1991-12-10

Hon. Monique Landry (Minister for External Relations and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity that I am being given today to focus attention on International Human Rights Day. This event is of particular importance at a time when, more than ever, the peoples of the five continents have legitimate aspirations to freedom, social justice and the rule of law.
Today we commemorate the 43rd anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. The world has changed radically since then. Considerable progress has been made in many areas, especially on the world political scene.
In the past two years alone, we have seen the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, which symbolized the cold war, and revolutionary changes throughout eastern Europe. The improvement in east-west relations has had a ripple effect: the reunification of the two Germanies and the holding of free elections in eastern bloc countries are impressive testimony to this.
The Communist regimes of eastern Europe have collapsed under the pressure of the democratic aspirations of peoples too long deprived of their individual and political freedoms. In Africa, several countries including Benin, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Namibia have chosen the path of democracy.

In South Africa the apartheid system is being dismantled. In Asia elections have been held in countries such as Mongolia and the Philippines and at last the end of the rivalry between the two major blocs has enabled the United Nations to revive the co-operative spirit of the charter. The UN has regained its decisive role in maintaining international order and in seeking to resolve conflicts.
This new climate of co-operation and this emerging new world order along with disarmament talks have allowed a redefinition of the concept of security based on socio-economics far more than on military foundations.
Our concept of security must now be adapted to suit a new environment that includes all threats to global peace and stability.
Chronic poverty, debt, socio-economic disparities, destruction of the environment, unresolved regional conflicts, governments with repressive regime, all these socio-economic pressures represent threats to world peace and call for international joint action and ongoing political dialogue among all countries. A better understanding of the human factor and recognition of the universality of such fundamental values as individual and political freedom are essential to the advancement of all the world's societies.

Respect for human rights and the maintenance of peace and security are closely related, as are freedom and human development.
Our own country's security is also closely tied to our openness to the world and our desire to build a united Canada with democratic, economic and cultural freedom, a Canada that is proud to promote its values and convictions beyond its borders, a Canada that will play a leading role on the international scene in the 21st century.

December 10, 1991
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The promotion of human rights has been one of the cornerstones of Canada's foreign policy for several years and is manifested in various types of activities. These include: our support for international institutions such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights; our policies in favour of human rights and democratic development in our bilateral relations; our material and technical assistance to countries and institutions to support the promotion of human rights; the creation of an International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development; Elections Canada's support to the electoral process; and our development assistance program.
Canada's membership in international institutions such as the Commonwealth and La Francophonie consi-tutes a decisive factor in the quality and credibility of our political dialogue with other countries.
Canada's influence on the international scene is increasingly effective in efforts to achieve greater respect for human rights. The growing credibility that we have acquired beyond our borders stems from the quality of our activities and the vision that we seek to share with all human societies. Under the remarkable leadership of the Prime Minister, Canada has distinguished itself by its firm positions and innovative initiatives.
At the closing of the Dakar Summit in 1989, the participants issued a joint statement calling for respect for human rights and for the right to development. This statement, proposed by Canada, clearly defined the link between individual rights and the rights of peoples.
At the World Summit for Children, held in New York in September 1990 under the co-chairmanship of the Prime Minister of Canada, not only did Canada play a very active role, but we have also honoured our commitments through concrete initiatives, including our important financial support to the universel immunization program.
At the Commonwealth Summit in Harare last October, the issue of human rights was raised at Canada's urging. Canada played a leading role, as well, in the decision not to hold the fourth Francophone summit in Kinshasa, in the presence of Colonel Mobutu. The summit was moved to Paris.
I think that I must also mention Canada's support to Haiti's only legitimate leader, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is in our country right now and whom I will have the pleasure of welcoming to Ottawa in a few minutes.
And yesterday, Canada suspended approval of new aid projects to Indonesia as a sign of indignation following the recent killings in East Timor and to reflect our concern about the human rights situation in this country.
Finally, the Prime Minsiter of Canada's firm position on human rights and democratic development set the tone for discussion and for the final declaration of Chaillot. Let me quote the key passage:
Gathered to reaffirm our solidarity and our firm desire to work together actively to shape a better future for our peoples and for the international community- we, the heads of state, government and delegations gathered at Chaillot thus intend to live up to our historic responsibilities and to respond to the legitimate aspirations of our peoples in a new international context.
This new international context is sending us clear messages that call for a shared concept of the rights and freedoms associated with human development.
The whole world is moving irreversibly toward greater respect for human rights and freedoms.
This movement is based on growing awareness of our interdependence and our common destiny and on a broadly shared desire for global development that is both democratic and sustainable.
Mr. Speaker, 43 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the peoples of the United Nations proclaimed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women, and determined to promote social progress, better standards of life and greater freedom. This is the fundamental commitment that the international community has made: These are the values that Canada defends and will continue to defend with conviction.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this House today to draw attention to International Human Rights Day. Today we celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the world's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
December 10, 1991

I agree with the minister. The world has changed radically since December 10, 1948. Some progress has been made in the world political scene. The Soviet Union, as an example, no longer exists as we knew it. This former superpower is now more than willing to work with its former adversary, the United States, to seek common ground on global issues rather than pursue the previous path of a balance of terror.
The Berlin Wall has come down, highlighting the end of the cold war and revolutionary changes throughout eastern Europe. Several African, Asian and American countries are choosing democracy. There is a world-wide movement toward democracy and no longer will people quietly be subject to authoritarian rule.
1991 has become the year in which we have become evermore aware of the tragic victims of violence around the world. Since we last proclaimed International Human Rights Day, the world has been at war with Iraq.
Yugoslavia continues to tear itself apart amidst ongoing violent struggle. In the Middle East, though human rights violations continue there is a beacon of hope with the peace talks.
A new internationalism is waiting to be bom, based on the common goals of the elimination of poverty, a recognition of the fragility of the environment, and the slow recognition of the basic rights and dignity of every person and people.
Everywhere, including former Soviet socialist republics, the struggle for self-determination is the order of the day. The key word here is the word "struggle". With the freedom we enjoy as Canadians comes a responsibility to help reshape and redefine a new world order.
Canada has had a tradition of pursuing an international foreign policy, particularly under Prime Ministers St. Laurent, Pearson and Trudeau. As we face new challenges we can again be a voice in this birth of international co-operation, openness and compassion which will seek to free all people.
My leader, the leader of the Liberal Party, said in a foreign policy speech over a year ago:
I am realistic about our ability to influence the course of events in
a world where others often have larger stakes, or larger means, than
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ours. But Canada does have a respected voice and shares legitimate interests with many countries. We lead when we contribute a well-rounded vision of the world, or when we speak up for international law and mediation, or when we show that we care for those who suffer elsewhere in the world.
The minister speaks of Canada's support for international institutions such as the United Nations or the government's stated policies in favour of human rights and democratic development in our bilateral relations. Of late, however, there have been many examples in which the actions have not lived up to the rhetoric.
I think particularly of East Timor. It was not until yesterday that the government suspended approval of new aid projects to Indonesia as a sign of indignation following the recent massacre by Indonesian troops of an estimated 200 unarmed East Timorese.
This tiny nation was struggling toward independence and self-determination only to be invaded by Indonesia in 1975. The people of East Timor have suffered one of the most ruthless attacks in modem history. On a per capita basis the atrocities committed against the small population of less than a million people are higher than those committed by, as an example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. As many as one-third of the people of this small south Pacific island have perished due to the initial war and subsequent acts of violence, starvation and disease perpetrated by the Indonesian army.
This week December 7, 1991 was the 16th anniversary of this invasion and the action of this government. While we recognize it, I am afraid it could be too little too late.
Indonesia, by its invasion and occupation of East Timor, has embarked on gross violations of the United Nations two most basic principles of integrity of territory and the right to self-determination. The United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Indonesia, yet Canada is one of only two hold-out nations. The government has recognized Indonesia's de facto rule over East Timor. Canada has at the UN voted against resolutions calling for Indonesia's withdrawal. We should all be ashamed of that.
In order for Canada to be legitimate in its condemnation of Indonesia's abhorrent actions against East Timor, it must immediately and unequivocally offer support for

December 10, 1991
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all UN resolutions regarding Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor.
We must press for implementation of the UN Security Council's resolutions 389 and 384, which call for the immediate withdrawal of Indonesian troops and for international assistance to the people of East Timor.
A quotation of Mr. Andrei Sakharov, Oxford, 1986, comes to mind: "Human rights will not be helped by silence". In silence we are as guilty as the perpetrator of the human rights violations. This government has been selectively silent. The Prime Minister has made lofty pronouncements of a policy that would see the linkage of Canadian aid to a country's human rights record. We have yet to learn how the policy will work. There appears to be a double standard in its implementation. For example, why has the policy of this government been to treat the invasion of Kuwait differently than the invasion of East Timor?
I recommend developing and defining the criteria for implementing this stated policy with the following in mind: transparency, consistency, coherency and compassion.
In closing I would like to honour this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Aung San Suu Kyi, for her non-violent struggle to restore democratic freedom to her country of Myanmar, formerly Burma. She has paid a dear price for exemplifying the values that we are commemorating on this day of international human rights.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to join in commemorating today the 43rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is an opportunity for us to review the progress that has been made toward equality and fundamental respect for human rights but also to underline the many challenges that face us still today in the world on this front and at home in Canada.
Internationally I would remind the House that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights encompasses civil and political rights as well as the economic, social and cultural rights. These aspects of human rights are profoundly important. Frank Scott, the distinguished Canadian poet, author, lawyer and constitutional human
rights expert, said: "The trappings of democracy hang loosely on an emaciated body politic".
We know this only too well in a world in which 40,000 children die each day from preventable disease and from hunger. We know this from reading the annual reports of UNICEF on the state of the world's children. We know there are over one million poor children in Canada. It is a national disgrace. At the same time globally the world spends over $900 billion on weapons of destruction.
Surely it is time to recognize that the real threats to security globally are poverty, hunger, homelessness, sickness, AIDS and the global destruction of our environment.
The Prime Minister has spoken of the importance of the linkage between human rights and Canada's aid policies and hopefully our trade policies as well. We in this House support that, but there remains a huge gap between the rhetoric and the reality.
For example, we heard just last night in the external affairs committee from representatives of NGOs who are working courageously and diligently on the issue of self-determination for the people of East Timor.
We also heard from government representatives who suggested that they are not prepared to impose an arms embargo on Indonesia and are not prepared to support self-determination resolutions at the United Nations. This suggests that they are not prepared to encourage actively an international independent inquiry into the murders at Dili on November 12.

When we talk about basic rights, we must not forget that economic, social, civil and political rights as recognized internationally are linked, especially when we are talking about developing countries.
Canada must not pressure countries receiving assistance into adopting economic policies designed by international financial institutions which ignore the economic and social rights of the poor. Canada must maintain the same standards for international financial institutions.

Amnesty International has documented many other areas in which there are profound abuses of human rights: Burma, today we pay tribute to the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi; China, including Tibet; Central America where over 70,000 people have died in the tragic war in El Salvador; Sri Lanka; India, particularly in the Kashmir and in the Punjab; Mexico; South Africa where apartheid is not dead; Togo where the fragile new democracy has been
December 10, 1991

overturned by a military invasion; and the Middle East where human rights continue to be violated whether it is the rights of 4,500 Syrian Jews who continue to be denied the most fundamental rights or whether it is the rights of the Palestinians who yesterday commemorated the fourth anniversary of the intifada. Certainly the time for justice for the Palestinians, for self-determination, for recognition of their right to nationhood and for an end to human rights violations has come. Indeed it should have come long ago.
We have seen violations in Croatia, in Vojvodina and in Kosovo. There has been a tragic loss of life and the destruction of the cultural heritage of a people.

We extend a warm welcome to Jean-Bertrand Aristide who is here in Ottawa, and we wish him a speedy return to Haiti as the president of that country.

In closing, I would remind the House that Canada must also practise at home what we preach abroad with respect to human rights. In that light the inter-church committee for refugees has reminded us of the importance that Canada not remain silent to abuses of refugees and asylum seekers in developed countries. Canada should do far more to respond to documented human rights problems with our own refugee programs in Canada.
Finally I would remind the House that the Canadian Human Rights Act must be amended. We have waited far too long for equality, equality for lesbians and gay men who were promised that equality five and a half years ago. They are still denied equality. We need equality for people with disabilities, for people of colour who still feel the sting of racism, for women who are still second-class citizens in Canada and for aboriginal peoples. The treatment of them at home remains a national shame and a national tragedy.
Both internationally and here at home much work remains to be done. Many challenges remain. We celebrate the accomplishments that have been made today on International Human Rights Day. We pay tribute to individuals who are working in NGOs both in Canada and internationally. We must remember much work
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remains to be done to realize the principle that was set out so eloquently.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide last night in Montreal told us: "Human rights are the torch that lights modem democracy".
That is true, so let us make sure it is true in Canada and throughout the world.


Mr. Speaker:: I believe it would be appropriate to remind the House of the order of business at this point. We are now on Presenting Reports from Interparliamentary Delegations, under Routine Proceedings.


NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, I have consulted with my colleagues on all sides of the House and I believe that there would be agreement to the following motion:
That this House express its congratulations to Aung San Suu Kyi, recipient of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize being presented in Oslo today, for her courage, integrity and commitment to the Burmese people's struggle for human rights and democracy.
It calls upon the state law and order restoration council of Burma to honour the results of the 1990 national election, to free Aung San Suu Kyi and the 62 jailed members of Parliament, and to allow her to give her speech of acceptance at this highest of awards from her home in Rangoon.
I believe this would meet with the agreement of the House.


Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for External Relations and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, I second the motion moved by the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has shown extraordinary courage in the face of repression by the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

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Her efforts to promote human rights and democracy in Burma is certainly worthy of mention in this House. The Government of Canada has repeatedly demanded the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and of all political prisoners held in Burma, while asking the Burmese authorities to respect the results of the May 1990 election.
Today's motion is one more in a long list of representations.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate our caucus with this resolution, especially on a day when humankind's highest award is given to the Leader of the Opposition in Burma.
It is tragic that at this time she is denied her fundamental right not only to speak out on behalf of her own people but to be with her family, her husband and friends at this season.
I think this Parliament must go on record as supporting this resolution in particular in the hope that we can urge our own government to add its voice continually for the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi. It is absolutely essential that her voice be added to the peaceful voices in this world.


Mr. Speaker:: Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Mr. Speaker:: We are now on Petitions.


PETITIONS
Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I am rising to present a number of petitions signed by people from Windsor, Ontario and various centres in Ontario.
The petitions bear close to 8,000 names. They call upon Parliament to pass legislation establishing mandatory minimum sentences for all violent crimes which would apply uniformly to all regions of Canada.


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I am rising to present a petition signed predominantly by people from the riding of Mission-Coquitlam.
They are petitioning the government to recognize the Hatzic rock site near Mission, B.C. to be of great historical and spiritual value to the Sto:Lo people and to the people of Mission-Coquitlam.
We therefore ask the government to proceed with the necessary steps to see that the site is preserved and protected as a national heritage site.


Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by residents of my constituency of Burnaby-Kingsway, as well as residents of other parts of British Columbia and Quebec.
They point out that on August 24, 1991 the Ukrainian Parliament declared Ukrainian independence and the creation of an independent and democratic state of Ukraine. One million Canadians of Ukrainian descent have for a century sustained their ideals of freedom and democracy for an independent ancestral homeland.
They go on to point out some of the other history leading to the historic referendum just recently in Ukraine. Finally they call upon the Parliament of Canada to urge the government to give genuine support to the people of Ukraine by officially recognizing Ukraine's independence and establishing full diplomatic relations with the government and people of Ukraine immediately following the positive referendum on December 1 of this year.
December 10, 1991


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk)
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, Question No. 145 will be answered today.


Mr. Duhamel: 1.	Since 1984, with respect to applications for (a) War Veterans Widows Allowance, (b) GIS, (c) Survivor Disability Pension, (i) how many late claims have been received (ii) how many late claims have been accepted?
2.	What has been the estimated savings to the government in non-payment of these benefits to eligible persons?


Albert Glen Cooper: I am informed by the Departments of Veterans Affairs and National Health and Welfare as follows:
1.	(a) With respect to retroactivity for war veterans allowance, there is no provision in the War Veterans Allowance Act to authorize payments for any period prior to the first day of the month in which the application was made. This is a matter of legislation and there is no discretionary power to alter it. With respect to the hon. member's question, then, there are no "late claims" for war veterans allowance purposes.
(c) There is no deadline for applying for survivor benefits under the Pension Act. When benefits are awarded to a survivor of a disability pensioner, the effective date of the award is the later of either the day following the death of the disability pensioner or three years prior to the date of the decision to award survivor benefits.
2.	Because there is no provision within the WVA Act to authorize payments for any period prior to the first day of the month of application the question with regard to estimated savings is not relevant.
It is not possible to determine, or to estimate with any degree of accuracy, the number of applications for survivor benefits which may have been affected by the retroactivity limits of the Pension Act.
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1. (b) and 2. At the present time, the Old Age Security benefit system does not maintain payment history on each beneficiary. Therefore, extensive research involving administrative costs and person-year utilization would be required to capture the requested information.


Mr. Speaker:: The question as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary has been answered.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 87 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 87 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Whittaker: For each month since November 21, 1988, have any payments
been made pursuant to the parliamentary secretaries expenses
regulations and, if so, to which parliamentary secretaries and in what
amount?
Return tabled.


Albert Glen Cooper: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I wish to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 33(2)(a) and because of the ministerial statement Government Orders will be extended by 23 minutes beginning at one o'clock p.m.
Also, since today is the final allotted day for the supply period ended December 10, 1991, the House will go through the usual procedures to consider and dispose of the supply bill. In view of recent practices, do hon. members agree that the bill be distributed now?
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Some hon. members:: Agreed.

December 10, 1991



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition) moved: That this House condemn the government for economic
mismanagement that has led to an intolerable and tragic level of
unemployment, business failure and poverty in Canada.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to rise in the House today, December 10, especially since exactly one year ago the constituents of Beausejour did me the honour of electing me as their member. I wish to thank them for doing so.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I had the honour and the privilege to be elected in a riding that truly represents what is best in this country, where the two-thirds of the population that is French speaking lives on friendly terms with the other one-third that is English speaking, in southeastern New Brunswick. This people are hard workers and as Canadians they are very proud of their linguistic and cultural diversity. The two-thirds who are French speaking are descendants of those people who were deported and then came back, and they truly believe in the French language and culture and are very proud to be Canadians and to be part of Canadian society.

In every day of their lives we see examples of what is possible in Canada. The francophone Acadians who make up two-thirds of Beausejour are working side by side with anglophones who make up one-third and have strong roots in Canada. Many of them were Loyalists who came from the United States to live under the Canadian regime. They have shown to this country that it is possible to live and work together in harmony. It has been a great experience and a great honour for me to be the member for Beausejour for the last 12 months.
I would like to congratulate my colleague from York North who is celebrating his comeback to the House. He is one of the few in this House who has had the occasion to sit twice in one Parliament. All of us are very proud to have him as a colleague and we want to extend our congratulations for his second election in one term.

I am moving this motion as a condemnation of this government's economic policies. Of course, at the end of the year, in the festive season, we would like to be able to get up with a smile on our lips and say that we face the new year with great optimism.

We have to recognize that the government's mishandling of the economy has caused the worst and longest economic crisis since the 1930s. Every family, every community, every region of the country and every sector of the economy are being hurt.
For the last three years we have been saying to this government that the mix of economic policies it was developing was the wrong one. Yet it is still on it.
For the last three years the one obsession of this government has been to fight inflation at any cost. What has been the result of this policy that led to a high dollar and high interest rates? What is the situation today in Canada?
Somebody said this terrible economic strategy of the government is more or less a political version of the neutron bomb. The buildings are left standing but inside all the people have been destroyed.
We have 1.5 million Canadians today who are not working. In less than a year in Canada we have had
60,000	bankruptcies, either personal or business. We can talk about anything we want in this economy today and it is a disaster. Look at what happened in our cities. In the city of Toronto and the city of Montreal what do we see? It is a complete disaster. In fact in any big city in Canada we find that the fastest growing sector of the economy is food banks and soup kitchens.
In Toronto there are more than 100,000 people on welfare. Some 120,000 people have to go to food banks and one-third of these people are children.
December 10, 1991



Today the fair city of Montreal, which a few years ago said that it had pride, has unemployment. Thirty per cent of the citizens of greater Montreal receive unemployment insurance or welfare or some form of government assistance, and that is a disaster.
If you go to Montreal or other parts of Quebec, as I have, you see that people are completely demoralized. The same thing goes throughout the country. People are leaving the rural areas of Quebec to go to live in Montreal, but of course they do not find work. Nothing is more depressing today than walking down Ste. Catherine Street in Montreal. You see one closed store after another. That is the result of this government's economic policies.
We could talk about many other sectors like agriculture, for example. If any industry was stable even in Ontario it was agriculture, because in the past 10 years, marketing boards had stabilized it and balanced production with demand so that consumers had fixed, predictable prices and farmers had stable incomes.
But what is happening today? Because of this government's poor strategy, we are wondering what will happen with GATT. No one knows. If article XI were abolished, what would happen to marketing boards? What did the government do in the Free Trade Agreement? It completely gave up the possibility of setting up bilateral tariff barriers with the American market in case the GATT decision was unfavorable to farmers. Over the past 10 or 12 years, we had managed to stabilize that sector with some effort. It is now very uncertain and thousands of jobs are at stake.

I could talk about western farmers, not only those who need supply management in Canada. Wheat is at its lowest price since the depression. Farmers are leaving their farms every day, to go where? There is no place to go. If they go to the city there are no jobs. There are families who are losing their life assets day after day after day, and they really do not know what will happen to them. It is almost unbelievable.
In Beausejour, Manitoba they have established a food bank for farmers. These are the very people whose job is to create food for our table and who do not have enough
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for themselves. We have never seen such a disaster in Canada. When does the government give some help? It just does that under a lot of pressure in the middle of an election, cynically to show that it can buy votes. Wait until the next election. It will not be able to buy one vote. I can guarantee that.
What about the fisheries and overfishing? There is no control over foreign ships that come and take over Canadian resources. We protect the fish on the Grand Banks, for example, off the coast of Newfoundland with conservation measures. We restrain our own fishermen from taking too much fish.
What happens? At the other end of the banks the foreign companies come and pick up the fish. There is no passport for fish. They do not know if they are in Canadian or international waters. Neither the international community nor this government is putting pressure on these countries that are abusing the situation. They are depleting resources that have been there for centuries.

I was in my riding of Beausejour on the weekend and I met fishermen and people who work in the processing plants in Cap-Pele. Cap-Pele has perhaps the largest concentration of this kind of smokehouse in America, if not the world. These people worked very hard all year. Companies have built up considerable inventories. And what happens? Suddenly, but quite properly, the government embargoes products sent to Haiti, the main customer. But who pays? The fishermen and entrepreneurs, who are all small business people, and the government does nothing. We have called CIDA but have not heard back. We should not destroy this industry. I am not saying that there should not be economic sanctions against Haiti, but on the other hand this kind of food keeps and the government should do something. This was directly caused by a government policy, although well intentioned and one that looks good around the world. But the government does not pay the cost of it. Who pays? The fishermen and smokehouse operators in Cap-Pele, New Brunswick, in the riding of Beausejour. I hope that someone at CIDA is listening to us and will realize that they are working against a traditional industry that has been profitable for many years, that they are ruining it, perhaps even destroying it forever.

December 10, 1991
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That is the kind of policy this government implements all the time. I could talk about plant closures.
Industries are closing down all over Canada. When we had the recession 10 years ago in 1982 they were closing down for a period of time. Now they are closing down forever. They are moving to the United States because of the free trade agreement. This government does not want to do anything.
I could talk about the trade deficit. For the first time in 15 years we have a merchandise trade deficit in Canada. We used to have a balance of payments problem but not a merchandise trade deficit. It is like that all over Canada, and this government is doing nothing at all. Why? It is because the government stubbornly has a fix on inflation and this is destroying everything.
Yesterday the Minister of Finance was in Montreal. He had discussions with business people and they said they wanted a lower Canadian dollar and they wanted to be competitive.
I remember what was said by the manufacturing sector in Canada at the time of the free trade agreement. They said: "Okay, we can sign that, but we need a dollar that will remain competitive". But this government has refused to recognize that reality because some government advisers have the gall to say that we will endure 30 per cent unemployment if we can have zero inflation. They should know that 30 per cent unemployment is a revolution. When you administer the economic and monetary policies of this country, you cannot have a fix only on inflation. You have to have a fix on employment and competition too. That it is exactly what we said to this government.
During the fall I travelled this country and talked about the five principles that we need to restore Canada. We said one of the first things we need is to restore Canada's industrial strength. The only instrument available to them in the very difficult world we are living in today is a competitive dollar. It is always a high dollar. Why? We do not know why. Is it because there are those who say we should have zero inflation that they are afraid to attain anyway?
Mr. James Baker, when he was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, said: "We have no trade problem with Canada. The only problem we are having with Canada is the level of the Canadian dollar". Since the government signed the free trade agreement the dollar has been kept high. You have to look at all the reasons. The minister will get up and say that the interest rates are going down. They are going down, but today the government rate is still three points above that of the United States. Of course the prime rate has been reduced, but the government rate is 3.04 per cent above. Yes, sir. I checked this morning. You can say whatever you want, but it is-


Some hon. members:: You are right.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It is 3.04. Why is this? Because this government has a deliberate policy to make sure that the Canadian dollar remains high. It is why the investor is looking to buy Canadian dollars. The prime rate has gone down, but the main rate has not gone down. There is still a spread of three points. So let us get the dollar lower.
The minister will tell us that he cannot lower the dollar. I have been Minister of Finance. I know that the government intervenes strongly or less strongly. I was there. At that time it was at 93 cents, but because we wanted to make sure that the industry in the riding of the minister in British Columbia could sell wood in the United States, we let the Canadian dollar go from 93 cents to 85 cents. We have to do that to the dollar, to make sure that we train our labour force, that we have research and development and that we have market support.
I could go on and on but apparently time is running short.


Some hon. members:: More, more.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: We have to reduce the tax burden of the middle class. This government has increased the taxes 32 times in the last few years. The gap between Canada and the United States in terms of the GDP and taxes is higher than ever before.
We have to make sure that we face competition today and with globalization that we have comprehensive and creative adjustment policies to make sure that those affected are not left in the cold like it is with this government. Nobody will do anything.
December 10, 1991

We have to make sure, as a fourth point, to balance regional economic growth because we cannot let only the market forces decide. There is nothing Canadian left on the shelves any more. This government has destroyed everything in terms of transportation and anything that was keeping this country together. What happens if we do not have any transportation? The people in Atlantic Canada are trapped there and remain poor.
We need a government that can intervene. It is why Japan and Germany are successful. The government intervenes there when it is needed. It is not a laissez-faire government like this one.
The fifth point of course is that they were elected to reduce the debt. Do you remember that, Mr. Speaker? When they started they said: "The $175 billion that these Liberals have left us is terrible". They worked on a program to reduce the debt. They worked very hard on it, and now the debt has been reduced to $400 billion. What a success, what a success.
I would like to say to everyone at the end of my remarks that people feel terrible in Canada but there is hope at the end of the tunnel. If this government has any decency within 12 months there will be an election. There was an election three years and one month ago so we should have an election in 1992.
I say to Canadians when I am travelling that we need a new government, but this new government will need a mission. This mission is to bring hope and pride to this nation as this government has failed to do. On every score this country is desperate today.
They have created a constitutional mess that we will try on a non-partisan basis to cure. If they had known better they would have shut up in 1987 when they were preoccupied in Quebec about having a new class of business people doing well in the world. They opened a wound that they will have a hell of a problem closing. We will help them.
I hope they will stop that nonsense of having a Spicer II show and doing what they are doing today. The NDP and ourselves put our feet on the ground and said: "We do not want that kind of show any more. We want the members to look at the 28 propositions". We went far to achieve that, but we have succeeded. I hope that we will be able to find a solution and bring hope. It is a problem
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that need not have existed, but it was created by this government. The economic mess is there, as we all know, but we say to Canadians that there will be an election. There will be a government that will understand that we have no ambition in life to be the lap dog of the American presidency and that we can speak as proud Canadians. We will tell the people that we will have a government that cares for people.
We had the Aylmer conference where we had experts coming from all over the world who told us: "Yes, it is possible to take the challenge of globalization but maintain at the same time the social safety net that is the pride of Canada. If you have proud and independent people, you will not have people in misery. They will be able to compete in the world".
The government that we will be forming, if the election comes next year, if this government has the courage to consult the people, will be a government that will maintain the dignity of Canadians while at the same time preparing Canadians, training them, educating them and challenging them to be the most competent, the best educated people in North America.
We can be on top of the world if we have a government that cares for people, that restores pride in Canadians. We will go into the 21st century, as we should do, as a proud, independent Canada which will not be afraid of the globalization in the world, but will remain, as I like to say, a united country in its diversity that will be the envy of the world.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, in its opposition day motion the Liberal Party talks about the tragic levels of unemployment, the business failures and the poverty in Canada. I can certainly agree with many of the remarks that the hon. Leader of the Opposition made, but I think there are two very major areas that the opposition leader did not touch on and I would like to ask him about.
There are two economic policies that this government has implemented that have destroyed the economy of Canada, that have led to this poverty, that have created the business failures and that have created the unemployment, and those are in the Canada-U.S. trade deal and the GST.

