1991-03-14

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Hon. Andree Champagne (Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34, I have the honour to table in the House, in both official languages, the fourteenth report on the activities of the Canadian section of the International Assembly of French-speaking Parliamentarians.
This report concerns the meeting of the AIPLF executive, held in Delemont, Switzerland, in the canton of the Jura, on February 7 and 8 this year.


REPORT ON OFFICIAL VISIT OF PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION TO CUBA
Mr. Charles DeBlois (Beauport-Montmorency- Orleans):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34,1 have the honour to table in the House, in both official languages, the report on the official visit of a parliamentary delegation to Cuba from February 3 to February 10, 1991.
Mr. Speaker, I may add that this was an opportunity to establish closer ties between Cuban and Canadian parliamentarians, to consider new opportunities for bilateral trade exchanges and, especially, to obtain family reunification for a Canadian citizen of Cuban origin.
As leader of the delegation I had the privilege of arguing this case, and I am proud of the results, which have vindicated our stand on human rights.


COMMITTEES OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the tenth report of the Standing Committee on Finance in both official languages. The report is in connection with Bill C-97, an act to provide borrowing authority. The report is without amendment.


BILL C-85 -TABLING OF REPORT OF LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE
Mr. Guy Ricard (Laval West):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the report of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-85, an Act to provide for certain matters respecting official languages, employees' pensions and labour relations in connection with the transfer of certain airports. This report, Mr. Speaker, is tabled without amendments.


PETITIONS
Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present almost 500 names on petitions from people across southwestern Ontario who are asking this government to implement legislation banning the use of MMT in Canada because it appears to have a health impact on the children of this nation and other people who work closely in the automotive sector.
Also, this petition would encourage the use of ethanol, which would create a market for approximately five to eight million bushels of grain which we have here in Canada and can easily supply. It also has another impact in that it reduces dramatically the hydrocarbon emissions into the atmosphere and assists in stopping the global warming of this planet.

March 14, 1991
Routine Proceedings


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by constituents in Ottawa-Vanier, to the effect that Canada Post's decision to close Branch No. 23 located at 580 Rideau Street, Ottawa, will inconvenience all customers. It will make things much harder for all the pensioners who live right next door. They will be deprived of a service that is essential to their needs.
The undersigned are asking for a review of this decision. Wherefore your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to ask Canada Post to review its decision to close the branch.
Mr. Speaker, there are hundreds of families living in this area, mostly senior citizens who would greatly appreciate a favourable decision as a result of this petition.


Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table this petition in the House today, signed by many constituents from my riding.
It urges the federal government to fulfil its duty to provide proper maintenance of our wharfs and harbours, many of which are in a deplorable, unsafe condition and require major repairs.
I join with these constituents in urging the federal government to evaluate the state of wharfs and harbours, proceed with the necessary maintenance and repair, and ensure the future safety of the fishery of Prince Edward Island.


Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present petitions signed by people from many communities in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario.
The petitioners recall the regulatory meltdown which led to the spill of 2,000 litres of contaminated radioactive waste at Wollaston Lake in the fall of 1989. They repeat the call for an independent, comprehensive public inquiry into the whole uranium mining industry.
They are happy to note that AECB has recommended that an ERP panel be struck and they hope that pending a full scale inquiry that the ERP panel proceed immediately.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to table, pursuant to Standing Order 36, a petition from citizens of Lamorandiere, Despinassy, Rochebaucourt, Lac Castagnier, all in Abitibi, who insist that the government of Canada drop its plans for the development of Parliament Hill, which would cost $68 million and involve building a parking garage and a shopping concourse under the Parliament of Canada, and that the government recognize the need for preserving the natural environment and historical character of the Parliament Buildings and Parliament Hill.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure, indeed, an honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of constituents of mine from Kamloops, British Columbia.
The petitioners point out their concerns about the government's treatment of VIA Rail service throughout Canada. They are complaining about the government's decision to curtail VIA Rail service through the southern route of the line between Calgary and Kamloops. They suggest a whole set of reasons why this would not only be important in terms of providing passenger rail service, but also environmentally would be the most appropriate way to move large numbers of people, to say nothing about the tourism industry.
They are asking the government to reconsider the decision to close that line.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Rob Nicholson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
March 14, 1991


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

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Mr. David Berger (Saint-Henri-Westmount) moved:: That this House condemn the government for failing to honour the Prime Minister's promise to "double Canada's spending commitment to research and development".


Mr. Dingwall:: Mr. Speaker, if the Chair will permit, we intend to proceed today with ten and five minute speeches. I am sure members would agree with that.


Mr. Danis:: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government, of course we have no objections to that.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party we too agree that this would be an appropriate way to continue for the day. It would simply be a decision of each of the political parties whether they decide to use that option or not.


An hon. member:: Advise the Chair.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I presume that the lead off speaker will take 20 minutes or 10?


An hon. member:: Ten minutes.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, the motion before us today reads, and I quote:
That this House condemn the Government for failing to honour the Prime Minister's promise to "double Canada's spending commitment to research and development".
Seven years ago next week, on March 22, 1984, the Prime Minister, speaking before the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, promised, and I quote: "-to double the collective national effort in the field of research and development during our first mandate".
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He added, and I quote: "Through this effort, we expect to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and increase overall sales by several billions of dollars each year".
It is not often, Mr. Speaker, that we, Liberals, agree with the Prime Minister's ideas. However, I can say flat out that we agree totally with those he expressed seven years ago about the importance of increased investment in research and development. Therefore, it is only logical that, today, we condemn the government and the Prime Minister for not delivering on this promise. We remember that, in his book entitled Where I Stand, the Prime Minister stated, and I quote: "Research and development, and the resulting innovations, are the lifeblood of a successful economy and country". The Prime Minister believed that, if the percentage of gross national product allocated to research and development were increased by a mere 1 per cent, we could create in Canada one million new jobs and $20 billion in additional sales of manufactured products.
We know what has happened since 1984: Spendings for research and development, instead of increasing, decreased by 1.4 per cent to 1.3 per cent of the gross national product. That was due to a reduction in the overall support to the research and development effort in Canada, and I can give you examples of that.
First, the Conservative government cut back on the support to industrial research and development. For instance, first-rate purchasing programs have been cancelled and the National Research Council Industrial Research Assistance Program is always starved for funds.
Second, the government reduced post-secondary education transfer payments and vocational training appropriations.
Third, the government went after Canada's foremost research agency-the National Research Council-and cut down the budget for research projects on environment and alternate energy sources.
Fourth, it cut in half the budget of the Science Council of Canada.
Fifth, intent on promoting university research, the government created the Centres of Excellence Program, yet at the same time it froze the funding of the main source of financial support for Canadian university research, the federal grants councils. The Prime Minis-

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ter did not follow the recommendations of his own national advisory council which had advocated doubling the appropriations of grants councils.
Sixth, health care research was the latest victim of conservative restraints, including programs on health care research, health promotion, prevention of diseases-cancer, for one-as well as labour injuries and accidents.

Mr. Speaker, I anticipate that in their remarks today members of the government-and I see that the Minister for Science is here- will down-play the significance of research and development. They will say that research and development is a measure of input, that doing research and development does not necessarily lead to jobs and sales.
It is true that there is not as direct a link between R and D and jobs and sales, as the Prime Minister led people to believe in his remarks some seven years ago. Investment in research and development is needed but not sufficient for jobs and sales. It is also true that a company is not likely to increase sales without doing research and development. That becomes more and more so with advanced technology, goods and services. In theory, a bad firm can spend money on R and D and get nothing from it. Yet all successful firms spend a lot on research and development and get a lot from it.
Of course, Canada's major competitors routinely spend twice as much as Canada does on their R and D investments. Are they all stupid? Are they throwing billions of dollars away for nothing? The new products, all the technological improvements that we see every day have to come from somewhere, and that is from research and development.
Increasing spending on R and D is part and parcel of developing in Canada a research and development culture or a culture which values knowledge and education, and which would place top priority on developing Canada's human resources. Developing an R and D culture means giving Canadians the opportunities they deserve to attain their potential, to have meaningful choices for a variety of kinds of employment without
having to leave Canada to pursue a rewarding career in science or in research.
In the budget the finance minister announced that the government will launch, and I quote: "a national effort to build a new partnership for prosperity". As a first step he said, and again I quote: "We will release a discussion paper in the spring to help focus public debate about the problems we face and the development of solutions". The Minister of Finance said that "more needs to be done to assure our future prosperity. We need to look hard at the quality of our investments and infrastructure, machinery and equipment, training and education, and research and technology". "There are signs", the Minister of Finance says, "that in some areas, such as private sector research and development and training, we are not doing enough".
My reaction on hearing these remarks of the Minister of Finance was, this is news to the Minister of Finance. For 10 years now members of Parliament have heard from countless sources that we are falling behind in all the areas that he identified in his budget speech two weeks ago. From university teachers, presidents and students, from business executives and workers, union leaders and from the government's own advisory committees the case has been made eloquently and consistently and now seven years after the government took office it proposes to focus public debate on these questions.
Where has the government been for the past seven years? Has it not been the government's responsibility to take action in these areas, to show leadership, to develop the kind of research and development culture that I said earlier values knowledge, education and the development of our human resources?
The debate the government proposes to engage Canadians in coming months is an admission of failure, an admission that we have lost seven years when we should have taken steps to ensure that all Canadians receive quality education and that Canadians businesses do enough R and D.
John Polanyi, the University of Toronto chemist who in 1986 won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, said shortly after being awarded that prestigious prize, and I quote:
Speaking from the perspective of someone who's been famous for
almost 24 hours, I have found that good research is a combination
of good luck, good colleagues, good students and adequate facilities.
March 14, 1991

The first, he said, comes from God; the rest from a university system properly supported by the government. Polanyi concluded:
I wonder whether we aren't relying rather more heavily on God
these days than on government.
Canadians need a government that will do its share.


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but make a couple of quick comments here.
My hon. friend has said that funding for university research in Canada has decreased. He knows that is not so. He knows in fact that the funding to the granting councils has increased every year. I will give him some figures later on just to refresh his memory.
He talked very briefly about Established Programs Financing. I remind him that it was his government in 1977 that changed the formula so that EPF was transferred to the provinces without any conditions whatsoever, where it could be used for roads, sewers or goodness knows what. It did not have to be used for health care and it did not have to be used for university or post-secondary education. It was not our government that threw the baby out with the bath water, it was his. He has got us into this situation now where the provinces have complete carte blanche to do what they want. They also have complete carte blanche to support the system for which they have the responsibility. It is time they began to do that.
I am glad that my hon. friend is learning that we need to support industrial research in this country. I will give him more figures on that this morning. I might ask him what in heaven's name his government did over all the years it was in power to support, promote and encourage industrial research in Canada. If there is anything, it has been hard for me to find.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, it is now seven years since this government took office and it is time that it started accepting responsibility for the economic circumstances which this country finds itself in now.
The minister said that funding for the granting councils has increased. He can try to fool people with figures, but I would remind him that there is only one appropriate way to look at the figures for the budgets of the granting councils and that is to determine what percentage of our gross domestic product funding for the granting councils represents. He knows that that per-
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centage has gone down, that funding for the granting councils, as a percentage of gross domestic product, has declined since 1984, and that is in constant dollars. The buying power, in other words, of funding for university research has gone down since 1984.
If the minister travels, as I know he does, to universities across this country, he knows that university researchers cannot keep up with inflation with the meagre stipends that this government has accorded them.
The minister says that our government transferred money to the provinces without any conditions in 1977. That is, of course, what the provinces asked for. But I would remind the minister that the Liberal government commissioned a study of the problems with post-secondary education funding, which we recognized as early as 1981, three or four years after the current EPF arrangement was established.
A1 Johnson tabled a report in 1984 which this government has chosen not to act upon. Therefore, it is time again, as I said earlier, that this government took responsibility for the circumstances that we find ourselves in. It is now seven years since it took office and I think it is time that this government stopped telling people about the history of this country prior to 1984 and present to Canadians a program to deal with our problems today.


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


Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, in 1984, the Prime Minister promised Canadians that he would undertake to double Canada's level of research and development.
This promise was reiterated at Halifax when he spoke to a Conservative gathering on June 19, 1989. He said to all Canadians that "Canada's place in the world is not guaranteed; either we meet the challenge of competitiveness and ride the crest of the technology wave into the 21st century, or we exhaust ourselves in the rip-tide of history, fading inexorably backward."
Beautiful words. I commend the Prime Minister on his eloquence, but we are here today to hold his feet to the fire. What is his promise? We have heard it. What has he done? The facts show just the opposite.

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When the Conservative government took over running Canada in 1984, our level of R and D was 1.42 per cent of the gross domestic product. Every year, under his stewardship, it has fallen so that today it is at 1.28 per cent of gross domestic product. We are at less than one-half the level of all our major competitors.

For example, let us look at what they did to the National Research Council Canada, NRCC. Since 1984 the federal government has reduced its NRCC appropriations by 12 per cent, or more than $5.7 million. In constant dollars this reduction would amount to roughly 48 per cent.
Last year the government appointed Pierre Perron President of the National Research Council. When he appeared before our committee at that time I asked him whether he thought his role as head of Canada's premier research and development agency was to lead the scientific community or to do the government's bidding. He was miffed, he said, so I had to rephrase my question: Well, Mr. Perron, do you think your role as president should be to fight against the government's NRC cutbacks? He replied: No, I cannot do that.
That is what I call doing the government's biding without question. And just a few days ago, Mr. Speaker, we learned that sixty-odd important employees had to resign. The NRC spirit has been flattened by this government.
And that is not all. Is the government really intent on promoting science and technology? Mr. Speaker, budget increases for science and technology amount to a mere 3 per cent. That is much less than the inflation rate and it spells fewer grants and less support for the NRC.
With respect to education in Canada we have only 90 scientists and researchers per 100,000 inhabitants. That compares with 140 in Britain, 150 in West Germany, 240 in Japan, and 280 in the United States. As to federal transfers to the provinces for health and education between 1986 and 1995, the cut-backs of this government will translate into a $40.1 billion loss for the provinces.
This has now become a serious issue. Even the Minister of Finance acknowledged in his budget that it is
a matter of competitiveness for Canada. The World Economic Forum has shown that Canada lags far behind in terms of international competitiveness-down from fourth to fifth rank last year. -In research and development we are sixth among 24 industrialized countries, and that explains why we have so many bankruptcies in Canada, why our country is being de-industrialized.
Over the past 26 months Canada lost 277,000 manufacturing jobs, a frightening figure which accounts for 13 per cent of all jobs in the manufacturing sector. There is a direct link between this government's lack of support and the vanishing jobs in that major sector.
In the few minutes I have left I should like to comment on the recommendations of the Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. The report was drafted and endorsed by all three parties, and government members made up the majority of the committee. Here are some of the recommendations. We should raise the level of research and development. But this government has done nothing. In three years we were to double the budgets of three research councils, namely the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanitys Research Council of Canada, and the Medical Research Council of Canada. The recommendation was to double appropriations over three years. What did they do in the budget? They limited government support to 3 per cent, which amounts to a loss in constant dollars.
The Science Council of Canada budget was to be brought up to the previous level of $5 million, but the SCC will have to make do with only $3.2 million. Our recommendation was an immediate boost to $100 million for IRAP-Industrial Research Assistance Program- but the budget has been kept down to only $85 million.
The committee recommended that the federal government reduce the renewal rate of these programs and staff for industry. We can see what they did with the National Research Council Canada. And then the government took $55 million off the total industry, science and technology budget.
Mr. Speaker, de-industrialization is creating a major problem. The only way to create sound manufacturing industries is to reverse these trends and double our efforts for science and technology and research and
March 14, 1991

development. The government is headed in the wrong direction, it needs to be set straight!


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment, and I would like the hon. member for Saint-Henri-Westmount to stay in the House and listen to what I have to say. I also have a question for the hon. member. Earlier, I heard him say "for seven years". But he forgot something. Why didn't he say "eight or nine years"? I will tell you why, Mr. Speaker.
I have a newspaper article here, dated September 30, 1987-that was during the past seven years-and the heading says the Liberals lost Canadians billions of dollars. This information came from Kenneth Dye, Auditor General of Canada, who said that because of the political situation, the previous Liberal government caused taxpayers to lose billions of dollars, for no good reason, and he was referring to scientific research. The program set up by Marc Lalonde with a budget of $200 million in 1983-84 went so far over budget that costs skyrocketed to $3.9 billion. The Liberals lost this country billions of dollars. That is my comment. Out of those $3.9 billion, $1.9 billion were misused, they even gave money to a guy in Victoria, a mechanic, to do scientific research on data processing. He used the money to go to China and write a book on break dancing!
I have another comment to make, Mr. Speaker. I heard the hon. member for Willowdale say the government is giving nothing. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but the latest Budget, and the news was out several months ago, provides that the federal government will set up a mining research centre in Val-d'Or, in the Abitibi, at a cost of $14,830,000 over five years. In today's paper, since he often refers to newspaper articles, the people of Abitibi thanked the Canadian government for establishing and starting up a research laboratory specialized in fragmentation. This means $15 million for a research centre to help the mining industry in our area, so it is not just in the large urban centres. You must know about this. My question is as follows: What do you think of the $3.9 billion that were lost in 1984?


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, it is not my job to defend the actions of the previous Liberal government. However, it is a fact that since 1965,
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Canada has been losing its competitive position throughout the world.


Guy St-Julien: The robbery of the century didn't make a lasting impression!


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: I meant that during the past decades, we, as Canadians, whether it was the Liberal government or the Conservative government, have missed opportunities.


Guy St-Julien: It was the Liberals!


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Maybe there were a few problems in 1984, when we tried to establish programs to encourage the private sector to do more research and development. I admit, there were some problems with our tax programs. However, the minister at the time is to be commended for having tried to do something about one of our country's biggest economic problems.
You have been the government for seven years now. Since you were elected, the level of research and development has gone down, down, down. You must acknowledge your responsibility. In seven years, you had plenty of time to keep the promise made by your Prime Minister, a promise that was well received by all Canadians because they knew it was necessary for Canada to have more.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues across the way but for quite different reasons, I am sure, I am delighted to participate in this debate today.
Hon. members of the Liberal party are quite right when they say that science and technology are crucial to the future of the Canadian economy. That is a message that cannot be repeated often enough. It is a truism, but one that I and many of my colleagues have been crossing the country to deliver. Nothing could please me more than to see it discussed in the House today.
We take very seriously our commitment to science and technology. At a time when we have had to cut back on government operations in order to fight a debt that will now reach almost $400 billion, the federal government has increased its R and D spending from $2.5 billion in 1984 to an estimated $3.2 billion in 1990. That is an increase of 28 per cent, while the government at the

March 14, 1991
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same time has been under expenditure restraint trying to bring the economy of this country under control.
Total federal science and technology expenditures amounted to approximately $5.5 billion in 1990-91. Those expenditures on science and technology have increased in real terms by 8 per cent since 1984, by an average above inflation of 1.1 per cent each year since taking office. That is not too bad.
Our spending on science and technology grew from 11.1 per cent of all discretionary spending in 1984-85 to 12.3 per cent in 1990-91. That is the true indication of the priority that the government awards to spending on science and technology. This, I might add, is in contrast to the record of the previous government.
I would suggest to this House that these figures demonstrate a strong federal commitment to science and technology in Canada.
Hon. members opposite would like us to do more. We would all like to do more, certainly I would, but the strength of the Canadian economy does not depend solely upon science and technology.
Canada's performance in research and development does not take place in some sterilized atmosphere in some test tube. It takes place in a real world which is influenced by all kinds of important factors. The strength of the economy depends upon the availability of capital, the accessibility of international markets, the value of our dollar, and the general climate for business in the country. We cannot separate science and technology from any of those components.
Each of those factors is strongly influenced by the public debt in Canada, a debt that has been growing since 1970 and a debt that we must get under control.
As the Minister of Finance said in his budget speech a couple of weeks ago, "the interest on the debt alone this year is going to be $43 billion". Just compare that to what we are able to spend in terms of science and technology. The amount we spend in interest payments is eight times what we can afford to pay for all the federal R and D and related science activities.
Think of what we could do with that $43 billion for the granting councils, for the National Research Council, more for big science and little science, for small business involved in the leading edge of the high technology
revolution, and more scholarships to young people-all of the things that members of this House want to do, but we cannot do them in the range we wish unless we also take steps to control government spending.
I have lots of favourite programs, as has every member of this House, of the things we might like to do, but we cannot do them if we cannot pay down the debt. We cannot do them if we are spending $43 billion a year just to pay the interest on the debt.
In contrast to some of my colleagues on the other side of the House, I congratulate the finance minister for his budget. He has set us on a real course of fiscal responsibility. He has set us on a course where we will be able down the road to do all the things we want to do. In terms of science and technology, we have always had preferential treatment in every budget that this government has brought down; not as much as I would have liked, but we have always had top priority. I believe that is as it should be.
If finance ministers a decade ago had used fiscal restraint but at the same time had delivered a priority to science and technology, we would be in far better shape today. There is no question about that. We have to tighten our belts, but we recognize the critical role that science and technology plays in the economy.
The recent budget placed expenditure controls on many programs. My colleagues opposite scoff that science and technology, beginning in 1992-93, will receive increases of 3 per cent. When I look at what has happened to other government programs and the way we have to exercise that restraint, I know the Minister of Finance has given us a top priority. That is important. If members opposite would look at the situation realistically, they would agree that the government has done quite well in terms of science and technology operating in these difficult times.
People should know that the Government of Canada by itself cannot change the attitude of industry in terms of promoting more research and development. We cannot shoulder the financial burden. It has to be shouldered by Canadian industry; it has to be shouldered with the provinces, with the universities. When hon. members opposite refer to GERD, gross expenditures

March 14, 1991

on research and development over GDP-and I heard them on many occasions-we have to be very precise in our analysis of the problem. It is not what governments spend, because we compare with most of our competitors in terms of what governments spend. It is what industry in Canada has not found itself able to spend, and that is where we lose out with respect to other countries.
Canada's ratio of gross domestic expenditure on research and development to GDP is 1.35. The ratio in the United States is 2.86, and in Japan it is 2.72. It is an interesting figure to have and points out once again where the funding must come from, where the impetus must come from, if we are going to move forward. I agree with hon. members, and always have, that this is a disturbing situation. But the way to improve the ratio is not to pour more Government of Canada money into science and technology; it is to encourage industry to do more, to devise programs that will allow them to do more.
Incidentally, concentrating on the GERD is in fact only looking with one eye at what industrial people need in this country. It is equally important to concentrate on the amount of technology inflow that we need, as well as the R and D that we need. It is useful to open both eyes and look at both sides of this question.
We compare favourably in terms of civil expenditures. We are about the middle of the pack in terms of public sector spending on research and development. We spend more as a percentage of GDP than does the United States or Britain in terms of civil research; less than France, Sweden and the Netherlands; and about the same as Japan and Italy. Where we fall behind is in our private sector.
When we look at the ratio between industrial and public sector civil R and D we notice once again that Canadian research and development is very heavily dependent upon taxpayers' dollars. That has to change. The ratio in Japan between taxpayers' dollars and industrial dollars is something like 4.38; in France, 1.38; and in United States, 3.13. We have all these figures.
Sweden, in spite of its reputation as a socialist nation, is well ahead of Canada in terms of private sector spending in research and development. Its ratio is 2.49. Again, it points out what we have to do in Canada:
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increase the amount of industrial research. That is the challenge and it is clear.


Raymond John Funk: Elect a socialist government.


William C. Winegard: We will not get into that today. We must encourage more private sector investment in research and development.
The difference between my colleagues opposite and the government is that we are not just going to say if the private sector increases the amount of research and development, everybody has to increase it by x per cent. We do not know whether that is appropriate or not. We do not know whether some sectors would be far better off to spend their money on technology inflow to adopt and adapt new technologies rather than invest significantly in R and D.
In our opinion there is only one way to go, and that is to do the analysis of the Canadian economy sector by sector and see what the problems are, why they do not invest in R and D, or indeed even if they should. That is one of the contracts we have given to the Science Council of Canada. We expect some of those results will be with us over the next few months.
The solution, as I have said, is not to replace private sector spending with public spending. That has been the record of our country now for 25 years. It does not work, and it is not going to work. We must get the private sector involved.
What can the government do to encourage more private sector R and D? For one thing maybe not generally known-and it certainly would not be known to some of my colleagues opposite-we have created one of the most favourable tax regimes in the world for private sector R and D. We do not say that. A recent Conference Board of Canada study put Canada's support for R and D through the tax system ahead of that of the United States, Britain, Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Sweden, West Germany and Australia. Australia's is probably very close to our own.
Canada's tax system for research and development consists of two main features. First, the ability to write off fully R and D current capital expenditures in the year the costs occur. Second, R and D tax credits are used either to reduce a company's federal income tax liability or they are refunded in cash. The system helps start-up companies, particularly the small companies, get going. That is what we have done.