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With the trade deal we have seen the loss of manufacturing jobs. Just last week Norsk Enterprises in Quebec said that the trade deal had caused it to lose its business and that it had to lay off more workers. That is the story right across Canada.
We gave away our access to oil and gas. We created a situation where social programs are being undermined through the trade deal. We have ensured that programs like medicare could never be set up again in Canada because of the trade deal. Surely it is the Canada-U.S. trade deal that has created much of the problem that the hon. Leader of the Opposition has referred to. The second one is certainly the GST that has helped to create those bankruptcies, that is destroying small business.
I want to ask the Leader of the Opposition a question. The New Democratic Party has been very clear. The trade deal must be abrogated with Canada and the U.S. and must not be extended to Mexico. What is the position of the Leader of the Opposition on this very profound issue that has created these problems in the economy?
Also the position of the New Democratic Party on the GST is to get rid of the GST. What does the Leader of the Opposition think?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, on the question of free trade our position is clear and has been copied by the Leader of the NDP in an interview with The Financial Post three weeks ago. She said very clearly: "We will renegotiate and, if they do not want to renegotiate, we will abrogate". Thank you very much. That is exactly our position.
I agree that this is a badly cooked deal. Only half of it has been concluded. We have seen the case of the electric problems Quebec faces. Now everything is a subsidy according to the Americans and a big failure of this government was not having clarified what is a subsidy.
I am happy to see on the free trade agreement that the Leader of the NDP is in agreement with us. It is a big move. It is a shift in policy in the right direction.
On the GST we have a very clear position. We say that we want to kill the GST, but we will come forth with an alternative. Not like NDPers who say that they will kill it. What about the $25 billion? They say they do not know where the money will come from. We will have an alternative. If the GST has put $20 billion into the coffers, we will find $20 billion to replace it. That is the
only responsible way to do it. We will get rid of the GST but we will have to find a clear alternative because we will be responsible. We will not be like the NDP.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the member for Beausejour.
Trust is the central issue in public life today. Canadians are saying from coast to coast to coast that they do not trust their politicians. What assurances can he give the people of Canada that the Liberal Party of Canada will have a value system that people can trust?


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I think that it is a veiy good question. It is a very important problem in Canada today.


Ms. Copps:: The NDP thinks it is funny.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: The NDP laughs at it. It promised that it would get rid of the GST and it put nothing in the window instead.
Trust will come when we say we will get rid of the GST and we have an alternative. This is responsible government. This is what we will offer to the people. We will not try to buy votes because people do not want to sell their votes. They want an honest government. They do not want the repetition of what this government has done to this nation, making promises and breaking them all the time.
We say to the people that we will not buy their votes. We will be truthful to them. We will have an honest government. It will not be a government riddled with scandal like the one we have now. It will be an honest government that will call a spade a spade, and the people will have confidence in us. We will restore faith in the institution.


Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North):: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to congratulate my leader on his first anniversary back from his electoral victory in Beausejour. I would also like to congratulate him on what I consider to be an excellent and passionate speech. I believe it clearly outlined the concerns felt by millions and millions of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
What is also important about the speech of the Leader of the Opposition is that it clearly accentuated and punctuated the differences that exist between the political parties in Canada and the clear and the precise economic agenda that the Liberal Party has proposed to Canadians.
December 10, 1991

My question to the Leader of the Opposition concerns the high unemployment rate among young people. In this country 400,000 young people in total are unemployed. I would like to ask the Leader of the Opposition to comment on this extremely important national issue.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, this is the future of tomorrow that the hon. member for York North has raised, what we have to do. It will be the challenge of Canadians. We have to become the best educated and the best trained people in America. We can do that. In order to do that we will have to invest in the youth of Canada. We will have to invest in education and in training. We will have to work with the provinces to have a collective goal.
Yesterday I noted progress. Almost all provincial governments agree to have a kind of national standard for education among themselves. Unfortunately only the NDP Government of Saskatchewan disagrees with that.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I do not know why only one government does not want to give an okay. The Quebec government recognizes the need to make all Canadians very competitive. We have to be educated in order to be as good as the Germans and the Japanese, but one government has refused to do that. It is the NDP Government of Saskatchewan.
It was not a Liberal government because we all believe in the youth of Canada. The youth of Canada is the future. We will invest in them because they will make this country the best in the world.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Leader of the Opposition seems to think because he says something it is true. If he were consistent and said the same thing maybe Canadians would think it was true too. He needs to be consistent about it.
The Leader of the Opposition mentioned that he had been elected a year ago. I congratulate him on that. If he had been here, he would have heard the alternatives that the New Democratic Party has put forward consistently on the GST. We are the party that has come forward with the alternatives on the GST. The hon. Leader of the Opposition knows that very well. We are the party that
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has consistently said that we will abrogate the trade deal. It cannot be renegotiated.
I say to the hon. Leader of the Opposition: Why does he not have the guts to stand up to the Canadian people, be honest with them and say the same thing, that this deal must be abrogated?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Perhaps I was not nice to the NDP. She is quite upset. Probably the best thing I can do at this moment is to offer her a happy Christmas and New Year, but the reality is that what I said is all true.
Indications yesterday were that it was only the NDP Government of Saskatchewan which opposed. Look at what the NDP Government in Ontario has done to the electorate there, breaking every promise.
We are responsible. We want to get rid of the GST and will have an alternative which will not be like them. On the free trade agreement I have to repeat that it gave me a lot of pleasure when she met with The Financial Post. She said: "We will just adopt the Liberal policies". Thank you very much, madam, et Joyeux Noel.


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I must say I am enjoying very much the family feud that is going on. It is very enlightening. We have all garnered a certain amount of information about the formulation of policy and how it actually is formulated, sort of on the run and in the House of Commons.
The hon. member and the member for Broadview- Greenwood talk about trust. The Leader of the Opposition says: "We will scrap the GST and, trust me, I will bring in an alternative".
Well, he is going to have to get a little more specific than that. Oh, I am sure he will. Him and Preston Manning will certainly be able to give us a lot of enlightenment on that one.
Yes, it is the Christmas spirit. Yes, it is. I thought for starters that one would want to look at the record of a government of which the hon. Leader of the Opposition was a member. I just took a quick survey and 10 years ago today interest rates for an ordinary businessmen were running at about 18 to 20 per cent. He talks about spreads. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, the spread between the Canadian prime rate and the United States prime

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rate is about half of 1 per cent. The Canadian prime rate, the lowest in 18 years, is at 8 per cent. The American prime rate is at 7.5 per cent and if you want to go to three-month commercial paper, that spread is about 2.6 per cent. It hovers between 2.4 per cent and 2.6 per cent.
I think that factually the hon. Leader of the Opposition was wrong.
Let us look at the unemployment rate. It was running at about 11.2 per cent. The inflation rate was at 12.6 per cent, and what happened in the third quarter of 1981? The GDP fell by 3.5 percentage points. There you have a situation where this member is condemning the federal government for its economic mismanagement and all we saw during the time that he was a member of that government of which I spoke. We had our fill of fiscal irresponsibility and structural suffocation. That fiscal irresponsibility is placing a heavy burden, an undue burden, on all Canadians in terms of our ability to cope with a burden of debt and the cost of servicing that debt which is costing Canadians 35 cents for every taxpayer's dollar that they provide to the Government of Canada.
Let us review a little more of the record of the Leader of the Opposition while I have his attention. He condemns this government for fiscal mismanagement. When he served as President of the Treasury Board between 1974 and 1976, in two short years he spent-


An hon. member:: You're shameless, absolutely shameless.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, if you want to give the hon. member a chance to speak I am sure that we can organize that.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member may very well seek time to speak but the hon. Minister of Finance has the floor and I know members would want to extend the courtesy of hearing him.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, in two short years, between 1974 and 1976, he presided over a spending increase of 33 per cent and then he said at 16 per cent, when he increased the spending for one year, that that reflected great restraint.
In Mr. Macdonell's Auditor General's report in 1974-75, he said this, and I quote:
The present state of financial management and control systems of departments and agencies of the Government of Canada is significantly below acceptable standard of quality and effectiveness.
In September 1976 he wrote, and I quote:
I am deeply concerned that Parliament and indeed the government has lost or is close to losing effective control of the public purse.
That is the background around which we have to restore the fiscal integrity of this country and restore management. Again, giving an example of his managerial prowess, in a strike where public servants shut down the grain transportation sector for 31 days, he settled for a 29.25 per cent increase and he called that leadership.
Let us talk about the deficit when he was Minister of Finance. In 1977, the deficit the previous year had been $6.3 billion. The spring budget he brought in was to be a $7.2 billion deficit for 1977-78 and it ended up being a $10 billion deficit, a 70 per cent increase.
His next budget was a 30 per cent increase above the earlier one. That is where we got into this treadmill of spending. You know, spend today and borrow for tomorrow and place the burden on future generations.
He talks about the control he had over the Bank of Canada and how he manipulated the exchange rate. Well, here are some quotes out of Hansard that clearly demonstrate the opposite of his allegation that he had just presented to the House of Commons. He said on February 27, 1978, in a speech to The Canadian Club in Montreal, and I quote:
Market forces should continue to determine the appropriate exchange value for our currency.
Another quote in Hansard at page 1222, November 17, 1978. He said, and I quote:
We do not intend to fix the rate of the Canadian dollar. The rate will be fixed by the market.
And then another quote, in which he said the following:
Our monetary policy is set by the Governor of the Bank of Canada and I do not intend to ask him to change his policy.
That quotation is from Hansard page 1635, December 7, 1977.
December 10, 1991

What the hon. member is saying here today is all hogwash. He talks a good line. He said something when he was sitting over here on the treasury benches. He had one position. Now that he is over there on the opposition benches he clearly has another position. That has to be taken into consideration as we focus on this particular debate.
There is no question, and no one can argue with the fact that the economy is emerging from a very difficult period. It has been a painful period for many Canadians. Coming out of a recession and through a period of transition where we see the need for a structural adjustment and change has placed very severe difficulties upon all segments of the Canadian economy.
I indicated in my appearance before the House committee last month that the recession had been a little deeper than expected and that the pace of recovery had been somewhat slower than we had anticipated. However, one has to view this in the changing circumstances that have occurred throughout the world. The world economy, for example, as I have indicated on many occasions, grew by some 2 per cent in 1990. It will grow by a meagre 1 per cent in 1991 and it is expected to grow something around 3 per cent or less in 1992. As a matter of fact, I have before me a headline from The Ottawa Citizen which says that the world economy is at its worst since 1945.
The growth rate of 1 per cent in 1991 has been the worst since 1981 or 1982. One has to look at the Canadian situation in that context and I have to remind hon. members that all industrialized nations have been revising their growth projections downward. I also have to advise hon. members that the only two countries that will experience an improvement in the unemployment situation in 1992, according to the Conference Board of Canada, are the United States and Canada. All other industrialized countries, particularly those in the G-7, will experience an increase in unemployment during
1992.	I say that because we are going through difficult times and Canada is affected by it because we are a global trader, a world player. We cannot deny that.
There are some positive things that are occurring. I think they have to be recorded and that hon. members have to be reminded. Inflation has dropped significantly
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to just 1.6 per cent on annualized basis over the last six months. That is the lowest in 20 years.
I talked about interest rates. The prime rate at 8 per cent is the lowest rate of interest in 18 years. That is a remarkable achievement. There are other positive indicators on the horizon that came out in the third quarter annual accounts.
The corporate profits are strengthening. You need corporate profits if you are going to have investment in plant and equipment. They increased by 15 per cent on an annualized basis. The latest data indicate that personal income rose by 4.4 per cent over last year and personal disposable income by 4.6 per cent.
What is also interesting is that the savings rate of Canadians has increased from an average of 9 to 9.5 per cent to about 11 per cent. I have to remind hon. members that every one percentage point increase in the national savings, personal savings, reduces consumption by about $4.5 billion. Put another way, if that saving rate had not increased from 9 per cent to 11 per cent there would be an additional $9 billion out there for goods and services consumption.
It is quite obvious that Canadians are saving more because there is uncertainty and because there is lack of confidence in the economy. That is true, but some day soon that money will be spent.
The goods producing sector is another very important indicator in the third quarter statistics. The goods producing sector increased by 5.2 per cent. The other thing that should be noted is that in a survey by the 300 large corporations that are operating in Canada they had indicated that they would increase their capital spending by some 5.2 per cent in 1992. That too is good news.
Mortgage rates have come down dramatically and a person renewing a $75,000 mortgage will see a saving of something between $275 and $300 per month on his monthly mortgage payments. That is a major decline. That puts additional income in the pockets of Canadians for spending on consumer goods and services.
Housing starts are another important indicator which should bring us some comfort. The increase in the residential investment sector was some 17.2 per cent in the third quarter. Housing starts have been increasing to the level of roughly 200,000 on an annualized basis. The

December 10,1991
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data coming out are not uniform. The data are erratic, and that is not unusual coming out of a recession.
We said in the budget of 1991 that growth would re-emerge in the second half of 1991. Colleagues certainly did not condemn the government for being overly conservative in that projection, but the fact of the matter is that growth re-emerged in the second quarter. It was originally quoted at 4.9 per cent real and in the third quarter accounts that was adjusted upward to 5.7 per cent. That is a remarkable turnaround when you consider that there was a decline of 4.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1990 and a decline of 4.7 per cent in the first quarter of 1991. To have a turnaround of 5.7 per cent positive in the second quarter was a dramatic turnaround.
Obviously no one expected that kind of recoveiy to be sustainable. We did have a lower rate of growth in the third quarter, .9 per cent, but when you average the two you end up with an average rate of growth over a six-month period of 3.3 per cent. I think that is not bad considering the depth of this recession, much deeper than we expected. We expected a peak decline of about
2.5	per cent. It declined closer to 2.8 per cent. The fact of the matter is that the recession accompanied by the need to readjust and to restructure is making this issue much more complicated and much more critical.
I should remind the House that in the early stages of the recovery, going back to 1981 and 1982, we had the similar kind of data coming out that were quite variable. As a matter of fact, in the ninth and the twelfth months of recovery in 1983-84 period we actually had negative growth.
I am just going through some of the quotes of expert analysts and journalists. In the 1982-83 newspapers there are articles on months one to three of the recoveiy. In a The Globe and Mail article by columnist Peter Cook there is a headline "Deteriorating Conditions Suggest a Renewal of Slump". On December 7 there was a headline "Economic News Bad to Worse".
On December 30, two months into the recoveiy, one read "Few Signs that Relief is Imminent". Again bad economic news predominates. You then get into four to six months of recovery. One headline is "Progress Uncertain in Real Economy. Upturn Begun but Still
Weak". On April 6 one headline read "The Rate of Recovery in Manufacturing Begins to Falter." On July 22, 1983 another read "Don't Depend on Consumers Alone".
On August 2, 1983, 10 to 12 months into recovery, the headline is posing the question "Is Economic Recovery Faltering?" We go again to August 31, 1983. The Globe and Mail headline was "Experts see Signs of Recovery Slowing". We go on to October 1. The Star Phoenix says that the economic news was glum.
We are going through that kind of a situation. The fact of the matter is that we are going to have these kinds of volatile data that will be coming out and that will require explanation.
The fact of the matter is that we still remain confident that growth in 1992 will be something in the range of 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent. The latest survey conducted by the finance department and the private sector forecasts the growth rate to be something in the order of 3.5 per cent.
The IMF's most recent forecast suggests a growth rate of 3.8 per cent. The OECD suggests a growth rate of 3.5 per cent. The Conference Board of Canada suggests a growth rate of something in excess of 4 per cent. By historical standards, this is a moderate to modest recovery.
The fact of the matter is that we must continue to maintain our policy stance of declining inflation and the maintenance of low interest because that will produce the growth and that will produce the long-term jobs.
Inflationary policies which are being advocated by members across will not produce the goods, will not produce the services, will not produce the jobs and will not produce the long-term prosperity for Canada, and history really proves that.
By historical standards we know that this recovery is slow because of our inability, and we do not have the luxury of injecting fiscal stimulus. The hon. member should understand that. We must deal with the issues that are really confronting us. The issues are not only coming out of the recession, but how we can be more competitive and how we can be more productive. In that connection, it requires the co-operation, co-ordination and leadership of all segments of society.
December 10, 1991

In The Globe and Mail, I believe on Saturday, I noticed what the chairman of Ford Motor Company had to say about Ontario's policies. I am not here to pick on Ontario. I only use this to demonstrate the necessity for co-ordinating economic policy in this country. The headline says that our entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in Ontario. Mr. Harrigan said:
Ontario's economic policies are placing roadblocks in the way of the recovery and scaring away investment.
Frankly entrepreneurs are afraid to invest in Ontario. The auto industry is apprehensive about labour changes that will make it easier to unionize, particularly auto parts companies. A strike at one of these companies would close down operations of the Canadian and U.S. car makers which rely on just in time parts delivery schedules. Eighty per cent of our production is exported to the United States.
I say that we must co-ordinate our policies in such a way that we can meet the challenges we face. Canada is a trading nation. We are the seventh largest trading nation in the world. We must trade to survive.
We must meet the challenge of globalization. We must meet the challenges of improving our productivity. The foundation of prosperity had been rotting away when we came into office. It required some major structural changes such as getting the deficit under control, making those structural changes such as deregulation, bringing about a free trade agreement and trade liberalization, scrapping FIRA, scrapping the National Energy Program and creating an investment climate in which Canadians would invest, in which the skill and the spirit of enterprises could flourish.
This is the kind of framework that we put in place. We have made the structural changes. We are getting the fiscal and monetary fundamentals correct. We have provided the foundation for strong sustainable growth with price stability. That will produce the growth. That will produce the jobs and that will produce security for all Canadians.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, before I address my comments and question to the minister, may I say that this is what Canadians expect from Parliament. This is the best of Parliament today and
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I am pleased to take my place in this debate in that regard.
I was disappointed in the minister responding to what is really turning people off in this country. We are in trouble in Canada and we expect something better than the exchange of the old cliches between the two ruling parties that represent the same interests which have governed this country for the last 100 years.
We expected some alternatives and specifics from both the opposition and the government because people out there are hurting. It is a cliche to refer to the experts and their interpretations. There are one and a half million experts in Canada on the economic crisis. They are all unemployed. They are experts about what has happened to them and to their families.
One of the major problems, if I may point it out to our friend who wants to quote economists, with the poor is that they do not have enough money. If you cannot figure that out, all the experts in the world are not going to be able to help you or the Official Opposition.
What is the action now? What will this government do today in the face of the fact it promised in the 1988 election that 250,000 new jobs would be created because of the free trade agreement? What is the government prepared to do today to help those people who are waiting for that promise to be fulfilled? What is the government prepared to do today to mobilize the indigenous savings of Canadians rather than lamenting that consumers have dried up?
What is the government prepared to show to initiate the use of RRSPs in an imaginative thoughtful way, to re-establish the infrastructures of our municipalities, cities and towns through municipal bonds? Is this government prepared to do as governments did during wartime crises such as give leadership, succour and comfort to those who are afflicted out there rather than rhetoric and comments about what economists are saying or what editorials are saying?
Finally my question to the minister, the most important question of all is: When is this government prepared to recognize that the polls consistently say it is at 16 per cent? Call an election and, by God, be gone from office.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I thought after the preamble that he would certainly not have engaged in political rhetoric. I agree it is a serious matter. Stick

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around. There will be an election and I hope he is ready at the time.
He talks about me using cliches. When we are addressing some of the fundamental problems, fiscal and monetary problems that Canada faces, and laying out a clear plan of how we are going to achieve the fiscal targets and the deficit targets, I do not think that is rhetoric and I do not think that is using cliches. I did not quote economists. I did refer to study groups, respectable study groups, like the IMF, OECD, and the Conference Board of Canada.
He made the suggestion of using RRSPs and municipal bonds. I would be very interested if he wanted to impart that information to me. I would even invite him over to my office and we could have a chat about it. I am open to all reasonable suggestions that can contribute to the process. At least I garnered one bit of a constructive element in the hon. member's question. What are we going to do about jobs?
I indicated that we expect growth to re-emerge in the vicinity of 3.2 to 3.5 per cent. Our estimate is that there will be at least 300,000 new jobs.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, the minister stated that interest rates in Canada were the same as in the United States or so close that there was almost no difference.
With respect, what he was comparing was the prime rates in the two countries, which I suggest is not what the Leader of the Opposition was talking about. He was talking about the U.S. federal funds rate which is 4.5 per cent, at least it was as of yesterday. I understand it fell further yesterday afternoon so the spread is now more than 3 per cent.
The Bank of Canada's prime rate is 7.54 per cent which is an interest rate spread of 3.04 per cent. That was before yesterday's fall in the U.S. rate. The spread has increased and is more than 3 per cent. The traditional spread between these two rates is two percentage points.
The reason for the lack of prosperity is the size of this spread. It is overly large. I agree that interest rates have come down, but they have not come down far enough and I think the minister knows that. I would like him to comment on that and acknowledge that these figures given by the Leader of the Opposition are correct.
I would say to him that I agree with the other part of his comment. There are two reasons primarily why Ontario's economy is lagging. One is the present government in Ontario, which is a disincentive for investment in this province. It is costing us dearly in terms of the anticipated investment that should get us out of this recession, and it is not happening because of the incompetence of the government there. Also it is because of this interest rate spread which he knows is keeping the Canadian dollar artificially high and which is a disincentive to foreign investors, particularly in new plants because it costs more to do business in this country than it should. It is helping drive businesses south of the border and costing us dearly.
I wonder if he would comment on both those and acknowledge that the Leader of the Opposition's figures were correct.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I will comment on it. First and foremost Americans do not borrow money from the Fed; they borrow it from the banking system. Canadians do not borrow money from the Bank of Canada; they borrow from the banking system. The differential between the prime rate, which is the differential between the prime commercial bank rate in Canada and the commercial bank rate in the United States, is one half of one per cent. In the United States it is 7.5 and here it is 8 per cent.
The figure normally used for defining spreads is the three-month commercial paper which as of two o'clock yesterday was at 2.6 per cent. It has been hovering between 2.3 and 2.5, considerably down from the 5.65 per cent spread that was in existence a little over a year ago.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, let me ask the Minister of Finance a question.
He has gone through his usual performance today of giving us a great many optimistic statistics. How he can possibly justify, not after seven months but after seven and a half years of Conservative government, that all of the great plans and all of the changes of direction he said had to take place have led to a situation in which 1.5 million people are out of work? We have lost more jobs in the last year than the government promised we would gain from the free trade deal.
December 10, 1991

Does he not realize that his policies are bankrupt and that he must change those policies so as to put people back to work and make this country start to work together again?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, if I could influence world economic policy I suppose I would be able to fulfil the suggestion the hon. member has made.
We certainly never denied the fact that Canada was part of the global trading community. We are the seventh largest trader in the world. We are the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world because we trade. We trade very aggressively. Our fortunes are very closely tied to our ability to trade.
We are coming out of a recession, but we are also going through a period of transition in our economy. We are trying to improve our productivity to compete internationally in a global economy. There is a shift from the emphasis on the resource base and manufacturing sector to a more service and more intensive value added sector. All these things are part and parcel of the process we have to go through.
What we have been trying to do is put in place the kinds of structural changes that will allow that adjustment to take place more effectively. Perhaps that adjustment should have started earlier. Perhaps it should have started in the early eighties. We are paying a bit of the price today.
The fact that we had a low dollar in the period from 1976 to 1986 masked many of our competitive inefficiencies. We are going through that structural change today and we must get the fundamentals right.
If you go to the period 1970-73 we had low inflation and an average inflationary rate of 2.8 per cent. You had an average unemployment rate of 4.8 per cent and you had an average growth rate of just under 5 per cent.
Historically the only way that you can have long-term sustainable growth and low unemployment is to pursue the kind of policy we are pursuing. Why does the hon. member not reflect on a little history? Perhaps he will join us and agree with the fact that we are on the right course to provide a framework for sustainable recovery and sustainable growth with price stability.
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Mr. Flis:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca complimented the House on the calibre of the debate this morning on the economy. He said that is what we should be doing, and I agree with him.
I am wondering if I could have the unanimous consent of the House to extend the question period another five minutes because we do not have an opportunity such as we have to question and debate with the Minister of Finance. Five minutes would allow some of the other members to pose a few questions.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Parkdale-High Park has asked for consent to extend the usual period of comments and questions for another five minutes. Is there agreement?


An hon. member:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: I know the hon. member for Parkdale- High Park would not use up all the five minutes.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, the leader of our party, the deputy leader and I have asked many times in Question Period what the government is prepared to do to eliminate food banks from our
society.
One year ago I told the government it had two years left in its mandate and asked if it could give us some plan, some program, that it would eliminate food banks and child poverty from our society. The normal answer the minister always gave was to tell us how many more people are above the poverty line.
That is not an answer. The food banks are growing. The number of children who have to be given breakfast at school is increasing. Now the minister has one year left in his mandate. Could he share with us his government's plans to eliminate food banks from our society? It is a sore point and a shame to all of us in this House if the present government does not eliminate them.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, it is a very important question and it is a tragedy. The minister of health is developing a program with respect to child poverty. He has so indicated in the House.
It will be going through the normal process. I cannot give the hon. member an undertaking as to when it might be announced, but I can assure him that it is actively being worked on. After it goes through the normal

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cabinet committee process, I am sure something will be announced.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, in my former life as director of United Way of the lower mainland, I co-ordinated 32 unemployment action centres that were funded by the government for unemployed workers throughout British Columbia.
It was run by the B.C. Federation of Labour to help workers make the transition from unemployment insurance to welfare at a time when unemployment was lower than it is today. This government withdrew the funding through Canada Employment and Immigration for those action centres. There are still a couple that have managed to survive.
The government has not been able to reduce unemployment to even the levels that we faced when we had those action centres in the early 1980s and has withdrawn the funding. Could the hon. minister please tell us what this government's plans are to help the unemployed make the transition from unemployment insurance to welfare in their communities? Right now there is nothing.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared to look into the specific matter that the hon. member raised. I remind her that about three weeks ago the Minister of Employment and Immigration announced additional funding for the training and development portion under the Unemployment Insurance Program. He increased that funding from $1.4 billion to $1.8 billion. I am not sure whether this might be covered, but perhaps that is a way in which that might be explored.
I will undertake to look into the hon. member's question. If she will give us further details, perhaps I can have one of my staff members call her office today.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I have a short question for the Minister of Finance.
The tax designs, both personal and corporate in this country, are disincentives to productivity and consumer spending. I believe this government's phase one tax reform did not meet the objectives.
I would like to ask the minister if he will consider another shot at corporate and personal income tax reforms for the next budget.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the difficulty with tax reform is that it creates uncertainty. We have had so much of it that we have been trying to fine tune and stabilize the system.
The hon. member has a unique proposal that he has been championing. I have taken a look at it. The biggest problem I have with his proposal is that if it were to be implemented roughly 50 per cent of the taxpaying Canadians would end up paying more tax under his proposal than they are today.
If that is wrong then perhaps he might be able to enlighten me. We have gone through it and that is what we have ascertained.
If he is asking me whether we are contemplating major and substantial tax reform, the answer is no. We are looking at ways in which we can make the tax system work better. We will hopefully simplify and streamline it and make it more effective in terms of discharging the kinds of approaches that are necessary to create investment, jobs and economic activity.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate today.
It is important that we in this House are debating the economy and putting forth the kind of alternatives that we as parties propose. We did not hear many alternatives from the government or from the opposition, but what we can see in terms of what is happening to Canada today is that this government's economic policies have failed.
Indeed the neo-Conservative economic policies of both this government and former Liberal governments have led us to where we are today.
I do not believe I need to go on in any great length about the record of this government. Virtually every day in Question Period we raise questions with the government asking whether it will be open to changing the economic policies which are destroying this country. Every day we get the same answers. It is closed to listening to what Canadians have to say and it is certainly closed to the alternatives that this party has put forward. What this government cannot ignore is the 1.5 million unemployed in this country. This government cannot
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ignore the other 1.5 million who are on social assistance or unemployment insurance.
The record small business bankruptcies, the record number of farm bankruptcies and the industrial sector in this country that is rapidly disappearing are all characteristics of our economy and are directly related to the policies of this government. Millions of Canadians are living in poverty. One in six children is living in poverty. An increase in food banks and an increase in the number of homeless necessitate action now. The homeless, the poor, the unemployed and those on assistance cannot wait until the middle of 1992 or 1993. They need help now.
When this government was first elected in 1984 no one, not even its strongest opponents, could have imagined the depth to which it would take the Canadian economy. No one could imagine the extent to which this government, which called social programs a sacred trust, would diminish social programs in this country. No one could have imagined a country that had so much to look forward to now has so much to regret.
This government was elected, I might say with some enthusiasm, in 1984. It was returned with reluctance in 1988 and in the next election this government will be turfed out where it belongs for the destruction it has done to Canada.

What Canadians have learned in the last decade is that neo-Conservative policies do not work. They do not work with a Liberal government and they do not work with a Conservative government. I am talking about high interest rates, an overvalued Canadian dollar, the trade agreement between Canada and the United States, the GST, privatization and deregulation.
Let us be concise and to the point. Each one of these policies has been a total disaster. All together, they have meant economic ruin for Canadian families. The GST is perhaps the best example of these destructive economic policies. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has explained how this sales tax is destroying our country's small businesses. It has reduced the purchasing power of consumers, undermined consumer confidence and encouraged Canadians to shop in the U.S.
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The GST is the iceberg that is sinking the business sector of our economy. Canadian families may go under as well. If our economy makes it to port, it will be necessary to abolish the GST. Under an NDP government, the GST will be abolished.

The opposition, on the other hand, has been what we could call I suppose unequivocally equivocal when it comes to the goods and services tax. One day it is a tax that is regressive and discriminatory according to its leader. Another day it is a tax that would be scrapped but replaced with something like it. This is a bit confusing to Canadians.
One thing Canadians do know is that the Canadian economy cannot withstand the Conservative GST nor a Liberal GST. We have to scrap the GST, and that is the policy of the New Democratic Party.
Canadians are looking for a fair tax system. The Minister of Finance has just said that in this period of instability it would be difficult to consider major changes in our tax structure. I suggest to the minister that he go to any community in this country and ask the middle income person, ask the families that are struggling day to day to get by, whether this tax system needs to be reformed to create a fairer tax system. The minister will hear Canadians speak out and speak for a tax system that is fair, just and reformed.
The government and the opposition are quick to point out that if we get rid of the GST there must be alternatives. I certainly agree, as does my party. That is why we have put forward a number of alternatives aimed at closing tax loopholes and ensuring that the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
I heard a member of the Liberal caucus during a debate yesterday suggesting that the idea of taxing the rich is an old idea. I would suggest that member ask someone who is unemployed, someone who is in a food bank line if that old idea is not the best idea and whether is time to do it now.
Just to put forward a couple of suggestions about replacing the GST and funds that could be raised, wealth and inheritance taxes for example which are common in Europe should be implemented. A corporate minimum tax such as is in place in the United States must be implemented.

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Canada should put in place similar taxes to tax those who have the ability to pay rather than regressive taxes like the GST. Why do the Liberals and the Conservatives refuse to do this? Why were the corporate loopholes put in place in the 1970s by Liberal governments? They led to the rich not paying their fair share. Why do we have banks making $4 billion in profits and not paying their fair share of taxes?
The answer is quite simple and Canadians know it. Those same banks are those that fund the Liberal and Conservative parties and support those same political parties. It is time for a government that stands on the side of Canadian families, that stands for tax fairness and is not afraid to stand up and say so.
In these difficult times we have banks with $4 billion profits, and we have the highest number of billionaires per capita in any country in the world. This is a nation that is going through difficult times. We have millions living in poverty and, as I have said, many hundreds of thousands dependent on food banks and homelessness is increasing.
Is there anyone in this House who would disagree that those who have must pay their fair share for those who have not been as fortunate.
This is what an enlightened society is about. It is not a phrase we often hear any more, but surely all of us want Canada to be an enlightened society. Surely that must be what Canada is all about.

Let us talk about trade policy. Let us talk about the trade agreement between Canada and the United States, and about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been lost. These job losses are real. These jobs are now in plants in the United States or Mexico. Have any ministers bothered to go down and take a look recently at southern or southwestern Ontario or Quebec to see what this trade agreement has done to the auto parts industry and the manufacturing sector? I did, and my colleagues went as well. We are not talking about unemployment as an abstract concept. We are talking about people's lives, about families without jobs, about families who are looking for jobs. We are talking about families whose future is bleak. The plants that are closed will, in many cases, stay closed. These job losses are
permanent. That is what this government has done, to its everlasting shame.

The solution according to the government is to expand the trade deal to include Mexico, to take a bad deal and make it worse. Again the Liberal position on the trade deal with the United States is confusing at best. The Leader of the Opposition, I believe, changed the party's position from ending the trade deal with the United States to renegotiating certain aspects.
My caucus, my party and I remain firm. This deal has cost hundreds of thousands of Canadians their jobs. It has undermined social programs in this country. It has meant that we cannot even use our own oil and gas resources in a way that is favourable to our economy. The deal must go and must be abrogated.
I understand that this is not the position of the Official Opposition. On a continental deal with Mexico the Liberal Party appears to see negotiations toward an agreement with Mexico as an opportunity for Canada.
In a letter to a member of the public, the international affairs critic for the party who is the member from Winnipeg wrote: "The current North American free trade talks have given us a new window of opportunity where the government can insist on provisions which would safeguard the Canadian people and economy".
"Insist on provisions". They sold Canada out in the first place. Are we going to give them a second chance? The New Democratic Party says there are no second chances to sell out Canada.
A North American trade deal of the kind proposed by this government would be a disaster for Canadian workers, for many American workers and for Mexican workers.
A few weeks ago there was a policy conference by the Official Opposition which suggested a significant shift to the right to these same neo-Conservative policies that have led us to the poverty, to the declining business and to the bankruptcies that we see today.
Globalization is a fact of life. We all agree with that but that does not mean that we have to accept neo-Conservative prescriptions on how to deal with globalization.
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It does not mean that we have to embrace free market policies without any rules at all by governments in power.
There are two ways to approach globalization. One is to let it happen and accept all of its negative effects. The other is to work to ensure that greater international competition does not come at the expense of the workers of the world, of the families of the world and of the natural environment of this world.
The Canadian government's attitude seems to be that because many of the world's trading nations have a six-day week, 60-hour work week and $1 an hour wages we must diminish our own standards and wages in order to compete.
The Minister of Finance said again today that he does not like Ontario's proposal that there would be greater unionization of workers, greater powers for the workers. These are the very same workers who build this country and who are productive but who are suffering from a federal government's economic policies that have made it impossible for Canada to compete in many sectors.
Because of those nations that have weak environmental standards this government says that we have to reduce our environmental regulations in order to compete. That is obviously destructive and futile. It is also unnecessary.
What we can do in the face of globalization is establish international ground rules that ensure that workers are not exploited, that social programs are not destroyed and that the environment is not devastated.
The social charter that just this week the European community is discussing is an example of such ground rules. It is interesting that both the Liberal and Conservative parties have shown absolutely no interest in either national or international social charters. The government persists in saying that trade agreements are commercial agreements: they do not involve or affect people, they do not affect the workers and they do not affect the government. That is rubbish. At least the people of Europe recognize that.
would enforce a 48-hour week, break periods during work, a 14-week maternity leave, and consultation between employers and employees.
Colonialism in a geographic sense has been dead for a long time. I regret that the Prime Minister of Britain thinks that he can continue to entrench Thatcherite and Reaganite policies on the rest of the workers of Europe. Canada should be taking the lead to say we will not do that in our trade agreements and we will support a social charter.
We all agree that Canada must indeed be more competitive, but we can meet the challenge of globalization in my view in a positive way. Let us not look at it as an opportunity to reduce our rights and our freedoms but to enhance those of the exploited people of the world. No one should have to work a 60-hour or 70-hour week. No child of 12 should have to work. No family should have to live next to a toxic dump.
Let us make Canada more competitive. Rather than reducing standards and cutting money to education, health and social programs, and rather than perpetuating double digit unemployment, let us look at investing in people and putting people back to work.
Investment in education, job training and research in new technologies is just that. It is an investment. It creates opportunities. It creates jobs. It creates growth and in doing that it will mean debt reduction. Jobs must be a priority. Economic decision making must include social groups, labour, business and government.
This is what the world's most successful economies do and this is what Canada must do. Rather than imitating the world's weakest economies Canada should follow the course of the world's strongest. Instead of competing against the world's worst, let us aim to be the world's best. Let us be the world's best.
Finally I would like to put forward an amendment to the motion. The amendment reads:
That the motion be amended by adding the following words: "unparalleled since 1982".
There is one opponent of course in the EEC to a social Mr. Speaker: The House has heard the motion of the charter and that is the Prime Minister of Britain. Mr. hon. member for Yukon. On questions and comments, Major is opposed to the European charter because it the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood.

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Dennis Joseph Mills: I would like to say through you, Mr. Speaker, to the Leader of the New Democratic Party that there are many things she said in her address today that I agreed with. We in the Liberal Party support a priority on full employment. We also are addressing the issue of fairness in the tax designs of this country. She brought forward in her proposal, if I understood her correctly, that she basically wanted to get the needed revenues from wealthy and major corporations.
I have stood in this House many times and have acknowledged the fact that close to three years ago there were 6,200 people in this country who made in excess of $500,000 a year and did not pay any personal income tax. That is wrong. There were 2,200 corporations three years ago with retained earnings in excess of $25 million that did not pay any tax. I think that is unfair as well.
But if we were to put the emphasis on taxing those rich people, those people with wealth and those few large corporations that are left, it would not generate enough revenue for the Treasury to meet all of the social programs that are required to meet the lifestyle we want in this country.
Here is my question to the Leader of the New Democratic Party: What specific tax designs does she have in mind to raise or generate the funds required to operate this country beyond just taxing the few rich who are left in this country and the few large corporations that are left?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I presume the member is not suggesting that the wealthy should not pay their share of tax. He did say that there are number of people who are not paying their taxes. We are agreed on that.
In terms of alternatives let me mention several. I mentioned a minimum corporate tax in my comments where about 60,000 profitable corporations are not paying any tax. It is clearly not just. Most Canadians recognize that very clearly. Corporations should be paying their full share of taxes.
Second, there are a number of tax loopholes for those in upper income brackets. As the member mentioned there are many with incomes over $500,000 who do not pay any tax. Clearly that is not just and we must close those loopholes.
There are other taxes. There is a tax on wealth similar to that in Europe which has certainly proved to be efficient in raising revenues and certainly is not oppressive to those in the middle income range because it is only dealing with those in veiy high capital and income brackets.
We talked about getting rid of the $100,000 lifetime capital gains exemption. Clearly this benefits those who have money. It takes away tax revenues from those who need the funds and detracts from redistributing income in our society. This is one of the very important tasks of any government.
Consider the entertainment tax which costs Canadian taxpayers a billion dollars in tax revenue. Any government has to choose priorities. Surely the priority cannot be that someone gets a tax write-off for a box in the SkyDome or for business lunches rather than kids getting lunches and having the opportunity to eat. That is the trade off we are talking about.
The hon. member also spoke about tax options. Those are three I have mentioned. As the hon. member knows there are many billions in taxes that are uncollected. He will remember that just a couple of weeks ago the government, not to the surprise of any of us in the New Democratic Party, discovered billions of dollars in uncollected corporate taxes. We suggest that even under the existing rules the quantity of taxes that could be collected are not being done. This has been reinforced time and time again by the Auditor General of Canada.
Finally I would like to comment on the hon. member's point about full employment. I think he is quite right that in this society we need full employment as a goal. What that means, having adopted that as a goal, is that we structure our training programs and research and development toward that goal.
The unemployment rate for young people in this countiy is a tragedy. A country that cannot offer a future to its young people certainly is not going to have the confidence of Canadians who are young or old.
The New Democratic Party has long advocated a policy of full employment. We continue to advocate that. We believe it can be done, but it requires a different set of attitudes as well as concrete programs in training and education and income support.
December 10, 1991


Mr. Rene Soetens (Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to ask a question of the hon. member for Yukon who is the Leader of the NDR
I did listen to her presentation. I certainly must congratulate her in one sense because she did present a very clear alternative to the system we presently have with the government I am a member of.
I would like to come to the point. In the riding of Ontario that I represent members of the business community are very demoralized. They are afraid to invest their money in new plants and new equipment. They are not afraid to invest in other parts of Canada. They are afraid to invest in my riding and in the province of Ontario. Part of the reason they are afraid to invest in Ontario is because of the dramatic increases they are seeing in social programs.
The member opposite in her presentation said that the Government of Canada or the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party was funded by the banks and the large corporations. There is no doubt about the fact that the unions in this country fund the NDP. In Ontario we have an NDP government that has brought forward union legislation. That has been tremendously discouraging to the investors in the province of Ontario and has clearly given advantage to the unions. The end result is that it has been a direct attack by the NDP government on the investors who would improve the economy of Ontario. Yet I have listened to the member say in public statements that she supports the policies of the Government of Ontario and would implement similar policies.
Now my question gets down to the final point. I met last week with a manufacturer who is in the process of announcing and will announce in the next two weeks a $100 million expansion of manufacturing capacity in Canada. This is in another province, even though he and his company are headquartered in my riding in the province of Ontario. He blames it squarely on the NDP policies of the Government of Ontario.
I have a question for the member. She stated that she supports the policies of Ontario. Heaven forbid if she ever forms a government in this country, but would she carry on the same policies that her party has in the province of Ontario?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the hon. member that he look at the polls. The fact is that over 40 per cent of Ontario people support the Ontario government. He might want to look at how many support the Conservative Party in Ontario. The reason they do
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not is because the Conservative Party federally and provincially, but particularly federally at this point, has caused unprecedented unemployment in Ontario. I think almost one in ten people in metro Toronto is living on some form of social assistance. This happened long before the New Democratic government.
This federal government insists: "If you just wait long enough we are going to help you out". The churches used to ask us to wait for the afterlife. Now it is the Conservative Party. There are poor people out there. There are hungry people out there and thank God they have a government like the Ontario government that cares about them and that has put in some policies to care about them.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I was impressed by the serious proposals given by the Leader of the New Democratic Party with specific alternatives. Even the government's spokespersons and others recognized that.
In the country right now there is disillusionment with politics and politicians. The Leader of the New Democratic Party says she will bring in a minimum corporate tax in this country, there will be succession duties and there will be the elimination of the GST. Can she tell us a timeframe? What record can she point to besides socialized medicine and other efforts by the New Democratic Party to lead this country rather than follow blindly behind?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Those are very excellent questions from my hon. colleague. Certainly if I were to start listing the excellent contributions that New Democratic governments have made to this country it would be a very long list.
I should mention the record of my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca when he was the premier of British Columbia. He too established programs that were in the interests of the people of British Columbia. He took hold of that economy and said: "We are going to put in measures that benefit the people of British Columbia and in turn benefit this country".
My colleague asks about timetables. Clearly it is the policy of this party to bring in a fair tax system. In the 1960s the Carter commission had many good suggestions that Liberal governments refused to look at and Conservative governments have failed to look at. We have the alternatives. Tax reform is a priority. A fair tax system is the priority for a New Democratic Party. I can assure my

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colleague and I can assure Canadians that will be one of our first priorities as government.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wish to indicate that the speakers henceforth from the Liberal Party will have 10-minute speeches. Our times will be split into two 10-minute speeches, each with five-minute question and comment periods.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I will ignore the comment by the hon. member. He is trying to suggest our policy is split, but it is not as badly split as the party on my left.
I think you will find unanimous consent in the House to sit through the lunch hour. In other words our scheduled adjournment hour of 1.23 will be moved to two o'clock. I think if you ask you will find unanimous consent for that, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Hon. members have heard the terms of the motion. Is there unanimous consent to extend the length of speeches during the lunch break?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Ottawa West for 10 minutes.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, the comments I have to make in the next while are very much comments on paradise lost and a bit of despair that we are ever going to see paradise regained.
I want to talk about the code words of the years since 1984. I want to talk about the code words that have become empty words, hollow words, unkept promises and failed dreams for Canadians. I want to start with the most famous of the empty words that we have heard from this government and this Prime Minister about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Unemployment in this country right now is affecting
1.5	million people. That means there is virtually nobody in this country whose family, friends, neighbours are not touched by the devastation of being without a job and
adequate income to provide for one's family, survival and comfort.
Unemployment has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the number of bankruptcies and is partially the result of a dramatically increased number of bankruptcies. This government that came into office promising that Canada was open for business does not understand small business. It does not understand that 80 per cent of the new jobs in this country come from small independent Canadian owned businesses. Its policies have been devastating to those very businesses that are essential if we are to get Canadians working again.
On a larger scale, we have now lost .5 million manufacturing jobs. The number is bad enough but nearly one-quarter of the nation's manufacturing capacity is gone. It has gone in a very short period of time as a result of the policies of this government.
Getting Canada working means getting Canadians working again. Canadians working means people have income, are paying taxes and are able to buy goods and services that create jobs for other Canadians. It means a drop in the number of people who have to turn to government to help them through these difficult times with unemployment insurance and social services programs.
Jobs, jobs, jobs are empty words, hollow words for millions of Canadians today, and for more that 1.5 million over the course of this year. It is especially devastating when we know the extent to which it is affecting young children. This should be a happy time of year, but families are worried about their very survival and are unable to celebrate and join in sharing the joy of the season.
I want to talk about the other code words: globalization, competitiveness and free trade. Canadians know nothing is free and they are only discovering now how much free trade is costing us.
I remind the government that when it did its predictions on free trade and the benefits, not too many Canadians believed them. But the government believed, even it knew that any benefits to come from the free trade agreement were based on a dollar that was at maximum 85 cents.

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For every one-hundredth of a penny the dollar went over 85 cents would in fact be negative effects of free trade. Yet it has consistently allowed the dollar to go and stay close to 90 cents.
The high interest rate policy of this government has devastated Canadian businesses and manufacturers. There have been 33 new taxes since this government has come into office. We now have a trade deficit for the first time in 15 years. There is a trade deficit in manufactured goods. No wonder we have lost so much of our manufacturing base.
Even more importantly we have this attitude that somehow straight raw market forces are what builds a country and what will let us get out there and compete and prosper in the global community.
That has been the philosophy of this government since 1984, and we are not prospering. We are not growing. We are not competing. Instead we see an attitude of freeing capital to move anywhere it wants in the world. The government is seeking out the cheapest labour and resources and is more concerned about helping those global dollars than helping their people.
We see that as the attitude of this government. We are seeing a new economic colonialism that is prepared to say that those who have least in any country in the world will have even less than they have now.
The third code word I keep hearing from this government which has no substance behind it is that people are our most valuable resource. If that were true then why have we seen a cut in unemployment and a cut in services to help people when they are going through difficult times created by this government's made-in-Ca-nada recession?
Why have we seen hundreds of millions cut from training? Why have we seen no worker adjustment programs? Why have we seen no move on a good national apprenticeship programs? Why have we seen the devastation of science and research in this country so that our bright young scientists have to go south of the border or elsewhere in the world to use the talents that we as Canadians have paid to develop in them? Why can a bright young man with a Ph.D. and years of aeronautical experience in Canada not find a job and contribute to the growth of Canada and to our future?
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Why do we now see in Ontario, the richest province in this country, an increase in welfare payments of only 2 per cent when inflation is 4 per cent and more? It is bare subsistence living for tens of thousands of Ontario families.
We are told: "Do without social programs. Do without education. Do without medicare. Do without training. Do without many of our social programs so that we can build an economy and have those things in the future". We see the doing without, but we do not see much of the future.
I want to speak briefly about the fourth code word, sustainable development. We know that our economic prosperity depends on the preservation of our resources. There is no area of economic growth or prosperity that does not depend on natural resources.
Yet we have a government that produces a well developed proposal for an economic union, but totally ignores the fact that sustainable development means integrating our environmental planning with our economic planning.
We have a government that is negotiating a new free trade deal, an economic instrument if ever there was one. It is refusing to integrate environmental considerations with that economic agreement.
I want to close briefly by talking about an experience I had a couple of weeks ago when I spoke to a small group of immigrants. A gentleman from El Salvador who has been here for about five years said to me: "What we cannot understand is why you have a government that keeps destroying things instead of building things".
I said: "You know, you just turned on a light in my head because all of you in this room have been in Canada less than seven years. You have never known another government besides the Conservative government. Let me tell you about when we had governments in this country that created medicare, that created the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that created pensions and indexation so that people could live decently, that created unemployment insurance, that created legislation that protected workers". We had that kind of government in Canada and we will have it again when a Liberal government is returned to office. There is no hope for any improvement with this government.

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René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to ask this member a question because she talked about the group she met with which had only been in Canada seven years and had not known previous governments. She went on to explain some of the things that previous governments had done.
I wonder if she proceeded to identify that the previous government forced an inflation rate in this country substantially higher than that of the United States and that the previous government put in place a National Energy Program which desperately attacked the wishes and needs of western Canada. Did she talk about a government that caused interest rates to climb to 22 per cent, that caused mortgage rates to climb so high that thousands upon thousands of people lost their houses because of the economic policies of a Liberal government that she was talking about? Did she talk to those people about the $200-odd billion debt that was created by that previous government in financing all of those many things that she took credit for in her presentation?
I am really curious. Was the member honest with the people when she talked about previous governments and the mess they left this country in? If they had not been stopped on the track they were on then, I hazard that many of us today would not be in this Parliament debating in such an open and free fashion the economic prospects of this country. We would be presently run by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank because under the policies of the government that she says was so great in the past we would have lost all control over all economic decisions. I wonder if she explained that to the people she was meeting with the other night.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could tell me which of the programs and policies he is disagreeing with. Which does he not think were worth Liberal governments doing? Was it medicare? Was it the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Was it pensions with indexing so people are not poor in their old age? Was it unemployment insurance? These all seem to be programs that his government seems determined to get rid of.
I suspect also that we should go out and ask Canadians whether they preferred the kinds of programs that Liberal governments had over the years or the kinds of
programs that his government is now doing and whether they felt more optimism in the 1970s and early 1980s than the despair they feel now with this government. I suspect the answers to those questions are in the polls which tell us the government is at a popularity level of less than 15 per cent.
I really did not get into a lot with the group of immigrants I spoke to. I did not get as far as telling them how this government has managed to go through a period of relative prosperity, high employment, positive trade deficit and still more than doubled the debt of this country and more than doubled the amount of taxes these people pay simply to service the debt.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to debate a very important motion presented by the Leader of the Opposition.
This government was first elected seven years ago on a promise that it would put the economy back on a solid footing and get the national debt under control. I think, if it were not so serious for the future of Canada, those promises would be laughable.
Seven years ago the Conservatives were full of ideas. They were going to give Canadians an unheard level of prosperity. They were going to make Canada competitive with new research and development commitments. They were going to cut the tax burden and create a climate favourable to business and business activity and hence economic growth. So much potential, so much disappointment.
As we survey the economic landscape seven years after, we see the wreckage created by the Conservative economic agenda. We see the industrial heartland of Canada slowly shutting down as plant after plant closes up and heads elsewhere.
We see Montreal, formerly a vibrant manufacturing centre, being turned into a desert where 11.8 per cent are unemployed. We see the farmers in the west and the fishermen in the east being told by the federal government that the cupboard is bare.
There is definitely anger in the land. The farmers, the fishermen and the unemployed are getting tired of this government's indifference and excuses. The government tries to pin the blame on past administrations but after seven years that excuse is wearing thin. After all, its blunders stand alone.
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We can look at the national debt. In only seven years the Conservatives took the debt that had accumulated from 1867 to 1984 and nearly tripled it to over $400 billion. That is, I believe, an incontestable example of bad management.
The Conservatives also promised to get the deficit under control. Yet, even though they governed during the record boom years, they never managed to bring the deficit under $28 billion. The Tories can come up with all kinds of excuses, but the fact remains that these people who were elected because they were perceived as competent money managers could not get the deficit under control even in the boom years of the mid-1980s.
They could not get the deficit under control despite massive spending cuts and tax increases which have resulted in an additional income tax burden of $1,500 per Canadian family. Even the GST, which has done so much damage to business and consumer confidence, has not brought down this deficit.
There are many other examples of their economic mismanagement. In September Canada suffered its first trade deficit in 15 years. For a country like ours which is so dependent on trade, that is cause for alarm. Last month the Canadian economy lost another 49,000 jobs. This was added to 1.5 million Canadians who are unemployed, but it was not reflected in the unemployment rate because 45,000 Canadians left the labour force. In other words, things got so bad for them for so long that the people's UI is running out and they are giving up and joining the welfare rolls of this country.
Speaking of people giving up, what of the 250,000 manufacturing jobs which have vanished since 1988? In the 1988 election the Prime Minister told Canadians not to worry about free trade because there were going to be adjustment programs for displaced workers. Three years later those programs are only on paper.
Conservative mismanagement is easy to explain. They have no coherent plans. They have no master plan, no innovative plan to deal with the emerging global marketplace. The old ways of doing economics, raising taxes and cutting spending are no longer enough to deal with the new creative approaches used internationally.
I do not think that their strategy will make Canada globally competitive. It is no wonder that as a nation we are faring so badly. On the other hand, I must say that there is an answer and the Liberal Party of the 1990s has
a clear, precise and well planned agenda for rebuilding Canada's economy, an economy that since 1984 has been mismanaged to the point of causing unnecessary and irresponsible pain for Canadian small business, individuals, families and entire towns and cities.
We have a set of five Liberal principles on the economy. In restoring Canada's industrial strength, interest rates and the value of the Canadian dollar must be allowed to fall gradually, helping Canadians and their products to compete better internationally. New initiatives are required to promote labour force training, research and development and marketing support.
We must ensure a fair tax system. The Leader of the Opposition knows that the problems of unfair taxation cannot be solved overnight. While it would be responsible to offer tax cuts for everyone, Liberals have called for a fair tax system, especially to the middle class.
We have a comprehensive and creative adjustment policy. A Liberal government would introduce comprehensive adjustment programs to help both firms and workers adjust to the economic changes now in play.
Canada must help its workers to get the training they will need to have high skilled, high paying jobs in industries of the future. We must have balanced regional economic growth. All regions of Canada must be allowed to achieve their economic potential. Future industries should be based on the foundation of our existing resource industries and Canada should be seizing the opportunity in fast growing markets in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Rim.
We must have a fiscally responsible government. Canada's yearly deficits and accumulated debt are becoming an increasing drag on economic growth. The Leader of the Opposition has said that a Liberal government will scrutinize every line item of spending and only use government to do things it can and should do.
In conclusion, I would like to express the disappointment that all Canadians feel with this government's failed economic policies. Canadians, I truly believe, are not asking for too much. They want to feel that their government in Ottawa is fair, that their government is just, and that their government cares about their present state. Canadians want to feel that they live in a nation in which dreams and aspirations are still part of the national fibre. They want to know that their children

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and their children's children live with the hope of a brighter tomorrow.
At a time when people need to be taken care of, the Conservative government is abdicating its responsibility to the citizens of this country. I hope the Leader of the Opposition's motion in this House today has rekindled some of the necessary human feelings, necessary human passions, that all governments must possess in order to bring back faith, confidence and trust in a nation that is presently searching for a sense of identity.
It is one year since I was re-elected to the House of Commons. I was really hoping that I could get up in this Chamber and bring good news to the residents of York North. Unfortunately today I have to rise once again and say that the conditions for the residents of York North and Canadians from coast to coast to coast are worse. There is a lack of confidence. There is a crisis in confidence in this country. I think the government must seriously look within itself and find the inner strength necessary to bring about the type of positive changes that will take care of Canadians, particularly those people who are being hit by this unfair and unjust economic recession that has created so much heartache in many families and in many communities.
I trust that the government is listening to the message because it is a message that comes from the people of Canada.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from York North on his re-election.
I want to deal specifically with a question related to the economy. In all of our ridings we spend time when we are home going to the local restaurants. I have a couple of favourite spots. I have a place in the south end of my riding on Yonge Street called the Albion restaurant where I go on a Saturday morning to try to get a pulse on what is going on in the community. I know that the member for York North does the same thing in his community. We are constantly hearing that the tax designs are a real disincentive to growth and achievement in this country. The member lives in probably the wealthiest region in all of Canada. We heard NDPers take some rather cheap shots, I thought, when they said: "Let's just tax the wealthy and that will probably fix all our problems". I do not agree. I think people who pay absolutely no taxes should obviously pay their fair share.
But I would like the member who knows his constituents well to comment on the fact that people are not really against paying their fair share. At least that is my sense of this. Having said all that, they want some kind of a tax design that is going to sort of stimulate productivity rather than a tax design that is going to be a disincentive. I wonder if he would comment for those of us who are in regions of the country that may not be as well off as his. I wonder if he could share with us some of their comments as well.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood for his question, the sincerity of his question. He has been a member of Parliament who has worked extremely hard at devising a proposal that is obviously his own. I know that he has spent a great deal of time thinking about ways and means to have a tax structure that best reflects the aspirations of Canadians. I think he makes a very important point.
The people of the riding of York North like all Canadians do not mind paying their fair share of taxes. They do however resent it if the taxation system is imposed and if it indeed impedes economic activity and growth in this country.
I say to the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood that the Liberal Party, as it did in the goods and services tax debate, clearly outlined principles that we will adhere to in our tax reform package. These are principles such as simplicity, visibility, fairness, the ability to pay and revenue neutrality. These are principles we are going to stick to.
We are not going to throw them away like the Conservatives did with the goods and services tax. We are going to have a tax system that is going to make Canadians want to get out there and produce and bring about economic growth.
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On the point of taxation, I think at some time we are quite parochial in this House to think that the deficit is going to be reduced through an increase of taxation. I think that is unbelievable.
The only way we are going to reduce that deficit is going to be through economic productivity and growth and through having an economy that is going to expand. We have to make the pie bigger.
I am often puzzled by debates in this House concerning taxation, that we are still using this old-fashioned way of dealing with the deficit. What we need are innovative measures that will bring about economic growth and facilitate the process for those people who want to invest in people and indeed in the economic structure of this country. Government should be the key facilitator.