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Canada's tax system-and the latest figures I have are for 1988-was responsible for $764 million in tax credits. That is a substantial contribution to $3.4 billion invested by business that particular year. What is more, 65 per cent of the claims came from small and medium sized businesses, which is the kind of business we are hoping to promote.
Indeed, we have even met with the industries, sector by sector, again to ask: "Does the income tax system work well for you? Is the R and D system working well? What problems do you have? " We have sat down again with Revenue Canada and worked it out sector by sector to see what we could do.
Those things take time. They are not things that are on the front page of the newspaper, but they are the things that will make Canadian industry grow and that is why we are doing them.
Look at the initiatives that we have launched. I do not need to repeat the networks of centres of excellence; 500 researchers at 35 universities and 37 other research bodies all involved in these networks across Canada. That is the way to promote the interaction we need, $244 million to 15 networks. That is a significant amount. The strategic technologies program to promote networks and alliances are being led by industry itself. Forty of these alliance projects are now in place; 13 of them in advanced industrial materials, 20 in biotechnology, seven in the information technologies.
The Canada scholarship program is a massive acknowledgement that young men and women should be studying science and engineering today. That initiative came from the Government of Canada through the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology.
I want to take a moment to talk about the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology. It has been very influential in setting the science and technology policy for Canada since it was formed in 1987 with the Prime Minister in the chair. NAB ST is really responsible for the networks of centres of excellence. It is the one which came up with this idea.
NAB ST was really behind the Canada scholarship program and particularly the concept of allowing or insisting that 50 per cent of the scholarships go to women. NABST recognized that we are not going to
resolve the people problem of Canada unless we can somehow encourage and recruit more young women to science and engineering. NABST was the one which made that recommendation.
It was NABST that was behind the $1.4 billion to science and technology announced two or three years ago. In recent days, the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology has presented to the Prime Minister, and he was in the chair, the financing of industrial innovation, human resources development, and science, technology, innovation and national prosperity. Those recommendations had a significant influence upon the finance minister and the government's commitment to look again at the whole concept of an agenda for prosperity, using innovation and research and development.
I wanted to get those words in on the National Advisory Board because many of the members will be retiring from NABST after serving for three or four years. I wanted to acknowledge publicly their influence, not only upon government programs, but their influence upon government policy. They have had this constant interaction with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the ministers of our department.
Let me conclude on a subject that has always been discussed in the House, and I think all members are very interested in it, and that is women in science and engineering. We heard from my hon. colleagues this morning how we had to do more about the people situation in Canada and we had to change attitudes. I have just a few things to add. Half of the Canada scholarships go to women. Corporate members, institutions and industries are now beginning to support mentor clubs and additional corporate funding for other kinds of scholarships, all hooked into the Canada scholarship program.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, recently the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council have made some interesting innovations. NSERC's policies are intended to encourage women to pursue graduate studies and research and to encourage universities to hire more women as faculty members. In the last competition they had so many good applicants by encouraging women to take faculty positions, that instead of offering 10 fellowships, they offered 20. They just had to do it because the applications were so good.

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We have 200 new undergraduate student research awards by NSERC and just a couple of months ago the National Research Council announced that they have in fact a new summer program for women to work in their laboratories across Canada that will stimulate once again the interest of young men and young women in these things. They will go back to their own high schools. They will tell their colleagues and their young friends and their sisters and their brothers of the importance of science and technology.
We have done something about these things. We have had a large program. We have not stood idly by.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, I have difficulty containing my anger when I hear the Minister for Science equivocate on the subject of R and D and come up with a zillion excuses to explain why his government, and he as a minister, has failed to increase R and D spending in Canada.
I never said, and no member of my party ever said that the federal government could solve this problem by throwing money at it. What we want from this government is a strategy to encourage Canadian industry to increase its spending on R and D. The minister refers to the deficit and the debt. I would suggest to him that to reduce the deficit, an appropriate balance is needed between raising taxes, cutting spending and increased growth.
I would suggest this government has been singularly unsuccessful in achieving the objectives it set for itself, not only with respect to R and D, which is the subject we are debating here today, but also with respect to reducing the deficit. This minister has the gall to stand up and give us lectures about the importance of controlling the deficit and the debt.
The Minister of Finance, in his first budget some six years ago, forecast that he would reduce the deficit to $18 billion by the end of the decade. Where is the deficit this year? It is forecast in the latest budget to be $30.5 billion. So the Minister of Finance missed the mark by the small sum of $12.5 billion, and this minister has the nerve to stand up here and tell us that reducing the deficit is something that his government knows something about.
The minister studiously avoided the subject of the debate. I wonder whether he even picked up the Order
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Paper and looked at it. The subject of the debate today is a motion to condemn the government for failing to honour the Prime Minister's promise, and I quote: "to double Canada's spending commitment to research and development."
That should be a matter of some importance to the Minister for Science. But he did not even refer to it during the course of his speech. Why not? Why was it important to the Prime Minister seven years ago when he made that speech, and why is it so unimportant to the minister today that it does not even bear mentioning in his speech? I would remind him that the Prime Minister said also that increasing spending on research and development by just 1 per cent would create some one million jobs in Canada and $20 billion in additional sales of manufactured products. I would suggest that in 1984 the Prime Minister had some idea that R and D might permit the economy to grow and therefore reduce the deficit and debt. But that is a matter which has been thrown out the window by this government.
I would suggest to the minister that he ought to do more than simply berate the private sector for its failures, which is what he has taken to doing like his predecessors. Berating the private sector is the sum total of the efforts of this government to increase R and D spending. It is an admission of failure by the minister. It is abject failure and he should be ashamed of himself.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, I find it very interesting that my friend across the way would say we have made no effort. Look at the programs we have put in place.
Maybe what he is talking about is this. Maybe he wants an effort such as they had when he was in power. Maybe he wants a scientific tax credit system that bleeds the system.
There are two ways to do things. It can be done that way, where the only people who make any money are the money shufflers, or it can be done the way we have done it, that is by changing the tax system so that industry is actually encouraged to do more.
I remind the hon. member that since 1984, industrial spending on R and D has increased by 73 per cent. That is better than anything the Liberals were able to do. All they did was to put in tax schemes that made sure no research and development was ever done.

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Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, I have listened with considerable interest to these exchanges.
I have to say that the hon. minister is a man who came to this place with considerable respect from the scientific community of this country. I think those of us who were involved in science welcomed his appointment because we thought that he would be an advocate for science.
We did not expect him to play games with figures in order to demonstrate a point that cannot be made. For example, he attacked the Liberal record, which is worthy of attack, and said that industrial expenditures have increased since 1984 by 73 per cent. I would ask him: "How does that compare to the growth between 1975 and 1982?" In the absence of comparison those figures mean nothing.
He insists on saying that there have been increased expenditures by government on research and development, and on science and technology. Yet he knows bloody well that the figures he has been providing do not represent a significant increase in expenditure.
He has a right to defend the policies of the government. I wish he would defend research and development, but he has made his choice. I should think that a former president of a university would show sufficient intellectual honesty in defending his position and his government so that we can have a clear understanding of where he really does stand.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, one of the things you learn as president of a university-my colleague might learn a little bit from this-is that it is also necessary to deal with reality.
In fact, the reality is that what this Minister for Science has been able to do with all of my colleagues on this side of the House is ensure that in the last year the granting councils received the highest increase of any part of the Government of Canada. In this current year, they received approximately a 4.8 per cent increase and in the finance minister's budget, they received approximately 3 per cent. Again, this is the highest increase available.
If the hon. member thinks that happened because the people on this side of the House do not care about science, he is quite wrong. We care about it. We have put
in whatever money is available. It is discretionary funding, as I have said.
The hon. member across the way may not care about simple things like budgets, but presidents of universities have to worry about things like that. When discretionary funding can be increased from 11 per cent to 12 per cent, that is a significant shift in dollars. It is more than the Liberals have ever been able to do, and I doubt if my hon. friend, who should perhaps go back to teaching biology, would do any better either.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not respond to the latter statements of the minister, who utterly failed to respond to what I would have thought was an extraordinarily provocative statement. I said that the way he uses his figures belies his university experience because they represent, in the manner in which he uses them, intellectual dishonesty. His answer to that was, that I should go back to heading a biology department, a biology department that had a balanced budget for the first time when I became head of the department and had a balanced budget thereafter.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: And an expanding department at that. I made my case without playing with figures.
We are here to consider a motion that would condemn the government for its failure to fulfil the promise of the Prime Minister, made in 1983, that he would double the rate of national expenditures on research and development by the end of his first term.
If there is anything that is transparently clear in all this world, it is a promise that has not been kept. In fact, as others have noted, the national expenditures on research and development have, in fact, fallen, tumbled since this government came into office. That is indisputably clear.
It is not that the hon. minister, if listened to carefully, seemed to dilute the importance of the gross expenditures in research and development. I think we got a hint that the government is deserting its previous position. But we ought to take note of the fact that virtually anyone who has commented on research and development in this country, including the house committee on industry, science and technology, has identified 2.5 per cent of GDP as an appropriate target for national expenditures and research and development.
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Indeed, on my suggestion that committee was quite specific. It said that we should achieve approximately 2 per cent by the year 2000 and 2.5 per cent by the year 2005. This will still leave us behind Sweden, Germany, the United States and Japan.
It is important to understand that what we are talking about is a fundamental requirement for Canadian economic development, for our capacity to produce wealth, for our capacity to produce jobs. A certain kind of job. A job with high wages, high salaries. The kind of wealth that will enable us to sustain our social programs. I say that because the hon. Minister for Science is so facile in blaming this government's failure on the deficit.
If there is anything that anybody by now ought to begin to realize it is that the deficit is not just a question of interest rates. It is not just a question of profligate expenditures by this or any previous government. It is a problem essentially created by our incapacity to generate the kind of wealth that we must generate.
So if we are going to ultimately deal with the deficit, it is not going to be by the helter-skelter cutting of programs left and right, and it is certainly not going to be in the absence of reasonable decisions about appropriate expenditures in areas that ultimately will contribute to Canada's capacity to produce that wealth in a knowledge and technology based economy.
The minister has said, and rightly said, that this is not a problem that has been precipitated by this government. It is not a situation that can be blamed exclusively on it. The fact of the matter is that in the early years of the Trudeau government, 1968, the percentage of our gross domestic product that was spent on research and development was in fact 1.4 per cent.
By the 1970s the Liberal government had allowed that to drop to 0.9 per cent.
I am not talking in abstract terms of statistics, down statistics, I am talking about a full knowledge of the situation in this country with respect to science. There is no one who was in the universities during the late 1960s and 1970s who does not recognize the utter failure of Liberal policy in the area of science. It was the almost overwhelming preoccupation of everyone. Several spe-
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cific scientific organizations were formed in order to do something about a situation that was made bad by the Liberals but which has been made still worse by this government.
If you look back to 1979, to extend this example, the Conservative government at the time, under the present Secretary of State for External Affairs, did at least undertake to approve a five-year program of assured funding for the granting council, a decision that was completely annulled when the next Liberal government came into office.
We have a situation where a Liberal government promised in 1980 that it would increase GERD, that is gross expenditure on research and development, to 1.5 per cent, but by 1984 it was sitting at 1.4 per cent. But it has fallen since. It has fallen under the leadership of this government.
Every time the question is posed in this House the minister says: "Well, yes, that's true, but it is industry's fault". There is no question that there is a fault in industry, but what kind of leadership is it when expenditures by government do not increase or if they stay steady over that period of time? When in fact this happened, as that percentage that GERD has fallen, the percentage executed by industry, and paid for by industry, has increased. The minister knows that.
It follows, therefore, quite logically, that this government's contribution must have fallen. He will tell you that, for example, the government expenditures on science and technology have increased since this government has been in office from $4,083 billion to $5,450 billion.
He says that is an immense change, an immense increase, and we are all supposed to shudder at the sheer commitment and bravado of this government in pursuing the mission of increasing research and development.
My calculations have that at a 33 per cent increase and over the same period of time the CPI has increased by 35 per cent. My God, fantastic. Are we not all impressed? No, we are not. No, we should not be impressed.
If we look at almost every area in which there is any role for the government, this government has not done what it ought to do.

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When this government came into office, we had the lowest percentage of scientists and engineers per thousand in the labour force of virtually any of the OECD countries. That is unchanged.
Let us talk about education. What is the situation at our universities? Our universities are in a state of deterioration because this government's contribution to post-secondary education has decreased.


Mr. Thacker:: It's still higher than inflation.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: It is not higher than inflation, sir, I am sorry.
Let us look at what has happened with respect to the GDP between 1978-79 and 1987-88, during which period the GDP increased by 127 per cent. In the meantime, expenditures on university libraries increased by only 93 per cent by comparison. Physical plant expenditures increased by only 81 per cent, capital expenditures by 97 per cent, instruction by 103 per cent.
We have a situation in which the universities are suffering, and meanwhile we have the Established Programs Financing levels being cut at the same time. What has been the situation there? If the EPF formula had not been changed, and had it not been subjected to the six and five formula that was imposed by the Liberals, the EPF payments would have been $7 billion by now.


Blaine Allen Thacker: And the deficit would be 70 billion.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Even with the six and five it would have been $6.7 billion by now. And, in fact, in 1991 it turns out to be $5.78 billion. On top of that, they are going to cut university expenditures by another $3.8 billion between now and 1996-97.
We have all herd the discussion about the cutback and elimination of cash transfer payments. If one looks at the contribution of the federal government to the research function of the universities-which is really the subject for discussion now-higher education expenditure per researcher in Canada is $60,000 per annum; in the United States, it is $140,000 per annum.
The percentage of the gross domestic product that is spent on the granting councils has fallen from .12 per cent to .1 per cent.
If we could turn to the issue of government-executed research, we have the sorry tale-which all of us in the
Ottawa area had an opportunity to hear last night on CBC-where approximately 80 NRC scientists have accepted early retirement. What are they really doing? These are people looking for life jackets to save themselves from what they see to be a sinking ship. And this minister has the gall to tell us that he is doing the best he can, that 3 per cent increases or 5 per cent increases amount to a significant improvement in government's role.
Of course, he returns to that usual song and dance, that it is industry that is failing.
This is the government that has allowed a fantastic increase in the rate of foreign ownership of Canadian industry. And yet his own National Advisory Board on Science and Technology has pointed out that one of the most significant failures in the Canadian economy to achieve a reasonable level of research and development is precisely attributable to the fact that such a high proportion of Canadian industry is foreign owned and does not do research here. Yet they continue to improve and encourage and in no respect prevent this increasing takeover of Canadian industry.
To top that all off, this minister should have understood as others have understood that there are certain kinds of measures that one can take to improve our research and development levels in this country, to encourage industry to do so, such as procurement and other things. The free trade agreement has eliminated some of those mechanisms, as he very well knows, just as the free trade agreement has encouraged the takeover of precisely those industries where science and technology, research and development, can make the greatest contribution to Canada.
He claims that he has fought hard for research and development in this government. If he has fought so hard, why has he not achieved what all members of the committee on industry, science and technology thought could be achieved? Why relatively minor changes in priorities?
Let's take the NRC once more, whose complement of scientists has been cut by about 250 since this government has come into office, whose budget has been cut commensurately, which institution has been so demoralized that it may likely become irrelevant if the efforts of
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this government are allowed to continue. It was a year ago that its president, monsieur Perron, submitted-and not too many are supposed to know about this-a tentative five-year plan that asked for $250 million in additional funding over five years. Of that amount, $125 million was supposed to go to IRAP. What did they get? The whole of the NRC got $50 million.
We heard a former executive scientist at the NRC on radio last night condemning the actions of this government in having caused such a dispirited complement of scientists that, as I said, they are trying to leave. But he has done such a great job.
That report made a number of other recommendations that could easily have been responded to and effectively responded to by a science minister who was an advocate for research and development for science and technology rather than an apologist for government. It is about time that we had advocacy. It is about time that we had somebody who is going to stand up, as those of us on this side are standing up, for not only research and development as something worthy in itself but something which is fundamental to the future of this country. When he says that they have had tax incentives which have been so generous, maybe it is time to talk about focusing those tax incentives to produce useful activities within the context of national economic priorities rather than giving great sums of taxpayers' money to those who are not adding to our capacity to increase wealth.
The business luncheon, the Dome cabin, the real estate speculation, the foreign investment, all contribute not a thing to Canada's capacity to grow.
Mr. Speaker, I think you would agree with me that there is reasonable concern throughout the leadership in this country in the industrial sector, in the academic sector, in the political sector, about the deindustrialization of this country. With that deindustrialization, we have the descientification of this country. And it will become worse. Unless we address the needs for research and development in industry, in academia and in government, unless we do something about the constant underfunding of a deteriorating university system, unless we do something about the fact that we are graduating fewer and fewer scientists and engineers than we have in a decade, then we are going to see all potential for production of wealth through knowledge fleeing to the United States while the minister insists that the Minister
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of Finance is doing a good job even while he causes the deindustrialization of this country.


Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, I rise because the member who has just spoken and I come from the same part of the country. I must say that I welcome his speech. I think he has expressed his views in his usual articulate fashion. But what is particularly remarkable about his speech is that it is so inconsistent with the stands that are regularly taken by his party. His party is the one that has consistently over the years engaged in deep, profound and vicious attacks on the Canadian private sector. They have never differentiated between foreign ownership and Canadian ownership. The fact is that if it comes from the private sector, it is simply out exploiting the workers. If it comes from the private sector, it is engaged in activity which is exporting jobs. Never does the member's party ever give any thought that if you are going to spend money on research and development, it must be spent on a basis that is world-wide.
Why is it that the Japanese and the Germans have done so well? It is because they operate an international market, a market that this member's party would have Canadian companies issue. I find it completely inconsistent to understand this member talking about R and D when he would have us live within the narrow borders of our own country as opposed to giving Canadians the competence to take on the world.
The second point that I would make to the hon. member is how can he stand up and talk about what government should do when it is very clear that if the private sector is going to pursue R and D, it will only do so on the basis of confidence in government policies- that means, governments that do what they say they will do-when he belongs to a party that in the province of Ontario has consistently broken every election promise that it made.
Education, they promised us great things in education. The member talks about education. Yet in the province of Ontario the government of Bob Rae is not doing what it said. The government of Bob Rae said that it would do great things for the environment, the basis of all new technological development. The government of Bob Rae has broken every promise, and no one can have anything. The government of Bob Rae in Ontario is not investing the way it said, or the way the private sector requires, or the way Canadians require from the most important

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economic province in the country in terms of research and development.
The member stands here in the House representing a political party that has broken its word, that is destroying the economic system of what was once the motor of the Canadian economy. My only question to the member is that his party stands for a destruction of the economic system and I do not understand how within that basis he can talk about research and development, because research and development operates with a combination of government, the universities and the private sector. That is where jobs are coming from.
The member represents a party that will create yesterday's jobs, but not tomorrow's.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, that is from a gentleman who has produced so many foreign jobs in his own enterprise.
The member talks about the broken promises of the Ontario government. I did not notice him mentioning the secret $2.5 billion deficit that his party left to that government. But the rest of what he says is so bizarrely out to lunch that I find it almost impossible to respond to him.
He said that we would not open this country to foreign markets.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, the hon. House leader for the opposition.


David Charles Dingwall: Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, I may facilitate the Chair and the hon. member that if he is not able to respond to my colleague in his assertions, I would dearly love to take the floor and perhaps provide further information so that my colleague will then have an opportunity to respond.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is not a point of order.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: If the hon. member, who has a slightly more than casual relationship to my home city, has not expressed himself clearly enough to be responded to, well then I do not think that we should now accord anybody else an opportunity to clarify it.
If the hon. member had ever come home, then he would have had an occasion on any number of occasions
to see precisely what this member and therefore what this party considers is the fundamental of economic development. He will not have heard me say or this party say that we should not compete on the international markets. What he will have heard us say, as I think he might have said on occasion, that the free trade agreement that this government negotiated ties our hands with respect to developing that kind of competitiveness that would allow Canada to compete in the open market.
This I have said. It has not been any Liberal in Windsor who led the construction of an economic development strategy in that city. There was no Liberal who was involved in leading it. This New Democrat was involved in it. If he wants some lessons on how to improve the economy, how to use research and development, how to encourage a community to prepare itself in international competition, I am prepared to do it, but he must first correct his ignorance about where I and my party stand.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, I do not think I will comment on just exactly who is out to lunch here. There has been enough of it.
I would like to make a comment about my friend talking about generating wealth. Like my friend from the Liberal Party, I too find this quite surprising coming from a member of the NDP. This is a party that wants to tax away anything called profits. This is the party that says it is a nasty word.
Of course the hon. member is absolutely correct. This country must generate more wealth but, at the same time, to ignore the expenditure side of that equation is foolhardy. One generates wealth by looking at how industry can thrive, how it can make profits, and therefore how much research and development it is able to do. The tax regime in this country, which we changed, has been established so that R and D is given very favourable treatment.
Is it not interesting that my colleague just does not seem to want to acknowledge that? In terms of the practice of the R and D tax credits, I have already said that we have gone out sector by sector and looked at how it is working. In the sector, the one my colleague from the Windsor area is so interested in, we have been discussing this with the automotive industry and meeting
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with Revenue Canada to iron out some of the wrinkles that might be there. Those are the important things to do.
My colleague says that industry has done more, that the ratio is increasing and that is a terrible thing. I do not know what he would expect. If industry does more R and D, then of course the percentage that is done by government is going to be lower as the percentage done by industry increases.


An hon. member:: Where?


William C. Winegard: It is in Hansard, sir; I will show your comments to you.
In the public sector in Canada, .60 GDP is what government does; .5 GDP in Japan. On the industrial side in Canada it is around .7 GDP. So we get a ratio. Of course, as it changes, the government ratio is going to go down. In Japan it is 2.05 GDP. Of course the ratio is quite different. I do not know, but it is simple arithmetic. If we do relatively less on one side than the other, which is what the whole policy is designed to promote, it seems to me that what my hon. friend misses is that the policy is working, hence the numbers that he has put down on the Order Paper here today. Of course it is working.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I provoked both the Liberals and the Conservatives into intellectual dishonesty.
First of all, I have never said, you will never hear me say, nobody will ever hear me say, and nobody can claim to have heard me say that profits were in and of themselves bad things. There is a word for an expression such as the minister's that is so contradictory to the truth.
The minister then goes on with another classical example of the games he plays. He claims that I condemned the increased contribution of industry. He knows very well that what I was doing was stating a simple statistical fact, that if the GERD goes down as a percentage of GDP and industry's contribution goes up then the government's contribution must be going down.
What is bad about it is that the debate is about the fact that this government promised to increase the gross expenditures on research and development, and it is doing it by cutting government expenditures. That is a hell of a way to meet a goal established by a Prime Minister.
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Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, we have before us a motion which draws the attention of this House and indeed of the people of Canada to a subject of prime concern.
There is no question that Canadians are deeply concerned about our ability to compete internationally in an increasingly global economy. The success of our efforts in greater international competition will depend of course in large measure on our ability to be more productive, particularly in the areas of research and development and in the training and retraining of our work force.
The increasing interdependence in the world means that all industrialized countries place increasing emphasis on research and development, on science and technology in the broadest sense, and indeed on the quality of education of their people.
In Canada we no longer have the possibility of hoping to achieve greater global competitiveness through reliance on our resource industries, industries which for many generations provided Canadians with a high standard of living, but which can no longer provide that level of living to Canadians. We are increasingly challenged by a global economy and by the higher technologies that emerge from such a global marketplace.
If Canada were to engage in protectionism there would be no solution to the questions of our future prosperity. The route we must go is of course to engage fully in the liberalized global trading economy. To do that, we must equip ourselves with the necessary higher technologies and improved human skills which will enhance our comparative advantages and our competitiveness.
The only way to increase our international competitiveness, as I mentioned a moment ago, is through improved productivity. In the high technology sector opportunities for increased productivity are the greatest. Quite obviously Canada should move aggressively into such areas especially as the Third World takes on the simpler forms of manufacturing and mass production. The impetus is there for Canada to engage in higher technology manufacturing and production processes.
It is past time in Canada that we gave more attention to the need for science and technology and for research and development. The current government, when it came to office in 1984, set itself a priority to define a new science and technology strategy. I am sure all Canadians would join me in regretting that, despite the high flown

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statements of that period, the government did not make the progress it had set for itself.
Through a consultative process, a process which I am sure all of us would endorse, the government of the day did attempt to identify where it is that we could best develop science based innovation in the Canadian economy. Elowever, since setting itself that goal, it has not provided the incentives, the tax incentives in particular, that could have helped to make a reality of that policy initiative.
The centres for excellence which the government committed itself to establishing have not flourished. The networking of university, government and industry laboratories has not proceeded in anything like the way that it has proceeded in the countries with which Canada competes in the global markets to which I referred a moment ago. Canada, on the contrary, continues to fund and conduct its research and development at low levels.
For example, in recent years merely 100 companies accounted for 75 per cent of Canadian industrial research and development, with only 10 companies accounting for 40 per cent of that total. The situation in essence has not improved. The vast majority of Canadian businesses still does not conduct any research and development.
In those circumstances I would ask how it is that we think in Canada that we can keep up with state of the art technologies which are being developed among our principal trade partners.
I want to quote in that context a statement by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which three years ago noted:
Canada's-capacity to perform in industry strategic applied research-is appallingly weak-A strong capacity to perform longterm applied research is essential as part of our industrial structure, if strategic market opportunities are to be identified by industry and pursued through sound programs of investments keyed to all the elements in the chain of innovation.
That was the judgment of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research some three years ago. There is certainly no reason today to challenge that judgment. In fact, there is every reason to believe the situation has not
improved, despite the fact that the reduction in trade barriers including those in the United States-Canada Free Trade Agreement, make it all the more imperative that Canada's research and development capacities be fostered.
I am not one who would advocate that we merely throw money at science and technology. No such simplistic answer would meet Canadian circumstances. There is already some degree of research and development support in our country, although it is relatively low, but it really is the market success of the research upon which we should concentrate and industry should be encouraged to address.
Our traditional comparative advantage in resource industries, which I noted a few moments ago, may have made Canadian industry and indeed the Canadian government rather complacent, but certainly the time for complacency is long since passed, especially in light of the global trade liberalization which I have already touched upon.
It seems to me that the efforts of the government should in general be to develop a broad consensus on the need to improve our scientific and technological base and to identify and capitalize on strategic market opportunities. We should promote industrial consortia, groupings of industrial companies that can augment our capacity for long-term applied research. That too is an area where government incentive could be of great importance.
Equally important, the linkages among industry, university and government to train specialists and to aid in technology transfer could certainly be fostered through the increased privatization of government funded research. Such a policy, I might add, has been in the forefront of the recommendations of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce for sometime, as well as in the case of universities, and yet we have seen little action on the part of this government in that direction.
I would also suggest that we should expand the availability of private equity capital to finance smaller technology based companies. We should look again at the way in which we finance R and D through tax incentives and tax credits.
March 14, 1991

If this government were to pursue those policies, we would today have a much stronger research and development based industry with which to compete with others.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague on the other side for his as always very thoughtful comments about this issue.
He mentioned the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research and its preoccupation-and it is a good one- with the lack of pre-competitive research in Canada.
That is where we hurt. That is where we are having our difficulty. It is hard to get Canadian industries to co-operate with each other in that area. I like to mention the Sony-Philips consortium which did all of the precompetitive research for the compact disc. Then, when they realized they could in fact have a product, they went their own separate ways again.
It has been hard to get Canadian companies to accept that kind of philosophy, that kind of co-operation. That is why the networks of centres of excellence were established, to see if we could not bring those units together somehow.
The Strategic Technologies Program responds to some extent to my colleague's concern about industrial consortia. In that program we will provide 50 per cent of the funding for pre-competitive research, either in advanced industrial materials, the biotechnologies or the information technologies. It is a move in the direction that my friend has been talking about.
I think in terms of funding for start-ups and that kind of thing. I hope, when the latest National Advisory Board on Science and Technology reports are released within the next few weeks, that he would be kind enough to give me his personal comments on the issue of financing, which one of those reports does address in some detail. I know his interest and I know his expertise. I would be very grateful for his personal comments when we are able to deliver those reports to him.


Roy MacLaren: I should be pleased, Mr. Speaker, to respond to the minister's kind suggestion. I certainly shall take the occasion to offer a few comments.
However, let me say at once that I recognize, as I believe he does, that part of the difficulty in this broad
area of research and development has been the degree to which foreign ownership has marked the manufacturing industry in particular.
We could, I suppose, engage in a debate today about the merits of previous governments' policies about promoting or indeed discouraging Canadian investment in Canada. However, the time is so limited I think I shall resist that temptation and merely suggest that any government action, and I hope the government would share this view, should be on the supply side, that it would and provide the circumstances through education, through tax incentives and other devices to encourage greater private sector activity. The government would not itself reach in, designate or select specific corporations where some funding might be thought to be of assistance. That would be of course a direct intervention on the part of the government.
I would instead urge this government to look again at its budgetary policies with regard to promoting the circumstances which can give rise to the enhanced growth of R and D in our country.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, the entire country has become more aware of the crisis problem of violence against women. Indeed, yesterday we debated the need for a royal commission.
For the past few months, the subcommittee on the status of women has been hearing testimony on the terrible and terrifying subject. But it is clear that not all legislators are as concerned with or as sensitive to this issue as we might wish. I refer to Ontario's Minister of Consumer and Corporate Relations, sunshine boy extra-

March 14, 1991
ordinaire, who has hired as his adviser on sexism a man convicted of assaulting his common law spouse.
Premier Rae's office said that Mr. Grimaldi has made his penance. While no one disagrees, I ask: "Is this the message that Bob Rae and the New Democrats want to send?"
This appointment is no joke. It is an affront to the women of Canada. Mr. Kormos and his cavorting demeans himself, his government and the profession of politics.


CANADA POST
Mr. Cid Samson (Timmins -Chapleau):: Mr. Speaker, according to a Decima poll released this week, 90 per cent of rural Canadians are satisfied with the results of Canada Post's rural conversion program.
Yet people are complaining of a reduction of service in towns like Dubuc in Saskatchewan where one person wrote to Canada Post saying: "We have no counter service at all on Mondays. Any emergency mailings have to be taken out of town even though we used to have counter service Monday through Saturday".
A person from Claremont, Ontario sent a letter to us to protest the closure of their post office. She says: "You just have not seen this the way the average Canadian resident does. We want our post office". These letters and many others in the same vein were also sent to the minister's office, but it seems he has chosen to ignore them.
The minister should know that polls do not always reflect reality, except maybe when it comes to evaluating the popularity of his party. But this is one exception.


Mr.   Maurice@: Mr. Speaker, last Monday, I had the honour of addressing a group of Tibetan Canadians to celebrate the 1959 uprising in Lhassa.
It is true to say that the government of Canada does not recognize Tibet, but it is also true to point out that no Canadian government did since 1959.
However, I want to remind the Tibetan community that the government of Canada cares greatly for their fellow countrymen and women and did not hesitate to condemn the Chinese government in the UN, through the Canadian ambassador, Mr. Yves Fortier, who told the UN Human Rights Commission last November, and I quote:
We will continue criticizing the Chinese government for its breaches in the field of human rights. By proclaiming the concern of the people of Canada for the respect of basic human rights in China, we are not trying to isolate that country. We believe that we are encouraging China, by keeping it in contact with ideas from abroad, to start up again the reform process launched ten years ago.
We are hoping, Mr. Speaker, that this would allow Tibet to regain freedom.


INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF CANADA
Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, we had an opportunity, yesterday, to hear what the President of the United States had to say about the political status of Canada and particularly the exaggerated interpretation given by the Prime Minister of Canada.
I think that, if it was unacceptable for De Gaulle to come and state his views of the Canadian and Quebec political environment in the 1960s, it is equally unacceptable for the President of the United States to interfere today in the internal affairs of Canada.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, we hope that the President of the United States will have seen through the Prime Minister and, in the future, apply a strict non-interference policy regarding Canadian internal affairs.


VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland -Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, in my riding, we are very proud to have a higher than average population of veterans.
We are naturally pleased at the positive attitude taken by the Minister of Veterans Affairs last week when he indicated that services to veterans and their families will not be affected by the budget and spending restraints. The minister is confident that his staff and officials can meet the fiscal restraint as an opportunity and management challenge. Just as private industry has been required to cut its cloth to fit today's competitive times, so
March 14, 1991

the Public Service is more than capable of adjusting to the new realism.
The Department of Veterans Affairs plays a very important role in Cumberland-Colchester, and I appreciate the minister's firm stand and the support of his department.


INDUSTRY
Ms. Albina Guarnieri (Mississauga East):: Canada's only fax machine manufacturer, the Widecom Group of Mississauga, has recently been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records for developing the world's largest facsimile machine.
This new product will allow for the first time the transmission of blueprints, engineering drawings and other oversized documents. Three years of privately funded research by Widecom will create many new jobs in Mississauga and help the Canadian economy when manufacturing escalates to meet foreign demand.
This government should learn from high technology companies like Widecom and reverse its decision to cap funding to science and technology and post-secondary education. The future of Canada should be given more credit.


CANADA-U.S. AIR QUALITY ACCORD
Mr. Yvon Cote (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, for more than ten years, the whole eastern part of Canada, particularly the Eastern Townships in Quebec, have been plagued with the very serious problem of acid rains. The maple groves of Tingwick, Ham-Nord and Disraeli, in my beautiful riding of Richmond-Wolfe are economically very important for farmers and producers. The same can be said about deciduous and coniferous forests that are unfortunately suffering also from those acid rains.
The signing of a treaty between Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Bush in Ottawa yesterday fortunately ensures our environment will be saved and preserved since the treaty lays down precise rules regarding maximum levels of emissions. It also forces both parties to cooperate closely in environmental planning.
That is a tremendous gain for Quebec as well as the riding of Richmond-Wolfe, and it took only five years to achieve, while previous governments sat and did nothing about that for ten years.


NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERMEN
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, nobody can support acts of vandalism like those that were perpetrated last Ihesday in Port-aux-Basques. But we have to understand the nub of the problems that led Newfoundland fishermen to resort to such measures.
Those fishermen are in a wedge, Mr. Speaker. While large foreign factory ships swallow up our fish stocks, their quotas are cut. High interest rates and new taxes increase their production costs.
And above that, the Minister of Fisheries is imposing this new burden on them: a wharf suveillance program for which the fishermen will have to pay themselves.
Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland fishermen see their standard of living taking a plunge and the Minister of Fisheries is slapping them in the face. That is why they are angry. If the Minister wants to avoid any more violence, he will have to stop ignoring the demands of the fishermen and start listening to them.

Mr. Jean-Marc Robitaille (Terrebonne):: Mr. Speaker, two days ago I was pleased to mention in this House the good news with respect to the decontamination of different sites in Quebec because of the initiative taken by our government. But today, Mr. Speaker, we have one more reason to be happy since the Prime Minister and the President of the United States, Mr. Bush, have signed yesterday the long-awaited agreement on acid rain control and air quality.
Mr. Speaker, that is another of our government's tangible achievements in the environmental area. And that was made possible for both countries thanks to the dedication and never ending work of the Prime Minister, Mr. Brian Mulroney, who has been so determined as to

March 14, 1991
put forward an agreement that will benefit both our countries as well as future generations.
In the name of the people of my riding, I want to pay him a tribute today and I urge all members of this House to do the same because that is an important achievement for all Canadian men and women. Congratulations, Mr. Prime Minister!


MEDICARE
Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: After Michael Wilson's budget comes the deluge, Mr. Speaker. For Canadians depending on medicare, this has meant a deluge of proposed user fees, deinsuring of medical services, closure of hospital beds, and lay-offs of health personnel. Yesterday the Tory Nova Scotia minister of health suggested charging an annual premium for all Nova Scotians using medicare, similar to the premiums now levied by the Tory provinces of B.C. and Alberta.
This user fee would be in addition to the higher charges for such services as prescription drugs and children's dental care. All of these charges and fee increases flow directly from the five-year freeze on federal contributions to provincial medicare plans.
When asked how he will protect Canadians from the growing erosion of medical services, the minister of health and welfare always mentions the Canada Health Act. Nothing in that act stops the provinces from charging premiums, laying off health personnel, closing hospital beds or taking away services.
What the minister is really saying to low and middle income Canadians who depend on medicare is: "Let them eat cake".


SEAN O'SULLIVAN
Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton -Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker,
I wish to draw to the attention of the House a very important and, for me, a most sentimental occasion which will take place on Parliament Hill next Monday, March 18.
Many on all sides of the House will remember with fondness the late Sean O'Sullivan, who was my predecessor as MP for Hamilton-Wentworth and, indeed, one of the youngest and finest members of Parliament ever to grace this Chamber.
Sean resigned his seat in 1977 and dared to become a priest with great distinction. He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada.
God took Father Sean from us in March 1989 at the age of 37 after a long battle with leukemia.
This House will commemorate Sean in a formal way. We passed a resolution in November 1990 that a sitting room at the Wellington Street entrance to the East Block be set aside as a meditation place for people of all faiths. This room, to all those who enter it, will forever be a reminder of God's special friend, Father Sean O'Sullivan.


CANADIAN ARMED FORCES
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, on Monday in my riding of Dartmouth at CFB Shearwater I had the pleasure of welcoming home some of the first of the Canadian men and women returning from the Persian Gulf.
These troops, from various Canadian forces bases, returned after proudly contributing to the successful efforts of freeing Kuwait from the oppression of Saddam Hussein.
These brave Canadian men and women are a model of strength and courage which all Canadians should greatly admire and respect. They placed their lives on the line in the name of Canada to preserve freedom and democracy, life and liberty, peace and humanity.
The remainder of their colleagues serving on the Terra Nova, the Athabaskan, and the Protecteur is steaming back toward Canada. I know, Mr. Speaker, that when their ships arrive in Halifax harbour, they will be witness to the gratitude and thanksgiving of all Canadians as tens of thousands of Nova Scotians will line the shores of Halifax harbour to say thank you and welcome home.
They have served us well but, more so, have caused us to reflect on how fortunate we all are to live in this great country, Canada. For their service and their example we say thank you and wish them a safe and speedy trip home.
March 14, 1991


AIR QUALITY ACCORD
Mr.   Brian@: Mr. Speaker, sustainable development, one of the most important issues in Canada and around the world, focuses on balancing economic concerns with environmental concerns.
In the pursuit of the goal of sustainable development, Canada's Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and American President George Bush signed the historic Canada-U.S. air quality accord.
This agreement sends an important signal to the world and demonstrates that a key element in achieving sustainable development is a determined spirit of co-operation, not only between countries but also between various levels of government, industry, the scientific community, and the public.
If we are to continue to address successfully the needs of our society, then we must work together to ensure that environmental goals are responsibly pursued in our efforts to meet the ever-increasing economic challenges.
Let us work together for a cleaner environment and a better quality of life for all Canadians.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, a woman in New York was just awarded $4.5 million after a jury ruled that a toxic substance released from the foam covering of a Meme breast implant caused cancer in that woman. They were amazed that a product which contains a known carcinogen would be implanted in women.
Canadian women are not protected from this. Since last April I have twice raised this issue in the House with the minister of health. I asked that he remove the product from the market until it was proven to be safe. He accused me of fearmongering.
The FDA in the U.S. has recently taken steps which would implement the strict regulation of breast implants. They will have to prove the safety and effectiveness of implants before they are allowed on the market.
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This is similar to measures which are included in a private members' bill which I have introduced in this House.
The minister of health must listen and take steps to ensure that women in this country are protected, and to ensure that Canada does not become a dumping ground for implants ruled unsafe in the United States.


MINISTER OF CONSUMER AND COMMERCIAL RELATIONS
Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I was shocked to learn that the provincial minister responsible for sexism in advertising appeared as a sunshine boy in a widely circulated Toronto newspaper.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I have since learned that the same minister saw fit to hire his close friend, a convicted wife beater, as his policy adviser on sexism in advertising.
As a woman, I am concerned that someone with such questionable credentials should be given any responsibility for women's issues. It also speaks volumes about the provincial minister who has shown such poor judgment on both counts.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. On Tuesday the Prime Minister refused to answer a specific question about whether he would be telling President Bush that Canada is now dropping its 15 per cent tax on softwood lumber exports.
Given the length of the photographic opportunity and the meetings between the President and the Prime Minister yesterday, I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether, in fact, he informed the President that we will be dropping this tax which penalizes Canadian lumber exports.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I regret that my hon. friend was offended by the

Oral Questions
length of the photographic opportunity. It was to accommodate the growing number of Liberal members of Parliament who wanted to have their pictures taken with the President. I was happy to arrange it.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the right hon. Prime Minister could answer the question.


Martin Brian Mulroney: No, he didn't ask for you, Paul.
Apart from the signing of the acid rain treaty, which this Parliament has sought for over a decade and which I think brings honour to all members of Parliament who fought for it, we also dealt extensively with a number of important bilateral issues including the softwood lumber issue.
The Minister for International Trade continues to consult with the provinces that are affected by it, and once all of the provinces have agreed to a common approach, then I will follow through on the very productive meeting I had with President Bush last night in regard to this, preparing him for the positions that we hope will emerge from the consultations of the minister.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, indeed, Canadians were pleased that the Prime Minister was finally photographed signing the agreement which he announced in a similar photographic experience about a year ago.
In a second question specifically related to some bilateral issues that have not been settled, I would like to ask the Prime Minister this. In light of the fact that the Canadian Lumbermen's Association has stated that the combination of the high dollar policy of this government, combined with the 15 per cent lumber tax, has led to rampant mill closures and has created a situation which is the worst since the "dirty thirties", I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether he discussed this issue very specifically with the President of the United States, and whether he put a deadline on when Canada intends to withdraw this tax which is penalizing our own industry.


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure hon. members know there is an intensive consultation under way here in Canada with respect to this question between myself and ministers and premiers of provinces that are involved in the question of softwood lumber exports to the United States.
That process of consultation should soon be concluded.
There is opposition, as the hon. Acting Leader of the Opposition should know. There is opposition in the Atlantic provinces to our even taking this matter up with the United States. I am meeting tomorrow morning with ministers from the Liberal government of New Brunswick, who are, as one example, opposed to our taking this issue up with the United States at all. When we have these matters resolved, if we can get the consensus in Canada, we will certainly be proceeding. In the meantime, we are going to finish our consultations before we engage the United States directly on the matter.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, once again, given the fact that it was not the Minister for International Trade but the Prime Minister who spent at least a full working day with the President yesterday, during which he should have had an opportunity to discuss this issue, I would like to ask the Prime Minister-

My third question is for the Prime Minister. Given the fact that thousands of jobs have been eliminated by his high dollar policy and the 15 per cent tax on our lumber exports, I would like to ask him whether he is ready to announce today that he will cancel the export tax on lumber to give workers in that industry a chance to go back to work?

Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International
Trade): Mr. Speaker, the government is not going to announce today any such thing. There is a process of consultation under way between the government, provincial governments and the industry in this country. There is no 100 per cent consensus on what action should be taken.
I would make this point, that if the then Liberal Government of Ontario had been more co-operative by implementing some measures with respect to the situation in Ontario, our case might have been easier. Nevertheless, we think there have been certain fundamental changes since the MOU went into effect. The time has now come for it to be removed.
March 14, 1991

I have no doubt that the government will decide on a course of action involving consultations with the U.S. presently, but the first thing we are going to do is finish our consultations with the interested parties in Canada.


MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Minister of Finance.
The budget is forecasting that unemployment will remain at 10 per cent during 1992 and 1993. According to Laurent Thibault, the outgoing president of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, half of the manufacturing jobs lost because of the recession will be lost for good.
What kind of help are the minister and the government going to give to people thrown out of work, not until next summer or next fall, but forever?


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, to respond to the hon. member, who asks about the level of manufacturing activity in our economy, he should know, first of all, from reading the Royal Bank report at the end of 1990, that the manufacturing base of the Canadian economy is 9.6 per cent ahead of where it was at the end of 1982. That is still there. We have a stronger manufacturing economy than we did at that time.
Even more important, we had record investments in capital and new machinery and equipment in 1988 and 1989. All of this was put in place thanks to the prospect of the free trade agreement and, of course, the experience of the free trade agreement.
As a result of all this, we have a good base for the future if we can continue to get interest rates down and bring inflation down, and that is what the new budget was meant to do.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, comparisons to 1982 do not do anything for the 1.5 million Canadians who are out of work today.
My supplementary question is for the Prime Minister. Given the fact that in the last two weeks both his Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Canada have admitted that they pursued the wrong policies prior to the last election and that Canadians are
Oral Questions
now paying the price for that, will he assure us that he will take the first step necessary to promote economic recovery in Canada and give us a new Minister of Finance who an be trusted to handle this economic crisis?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, first of all, my hon. friend will understand if I take exception the interpretation that he has placed on statements made by the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Canada. An accurate reading will indicate that that is not the statement, as he has reported it, that was made. That being said, I think there is general acknowledgement in this House and certainly across the country that Michael Wilson is probably one of the finest ministers of finance-


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: You notice that I said "one of the finest ministers of finance", the other being seated not very far from me right here.


BUSINESS COUNCIL ON NATIONAL ISSUES
Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. The finance minister said yesterday in the House that the Business Council on National Issues that commissioned a study on competitiveness was actually a government-initiated partnership with the BCNI and other groups.
These reports on this very important study could in fact have an impact on the national unity debate. Yet I understand that it will be in fact the Business Council on National Issues which decides what will be released and when it will be released.
My question to the Prime Minister is this. The government has given $400,000 to the Business Council on National Issues for research purposes. I ask the government if today it will commit to spending the same amount of funding for research for other groups which might have a similar interest, not only in competitiveness, but in the national unity debate, such as aboriginal people, the ethnocultural community and small business?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada gives grants from time to time to organizations. It has given millions of dollars to the Canadian Labour Congress over the years in grants and for specific purposes to other organizations.

March 14, 1991
Oral Questions
I am not acquainted with all of the details of this. It would not strike me as being inappropriate that there would be a study on competitiveness done jointly with the Business Council on National Issues. That strikes me as being more appropriate than with perhaps an aboriginal group. The aboriginal groups receive grants for perhaps other purposes.
If my hon. friend, in respect of the question which she raised which dealt with international competitiveness and enhancing Canada's productivity, is making a request for a grant to a specific organization to conduct such a study, we would be happy to look at it.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the Prime Minister. Will there be just, fair and even-handed treatment for all groups which have an interest in the future of this country?
Last week the Prime Minister's chief constitutional adviser met at Meech Lake to discuss a number of papers commissioned by the Business Council on National Issues and done by distinguished academics across Canada. Two days ago, the Prime Minister, in this House in response to a question that I asked as to whether he would have similar meetings held with aboriginal groups, ethnocultural groups and other such interest groups, agreed that he would do so. I understand that the Prime Minister has received a written request from the Ethnocultural Council and the Assembly of First Nations for such meetings.
My question for the Prime Minister is this. Given his very positive response on Tuesday, can he tell this House when those meetings will be held and who will be involved in those meetings?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, in an earlier question my hon. friend suggested that the meeting that had taken place at Meech Lake, of academics and people interested in the Constitution, was somehow directly or indirectly associated with the BCNI. That is not the case. It was a consultation conducted by the Government of Canada of groups totally unrelated to the BCNI. I indicated to my friend that if she had any ideas or if anyone else was interested in a consultation that we would be happy to oblige.
The member seems to be more aware of my correspondence than I am. She indicates that I have received a letter from the Ethnocultural Council. I will be happy to look at it and let her know. I am struck by the fact that the leader is on her feet today asking for more grants to bodies and last week she was on her feet saying that Spicer was too expensive.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister is missing the point. The national unity debate belongs to everyone in Canada, not just the corporate community and everyone must have equal access to resources and to the expertise and time of the Prime Minister's office. Canadians deserve that.

This week, the government voted against our motion which would have opened up the constitutional process.
This government is saying that it wants an open process. This coming summer, provincial and territorial commissions as well as the committees and groups appointed by the government will have finished then-work.
I am asking the Prime Minister whether he can guarantee us that all this work will not result in a federal-provincial conference or in bilateral negotiations, but rather in a real people's forum, like a constituent assembly or convention.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the NDP motion that was debated in this House would place the Canadian government, the Parliament of Canada, in an unacceptable strait jacket in terms of future negotiations and consultations.
The hon. member knows it, and that was the aim of the motion, which is not a very noble goal. The leader of the New Democratic Party will have to recognize that.
As to her fundamental question, I mentioned several times- I don't know whether she has been traumatized, but every time she gets up she talks about the corporate elite.
March 14, 1991



What about the big labour elite? Why is the hon. member so traumatized by the corporate elite and so comfortable with big labour rules?


SOFTWOOD LUMBER INDUSTRY
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade. The minister told us today that he is trying to seek a consensus among the provincial premiers on the surtax on softwood lumber exports. He has said some provinces, notably New Brunswick, are against approaching the Americans.
The question I would like to ask is, what is the position of the federal government and what is the minister advising his provincial counterparts?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the position of the government and my position is that matters have changed since 1986 when the countervail duty case was launched. There have been considerable changes since then. Several provinces have instituted new stumpage charges in their provinces, such as British Columbia and Quebec. There have been significant changes in the industry. Our dollar has appreciated 19.4 per cent. Our share of the U.S. market has dropped from 33 per cent to 27 per cent. So there have been very considerable changes.
Anyone who examines this question impartially and rationally will agree, I am sure, that the time has come for the memorandum of understanding to be done away with. However, we are not necessarily dealing with people who are rational or impartial. We are dealing with people like the hon. gentleman opposite. Therefore, it is not going to be easy to accomplish this. We have to assess the risks and the possible benefits, which we are now in the process of doing.


Bob Wood: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is to the same minister.
The 15 per cent surtax coupled with a high dollar policy have caused close to 100,000 job losses in the forestry industry. The minister has said that he wants to renegotiate the agreement, but the American Congress has said that it would not. Can the minister tell us what the government will do if the Americans refuse to negotiate? Will the government take some firm action
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on behalf of the tens of thousands who have already lost their jobs in the forestry industry?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the memorandum of understanding with reference to softwood lumber is not the only matter that has affected the softwood lumber industry. When we decide upon a course of action, I want the provinces-or most of them-supportive of that course of action. When I am out in front leading the charge down in Washington, I do not want them suddenly disappearing behind my back. That is the purpose of this consultation; to make sure we are united and agreed on the course of action we are going to follow through, no matter how tough it might be.


POVERTY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, with an unemployment rate of over 14 per cent and retail sales that dropped 20 per cent this month, Montreal has become the unemployment capital of Canada. With unemployment comes poverty. So much so that this year, 53,000 families are obliged to go to the Sun Youth Food Bank. This is a disgrace, and it also very sad. I therefore want to ask the Prime Minister what kind of programs the government is going to set up in Montreal to help these families get out of the poverty cycle and store their dignity?


Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, I agree the economic situation in Montreal is difficult. We realize this and we sympathize with the people who are in this situation. However, it must be said that the government has done a great deal since 1984 for the Montreal area. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, and I could name a number of examples for the benefit of the hon. member for Mount Royal. Recently, the Minister of Science and Technology invested $112 million in one of the poorest areas in Montreal, and I am referring to the southwest. And we also set up a training centre for petrochemical workers in East Montreal. Since 1985, we have created 83,000 jobs in Montreal, and that is better than the previous Liberal government which lost 4,000.

March 14, 1991
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Sheila Finestone: The ex-psychiatric people, the single parent families, the poor and the elderly are not interested in being statistics. These are human beings who are lining up at these food banks and need to be fed.

Even in my own riding of Mount Royal, a food bank and food aid are needed. Formerly, Multicaf used to distribute about 30 baskets per month. Now we are up to 350 baskets per month. This is a terrible human catastrophe. My supplementary is directed to the Prime Minister. In a country where we have a food surplus, I would like to know whether he is prepared to help food banks fill their shelves. And if not, who is going to feed the poor in our communities in Montreal?