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to participate in this debate today on the government's record in managing our economic affairs.
Unlike some of the other speakers who have spoken previously and who undoubtedly will follow me, I will speak about the record as it is and not as they imagine it to be.
I would like to remind this House that the government of which I am a member came to power some seven years ago. It inherited a backlog of deficit spending and accumulated debt unprecedented in Canada's history. I suspect if you truly check around the world, on a per capita basis there are not too many countries that saw a growth in their debt and deficit to levels that Canada did. Nothing can wish this record of fiscal irresponsibility away.
It is to the credit of this government that instead of trying to wish the problem away, it has taken some firm action to correct it and I might say particularly in the last three years. It is false and irresponsible to insist that one can spend one's way to prosperity. Instead, the government is taking the responsible course of putting our fiscal house in order as the only sure foundation on which to build the strength of Canada, growth and prosperity.
The facts are quite plain. Canada has a $400 billion deficit. It has a federal debt problem today because during the seventies and eighties governments spent
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more on programs, public services and interest than they received in revenues. While the deficit grew, rather than cut back, governments spent even more money.
By 1984-85 the government had a $16.5 billion operating deficit just on programs and operations. Add to that another $22 billion in interest costs on the national debt and we had a deficit of $38.5 billion. The government was spending $1.33 for every $1 in taxes that it took in.
The result of that "spend today, pay tomorrow" policy was to boost the national debt by nearly eightfold in just 10 years. It went from $27 billion in 1974-75 to $206 billion in 1984-85. Unfortunately the spending track that the Government of Canada was on was almost impossible for us to get off. In the last six years the debt has almost doubled to a level of about $400 billion.
Since the Conservative government came to office, it has been following a very consistent plan to increase Canada's economic potential. In fact the previous member who just spoke said that the solution is not increased taxation but an increase in the over-all pie. I can tell you that the government that I am a member of is in fact trying to do exactly that.
We have had to attack the debt challenge on two fronts. First we had to introduce fundamental structural reforms to revitalize the private sector and encourage the growth that makes possible new government revenues. These initiatives include deregulation of key economic sectors, tax reform, privatization of more than 20 Crown corporations, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and scrapping of the Foreign Investment Review Agency and the National Energy Program. It has provided a more positive investment climate.
The result of these reforms has provided real fiscal benefits. For example no longer are taxpayers footing the bill for de Havilland and Canadair. The spending on those by the end of 1984 had cost the government at least $2.5 billion. Privatization has helped reduce the public payroll by 80,000 in Crown corporation employees. In the post office, government payments this year will be $500 million less than in 1984-85.
In fact I heard members of the NDP, including the Leader of the NDP, speaking a little earlier about minimum corporate tax. I guess what I would ask her is why, when the government introduced the minimum

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corporate tax in this House, did her party vote against it? In fact that tax is now in place.
We also put in place a thing called a tax on capital. Why is it then that the NDP party and in fact the Liberal Party voted against those two proposals? They talk about fairness in the tax system yet on those two very specific points both opposition parties clearly voted against them.
We also recognize that Canada's debt burden was itself a barrier to economic growth putting pressures on taxes, inflation and ultimately interest rates. That meant further direct action was needed at the source of the debt problem itself, which was federal spending. We took action.
Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, we established a broad program to control spending. We have made absolute cuts in programs wherever possible and applied severe restraint on growth in other areas. The government has completely eliminated programs on home insulation, oil substitution and heavy water plants. As a result, federal energy subsidies today are $2.4 billion less than they were seven years ago.
We have closed military bases. We have cut back payments to VIA Rail. The size of the civil service has been reduced. It has been difficult but we have made those decisions. That discipline has delivered major results. From 1984-85 to 1990-91 growth in federal program spending-that is all spending except interest payments and debt-has been held to just 3.7 per cent a year. That compares with an average annual growth rate of 13.8 per cent in the previous 15 years.
We have gone even further because we have introduced into this House a proposal in the last budget which is now being finalized by the Minister of Finance, which is a spending control act. This will in fact restrict our arms and our ends and the way government spends money for the next five years.
It is important to recognize that two-thirds of the improvement in the operating balance has in fact been accomplished by expenditure control. Revenues account for only one-third of the improvement. As a matter of
fact, government revenues as a share of Gross Domestic Product are no higher than they were in the early 1970s.
Because the government has achieved this operating surplus, the entire increase in the national debt since 1984-85 is due only to compound interest or interest charges on the debt we inherited. The fact is we have to make those interest payments and that means further deficits and still growing debt and the interest charges that debt imposes.
That is why in the February budget there were further measures introduced: first, to hold the deficit to $30.5 billion this year despite the impact of the recession, the agricultural subsidy war and the possible Persian Gulf war expenditures. That was a major accomplishment, in my mind. Second, we plan on getting the deficit down to $25 billion next year for the first time in a decade. We will be setting it on a path where it will continue to fall even further. Third, we plan on eliminating the need for new government borrowings on financial markets by 1994-95. This will be the first time in 25 years that no such borrowings will be necessary by the Government of Canada.
It has been tough and we have got to take some actions. I mentioned we introduced the spending control act which establishes very specific limits on program expenditure growth for the next five years. In fact the finance committee has reviewed that particular spending control act and has made its report.
Nearly all of the increases in program spending over the next two years are concentrated where they are in fact most needed: old age security, unemployment insurance benefits, increases in transfers to lower income provinces and social assistance transfers under the Canada Assistance Plan.
Complimenting the spending control act, we have the debt servicing and reduction account which will ensure that all net revenues of the GST will only be used to service and reduce the debt itself ultimately. That is what Canadians demanded during the GST hearings. That is what they demanded when the GST was put in place. They wanted a guarantee that the government was not going to spend the revenue of the GST on new programs. They have that commitment in the form of legislation from our government.
Finally we established specific inflation targets to get inflation down to less than 2 per cent by the end of 1995. We have seen already that lower inflation is the key to
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interest rate reduction. The banks prime lending rate is at the lowest level since the early 1970s. Some mortgage rates are lower than they have been since the 1960s. I can vouch for that personally. We purchased our first house in 1970 and in that entire period from 1970 through until today I have never had a mortgage rate as low as I have today. There are results.
In my constituency, which has substantial housing development going on, even in the recession environment, I can tell you that mortgage rates are very important to my constituents. Lower rates have reduced in fact the cost of servicing the debt.
Good economic management means focusing and facing up to the fiscal reality. It does not mean promising silver bullet solutions, lower interest rates at whim, increased government spending that ignores our destructive debt burden or a dollar lower than the market determines that the opposition is trying to sell the Canadians. Those are just snake oil potions. They are all recipes for enduring competitive weakness and national decline.
We have to keep things in perspective as we look ahead to the challenges that we face as Canadians. We have one of the most prosperous countries in the world with an enviable record of wealth, income and job creation. We have the seventh largest economy in the world. We have the second highest standard of living. In other words, we should recognize and build on those strengths. By holding the course of putting our fiscal house in order, our government has chosen the responsible course. This is one that means we can and will be able to build on strength and not weaknesses. Finally I would like to turn to another vital area where the government has proposed ways to strengthen our economic potential. These are the proposals we have made to improve the working of our national economic union. These proposals would strengthen our economy in two important ways.
Before I list those ways, I should point out that in my riding we have discussions going on about the constitutional proposals that are before the country. Many Canadians seem to come out with the standard line: "Would you forget about the Constitution? Would you deal with our economic problems?" Well, those Canadians obviously have not read the proposals to their fullest, because if they truly look at them they will see
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that of the 28 proposals out there before Canadians right now, 14 of them deal with the economic issues of this country. That is where we need to make progress, and clearly that is where the government is acting.
I would like to return to my comments about two very specific issues. First we are trying to remove barriers to the free flow of persons, goods, services and capital.
Second, we are facilitating a process of joint decision making by federal and provincial governments on issues where greater co-ordination and harmonization can improve the operation of our economic union. The internal barriers in our domestic market represent a great burden to all Canadians.
The Canadian Manufacturers' Association estimates that the cost to the average family of four in Canada is $1,000 a year because of those barriers that exist. Those are internal barriers, provincial trade barriers operating against Canadians.
To deal with that, we have proposed an amendment of the so-called common market clause in the Constitution. It would empower Canadians, both businesses and individuals, to challenge through the courts government practices that create barriers or restrictions to the free flow of people, goods, services and capital within Canada on the basis of provincial or territorial boundaries.
The effect of such constitutional amendment would be clear and simple. It would provide all Canadians with the right to pursue the livelihood of their choice and economic opportunities wherever they choose to do so across our great country. However, a strengthened, competitive economic union will require more than this. It will also require greater co-ordination and harmonization of policies between all levels of government, but particularly between the federal government and the provincial governments.
In the past, federal and provincial governments have had no mechanisms through which they could work together as partners to implement beneficial economic policies. In the absence of such a mechanism, federal-provincial meetings have often seemed to many Canadians as little more than a tug of war because there was no way to take decisions and no need for anyone to stand up and be counted.
We have to do better. What is needed is a joint decision-making mechanism that will allow governments of all levels, working together, to take actions to improve the efficient functioning of our national economy. To this

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end we have proposed a second amendment to the Constitution.
We are proposing that Parliament be empowered to make laws for the efficient functioning of the economic union with, and I stress only with, the agreement of at least seven provinces with 50 per cent of the population. Because of that provision such a power would not and indeed could not be used as a vehicle for a power grab by the federal government.
Unlike other federal-provincial powers in the Constitution, this power could not be used unless there was an agreement between both levels of government. Its application would be restrictive to co-operative measures that improve the functioning of the Canadian national economic union.
It is important to note that many of our international competitors have strengthened their economic unions by transferring powers to central authorities. Ours is a different approach, with proposals that apply to both levels of government. It is a model that calls for co-operation, not domination.
There is another important point I should add. Not only are our proposals designed to improve the way governments work together, but they also reflect the goal of making the whole economic policy process more open and transparent to the public at large.
Canadian taxpayers and business decision makers have a right to be better informed about policy issues, objectives and constraints. More open and better informed exchanges of views between government and the public is an important foundation to improve our economic performance and our ability to work together. Our government is committed to a course of fiscal progress toward the ultimate goal of debt freedom. Surely everyone in this House would support that goal. It is also important that we keep current economic circumstances in proper perspective. We must not allow an unjustified mood of pessimism about our economic prospects to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We should also recognize that we have made real progress in getting our financial house in order.
Only by sticking to this responsible course can we ensure and fulfil our future prosperity. That is what good economic management really means.


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke talked about his responsible policies and how well they have worked for the country.
If they have worked so well, can he explain why 1.5 million to 2 million people are out of work today and 1 million children live in poverty? If his government's interest rate policy is working so well, why have we seen a drop in new housing starts over the last little while across the country rather than an increase? Surely the member has to take off his glasses and start looking at the world as it really is.
His government's policies have failed and he should admit they have failed as R. B. Bennett did at the end of the last depression, and start changing those policies so that they can address the reality of the fact that we are deeply in a recession and need some action on the part of government to bring us out.
His government's policies have clearly failed. How does the hon. member explain high levels of unemployment, high levels of poverty, low levels of housing starts and economic activities? Clearly he must recognize that his government's policies have failed.


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, no one can be happy with
1.5	million people out of work. In fact the number may even be slightly higher than that. We cannot be pleased with that. What the member is saying is that you ignore the concepts of debt, inflation and interest rates.
If he would truly look at it, the very people he is speaking about and those at the poverty levels are hurt more by inflation than anyone else in this country. They are hurt more by high interest rates than anyone else in this country.
It is very clear that you need to address the fundamentals to encourage investment. I would like to give him the best quote of all, because we look at some of our neighbours and some of our competitors around the world as doing really well. I would just like to quote him one line which appeared in the December 16 edition of Fortune Magazine: "What the economy needs now is not fiscal stimulus. It would send interest rates soaring. A better idea for the long term is to cut taxes on investment and pay the bills".
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Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member for Ontario. I tend to agree with some of the views he presented in his speech.
He did say in his address that the government's inflation target was approximately 2 per cent by 1995. We are sitting here in 1991 with an inflation rate that for the last two months on an individualized basis has been almost zero. Probably by the first quarter of 1992 there will be no inflation in this country. I believe the Minister of State for Finance in this House just yesterday or the day before said that.
This is a very heavy ratchet on inflation. The member knows this causes a lot of pain in the economy. In order to bring inflation to that level this quickly, it is obvious that the results are high unemployment and a nervousness in the constituency in the country, even though there is a low bank rate. It is the lowest in 18 years, I acknowledge that, and people are not spending. There are a lot of retailers out there right now in the busiest month of the year who wonder, because of the drag on consumer spending, whether or not they are going to make it past February 1 or whatever.
My question for the member who sits on the finance committee is: At what point do you let up on that ratchet on inflation, especially when it is zero, to try to let people revive again and get that economy going? At what point?


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his question.
Presumably his comments about the current inflation rates are correct. The fact of the matter is that in the three years I have been on the finance committee we have done a number of studies on inflation rates and interest rates. There is no doubt there is a direct link between the two.
There are some other things, of course, that impact on interest rates, but inflation is certainly one of them.
Although we have two or three months of inflation numbers that are extremely low, I think what we on the government side are saying in our objective of a 2 per cent inflation rate is a sustained 2 per cent.
I would concur with the member that zero per cent is not sustainable. It is not healthy for the economy to have
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a zero inflation rate very long. I guess at some point we have to allow the economy some growth. We have acknowledged that in the context of reduction in interest rates that have already taken place.
I personally believe we will see more of that. I hope that will carry on. If you can get that rate down to 7 per cent or 6 per cent, I think consumers across this country will realize first of all that putting money in the bank is not all that lucrative, as was indicated this morning.
There are people saving money right now. The minute they have confidence in the economy, which we think they will have, they will have the resources to spend. They will also be able to borrow money at a very competitive rate which will also boost consumer spending. I think at that point, at a low inflation rate, we will see the economy functioning extremely well. I believe we will see that within a very short term, in the next quarter if not the one after that.
[Translation}


Mr. Pierre H. Vincent (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, allow me to congratulate my colleague from Ontario on his excellent speech. I think that he gave a good overview of Canada's past and present situation.
That being said, I would like my colleague to tell me how come the national debt, which was about $200 billion in 1984 when this government was elected, is around $400 billion. I want to ask the hon. member whether it is true that 90 to 95 per cent of the government's annual deficit since 1984 is interest it had to pay on the debt that the former Liberal government left us.
Doing this calculation, I must say that in 1984 I had a $200 billion debt with x billion in interest to pay and so on every year since then. All the interest payments made since then amount to the increase in the national debt that we have today.


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Trois-Rivieres for the question.
Certainly prior to 1984 the growth in government debt was tied twofold. First, they were spending more on programs than they were generating in revenue. On top of that there was the interest cost.

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Since 1984, if you look at the six-year budgets-I am not sure of this year's number-of the Conservative government, of the over-all growth in debt of the Government of Canada about $15 billion was because the government spent more on programs in total over that six years than it generated in revenue.
The other $185 billion in growth on the debt of this country was in fact directly related to the interest payments we had to make on the $200 billion debt that was there when the government was elected in 1984.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, to the member, I note the figures on small business and personal bankruptcies over the past year have skyrocketed.
The last figures for October show there have been 6,896 businesses and consumers declaring bankruptcy. Of those 1,156 businesses went bankrupt in October, which is 22 per cent higher than last month and 1 per cent higher than one year ago.
How can the member assert that the Progressive Conservative government's policies in monetary and fiscal matters are working when the unemployment rate is so high, poverty is at an unheard of level in this country, and more small businesses are failing than ever before in the history of Canada? How can he stand there and tell the people of Canada that the government's fiscal and monetary policies are working when so many people are hurting so badly?


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, no one can be happy when you recite numbers of 6,896 people or businesses going into bankruptcy. Yes, 1,156 businesses filed bankruptcy in this country and I presume they were small businesses. That is a terrible number. But what the hon member refuses to acknowledge is that in the last six or seven years there were some 1.5 million new businesses created in this country.
It is unfortunate there were 1,156 bankruptcies last month but we cannot ignore the 1,500,000 that were created in the last six years.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this extremely important debate, the motion that was introduced by the hon. Leader of the Opposition.
This opposition day motion we are currently debating should be of concern to all Canadians no matter where they live, no matter what their jobs are if they have a job, no matter what their financial circumstances are.
The motion deals with the economy. It deals with the sorry state of affairs this great and wealthy nation currently finds itself in. A little earlier I said this was perhaps the wealthiest and greatest nation in the world. We have been blessed with more resources than any other part of the globe. We count ourselves lucky under God to inhabit this land.
There is a problem and it is not a lack of resources or a lack of ingenuity. The problem is not a lack of caring or wanting by the Canadian public to be productive to have our economy grow and flourish to become more competitive nationally and internationally. The problem comes down to managing that great resource which collectively we all own. That is where the problem is.
This sorry bunch opposite has been in since 1984. I remember 1984. The Prime Minister at that time went around the country with that smirk on his face saying: "Jobs, jobs, jobs". All you had to do was elect Brian Mulroney and his band of Tories and jobs would be everywhere.
In Atlantic Canada he threatened to inflict prosperity upon us. It was a pretty interesting challenge to be taken up.
In 1984 they elected him, figuring maybe he is the best individual to put forward continued liberal type policies of inclusion in the economy, of equalization, of growth of social programs, of growth and increase in our competitiveness and our productivity as a nation.
By the end of 1988 the gig was up. Canadians who had waited with bated breath in every part of this country for prosperity to be inflicted upon them found out there was something being inflicted upon them but it did not start by the letterp. It was not prosperity. It was depression. It was regression. It was recession.
In places like the Atlantic which are the first to slip into recession and the very last to climb out of recession, the same as some parts of western Canada, we waited. By the time the dinner tray got to us there were no crumbs left. In 1988 he knew that his promises of jobs,
December 10, 1991

jobs, jobs was pretty hollow. He and his miracle makers, the mandarins in the back room, and his high priced help from down at the advertising agencies on Bay Street, some even from New York and other places, pulled together a campaign on free trade. Again we were told that the key to the competitiveness and future of the Canadian economy lay with the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. He said: "If you come with us, you will be set free because the borders are going to be opened and there is going to be prosperity. The sun is going to shine and in every garden patch there will be a job again". My colleague says big business bought full-page ads. The Canadian electorate were a little confused. It was not sure, and with friends like big business and full-page ads he managed to squeak in again.
The results are pretty sorry. We are three years down the road now and where is the prosperity? Where is the feeling of Canadians that somehow the greatness of this country has not been spent or misspent by this government? There is a mood in this nation which is foul. We do not even know if we want to stay together any more. Can you imagine? We are blessed. We have been put on this planet, on this soil, in a country that is the richest in the world. Now we are even talking about whether or not we want to stay together, if the French can live with the English, if we all can live with the immigrants and aboriginal Canadians. This did not just crop up. It was not some latent racism and bigotry and urge to self-destruct that we as Canadians always carried. It was planted there by this government.
You start to wonder whether or not you can put bread and butter on the table for your children. It is bread and margarine these days. Nobody can afford butter. You wonder whether or not your kids are going to be able to get a university education. You wonder how you are going to be able to manage if you do qualify for unemployment insurance. Then maybe you start to wonder if that great dream of Canada has lost its sparkle and magic.
Let us look at what government members have done to us. They are so smug on the other side here and when we get up to ask them questions they try to slap us down. They do not want to hear what we have to say, but we are speaking for Canadians.
Look at the unemployment rate. There are a million and a half Canadians unemployed right now. There is upwards of another half million, maybe a million relying on food banks. This is Canada, not a Third World nation.
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But those people have to rely on food banks to put bread on their tables and clothes on their children's backs.
The business community in Canada is a great business community. Small and medium sized businessmen and women of this country have made this country great. It was their ingenuity, hard work, commitment and investment in this country that allowed us to grow and flourish. But government members were not content to let well enough alone in that case either. They crippled them with taxes. They came in with the goods and service tax, and they told every businessman and woman in the country: "Don't worry about it. It is going to be better than the PST, that dastardly dirty old provincial sales tax, that killer of jobs. Trust us once again".
They trusted them, some of them did, but most of them said: "No, we have been misled by this bunch for too long. We were misled on the jobs, jobs, jobs in 1984. We were misled on the free trade in 1988".
Look at the manufacturing sector. There are nearly
400,000	jobs that have been lost because of free trade, most of them in southern and southwestern Ontario. They come with the GST and say: "Trust us. This is a fair way to do a tax". It was pretty damned fair to the 51,000 businesses that have had to declare bankruptcy in the first 10 months of this year. Go talk fairness to them and talk about economic prosperity. They have seen their businesses, their family lives and their dignity crushed. It is not because they did not have the wherewithal or the ingenuity but simply because they could not take another beating by this government through its insane economic policies.
Go talk to the 15,000 Canadians who have had to declare personal bankruptcy in this country in the last 10 months. TMk to them about how great this government has been doing with that fabulous resource called Canada that was entrusted to it. Talk to the retailers who probably do not have any fingernails left.
They have worked their fingers to the bone. They have bitten their fingernails off in every mall and on every main street in Canada. We have not forgotten them on our side. We have been doing our best for them. This

December 10, 1991
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government by its own economic policies has driven the country into recession. The GST has compounded the situation. The GST has done more to cripple the consumers' faith in the economy than anything any government has ever done before. Consumers do not spend. Do you know why? It is not just the GST. They just do not know the next trick this government has up its sleeve to beat them up with. They do not believe this government is dealing in good faith and that it has not abused the trust that was placed in it.


An hon. member:: Obsessed by inflation.


Ronald MacDonald: I could go on and on,
Mr. Speaker. Bankruptcies are up. The GST has crippled consumer confidence. There are two million people unemployed. It is even higher than that. What about all those people who are underemployed? How do they feel? Maybe they are watching us live now because they do not have jobs and maybe their cable television has not yet been cut off. That would be the Grinch after Christmas. They sit there. They look at us and they want us to do something. They say: "Stop beating on me".
The hon. member opposite said a few minutes ago said: "We have done the hard stuff". It is easy for us to say that. We make about 100,000 bucks a year in this place. It is easy for us to talk about hard times, isn't it, when the results of our actions is that the poorest of the poor get nailed?
I wish I could speak for days on this. However, all I wish to say in conclusion is that this government has the message. It is at 14 per cent in the polls. Does it have no shame? It has crippled the small business sector and the economy. What we need at this point is either for this government to do a complete turn on its economic policies or to do the right thing and show some sense and decency. It should call an election so that the people of Canada can once again experience hope for the future.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my colleague from Dartmouth that I believe he is right on focus.
So often the people in the country wonder if the opposition only knows how to criticize. They wonder if the opposition has ideas to put forward. Even though the opposition is constantly putting forward ideas sometimes those ideas are not promoted.
I would like to refer to an idea my colleague talked about earlier last week. It dealt with credit card rates in this country.
We all know that when we do have fairness in our system this generates a will to succeed and to be productive. It generates a sense of confidence. When the government stands up day after day in this House of Commons in Question Period it talks about the 8 per cent bank rate. It is the lowest bank rate in 18 years, it says. However we have in our economy close to 50 million credit cards at 18.5 per cent to 19.5 per cent. These 50 million cards are the instruments of purchasing in this country today.
Does he not think, if this government were sincere in trying to give this economy a bit of a kick, that this might be a good time for an Order in Council from this government to do something concrete about reducing credit card rates to where they are more reasonable? This is especially valid when we now know that the major financial institutions in this country just finished recording close to $4 billion in profits.


Ronald MacDonald: I want to thank my hon. colleague from Broadview-Greenwood for an appropriate question, particularly at this time of the year. This is the time of the year when individuals have been inundated with the promotion of the new type of transaction in Canada which is called credit cards. He is quite correct. Just for Visa and MasterCard alone in Canada there are nearly 27 million cards. Of those 27 million cards fully 50 per cent of them carry an unpaid balance of approximately $1,000 a month. That is a lot of money. Figure it out. There are billions of dollars here. The government has the ability to come in and regulate but it has not.
We have seen interest rates go down. We have seen the spread between the prime rate and credit card rates charged to about 18 million consumers in Canada stay almost 12 points above prime.
What does 12 points above prime mean? It means that for every single one per cent the interest rate is above what it should be per month Canadian consumers are being gouged to the tune of $15 million a month.
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What has happened here is again a matter of confidence. The government has the tools at its disposal. The chairman of the committee has done an extremely good job in stripping the partisanship out of the committee that had studied this. The chairman is Mr. Holtmann. I know I am not supposed to say his name but I think Canadians should know.
We have come up with solid recommendations to the government. We said that one of the things the government can do easily is not going to cost it any money. It will put more money into the pockets of consumers. More important, it will put some confidence back into the pockets of consumers. They will feel that they are not going to be gouged and that the government is listening. It is taking the appropriate steps to ensure that they can become more productive and that their interests are being looked after. It could be done easily.
The banks at this point have made $3.7 billion profit at a time when we are in the worst recession since the dirty thirties. It is a time when there are one and a half million people unemployed and nearly half a million to a million people relying on food banks. The unemployment rate is over 10 per cent. Canadians are suffering. At this very time that Canadians are suffering the hardest the government says: "My hands are tied behind my back. I cannot do anything". If we can drop interest rates by 2 points that is $30 million a month or $360 million a year.
I am glad that he raised that because it shows Canadians that there are certain things the government can do. It can do them easily and quickly to effect an upsurge in consumer confidence which will in turn fuel the recovery we so badly and desperately need.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to stand in this House today to address this very important topic of the economy in Canada.
There are basically four points that I want to make. First, I want to draw a large picture to try to situate Canadians to give them a sense of what is happening within the country. They are not without knowing that the deficit is extremely high. It is in excess of $30 billion. They know that the debt has surpassed $400 billion.
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These are astronomical figures and extremely difficult for most individuals to understand because they do not deal with them on a regular basis.
They know that they have suffered tax increase after tax increase. In fact the number is well over 30.1 believe the count is 34 if we include the goods and services tax. In fact it may be 35 if we include the increased premiums of unemployment insurance.
They see these particular increases and they see the deficit as still very high. The deficit is almost double and they say to themselves: "What is happening? Why are these problems not being resolved?" They recognize as well that when this government came to power the total revenue that it was collecting in taxes was in the neighbourhood of $70 billion.
It is now almost double. It is in excess of $130 billion according to what we project this year. They say: "All of these tax increases, an almost doubling of revenues, and there has been no significant gain with respect to the reduction of the deficit or the debt". They know that there have been until recently extremely high interest rates.
They recognize that if those interest rates had been lower it would have cost us less money to support that debt and to pay the interest. They are not totally sympathetic and that is the kindest way that I can say what has been happening.
They recognize that since June 1989 there have been over 300,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector and they worry. They worry about today, tomorrow, themselves, their future and their children's future.
They also know that this country of ours is one of the finest in the world and one where most people from outside our border would like to live. They know it is not only in a serious financial situation but the institutions that we have come to rely upon are really crumbling.

For example in Canada today as we speak-about five million people are poor. Many of them-I believe over a million-are young people, children, and a large majority are women.
Right now we realize that over two million Canadians are on welfare and nearly one and a half million are unemployed. We know very well that the actual number

December 10, 1991
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is much higher because many unemployed people have given up looking.
We know that this year 1.8 million Canadians, almost two million, will have to go to food banks. How can this be in our country? That is what is going on today and it is not at all pleasant. It is shocking. We realize that these
1.8	million Canadians who rely on food banks to eat include about 300,000 children, some very young. It is unimaginable, unacceptable and it frightens people. It makes them lose all confidence.

These same people, as they look at this deteriorating situation which I indicated, are frightened. They are losing confidence in the country, in its institutions and in government. Of course this makes the whole challenge of governing that much more difficult today.
It is not unusual that we should be having serious conflicts throughout the nation. There are conflicts in terms of national unity and conflict in terms of people being unwilling to make accommodations or compromises. Because they are frightened they feel that if they were to do that they would lose even more than they have lost.
They look at the country and they see bankruptcies. I want to quote because I do not want to mislead anyone. There have been more bankruptcies in the first 10 months of this year than in all of last year, which was a record breaking year for both consumer and corporate insolvencies. That was in the province of Manitoba. Between January 1 and November 1 of this year 2,455 bankruptcies were recorded in Manitoba. This includes 331 business failures.
As I travel about my constituency I see vacancy after vacancy. Many of the areas which were once flourishing with small, active, lively, competitive businesses look like disaster areas. That frightens people as well because as they travel back and forth to work and go out and do whatever shopping they can, they see that the situation is not getting better. It is getting worse. It is really getting very bad.
Let me share some personal statistics with which I am dealing in my own constituency. I will use fictitious names to protect the identity of the individual. The first person is Allan who is almost 50 years old. He was removed from his position because it was redundant. He
was in a position of middle management. He has been looking for a job for over a year and has been unable to find anything. He has an excellent work record with superb references.
What about Brian? Brian has a master's degree in public administration. He has not been able to find a full-time job. There are little short jobs and very often he is very poorly remunerated.
What about Charles? Charles has a degree as well, in the area of economics. He has not been able to land a long-term job. If my memory serves me correctly, six months has been the longest job.
What about Donalda who has two degrees? She is a single mother who has not been able to find anything significant. In fact if things continue as they are she will probably have to take a basic entry job which pays a bare minimum wage or slightly over minimum wages.
What about Ernest? Ernest also has a master's degree. He is a new Canadian and full of enthusiasm. What has happened to him? He has been looking for a job for the last several years.
Every one of those individuals, and I can mention some other as well, is a responsible and well educated person. They have excellent skills but they simply cannot get jobs. I have not mentioned the Pauls and the Janices. These are the people who have journeyman papers and a number of trades who have lost their jobs and would have to take roughly half of what they earned if they can get a job. There are many of those people out there as well.
There were 2,000 jobs lost during the last 10 years in the CNR as I mentioned in this House this week. I think it was 1,000 during the last three years. They say: "What is happening to my province? What is happening to my country? What is happening to my city?"
They look at VIA Rail which was decimated with almost 3,000 lost jobs that were never to return. They look at Route Canada which was a trucking firm that went bankrupt a number of years ago and over 1,900 people were just left hanging. Nothing has been done for them. They look at ITEM, the company that was supposed to help small businesses. We do not have the full story there, but we know that it is less than totally pleasant. It did not work out at all. It left people hanging,
December 10, 1991

people who had invested a lot of their time and a lot of their money.
They look at news stories such as the one yesterday about the port of Churchill possibly closing. They saw the headline of just a couple of days ago about the loss of additional jobs at CNR. They look at the cuts in Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International Limited. They wonder when this is going to stop.
What has the government done? It could have invested more in education, but it will have cut $10 billion in education between 1986 and 1995.
In training and retraining there are fewer dollars. We need more training and retraining. In research and development it was going to invest twice as much. What has happened? It slid. It is much less than what it was. I could go on and on.
We need an election. We really need to have the Canadian people say: "This is what we want with this particular program". We need to look at policies such as a lower dollar. We need to look at whatever it is we can do to get Canadians back to work.
I would like to say that if we could make one decision right now, it would be to permit those people with credit cards to have lower rates at this time. I am sure it would help the small business people who are struggling to make it over the Christmas holiday. If it does not work out during the next couple of weeks, they are going to be a lot more bankruptcies.
I am pleased I was able to address this particular motion.


Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, you caught me off guard. I thought for sure we would have some questions and answers from the other side.
The motion before us today is certainly a serious one. I think it is very important that Canadians have a chance to hear us debate it today in the House of Commons. There is no question that the Canadian economy is hurting, that we are in the midst of a recession, and that we do have a million plus unemployed in this country.
I think what we have to do is not only talk about Canada, but focus on where we are in relation to the rest of the world. Canada is not alone in this thing. None of us in this House enjoys listening to or looking at some of
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the stats that have been thrown around here this morning. Some were quite accurate and some were misleading.
Most of us would agree that we have a million plus unemployed and it is not a nice thing to see when we go back into our ridings. All of us are affected. This unemployment knows no political boundaries. Whether you are NDP, Liberal or Conservative, we are all affected in our individual ridings, neighbourhoods and our individual families. It is not an easy thing to see at this time of year.
As I mentioned at the outset we are not alone in this thing. That is what we have to focus on in this debate today. Canada is moving out of the recession. There are some veiy strong indicators that we are effectively moving out of the recession. There is a long way to go. We admit that but we are moving out of it.
Much of the emphasis today has been on Canada versus the U.S. and the free trade agreement in relation to the U.S. Let us examine the U.S. economy for a minute. Let us take a look at what is going right or what is going wrong with that economy. The United States has monumental problems. When we talk about job losses in Canada, we can talk about a million plus jobs lost and we will accept those figures.
As I mentioned earlier, they are not easy figures to accept, but we will accept them.
South of us in the United States there is unemployment at this very moment ranging, depending on whose figure you want to believe, from 10 million to 12 million. The U.S. has its problems too.
It is interesting to note that we are doing some things in this country about our position. We know we have to get some of the fundamentals right to move beyond where we are this very day.
Some of those fundamentals that we believe are very necessary to move out of recession to a period of recovery and growth I think we have the right concept of and we are doing the things that we have to do versus the United States which refuses to look at the real structural problems within its economy.
We have taken some of those hard decisions in the last couple of years, many hard decisions. Those are not easy ones to go back home and defend, but we have nonetheless taken those.

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One of the serious problems that we faced in 1984 when we took office was a mounting debt, a crippling debt load, and one that was bound to get us into the kinds of difficulties we are in now.
Take a look at 1984. The percentage of debt in relation to Gross Domestic Product was running at a rate of 8.7 per cent. Take a look at it today. Today that number has almost been cut in half. It is in the area of 4.6 per cent in relation to Gross Domestic Product. That is the real measure of what we have done about the debt because the Canadian economy has grown but our ability to fight that debt in relation to the growth in the economy has been very successful. No one argues that, particularly international investors when they look at this country and can measure what we have done.
Politically it has not been easy. If you want to poke fun at our standings in the polls, they are higher than the interest rates today. A couple of years ago maybe we could have argued that they were not, but they are now.
I think the real truth of what is happening to the Canadian economy can be measured in the international investment world, the investment markets. We are doing the right things, although they are tough politically.
The figure of 4.6 per cent, the figure of debt in relation to Gross Domestic Product, is going to drop to less than 1 per cent by 1995. If our projections are right, it will come down in the order of about .7 per cent, less than 1 per cent. That will be the year that we will also start to pay down the debt. If it is not that year, it will be close to it. We will be in what we call a zero borrowing position. We can start really paying down that debt.
Another difficulty we inherited on this side of the House in 1984 was that our operating balance was out of whack. The cost of programs before paying interest was something in the order of $16 billion more than revenue. We changed that around. Now we have a $12 billion surplus on that operating balance and that operating account.
That was the thing which restricted us from paying down the debt. All political arguments aside, if you look at the debt we inherited, which was $200 billion plus in 1984, what we have today when we look at the accumulated debt of approximately $390 billion is accumulated interest on that debt because the structural deficit we
inherited restricted us from paying down the dollar amount of that debt. We are simply paying interest on it.
We know how much that interest is gobbling up in terms of government revenues today.
Canadians are probably paying too much in taxes and 35 cents out of every dollar simply pays interest on the debt.
It is crazy. It is a crazy position for a government to get into. How did we allow ourselves to get into that position? Again, it is the old trick that I usually pull back in the riding. I pull the pen out of the pocket. It is interesting that I have a red pen here because those red numbers were simply created in those years leading up to 1984 when politicians went back home to their ridings and simply wrote the cheque knowing full well the money was not here to pay for it.
We did not have the money to pay the bills. We had to borrow it. We went on that destructive course and we had been on it for many years.
This is the first government in the last 30 years that has decided we cannot go on that destructive course. That 35 cents you are sending to Ottawa to pay the debt is money that is wasted.
Just imagine the types of programs we could have today if 35 cents of our dollar were not simply going to pay interest on the debt. It is wasted money. It is money that cannot be used for health care programs. It cannot be used for housing programs. It is simply money that is wasted. It is going to the bond holders who are reaping the rewards of this.
Talk about irony. The people who need the money the least are the ones who gain in a system laden with debt. Canada has done what very few western countries have done in the last 10, 20, 30 years. Canada has faced reality and is going back to square one.
An editorial in The Globe and Mail dated November 7, 1991 says it all. Talking about the U.S., the headline is "A wake-up call for George Bush". What it is saying is simply that the United States of America has refused to come to grips with its overspending as we have in Canada. When I mentioned those Gross Domestic Product figures in relation to debt, our position is much
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more favourable now than it was seven years ago, eight years ago, ten years ago.
Our position is on a projectile and you can see light at the end of the tunnel. The American position is straight up. Politically it does not want to deal with it. Politically when you deal with debts and deficits there is a price to be paid on the other end. When you go back into your respective neighbourhoods without those programs and the cheques in your pockets to do the types of things that make you popular in your ridings, they are not there.
The U.S. has not come to grips with that. It has its eye on the 1992 election, but it does not want to deal with the truth. It wants to continue to spend by borrowing from future generations.
We are not going to do that any more in this country. That is one of the reasons why we are bringing in, as a government, a proposed spending control act. At this point it is proposed because it has not been laid before the House, so to speak.
What it is saying is simply that we are going to put restrictions on the Government of Canada to spend the taxpayers' money. We know the future of this country can only be secured when we erase that burden of debt under which we are operating today. We are going to do it.
Some of the arguments that we have heard in this House this morning were in relation to the free trade agreement. I want to dismiss some of those. They are not painting an accurate picture at all.
The trade agreement with the United States is working. It is not perfect but it is working. I want to give some statistics that I will back up any day of the week, any place.
Our exports to the United States in the first two years since the free trade agreement have increased by $8 billion. Since the free trade agreement, our trade surplus with the United States has gone up by about $3 billion. Between 1988 and 1990 Canada went from a net direct investment outflow of $2.5 billion to a net direct investment inflow of $5.1 billion for a net turn around of $7.6 billion.
Those are good figures, believable figures. It is working. In August of this year Statistics Canada announced that our exports to the U.S. were at an all-time high.
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The FTA has been good for Canada. It has been very positive for Canada.
In this House the opposition is quite famous for coming in with names of companies, fictitious or otherwise, that have abandoned Canada as a place to invest. I want to go through some of the companies that have left the United States and have come to Canada with their money, with their investments. Let us go through some of these.
Canadian Thermos Products has closed plants in the United States and come to Canada as a good place to invest. Gandalf Technologies in Nepean is a U.S. company that moved to Canada. Heron Cable of Waterloo, Ontario left the U.S. and came to Canada. Hughes Aircraft Company located in Midland, Ontario left the U.S. and came to Canada.
There are others such as Inter-City Products Corporation, Brantford, Ontario; Kodak Canada Limited; Keep-Rite Incorporated of Brantford, Ontario; Sault Star Seamless Cylinder Co. of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario; J. L. DeBall Ltd. of Montreal; Polymer International, now in Nova Scotia; a litany of companies because Canada is a good place to invest.
International investors are recognizing that simply because of what we are doing. We are erasing that burden of debt and attracting international investors to this country.
One of the arguments they make on the other side is that the Canadian dollar is too high. Maybe it is too high. We do not argue that but world markets determine the value of the Canadian dollar. The world markets and investors are telling Canadians that we have a good country and it is a good place to invest. The level of the Canadian dollar is merely a reflection of what we are doing; building a strong country with a strong economy. More important, we are getting the fundamentals right. We are getting them down into the area in which investors can live with them, especially regarding inflation.
What we want to achieve is an economy in which inflation is as low as it can possibly get. We are achieving that. We also want to have an economy in which we have what we call price stability. We are achieving that. Those are the types of things that attract investment into a country. Those are the types of things that have attracted

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those companies that I just mentioned into Canada. We are doing those types of things.
We are also talking about job stability. Let us talk about the GST. The opposition loves to talk about that. We brought in a change to the old manufacturers' sales tax in this country to help manufacturing. That is what it is doing. It is helping manufacturing. It is bringing foreign investment into this country and doing what we said it would do.
If the opposition wants to argue on the political merits of the GST and the negative impact it has on our standings in the polls, I will support that 100 per cent. It is doing the tough things but doing them for the right reasons, and the right reasons are simply to gear up the Canadian economy so we can compete in the 1990s and into the turn of the century, doing the types of things that we were elected to do. We were not elected to simply stay in office and do the easy things. We were elected to make the tough decisions for the benefit of all Canadians.
Our economic policies are working. When the Canadian people go to the polls in 1993 they will have a chance to reflect and they will say we have done the right things, the tough things, and they will be willing to re-elect us.


Mr. Speaker:: It being two o'clock p.m., the House will now proceed to Statements by Members pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, each year governments in Europe and North America subsidize consumers through programs to assist farmers that produce food at a loss.
Canada has developed a system of supply management which makes a great deal of sense to producers, processors and consumers with minimal support from the Canadian Treasury.
There has been a great deal of encouragement and support throughout Canada for the position that the
federal government has taken at the GATT negotiations to see article XI:2(c)(i) strengthened and clarified.
Better access to world-wide markets, clear and fair rules on countervailing duties and rules to prevent the abuse of health and sanitary reasons as disguised trade barriers are important.
It is imperative if agriculture is to survive in Canada that we have a more stable environment for our domestic and export producers.
I urge all members of Parliament to support the government in order to ensure success in Canada's position during these last minute negotiations.


AIR CANADA
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, Air Canada has failed to ensure that the federal policy relating to employment contracts of airport screening personnel was respected at the Halifax International Airport.
The federal policy was that the turnover of these workers would be reduced through improvement and protection of wages and benefits. Transport Canada was supposed to ensure job security and wage benefits for the workers during turnover. It did not.
Those workers have lost their wages and they have lost their jobs. As of last week, workers with as much as nine years of experience had not been offered seniority by the new screening firm.
There were 30 employees at Walker Security. I therefore call upon the government to instruct Air Canada to review the contract with the new security firm. If it finds that the firm has abrogated the commitment that it made to both Air Canada and the workers, it should declare the contract void and sit down to ensure that we have fairness to those employees.
These people have been abandoned by Transport Canada, and they have been abandoned by this government.


INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
Mr. Walter Van  De Walle@St. Albert: Mr. Speaker, I rise to remind all hon. members that today is a very significant occasion in Canada and throughout the world. It is International Human Rights Day, and the 43rd
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anniversary of the United Nations adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The world has made gigantic steps. However, violations of human rights are still reported every day. That is why we must continue in partnership with other nations our efforts to ensure progress toward a world free of injustice, discrimination and prejudice.
Today, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a founder of Myanmar's National League for Democracy, a courageous woman, currently under house arrest for her beliefs. All members of the Subcommittee on Development and Human Rights of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade congratulate her and call for her immediate release.


LAND CLAIMS
Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker, today the NDP government in British Columbia is responding to the recommendations of the First Nations task force report on land claims.
Since my first days in the B.C. legislature almost 18 years ago, I have been urging that land claims be settled in my province on the basis of aboriginal rights and title.
Now that we finally have a government in British Columbia willing to do so, the federal minister of Indian Affairs is throwing up another road-block.
By threatening to stall negotiations with First Nations until the province accepts his preconditions on costsharing, the minister appears not to want to sit down with aboriginal people at all.
I commend Mike Harcourt's, aboriginal affairs minister Andrew Petter, and the NDP government for their historic, precedent setting commitment to settling the outstanding claims of First Nations in B.C.
I call on the minister of Indian Affairs to dismantle his road-block, drop the preconditions he has placed on negotiations with the First Nations, and get on to negotiating an honourable land claim settlement in British Columbia.


INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
Mrs. Gabrielle Bertrand (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from St. Albert just said in English, I would like to remind this House that December 10 has been declared International Human Rights Day and today is the 43rd anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.
Exactly 43 years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted this universal declaration, this document which was to give all people everywhere the same basic rights and freedoms. This does not mean that injustice and intolerance have completely disappeared from the face of the earth. Unfortunately in some countries these rights and freedoms are not respected. Canada has adopted its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but much remains to be done. We want to give all Canadians, without exception, a chance to participate fully in our society.
International Human Rights Day is an opportunity to reflect but also to act. We should take this opportunity to ask ourselves how we as Canadians can build a fairer, more tolerant country, a country where everyone can contribute to the best of their ability.


VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Ms. Albina Guarnieri (Mississauga East):: Mr. Speaker, last Friday, once again Canadians recalled the Montreal massacre, an event that focuses attention every December 6 on the issue of violence against women. Today and every day, women and children see their lives and families shattered by violence, violence that governments have done little to prevent or punish.
I call upon members of this House and all other legislatures in this country to look to their statutes and public programs for ways to control the menace that lurks in so many Canadian homes. Our laws must be made more effective, not just in words but in practice. Shelters only deal with the consequences of violence. Society must start to deal with the causes.

December 10, 1991
Children and mothers across the land are looking to their legislators for protection. Parliament must not fail them again.


EDUCATION
Mr. David Bjornson (Selkirk-Red River):: Mr. Speaker, I stand today to endorse the objective of national standards testing in education as proposed by the provincial governments at their meeting in Toronto yesterday.
As we all know, the future of our country will depend upon the ability to compete. However, this ability to compete is not attainable without a properly educated society.
In Canada today the inability to move east to west or west to east to provide for one's self and create a stronger economy is restricted by the lack of national education standards. I hope now that the business community and the political community are working together to set national standards that the educational community will be a very important part of this new strategy.
I congratulate all of the provincial governments for their efforts in reaching this agreement.


FISHERIES
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take this opportunity to commend approximately 200 Prince Edward Island fishermen who participated in the 11th annual convention and seminar at the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association this past weekend.
It was unfortunate that the federal minister of fisheries was unable to attend the event because he missed a great opportunity to listen to the concerns, views and possible solutions put forward by Prince Edward Island fishermen.
The fishing industry employs approximately 10 per cent of our work force in Prince Edward Island. In 1989 it contributed $226 million to our provincial economy.
Among the many issues discussed, perhaps the most serious issue remains the government's reluctance to return to a standard minimum lobster carapace size of
2.5	inches for all three designated areas on the Island.
I look forward to receiving copies of the resolutions passed which I hope to share with this House at the earliest opportunity.


Mr. Jean-Pierre Hogue (Outremont):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the unfair treatment Serbian people are receiving from the highest levels of our parliamentary system. There are more than 100,000 Serbs in Canada, and Serbia has always been Canada's ally: Furthermore, the Serbs were one of the groups that suffered most during the two last wars in which they lost almost a third of their population.
Today these people have a right to be treated fairly in the House of Commons. In fact, its most basic rights as a society have not been recognized, although today, it remains the first victim of the surge in fascism in Europe. It seems that people in certain Canadian political circles are playing a most unfortunate role in the present crisis in Yugoslavia. One would hope that in this country all parties concerned would at least have the decency to look at both sides of the story.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration with six northwestern Ontario aboriginal communities which finally, after decades of neglect, will now receive a secure land base and the funds necessary to develop water and sewage services, decent housing, community facilities, not to mention the chance for economic improvements.
As my colleague Bud Wildman, Ontario minister of native affairs, said yesterday: "We are taking the first
December 10, 1991

step toward ensuring that six communities in the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation will have a brighter and healthier future".
It is an historic first step to the people of the First Nations of Kee-Way-Win, McDowell Lake, New Slate Falls, Saugeen, Aroland and Wawakapewin. My congratulations and best wishes.
To the Government of Ontario: Thanks for providing the leadership to solve this dispute so long in occurring.
To the federal government: What took you so long?
Let us use this decision to move forward toward resolving all of the outstanding aboriginal issues. It is our responsibility.


ENTRANCE TO NOVA SCOTIA
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, for decades the main highway entrance to Nova Scotia has provided the most unique welcome of any province.
With a huge flower garden and information kiosks describing the provincial attractions, all tourists have been made at home right away.
Now, with the new highway about to bypass this entrance, it is important that tourism groups unite with the province to rearrange and rebuild this unique welcoming facility. The Amherst and area Development Commission has spearheaded the drive to create an even more impressive display than ever before.
The proposal includes replacing the Bluenose II at the site where it will be the first impression that tourists have as they enter the province and their last impression as they leave the province.
The Bluenose II will soon be retired and the border site provides the best possible location where virtually all visitors will have the opportunity to see the symbol of our Nova Scotia heritage and know that they have arrived at a unique province.
I call on the tourism ministry, the province, the federal government and all interested parties to work closely to achieve this goal of re-establishing this entrance to Nova Scotia.


CANADA EMPLOYMENT AND IMMIGRATION ADVISORY COUNCIL
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, the Canada Employment and Immigration Advisory Council, established in 1977, was mandated to provide the government with independent advice on policy issues.
In recent years the council has recommended, among other things, a full employment policy, a regional employment strategy, adjustment programs for older workers and opposed cutbacks in unemployment insurance. In most cases the government has totally ignored this advice.
Now there is serious concern that the government will close the council down. Currently there are five vacancies on the council which have not been filled, including the chairperson and one vice-chairperson.
What are the government's plans with respect to this independent, broadly based, private sector advisory council? Can the government not take advice which says it is wrong on several matters? Is this another example of the government suppressing legitimate dissent?
What is the future of the Canada Employment and Immigration Advisory Council?


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr.   Brian@: Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada is committed to a safer environment.
As part of the green plan, our government will improve the ability of Canadians to predict and warn about weather emergencies. Each year some 150 Canadians die from the direct effects of severe weather. Many others are affected by floods and automobile accidents caused by poor weather.
Under this $40 million program, weather emergencies and emergency surveillance systems will be upgraded and the public will be made more aware of natural disasters and how we can respond to them.
Doppler radars already in place in Edmonton and Toronto will also be installed in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec to give more advance notice of tornadoes. A more accurate computer model will be developed to improve Canada's ability to track clouds of

December 10, 1991
nuclear fall-out, volcanic eruptions and major toxic gas releases.
The weather radio network, which already includes more than 100 transmitters, will be expanded further and upgraded, and special emergency television messages will warn of impending floods and of iceberg movements.
Let us all work together for a safer environment for all Canadians.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West -Revelstoke):: Mr. Speaker, this government's high tax, high dollar, free trade induced recession is continuing to cost Canadian workers their jobs.
In my riding of Kootenay West-Revelstoke the following plant closures last year contributed to an unemployment rate of 13.9 per cent.
Lost are 95 high-tech jobs moved to the U.S. due to closure of Johnson-Matthey in Trail; 167 woods product jobs permanently lost due to closures: YMIR Forest Products, Koala Timber, L & W Sawmills, Poplar Cedar, Shelly Cedar, and Eaglewood Firewood.
Many more have been laid off: 240 from Westar Timber in Castelgar; 50 more from Treminco Resources Mine shutdown at Sandon; 130 more at Kalesnikoff Lumber, Kootenay Valley Sawmills and Slocan Forest Products; 100 more from shutdowns at Columbia River Shake and Shingle; and at least 200 loggers are out of work as a result of all this carnage. I and my constituents urge the Prime Minister and his finance minister to open their eyes and see the damage they are causing.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
My message is this: Stop, look and listen to unemployed Canadians. Shape up or ship out.


VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, it is most important that we cling to the symbols which unite us and pay tribute to those who have served their country. Like all other Canadians, I commended and
applauded the Minister of Veterans Affairs last spring when he announced that a medal was finally being struck and awarded to those members of our Armed Forces who so valiantly served in the Korean war some 40 years ago.
It was nice to see a few of the medals presented in early November in a ceremony with the Governor General, but does the minister realize the time it is taking to process the applications for the medals and does he also realize that these medals are slated to be mailed out rather than be presented in any formal fashion to the recipients?
Mr. Speaker, the hypocrisy of it all. How can this government mail out medals of honour?
I call on the government to provide the persons who earned these medals with a more dignified presentation than is being planned at the present time.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon -Souris):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians can be proud of the substantial progress which has been made on the green plan as 80 per cent of first year program targets will be met by the end of the fiscal year.
Canadians in all regions will benefit from important initiatives which range from the Canada-U.S. air quality accord to the $275 million Indian health and water initiative.
Through the $100 million Arctic environmental strategy, northern communities and non-governmental organizations will be assisted to take local action on important environmental issues.
We are also expending some $100 million to help clean up the Fraser River and to return salmon populations to historical levels.
The $10 million Atlantic coast action program to restore harbours and coastal areas will fund programs run by a cross-section of community residents along with government, industry and business representatives.
In summation, we are making good progress in our stated goal to integrate environmental protection and economic development. We are improving the manner in which decisions are made and that is the best news of all.
December 10, 1991



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance.
Yesterday the Minister of Finance and some of his fellow ministers from the province of Quebec met with businessmen and union leaders in Montreal and according to the press reports the meeting was not a success.
I would like to ask the Minister of Finance why he will not admit that Montreal businessmen and Montreal union leaders were right when they said it was useless for our bank rate to be 3 per cent higher than the bank rate in the U.S. Why did the government not take the necessary action to set the Canadian dollar at a level that would allow plants that are now closed in the Montreal area to start up again?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I hate to disappoint the hon. Leader of the Opposition, but my colleagues and I had a very productive and constructive meeting with the Quebec business community. They acknowledge the fact that interest rates are the lowest they have been in 18 years. We have the third lowest interest rates in the world, next to the United States and Japan. The spread the hon. member speaks of is the spread between the Bank of Canada rate and the Fed in the United States.
As I said in the House this morning, people do not borrow from the Fed and they do not borrow from the Bank of Canada. They borrow from the commercial banks and the differential is about one-half of one per cent. Our prime rate in Canada is 8 per cent. The prime rate in the United States is 7.5 per cent. That is a tremendous record.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, as he has done for the last few weeks, this morning the minister told Canadians that he thinks the recession is over.
Oral Questions
He should know that, for example, last month housing starts were down 13 per cent. That was one sector we were led to believe was doing better and it was 13 per cent below what it was a year ago.
I want to ask the minister why he is not recognizing the fact that we are not out of the recession and why he keeps trying to defend the indefensible, the budget of his predecessor, and why he is not coming out with his own budget so we have a chance to create some hope for Canadians at this time.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, it is true that housing starts declined somewhat in November over October, but I remind the hon. member that housing starts in the month of October reached 204,000, the highest in 17 months.
It would be very unusual to maintain that kind of growth. I can tell the hon. member that housing starts have strengthened. They come in at 178,000 units but obviously housing being an interest sensitive sector, and given the fact that in the third quarter it was recorded that investment in residential housing had increased by
17.2	per cent, I think those are positive indicators for the housing industry and I agree with the hon. member.
As the housing industry is stimulated that has a very major impact upon the total economy of Canada.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I think it would be useful if the minister were more realistic and looked at what is happening.
Last week, for example, we learned that the Town and Country clothing chain will close 162 stores across Canada. Today the Ayres chain declared that it will close 60 stores across Canada. It is not waiting for Christmas; it is moving right away.
They all have the same reasons: high dollar, high interest rate, cross-border shopping, GST, and a terrible economic situation.
I ask the minister again: Why does he try to defend a budget that has been a complete failure and why does he not introduce a new budget on his own that might make more sense than the one presented by his colleague to his left?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I would much rather

December 10, 1991
Oral Questions
follow the advice of the former Minister of Finance than the track record of the Leader of the Opposition, which is pretty dismal.
I put a few things on the record this morning. For example, his first budget was over the target by 70 per cent. The second budget was over its target by 30 per cent in terms of the deficit. In those days when he was President of the Treasury Board he talked about a 16 per cent increase in program expenditures as restraint. Some restraint.
That is not to take away from the seriousness of the question that the hon. member raised. Obviously, and I want to point out to the hon. member, this government does not have a high interest rate policy. With the interest being the lowest in 18 years, that is far from being a high interest rate policy.
Clearly our aim and objective is to get the basics right, the fundamentals right, and bring about a decline in the inflationaiy pressures. That will bring down interest rates, as it has, and that will provide the climate for sustainable growth and price stability.