Marcel Danis: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member when she says there are many poor people in Montreal. However, my colleague should also realize that since 1984, we helped 760,000 people in Canada rise above the poverty line. This is cold comfort for the people who are still living in poverty, but nevertheless, one-third of these people-the hon. member refered to children as well- one-third of those 760,000 people who are no longer living below the poverty line are children. So we have made progress in a number of other areas. In Montreal, for instance, the Space Agency has created jobs. The Liberal party tried to kill the petrochemical industry in Montreal but the Prime Minister rescued it. It is true Montreal has problems, but this Conservative government has done a lot for Montreal.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: My question is to the Minister of the Environment. On November 18, 1987, the Prime Minister and President Reagan signed an agreement on Great Lakes water quality, which adopted
zero discharge of persistent toxic substances into the Great Lakes.
The principles of that agreement have never been enforced and the horrible effects of toxics are now seen on fish, wildlife and human health.
In fact there have been only seven pollution prosecutions in all of Canada under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act since 1988.
Would the minister explain why the government plans now to enforce zero discharge of toxics only in Lake Superior? Will that not turn other water bodies in Canada into toxic waste dumps?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague opposite that the government has acted very aggressively in terms of cleaning up the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River basin.
We are making progress both in the Great Lakes and in the St. Lawrence River with programs that total some $260 million. We will be moving in the very near future with the U.S. on a joint agreement in terms of further clean-up operations in the Great Lakes. We are moving very firmly to meet the commitment that we have made for the virtual elimination of toxic chemicals by the year 2000. We still maintain that we will move to zero discharge down the road.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, as of today, only seven of Canada's provinces are part of the national acid rain reduction program, while all the United States is covered by the 1990 U.S. clean air legislation, both National CAP and National Reduction Program.
Would the minister explain why last November 27 he said that the agreement of the three western provinces was necessary to make yesterday's acid rain accord fly?


Robert René de Cotret: Mr. Speaker, the answer is very simple.
I met all the members of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment in Victoria. We discussed the issue thoroughly, and I got the agreement of all provinces to meet the goals of limiting emissions as we have stated in the agreement yesterday.
March 14, 1991


LAND CLAIMS
Ms. Ethel Blondin (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Minister of Justice.
Members will know that the crisis which erupted last summer in Kanesatake and Kahnawake resulted basically over a land dispute. When the minister realized that this disputed land was destined to become a golf course, why did the minister not exercise his or her authority and bring in an immediate moratorium on the development of any land in dispute?


Hon. Pierre H. Cadieux (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, if I may, as my hon. colleague probably remembers, at the time of the dispute there had been negotiations with respect to that particular land in Oka.
The negotiations had been going on for about two years. As a former Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development at the time, I had appointed negotiators to do that. Negotiations at the time were suspended by the new chief and council that had just been elected at that time.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Mr. Speaker, my question goes unanswered.
Basically, the acting minister will know that indeed the Government of Canada has myriad statutes available to it, providing expropriation powers that could have been exercised to diffuse the situation.
Having said that, testimony received last night from an environmental group provided unprecedented evidence that the land in question has historical environmental significance. This is supported by a petition of 1,200 names.
If this group considers it to be of such value that it would equal the status of a world heritage site, why then would the minister not exercise his or her authority and put on a moratorium?


Pierre H. Cadieux: Mr. Speaker, again I think everybody would agree here. The hon. member in particular should agree to the proposition that best way to settle land claims issues in this country is at the negotiating table.
Oral Questions
If the band and council had come to the negotiating table, as we were prepared to be there for over a year, it might have been settled then and would be settled now.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Douglas Young (Acadie-Bathurst):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Last June the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick unanimously adopted legislation to enshrine the principles of Bill 88 which acknowledges the equality of both official linguistic communities in New Brunswick. I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether the government intends to ask the Parliament of Canada to adopt this amendment to our Constitution?
Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and
Oceans): Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member will recall that the constitutional agreement signed by the First Ministers in June 1990, when that legislation was adopted in New Brunswick, provided for two amendments to Bill 88.
One bilateral amendment provided for the enshrinement of the principle of equality of both linguistic communities in New Brunswick and the role of the provincial government as protector and promoter of that characteristic. As the hon. member will recall, the second amendment was to protect the contents of Bill 88 by preventing amendments without the unanimous agreement of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick and of the federal Parliament.
Now since the second amendment, linked to the first, died with the Meech Lake failure, any over-all approach to the Bill 88 solution died right along with it. What the Governments of Canada and New Brunswick should do now would be to get together and consider the best way to achieve our common goal-Canada's and New Brunswick's-of enshrining Bill 88 in the Canadian Constitution.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask the Prime Minister this: Is the Prime Minister of Canada, through the minister who just answered, saying no to the Premier of New Brunswick who is asking, on behalf of Acadians from his province,

March 14, 1991
Oral Questions
for the entrenchment of Bill 88, as passed unanimously by the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly, an essential Act for the survival of Acadians in Canada, under the present circumstances.


Martin Brian Mulroney: On the
contrary, Mr. Speaker. I told the Premier of New Brunswick that we also wanted to see the rights of Acadians entrenched. That is one of the reasons why it was so important for all legislative assemblies to approve the Meech Lake Accord, because the entrenchment of those rights was directly related to this project. But unfortunately, it is also one of the reasons why the rights of an important majority, the Acadian people, were affected by all this.
As the minister just said, I have met the Premier of New Brunswick and we are working together to find means, and even constitutional means, to entrench and better protect the vital rights of the Acadians and French-speaking residents of New Brunswick.


SOFTWOOD LUMBER INDUSTRY
William D. (Bill) Casey: I have a question for the Minister for International Trade, and I want to assure him that I am entirely rational and certainly impartial.
I want to point out to him that there are two sides to every story, and some members today have called for the government to drop the 15 per cent tax on softwood lumber. In Atlantic Canada we are very much opposed to such an action because it could have very damaging effects on an area of Canada that has really been an innocent bystander throughout this whole argument.
We seek the consensus of all the provinces or I understand you do. I want to ensure that all those provinces included all the Atlantic provinces, that you do not risk any countervail action through these negotiations and consider the concerns of Atlantic Canada in this very important issue.


Some hon. members:: What is your question?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, this is certainly the first rational question I have had today.
The fact we have to keep in mind is that 90 per cent of softwood lumber exports to the United States, valued at $2.6 billion in 1990, came basically from two major producing provinces, British Columbia and Quebec, and their concerns have to be paid close attention to by us.
I am aware of the views particularly of the industry and Governments of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
We have had three consultations with them. I will meet again tomorrow with the New Brunswick minister responsible for forestry and the acting minister of commerce and technology.
Everyone's views will be kept in mind, but there is one salient fact: 90 per cent of the softwood lumber exports, valued at $2.6 billion, are from these two provinces, British Columbia and Quebec. We simply cannot ignore their interests which are being seriously affected in this case.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General.
Back on December 30 The Ottawa Citizen reported that CB Chemicals, a company that received $13 million in support from ACOA and the Government of Nova Scotia, was under RCMP investigation.
My question to the Solicitor General is simply this: Could he tell us whether CB Chemicals is one of those 12 companies that the Minister of Public Works cited as being under RCMP investigation?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I am the acting minister for ACOA today, in the absence of my desk-mate.
I think the minister responsible for ACOA gave an excellent answer yesterday when he said that he was not going to give the names of any of the firms in question that might be at the present time investigated by the RCMP.
There were 12. In over half the cases, seven cases, the matters complained about were caught at the officials' level before any funding whatsoever was made or disbursed by ACOA. Most of the cases are old news. They were known a year or a year and a half ago.
March 14, 1991

I think the House should remember that 7,600 applications have been approved by ACOA since 1987, with $600 million committed and $1.8 billion leverage to the private sector, creating over 20,000 jobs.
When the hon. gentleman carps and brings this up in an attempt to embarrass the government or to embarrass individuals, he should keep that in mind.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I will be very straightforward. I think the government does enough to embarrass itself.
My question is really veiy simple. If the Royal Canadian Mounted Police provide press releases by which we find out, for example, that Technitread is under RCMP investigation, then why can't the government come clean about those 12 RCMP investigations set out by the minister himself in the House of Commons, rather than wait for press releases from the RCMP?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, not only is the question very simple but so is the hon. member.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the hon. minister could answer the question.


John Carnell Crosbie: All right, I will say that the hon. member is very complicated, Mr. Speaker.
With respect to this issue, some months ago the minister responsible for ACOA took the initiative with respect to the Enterprise Cape Breton operation to appoint a commissioner or a person to look into the operations of Enterprise Cape Breton, in the person of a Mr. Tony Brait.
There is no attempt to hide that there has been difficulty in certain instances in Atlantic Canada, but these are a very small proportion of the 7,600 applications. One wonders why the hon. member is carrying on a vendetta against Atlantic Canada with these questions.


FARM CREDIT CORPORATION
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Minister of Agriculture.
Oral Questions
In 1985, after a reduction in commercial interest rates, the Minister of Agriculture reduced the interest on Farm Credit Corporation loans from 14 per cent to 12.75 per cent.
Given recent reductions in interest rates, will the Minister of Agriculture now announce the same thing for the period of high interest rates that we just finished?


Hon. Charles Mayer (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Grains and Oilseeds)):: Mr. Speaker, the Farm Credit Corporation is a Crown corporation and a good one. It regularly lends money to farmers. It has to compete on the commercial market.
As interest rates go up, unfortunately it charges more. As interest rates come down, it will be charging less. The Farm Credit Corporation will be judging that itself and making announcements accordingly.


Don Boudria: that logic is so wrong today, why was it so right in 1985?

Back to the Prime Minister. I would like to ask him the following: The farm industry needs the assistance of this government and the Prime Minister. A precedent was set in 1985. Since his minister is unwilling to take action, will the Prime Minister announce today a reduction in interest rates on existing Farm Credit Corporation loans? If not, could he tell us why, since he did it in 1985?


Charles James Mayer: Mr. Speaker, that member was not around in 1981 and 1982 when the Farm Credit Corporation was forced to charge interest rates way above what we have now.
I happen to have been a farmer and a member then and know what kind of damage the policies of that government did to the agricultural community. We are still trying to recover from them.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, the Minister for International Trade is quoted in Maclean's magazine: "Most of the auto parts work in Canada is not

March 14, 1991
Oral Questions
highly skilled. That kind of work will be done in Mexico or it will be done somewhere like Mexico, other than in Canada".
Is this why the minister is rushing hell-bent into a free trade agreement with Mexico?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to discover that the hon. gentleman reads Maclean's magazine.
If he looked at the transcript of the reporter who conducted the interview he would see exactly what I said. I said that with respect to low value-added and less skilled work in the auto parts industry, that is a matter where we cannot stop competition from lower wage countries such as Mexico and many others being extremely effective.
We are interested in the higher value added, skilled end of the industry, and there Canada can compete just as the auto parts manufacturers say they can. There we will compete and there we will be very competitive under free trade. With free trade we are globally competitive, and there is nothing to be afraid of if you have any faith in the auto parts industry or in Canada.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, auto parts manufacturers of Canada do not agree with the minister. According to their letter, the auto parts industry is in the vanguard of high technology in Canada's manufacturing base in terms of automation, robotics, and other technologies. They say: "Your comments are unacceptable to us. Your comments are criticizing the technological skills base of not only the 75,000 auto parts manufacturers in Canada, but the 300,000 other related workers in related industries".
Will the minister take back his statements? Will he start fighting on behalf of Canadian jobs and workers rather than just dismissing them with the stroke of a pen?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, these are the gravest accusations since Emile Zola.
Members of the auto parts industry just wrote me a letter. Apparently they sent the hon. gentleman a copy, because they read the same article as the hon. member and have drawn the same wrong conclusion as the hon. member. I never said what they say I have said, or you
said I said. I never said it, as I just explained a few minutes ago.


ARMS SALES
Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday the United States President appeared to dump cold water on the idea of a global summit on arms sales, an idea which had support on all sides of the House.
The United States and other countries in fact are already lining up to sell arms to the Middle East, despite the admonition of the Prime Minister to the contrary.
Can the Prime Minister report to the House on this aspect of his talks yesterday with President Bush? Is the global summit dead? Are there alternatives that the government would have in mind if in fact the idea is a goner?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that President Bush, were he here, would want me to correct the misstatement in the prefatory remarks of my hon. friend. He did not throw cold water on it.
As the minister of trade suggests, it is important to read the transcript. Here is what he said. "I am not sure exactly what the proper structure is for this, but clearly that idea"-namely the one that Canada put forward-"may, indeed, have some merit".
Pursuant to this, we began the process of examining it last night. The Secretary of State for External Affairs met with eight heads of government, I believe, throughout the region in the last number of days. All of them believe that it had some merit. The President is going to examine it today with President Mitterrand and over the weekend with Prime Minister Major, and slowly but surely, hopefully the idea will advance.
We think it is a good one. We put it forward vigorously on behalf of Canada. I indicated the contradiction, of the five permanent members of the Security Council persist in large, vast arms sales to the countries in the region, and then are perplexed by the fact that some members in the region decide to use them to wage war against innocent members. This does not make any sense. We
March 14, 1991

believe the Canadian position is a consistent and a reasonably thoughtful one. After a period of reflection, others will subscribe to it.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Richelieu now has the floor. One question only, please.


TELEVISION NETWORKS
Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the hon. Minister of Communications. The sale of TV Quatre-Saisons and CFCF is raising serious concern in the Quebec television circles. There are two potential buyers competing, namely Intermedia and Global. It seems, however, that Global's offer contains a clause calling for the creation of yet another televison station in Montreal, the Global Network, which would cause the further splitting of an already insufficient advertising revenue base. Considering several television stations in Quebec are already in deficit, is the Minister ready to commit to defending the interests of the television workers presently working in Montreal and, thus, protecting the quality of programming in the province?


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I too learned through the papers that offers were made to CFCF, Mr. Pouliot and Quatre-Saisons. I want to point out to the hon. member that any such agreement must be approved by the CRTC and that it will go through the usual channels.


Mr. Speaker:: I should advise the House that I have a question of privilege from the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace.


PRIVILEGE
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Labour, when asked what the government would do about the 14.3 per cent unemployment rate in Montreal, the highest municipal rate in Canada, did not answer the question, but said, and I quote from page 18397 of Hansard:
Business of the House
-we should make allowances for the hon. member for Saint-Laurent-Cartierville who may not have all the facts, but we cannot make the same allowances for the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace who has been sitting in this House as a Liberal member for 25 years.
He went on to say:
Before 1984-during the last 17 or 18 years the Liberals were in
power in this country, Montreal lost not 100, not 200, but 4,000 jobs.
Between the election of a Liberal government in 1965 and the election of a Conservative government in 1979, a period of 14 years, when I was a member of this House and a member of the government, the average rate of unemployment in Canada was 6 per cent, and in Montreal it was 6.7 per cent, and thousands of new jobs were created, a record never matched by this Conservative government.


Mr. Speaker:: I have looked at the exchange in Hansard. I also have examined carefully the notice which was given according to the rules by the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
I think I have to indicate to the hon. member that there may very well be an argument between himself and the minister and others. But I have to say that it is not a question of privilege.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pose the weekly question to the government House leader. Could he indicate to the House what the business will be for tomorrow, Monday, Tbesday and the rest of the next week?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to formally designate tomorrow as an allotted day for supply.
It would be my intention at this time to designate next Monday as an allotted day as well. I would like to keep open the possibility of discussions with respect to that date, but that is the intention at this time.
On Tuesday, March 19, I plan to call report stage and third reading of Bill C-97, the borrowing bill and, hopefully, complete both stages by the end of that day.

March 14, 1991
Business of the House
I would like to carry on with the discussions between House leaders to see how we might most effectively and efficiently decide on business for the remainder of next week.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order with my hon. friend the government House leader, I wonder if I could seek clarification on the point regarding the eventual introduction of legislation to impose the tax on cigarette products.
When the budget was tabled on February 26 a ways and means motion was also tabled. We have yet to have the final two days of the budget debate. My hon. friend will know that until those two days of debate take place the Standing Orders make it impossible to introduce the ways and means motion which would then give legal authority to collect the tax on cigarettes.
I suppose one could always make the case that at the moment the government lacks the legal authority for the collection of this tax but I would like to say that since it has already been introduced perhaps we should talk about ways and means of facilitating the passage of this bill.
Could my friend give some indication as to whether or not he plans to bring in that legislation soon.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows in fact there are ample legal precedents to collect the tax at the time indicated in the ways and means motion during a budget. I know that from experience having, while in opposition, challenged the government's right to collect taxes on the basis of a ways and means motion. It wasted a lot of time and money on legal opinions which confirmed that, in fact, all that is necessary is that at some point legislation be brought forward to change the law. That needs to be preceded by adoption of the ways and means motion.
The hon. member is right, it can be done after the approval of the general motion attached to a budget. Of course should events intervene such as prorogation, none of that applies and it becomes academic.
It is in regard to discussions such as that that I look forward to discussing our plans for future deliberations in this House with my hon. friend and the House leader of the Liberal Party.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, perhaps my hon. friend has misunderstood the point I was making.
Technically, I agree with him based on terms of past precedents, but retailers have been collecting this tax and consumers have been paying the tax in good faith based on the announcement of the Minister of Finance during the budget presentation. Yet the government does not seem to be delivering in good faith, in terms of their initiative, legislation that would clearly authorize the collection of this tax.
I am simply saying to my friend that I look forward to facilitating this discussion so that we can react in the same good faith that consumers and retailers are showing.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, the point I was making is that it is not merely good faith. I do not think there is an option available to consumers in that regard.
I appreciate the offer of the hon. member to facilitate the passage of the budget bills. There will be that budget bill, plus one or two others coming from the budget and I look forward to our discussions to find a way in which we can facilitate the passage of those bills as early as possible.
My seatmate, the Minister of Finance, informed me yesterday that the draughtsmen are beavering away and in short order should have those bills available for first reading.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the government House leader. He is talking about some delays as a result of the government draughtspersons not being ready to introduce legislation. However, prior to the House sitting in mid-February, the Minister of Finance had draft legislation on the northern tax benefits. He circulated not only the legislation, but he also circulated the regulations. However, that legislation which he circulated across this country has never been introduced into the House of Commons.
Since the Minister of Finance felt capable of circulating this legislation far and wide, could the government House leader indicate why Canadians who are now able, as a result of the government's announcement last December, to claim for at least a partial northern tax benefit; why they have to sit and wait for their rebates and any money that is owing to them by the federal government, and why they have to wait and wait when this legislation was presumably written, since the government can circulate it.
March 14, 1991

This is the third week in a row that I have asked this question. Why has the government not introduced that legislation into the House?


Harvie Andre: The hon. member is right; this is the third week in a row. And for the third week in a row let me say that just as soon as his party is ready to discuss and co-operate in getting legislation passed, we are ready to proceed.
It is absurd for the hon. member to imply that this program, which was brought forward by this government, which we recognize as beneficial to northerners-we did it deliberately-that somehow we would be wanting to drag our feet on it. That is absurd. Of course we want to proceed with it.
We have some other matters. We are running into time difficulties. I am looking forward to profitable discussions, which I hope we can have soon, to find a way to expedite the treatment of that bill and others.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Again, to remind the government House leader, there has not been a request from the government to the opposition parties to move on the northern tax benefit legislation. It is awfully hard for us to respond if we are not asked to.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Berger (p. 18439).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Ottawa West will have 10 minutes plus 5 minutes questions and comments.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: It is my pleasure to rise today and speak on this motion, bringing to the attention of Canadians promises of the Prime Minister with respect to research and technology in Canada, and the abysmal failure on the delivery of those promises.
I would like to begin by talking about the fundamental importance I see of investment in science research and technology, particularly at this stage in our history.
Supply
Canada went through a period where exploration was extremely important to our development as a nation. At that time the new frontiers were the frontiers of geography, climate and distance. We mastered those and we conquered those and we created a country. Now we are heading into the 21st century and the frontiers are no longer physical frontiers but the frontiers of the human mind and spirit.
That is what science is all about; it is launching off on those marvellous explorations, not knowing necessarily exactly where and when we will get to where we are going, but knowing that inevitably tremendous and new discoveries will be made.
It is in those discoveries by the human mind of the way the world functions that the prosperity of any nation rests in the coming century.
The failure of the government to recognize this has done irreparable damage to the Canadian economy, which is only now beginning to be felt and which will become even deeper and more prolonged as time goes on.
I want to go to the promises made by the Prime Minister in 1984 when he was still leader of the opposition. He promised Canadians a spending commitment on research and development during the first mandate of his government. He promised lower interest rates. He promised the development of job training and the development of trade.
I will come specifically to the abysmal failure to keep the commitment on research and development in a moment. I do want to talk about lower interest rates. We know that one of the reasons we have the huge debt and deficit we have now is because of the high interest rate policy of this government. We know that rather than the development of job training we have had major slashes to funding for job training and development. We have had massive cuts to post-secondary education.
He promised the development of trade. In the days since that promise, Canada's trade surplus has dropped dramatically. Our trade in high technology is in a deficit position. We have a competitiveness with our major trading partners that is less than it was 10 years ago. We now rank last, or second last, in eight of the ten economic indicators in science and technology used by the OECD. R and D spending has declined.

March 14, 1991
Supply
Our competitiveness has been reduced, not increased. The only thing we are trading and exporting more than we were before is jobs.
The government has failed to deal with poverty, which is a major impediment to education and to the improvement of the talent and the use of talent of our young people.
Going specifically to research and development, I want to go over what is a rather sorry history of this government and a total abandonment of the Prime Minister's promise. It has been a reversal of the progress towards improved research and development in this country. It goes well beyond simply the fact that funding to research and development has been decimated. It goes well beyond blaming the private sector for not doing the job that is the job of the public sector, namely, protecting the national interests and protecting the national wealth of knowledge and the foundation of progress in technology.
As the minister himself has said, "Our competitors increase their research and development, when times get bad. They know the answer is to look for new ways." Why is the minister out there admonishing the private sector to increase R and D when times are bad, while he stands in this House and says we have to cut research and development; that we have to cut science when times are bad? The same lesson applies for the government that applies for our competitors, the same lesson the minister wants to deliver to the private sector.
The National Research Council, a hallmark, the envy of the international community in progress in science and innovation, has been subject to savage attacks repeatedly over seven years. We have had a downsizing program in the public service that has left scientists spending half their time doing their own clerical work. Who, with a grain of economic common sense, would save money on a $25,000 a year clerical position, to have a scientist earning $65,000 a year do clerical work half the time?
We have companies specializing in research being sold off or bought off by foreign interests, further reducing the ability of the private sector to build the intellectual wealth of this country. We have the loss of Connaught Labs. We have the loss of Lumonics. We have young people refusing to go into science. Only 20 per cent of admissions to university are in science. They see no future, because this government has said there is no future. Twenty per cent of the National Research Council now has either been shoved out the door or bought off.
The minister had the temerity today to talk about women in science. Increasing the number of women in science is a useful and important strategy because we know that we have fewer young people coming into the labour market at all levels and that we are going to face a severe shortage at all levels of the labour market. One way of overcoming the shortages is to ensure that women, as well as men, develop their talents to the fullest.
What does this government do to women scientists? Less than 25 per cent of its professional scientists are women, and most of them are in short-term positions. They are renewed and renewed, but they are never hired as full-time permanent employees. Very few women scientists ever retire from the Government of Canada because they get fed up and they leave.
All the words the minister may have about attracting women into science are not going to work until women see career opportunities in government science, and career opportunities in the private sector in science. Until then we will be wasting our money.
We are losing opportunities to be world leaders in environmental technology. The NSERC told us years ago that this was a major trading and growth opportunity for the Government of Canada, and yet this government-in the midst of the global warming crisis-has decimated, literally, from $500 million to $50 million what we spend on alternative energy and on conservation of fossil fuels.
Instead of pursuing all options to show the world new ways of using energy and of prospering without destroying the very air we breathe, the government has cut out the energy sector at the environmental secretariat and it has cut the energy division at the National Research Council. Now it is scrambling to restore some symbolic but insignificant remnant of both of those important divisions that existed and were thriving just seven short years ago.
I could list a litany of cuts to environmentally important programs. While the world is desperate for good environmental technology to preserve the very ability of this planet to survive and thrive, not only are we failing to perform a useful function in the world through the development of our environmental technology but we
March 14, 1991

are missing a major economic opportunity to make Canada a world leader in many environmental areas.
The government talks about the deficit and the debt, and I like to talk about the human deficit.
We would not have a debt and a deficit if we did not have 10.5 per cent of our people unemployed. If we had people earning and contributing to the economy instead of requiring support from the economy, if we had people with purchasing power in their pockets creating jobs for other Canadians by the purchase of goods and services, we would have a healthy economy. If we were investing in the education of our young people, if we were investing in the kind of science and technology that gives us new opportunities in the world and gives us an opportunity to reverse our deficit in the export of high technology, then we might start to work our way out of this difficult economic situation.
But that is not the way of this government. The way of this government is to destroy, to cut, to squander opportunities. That is what has been happening in science and technology, in research and development in this country now for seven years.