POVERTY
Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said that poverty was decreasing in Newfoundland. Well, he was wrong.
In Newfoundland alone the welfare roll is increasing at the rate of 2,000 people a month and is at record highs. When the Prime Minister said poverty was decreasing he must have been in Disneyland, not Newfoundland. The ostrich approach may make the government feel good, but it does not put food on the table.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister what he can tell a four-year old Newfoundland child lined up at the food bank that can give him some hope this Christmas.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I will not comment on the frivolous conclusion of my hon. friend's question, but with regard to the information raised yesterday I simply indicated, and I think the statistics will bear it out, and I am speaking
from memory, that unemployment in Newfoundland is down in the neighbourhood of 6 per cent from where we inherited it in 1984. It is still too high. It was 23.5 per cent when the Liberals left office. It is down to 18.1 per cent, I believe, today.
We are working. Some 25,000 new jobs have been created in Newfoundland in the last six years as opposed to 1,000 jobs that were lost in the period from 1980 to 1984.
Hibernia is creating some 35,000 new jobs and some 3,500 permanent jobs. Premier Wells I think agreed yesterday-you may want to check with him-that the general fiscal and financial approach of the Government of Canada is one that he generally supports. He is very pleased with what we have done with Hibernia and other economic initiatives and he believes that the co-operation between the Government of Canada and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador will bring prosperity to that province.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, my question about the four-year old boy who will end up eating at a food bank this Christmas is not a joke. It is the truth. In Montreal alone 50,000 children will eat at food banks this Christmas. That being the case, why does the government and why do the Prime Minister and his colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, keep claiming that poverty has not increased, while they know perfectly well the unemployment rate and the welfare rate are going up, not down?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is wrong again. No one can ignore the social problems we have in this country today. In Quebec we have some serious problems, for instance in East Montreal and a number of areas in eastern Quebec, and there are also problems in the Atlantic region and other parts of this country. There will always be too many cases of poverty and too many cases where the children of this country are involved. But the government has done a great deal. And I believe that very soon the Minister of National Health and Welfare will announce a number of major initiatives to provide
December 10, 1991

greater security for children who are affected by poverty and other social problems.
That being said, I think we should realize that the real wealth of a nation is created by the private sector, not by governments with deficits. And the private sector will create wealth if interest rates go down. Today, however, interest rates are at their lowest levels in 18 years and the inflation rate is at its lowest level in 21 years. Those are signs that should encourage, not discourage the hon. member.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Many Canadians were astonished when they heard on September 30 this year that the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had been toppled by a coup d'etat. Canada has now frozen $20 million in aid, of which $10 million was earmarked for non-governmental organizations.
We are in favour of economic sanctions against the military dictatorship, but the situation of the poor who have no shelter and no food is appalling. Will the government reinstate the assistance channelled through NGOs?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Canadian government supports President Aristide and all efforts to help the president resume his democratic duties in Port-au-Prince. We also support the embargo ordered by the Organization of American States. Although it is unfortunate that the embargo is causing serious problems for a broad segment of the population, I believe that President Aristide's position is that the people of Haiti prefer this kind of temporary problem to the loss of democracy. He believes that these initiatives on the part of the Canadian government are helping to restore democracy in Haiti. That is why we intend to persevere in our efforts in this respect.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. I gather that means that the government will not be assisting the Red Cross and other organizations which have asked for additional aid in order to assist those people in Haiti who are suffering.
My question for the Prime Minister on another subject however is that he was very careful on another international matter regarding the break-up of the Soviet
Oral Questions
Union and careful in Canada's response to this extremely complex and volatile matter. The Secretary of State for External Affairs, however, was not quite so cautious in her comments about the Slavic commonwealth. She said: "The Soviet Union is evolving into a new format and the changes we see are positive".
I would ask the Prime Minister if he would tell us today if he agrees that recent developments are positive, and will he let the House know if this is the message that he has conveyed to Mikhail Gorbachev?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I was away yesterday, but I looked at the transcript and I am told that the minister indicated that it was a positive sign that the three republics wish to work together. That of course is by any standards a positive sign.
Our concerns-and I think they are probably shared by my hon. friend- in respect of the Soviet Union are political stability in the former U.S.S.R., because there is general agreement that it is in an evolving state, on terms that would be agreed to. We have deep concerns, as I expressed in the House the other day, about the deployment, use and control of nuclear weapons on the sods of many of the republics. We have concerns about food shortages, shortages of medicines this winter and the devastation that may inflict upon the Soviet people. We have concerns that we have expressed about minorities and borders so as to ensure that the situation in the Soviet Union does not disintegrate into the catastrophe that has now engulfed Yugoslavia.
We are proceeding with caution. We are proceeding with great care because we would like to have a constructive influence, if we can, on the development of matters in the Soviet Union. To that end we will consult with parties in the House and we will try to take the most constructive attitude possible.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. The Prime Minister has outlined a number of concerns that I think many Canadians and many people throughout the world have, while certainly supporting co-operation among newly independent states.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister a specific question about one of the issues he himself raised. In the three new Soviet states there are 8,911 nuclear warheads

December 10,1991
Oral Questions
pointed toward North America and Europe. Yesterday there were conflicting statements from leaders in the three new Soviet republics regarding control of that arsenal.
The Prime Minister said that he is concerned, but I would like to ask him what action he has taken to convey that concern to the leaders of these new republics, and will he ask them to provide a specific plan for the control, non-proliferation and eventual elimination of this nuclear arsenal?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I think that the position that we have adopted and conveyed to President Gorbachev personally and to the various ministers representing appropriate republics can be summarized in the communication that we conveyed to the President of Ukraine when we recognized the independence of Ukraine.
We recognized independence for Ukraine, but we began a process of negotiating diplomatic recognition pursuant to four or five important criteria, including some that have just been raised by my hon. friend. We have senior officials in Kiev doing that with a republic whose independence we have recognized. We will no doubt proceed in a similar fashion under analogous circumstances because the problems in large measure remain the same in the various republics.
I think that the precedent that the Government of Canada has established and laid down in regard to Ukraine can be looked upon for guidance in regard to the evolution of the other Soviet republics.


Mr. Speaker:: I should advise the House that I am going to break with our recent practice and I think the House will agree with the reason for doing so at this moment.


PRESENCE IN THE GALLERY
Mr, Speaker:: I wish to draw the attention of the House to the presence in our gallery of His Excellency Mr. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, President of Haiti.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


HOUSING
Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance in his answer to the Leader of the
Official Opposition acknowledged the figures that were released by CMHC, indicating that housing starts had plunged by 13 per cent.
The Minister of Finance has several proposals made by the housing industry, such as the Canadian Real Estate Association proposal dealing with RRSPs and the 5 per cent down payment for home buyers.
When will the government take action on these proposals and introduce pro-active policies to kick-start the housing industry?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, just to reiterate, the housing starts have been strong: 204,000 housing starts in the month of October. That was the highest in 17 months. I acknowledge as I indicated in an earlier answer that anything that would stimulate the housing industry further still certainly has a very major spinoff effect upon the total economy.
The two proposals to which the hon. member has referred are proposals that I am looking at very carefully with my colleague, the Minister of Public Works and minister in charge of CMHC. Hopefully we will be able to come up with some positive actions on those fronts. I hope to be in a position to announce the results of that review in the not too distant future.


Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Mr. Speaker, this government should start walking down Main Street, Canada, and see the real world out there. According to CMHC, federal housing programs are not reaching over 1.25 million households that are in need of assistance, and yet this government keeps slashing dollars and programs. This is unacceptable, uncaring and irresponsible.
I want to ask the Minister of Finance when this government will honour its commitments and its responsibilities and restore the funding to build affordable housing units and co-operative units in this country.


Mr. Dave Worthy (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I think it is most important to put this matter in its proper perspective for the people of Canada. There are over 640,000 housing units for people who are now getting assistance from the federal government. That is 40,000 more this year than there were last year. There has been $116 million put into an increase in housing assistance.
December 10, 1991

I think the hon. member should realize that people in Canada are asking: Do you want to raise taxes to do that? Should this government act responsibly? We say yes, we should, and we will continue to do so.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin -St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Prime Minister who, after meeting with Premier Wells yesterday, undertook to his great credit to reassess the fishery reforms announced last week by his Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, a hare-brained scheme if ever I saw one and whose only motive must have been to put Atlantic fishermen at each other's throats.
I want to ask the Prime Minister if he will now instruct the minister to get down there and talk to the Newfoundland government so that any changes in fisheries management reflect this new spirit of co-operation between the federal and provincial governments.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I did not undertake to reassess the minister's programs. I undertook to look at a plan submitted by the provincial government.


Roger Simmons: That is not what the press said.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Well, if it is not what the press says you can blame them, not me. I apologize, Roger. They are always right. I am sorry.
As a Newfoundlander, I think my hon. friend would want me to raise the fact that last night a thousand Newfoundlanders gathered to pay tribute to one of the greatest sons of Newfoundland, the hon. John Crosbie.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary.
On October 21 of this year, that son of Newfoundland-


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Brian Vincent Tobin: -said that every fisherman or plant worker who qualifies for assistance under the Fisheries Assis-
Oral Questions
tance Program will get that assistance or "My name is not John Carnell Crosbie".
I want to ask the minister of fisheries, that son of Newfoundland, why some 150 fishermen and plant workers on the great northern peninsula and hundreds more around the province have been disqualified for assistance under this program, assistance that they are fully qualified for.
Will he keep his word of October 21? Will he see that they get assistance? Will he see that he can continue to call himself not only a son of Newfoundland but John Carnell Crosbie?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to report to the House that a son of P.E.I., Premier Ghiz, attended our magnificent PC fund raising function last night in my honour.
He spoke very eloquently on the question of national unity. He is a Liberal who has some clarity of thought and who knows where is the best place to be. He is certainly to be admired.
To the hon. gentleman's question: I believe that everyone who has met the rules of reasonable attachment to the fishery has been looked after in this program. If they have not been looked after, then they are to be considered and reviewed.
The problem in Newfoundland is this. There are a great many people who are unable to get work or who are coming off unemployment insurance and who do not have the necessary attachment to the fishery. They cannot get work, and that is an argument for a job creation program.
Unfortunately they do not meet the terms and conditions laid down for this particular program which was to deal with catch failure and which is dealing with it. I am going to continue to call myself John Carnell Crosbie and to attend such functions with the Prime Minister as last night's function.
You did very well, Prime Minister.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for J. C. as well.

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Oral Questions
It is about the flagship of freshwater research in Canada. The Experimental Lakes Area Program was identified in last week's Auditor General's report as nationally and internationally significant.
Since this program is critical to our understanding of acid rain, Great Lakes water quality, sustainable fisheries, mercury and methane production related to hydroelectric projects and to the accurate measurement of global warming, I wonder if J. C. would explain why funding for this crucial scientific study has been cut by more than 70 per cent since 1976. Will he fully restore it?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, obviously acid rain has not affected the hon. gentleman's moustache.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: There has been some brain damage.
With respect to the Experimental Lakes Program, that program is not terminated. We have contracted with the Rawson Academy, which I think is a well respected environmental organization, to develop a business plan for the experimental lakes area.
That business plan is due to be completed in March 1992 and the work will continue. It is true there has been some reduction in spending due to spending pressures that affect the government as a whole, but certainly the work is going to continue.


James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is not for the same minister. It is to the minister responsible for the green plan. Since he has just released his anniversary check list which has been almost universally described as off target, without timetables and a slush fund for other ministers and their pet projects, will the Minister of the Environment take this opportunity to avoid the flim-flam and tell the people of Canada that this project in terms of the experimental lakes area will in fact be returned to full funding.


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to take this opportunity to respond to the member for Skeena on how far we are and all the work we have done with the green plan. In fact we are on target. We have met about 80 per cent of our commitment up until now on green plan expenditures. That is in excess of $1 billion in expenditures that will be put forward over a six-year period.
In fact this green plan he has just referred to is probably the world's most comprehensive environmental strategy.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to say we appreciate President Aristide's presence here, but we would prefer to see him in Haiti's Parliament, right now.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


SOVIET UNION
Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pose a question to the Prime Minister concerning the historic and serious developments taking place in the former republics of the Soviet Union.
The secretary of state said yesterday that she welcomed these as a positive development. The Prime Minister today is saying that we are now proceeding with caution.
I wonder if the Prime Minister could tell us what it is that Canada is going to do and how are we going to proceed. Are we in fact withdrawing recognition from the present apparatus of the Soviet government, headed by President Gorbachev? Will we be extending recognition to the so-called new commonwealth? Will we be starting discussions to establish diplomatic relations with all the other republics of the former Soviet Union?
Perhaps the Prime Minister could tell us exactly what we are going to do.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I indicated that in response to another question. I understand that the minister yesterday said that it was a positive sign that the three republics wished to work together. Obviously anything that brings greater stability to the region is veiy much a positive sign.
When I was in St. John's yesterday and before the minister spoke, I believe, I indicated that the policy of the Government of Canada was that we would wait for
December 10, 1991

President Gorbachev's speech which he delivered later that day and that we would look at this with a great deal of caution because of the four or five concerns that I mentioned to the leader of the NDP, particularly the deployment and control of nuclear weapons on the soil of a number of these republics.
As we speak, events are taking place. We are being briefed on a very regular basis by our ambassador, our representatives in Kiev and elsewhere. We are monitoring it very, very closely so that the policy of the Government of Canada will become one that is helpful and constructive in pursuance of the four or five criteria I laid out both in the question of Ukraine and in response to the Leader of the NDP today.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question to the Prime Minister. One concern the Prime Minister did not raise in his early remarks was the arrangements made with the former Soviet government with wheat sales and over $2 billion worth of credit.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister specifically: Are we continuing to send food aid to the various republics of the Soviet Union? If so, under what kind of credit arrangements and what kind of repayment arrangements will we be making? Will those simply be held in abeyance? Will we continue that kind of important humanitarian aid during these very critical winter months?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I wrote to President Gorbachev a few days ago when we decided our course in regard to Ukraine. I conveyed to him the view of the Government of Canada, that we would be helpful to him as he grappled with these various problems my hon. friend has just raised in regard to foodstuffs, medicines and so on, particularly with the encroaching winter.
With regard to grain sales, I would have to check. But my recollection is that in the last major grain sale that was concluded by the Government of Canada through the Canadian Wheat Board, we received a counter-signature from the Republic of Russia. The Minister of Agriculture signals that is correct. We had the negotiations that took place in the normal course, but we asked for a further guarantee, and we obtained it.
Oral Questions INDONESIA


Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday, reacting to recent killings in East Timor, the government supposedly suspended $30 million of bilateral development projects in Indonesia. Yet, despite inquiries we do not know what projects are suspended. What is more, resumption of Canadian aid will depend incredibly upon the report of Indonesia's own commission of inquiry into the East Timorese killings.
Will the Prime Minister today demand an independent objective UN commission of inquiry into the East Timorese killings?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, Canada has suspended some development projects, as my hon. friend has suggested. About $30 million in projects will be affected.
As far as the role of Canada in calling for an independent UN inquiry into this, my understanding is that the UN Secretary-General has announced that he is sending an envoy to Jakarta. We want to see what the outcome of that visit is, consult with the United Nations as to what those findings are. Once we have that information then we will be able to make a decision as to which way we should be going.


Beryl Gaffney: My question is for the same minister.
A $30 million suspension of aid to Indonesia is significant, but it is still only a fraction of what Canada should be doing.
Will the minister today assure the House that Canada will finally withdraw its total support of this despotic regime and immediately support United Nations Security Council resolutions 384 and 389 which call for the withdrawal of Indonesian troops from East Timor?


Monique Landry: Mr. Speaker, as my colleague answered

December 10, 1991
Oral Questions
the hon. opposition member, we indeed suspended three aid projects totaling $30 million.
I would like to ask the opposition where it stands on aid to Third World countries. The projects being maintained in Indonesia-and I would be very happy to list them in this House if I had enough time-directly help the people.
I have the list of projects-and I could name them- which directly support the people through Canadian non-governmental organizations. What does the opposition want? Does it really want to help the people? That is what we are doing by maintaining some aid projects that really help people at the grass roots.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: My question is for the Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs, Mr. Speaker.
As the country knows, the Prime Minister has been meeting the premiers from one part of this country to the other and the minister himself said that in the new year he wants to meet the premiers regarding the Constitution.
I wonder if the minister can tell us two things: First, as a result of discussions that have already taken place, have there been any changes to the proposals that the government has tabled on the Constitution; and, second, can he assure the House that if discussions go on in the new year with the premiers and with the officials from the provinces that any changes agreed to between himself and the federal government and the premiers will be told to the committee right away so that the work of the committee could be as meaningful as possible?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Privy Council and Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am rather surprised by the question. Any changes that will come to the proposals will be changes made by the special joint committee. That has always been the understanding of the House and the government. I have made that clear on a number of occasions.
I think the hon. member and other members in the House would want me and would want others in the country to do everything we can to encourage people who have concrete improvements to suggest to bring them forward so that we are dealing with very specific suggestions for improvement of the proposals we brought forward in September.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I thank the minister for his reassurance that the committee will of course be told right away, and the committee itself will recommend the changes.

But yesterday in Montreal the minister met the group on the economy and the Constitution, including the president of Bombardier. This group suggested abandoning the economic union proposal. I agree but for different reasons. However, I have the following question: To make it easier to reach a national consensus, is the minister prepared to act on a suggestion made by this important group from Quebec and drop the proposal on economic union?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I think the second question is the exact opposite of the first one. We are now asking Canadians to suggest improvements to our proposals.
Yesterday, here in Ottawa, I was delighted to have a conversation with a group of business people from Quebec who were interested in efficient federalism and suggested a number of changes. I think they will have an opportunity, either today or tomorrow, to present the same proposals before the special joint committee, and I hope the committee will consider those proposals. As far as we are concerned, we made some proposals and we will continue to urge Canadians to suggest improvements, but it is up to the special joint committee to make the next changes, to take the next step toward developing a Canadian constitutional position.


AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
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The Canadian automobile industry is having difficulty competing with used U.S. cars and trucks entering Canada because some of the standards outlined in the Motor Vehicle Safety Act are not being enforced on U.S. vehicles.
The Department of Transport is currently drafting new rules to address this situatioh, but in the meantime will the minister assure the Canadian industry that the present rules will be equally enforced on both Canadian and U.S. products and that new rules will require U.S. vehicles to compete and meet exactly the same standards as Canadian vehicles?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of TVansport):: Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member on his tenacity in this matter. I can assure the hon. member and the industry that no vehicle will be allowed entry to Canada that does not provide the same level of safety as any vehicle made in Canada.
His concerns and those of the industry have been taken into consideration. We will be circulating a consultation paper on the different options, for instance auto maker regulations, before Christmas and we will make sure that the safety of vehicles made outside Canada meet the standards of the vehicles made in Canada.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture.
For the sake of supply management Canadian agriculture needs a strengthening and clarification of article XI of the GATT. Some of the vibes we are getting from overseas are not positive. The free trade agreement has already left many Canadian farmers vulnerable to unfair competition from the United States and if we lose at the GATT, Canadian farmers will have nothing left with which to defend themselves.
I want to ask the Minister of Agriculture whether he can assure the House today that his government will accept absolutely nothing less than clarification and strengthening of article XI.


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I guess I would reply to the hon. member by asking him a question. Is he suggesting that out of 108
Oral Questions
countries Canada should not sign a GATT agreement which would benefit this country, would benefit agriculture? We believe we have developed a policy with the producers and with the provinces in both the elimination of export subsidies which are distorting the market and strengthening and clarifying article XI that will allow supply management to continue in Canada, that will allow the export part of agriculture to grow. In that we are firm. We have the support of the industry, and I hope I have the support of the hon. member and his party opposite in attempting to put in place something that will allow supply management to continue in this country.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I think the minister just told us that he has caved in.

I have a very specific supplementary on a subject I raised yesterday: Could the minister give the House the assurance that the quantitative controls that exist today under article IX of GATT will be maintained after the current negotiations? Yes or no?


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member has been following the debate he will know that is exactly why we are putting forward the position that we want article IX strengthened and clarified, so we can meet the end that he has just asked me about.


AEROBATIC FLIGHTS
David Bjornson: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
As the minister is aware, his permit to allow irregular and unsafe flying above the community of St. Andrews is due to expire. The permit in question allows irregular aerobatic flight within metres of a large housing development at St. Andrews, when a special flight area designated for aerobatic flight already exists only seven kilometres away.
Is the minister going to deny his permission for this irregular flight by directing the aerobatic flights to the nearby special flight area already designated for such activity, or is the minister casting some doubt on the

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safety of his department's special use areas all across the country?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I must inform my hon. colleague that we do not have a final decision on this matter yet.
My colleague, the minister of state, has undertaken to look into all the concerns raised and we will be getting back to him very soon.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Dartmouth, a single question. This will be the last question.


PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
The minister knows that the drug patent protection legislation has been offered as a negotiable item of GATT, a move that will threaten thousands of jobs in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry.
I ask the minister to please clarify. Is he for or against increasing patent protection from 10 to 20 years and is compulsory drug licensing now on the table at the GATT?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to receive that question. I think my hon. colleague will agree with me that the bill we put in place in 1986-87, C-22, was a great success because we got the increase in prices lower than inflation. We also got a large investment.
I can give a few of them if you want: Bristol Myers, $151 million; Burroughs Wellcome, $20 million; Ciba-Geigy, $225 million; Eli Lilly Canada Inc., $70 million; Boehringer Ingelhien Canada Ltd., $135 million; and Glaxo, $275 million. All those investments were just because we put in place a legislation that allowed research and development in Canada.


PRESENCE IN THE GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of Ms. Joan Sawicki, Speaker Designate of the Legislative Assembly of the province of British Columbia.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to remind the Chair that today in Question Period while there were more than two dozen questions from opposition members, the Chair allowed only two questions from this side of the Chamber. Both of those questions were in the last five minutes of Question Period.
I would like to remind the Chair that some other members of the government side came to Question Period today with questions to ask of the government. A number of our constituents-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I would simply remind the hon. member that this point has already been raised several times in the past and that the Speaker can only give the same answer. If the hon. member has certain matters to raise, he knows very well that there is a parliamentary committee on House management and he can make suggestions to improve the Standing Orders if he sees fit.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Chretien (p. 6042), and the amendment thereto of Ms. McLaughlin (p. 6057).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The hon. member for Carleton-Charlotte has one minute left.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what I can say in one minute, but I think I can at least invite-


Some hon. members:: Thke your time.


Gregory Francis Thompson: I guess by the sound of it they are going to give me more than one minute.
I do have 10 minutes that have been allotted to questions and comments. I may extend that courtesy to opposition members at this point and respond to some of
December 10, 1991

the comments. If they do have a question or critique I would be more than willing to take them.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my hon. colleague's address just prior to Question Period. I know that he would not want to mislead this House and the Canadian people. He referred to a debt of $200 billion. I have a signed letter from the former Minister of Finance pointing out that when they took over government the debt was in the neighbourhood of $168 billion. I can table that signed letter if he wishes. I would appreciate the acknowledgement and the correction.
My colleague indicated that if he added the interest rate only to that particular debt at the time the government inherited it, it would add up to the current debt. Not so. He knows it, and if he does not he should because I have done the mathematics. I have had it checked out. It is an incorrect statement. I wish that he would acknowledge that as well. I am sure that he would like to do that and I will give him the opportunity.
The other question that he has not addressed is the whole question of revenues. When the government came into power it had revenues in the neighbourhood of $70 billion. This year the revenues will exceed $130 billion. It is roughly a $60 billion increase, almost twice as much. What has it done with the Canadian taxpayers' money? That is what I would like to know.
In a final point, the government boasts about controlling the debt. It is very easy to control the debt if you give it to someone else. That is exactly what they have done. They have given it to the provinces who have given it to the universities, the colleges, the hospitals, the Canadian taxpayers, the students. Do not brag about controlling the debt. It is no different than if I were to walk around and parcel out my own debts to all of you and then walk out and say that I am debt-free or I have less debt than you have.
The debt in 1984 when they came into power was not $200 billion, as he and a number of people say. It is not correct to say that if you add the interest rate only it would generate the debt we have today. That is not an accurate statement. Of course it does not even address the question of high interest rates that existed and in fact created additional debt. That is another issue. The revenue has increased. It is almost double. I would like a comment on that.
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Finally with regard to the control of the debt by offloading it on to the provinces, I think a number of statements were verging on being somewhat irresponsible and certainly exaggerated.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I am more than willing to respond to that. If the member has the figures he tells us he has, he should table them in the House. I stand by my statement and the figures I have used and virtually every member in this House uses including the opposition. The figure is a very real figure. We have inherited a $200 billion debt.
The fact still remains that if we take interest into account in calculating the figure we have today, the accumulated debt in this country today of $390 billion is simply interest on that debt. He can shake his head and argue all he wants. The facts are there.
If the hon. member has further facts or evidence that he wants to promote, he better present them to this House. Up to this point he has not.
The party arithmetic it uses is simply not the kind of arithmetic Canadian people will put up with because it is not factual. It speaks volumes about the hon. member. He is lost in his own rhetoric.
There is no question about it. The interest we are paying today on the debt in terms of Gross Domestic Product is much less than when we took office. I used those figures earlier this morning to indicate we have made progress. As the Canadian economy has continued to grow under this government, the percentage of Gross Domestic Product that has to service the debt is less now by half of what it was when we took office in 1984. Those facts cannot be disputed.


Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to question the member for Carleton-Charlotte.
When this government ran for office it talked about accountability. It did not mention the deficit at that time. It told the Canadian people how much better it could manage the economy and how much better it could govern.
The fact remains we have all these people unemployed across Canada. We have a situation where the government promised jobs, jobs, jobs. It found money to fight a war in the gulf, but it cannot find the money to put people back to work. We have people all across Canada who are unemployed. It is cutting Canadian assistance

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programs across Canada. It is cutting medicare and equalization to the provinces. It is cutting the very network of our Canadian economy. It is saying to us that we are responsible. I want to say it has an accountability problem. It promised the Canadian people it was going to answer their problems. It has not answered them.
What is the government going to do with the unemployed especially at Christmastime when people are lined up at the food banks? What is it going to do to assist these people and get them back to work so they can be part of the Canadian society we all want?


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, this question of what the government intends to do specifically was answered in Question Period by the Prime Minister.
What the government is attempting to do in this country can be better addressed in the over-all picture. It is attempting to get the fundamentals right. One of those is simply to pay down the debt and get out from beneath the crushing debt load that we have as Canadians.
The truth is that 35 cents out of every tax dollar going to Ottawa today services interest on the debt. Just imagine what we could do for the poor and unfortunate in this country, for the Canadians that really do need help. Just imagine what we could do if we did not have to send 35 cents of every tax dollar to pay interest on the debt. That is the real answer to the problem.
We know that the problem is there. We are doing our best to address it on a day to day basis. The real answer lies in coming to grips with debt and deficits in this country. That way we are going to utilize Canadian taxpayers' dollars the way they should be utilized to help the less fortunate than ourselves.
It is interesting to note that last year the United Nations did a study of 162 countries in the world in terms of how they deal with their people and the level of support they give to their citizens. Everything was measured in regard to help to the poor and elderly, housing standards and social benefits of all sorts. The only country in the world that beat Canada was Japan. Canada came in number two and Japan was number one. Canada came ahead of 160 other countries. We are doing a good job, but there is more to be done. That more means working together to rid ourselves of the debt that restricts us from doing the very things he mentions.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Very briefly, the hon. member for Longueuil. Very briefly, please.


Mr. Nic Leblanc (Longueuil):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about free trade. I want to tell him that I was also in favour of free trade during those talks. Unfortunately a year later people in Quebec and Canada were told that from now on they would have a huge open market to sell their products. They started spending money to open offices and promote products to the United States. At the same time they were told they would also have to train their employees and improve their equipment in order to produce more efficiently and be more productive.
Unfortunately a year later the government raised interest rates and kept them high for a long time. It also raised the value of the Canadian dollar so that Canadian companies started going bankrupt. Instead of helping, free trade was hurting the economy because the government was inconsistent in its policies.
When the hon. member tells me Canada is a prosperous country, I say that Canada would be a prosperous country if the government could be consistent. To be consistent, we should not have 11 political powers in this country.
What can he tell me? I do not have much time, Mr. Speaker, so I will get back to that.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I want to address a couple of points raised by the hon. member. Certainly the member is well informed enough on the economic side to realize that the value of the Canadian dollar is simply a reflection of the confidence that is placed in Canada as a country in which to invest. Internationally we are held in very high regard. That is really the reason for the high Canadian dollar. No economy in the history of the world has ever gained anything by artificially reducing the value of its currency. I hope the member is not suggesting we do that.
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Interest rates right now in Canada are the lowest they have been in 20 years. That is something that will pay dividends to all of Canada for the next number of months.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the House that the 20-minute and 10-minute question and answer periods will be split with the House's permission with the member for Comox-Alberni.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is no problem. You do not require unanimous consent for that. You have the floor for 10 minutes.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, I think it would be helpful at the outset to set out the opposition day motion that is before the House to put my remarks in context. The motion reads:
That this House condemn the government for economic
mismanagement that has led to an intolerable and tragic level of
unemployment, business failure and poverty in Canada.
I think the motion comes at a very appropriate time when one considers what is occurring in Canada today as a result of monetary and fiscal policies that this government has pursued consistently since 1984, and more particularly since I have been in this House from the fall of 1988.
If we look back at the record of this government, in the three years that I have been here we have seen a free trade agreement, high interest rates, the dollar rate go to unprecedented highs and the GST come in with devastating effects. We have looked at more and more taxation on the business community through things such as unemployment insurance and, if the government has its way, through a further tax on businesses through its Bankruptcy Act.
I put my remarks in context with some of the most recent figures that have come out with respect to both business and personal bankruptcies. They show an alltime high in October with a total of 6,896 businesses and consumers declaring bankruptcy. Of those 5,740 were consumers declaring bankruptcy in October. This figure is 20 per cent higher than last October and 10 per cent higher than last month. Over 60,000 consumers have had to declare bankruptcy over the past 12 months. Of the total of over almost 7,000 businesses and consumers 1,156 of those are businesses that went bankrupt. Most of those were in the small business sector. This figure is 22 per cent higher than last month and 1 per cent higher
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than a year ago. Over the past year there have been 12,952 businesses that have been forced into bankruptcy.
We look at the causes. Why are these people and these businesses being forced into failures and bankruptcies at this particular stage? It is easy to say that we are in a recession and those types of things happen in a recession. It is very clear if we look at the history of this recession that Canada entered this recession long before others did because of the policies of this government. Those policies exacerbated a problem world-wide and brought it on much more rapidly in Canada than anywhere else.
When I was on the finance committee looking into the technical paper on the GST, we were warned time and time again that we would be in recessionary times by fall of 1990 and early winter of 1991 and if the GST came in at that time it would make the problem much worse. It would accent the problem to such an extent that it was predicted by the treasurer of the province of Alberta, a Conservative also, that we would fall far behind. We would fall so far into the depths of recession business-wise and consumer-wise that we would never be able to crawl out of the pit that had been dug for us by this government with its monetary and fiscal policies and particularly the GST.
Recently we looked at a number of studies on the goods and services tax as one of those examples of what is happening. We look at the advent of massive crossborder shopping and what the reasons are. Being from a community and a riding that borders the United States in south central British Columbia, it is very clear that the problem was increased substantially by the GST. It was added on to the back of the high rate of the dollar. People know that in Canada they are being taxed out of existence by this government and they are willing to close their eyes to all the benefits we have and go across the border.
For the small business community that is devastating enough. But look at what it costs them for the implementation of this devastating goods and services tax. In British Columbia alone, my home province, a recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business shows that the average cost for each firm to implement the goods and services tax was $4,190 per firm. The ongoing costs of administering the GST were shown at $430 per month. The total cost for business in British Columbia appears to be close to $1.3 billion. That is money coming out of the very pockets of the business community that we have to look to, to climb out of the

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recession. This is the very community that creates 85 per cent of all new jobs within Canada and keeps within Canada almost all profits from small business community and reinvests it in its own country.
This is what this government is doing with the goods and services tax to our small business community. The ongoing costs of complying with the goods and services tax has been shown in that recent survey to be $9.6 billion for Canadian business. Small business bears 82 per cent of the implementation costs in the paperwork and administration of the goods and services tax.
Is that fair taxation? Is that being fair to the community that we look to for assistance within Canada? The answer is a resounding no, no, no, it is not fair. We have to look at this. The New Democratic Party has. It has agreed with small business within Canada that the goods and services tax must go.
There is no doubt that this puts small businesses and small firms at a serious competitive disadvantage in relation to the larger firms. It is a regressive tax that has been shown to cost small firms with less money coming in much more in GST administration than it does for large firms.
It is apparent why larger firms are in agreement with the goods and services tax and why small business is hurting so drastically.
Let us look again at some of the devastating effects of the Conservative agenda in banking. It takes so much from the banks at election time that I guess it is their turn to pay something back.
The cost to small business when it comes to the service charges for use of credit cards is hundreds of millions of dollars a year alone.
If we look at some of the anticipated revenue of the GST we can see that once again this tax hurts small people as well as small business.
Look at the anticipated GST revenues from the sale of clothing. Children's clothing that has been hitherto untaxed by this government will now be included with adult clothing. This will bring into the coffers approximately $1.24 billion from the goods and services tax.
Those are dollars out of the small person's pocket and out of small business.
Home heating oil tax will bring in $345 million out of the pockets of small business and the community. Transportation purchases will bring in $475 million. Non-prescription drugs will bring in $140 million.
It is very apparent that the monetary and fiscal policies and the direction that this government has taken this country have been nothing but devastating to the people of Canada and particularly for small business.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for offering his views and opinions to the House today.
I am somewhat puzzled by his speech. His speech is full of criticism and I think that there are reasons why you should be criticizing the government policy.
However what I noted is the absence of any plan or master plan by the member for the New Democratic Party in relation to how they would deal with the emerging global economy given the new dynamics that are at play today internationally.
In my speech this morning I not only criticized the government but clearly laid out the five economic principles that we Liberals have.
I think there is an obligation also on the opposition side of this House not to merely criticize the government. We should also offer concrete alternatives. I would like to hear from the member what his concrete alternatives are and what is the new master plan of the New Democratic Party of Canada toward addressing the very serious concerns that Canadians have.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, I think it is very apparent. I thank the member for his question. But had he been following over the past few years the New Democratic Party, which obviously he has not, he would have seen that there have been very positive responses to global economy. Unlike the Liberal Party we were willing to present to the people of Canada alternatives to the GST for their scrutiny.
I wondered at that time where the Liberals were. Where were the Liberals? When I sat with them on the
December 10, 1991

finance committee I found that their main critic from New Brunswick in fact kind of liked the goods and services tax. The Liberal Party was widely split on whether they should agree with the goods and services tax or not. We watched the flip and the flop and the flop and the flip and the belly flop of the Liberals as they flopped back and forth deciding whether in fact they were going to go along with the goods and services tax, whether they liked it or whether they did not. But did they put forward any alternatives? No, they were bankrupt of ideas as so many small businesses are now bankrupt. They had no ideas. They had to decide: "Do we like it or do we not like it? What are we going to do about it?"
What happened was that they decided they would come out in opposition to it without ever looking at what they should do in place of it. We were very solid in looking at it with economists, with people from around the country and others who had worked with goods and services tax and value added tax areas in other countries. We were trying to come up with reasoned and reasonable alternatives to the goods and services tax.
In our minority report in the finance committee we put forth those alternatives.
Similarly I think if the member looks at places like British Columbia, where people have just recently had the good sense to elect a New Democratic Party government with new Premier Mike Harcourt, he will see that the realization has to be that we cannot continue to simply run across the border to the United States. The future of Canada is with the rising sun and not with the setting sun to the south. We have to look at our Pacific Rim countries. That is what Mr. Harcourt, the premier of British Columbia, has done. He has gone across in his first overseas trip to ensure that at least the west coast of Canada is recognized where future markets will be. We are looking in the future to the birth of new trade partners and not at the death of old trade partners.


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, I very seldom intervene in the process of questions after a speech, but I cannot let the hon. member off the hook when he comes up with statements that are either misinformed and/or incorrect.
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For example, he blames the GST on the increase of cross-border shopping when he knows full well that the recent report by Statistics Canada concluded that in fact one-day trips to the United States since January 1 of this year decreased. That is incidentally when the GST took over from the old federal manufacturers' sales tax. The increase in cross-border shopping has decreased.
Second, he talks about the CFIB report about GST and cost to business. It has been made very clear, not only in this House but by analysts from coast to coast, that the report was flawed in its methodology. In fact I have here a letter to Mr. John Bulloch from Didatech Software Limited in Burnaby, B.C.-the hon. member's province-which says that Mr. Bulloch's report was flawed. It concludes in saying:
I run a small company employing 12 people and have sales of around $1 million per year. The GST has improved our ability to compete and export to the U.S. market. We spend a trivial amount of time administering the GST In fact the only problem with the tax is that it does not apply to everything.
It is signed by Paul Melhus, president of Didatech Software Limited.
I would like the hon. member perhaps to respond to that constituent from British Columbia who supports the GST over the flawed manufacturers' sales tax which has harmed Canadian businesses.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult to answer that question very briefly, but I will try.
First of all, regarding cross-border shopping, it is very interesting that the minister uses statistics that are now newly adjusted, but if he looks at Statistics Canada's own figures he will see that the dollar value of the amount that is coming across the border has gone up by those same figures.
Regarding CFIB cost to business, he points out that its methodology is flawed. Over the past few years we have seen this same government when it suited its purposes using CFIB figures saying: "Here is the situation".
He gives us one example of somebody who agrees with the GST. This summer I went around and talked to the forest industry and larger industries that have been hurt by the GST because of the administrative costs. I have talked to other small industries that are telling me they are being put out of business by this government and its tax policies.

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I think the minister had better open up his eyes, talk to the people of Canada and recognize that this GST is hurting Canada and has to be done away with.


Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I want to express appreciation to my colleague for sharing this time that we have to debate this Liberal motion. I want the House to know that I fully support this motion about the mismanagement of the government which has plunged this country into the kind of recession it is currently experiencing.
I suspect that the majority of Canadians living today have probably never gone through a period like the great depression of the 1930s. Most of us in this House were either too young to get the full impact of the experience or, like myself, were bom during the war when the economic situation had changed or were part of the post-war baby boom that took over after the war.
I suppose the last two recessions, 1981-82 when the Liberals were in office and the current recession created by the Conservative government, are the only things that really come close to helping us experience what people went through during that period of recession back from 1929 through 1939.
At that time commodity prices on the farm and elsewhere plunged to record lows. Farmers, fishermen, people working in the forest industry, people working in industries across Canada, their commodities plunged to such a value that they could not even recoup their operating costs much less earn a profit.
Unemployment skyrocketed at that time. Unemployed young men ended up travelling back and forth across the country seeking employment. They were not lazy by any means. They were seeking work. As a result of government policies work simply was not available no matter where they looked in this country and they were certainly attempting to look.
Many of us who grew up during the depression or were born during or just after the war really do not have any kind of understanding about the impacts of that depression. We were brought up in an era when governments were taking steps to learn from what caused the depression, taking steps to implement policies which they felt would result in no new depressions of the type they had gone through between 1929 and 1939.
I recall books about the depression, for example Pierre Berton's book. Even R. B. Bennett at the end of the depression just before the election of 1935 was getting on the radio and saying: "Maybe Roosevelt's deal was the right thing, maybe we were doing the wrong thing here in Canada".
Even R. B. Bennett was proposing measures which would have brought people back into the work force, which would have stimulated the economy, which would have assisted areas of the country that had suffered more from the depression than other areas, which would have brought people back to work rather than sticking them in military style relief camps or concentration camps along the lines that were proposed by Mayor Charlotte Whit-ton, a former mayor of Ottawa.
I was brought up in a period when governments took great steps to implement measures which would prevent the onset of another depression like the one they had experienced between 1929 and 1939.
What they decided was the cause of the recession was unlimited laissez-faire market systems. Even R. B. Bennett in his radio programs back in 1935 was suggesting that the time for the laissez-faire market system was over. It had failed. It caused the depression and what they had to look at was more government involvement.
This was coming from the mouth of one of arch Conservatives of his day. He was saying that the laissez-faire market system had failed Canadians, had failed the people of the world and what was needed was more government involvement in the development of the economy, more regulation of the marketplace and of private industiy in order to protect people from the onset of another recession or another depression like the great depression of the 1930s.
I am a person who grew up in that kind of an economy. My experience of that economy, although my family was relatively poor, is that it was a benign economy. It was not the kind of economy that we are experiencing right now. Government was involved in the economy. Government brought in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Trans-Canada Airlines. It was involved in transfer programs that assisted the less developed parts of the country. It was involved in transfer programs between the federal government and what were known as the
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poorer provinces in order to help upgrade the standard of services available in those provinces.
All of these measures were brought in by governments after the last depression in order to avoid the onset of another one. Things like the progressive income tax system and the distribution of wealth and income in the country were seen as necessary in order to prevent another depression.
Things like the Canada Assistance Plan, Established Programs Financing and national medicare were brought in I suppose at the end of this period in the 1960s to make sure that services were provided at a decent standard across the country.
Unfortunately in the 1970s and the 1980s that old phenomenon of Conservative ideology and the free market ideology resurfaced again. The pendulum swung back to the right. That is the kind of problem that we are wrestling here with now.
All of the regulations that were brought in after the depression and after the war in order to prevent the onset of another depression, all of those things which were brought in by both Liberal and Conservative governments of the day, are now in the process of being dismantled.
Regarding provincial transfer payments, we just passed legislation within the last couple of days to do away with some of those programs by capping them and by starving them to death.
We now as a result of the actions of this Conservative government have begun to dismantle the unemployment insurance system.
It is great to read the statements of R. B. Bennett and Mackenzie King during the last depression because they are so similar. They all were fiscal tinkerers and they all were concerned about balancing the budgets. The only thing they were not concerned about, the only thing they did not want to hear about, and I noticed it in the speeches being made by the Conservatives on the opposite side of the House, was the debt solution program which has not solved the debt crisis.
They talk about their inflation programs which have not solved the depression crisis. They talk about all of their fiscal tinkering and their financial programs, none
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of which has resulted in a single new job within the last little while.
The problem here is that the neo-conservatives of today-and there is no such thing because it is a contradiction in terms-are just like the old Conservatives at the time of Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. These are the kinds of people who took us into the depression last time. These are the kinds of policies that created the depression last time.
It is amazing how the statements made by people on that side reverberate all the way back to the 1920s and the 1930s. You can see exactly the same statements almost word for word. The problem here is that Conservatives create depressions. Tory times are hard times. When it comes to management of the economy, the Tories put ideology before practicality and that is the problem that Canada is experiencing right now.
If it were not the case then maybe the minister could get up on his hind legs for a change and tell me why we have two million people unemployed in this country. Why do we have a million kids living in poverty? Why do we have hundreds of thousands of people going to food banks under a Conservative government while the Minister of Finance here gets up and says that prosperity is just around the comer or that he can see the light at the end of the tunnel? He wonders why all his programs are not working.
In order to get these programs working, you have to focus them on the people who really need them and they are the poor, the unemployed, those people who do require food banks. Those are the people who need the focus of this government's attention and those are the people who are not getting it.
We need employment programs to put those people back to work. We need training programs in order for those people to be trained to deal in the economies of the future and to be able to survive in the economies of the future.
We have a government that is cutting back on those programs and cutting back on funding to the provinces. The problem here is that we have a Conservative government. It is going to be replaced by a Conservative government that now goes under the title of Liberal and that is going to be the problem.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I think the member was right that there is a

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pretty good chance we will probably replace this government, but you can be dam sure that our policies would show a lot more caring than some of the policies of this government. We will talk about that later.
I have a question for the member because I need a bit of clarification. I have a New Democratic Party government in the province of Ontario right now and the way it is behaving, to quote my colleague from Kingston and the Islands, it seems from time to time that it is rather hopeless.
I would like to ask a question of the member for Comox-Alberni. Would he rather pay people from the public purse who are on unemployment not to work or have the people who are unemployed work on capital projects, environmental projects, something like the Company of Young Canadians working in the Third World or whatever? I am just trying to seek a clarification here from the member in terms of work ethic. In other words, we talk about people wanting to work and putting people back to work. Would he go so far as to say that it would be a much better thing for the productivity and the spirit of this country if those people who are unfortunately out of work because of a depressed economy or whatever had some kind of a constructive, productive thing to do rather than sitting at home collecting unemployment cheques or welfare cheques?


Robert Evans Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question.
I just want to go back to the first part of his question and the concern that he has about the government in Ontario. I am sure that the Government of Ontario would have had a much better idea of how it was going to run the province had it been given an honest answer as to how much money had been left in the treasury.
I recall seeing a cartoon in The Toronto Sun in which the Liberal treasurer of Ontario was taking Bob Rae on a transitional tour to the treasury vaults in the Parliament Buildings down there in Queen's Park and there was a mirror in the back of the vault. Somebody had smashed the mirror so it did not look like there was twice as much money as there was. He said: "Oh, one of the workmen must have shoved a broom through the mirror". There is only half the money available in the treasury. In fact the Liberals knew before they went into the election that they were going to be running a substantial deficit in the
following year. They did not tell the people of the province the truth about that, and as a result it changed the whole perspective of the election. When people get into government and find out they only have half the money the previous government said they had, then we have a serious problem. That is the problem Bob Rae is dealing with right now.
The member asked me a question about how to get people in this economy back to work. I think it is possible to take a look at models that are available to us in other economies that have a relatively low level of unemployment and have a whole range of labour market strategies to deal with the problem of unemployment.
In most countries in Europe people retire voluntarily at the age of 55. Young people are able to move into the work force and take their place. In many cases they have better training. Many countries in Europe have paid educational leave. People can leave the work force and take a year or so of training to upgrade and become more skilled either in their own line of work or some other one. They become much more valuable to their employers and the economy as a result of that process of paid educational leave.
In most cases financing for those kinds of programs are paid in part out of collective agreements by employers and employees and are subsidized by the unemployment programs of the government. There are many ways that employment can be created and more people moved into the work force through expenditure on the part of all participants.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, I understood that the member for Calgary was going ahead of me but that is no problem. I will be pleased either to yield to her or continue, whichever she prefers.


Mrs. Sparrow:: Apres vous.


Roger Simmons: Apres moi. I thank her. I was reflecting on the two Canadas when I was getting ready for this debate.
I see my friend, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, is in good humour as is usually the case. It is good to see him.
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I was reflecting on the events of yesterday. I touched on it briefly yesterday here in the House but I ran out of time all too soon, at least from my perspective. I was reflecting on the two events at the Radisson Hotel in St. John's, Newfoundland yesterday evening.
One of the two events took place inside the hotel and had a fairly elite group of people. The Prime Minister was quick to point out that they were Newfoundlanders all, and I do not doubt his word on that. We happen to have per capita more millionaires than anywhere else in Canada, I am told. I am not surprised they could find some people out there to sell-


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Roger Simmons: That is a remark I will not repeat because it could get the minister in an awful lot of trouble and I like him too well to do that. It is a terrible remark.
I say to him that one of the companies that was mentioned today, Ayre's Limited, which is obliged for various reasons to shut down 62 stores across this country, has its headquarters in St. John's, Newfoundland. It had its beginnings there a couple hundred of years ago. It is a company that has provided a lot of leadership in the retail area to the entire country.
I know his quip was in fun, but I say to him that Newfoundlanders have a way of making an honest day's pay too and providing jobs for many thousands of fellow Newfoundlanders and people all across this country. That is the case with Ayre's that until now had employed over 700 people across this country from coast to coast in 62 stores and would continue to do so but for the policies of this government. The Ayre family has a tradition of not being particularly of the Liberal persuasion and that should come as no surprise, having just given its pedigree. The Ayre family in its release today has identified the polices of this government.
These are not my words. They mention the free trade agreement. They mention cross-border shopping. The member from Calgary looks like she is interested in what I am saying, but she obviously did not hear what I just said. I just pointed out that they have 62 stores across the country from coast to coast, in Toronto, in Montreal, all across the country.
We from Newfoundland have been in Confederation for such a short period that sometimes you will catch us in an unguarded moment saying "country" when we mean Newfoundland. We still say that a lot back home. However, in this particular case when I said "country" I meant Canada. I meant from coast to coast. I talked about the Ayre's stores in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and points in between. There are 62 of them going under and being shut down because, in the words of the management of that chain of stores, of the policies of this government, a government that family had supported over many years.
That was kind of off the track, but the minister has helped me make a point. I want to make a second point, which was to have been my first point. In the Radisson Hotel last evening there were two events. First of all, there was one inside the hotel. This great hotel was funded by a Liberal government that said everybody else had a convention centre except Newfoundland. Why does Newfoundland not have one? The government of the day pre-1984 made the funds available and of course they actually flowed in early 1985 when my good friend, the minister of fisheries as he is now, allowed the money to flow. So the convention centre and the Radisson Hotel were built in St. John's.
There are those that will tell you one of the hotels, which I will not mention, is the Liberal hotel and the Radisson is the Tory hotel. I do not subscribe to that kind of nonsense. I stay at both of them, depending on the occasion.
There were two events last evening, one inside the hotel with the elite. Some of the Newfie millionaires and others who could fork over the 500 bucks to see the Prime Minister were there. Let us face it, he has not exactly been seen down there recently. He has not been down there since May of last year, although it is an important part of the country as I am sure you will agree, Mr. Speaker, coming as you do from another important part of the country, Quebec.
I suppose there are people down there who were anxious enough to see him that they would pay 500 bucks. But to pay 500 bucks you have to have it. But Newfoundlanders are always fairly ingenious and those of us who could not pay the 500 bucks found another way. We set up a little soup kitchen. This is the other event I come to. It was not quite in the hotel. It was on the premises if you like, just outside the door. The fee there was a little different. It was not quite $500. It was

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50 cents for a bowl of soup. The bowl of soup was kind of secondary. The 50 cents was the same as the $500. It was to get a chance to look at the Prime Minister who had been missing of late.
It was also to help my good friend from St. John's West celebrate his 25 years in politics during which he has made a marvellous contribution to our province and to this country as a whole.
What else is different about the $500 and the 50 cents? They differ a lot if you subtract one from the other. You will get a fairly large sum. What else is different other than that one is a great massive amount of money that only some people have and the other is a small amount that most people would have.
What else is different? In those two events and in those two amounts you have the two Canadas. You have the two Canadas that are anticipated by this bill. You have the two Canadas that are already in the making by the policies of the gentleman from Baie Comeau. You have the Canada of the elite, the Canada of the well-heeled, the Canada of the people whose incomes are $100,000 or more and who in consequence had their taxes lowered since the Tories came to power by $1,200. That is right. They are paying $1,200 more now than they were in 1984 if they earn $100,000 or more. The other Canada is the 50-cent Canada, the soup kitchen Canada that has also been created by this honourable crowd, the Canadians who have had their taxes increased by $1,600 a year. They are paying $1,600 more in federal taxes this year than they were seven years ago when the Tories took office. Who is that group? It is the group whose salaries, whose income is $30,000 or less. Those are the two Canadas we are talking about. Those are the two Canadas this bill would perpetrate and carve in stone.
That is not the kind of Canada I envision. That is not the kind of Canada we need where one sits at the luxurious table and the other hopes to get near enough to the table to catch a few of the crumbs.
That is what this bill is all about and its predecessor bill from a year or so ago. It perpetuates an injustice that should never have been launched in the first place. Read The Quick and the Dead, the book by Linda McQuaig. I do not think she has ever been accused of being a
Liberal, but she says some things we have been saying for a long time.
She says some things the whole country is saying these days. She says in effect this whole system, whether you are talking free trade, the GST or changes in tax law, is a sock for the rich. The Prime Minister and his friends are looking after their collective friends while doing a song and dance about how they really care about poverty and the unemployed.
They get up and cite figures. They play games with figures. The people out there are lining up in the soup kitchens. People who seven years ago were employed and would still be employed but for the devastation that this government has reaped on the country are lining up at the food banks.
I wish there was a bit more time, but I see my time is up.


Nic Leblanc: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to put a question to the Liberal member who I think was a minister in the Trudeau government and also to make a few comments.
From 1975 to 1984 the Trudeau government tried so hard to centralize powers in Ottawa that it created a mighty confrontation with the provinces, especially Quebec.
In 1984 when the Conservative Party took power-I was then with the Conservative Party-it said three things. Decentralization was necessary to run the country better and to make it more profitable and prosperous. We had to decentralize. That was what the government said in 1984. It also talked about national reconciliation and about reducing the deficit because this nonsensical centralization of the Liberal Party had put the country some $200 billion in debt.
Seven years later we have exactly the same problem. The federal government wants to centralize more. National reconciliation has not happened. Instead of being reduced, the deficit has increased. It seems that we have an accumulated debt of around $420 or $430 billion.
Given these facts, I would like to say this to the Liberal member who had these problems in the Trudeau government, which have continued under the Conservative Mulroney government: Basically it little matters which of the two parties, Liberal or Conservative, runs the
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country better. We realize that the present federal system does not work. The proof is that the present federal system is not working. Unless and until the government is highly decentralized this country will go broke. I would ask him who is more to blame. Is it the Liberal Party, which ran up a $200 billion debt for Canada or the Conservative Party which added another $200 billion? He talked about taxes under the Conservatives and I want to tell him that with a deficit as high as we have now taxes will continue to go up. What does he think are the solutions?


Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Longueuil for his question. As he knows, and I imagine has guessed, I have constituents who are francophones and I trust I can make myself understood in French. Today I ask him to bear with me because I must speak English to be sure I make myself clear.

I do thank the member for Longueuil and I give him the undertaking that at the earliest possible opportunity I will do my best to respond to him in his mother tongue because I think it is important to have that courtesy extended to you, particularly when I represent several thousand francophone electors in the peninsule Port-au-Port in my riding.
The member asked a question to which I would like to respond. He asks: "Who is the most guilty?" When the Liberals vacated office in 1984 the debt was of the order of $170 billion to $180 billion. But if people who want to be fair critics of the situation would go back, they would find that the debt mushroomed in the last five or six years of that regime.
It was not without some explanation. Do not forget that the early 1980s were a very rough period on the world scene. We had come through a recession the likes of which we had not seen during the depression.
Anybody who cites the so-called massive debt of the Liberals in 1984 ought to in fairness cite the circumstances which brought it about.
"Who is the more guilty?" he asks. The people who took over in 1984, the Conservatives, did so first with their eyes open and second with the undertaking that it was going to be different with them. They knew what
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they were getting themselves into. He knew because he was part of the team at the time. They knew they were getting into a situation that included a massive debt.
They keep telling us since that the interest on the accumulated debt is what the real problem is. I have a question for him who was part of that team: "Did they not realize in 1984 that there was going to be such a thing as interest? Did they not know when they made their commitments to wipe out the debt? Did they not know that maybe interest would be applied to the unpaid debt from year to year?"
In direct answer to his question I say to him that the Conservatives, including himself who was there until a year or so ago, are far more guilty because they did some massive misleading at a time when they knew the difference. They knew they could not deliver on wiping out the debt in the short time frame they had undertaken.
I say to my good friend from Calgary Southwest that I am looking forward to hearing her speech. I know she and I differ on some matters. That is why she sits there. We agree on skiing, she says. This is true but here I say to her we are going downhill on another matter altogether and on this one we disagree.
I will say to the member in direct answer to his question that I think a fair amount of the guilt has to lie with the Conservatives who have misled the people on the debt. Having said that, pointing the finger does not help. The important thing is for us to indicate how we would do it differently and I think we have been doing that.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate. One moment. I want to be sure because the Liberals suggested to me that they split their time. The hon. member for Burin-St. George's spoke for 10 minutes and there are still 10 minutes left for the Liberals.
The hon. member for Calgary Southwest.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak today on a subject of primary concern for all Canadians, which is poverty. I would like to remind members that regardless of their political affiliations, really we cannot rest comfortably while we have people living in poverty in this country.