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


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I was so interested to hear what my hon. colleague was saying-she makes such good common sense, something that seems to be lacking from the members opposite- that I would like to ask her if she would continue with her observation, specifically as it relates to the cuts which have a terrible impact, and perhaps the implications of the loss of application of the Lortie report. We have had so much rhetoric in this room since this morning from the government side.
Perhaps, Mr. Speaker, you would allow her to continue and explain why the government has, in particular, ignored its own advisory board science and technology recommendations, which was to double the funding to the granting council so that it could really do a task, and we could stop listening to all the rhetoric which adds up to nearly nothing in the long term.
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I wonder if you would allow my colleague to continue.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Yes. The hon. member for Ottawa West has three minutes.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue. I am sure the member is aware, but I am sure many government members are not aware that the government has indeed ignored the advice of NSERC, the National Science Engineering Research Council. It has ignored the advice of its own advisory board which was set up by the Prime Minister with great fanfare. It has, in fact, cut funding to the granting councils, and that means that university research and private sector research are suffering.
Having cut the floor out from under research in the private and academic sectors, it has proceeded pell-mell to cut out research in government as well leaving Canada with virtually no foundation.
I will mention one particular area that is of great concern; that is, the government even cut Canada's ability to have people participating on international standards councils. It is now telling people who volunteer their services to sit on international boards looking at international scientific and technical standards to pay their own way to get to these international meetings. That has cut Canada's participation dramatically.
While the minister sits there and talks about international trade, we are not even at the bargaining table when standards are being set for the products, goods and technology that we want to export. Does that make any sense?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member who just sat down a question.
What is her solution to these problems? We have heard a long list of complaints. We know that provincial Liberal governments are doing exactly the same thing that we are doing because they do not have money any more than we have. We know that we have a deficit of $30.6 billion despite the restrictions we put in to try to stop the increase in spending. There is still a deficit of $30.6 billion.
For example, this year beginning April 1, we are going to have to pay $43.2 billion in interest. That is the first item that will come out of the budget, 35.5 cents for every dollar of revenue. What is the point of the hon.

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member opposite just giving us a repetitious list of areas in which spending is being restricted? We cannot spend as we would like to spend, and we all know this is the case.
I would like to know what the solutions of the hon. member and the party that she represents are. Since 1984,1 have never once heard in the House any member of the Liberal Party give us the solution to this dilemma. It would be in the same dilemma would it be here. It would be in even a worse dilemma with all the spending commitments it has made since.
What does it see as a solution to the fact that midway through this year, we are going to have a national debt of over $400 billion? We spent $43.2 billion in interest. We transferred $36.7 billion to the provinces. What are the member's answers to that?
I do not want to hear about the fact that there is not enough money for standards councils or to send people away. We know that. Our own departments are being gutted and restricted, et cetera to try to keep the deficit down, not to zero but to $30.6 billion. Why give us a litany of complaints? Let's hear where the solutions are.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, we have had seven years of empty promises, slashes in spending, cuts in science of valuable personnel, cuts in programs, damage to the unemployed, and a transferring of costs to the provinces so that they are strangling because this government will not meet its commitments to international programs.
We have not seen one iota of reduction to the national debt. We see only increases to the deficit. Is it not about time to stop delivering empty promises and to start delivering debt reduction?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Debate.


Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly pleased to participate in the debate this afternoon.
I will not be as fiery as my colleague, the minister from Newfoundland, but I will do my bit to perhaps antagonize some of my colleagues opposite as they are trying to do to us.
When a member comes into the House, he usually brings with him several interests or hobby horses that he
may have. When I came into the House back in 1974, 16 years or more ago, I was like that as well. One of those interests was science and technology, and research and development. Mr. Speaker, you will not be offended if I suggest that you, Sir, along with two others in the House this afternoon are old-timers here. You, Sir, the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace will remember, but other members will not recall the policy of the then Liberal government regarding science and technology. When I listened to the member for Ottawa West try to criticize us, it was unfortunate that she had not taken a little time to read about the history of science and technology as it relates to the House of Commons and the various governments over the last couple of decades.
The truth of the matter is that roughly 15 or 16 years ago I sat in the House here and listened to the then minister of science and technology. I believe he was at that time the member for Westmount. He indicated to the House when we were challenging him from the opposition, that really we did not have to spend much money on science and technology. That was a waste of money. We should be just buying our research and development and our science and technology from neighbouring countries like the U.S.A. or U.K. or Germany, where they were doing that. They would do it for us and we could acquire it from them. That was the official position of the Liberal Party at that time.
The other interesting thing, to take you a little bit back in history, that you will recall yourself, Mr. Speaker, is that at that time if you were interested in science and technology and you wanted to question the minister, the estimates did not come before any standing committee on that at all. Where they went at that time was to a committee known as the committee on miscellaneous estimates. That was a waste paper basket of all sorts of little things.
That was the priority that the government at that time gave to science and technology. Estimates at that time were referred to the miscellaneous estimates committee. There were three or four of us in the opposition who thought that was not good enough for science and technology, that we should be doing better. We tried to prevail upon the government of that day to create a
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standing committee, but no such luck. Nothing happened.
It was not, Sir, and I will remind you, until 1984 when our present government came into power that a standing committee on science and technology was established. The Conservative Party recognized the importance of science and technology. We now have that committee. I believe you will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the original chairman, if my memory is correct, was Dr. Bill Tupper, who sat here from one of the ridings in the Ottawa region, a very renowned scientist in Canada and a lecturer at the university. He sat as the first chairman of that committee and I had the privilege of sitting on that committee.
I think it is imperative that we bring to mind the past history before we start criticizing too much the present government. As the Minister for International Trade has pointed out, there are very trying circumstances at the present time and in spite of those circumstances, we are managing to increase our contribution to science and technology, albeit we would like to do it a little bit faster.
There are a number of areas that one could talk about in a debate such as this, but I would like to put a little emphasis on the area of the Canada Scholarship Program. The motion we have before us today in the House does not even mention perhaps the most crucial aspect of research and development and science and technology, and that is people. I think we have to remind ourselves that when we speak of research and development, and we speak of science and technology, we cannot afford to lose sight of that vital ingredient in the equation. That ingredient is indeed people. We are talking here of the highly qualified men and women who need to drive this remarkable technological revolution forward from the present time.
There have been recent studies done, including those done by our own Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council which have shown that Canada faces a crisis situation with a shortage of highly qualified scientists and engineers. Here we are talking about people. The proportion of students who now enter science and engineering has remained relatively constant at about 20 per cent over this past decade. I think that was alluded to by the member for Ottawa West. It has not grown actually in response to the needs that are out there at the present time.
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Though we may be only second to the United States in the number of post-secondary school graduates as a percentage of the work force, we do have a low rate of scientists and engineers. That is the problem that we as a government have identified over the last six years and are now trying to correct.
Moreover, the Economic Council of Canada has predicted that the technological content of all jobs, not just the scientists and engineering jobs but all jobs, are going to increase. The requirement is going to increase down the road and we will, therefore, need an even higher proportion of scientists and engineers in the work force than we have had over the past decade.
There is no doubt that we are committed to valuing scientific and engineering achievements and to providing appropriate recognition and rewards for contributions in these fields in order to attract students into it. It is this kind of remuneration and reward system for the science and engineering professions which has never been on par with some of the other professions such as the legal and medical professions. As a society, we have to take some blame for that.
It seems to us that the key, if we are going to reach our young people, these young women and men in our elementary schools and high schools, we have to make it attractive for them. We need to make them aware of how science and technology affect their lives. We need to get them excited about science and technology and we need to encourage them to pursue the wide range of career opportunities that exist in these fields.
I am proud to say that our government is playing a leadership role in this regard and we have done so under a number of initiatives, an important one of which is the Canada Scholarship Program, which is an excellent example of one of those initiatives.
When the Prime Minister launched the Canada Scholarship Program some three years ago, he spoke then about the bright minds and about the commitment of our government to ensuring that the talents of these young Canadians would be appropriately recognized and rewarded.
This program is now entering its third year. It represents an $80 million investment, which is a significant amount of money, over five years by the Government of Canada in its continuing commitment to excellence in scientific and engineering education.

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Based on outstanding academic performance, first-year students at the post-secondary level enrolled in science and engineering related disciplines are eligible to receive $2,000 a year for up to four years for a total of $8,000. We have now, over the course of the last three years, been able to help some 6,200 scholars, who are benefiting from what is offered under this Canada Scholarship Program.
One of the interesting things is that we are also getting industry involved. That has been alluded to by my friend from Ottawa West. For example, the Ballard Power Systems of Victoria and the Corel Systems here in Ottawa, among others, are funding the Canada Scholars Frontrunners Project which will be of some significance. The DuPont Company-Governor General's Canada Scholarship in Environmental Engineering also has to be recognized. Canadian Marconi is supporting the creation of Canada Scholars Mentor Clubs. The Nova Corporation of Alberta is funding special scholarship awards for Canada scholars.
Other corporations such as GE Canada, SCIEX Inc., MDS Health Group, DuPont Canada, Merck Frosst Canada, Rio Algom Ltd., Pan Canadian Petroleum and Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting are all involved from the private sector in trying to help out in this area.
But without a doubt, the success of these programs depends on the scholars themselves and their motivation and the ability that we have to encourage them to get into this field of endeavour, which is so crucial for our future competitive position in world affairs.
It is this Canada Scholarship Program which now stands as a glowing example of our government's ongoing effort to foster excellence in science and engineering education here in Canada. Combined with initiatives such as the science and technology public awareness campaign and the National Networks of Centres of Excellence, it represents an unprecedented federal commitment.
I conclude by suggesting that it is a commitment that I am indeed proud to talk about this afternoon and it is a commitment that will ensure a competitive Canada and a prosperous and rewarding future for our young people.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: I compliment my colleague and friend on that very fine talk on research and development, but there are some questions that we have on this side of the House that cause us a great deal of concern and seemed not to be properly addressed in this budget with the expenditures of money.
Let me just relate some facts. I am so glad that the Minister for International Trade has decided to stay with us because I think these facts reflect something about what he had to say to our previous speaker.
It is a little known fact in Canada today that the largest single industry is forestry. It is larger than either the automobile or the petroleum industries in Canada. Forestry in Canada employs over 8 per cent of our Canadian labour force and it supports over 900,000 forestry manufacturing and service jobs.
One out of every seven manufacturing dollars in Canada is related directly to this industry, and it contributes more than $17 billion to Canada's net trade balance. Forestry accounts for close to $2.5 billion in trade within our country alone.
Government policy does not reflect the importance of this industry to over 300 communities in Canada that are dependent solely on the forestry industry for their sole survival. It does not reflect this industry's contribution to the national economy and its treatment toward more than 30 single industry towns in northern Ontario alone, the area I represent.
With that background, let us consider the remarks the Minister for International Trade made just a few moments ago and discuss what the forestry industry is doing for our country and the lack of public expenditures to this most vital of all industries. Looking at the forecasts for 1990 and 1991 in the budgetary expenditures, $53 million was spent last year in that area. In the estimates for 1991 and 1992 that has been reduced by almost $20 million. It is now down to $33,900,000, a drop of $20 million which certainly does not reflect the tremendous importance of this vital industry in Canada.
Perhaps I may just address the comments made by the Minister for International Trade. One of the things that can be done-and it is so vital and does not cost our
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country one penny-is the elimination of the 15 per cent export tax that was placed in 1986 on the softwood lumber exports to the United States.
We have been asking the government to remove that tax because of its unfairness to the people in small communities in this country. It is not going to cost Canadians anything. It is just a simple determination that the 15 per cent tax on the softwood lumber industry in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, has imposed personal anguish and suffering on people who are involved in these single industry towns. It can be eliminated by eliminating that unfair tax and letting these people in these industries in these towns compete with the Americans on a level playing field.


Bruce Halliday: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to this, although it is a little bit off the topic of science and technology and research and development. I have a bit of a personal interest in the subject area of forestry, having worked one summer in the area of Thunder Bay-Nipigon. Having cut pulp up there, I have quite a bit of sympathy for the work that goes on in that area.
I am also concerned about science and technology in the forestry area. There is no doubt that we need to spend money there. I had occasion to meet with a Russian scientist a little over a year ago in Moscow and subsequently here in Canada, who is working very diligently on a scheme that will eliminate waste products that currently come from our forest product manufacturing plants here in Canada, whereby pulp would be produced without any waste product of significance at all. I agree that there is room for further study.
As to the tax on softwood lumber, I suppose the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon should probably speak with his colleagues from New Brunswick. He might get a little different slant on that tax from them. I appreciate the needs of our lumbering industry and the forest industry.
I am pleased to say also, from the point of view of the private sector and as one who is interested in disabled and handicapped people, that members of the union in the forestry sector and the management of those same plants are now working together to try to help injured workers and reintegrate them into the work place.
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Those workers and those management people in the forestry sector deserve credit for the work they are doing, which I think is of great importance to Canada.
I share the member's concern about this tax problem. It is a difficult one. But the Prime Minister, as we heard this afternoon, is addressing that problem with the President of the U.S.A. himself. I hope we will see a resolution that will satisfy all sides.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated.
Before recognizing the hon. member for Portage-Interlake, 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 Kent-Bankruptcy; the hon. member for Edmonton-Strathcona-Housing; the hon. member for Ottawa West-The Environment.


Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage -Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, like many of my colleagues who are participating in this debate this afternoon, I welcome the opportunity to review the opposition motion and its suggestion that the Prime Minister failed in honouring a commitment to double Canada's spending commitment to research and development.


An hon. member:: Could you repeat that?


Felix Holtmann: If the members opposite have a hard time hearing, maybe they should plug in their hearing aids. I think I have made myself fairly clear.
Let us examine the statement. Perhaps the exact doubling of these expenditures, which they have a complaint about, is the problem. We have heard this afternoon from my colleagues who just spoke, the member for Oxford and the Minister for International Trade, and in fact the Prime Minister. I can assure all members in this House that from the perspective of one area of Canada, the one I come from, our Prime Minister is light-years ahead of anything that has ever previously been accomplished by any leader of this country, probably Conservatives included, in focusing on science and technology.
Let us recognize that fact. Our Prime Minister made this one of his projects. He made some commitments for funding. Although the argument has been made that they have not been totally achieved according to what he said in 1984 or previously, I think the example that he has

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given and the leadership role he has played have focused attention on this particular area of concern to Canadians.
I do not think anyone in the seats opposite can argue otherwise. They may sit and laugh, but what other Prime Minister can they mention who has taken such a tremendous initiative and a leadership role? I do not think they should sit in their places and laugh at it. Certainly Mr. Trudeau didn't, certainly the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra didn't, certainly Mr. Pearson didn't, and quite possibly they might say that for nine months neither did the right hon. member for Yellowhead.
I do not think using this particular style of discussing the issues of science and technology will really indicate that we have not gone far enough. I suppose members on this side will suggest that maybe we should have gone further. But this party, under its leadership, has not gone out in any reckless way to throw money at projects, because we have always used that as a consideration point.
I would like to say, if I may, that if we look at some of the things that have happened as a result of the leadership of our Prime Minister, we see that a lot of things have happened to our young people as well. My children in school have science fairs, and I really believe that a focus on science and technology is occurring in the schools. They have taken it upon themselves from the educators and a direction, not just from the Prime Minister but from a lot of the scientific leaders in our country, to focus attention on the importance of the changes in technology and bring it to the attention of the young people.
As I said, my children in school do a lot of things differently than when I went to school some 20 years ago. Science fairs are really an "in" thing, and I think my colleagues opposite will probably have noticed that change as well.
That is drawing attention, maybe not with big dollars, to create an awareness in young people so that when they reach maturity and have completed their scholastic activities, they will see the importance of science, change, and technology and why we should continue this research, this important part of the development of our country.
As a farmer, although not active in recent years but in former years, I know that the importance of technological change in agriculture is fantastic and phenomenal. Canadian companies and researchers in universities are very often in the forefront of the technological change we are talking about.
Let us look at the production of wheat. We may argue and the opposition may argue that the farmers are not getting enough money for that wheat. Through the technology and science that has been applied to this very important part of agriculture, not just within Canada but around the world, scientists in Canada are producing wheat that doubles production compared to what we had in the late 1930s and 1940s. Consequently we are helping to feed the world.
That research has not stopped. It continues even in the oilseed crops. Canada is a leader in the production of a canola meal that has fewer impurities than in the beginning. This crop, through Canadian science and technology, has been developed into what is almost a perfect crop.


An hon. member:: What about hog research?


Felix Holtmann: My colleague suggested that I talk a bit about hog research. He is absolutely right. The technology in the production of better quality pork has made Canada's pork among the very best in the world. This is a result of research done at universities. A lot of people do not realize that we are now producing a hog that grows faster with greater feed conversion and less fat. This kind of research continues because the average consumer and everyone in this room do not like to eat as much fat. Because of such things as cholesterol it is not the healthy food we once thought it was.
It is also important to the farmer to produce a hog at less cost; in other words, feed efficiency, the ability to convert roughage and feed into meat, into protein. There have been tremendous steps forward in agricultural research. This is continuing, and I think we owe a great debt to the many scientists who are working on such projects.
Cuts to projects in terms of funding concern those on all sides of the House, but we have to balance that with what is available and what are the priorities. These are difficult decisions. No one will deny that it is not an easy decision to cut a project on which scientists in this countiy are doing research. It would not matter if members opposite were sitting on this side of the House.
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From time to time those decisions have to be made and I have experienced that.
It is important to look at the technological change and transfer that is going on. I think the fact that the Prime Minister has focused so much of his personal time on this particular endeavour is, consider him as you may, the most positive thing that a Prime Minister has done in this country for years.
Science is important to us and we should look at other countries. The best thing to do is compare. My colleagues opposite see what has happened since the war in the great countries of Japan and Germany, as well as in some other countries such as that great giant to the south of us, the United States. I was an international exporter as well as a fanner before coming here and know that these countries consider Canada to be doing tremendous advance work in many fields important to Canadians and to Canadian business people.
We should consider those few facts alone and consider where we ought to be going. Sometimes we look at a country like Germany and say: "How is it able to come out with this fantastic Mercedes Benz?" Lately we have seen the latest research and technology going into the Lexus car from Japan and the energies private companies have used, not the government so much but private companies.
I believe that in our efforts to continue that scientific research and technology sometimes we ought to give more assistance to the companies as maybe a tax writeoff, which I am sure they get anyway, if their research is going to lead to better productivity, more efficient products and ones that Canadians can help work to build and manufacture, where we shine.
We do shine in agriculture, but I think we also shine now as a country in bringing this awareness to our youth. The young people are doing so much more. I think that whole attitude will bring them into the sciences at university. It is a future they can depend on because we need a lot more scientists. I am happy to say that one of my sons is looking into computer science. I am very proud of him because he sees a future in it. There is lots of opportunity if we keep letting our young people know that they exist and that we support them.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-Trinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Portage-Interlake for his interesting presentation. I took into perspective what he said about the reputation he alluded
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to that Canada has in agricultural research. I would accept that because I do recognize his expertise in the field of agriculture. I had some personal experience on the trip that we had together. Certainly as somebody who has knowledge of the fishing industry, I was impressed with his knowledge.
Probably where we stand on this issue could depend on where we sit with respect to how selective we want to be.
I will accept that Canada has leadership in technology, research and development in the agriculture field, and I would like to relate that to the fishing industry. I would like to bring to the member's attention that Canada is the world's largest leading fish exporter. I was at a conference about three years ago where it was suggested that Canada's fisheries, from the scientific viewpoint and scientific research, are now where Europe's were 15 years ago.
I really have to reflect on what the fishing industry could be doing without this technological lag, what the predictions would be with respect to the northern cod and other areas of scientific information, knowledge and indeed research that I would have to recognize have been addressed to a certain extent in the Atlantic Fish Adjustment Program.
The fact remains that certainly we are the largest exporter in the world and I think a leading authority because of our geography, our three coasts and our continental shelf. Areas of excellence and centres of excellence could well be developed.
I am going to speak in a few moments on this subject. I do not want to take up any more of the hon. member's time. I would like him to reflect that there are certain areas we really could be improving in and they are key areas as far as I am concerned.


Felix Holtmann: Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge my hon. colleague from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception and I have had a small association in looking at different parts of the country once on a short visit. I cherished the exchange of views that he and I had.
I can only agree with his statement that there are many areas of importance with respect to the advancements of technology. I will just give him a brief example of what he has said with regard to fish. Believe me, I represent an area, for some who do not know, that has 1,200 commercial fishermen producing something like $40 million worth of fish products in the heart of this

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country, on the prairies of Canada, through the Freshwater Fish Corporation.
While I was campaigning in Gimli in 1984,1 was met by a street vendor who was selling some crab sticks. These were made in Japan. They were not made of crabmeat, but they tasted so much litre crabmeat that the chap was doing very well.
I thought to myself, in the middle of fishing country and in the heart of the continent, here we have a Japanese technology that has produced a very palatable product and something that I would buy. We have a long way to go to match the technology that exists throughout the world in some countries in developing products. We should be making the crab sticks, possibly with fish caught in Lake Winnipeg and selling them to Japan.
I concur with what he points out. There are many areas where a lot of work needs to be done to bring this kind of technology forward and find new technology.
I agree that there are many areas with which he and I probably have no association or understanding. They are very highly technical. I am associated with reviewing telecommunications with the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture. The technology is changing so quickly that there are not too many in this room who can understand how it operates. But there are people who can assist us in recognizing the importance of technology being allowed to continue within the means of Canada's ability to pay.
I think that is really my point. I rest my case.


Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):: I had the pleasure of making a submission to that panel in September 1989. The panel's report called Protecting our Waters is a devastating critique of Canada's current ability to prevent or respond effectively to oil spills. I will quote from the report:
The capacity to respond effectively to a spill of any significant magnitude does not presently exist anywhere in Canada.
The panel had much to say about oil spill research and development, or rather the lack of it. Again, I quote from the panel's report:
A major research and development effort is urgently needed to develop more effective spill clean-up equipment and technology because what is now available is essentially primitive and largely ineffectual.
This panel made over 100 recommendations and costed them at approximately $1.5 billion over a 10-year period. It suggested that $800 million to $1 billion could be raised through a $2 per tonne levy on all oil products transported in Canadian waters.
It recommended that part of these funds could go towards enhancing Canada's spill response capability. This would be done by upgrading government co-ordinated and government funded research and development into spill response technologies and by supporting the establishment of a major industry operated spill response co-operative in all high risk areas in Canada.
The panel's interim report in September 1989 noted that both government and industry have significantly reduced their funding of oil spill response R and D over the past decade. According to the panel, there is a glaring need for more extensive research into the longterm effects of oil and chemical pollution.
[Editor's Note: Member spoke in Inuktitut.]
Mr. Speaker, I will focus today on environmental research, on oil spill research and its importance to Canada, particularly to the northern part of this country.
In June 1989, the Prime Minister commissioned a special review of Canada's capacity to respond to marine spills of oil and other hazardous material. That review, known as the Public Review Panel on Tanker Safety and Marine Spills Response Capability made its final report to the government last October.
The interim report listed some of the technologies requiring additional research and development, techniques for containing spills at their source, remote sensing and spill tracking technologies, beach clean-up techniques that minimize disturbance, better techniques for cleaning up spills in the Arctic and disposal techniques.
The final report last October stressed again the need for a major collaborative research and development initiative by industry, government and universities. This panel acknowledged that the level of required expendi-
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tures is high, but it also said that this cost would be minuscule compared to the cost of cleaning up a catastrophic spill such as the one from the Exxon Valdez.
Hon. members will be aware of Exxon's out of court settlement announced yesterday. Exxon will pay $1 billion in civil damages, criminal restitution and fines, in addition to the $2.5 billion already spent during the clean-up. And that is not necessarily the end of it for Exxon. Aboriginal people in Alaska may still sue.
The panel had some specific funding recommendations for Canadian spill-related research and development.
The annual level of Canadian funding, for spill-related R & D at all
levels, should immediately be raised to at least $10 million-the
objective must be to reach $20 million per year within five years.
In sharp contradiction to the need for continued and increased expenditures in spill research, funding has declined over the past several years. Since 1986, under the current government, funding for oil spill R and D has shrunk dramatically.
It was another federal government which began research into the spills in the early 1970s responding to the Arrow tanker spill off Nova Scotia. Environment Canada co-ordinated a multimillion dollar government-industry research program, but Environment Canada's funding for oil spill research and development has declined substantially since the 1970s. In 1978-79, $2.3 million went towards spill countermeasures R and D, almost all of it for oil spill research. Last year that funding was $1.1 million, and that money was divided equally between oil and chemical spill countermeasures.
A research paper I commissioned from the Library of Parliament last year estimated total funding of other federal government agencies at approximately $500,000, and half of this came from the now defunct Unsolicited Proposals Program.
The Tanker Safety Panel pointed out the cutbacks to Environment Canada's R and D team at the River Road Environmental Emergencies Technology Centre. This team manages the Arctic and Marine Oil Spill Program and has produced a variety of oil spill response techniques and equipment. Their research budget has been cut from $2.3 million to $300,000 in 1979 dollars. Over that same period, expenditures by the Department of
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Fisheries and Oceans on oil spill fate and effects has remained at about $300,000. Canadian Coast Guard expenditures on equipment evaluation has remained at less than $100,000.
Other federal funding programs which have supported some R and D in the past have either been terminated or severely curtailed. They include the Environmental Studies Research Fund managed by the Canada Oil and Gas Lands Administration; the Arctic Marine Transportation R and D Program funded and managed by Transport Canada; the Northern Oil and Gas Program managed by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; and the Unsolicited Proposals Program managed by the Department of Supply and Services.
Industry funded spill R and D has been declining. The Canadian Offshore Operators Spill Research Association conducted marine oil spill R and D until the latter half of the 1980s. Between 1980 and 1984, they spent $5 million on R and D. Spending in recent years has declined to virtually zero. The Canadian Offshore Operators Spill Research Association has now been disbanded.
Industry, however, has recently called for more R and D into oil spills. Both the Canadian Petroleum Association and the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute have done so. The Environmental Studies Research Fund, ESRF, administered by COGLA, was financed through a levy based on a percentage of the value of leases awarded to companies for offshore research on oil and gas exploration. A substantial cutback has occurred here. In 1983 the ESRF was established and it spent $1.3 million on oil spill R and D in that year.
In 1984, the EFRF spent $1.3 million on oil and oil spill R and D. That spending declined to $73,575 in 1990, and for a period of three years, 1986, 1987 and 1988, funding was absolutely zero.
What about the universities? The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has supported spill research at Canadian universities. Its level of funding, however, in the words of the tanker safety panel is woefully inadequate. The panel states that this country, "must place greater emphasis on developing effective

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clean-up technologies and learning more about the environmental consequences of spills."
With respect to the green plan, the government's response to date is extremely disappointing. The Minister of Transport's preliminary response in November said nothing about increasing spill R and D. The green plan was a far cry from the sweeping recommendations on funding requirements outlined by the tanker safety panel. What is there has been stretched over six years instead of five years, by the finance minister's new budget.
Any delay in providing necessary research funding increases the risk to our environment. I, of course, have particular concern for the Arctic and its unique ecosystem. The Arctic is extremely vulnerable to oil spills. Lancaster Sound and the Beaufort Sea are perhaps the most vulnerable.
I would also like to mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska where there is pressure for oil and gas development. Canada must do everything in its power to prevent such development in this sensitive area, which is the calving ground of the Porcupine caribou herd.
Mr. Speaker, the ability to handle large spills offshore while tankers are in transit is non-existent throughout the Arctic. Research and development expenditure in oil spill countermeasures has been reduced dramatically since the Beaufort Sea panel released its report six years ago. Despite that panel's recommendation that funding be increased, we must see an increased commitment to oil spill R and D as a necessary investment in our future.
In conclusion, we cannot afford not to spend those dollars for the sake of our environment and for the generations to come.


Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important subject. In light of the remarks of the two previous speakers, I thought what I would do, inasmuch as my background allows me to, would be to talk in a general sense of what is involved and get some measure of the scope of what we are dealing with here. Perhaps then if time permits, I would give two or three examples to show the House some of the concerns I have in respect of specifics that may be addressed by either looking at the present budget or, if that is not possible, maybe in future years or in future allocations.
I do not want to attribute blame or to make compari- H sons here. Perhaps some other time we may want to do	H
that. I am looking at the scope of what is involved here.	H
The sheer scale of explorable nature today is beyond	H
yesterday's wildest imagination. I want to give you some	H
facts and figures; there is no other way to do it. I want to	H
make a comparison of the small and the large and the	H
short and the long to give you some indication of what	*
sort of scale we are dealing with.	I
Scientists tell me that today we are probing phenome-	H
na that are as tiny as tcn-15 of a centimetre. That, to me,	H
is pretty small. It is one million billionth of a centimetre,	*
in a universe where the edge is 1023 miles away. That is	H
100,000 billion billion. I cannot conceive of that but I am	H
impressed by the numbers.	I
Equally, we are studying phenomena that has lived for	H
such a short time that it occurs in 10-25 of a second. By	H
contrast, our astronomers and cosmotologists tell us that	H
the universe is some 20 billion years old. What a range.	H
I recall listening to a speech given a few years back by	H
then President Reagan not long before his term was	I
over. He spoke to the Empire Club in Toronto. He	H
noted, when speaking on this same subject, that the	H
industrial revolution increased productivity by a factor of	H
100, while the microchip has raised the database technol-	H
ogy by a factor of one million. A single microchip today	H
has the capacity of a million transistors. The transistor	H
not too long ago was considered to be a breakthrough. It	H
is estimated that in about JO years' time it will have the	H
capacity of a billion transistors.	H
Again, I am looking at the scope of what is involved	H
here. No matter how this is looked at, there is no doubt	H
that technological leadership has become a strategic	H
factor in determining the economic performance of a	H
country, region or, indeed, a province.	H
In this regard, I regret to tell you that from the statistics I have, Canada lags behind its industrial competitors, and as someone from the Atlantic region, we	H
regretfully lag behind the other provinces on production	H
and retention of human resources. On a per capita basis,	H
we employ one-half the number of engineers and scien-	H
tists that our competitors employ. That is not a very	H
impressive thought. I look at it in my case. Of the	H
scientific knowledge that exists in the world today, 90 per	HH
cent of it has been created since I left high school and it	H

March 14, 1991

will double again before I become eligible for the old age pension.
Mr. Speaker, that means something to me, I am not sure if it means very much to you.
To give some practical examples of this, I spoke a few moments ago about how we lag behind. We are 15 years behind Europe in fishing technology.
I now want express some concerns. One concern I have is that the government seems to have eroded our premier research organization, the National Research Council. Just this morning I was listening to a commentary on the radio where great concern was being expressed that our expertise in basic research is being lost.
There is no question that anybody who knows anything about research-and I do not know a lot, but I know some-that while the bounds between basic research and applied research is always a very fine line there is an argument for one or the other. But like everything else, there are the fine bounds. There is no question that basic research has provided the inspiration and the direction for important improvements in the world.
I want to mention to the House three examples. The first is the development of radar, which was accredited for the Battle of Britain being won by the Allies in World War II. It was developed from basic research and the fact that someone noticed that large objects produced echoes from radio transmissions.
The second example is the Salk vaccine. The cure for poliomyelitis was developed from basic research on the tissue culture of a monkey's kidney cell and basic research in that area.
The example that will indicate the tireless efforts and the persistence of our researchers in the basic research area is the development of the chromosome theory. The chromosome theory took 67 years and, indeed, was developed by an obscure monk in Austria who was interested in garden peas and bred them in his monastery garden. This is an indication of what basic research can do. Obviously, that is a concern we should all have.
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The next point I want to make is the concern I have with the cutting of transfer payments for post-secondary education and reduced over-all funding for vocational training. My hon. friend from Oxford quoted the Economic Council of Canada and I going to quote as well from a report of last year. They mentioned a number of important statistics, but their over-all concern is that we are not training our people properly to compete in the highly industrialized and competitive world around us. There are two things I want to quote from this report: "A relatively high secondary school drop-out rate of nearly 30 per cent means that more young people fall outside the formal education and training system than is the case for many of our competitors".
The examples are that only 72 per cent of Canadian 17-year olds participate in a formal education or training program compared with 87 per cent of Americans and 94 per cent of Japanese. That is a tremendous lag. I think, nationally, all parties would like to address that.
The second point that is made is: "By some international standards, the quality of high skill segment of the Canadian workforce is only mediocre, according to the 1989 competitiveness scoreboard. Canada ranks in the middle group with respect to managerial talent, research and development, personnel and skilled labour".
Everybody in this House is aware that we have the native talent to do more and to do better. We need to be seized with the necessity to do it. While we laud all the efforts that have been made so far, I think it is very difficult to say that there is not a lot more that can be done. The question once again, of course, is how much is enough. The indication and the motion speaks to the Prime Minister saying it was going to be doubled and I think we have fallen far short of that.
In summing up, I think a good way to end is to talk about the third concern I have. Very briefly, it is the idea of establishing Centres of Excellence. It is my understanding that the freeze for the main source of funding for research for the universities in Canada and the federal granting councils has caused cutbacks to the point that this whole idea may be jeopardized.
If I could be permitted a personal example here, I make reference to Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland which, since 1986 and 1987, has been pursuing a topic called Ocean Studies Task Force, look-

March 14, 1991
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ing at studies that can be done and put in place by the year 2000.1 think anybody with a knowledge of Memorial University and its Centre for Cold Ocean Engineering, its marine laboratory, its marine biology programs and, indeed, all the programs that are centred in developing an excellence in the 17 separate areas of management in ocean studies, I think it is fair to say, whichever government, it seemed to have got off the ground very well in the mid-1980s. But it is certainly my understanding that in this particular case, while the potential is there, the desire is there, the reason is there, certainly the geography, the expertise and the academic excellence is there, it has come to a grinding halt with respect to the kind of funding that it is going to need to put this program together.
I am in favour of the motion, but I would encourage the Prime Minister and, indeed, this government to take cognizance of these kinds of things and to take the kind of action that would put Canadians, not just in selected areas but indeed in some of the areas that I mentioned in the forefront and to take advantage of the potential that we have.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you that the development of the scientific and technological capability of Canada is foremost in the priorities of the federal government.
In Canada, the national effort in the field of science and technology is led mostly by the federal government. Notwithstanding what the opposition parties are saying, the spending commitment to science and technology grew, increasing from 4.65 per cent of program expenditures in 1984 to 4.89 per cent this year, the highest percentage in ten years.
While, as a percentage of the gross national product, the government of Canada spent more on non-military research and development than the United States and Great Britain, he still spent less than France and Western Germany and about as much as Japan.
To encourage Canadian businesses and research facilities to exchange ideas, help raise funds and contribute to the development of products, Industry, Science and Technology Canada came up with a number of initiatives aimed at the creation of networks and partnerships. One of the most interesting is the Strategic Technologies Program, whose objective is to promote pre-competitive technology development and its diffusion in Canadian industry.


Mr.   Maurice@: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to point out that I will share my speaking time with my colleague the member for Richmond-Wolfe.
In the years to come, the success of an industry or business will depend on its ability to develop advanced technology and to apply certain essential technologies.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be able to rise today on the motion put forward by the hon. member for Saint-Henri-Westmount. When I look at it, this motion reminds me-and I think it is worth mentioning-of our memorable debate on free trade, during the 1988 election campaign, with what we knew then and we know even more today, about market globalization.
One the main arguments for promoting this very important issue, and we realize it today, was that Canada, the government of Canada, our government could support it and, thus, give our businesses the tools they needed to compete on the global market.
As it turns out, the opposition parties that were so strongly against free trade are now introducing a motion to criticize the government of Canada, not for a lack of interest for this field, but simply for not giving enough.
We want to ensure that our industries have access to those technologies.
Strategic technologies are generic. They can be applied by many industries and to many sectors of our economy. They affect the competitiveness of a broad range of industries.
Strategic technologies enable all industries to enhance their competitiveness. Even our traditional, resource-based industries such as forestry and agriculture use these technologies to remain competitive.
Strategic technologies reinforce each other. What is accomplished in one area of advanced technology may accelerate the development of other areas.
Industry, Science and Technology Canada developed its Strategic Technologies Program after an in-depth study and wide-ranging consultations with industry, uni-
March 14, 1991

versities and the provinces to determine which technologies were essential to Canada's competitiveness.
Following these consultations, three strategic technologies were selected for the program. They are: information technology, biotechnology and advanced industrial materials.
I will start with biotechnology. It involves genetic engineering, mass production of animal or vegetable cells, the production of monoclonal antibodies, and protein engineering. According to certain estimates, by 1995, medical drugs developed according to biotechnological procedures should represent over 40 per cent of the Canadian market in pharmaceutical products, worth $4 billion, Mr. Speaker. This percentage may well rise to 70 per cent by the year 2000.
Since the federal government created the national strategy for biotechnology six years ago, the number of Canadian businesses involved in biotechnology has risen from a mere handful to over 200 and is still growing.
Mr. Speaker, the total value of Canada's biotechnical research and development is currently estimated at more than $350 million, and over 1,800 private and public sector researchers are working in that field.
Thanks to the strategic technology program the Department of Industry, Science and Technology helps research companies and establishments use the existing infrastructure for research and development, particularly in biotechnology. Of course department officials plan for the future in light of previous achievements.
Mr. Speaker, the second of the three strategic technologies under this program, that is information technology, covers telecommunications, micro-electronics, intru-ments, guidance systems, the latest manufacturing technologies, and artificial intelligence.
Canada's industry gained wide recognition in that field by setting up teledetection and telecommunication systems never before seen anywhere in the world.
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Data technology in Canada has become an industry which every year produces revenues of $30 billion and directly provides work for a quarter of a million Canadians.
Data technology also creates new businesses overnight, especially in the service sector where there are so many opportunities for technicians in telecopy, electronic publishing and geographical data systems.
The federal government has already taken certain initiatives to promote the development of information technology. For example, with respect to our innovaction strategy, we have set up a micro-electronic and systems development program with a budget of $60 million for developing micro-electronics and data processing systems.
The Strategic Technology Program provides other incentives to boost the growth of that vitally important sector. The government has earmarked-these are my concluding remarks, Mr. Speaker-$10 million for a university/industry consortium called PRECARN. This all-Canadian group supports the latest research and development jointly carried out in robotics and artificial intelligence. Such are some of the priorities of our government.


Yvon Côté: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased to take part in this debate on the motion introduced by the hon. member for Saint-Henri-Westmount. All the more so since we all know that the economic competitiveness and future prosperity of Canada is a topic which deserves our full attention and which should be debated not only by members but by all Canadians as well. This debate gives me and my colleagues an opportunity to set the record straight with respect to this government's commitment to science and technology. Despite the odd myth that may have gain some currency, the fact is that one of our government priority is to build a strong and prosperous Canada for the 1990s and beyond.
Mr. Speaker, science and technology are our hole cards when it comes to strengthening Canada's economic competitiveness and financial prosperity. Research and development, particularly in the technical field, are growth mechanisms in a global economy where innovation and the dissimination of knowledge are of such vital importance.

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I should like to emphasize a key initiative which clearly shows the approach of our government to science and technology. I am referring specifically to the Networks of Centres of Excellence Program, the key element of government strategy to promote long-term basic and applied research in Canada. It encourages researchers to minimize barriers between disciplines, ideas and institutions, and to combine their efforts with a view to enhancing industrial competitiveness on a national scale.
Mr. Speaker, researchers no longer work alone in their basements, away from everything and everyone, working very hard, without any kind of resources.
Centres of excellence networks are a new way to promote excellence in scientific research in Canada. With interlinked networks throughout Canada, they further the integration of the research community into the industry, universities and governments. No researcher could ever realize his full potential while working alone in a basement. Those times are over. We have to pool our energies and our skills to ensure a better future for our country. Our top Canadian researchers now have a unique opportunity to work together within a coordinated structure on long-term projects.
All in all, the centres of excellence serve the following purposes:
First, to improve Canada's performance in science and technology in order to contribute to long-term basic research.
Second, engineers and scientists trained under this Program will gain international stature. Being interlinked with other universities across Canada, participating scientists will be able to confront to international competition and to tackle modern scientific methods.
Third, it will allow new technical knowledge to be passed on to the industry.
Fourh, this Program will launch an era of cooperation and creation of networks between researchers working in various institutions and corporations across this country. But what will be the effects of these objectives?
This initiative, Mr. Speaker, will include the participation of more than 500 Canadian researchers from 35 universities and 37 large Canadian corporations channelled into 15 networks. Total grants from the Government of Canada-this government-will amount to $244 million. Through these networks, we will not only enhance research and development but ensure that our capacities in that regard will be applied towards social and economic goals. In the end, we will become more competitive and our fellow citizens will no doubt enjoy a better quality of life.
These networks were set up about a year ago. The network for marine resources development-and that could be of particular interest to our colleagues from the Maritimes and also from the Pacific-could offer new perspectives to the Canadian fishing industry and allow it to become more competitive.
There is another network which deals with pest control. That network could lead to increased productivity in agriculture and forestry. Again, that will be of interest to our colleagues from the Prairies, and particularly to producers from the area, whose crops are often threatened by such infestations.
I can also talk about another network that I find interesting. It deals with concrete and is centred at Sherbrooke University. Did you know that this network for research on concrete has benefitted from a $25 million investment thanks to a team of collaborators from Sherbrooke University, in the Eastern Townships, whose reputation is countiy-wide? This study on concrete, and on the molecular structure of concrete, will lead to discoveries that all of Canada will benefit from.
The advantage of this network is that it will involve the collaboration of seven universities for the general study on concrete, and of 14 other universities throughout the country for the molecular study. I could give you some names like the University of British Columbia, McGill University in Montreal, Laval University in Quebec, the universities of Ottawa, of Toronto and of Alberta. On top of that, many national companies in Canada will cooperate and contribute. Even in Eastern Quebec, one company in Matane will benefit from this cooperation between universities.
Mr. Speaker, in our day and age, the economy is based on knowledge and because of that, an unprecedented cooperation is needed in the science and technology sector, and this cooperation must involve industries, governments, and universities.
March 14, 1991

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset, it is not possible any more to stay each in his own house. We must share our skills and knowledge with our neighbours in order to get the most out of those resources. The centres of excellence network promotes cooperation and puts together skills everywhere in Canada. It will stimulate the acquisition of new knowledge and strategic technology transfers for a better future in Canada.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the speech the hon. member for Richmond- Wolfe just made, like a true Quebecer, as we may call him in this House, particularly in the absence of the Bloc Quebecois members. We do not see much of them here, but we are qualified to talk about what is going on in our universities.
I have a comment to make, Mr. Speaker, especially this year, on the 1991-1992 Estimates. Some things, like the CANMET mineral technology centre, are being patriated, thanks to members like Yvon Cote, from Richmond-Wolfe, Jean-Luc Joncas, Maurice Tremblay, who represent Quebec here, in Ottawa, and who champion, in their respective caucuses, the patriation of research centres.
Let us take a look at what there is for us in the Wilson Budget. There is a $15 million research and development project for Northern Quebec. But that is not all. There is also an alternate energy sources centre in Varennes, an $8 million project. That was unheard of under the Liberal government. What we are doing here, in Ottawa, is defending the interests of Quebec, in collaboration with the Quebec government. In the case of the CAN-MET project in Val-d'Or, for instance, we had the support of Mrs. Lise Bacon and the former Minister of Mines, Raymond Savoie, who helped us get a research laboratory in Quebec.
I would like to ask the hon. member for Richmond-Wolfe, who is from such a beautiful region, this: Is it important for you to defend the interests of Quebecers in Ottawa? You gave certain facts, and so did I, but is that important or not?


Yvon Côté: Mr. Speaker, I quoted earlier a very specific example of the impact of the centres of excellence networks across Canada, which bring cooperation and have an enormous immediate
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impact on all of us. I mentioned the University of Sherbrooke.
So, there is a financial impact: $25 million to scientists in Sherbrooke. There is a moral impact, that is, the pride of having scientists who are willing and able to do research whose consequences will extend everywhere across Canada.
I know that in the case of concrete, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that Beton Provincial in Matane and Matapedia, for example, could benefit from this research on concrete and lead to an even better use and expertise in that field.
We were talking about Hibernia, which brings an international cooperation from France, particularly from Paris, but which could have been provided by Canadians. These centres of excellence are a welcome contribution from our government.
Of course, there is also the transfer of technology which will lead to the development of local businesses, because once that research has been done and is considered successful, it is quite evident that this local pride will bring investments and real business development.
Yes, it is important that we contribute.


Mr. Jean-Luc Joncas (Matapedia-Matane):: Mr. Speaker, I listened veiy carefully to the speech by the hon. member for Richmond-Wolfe. Naturally, there has been much talk about spin-offs in various areas.
Living in an area where there are many farmers and forests, he mentioned the importance of concrete in which the centre of excellence was involved in the Sherbrooke area. I know there are many such centres across the country in various fields.
I would like to know more precisely what each of us can expect from these centres, in our areas.


Yvon Côté: Mr. Speaker, this is a matter on which I would have to elaborate. Unfortunately since I only have one minute left, I would say that, beyond the moral impact I referred to in a previous answer, this is mainly going to allow for the development of specific local skills.
If a center has acquired some expertise in concrete, for instance imagine the message for young people in elementary or secondary schools. And imagine the effect it would have on academics or on students when choosing a career, when they realize how profitable the

March 14, 1991
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expertise of that university can be. So we will have new engineers, Mr. Speaker, and this is one of the immediate results that I can see.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. Debate.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, I too wish to join in the debate this afternoon on the Liberal motion in front of us.
Much has been said today on the need for further research and development in Canada. When we do away with all the rhetoric that we have heard today, there is fundamental agreement among all political parties in this House that as a nation we must strengthen our ability to do research which is both basic and applied and to use the findings of our research in developing new services and new products.
If we are to survive in the type of competitive world we live in, we have to recognize and acknowledge that it is a world of very rapid changes where traditional trading patterns are being changed all the time, and that the only way to survive is through smart technology, smart trade strategies, smart economic strategies.
It requires a nation with a high degree of research and development, a high capacity for processing information, a capacity for being able to use what it has learned to implement and practise that knowledge.
It is not enough for us to do R and D and then not use that knowledge. It is not enough for us to have all the information at our fingertips, stored in computer data bases, and not be able to use that data to affect our behaviour or our trading strategies, et cetera, that would allow us a competitive edge in the world today.
We could talk a bit about the records of the present government. I would tend to think that most hon. members would agree that the Minister for Science, if he was not on public display but more in the privacy of a private conversation, over a beer or over a lunch, would admit that the record is not as great as he would have hoped it to be.
I am sure that some of our Liberal colleagues in a private situation would admit that programs like the scientific research fund, which Mr. Lalonde introduced in the dying days of the Liberal regime, was indeed a
tremendous waste of public money and a waste of money that could and should have gone to proper research. I am sure my Liberal colleagues, in the privacy of a private conversation, would admit that more should and could have been done when they were in government those long decades.
However, it is not enough to acknowledge the need to do more in private. What becomes important is for us as an entity, as a Parliament together, to be able to affect the thinking and the priorities of the government so that it begins to recognize, not in a private way but in a public way, in a way that results in action, that if we are to survive as a trading nation we must spend more on research and development.
We have to recognize that an erosion is occurring in Canada, and let not political gamesmanship, pointing blame or defending oneself, and the huffing and the political puffing hide the fact that our universities are deteriorating.
A year ago I had a tour of some of our universities across this country: some in Alberta, some in Saskatchewan, some in Manitoba, some in Ontario. I talked to faculty and to students. In one university, students told me they have exactly 15 minutes to spend with a book because there is such a line-up behind them waiting for the same source book. Our libraries are badly underfunded and cannot keep up with the latest journals, magazines and books that are being published. Our Canadian students do not have access to the latest in their particular field of expertise.
At another university, I was told about their lab equipment that had not been properly replaced and upgraded since the early 1970s when there was a spurt of spending in R and D and in universities. Those students are using lab equipment that is at least a decade and in some cases two decades old. Those students do not have an opportunity to deal with the latest technology.
I hear stories of the difficulty of getting entrance into university, that more universities are having to set higher requirements. Just recently I noticed that the university in my home city, the University of Regina, is talking about establishing quotas in its different faculties. It does not have the space and the faculty to meet the demand that is out there for higher education.
March 14, 1991

Yet, the demographics will tell us that we are going to have a shortage in this country of trained people. We are going to need scientists, engineers and teachers. We are going to be having a shortage at some point in the future.
Elistorically we have made up the deficit by importing graduates out of Italy, Holland, Germany, England and the other European countries, but that is not possible any more. We cannot expect waves of scientists and trained people from Europe to come and fill the need that exists in Canada.
We see the sad situation arising. Here we have young Canadian men and women desiring post-secondary education. We know that down the road they are going to be needed, that we are going to have a shortage. Yet, somehow or other we are not able to bring together these two central facts and do something about it.
Recently I have had an opportunity to see some of the scientific sectors that exist in other countries. The one that impressed me the most was the one I saw in Taiwan where there is a tremendous combination of resources. There is a co-ordination of resources between the private and the public sectors not just in terms of dealing with the research and development of R and, D but also the marketing of it.
Is it not about time that we in North America began to realize that our traditional economic model, which is essentially one of competition, an adversarial model, is not going to make do in the 21st century? When we see economic giants such as Japan and Germany, we begin to realize that they have a different economic and social structure. They have one in which the private and public sectors co-operate very closely. Nowhere is that co-operation closer than in the area of research and development.
The public sector and the private sectors sit down and work together to target certain areas. Certain tax concessions, the raising of capital, and the focusing of the country's resources, whether through the public or private sectors, are brought together to bear on the goal.
We have seen both Germany and Japan become technological leaders. They have taken certain fields and developed expertise in those fields. Then with the co-ordination of the public and the private sector, and I should include the trade unions as well, they worked
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together to create for themselves high-tech industries that create employment, good employment with high paying jobs, and wealth for the country and that help the general good of the nation.
That is a model I think we have to seriously start looking at. The adversarial model between the public and the private sector and between different industries and between labour and business is one that in essence is self-destructive. Nowhere is it more self-destructive than in the area of research and development. A new attitude and new thinking are needed if we are to survive economically.
When we contrast the state of our universities and the state of R and D in this country with the state of the universities and R and D in countries like Japan and Germany, I think it becomes obvious and very plain what the difference is and why some succeed and others do not.
We also have a basic structural problem in this country when it comes to R and D. That was enunciated many years ago by the Lamontagne committee report on research and development. What it found was that-and I believe that paper was done in the early seventies- compared to other nations in the world our public expenditure on R and D at that time was a little bit more than what public expenditure was in most of the industrialized countries in the world. What they found significant was that the private R and D done was way below what was normally done in the other OECD countries. When they broke that down a little further, they discovered that Canadian owned businesses did quite well when it came to R and D and that it was the multinational firms that did so poorly when it came to R and D.
In some ways that is logical. It should not surprise us at all that a multinational firm generally does its research and development in its own country. Our economic structure is such that so much of our industry is foreign owned by multinationals which do little research in this country. That is what the Lamontagne committee report pin-pointed as a structural problem that we had.
When I heard earlier today some of the remarks from our Liberal colleagues about R and D, attacking the NDP for being anti-business, I chuckled. Many of the things that my colleague, our critic for science and research, was saying were things to be found in the

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Lamontagne report. The Lamontagne report of course was a Liberal report, but then perhaps Mr. Lamontagne was of the old school, of the old Liberal school of Walter Gordon and Mr. Kierans, the old school that died in the sixties, the old school that believed in Canadian economic nationalism.
It is no wonder that we see the evolution of the Liberal Party coming around to the point where when we say things that are not unusual, in fact things that Liberals like Eric Kierans and Mr. Lamontagne around that time were saying now are considered by the Liberals in the House as being anti-business, socialist, sloganeering, totally impractical and off the wall. So be it.
If we are going to deal seriously with the question of R and D in this country we have to be able to mobilize industry, the public sector and labour. I suggest that it is harder to mobilize industry when it is a multinational industry. Canadian industry which has some roots and loyalty to this country can work together in a common strategy to do the research and then do the development and the marketing. That becomes, of course, insurmountable when we are dealing with an economy where vast chunks of it is owned by foreigners through foreign multinationals.
I could stand here and recite statistics concerning the record of the present government. I think they have already been put on the record. I do not want to get into this game because really what we are doing on the floor of the House of Commons is posturing.
As I suggested before, I am certain that in a private discussion, my hon. friend from the Liberal Party and my friend the Minister for Science, sitting privately together without the television sets and the microphones and so forth, we would find, I am sure, 99 per cent agreement. It is a pity that basic agreement cannot be brought out here into the public forum, that we cannot take that agreement and really create programs that would begin to meet the R and D needs for Canada.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I was delighted to hear the hon. member say that he was posturing in the House. That must be a rarity. I am surprised to hear him suggest that he would ever posture. I was unaware that someone as distinguished as he, who has run to be leader of his party, would have considered indulging in such a pastime.
I did listen with interest to his comments about the past policies of the party of which I have the honour to be a member. I was amused to hear him suggest that the New Democratic Party has picked up on the policies the Liberal party began to advocate 20 years ago, in fact, almost 30 years ago.
I have always suggested that the New Democratic Party has been slow to pick up good ideas, but I did not realize it took that long.
In that vein, I wonder if the hon. member could, perhaps, say that he agrees with our party, that research and development is not the sole focus of government activity, but in fact it involves all elements of society. Much more than government is involved in it. The Liberal Party policy that has been so ably set forth in the debate today, whereby all segments of our society must participate in the development of research projects in our country is, in fact, a very sensible policy, one that commends itself to the hon. gentleman and even to the members of his party who are less up to date in their thinking than he is, 30 years back though he may be.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, there certainly is a lot to respond to in the brief question of my friend.
First of all, my friend is new to Parliament. I think he is beginning to recognize the amount of posturing that even he does automatically. At some stage he might even become so self-aware that he begins to realize that what happens on the floor of the House of Commons is one reality that in many ways is surreal to the reality of the real world.
Perhaps when he begins to realize the surreality of this place, he will become a very effective member, when he will be able to differentiate between various realities.
When my hon. friend talks about old Liberal ideas, let us not forget that the NDP is called "the Liberal Party in a hurry" by some. When I talk about the economic nationalism that used to be advocated by the Liberals, it is something that we find to be still a valid idea. If we want to follow the Liberal course in terms of how to spend money and encourage private R and D, then what Mr. Lalonde brought forward with a scientific research tax credit, saw literally billions of dollars being wasted.
March 14, 1991

I wish I had my notes on some of the research projects that the Liberals were financing at that time. I believe there was one in which they were trying to raise cows so that cows could give chocolate milk.
I believe the Liberals were going to help finance that as part of their research and development projects.
If you could run and look at the list of what the Liberals were going to sponsor-and in fact they did - billions of dollars were lost to tax scams. That is the Liberal idea of how to encourage private R and D. Well, if that is the idea, forget it. Those folks are not ready for government tomorrow. They were not ready for government then; they are not ready for government today or tomorrow, and if that is still the thinking of the Liberal Party, they are not ready for government for the next decade to come.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for his quite helpful observations on science and technology policy. I wish my friend would not leave, because we have some words for him.
I do not think the debate here is about surrealism, quite frankly, and it may be a good deal less about posturing. I think it is about a little honesty, a little sincerity, a little seriousness, as representatives of the Canadian people.
We heard the hon. member moments ago talking about the Liberal science and technology policy of the past. I do not mind telling you, Mr. Speaker, and I know you are going to appreciate this, that the national rate of expenditures for science and technology was higher during the Diefenbaker years than it was during the Trudeau years.
When Mr. Trudeau came into office, the gross expenditure on research and development was 1.4 per cent of GDP. During the 1970s and almost throughout the 1970s it was up .9 per cent. So this party, this party which has been the firmest advocate of research and development has not a thing to learn. The Liberals could learn if they recognized the contribution they had made to the deindustrialization of Canada at the present. We are happy to see them joining the fight.
On the other hand, I just left a meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technolo-
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gy where we sat mystified. My Liberal colleagues, whom I respect very much on that committee, heard the Minister for Science talking about an additional $1.5 billion that he had to spend, out of which there would be a number of programs launched, KAON and so on, and a number of things were somehow supposed to figure into this. I asked my colleagues where the $1.5 billion was? What is this, new money? They said, oh, no, that was the 5 per cent and the 3 per cent additions that were in the budget last year and this year.
What that means is that within the confines of a decreasing real dollar rate of expenditures for research and development, they are going to take money from already existing and short funding programs and do all of these new things. That was misleading. It was hypocritical because it communicates a bad, wrong, and unhelpful message to the people with respect to what should be done, as well as to what the government is doing.
I want to ask my hon. colleague if he thinks that so far either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party have been essentially helpful in addressing this very desperate need of the Canadian economy.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague would agree that individually, members of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party see the importance of R and D and would like to see more R and D. However, the fact and the reality remains, that when the Liberals were in power their performance did not live up to what they publicly stated to be their goals.
Certainly the Conservative government does not live up to what even the Prime Minister has stated to be the goal. Indeed, we are slipping into a Third World stance. Of all of the OECD countries, we are one of the lowest in our expenditures on R and D as a percentage of our GDP.
In answer to my colleague, I must say honestly, no. The Liberal government and the Conservative government have not done the job which needs to be done.


Mr. Murray W. Dorin (Edmonton Northwest):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to participate in the debate.

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When I was reviewing the text of the opposition motion, I was struck by the fact that it failed to adequately capture the essence of the competitive technological challenge that we face.
This is a challenge which encompasses a wide range of pervasive issues, each of which is a vital element in the competitiveness equation. We are in the midst of a period of unprecedented scientific and technological change. These changes have touched every Canadian and virtually every aspect of our lives.
While research and development performance is clearly a key determinant for success, there are a number of underlying factors which we must first address. These are factors which will ultimately determine the success of any research and development effort.
One integral factor is public awareness of science and technology. It is clear that we face some rather formidable challenges in trying to build a strong science culture in this country. Changing the attitudes of a culture is a long-term process. It is an undertaking that requires the collective commitment of all sectors of our society: government at all levels, industry, organized labour, educators, parents, and our science and engineering societies and associations.
It is imperative that we make this commitment. To state it simply; if people do not properly understand what drives the changes they see happening around them, they will resist. After all, it is only human nature to do so.
The government has therefore placed the highest priority on fostering greater public awareness and understanding of science and technology. Our citizens, particularly our young people-


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Spending money on advertising.


Murray Dorin: Yes, there is some advertising involved, and I am going to get to that in a moment.
Our citizens and young people must be made more aware of the integral role of scientific and technological development in our personal lives, our national economic well-being, and our international competitiveness.
We must convince more Canadians, first, that a scientifically and technologically literate workforce is a condition of continued or increasing national prosperity; and, second, that science and engineering represent very
promising careers for their children. It is vital for us to get more Canadians involved in informed debate and decision-making involving the vital science and technology issues of the day. Clearly the task at hand is a formidable one.
The message concerning the need to promote enhanced public awareness was hammered home in a survey conducted last year on Canadian scientific literacy.
The findings of this first-ever survey of adult Canadians revealed an alarmingly low level of science literacy knowledge. If there was any good news to be found in the results, it was that Canadians often scored higher than other western nations. The results of the survey were rather sobering, however. For example, over half of the respondents did not know that the earliest humans came later than the dinosaurs; close to half did not know that it takes a year for the earth to go around the sun; close to two-thirds could not name a Canadian scientist; and over half could not name a single Canadian achievement in science.
I would be curious to see how members of Parliament would score if they took the test. And I don't mean this as a commentary on the intellectual capacity of any one members but rather on the fact that our low levels of scientific literacy appear to be quite pervasive. We have our work cut out for us in terms of heightening public awareness.
We are in the midst of a period in which our nation is depending on the talents of our scientists, our technicians, and our researchers to an unprecedented extent and numbers just are not there.
A major part of our problem is attitudes, attitudes passed along from one generation to the next. Changing attitudes begins with awareness, and this applies to everybody. We need to work with our schools and our educators in more actively pursuing a range of avenues which develop science and technology literacy and prepare students for careers in these fields. We must look at options such as co-operative work education and adopt school programs which bring schools and industry together in efforts to develop the workforce of the future.
It is obvious that parents, educators, employers, and governments must take creative and concrete action to
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break down the stereotypes which limit the career choices of both women and men. But government cannot do the job alone, nor should it be expected to. From a government perspective we realize that it is our responsibility to provide the leadership, the co-ordination, and the policy support needed to foster public awareness activities which involve industry, academia, and other key players.
I am proud to say that the government is committed to this leadership role. It is a strong commitment that can be traced through a number of initiatives we have launched. Hon. members have already heard or will be hearing about the Canada Scholarships Program, the Networks of Centres of Excellence and the initiatives of the Natural Sciences and Research Council. I would like to focus specifically on public awareness.
Three years ago, the government launched a national campaign to raise public awareness of the importance of science and technology to Canada's economic growth and to our quality of life. The campaign is designed to make Canadians, particularly youth, place more value on science and technology, to influence career choices, to make science and technology development an increasingly important part of public policy and to increase the level of national scientific literacy.
To date, the campaign has made significant progress towards achieving its long-term objectives. The campaign itself has developed to the point where it has become a social product for which there is a growing demand. The campaign has contributed to promoting the importance of Canadian scientific and technological development within the public issue agenda. It has begun to reverse the negative images that youth have about science, and has informed thousands of Canadians about our nation's scientific and technological achievements.
Perhaps more importantly, the science and technology public awareness campaign has helped leaders in the scientific community increase their effectiveness in communicating with the public and is both supported and catalysed provincial and territorial government action on public awareness in and outside the educational systems.
Allow me a moment to touch on some of the specific things we have done as part of the public awareness effort. We have the Science Culture Canada Program, which is supporting a wide range of projects from coast
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to coast, aimed at promoting greater public awareness of science and technology.
We launched a national advertising effort aimed at youth and we produced and distributed a range of public awareness materials. A travelling, interactive computer exhibit toured shopping malls across the country. We have worked with the provinces and territories on initiatives to increase the number of science and technology-related learning experiences in elementary school classrooms.
We are working with the provinces, the teachers and the school boards to strengthen the quality of science and technology education.
It is particularly important that we reach the students in grade six through nine. Surveys have shown this to be the key period during which attitudes are shaped. It is here that we win them over or we lose them for good.
A cornerstone of our public awareness effort is National Science and Technology Week, organized jointly with the provinces and the territories and scientific and engineering groups. Last October marked the first time we focused a national spotlight on science and technology, and by all accounts the week was a great success.
We had "The Magic of Chemistry" open house in St. John's; the University of Victoria hosted the Science Olympics, where teams of high school students competed in science problem-solving contests; Yukon College hosted hands-on scientific demonstrations by guest speakers from B.C. Science World; there was a high school science award ceremony in Jonquiere, Quebec; and, Winnipeg hosted the first National Congress of Young Sciences of Canada. These are just some examples. In all, there were over 600 events held, from coast to coast, and we expect an even bigger celebration for this October.
We want to use this occasion to give young people, in fact all Canadians, an opportunity to talk to scientists, to touch technology and to explore the new ideas being discovered every day. If we can do it for fitness, for theatre or for music, then surely we can do it as well for science and technology. It is an idea whose time is long overdue.
The government would like to extend the invitation to members on all sides of the House to get involved in National Science and Technology Week. There is a great

March 14, 1991
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deal we can all do in carrying the vital science and technology awareness messages to our constituencies.
I could not end without mentioning a particular science involvement in my own riding, the Edmonton Space and Science Centre. Just recently, I participated in a ceremony where the federal government committed $2 million towards that centre for the increased role that centre will be taking on as a science and learning centre in Edmonton for northern Alberta. I am happy to have that centre located squarely in the middle of my constituency.
I am pleased that I had this opportunity to outline the details of our government's significant and, indeed, unprecedented commitment to fostering the development of a science culture in Canada. It is important to note that all the policies and programs, all the grants and incentives in the world will be in vain if they are not coupled with a strong public awareness and education effort. The Government of Canada recognizes this reality and I am happy about the way that we have responded.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but say that the member who just spoke in this debate made a very interesting speech, but he avoided altogether the question and the motion which is the subject of the debate today. He started off by saying that he thought the motion was too narrowly framed in speaking of research and development, and then went on to speak about scientific literacy and scientific cultures throughout his whole speech.
I will acknowledge that the two go hand in hand, that there is a need to develop scientific culture in this country, but I find it astonishing that he did not refer to the Prime Minister's promise to double Canada's spending commitment to research and development. If the debate was too narrowly framed, his criticism should be directed to the Prime Minister, the leader of his party, who in a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce seven years ago next week promised: "to double Canada's spending commitment to research and development within a first mandate".
I would like to remind him also that the Prime Minister wrote in his book Where I Stand that: "research
and development and the resulting innovations are the lifeblood of a successful economy and country".
The Prime Minister asserted that if the percentage of our Gross National Product allocated to research and development were increased by just 1 per cent, it would generate an additional one million jobs in Canada and $20 billion in additional sales of manufactured products.
Of course we know what has happened since 1984. This government has abandoned the promise made by the Prime Minister, has cut support for research and development in practically every manner possible, and as a consequence Canada's collective output to research and development has gone down, rather than go up as the Prime Minister promised seven years ago.
I would like to ask the member to say a few words about research and development. If it was so important to the Prime Minister seven years ago, why is it not a priority of the member and of this government today? Why are the jobs that would result from increased R and D spending and why are the export sales that would result from increased R and D spending not a priority of the government?
How can this member stand by while other countries are spending twice on research and development as much as Canada does and are beating the pants off us in international competition? What suggestions has he got to see that Canadian industry will spend more or invest more on research and development?
I want to anticipate the kind of point the member would probably say. I am not suggesting that the Government of Canada should throw money at the problems. Far be it for me to suggest that the Government of Canada should throw money at a problem.
What I would like from that member is some kind of an idea of how we can stimulate Canadian businesses to invest in research and development and provide Canadians with the kind of jobs and sales that they deserve and which the Prime Minister promised he would give us seven years ago?


Murray Dorin: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member answered his own question in the final two or three sentences. That is simply that it is not the question of science and technology, as he stated. I acknowledge it is a very critical one for an industrialized country like ourselves if we want to maintain our standard of living
March 14, 1991

and our living style. The fact is the equation is not simply how much money comes from the Consolidated Revenue Fund or from the taxpayers of Canada and how much money the government spends. Surely we have to look at the total industrial and scientific community of the country and we have to look not just to the government itself.
He mentioned the fact that we cannot solve the problems by throwing money at them. That is true. Perhaps I can give him two examples of things that this government did which had enormous results.
The first one is we put in place changes to the Patent Act. At the time it was called Bill C-22. I just met with somebody last week in my office from a major company which has put $100 million into research and development at the University of Alberta in Edmonton for research into pharmaceuticals and new drugs for the future. That is a $100 million investment at one university in Canada and it is directly attributable to the fact that we in the last Parliament passed that bill, I might add, fought tooth and nail by his party, his leader and by his supporters in the other place.
A second example is in northern Alberta. I will use this example because it is close to home. In northern Alberta we are going to see shortly the construction of a new forestry project. I talked with the head of the engineering firm involved with that project only last week. He was telling me that this is going to set the standard for forestry projects in the world because it will have a virtually zero emission of toxins and pollutants. He expects a lot of interest to be generated from around the world in the forestry industry by this plant which will be world class.
The Prime Minister said we needed to have increased research and development in this country, but he did not say that it had to be strictly a matter of the size of the cheque that the government would write. I think I have demonstrated through two or three examples just exactly the the kind of things we have done that are not necessarily calls upon the taxpayer.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I am able to congratulate the member for Edmonton Northwest for his probably unsuccessful bootleg to the opposition motion put forward because let's face it the motion
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put forward is a brilliant motion when we really examine it.
The member for Saint-Henri-Westmount said:
That this House condemn the Government for failing to honour the
Prime Minister's promise to "double Canada's spending commitment
to research and development."
We cannot stress enough just what the point is. The point as reported in the Gazette back on March 23,1984, said that "Mulroney promised in Montreal that a government under his leadership would bring down interest rates and double Canada's spending commitment to research and development during its first mandate", double the spending commitment, I remind the hon. member for Edmonton Northwest, in case it did not click for the last four hours. The actually quote is, and this is incredible: "We believe this will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and billions in new sales for Canada each year". He said that to the Chamber of Commerce.


An hon. member:: If only they had doubled the money, we would have all those jobs today.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Yes, as so articulately spelled out today in the House on a few occasions, not only during his remarks but also during his articulate pin-pointing questions to the members opposite. Contrary to the Prime Minister's promise, spending on research and development in Canada has actually gone down since the government took office and the spending commitment from close to 1.4 per cent of the gross domestic product to 1.3 per cent of the gross domestic product. That is incredible.
When did this take place? It took place probably during the most successful, resurgent years in the Canadian economy that we had seen-seven years of good fortune, of job development, of spending, of buying, of production, of jobs. And yet, down we go, to 1.3 per cent of the gross domestic product.
The member for Edmonton Northwest likes to talk about tests. The test for the member opposite is to stop with the optimistic promises for future commitments, because we have already had those. We have had these optimistic commitments to research and development for the last seven years. It is time to see his government put its money where the Prime Minister's mouth is.

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Murray Dorin: I will be very brief. It does not take anything more than a brief moment to reply. The essential message is that the Liberal Party has just demonstrated again and again and again the fact that in its mind the only way to measure commitment or anything else is by how much taxpayers' money you manage to spend.
There is no point in spending money foolishly, like the $2 billion boondoggle of the SRTC.
I demonstrated in my answer to an earlier question the kinds of things that we have done to encourage spending, not by the taxpayers but by other people-industries- into research and development, developing new products, new technologies that create jobs and will be exported throughout the world.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to stand here in this House today to discuss this important opposition motion.
Many of us I think can agree that research and development is the only way that we can possibly become leaders in the world, rather than be relegated to followers. It is that which permits us to find new knowledge and to apply that knowledge so that we can in fact be in the forefront in a number of areas, whether it be in the technological area or the social science and humanities.
I could talk about the promises that have been broken, but I think my colleagues have made the point several times and I won't do that, with one exception, because I find this most interesting. I want to quote from the Toronto Star an article dated January 13, 1991. It is entitled Closed Eyes on Research and Development:
For years Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has spoken eloquently and often on the need for a national commitment to research and development. In 1982, even before he became Progressive Conservative leader, Mulroney vowed to double public and private sector spending on R and D.
Here is what he said:
Either we go into the game and become important players in this major league or we become a nation that will, during its entire lifetime, play in the Junior B circuit.
He went on. In 1983 as opposition leader, he bemoaned the fact that Canada had lost-and I am quoting-"a generation because of the absence of commitment to science and technology".
What a glaring contradiction. At the end of 1984 we stood at 1.40 of gross domestic productivity. That is in terms of spending for research and development. It slipped, and it is almost 1.30 now.
People will say, and my hon. colleague said, "you measure everything with dollars". That is not the issue. The issue is that there was a promise made time and time again.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: That is another lie.


Ron J. Duhamel: And that promise was not honoured. That is what is causing a whole lot of difficulty in this country, that kind of verbal commitment, without the follow-up, without the action. It is unfortunate.


Mr. Crawford:: Shame.


Ron J. Duhamel: It is easy for members to take examples of success and say: "We have built this. We have done that", but we have to look at the country and the over-all picture.
The over-all picture is not a good picture. It is simply not so. There is another technique that is being used by members of the opposition quite apart from saying that the Liberals did it or that you want to spend your way out of it. They use a number such as $40 million or $22 million. It does not really matter.
Of course, to a Canadian out there, that is a lot of money. We have to ask the other question. How much money is it in relationship of what has to be done and to what other countries are doing? If we look at those two questions, we find that it is totally inadequate.

I find it very distressing that the Prime Minister, even before he became Prime Minister, made this promise, and that later, when he should have done something, when the economic situation in Canada was still in pretty good shape-in fact it was in very good shape-he failed to support education.

We have to take a look at the cuts, the capping and all of that in the global context. Not in an unkind way, I say

that whatever the government touches in the whole area related to education and research and development, it is not going well.
The government increases the number of immigrants that it brings to this country. Bravo. That is not a real problem. But, where are the support programs? Where are the language programs? It has messed that up.
Regarding the copyright law, teachers and professors have been waiting for three years and still nothing. If I, as a teacher or professor photocopy a page or so, I have to be in fear of breaking the law. Absolutely nothing has come forward.
What about the cuts to transfer payments and $100 million to training and retraining? What about the 3 per cent administrative fee on the student aid program? What about the 7 per cent goods and services tax on books and other learning materials? I could go on and on, but we have to look at it in the global context.
It is not only the capping of research and development funds. These other reductions and cuts also have a negative impact. That is really very unfortunate.
I want to make certain that we understand the importance of research and development, not only with respect to developments in technology, but with respect to social problems in this country and indeed in this world.

So many people think that when we talk about research and development, we are talking about technological progress. Of course that is also very important, but the social sector is even more so, since the most complex problems confronting our society today are social problems.

Let me just share with you what I think most members would agree are the greatest challenges facing our nation. They are not the technological challenges. Of course, we need to make progress there. We must and we will.
What are the major challenges facing this nation? The whole question of national unity and the whole question of poverty. Almost 5 million Canadians are poor. Most of them are women and 1 million of them are children. There are 1.8 million Canadians going to food banks,
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many of whom are children. There are 2 million people on welfare as we meet in this House today. There are over 1.5 million Canadians unemployed. There are 5 million to 7 million who are functionally illiterate and are costing the country a bit more than $10 billion a year.
It is really quite inappropriate that women in this country still do not have their fair share of some of the best paid positions and that they still earn roughly two thirds of what it is that men earn.
Research and development can play a role. [Translation]
Research and development must show us what we can do to correct and resolve these major problems, these major challenges to our society and to our country.

Let me say very quickly what the Royal Society has recommended. It is an important organization. It has recommended an expansion in the funding of research, the social sciences and the humanities even at a time when many observers are worried that Canada may find it difficult to keep pace with fast moving and increasingly expensive fields of research in the natural sciences, engineering and medicine. That is what the Royal Society has said with respect to social sciences.
Some will know that there are tax credits for certain types of research, but not in the social sciences. People do not see an immediate pay-off, therefore there are not the kinds of investments. Yet it is the most underfunded of all and it is probably the most important of all in terms of national unity, in terms of correcting the social difficulties which we face on a daily basis as a nation.
If we look at the government's program in terms of centres of excellence, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, there is one on aging and its impact on society. There are literally hundreds of problems that need to be studied, yet there is only one in the centres of excellence. I think that is a powerful statement in terms of what the government sees as its priority. It is misguided.
Those are not the most important challenges facing Canada today, that is where they have invested the funds. They are important and I do not want them to lose those funds, but they must be increased in the field of social sciences and humanities. We need some tax

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credits. We need some additional assistance so that we can come to grips.

Mr. Speaker, I think I have reached the end of my speech. In concluding, I would like to say that to me this is not a partisan issue. It is all about promises, promises, promises that were not kept. It is also a matter of priorities: priorities for the country, for you and me and the people we represent, for a strong, united and prosperous Canada.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments of the hon. member for Saint-Boniface. When he refers to the motion which states in part, and I quote: "-the Government for failing to honour the Prime Minister's promise to 'double Canada's spending commitment to research-", I am sorry but, in our part of the country, in Abitibi and in Quebec, the Prime Minister honoured his promise. Indeed, the increase in spending was two and even threefold. Let me tell you why. In the 1991-1992 Estimates-all hon. members received a copy at their office- you can read that a new mining center will be developed this year in the North, in Quebec, at a cost of $15 million, as a site for testing ideas resulting from the mining research and development program.
Never, in the past seven years, has the Liberal Party organization in Abitibi lent a helping hand on this issue. You say that this is not a partisan matter, but you were conspicuously absent eveiytime there was an important debate. Articles such as this one are published in newspapers, and I quote: "Our thanks to the government of Canada for opening in Val-d'Or a research laboratory specializing in comminution." These are the words of our people, people like Paul Giroux, a restaurant owner, Roger Roy, from Jean Coutu pharmacy, Brigitte Giroux, from Saint-Hubert BBQ, and Roger Gareau, from Gareau Automobiles, thanking the Canadian government for developing a project for the mining sector and for helping that sector. So, are you for that project aimed at helping the mining industry in Quebec, yes or no?


Ron J. Duhamel: Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. I am very happy that the hon. member shared with me his views and these facts, and I really like him.
But I still want to get some things straight. It is past time-as I said at the beginning of my speech-to point to some projects and figures and then try to prove something that does not exist. These projects exist. But let us look at the whole of Canada. If we look at Canada, I challenge you.
If I used any statistics that are incorrect, I am willing to do almost anything that you will ask me, dear colleague. But do not simply point to a project or a figure and then try to determine that everything works well. One other thing you have to be careful with: You said that in Quebec the spending commitment will be doubled, tripled ou quadrupled.


Guy St-Julien: In Northern Quebec!


Ron J. Duhamel: Perhaps, but some areas in Canada may have been cut, hit hard or crushed. That is what people are telling me, dear friend.
So, to summarize, I tell you that I welcome your comments. I welcome the goodwill with which you shared your views with me, but I assure you that your reality is perhaps accurate, but that mine is different, simply in that I try to think about the country as a whole, including Manitoba.


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: Mr. Speaker, in browsing through some of the notes, I noted that the Prime Minister complained seven years ago about the then Liberal record of percentage of GDP devoted to R and D. He was being a little cynical about it, but he said that it was 1.3 per cent of GDP. I looked at the notes from our critic today as to where the government is now in percentage of GDP applied to research and development, and it is still 1.3 per cent. We have come a long way in 28 years.
I would like to think that the process of research and development involves government, involves universities, and involves the private sector, the private sector being the clearing house. I want to comment as well that it is not simply expenditure of funds by government that is going to move this area ahead. It is actually inducements by government to the private sector to invest and spend funds. It is the over-all spending that we want to increase. We do not want it confined to government spending.
March 14, 1991

As we stand here today talking about this continuing 1.3 per cent and how we would all like to increase it, I note that we in this House have not been able to do very much about that, although we all want to.
I would like to ask my colleague whether he thinks that the social sciences which he has referred to might be able to make a contribution to the process of inducing a greater investment in R and D by all sectors of the economy.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. He has made a number of important points.
First, he has recognized the importance of social sciences. I believe that social sciences can play a meaningful role. They have been doing that, will continue to do that, and will improve on that. It is critically important that this happen. I have also indicated that there should be some tax credits for people to assist the social sciences. The member's point about getting the private sector more integrally involved in research and development is also well taken.
However, it is not just money; it is also an attitude. It is opening up our minds to the possibilities. It is recognizing that if we want to be up there as No. 1, as leaders as opposed to followers, research and development will do it for us, investment in the abilities of our people. Research and development is the key.


Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to share the following quote with the House in debating on this motion:
Either we go into the game and become important players in this
major league, or we become a nation that will, during its entire
lifetime, play in the Junior B circuit.
That infamous statement was made by the right hon. Prime Minister in 1982 as his way of expressing his commitment to science and technology. At that time he did not have the reins of power in his hands, but he made it clear that he intended to place Canada, through a commitment to research and development, in the major leagues.
The game remains the same. The game is cutthroat where high-tech talent and innovation translate into dollars. It is a world where the undisputed leaders have a commitment to research and development. The game remains the same, but what has happened to the commitment of the Prime Minister and his party? They have had
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six years to take Canada to the major league, but we are becoming more junior every day.
As Official Opposition critic for national health and welfare, I will seize this opportunity to bring to this debate my perspective on how the government cuts are affecting health care, from lay-offs to the cancellation of research that may have shown us better and healthier lives. Unfortunately research is something that cannot be shelved now and taken out and dusted off when the economic climate is brighter.
Time does not stand still for technology. There are scientists in this country who have worked for years to gather the best people around them; specialized, talented people. I have recently heard of cases where researchers unable to realize funding from this government will have their excellent research teams disbanded. That will be a tragedy.
For instance, in the National Health Research and Development Program, estimated funding of $32 million was slashed to $28 million in the same year, in 1990. What does this mean? I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, what it means to people like Dr. Raisa Deber, a professor and researcher at the University of Toronto.
Because of the uncertainty of her funding, her two junior researchers may lose their jobs. The further implication of that is that we will be losing future talents as well. Their research was a study to better treat back pain, high blood pressure and other ailments through enhanced communication with patients-excellent research protocol that may not see the light of day. Dr. Jack Siemiatycki, professor at the Institute Armand Frappier of the University of Quebec, will also be forced to let go two of his team members unless he finds the funding NHRDP no longer provides. Dr. Siemiatycki was studying the link between asbestos and cancer. Only recently in this House we have been faced with the issue of this asbestos as a source of the problem.
Additional funding is not easy to procure, I submit. Canadian companies spend on average one-half of what is spent on research and development in other industrialized countries. The government has recently turned to Canadian corporations and pointed a finger, blaming business for lack of research and development. However, the blame ought to fall on this government because this government not only has reneged on its commitment; in

March 14, 1991
Supply
fact I think it has reneged on research and development altogether.
While wishing for a high-tech economy fuelled by an educated work force that my colleague from St. Boniface has alluded to, the government pares away research funds and money for education. The government is living a catch-22, but it is the Canadian people who will be snared.
There is an apathy in the government. There is an apathy in the country. It is an apathy not shared by eight other leading industrialized countries. Canada spends only 1.3 per cent of its Gross National Product on research compared to about more than twice spent by the United States, Sweden, France, Japan and West Germany. It is no wonder Canada has fallen behind.
The National Health Research and Development Program is the main funding agency for research projects in applied health care. It is one of the most important sources of funds for researchers working for preventive medicine. Yet this agency is having its budget drained away.
Today, the climate for health care is turbulent. Transfer cuts and freezes place unprecedented pressures on provincial governments. Newfoundland's budget tried to cope by closing 360 acute care hospital beds. Nine hundred health care workers are being laid off. Quebec and Ontario, along with the western provinces are feeling the strain. Ontario spends one-third of its tax revenues on health care. Each person in this province makes on average 10 Ontario health insurance claims each year.
Recently we discussed the plight of medicare in our country. We were really saddened. Just yesterday I was discussing this issue with the member for Hamilton Mountain and the member for Mississauga East. We are really saddened. We are not seeing any future for medicare. While we recognize there is no question that the cost of health care is rising, there is no question solutions need to be found. Money needs to be found to keep medicare intact.
Yet the most promising solution, preventive medicine, is just research away.
We must learn how to prevent disease even more. We must learn how to make health care delivery more efficient.
The answer is not user fees or closing beds, as we seem to hear from the government side, and the answer definitely is not to slash the budget for research and development.
How does this government think we can defuse the problems of tomorrow unless we tackle them today? Right now, in this city, at the University of Ottawa Medical School, Dr. C. Y. Kang is developing a vaccine against the HIV virus which is known to cause AIDS. Dr. Kang's microbiology team has found a drug that stimulates immunity, the capacity for the human body to defend itself against the HIV virus and "it looks quite promising", to quote Dr. Kang. I hope, for the sake of the world, the prospect of finding funding is promising as well.
Dr. Kang will need at least $1 million to manufacture this drug properly for testing. What if the money is not available in Canada? Will doors in the United States open if Dr. Kang knocks?
Research and development are more than a means of ensuring economic prosperity; they can also be a protector. We all know the story of Banting and Best who helped discover insulin for us and, thereby, prevented a lot of misery and tragedy among patients with diabetes mellitus, patients with high blood sugar.
Through this discovery, Canadians and people around the world have been offered some respite from this illness. I believe Canadian scientists and researchers have much more to offer, if only they are allowed to pursue their talents in science.
Frequently I receive letters from people across Canada who suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis, a type of disease that is known in layman's terms as chronic fatigue syndrome. The question is: What type of research is being done to prevent this disease? What is known about it, and how can they repair their health and lives? Maybe the government could have a better answer. I do not have the heart to tell these people that very little is being done in this country and, with the present government commitment to research and development, little will be done while this government is in power.
Let me end by echoing the sentiments of my colleague from Saint-Henri-Westmount in saying that this government should be condemned for failing to honour the
March 14, 1991

Prime Minister's promise "to double Canada's spending commitment to research and development". I challenge the government to start investing in the future that it professes to support. If we invest in the well-being of Canadians, we will have a better Canada and a better country.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for his valuable contribution to this debate.
It is unfortunate that the Minister of National Health and Welfare chose not to intervene in this debate and respond to the comments of the member. He was referring to cuts in the budget of the National Health Research and Development Program which, as the member explained, provides funding for research to health promotion, disease prevention, health care delivery and preventive medicine.
I wondered if the member might just explain a little more what the distinction is between health care research or disease prevention and medical research, which is conducted by the MRC.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member has one minute. I do not think he can do it, but go ahead.


Rey D. Pagtakhan: Mr. Speaker, health care research and disease prevention encompass investigations and inquiries into all aspects of health as a tool to prevent disease. One aspect of that is perhaps to help discover a vaccine that can be funded by the Medical Research Council. Other sciences, the social sciences, the role of counselling, the role of the social workers and other health care workers are all legitimate aspects of health care delivery, and we would want to know their role in preventing disease.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 6 p.m., it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 81(17), proceedings on the motion have expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
Adjournment Debate BANKRUPTCY
["The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at ten o'clock a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1)."]
Rex Crawford: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to follow up on my question of February 26, to the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. He will know that this is no ordinary recession. Southern Ontario is being hit hard. Plants are closing down. Jobs are lost forever. It is a far cry from the temporary examples of the last recession in 1981-82.
It is a fact that only 24 per cent of the lay-offs in 1981-82 involved total or partial plant closings. But in 1990, these accounted for 64 per cent of the job cuts. I raised that issue in Question Period with the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. He basically stated that since this government had created so many jobs since 1984, there were more jobs to lose. That gives no comfort to my constituents.
For those who say that this recession is not as bad as the last one, they are dead wrong, or they have not been to southern Ontario, the economic engine of Ontario. Southwestern Ontario alone is responsible for 60 per cent of the province's gross domestic product of $250 billion.
Welfare rates in Kent county are up 400 per cent from 1981 levels. The city of Chatham has a 30 per cent unemployment rate in the automotive sector, and 38 per cent out of work in the transportation sector. These are dramatic figures, far worse than in the last recession.
For example, Motor Wheel Corporation in Chatham has been operating since I was a young child, with a labour force of over 600 strong. It is closing its doors permanently in May. Hunt-Wesson's canning plant in Tilbury made it through the last recession, doing business for over 25 years, but not this time. The company president says that the twin killers of high interest rates and the high dollar put them out of business. Now tomato farmers in my riding are left holding their baskets, with no one to sell to.
The recession is hitting hard. Dresden, with a population of 2,500 is seeing two of its major employers closing their doors, over 100 people out of work. Many of these people have worked at National Hardware, one of the firms, for over 30 years. Think of the ripple effect on the local economy. Ever since I can remember, Dresden always had about four or five farm implement dealers. Those small businessmen made it through the last

March 14, 1991
Adjournment Debate
recession, but not this time. Now there is no one left. Zero. This is no ordinary recession.
Agriculture is vitally important. Essex and Kent counties alone, grow and sell nearly half a billion dollars worth of agricultural produce. This recession is hitting us with a double whammy. While the government opposite merely says this is but a normal downturn in the economy, that by having a plant close down here and there, it somehow makes us more competitive.
About one-third of Chatham's workforce is in the auto parts industry, so it may follow that the city would suffer similar setbacks to other automotive towns, such as Oshawa and Windsor. But Chatham is smaller, with a population of only 42,000. When a plant lays off, the result devastates and disrupts the entire local economy.
Lay-offs have had a dramatic effect on the city. Real estate sales are down 50 per cent and southern Ontario merchants are not only suffering as a result of laid-off people spending less, they are also losing money to the American merchants, perhaps up to 40 per cent of their income.
Bankruptcies handled by just one office of Peat Marwick Thome in Chatham are up 50 per cent from last year. This is no ordinary recession, some mere cycle in the economy.
I was interested in the comments of the Minister for International Trade in this week's issue of Maclean's. He says the auto parts industry is mostly unskilled, and that of course we will lose some plants and workers. But he offers no adjustment programs during the restructuring. He offers no alternatives. He says to the unemployed: "You are on your own." Instead, the government fails in its commitment to research and development, and cuts and freezes education and health care.
These are not the actions of a government that is committed to training our work force for the jobs of the future or assisting those workers currently laid off.
The recession is cutting deeper into the economic foundation of southern Ontario and this government turns a blind eye to it.
We are witnessing the terrible deindustrialization of Canada. We have lost 13 per cent of all manufacturing jobs since free trade. We have lost 20 per cent of our share of the world markets during the last five years. Our segment of the world export trade fell from 5 per cent to 4 per cent. As a result our current account balance has shifted from a $2.7 billion surplus in 1984 to a $16.7 billion deficit in 1989. Our trade balance with our major trading partner, the United States, has dropped $6 billion since 1984.
As our industrial sectors are being sacked and pillaged through free trade and a sad economy, the government has offered no adjustment programs, no answers, just more of the same. Canada is facing a serious long-term competitive crisis and it is no more apparent than in southwestern Ontario.
Southern Ontario, Canada's manufacturing heartland, is suffering from hardening of the arteries. As the winds of change blow away our economic structures and erode southern Ontario's foundation, the government is just standing back and watching. Any good farmer knows that you just do not stand back and watch your soil erode and blow away. You set up windbreaks.
Our manufacturing sector is the soil by which Canada's economy grows and prospers. The Tory government is letting it erode away.
Recession is not just a word in the dictionary. It affects your neighbour across the backyard fence, the farmer down the concession road, the local coffee shop where everyone gathers at six in the morning. It affects your kid's baseball or hockey coach. Recession hits families.
To conclude, this is no ordinary recession. I will be interested in knowing what the government plans are to tune up the economic engine of southern Ontario.
Welfare rates in Kent County are zooming. Burdened by the weight of the recession, some southwestern Ontario communities, including Chatham, are eligible for the first time in history for special provincial aid to pay for skyrocketing welfare costs.
I ask the government, on behalf of my constituents and southern Ontario, what policies are in place that will lend a helping hand to workers and their families?
March 14, 1991

What is this government doing while the recession is hitting us hard? How will you assist those 64 per cent of lay-off victims who will have no factory to return to after the recession is over?


Mr. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, allow me to praise your usual patience with our colleagues in this House for the length of their speeches.
The government recognizes that the Canadian economy is going through an adjustment period, which is creating problems for many Canadians. However, considering the growth rate experienced in the past years, the slowdown should not come as a surprise. This natural consequence of rapid growth is such that the demand in products and services exceeds the economic production capacity.
The strong expansion of the Canadian economy over the past seven years has exceeded our capacity limits, both on the labour and the product markets, creating destructive inflationary pressures which threatened to settle in the economy, making their elimination more difficult and expensive as years go by.
For that reason, Mr. Speaker, the government has introduced and followed fiscal and economic policies to achieve a better balance between demand and production, and to reduce inflationary pressures. These policies will lower interest rates and bring back a more balanced and sustained growth. Moreover, the government has introduced structural policies improving the competitiveness of the Canadian economy on international markets and increasing our production capacity. For instance, the imposition of the tax on goods and services allowed the Canadian manufacturing sector to improve its competitiveness, thanks to the elimination of the federal sales tax that subjected that production to discrimination, as was generally acknowledged.
Those policies aimed at reducing inflation and improving competitiveness are particularly important to protect and increase jobs in the automobile sector in Canada because of stii'fer international competition. Without a reduction in inflationary tensions in Canada, those jobs would be lost to a producer whose production costs are much lower.
Adjournment Debate
Because of the policies adopted by this government, Canada has cornered an ever larger share of the North American market.
However, the North Americain automobile industry is deep in a cyclical recession after several years of unprecedented sales that flooded the market. That recession has been aggravated by the present weakness of the economy as a whole.
We recognize, Mr. Speaker, that those periods of economic adjustment are not easy and that some people are faced with veiy real problems. However, it is important for Canadians to realize that the changing economic situation helps to ease inflationary pressures that have increased business costs and prices and that have eroded competitiveness and could jeopardize the jobs of all Canadian workers.
Also, Mr. Speaker, there are encouraging signs showing that the automobile demand may raise. In January and February, automobile sales have increased by 16 per cent over the third quarter of 1990. Because the rates have fallen by over 400 percentage points-



Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, the Nielsen task force which this government established several years ago did a complete review of federal government spending on housing. Its report was very revealing.
Only a fraction of the government programs in place at that time helped those in real need. Only about 40 per cent of federally-assisted housing was directed to those in need, perhaps 32,000 households.
Our government has turned this around. The new directions in housing introduced in 1986 has resulted in all social housing dollars going to those in need. Programs today are now targeted to those households that are unable to afford adequate and decent housing.
In the last four years, this government has assisted some 75,000 low income households. That is an increase of about 230 per cent over previous programs. All told, this year $1.8 billion will be spent to assist nearly 640,000 households to meet their housing needs.

March 14, 1991
Adjournment Debate
Through these subsidies, we are providing decent shelter and affordable rents. Over the lifetime of each dwelling it will provide a home to many households in their time of need. Surely these directions are the way to go.
When resources from government revenue must be carefully parcelled out, it must go to Canadians whose lives will be improved substantially. It should not be squandered on those whose personal resources are more than adequate to rent or purchase on the private market.
Studies have shown us that about 15 per cent of Canadians must rely on some form of government assistance to meet their shelter needs. I am talking about families, women with young children, the elderly, the handicapped who through no fault of their own do not have affordable homes. Many are paying 40, 50, 60 and maybe even 75 per cent of their income each month for rent and heat.
Yet there are glaring examples of well-to-do individuals who are living in housing projects that are massively subsidized by the federal government. These people are shutting out the homeless and low income Canadians from affordable housing. High income Canadians should not be taking advantage of funding intended for low and moderate income Canadians.
There is a housing co-operative in Edmonton which was given a $280,000 cash grant in 1977 when it was built. Under a special program it received a preferential mortgage rate of 8 per cent for 50 years. This means that each of the co-operative's 59 units receives a 1.5 per cent interest reduction grant of $42.83 per month.
There is an individual living in that co-op who is earning over $90,000 per year and tax-free allowances. This is completely unacceptable. This individual could easily find and afford a home to rent or buy in Edmonton. It is unconscionable that a member of this House should show so little regard for the poor of his own community. I know that there are desperate families in Edmonton who would be absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to live in this government-assisted housing. Hi ere are at least 30 people on the waiting list to get into the Sundance Housing Co-operative in Edmonton where a member of this House resides.
Furthermore, recent statistics have come to light which make it very clear that the situation in Edmonton is not unique. There is a shocking number of people living in co-ops throughout the country who have incomes in excess of $60,000 per year, more than 12 per cent.
Many of the people living in federally subsidized housing co-ops can afford the carrying costs of a modest home. Many housing co-op projects are financed by 8 or 9 per cent mortgage money over 50 years.
Having such high income earners living in these federally assisted housing projects is an abuse of a program meant for low and medium-income Canadians. Effectively, it shuts out the homeless and needy who must have affordable housing.
I would like to return to the example of a member of this House abusing that program. The member lives in a five bedroom unit that he shares with three other adults and a teenager. The whole rent for that apartment is $622 and he is paying one fifth of that, plus a modest surcharge of $60 or $70 a month to offset some of the costs because he is in a higher category. This member should be paying market rent.
My question is: Will the minister or the parliamentary secretary and the government give consideration to either a policy of encouraging these high income Canadians who are abusing this program to move out of these co-op projects or, perhaps better yet, introducing a policy of charging the market rent so that the sum return to the community and to the government is such that we can build more units and subsidize low and moderate-income individuals.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the hon. member and his question which was directed a few weeks ago to the Minister of State for Housing.
The need for affordable housing, as he has said, is an ongoing concern and helping provide that housing is a priority of this government.
A full evaluation of the program was conducted last year. One aspect that was reviewed was the issue of high income Canadians living in co-operative housing supported by the federal government.
March 14, 1991

Last December, the minister announced that the federal government would continue with the co-operative housing program, but with some improvements. A system of income ceilings for eligibility to move into any future projects is being introduced. Once residency has been established, the household incomes will be reviewed annually.
For those households whose income goes beyond the ceiling limit, they will be surcharged. The minimum number of units in each co-operative project dedicated to households in need that benefit from rental assistance will be increased from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. Through the provinces' cost share, the Rent Supplement Program, now eight of the 10 provinces help fund up to 50 per cent of the household in each co-op.
The minister is encouraging the others to follow suit. The experimental indexed link to mortgage that has been used for the last five years has proven to be quite successful for financing co-operative housing. Efforts are under way to expand the pool of potential investors and to hopefully reduce interest costs even more.
The logical result of this change should be an increase in the number of units that can be produced each year for the same federal government investment.
I know the minister is working out the program details with the Co-operative Housing Federation. He wants to ensure that the program is as cost effective as possible while retaining a range of income. It is the responsible approach to providing affordable housing to thousands of low and moderate-income Canadians.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to expand on my concerns about the process that has been followed over a number of years not to ensure the environmental soundness of a project called the Rafferty-Alameda dam.
This has been a sorry history at every stage of ministers of the Crown putting their political concerns for friendly relations with certain premiers above the concerns of Canadians for their environment, for the protection of their water supply and for a number of other serious concerns about the ecosystems of Canada.
Adjournment Debate
Time after time we have heard in this House statements from ministers that they want to see a full environmental assessment, but the actions have not matched those statements. This week we have had the Rawson Academy of Aquatic Sciences make a submission to the Environmental Assessment Panel reviewing a project that is, for all intents and purposes, well on its way to completion and therefore not even amenable to controls on how it is developed to bring those more in conformity with the best interests of protecting the environment.
As I look over the agreement that the Rawson academy analysed this week for the Environmental Assessment Panel, I think I see some of the problems as to why the ministers in this House have spoken positive words and taken very little action. This agreement signed in 1959 guarantees that the Government of Canada will expeditiously provide the Government of the United States of America with a minimum of a certain amount of flood storage. It is not as surprising as it might have been at the time, when we see the minister promising action and taking none.
We will recall that it took two court cases to order the Minister of the Environment to carry out an environmental assessment and that even then the actual establishing of that environmental assessment was delayed by up to eight months before it commenced. By that time, as we well know, there were suspicions about secret agreements behind closed doors, with the premier of Saskatchewan to give a nod and a wink and let the construction of the Rafferty Dam and the beginning of Alameda Dam proceed despite there being no environmental assessment.
We now know that Rafferty is virtually complete, that Alameda is well under way, and that no environmental assessment has been completed, so it is impossible to correct the design or construction of those dams to conform with the interests of the environment.
What was not quite so clear is that we are not even able to put environmental constraints on the operation of those dams. The environmental panel which we thought at least had the ability to recommend that the dams be operated in an environmentally positive way, or at least in a minimally damaging way, would not even have the ability to make those recommendations because the ability of the Government of Canada to control the operation is already seriously compromised by an agree-

March 14, 1991
Adjournment Debate
ment it entered into with the United States for the operation of the dam, by the operating agreement that is attached to that, and by a licence that has been issued which relates to the operation of the dam.
Two ministers this week have tried to assure the House that despite the analysis by the Rawson academy the control of water relating to these dams is under the jurisdiction of a 1959 intergovernmental agreement and under the control of the International Joint Commission. Nothing could be further from the truth because this agreement in fact modifies that 1959 agreement. The International Joint Commission has not even been advised that that agreement has been changed, nor has it been told that its mandate under it has changed. Even though it recommended that 1959 agreement for the apportioning of water between Saskatchewan and North Dakota, it was not consulted on amendments to it, nor will it be consulted on agreements still to be made as to the water quality.
Lest we question who this agreement is in the interest of, I would like to quote a few sections of it:
- releases from the Canadian dams will be scheduled to coincide with the periods of beneficial use in North Dakota -may be delayed when the State of North Dakota determines and notifies Saskatchewan-
Saskatchewan shall deliver water "if North Dakota requests the delivery".
The International Joint Commission for many years has functioned to protect water quality and water distribution between Canada and the United States. It is not too late to bring that body into a review of this agreement, a review of the water quality standards which must be set before April 1 of this year, and to ensure that the International Joint Commission with all its expertise is in fact reviewing this agreement and is making recommendations so that it will operate in the best interests of Canada.
Piece by piece this country is giving away control over its own water. We are constructing dams with no national control over the ultimate and cumulative effect of those dam. We already have more water diversions in Canada than the United States and the U.S.S.R. combined, and
we have no idea what the ecological effects of those diversions are.
It is not too late for the national government to take control of the most important national resource we have, and that is water. The government itself in its federal water policy had good words to say about the importance of the control of quantity and quality of water in Canadian hands. Where it has had the opportunity to exercise that control in case after case, it has failed to do so. It has failed to ensure that an environmental assessment is conducted to protect the quality and quantity of water for Canadians.
I urge the government to revise this agreement to make sure that it is doing what it should be doing for Canada.


Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite for Ottawa West has raised questions with respect to the latest development on the Rafferty-Alameda project in south eastern Saskatchewan.
As the Minister of the Environment indicated earlier, proceeding with additional construction of the Rafferty Dam and additional components such as the Alameda Dam and the interconnecting channel between Rafferty and Boundary Reservoirs would be in direct contravention of the Canada-Saskatchewan agreement which was designed to respect the integrity of the environmental assessment and review process.
In response to the hon. member's specific question as to whether contracts for the Alameda Dam were let or not, officials of the Department of the Environment have informed the minister that bids for a contract were in fact received, some land acquisition actions were initiated by the Saskatchewan government and technical review is now under way.
I sense that receiving the bids and land acquisitions by the province are clear statements of the province's intention to go ahead with the construction of the Alameda Dam, which were certainly not permitted by the agreement of January 26.
The latest field observation confirmed that there is limited construction activity on the Alameda site indicating some parts of the contracts were already let by the Saskatchewan government.
March 14, 1991

The Government of Saskatchewan must respect the Canada-Saskatchewan agreement which arose as a result of the Federal Court order of December 28, 1989. That order requires an environmental assessment by an independent panel according to the federal guidelines order for the environmental assessment and review process. In keeping with that, the Minister of the Environment appointed a panel on February 5, 1991 under the guidelines order in response to the court order.
Furthermore, as the minister indicated earlier, the province is proceeding with extended activities on the project beyond the scope that was agreed upon with the January agreement for which Canada offered financial assistance to the province. The concern that has been highlighted by the member is also shared by the minister. As a first step the Minister of the Environment has ordered that the payments to Saskatchewan be withheld until we are satisfied that the province is living up to the agreement.
Adjournment Debate
As the hon. Minister of the Environment stated in the House on October 18, Environment Canada officials have been instructed to seek an injunction against the province on continued construction and land acquisition related to the Rafferty-Alameda project. The Minister of Justice has agreed to initiate such action immediately following denial of the government's request for an injunction by the provincial Justice McPharson on November 15, 1990. An appeal process is under way.
Our laws must be respected and it is the government's intention to see that it happens anywhere in this great country of ours, regardless of which province.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.30 p.m..
[Stage Direction]
Friday, March 15, 1991