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We do share the concerns. It is the policies and directions that tend to be a bit different.
Canadians generally really do enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. It is second only to the United States. One of this government's priorities is to maintain and improve the standard of living for Canadians and especially for the children in the future. Assuring a better future for Canadians and protecting our social safety net is a sound basis for a healthy and prosperous economy. For Canada to be truly a caring society, our wealth and our prosperity must be shared with those who are less fortunate and those who are in greatest need.
Let us first address the issue of growth and prosperity. There is no question that the policies of this government have contributed to economic growth in Canada since 1984. In 1984 the government embarked on a program of revitalizing the economy. As a result of our economic new policies, there have been new jobs created.
Canadians in need have been able to benefit from this growth. Since 1984 close to one million persons have escaped low income circumstances. This government has taken necessary steps to help those people most in need and to ensure that economic growth can continue.
Despite these important achievements, most Canadians are aware that we are facing a very serious large debt problem. We have been debating this today in the Elouse. Last year more money was spent on interest payments to service our national debt than on all programs administered by the Department of National Health and Welfare. Considering all the programs in health and welfare put together, our national debt was a greater expense to Canadians.
That means that if you look through the department, we spend more than the cost of national programs servicing the debt. I know many people here in the Chamber have realized the amount of money which goes to health and welfare and assistance to Canadians. It is almost 60 per cent of our budget.
There are national health care programs, welfare programs, Old Age Security, family allowance and assistance through the transfers to the provinces and through to individuals. We can see that if servicing our debt has
cost us more than assisting Canadian through health and welfare, we have a lot of pressure on the revenues that we collect.
The survival of the programs that we have in place really depends upon the prosperity of this country. We have to take measures today to ensure for the next generation, which is our children. We must take these drastic steps, absolutely mandatory steps today to maintain a standard of living that Canadians expect tomorrow.
That has not prevented us from putting into place forward looking programs to ensure the future prosperity of all Canadians. Through tax reform we improved the simplicity, the fairness and equity of the income tax system by converting exemptions to credits and by lowering and reducing the number of income tax rates. Eight hundred and fifty thousand low income Canadians were taken off the tax rolls as a result of this policy change.
The government also remains firmly committed to maintaining social programs while recognizing the need to direct benefits to those most in need. One only has to look at the important improvements made in the recent years in respect of benefits available to families to see that the government is strongly in favour and believes in assisting the disadvantaged people and the disadvantaged families.
From the federal government's perspective, the concept of a family benefit related to the child goes back to 1918 when an amendment to the Income Ihx War Act was first introduced. It was called the child tax exemption.
The family allowance program then came into effect in 1945, demonstrating that Canada accepted its obligation to assist in the upbringing of children. It was established as a vehicle whereby the federal government could supplement family income in order to alleviate some of the costs of caring for and raising children.
Several changes have been made to the family allowance since its inception to make the system of family benefits better targeted to families who are most in need. Currently the federal government delivers almost $2.7 billion in family allowance benefits to over 3.5 million families on behalf of 6.5 million children.
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Benefits are usually paid to the mother on a monthly basis. In 1991 the monthly benefit was set at an average of $34 per child. The total amount does not differ, but the age group differs from province to province.
Current federal income support for families does not stop with the family allowances. In this regard family allowances are complemented by a system of child related benefits, mainly delivered through the personal income tax system.
The child tax credit program which provides benefits to lower income families is another key source of income support for families. Since taking office in 1984, this government has significantly enhanced the maximum value of the credit by over 50 per cent. The benefit has increased from $367 per child in 1984 to $585 per child in 1991.
As part of the national child care strategy, the federal government also introduced in 1988 a supplement to the child tax credit with respect to children six years of age and under. The supplement is valued at $207 per child in the year 1991.
The federal government has undertaken other income support measures to assist families with children. For example, we have implemented a goods and service tax credit package which, when all elements are taken together, means that families with incomes of less than $30,000 per year are better off than before the GST was implemented. Families benefit from an enhanced tax credit which is paid quarterly. In 1991 the maximum value of this credit is $190 per adult and $100 per child.
The issue of family violence is also a concern for this government for many reasons. It has a long lasting effect on individuals and on families as well as on our society as a whole.
We all have a role to play. The federal government announced in February 1991 a four-year, $136 million program to continue the effort of reducing the level of family violence in Canada. The new initiative addresses violence against women, children, seniors and the disabled and also within the Indian and Inuit communities.
The federal government has also eased the problem of marriage breakdown and divorce by introducing new divorce legislation which amended the grounds for
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divorce and humanized its consequences. To assist with the enforcement of support orders the federal government also introduced services which provide for the release of information from designated federal banks to help locate persons who do not meet their support order obligations and provide for the garnishment of designated federal moneys from defaulting spouses.
Given the increasing labour force participation rates of women and the changing structure of our family unit, there is no doubt that child care is an important matter. We the federal government do provide substantial support and it runs in the order of $1 billion per year. Included in this, of course, is more than $250 million in federal contribution to provincial and territorial governments in respect of their expenditures for day care services. Also included are the tax revenues forgone in respect of the child care expense deduction. Effective for the 1988 tax year this deduction was increased in order to better reflect the actual cost of care faced by parents using receipted child care.
For parents with pre-school aged children, the maximum deduction now is $4,000 per child, up from $2,000 per child per year.
There is also the child care initiatives fund which supports innovative approaches to child care. To date, for example, the fund has supported a wide range of projects including a national child care survey by the National Day Care Research Network, national conferences that have been sponsored by the Canadian Child Care Federation and a national survey of wages and working conditions for child care workers.
Families with newborn babies receive additional support as a result of the amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. The amendments introduced a multi-tiered system of maternity, parental and sickness benefits, including 15 weeks of maternity benefits available during the period surrounding the birth of the child; 10 weeks of parental benefits available to natural or adoptive parents, either the mother or the father; and 15 weeks of sickness benefits.
This year parents will receive over $1 billion in benefits in order to look after their newborn or indeed their adoptive children.

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The federal government also has a role in social services. While social assistance and social services are matters of provincial jurisdiction, and provinces determine policies with respect to the services, the federal government cost shares eligible provincial expenditures under the Canada Assistance Plan.
Current federal expenditures under this plan, called CAP, are about $6.3 billion in the fiscal year 1991-92. Moreover the federal government in co-operation with provincial governments is working to address housing needs of disadvantaged Canadians.
In 1990, the construction or renovation of over 42,000 new households was funded through federal social housing programs. Most of these programs were cost shared with the provinces and/or the territories. We have to address their sheltered needs. Besides that, over 640,000 households are now being assisted on an annual basis. There is a lot more that can be done and there is probably a lot more that should be done, but we are addressing the needs with the funds that are available.
The government is also committed to improving Canada's health care system to make one of the world's finest and best even better.
As the delivery of health services is a constitutional responsibility of the provinces, it is their responsibility to determine the needs, make the services available, and manage health costs.
The primaiy role of the Government of Canada is to make a financial contribution in support of provincial health programs. Under Established Programs Financing, transfers to provinces for hospital and medical services and extended health care came to an estimated $14.3 billion in the fiscal year which just ended.
That amount represented a significant increase over the value of health transfers during the previous year. EPF transfers will continue to grow. The federal government is committed to enhancing the health of Canadians through medical and health services research.
The Medical Research Council supports more than $200 million worth of grants and scholarships in aid of research every year. The National Health, Research and Development Program also supports research in the operation of health care delivery, the system of health
care delivery in Canada as well as the causes and treatment of AIDS and Alzheimer's.
The government's commitment to addressing major threats to the health and well-being of Canadians is reflected in our funding of special programs to reduce substance and drug abuse such as the national drug strategy.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare has signed several federal-provincial agreements which will provide funding for alcohol and drug abuse programs throughout Canada.
These agreements which will provide $20 million this year and each subsequent year will help those caught up in a vicious circle of drug and chemical abuse. Of course, we cannot forget the system of benefits for our elderly, central in its Old Age Security Program, which provides a basic floor for elderly Canadians that meet minimum residence requirements.
This basic benefit valued at more than $4,400 per pensioner is received by over three million citizens. In addition, the Guaranteed Income Supplement assists low income senior citizens by providing non-taxable benefits to those Old Age Security benefit recipients with little or no other income.
The Guaranteed Income Supplement recognizes the reality faced by many of today's senior citizens and targets benefits accordingly by providing an income tested benefit which directs most of the help to most of those in need.
I cannot overstate this government's concerns about poverty and its effect on children and families. For me, there is no other single issue which stands out that needs more time, more effort and more attention from all Canadians.
In fact, one of the major objectives of this government is to invest in our children and see them better educated, better protected and better nurtured so they can make their own contributions to our future.
In 1990 we watched children take on a new importance in world politics. At the World Summit for Children which was co-chaired by our Prime Minister, leaders of 70 nations adopted the world's declaration on the survival, protection and development of children and the action plan.
December 10, 1991

By signing this declaration Canada was urged to develop a plan of action of its own. We are doing this and I believe it will be early in the new year that the Minister of National Health and Welfare will be able to come forth with recommendations and with a policy.
On behalf of the government I have outlined certain areas we have addressed. We also realize the deficit and debt must be addressed.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on the government side for what I felt was a sincere speech.
[
It was one that expressed deep concerns, particularly to the whole issue as it relates to the institution of the family and children. However, there is a reality that we are facing here in Canada today and part and parcel of this reality is the 1.5 million Canadians who are unemployed. Among them are 400,000 young people. We have lost approximately 250,000 manufacturing jobs. We have seen a middle class that, since this government took office, is now paying $1,500 more in taxes. There has been a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor in this country.
The government must somewhere have a master plan to deal with this issue and this reality that I am presently addressing. I am sure that the Conservative government does not want to have 1.5 million Canadians unemployed. I am sure they take no pride in having 400,000 young people unemployed. However at times I question my own statements. Why have we seen in this country cuts in areas like post-secondary education? Yesterday we debated a cap on CAP and the detrimental impact it has on many communities and people throughout Canada. I am just wondering, if indeed there is a master plan, what went wrong, because obviously something must have gone wrong. I do not think a country like Canada can afford nor should it have 1.5 million people unemployed. We should not have to be concerned that throughout Canada from coast to coast we have young children who cannot learn properly because they go to bed hungry. They get up in the morning and do not have breakfast. In a country as industrialized as we are, it is a national disgrace that we have these problems.
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I want an answer in practical terms, in very specific terms. What are we going to do to address the issue of poverty in practical terms? I do not want to hear numbers. I want to hear actual facts and figures. I want to hear what we are actually going to do about these kids going to school with an empty stomach.
We must realize in this House that children and young people are going to be the future of this country. The government should realize that very quickly before we have yet another burnt-out generation.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the questions.
With regard to the 1.5 million unemployed and the
400,000	young people, it is very difficult and I certainly did try to speak from the heart. I feel very strongly that the situation of poverty and unemployment is one for all of us to be concerned about.
I would like to speak briefly first of all about the number of drop-outs in the education process. We certainly have seen the statistics that 30 per cent of youngsters drop out of high school. One in four people in the labour force are illiterate. By that I mean they cannot read or understand the manuals or the programs to run machinery or indeed carry on with their business. This is unacceptable.
We are addressing some of the issues with regard to forming partnerships with the labour union, academia, the educational institutions and private sector and discussing how we can better train people and increase literacy.
I can also say that through science and technology and globalization, the world is changing extremely quickly.
I think we all realize now that we have to change our attitudes.
We do have a problem. We are hopefully coming out of this recession which has hurt a lot of Canadians in all provinces. I just reflected back to the early eighties and what his party chose on how to attack the problem of that particular recession. It was by printing money. It was printing money and pouring money into the system which increased inflation and which increased the interest rates.


Some hon. members:: What about inflation?

December 10, 1991
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Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Inflation was 13.5 per cent and interest rates were 22 to 23 per cent, which is totally unacceptable.


An hon. member:: You forget the famous six and five program.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Wonderful, wonderful.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Other members may want to make comments or raise questions.


Nic Leblanc: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member for Calgary Southwest. In fact I had the pleasure of working with her on the industry, science and technology committee for a number of years. However, I wondered why she did not address the subject before the House. She talked about what she was doing for the poor. I agree that is important, especially in a recession. At the time we prepared a study on sustainable development and listened to the greatest experts in this country tell us what should be done to boost the Canadian economy. These people said there should be more co-operation between universities, research centres, governments, employers and unions. I would have liked to hear the hon. member talk about how we can improve our business.
We can say that since that time more Canadian businesses, especially in Quebec, have had a tendency to go bankrupt instead of being successful. There have been few successes and few solutions. I would now like to hear the hon. member's suggestions on how to improve the economy so that we can have successful businesses, create jobs, reduce unemployment and reduce welfare. I would appreciate an answer in this respect.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question. I will go on in English, for which I apologize.

I want to thank my colleague. We did share an experience sitting on the Standing Committee of Industry, Science and Technology, Regional and Northern Development, Tourism and Small Business. There were many things that we learned from the witnesses. In areas where this government has acted, the centres of excellence, I believe there were either 14 or 15 centres that
were announced a year and a half or two years ago and some $240 million was put into them.
It was interesting because through the Minister of Science we joined partners with the academic institutions, the post-secondary institutions and private enterprise, as well as through some of our provincial counterparts. It started bringing partners together.
The other area was with regard to Canadian scholarships for students in the science area. This started three years ago. Some 2,500 scholarships are announced every year. Half of these scholarships go to women. We are trying to encourage more women to go into the science and engineering areas.
Obviously there is no quick fix, but we certainly feel that by encouraging youngsters at school and through engineering and sciences we will be able to tackle these problems more beneficially.
My colleague was remarking some time ago with regard to decentralization. It was interesting in a poll I did in the province of Alberta that 90 per cent of the returns were in favour of a strong, unified Canada with a strong federal government.
I think what was interesting was that a lot of the people did not want to see 10 separate governments. I have to say that we need a strong united Canada with a strong federal government.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up where the member for Calgary Southwest left off in answering the member for Longueuil who asked about what we could do to promote a more healthy business climate in the province of Quebec. Was that part of the question? Did I understand him correctly?
I would like to suggest a couple of ideas to the member before I get into my basic remarks. For starters, as a member of Parliament in this nation's board room, they should start by getting behind the minister responsible for national unity. I believe one of the problems we have in this country is the fact that there is fear among foreign and local investors because of all this talk about separation.
If the member would spend a little less time on separation issues and spend more time on galvanizing the will of the nation, I say with respect, that would go a long way to help the business climate in Quebec. Further
December 10, 1991

than Quebec, I think it would go a long way toward helping the economy of this entire country.
I support the remarks of the member for Calgary Southwest who, unlike her Reform Party opponent who always deals in vague generalities, always speaks in specific terms about the issues she addresses. I do not always agree but that is fair. I do respect the member for Calgary Southwest for always dealing with issues in specific terms.
I want to start by saying that I felt good about my leader's motion today on the economy. Many people in this country have been waiting for our leader to be more specific about some of his thoughts on the economy. Today I felt he provided a lot of specifics.
He started off by referring to a value system that the Liberal Party would have as its cornerstone, as we are working a developing policy, hopefully in preparation for the opportunity to govern this country. He talked about a value system that talked about caring and approachabil-ity and a lot of compassion. He talked about a government that must really deal in terms of integrity.
I know that people from coast to coast are pleading for a value system like that to become a focal point again in terms of the policy we develop in this country.
Getting off the value system and on to a more specific area, I want to talk about the national debt of this country. There is one thing I hear over and over again from the government members that is almost like a part of a strategy, and that is that they cannot give a speech without referring to the national debt, the deficit and the debt. It is almost like a brainwash experience that they are putting the people of Canada through. I have noticed this as I have sat in the far comer of this House and listened to people over the last few months.
First of all, this government has exaggerated the debt of this country. It is terribly exaggerated. The exaggeration is close to $40 billion. It does not count the reserve of the Bank of Canada which is close to $23 billion.
Who controls the Governor of the Bank of Canada? The Government of Canada. That is a fact that it does not recognize in its calculations. There are also other reserves that it has which is another $23 billion that it has not calculated. I am not saying the debt is unimportant but I do not like this government's approach of trying to sort of scare the Canadian people into a state where
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nothing else matters but the national debt of this country.
We must address the problem. I am not saying that we should ignore it, but I think that one of the best ways to handle the debt of this nation is to make sure that we have a productive labour force.
The Gross National Product of this country is approximately $625 billion to some $630 billion. Can we imagine if the productivity of this country went up by some 10 per cent? We are talking about an intake of gross revenues into the system, if we kept expenses and inflation in line, of close to $60 billion.
I grant that all of that does not come back into the national Treasury. But my point is that the best way to handle the debt of this nation is with a galvanized work force where we have a galvanized will, a will that wants to succeed.
What instruments does the Government of Canada have at its disposal to work at galvanizing the will of this nation? It is from a galvanized will that productivity will increase. It may be low at 10 per cent. We should not just be thinking in terms of productivity being the number of widgets we make in an hour, because someone will be more productive.
We should also think of the creative juices that come from a work force that is galvanized and motivated. As I was about to say earlier, what instruments does the Government of Canada have? The one instrument that this government has that can touch everyone in this country is the tax designs.
This government has failed miserably in its tax designs. When it came to power in 1984 it promised comprehensive tax reform. I rest my case to the people of Canada. I think that the corporate income tax and the personal income tax reforms of this country have failed. The government should not look to the opposition to hear criticism. It should just listen to its own constituents. It could see the attitude reflected in their work habits. The tax designs of this country right now are a disincentive to productivity. The very thing that we need in order to address the problem which the member for Calgary Southwest mentioned earlier is the national debt.
It has exacerbated the problem, of course, with the goods and services tax. Now we are heading into a new season, a new budget is out there around the comer and

December 10,1991
Business of the House
there is still time for this. Mr. Speaker, I recognize that you have given me one minute. I plead with this government to use that one instrument that it has at its disposal to galvanize the will of this nation to make sure that the productivity levels are there to create additional employment. It will also attack the debt which can be handled easily once the will of this country is working together and everyone wants to succeed.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Albert Glen Cooper: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I believe you will find consent for the following motions:
That, notwithstanding the order made on November 22,1991, the membership of the Senate on the special joint committee to review the subject matter of Bill C-43, an act to provide for greater certainty in the reconciliation of the personal interests and duties of office of members of the Senate and of the House of Commons, to establish a conflict of interest commission and to make consequential amendments to other acts, be changed from 5 to 7 members; and
That a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint their honours thereof.
Mr. Speaker, the next motion is:
That, notwithstanding any Standing Orders and usual practices of the House:
That Private Members' Business hour for Wednesday, December 11, Thursday, December 12 be cancelled and the items retain their place in the order of precedence;
That Government Order No. 38, an act to provide for the continuance of Telesat Canada under the Canada Business Corporations Act and for the disposal of the shares therein of Her Majesty in right of Canada, be called for debate on Wednesday, December 11, 1991 after Routine Proceedings at report stage, and that all questions to dispose of the said bill at all remaining stages be put forthwith and successively by the Speaker no later than at 5 p.m. on that day; and
That if a registered vote is requested it shall not be deferred and the bells shall not ring longer than 15 minutes.
That the House adjourn after completion at report stage of Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, on Thursday, December 12 until 11 a.m. Monday, February 3, 1992;
That at any time during the adjournment, the Speaker may, after consultation with the government, fix a time at which the House shall meet for the sole purpose of receiving Royal Assent to a bill or bills;
That following such Royal Assent the House shall stand further adjourned as per Standing Order 28; and
That this order do not supersede the provisions of Standing Order 28(3).


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, on the clause that refers to the House adjourning after completion of report stage of Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, is that the only piece of legislation the government is calling on that day?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I want to indicate to the House that yes, that is the intention of the government. There was one caveat discussed at the House leaders' meeting. It was that if there was an agreement on another bill-and I say "agreement" meaning all three parties-we would then perhaps proceed with it but it would have to be by agreement. Otherwise it will only be Bill C-32 that we will be calling.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader. It does not directly relate to our permission to allow this motion to go through, but it does affect an item that will be happening when the House is not sitting. As he knows, I wrote to the government House leader earlier today reminding him that the royal commission on the Election Act will be reporting in mid-January and that in that commission's report there will be draft legislation.
I would ask that the government make a response to my request that a committee be set up to do pre-study of that draft legislation. It is important that the government respond. I would recommend that it would be in the best interests of all members of Parliament and all parties that we be in a position to act on that legislation. I would certainly be supportive of pre-study of the legislation.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, I was not aware of the hon. member's letter. The issue was raised at House leaders' meeting earlier this afternoon. I can indicate to the member that the House leaders agreed that they would look at that and come to a decision hopefully prior to us rising. But I do not want to commit anything on behalf of my House leader or any of the other House leaders that were at the meeting.
December 10, 1991


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Members have heard the terms of the motion. Is there unanimous consent to present the motions?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to adopt the motions?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Motions (Mr. Cooper) agreed to.


ALLOTTED DAY, S. O. 81-CANADIAN ECONOMIC SITUATION
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Chretien (p. 6042), and the amendment thereto of Ms. McLaughlin (p. 6057).
Mr. Guy H. Arseneault (Restigouche - Chaleur):: Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a few comments and then maybe ask the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood to answer a question that I have and give some of his comments.
I listened to the Leader of the Official Opposition this morning speak about his motion and the economy. I must say I agree whole-heartedly with what he had to
say.
I want to come back though to what the member for Broadview-Greenwood asked the Leader of the Official Opposition this morning. He noted there was a problem out there in the country that our Canadian citizens do not have any trust or confidence in the system any more. I am going to reiterate that question to the hon. member because I feel that it is a very important one. I know in my travels throughout my riding that my constituents are telling me the same thing. They have lost trust and they have lost confidence in the system itself, not necessarily in individual politicians but in the system which does not seem to want to work any more. They are very frustrated.
One of the questions I have is: Will the member explain to me and to the Chamber how he expects to build trust and confidence back into the system?
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The other point I want to ask him and make note of is the idea of income tax reform. The government quite often throws out the point that we do not have any ideas. I know the hon. member is noted for his ideas. I know he has a very good one with regard to the single tax. I have talked somewhat about that single tax in my riding. I was wondering if the hon. member could explain to those members who are here today a possible solution for getting rid of the GST and replacing it with a simpler type of tax. At the same time it could probably lower the income tax and put more money in Canadian pockets.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Restigouche-Chaleur for his two questions.
The first question is the issue of trust. I believe, and I know most of us believe, that the central issue in the next election campaign is going to be trust. The days of blind faith in politicians are over. I believe that people are going to say to us when we are campaigning in the next election: "Don't tell me what you are against. Tell me what you have as an alternative equal or better to what is in existence".
One of the things that I am so pleased about is the fact that we in the Liberal Party, as we are developing policy and as we are preparing for the next election, are not just listening to people from our own party. We are going to people who are from all parties and from all parts of the world, as we did in Aylmer two weeks ago. That is the kind of thinking that the people of Canada, I believe, want to see in the political process.
My last point is on the single tax. We got a major breakthrough today from the Minister of Finance because he said to me in this House today: "If you can prove to me that under your system 50 per cent of this population will not not pay more than they are paying under the current system I am willing to listen". I am in the process of presenting him that documentation.


Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton -East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, my question to the hon. member is simply this. The hon. member is an individual who has some experience with entrepreneurs and is somewhat of an entrepreneur himself. Since the government has been an unmitigated disaster in terms of facilitating the private sector to create the necessary jobs, I am wondering if the hon. member could comment on the appropriateness of the monetary policy which is being pursued by the Government of Canada as it relates to entrepreneurs in

December 10, 1991
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this country and in their desire to facilitate increasing employment opportunities.
I would like to hear the hon. member's views.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Cape Breton. As he knows and as he has articulated so often in this House, the 900,000 entrepreneurs across this country are the best hope for putting people back to work. For some unknown reason, this government does not want to address that fact head on. I believe instead of ratcheting inflation to a point where we now have deflation, the government should let up a little bit on the inflation. That would ultimately cause a little bit of a drop in the dollar and would put out the kind of confidence that would generate a lot more jobs in this country which we so badly need at this time.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate. To avoid any misunderstanding, I gave the floor to the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood to implement the Liberal round with the hon. member for Burin-St. George's. I now recognize, because there are no speakers on the other side, another two Liberals for 10 minutes each. The hon. member for Willowdale.


David Charles Dingwall: On a point of order, if the hon. member has joined our party and wants to be known as a Liberal member of Parliament, we would be prepared to give him the floor if he is going to support the policies we have just enunciated.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I would not join a group that would have me.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Christmas spirit is here.
The hon. member for Willowdale for 10 minutes.


Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, in confronting the tremendously serious economic challenges we face in Canada today, I believe we need a double-barrelled approach. For the past three years we have been talking to the government about one barrel of that approach and that is the long-term type of industrial policy that we as Canadians need and deserve.
This is a policy which is necessary, not only to allow us to compete, but more importantly to make us competitive. We have talked at length about monetary policies,
fiscal policies, training, development, science, research technology, innovation, development, all of those things which are the hallmarks of an internationally competitive society and areas in which we are in decline.
The other barrel of our approach must be aimed squarely today at what has been a very disappointing economic performance in Canada, disappointing to members on this side of the House and to the other side as well.
We are not out of this recession. We are on the brink perhaps of a double dip. We are seeing unemployment figures stalled. Last month unemployment did not go down and 45,000 more Canadians dropped out of the work force. This requires immediate redress.
I want to put before you today some ideas where we can act immediately in Canada to deal with this depressing problem.
Let me start with a bit of background. Today we are spending in Canada on direct unemployment insurance payments, combined with welfare payments, the grand total of $31 billion. If we could wipe out all welfare and unemployment insurance payments for a year, we would wipe out our entire federal deficit.
When you look at how this affects individuals, it means that we are paying regular unemployment insurance of $13,000 per year for every unemployed person. In addition to that, we are spending $12,800 per year for every case of welfare.
We have money available, if we could get them off the UI cycle and off the welfare cycle, to invest in more productive aspects of our economy including job creation, a full $31 billion. Let us look briefly at some of the ways that we might constructively do this.
Number one, upgrading our municipal infrastructure. In 1988, the Liberals introduced a plan whereby the federal, provincial and municipal governments would share equally the cost over five years of a total of $15 billion expenditure to upgrade necessary municipal infrastructure such as roads, sewers, bridges and everything else.
That would have meant that the federal cost of the program was $1 billion a year for five years. We must look at the real cost, what we would have paid out of pocket. Informetrica did a study for the Canadian Feder-
December 10, 1991

ation of Municipalities which showed that the cost would not have been $1 billion but only $80 million.
What would we have received for that sum of $80 million a year for five years? We would have created 62,800 jobs a year. That would have been a net cost per job created of $1,274. That cost of $1,274 per year per job did not take into consideration the $13,000 a year that we pay for unemployment insurance.
If we had a municipal infrastructure program in place, we would be saving federal expenditures of close to $11,700 a year. That makes economic sense. We are investing a little and getting a lot through savings, stimulus and everything else.
Another area where we could be very creative is home building. Home building starts are down dramatically and this year we will be lucky if they are up over the depressing level of last year.
The industry is working at only 50 per cent capacity and there are 180,000 unemployed construction workers across Canada. Let us look at some constructive ways we could get this industry going with savings to the taxpayers of Canada. Reduce the down payment on new homes to 5 per cent.
This government is telling us it is out of the recession and things are rosy. Then there should be no problem in this government guaranteeing the remainder of that 95 per cent financing for a house.
We talked about another possibility that would cost the taxpayers nothing. We could allow potential home owners to invest their down payment from their RRSP savings. That would free up funds and savings that are already there at no cost to the taxpayer.
Another area where this government has been penny wise and pound foolish is in skills training and illiteracy. The Southam survey showed there are 5 million Canadians that are functionally illiterate.
The cost to business of this illiteracy alone is $4 billion a year. The annual social cost is some $10 billion. When you have costs like this to Canadians, does it not make sense to invest a little bit of money to correct it?
What has this government done? It announced a program in 1988. It said it would spend a total of $22 million over five years to deal with the problem of
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Canadian illiteracy. Do you know what this amounts to? It amounts to $4.40 per year for every functionally illiterate Canadian. It amounts to 1.21 cents per day for literacy training for illiterate Canadians. It is peanuts when you think we could save the social cost of $10 billion and the cost to the private sector of $4 billion.
Last, we should be looking at the optional right of every unemployed Canadian to have skills assessment and get immediately into a program of remedial and skills training.
I would suggest that when we have such payments as $31 billion of public money directly for unemployment insurance and welfare, $13,000 per year for every unemployed Canadian, $12,800 for every person on welfare, we have a tremendous fund available to create jobs through the private sector.
If we could create jobs by investing all or a portion of those funds in job creation, we would have the dignity of work. We would have taxpayers rather than welfare and insurance recipients.
There are a lot of programs where small businesses in particular could benefit but not by giving the full amount of that money. For example, we could take $5,000 to pay for the cost of a new full-time job for one year created by business in Canada. Financially and economically we would be far ahead in terms of what it would do to our deficit. Even more important, we would be restoring dignity to those people who want jobs but cannot find them.
There is so much we have to do in terms of our long term ability to compete. In the short term this government has neglected the most fundamental aspects of sound fiscal management. In economic management, in not investing in these programs which could help us immediately to get out of this unemployment and welfare cycle, this government has demonstrated once again its incompetence by being pound wise and penny foolish.
It is absolutely necessary that the government act immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I would appreciate if in the beginning of his speech the hon. member could say if there is an agreement with the Liberal opposition.

December 10, 1991
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David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I thought I got an agreement from Dingwall.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I would appreciate some explanation from the hon. member.


Charles Joseph Clark: The details of this new organic union should be spelled out to the House so that the rest of us will understand precisely what is happening.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, we are going to have a royal commission and we are going to study it very thoroughly. I want to tell the Chair that the hon. member is a senior member of this Chamber and we thought out of the generosity of Christmas time, since he did not wish to join our party nevertheless we would give him an opportunity to take the floor and speak for 10 to 12 minutes or thereabouts. Then we would continue on with the debate.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to reconsider. Generally I am not in receipt of such generosity from the two governing parties which have been tandem in creating the mess that we are talking about in this country for the last 50 years. I welcome their understanding of my role in this debate.
I particularly appreciate the amendment to this debate that says since 1982, because they are wrapped up in it too. I am not here to blame the Liberals. I am not here to blame the Tories because they have been faithful to their political supporters. This is a direct result of their faith in their political supporters because both parties are the representatives of the corporate agenda in Canada.
As a consequence of being true to their corporate supporters, they have brought this country to its knees except for one major distinction. No previous Liberal or Conservative government ever gave up on Canada until this government was elected. This government, unlike previous Liberal governments and Conservative governments, gave up on Canada the day it started to negotiate the free trade agreement.
Who was it who made the strongest speech and the most clear position prior to the election of 1984 against the free trade agreement? It was none other than the Leader of the Conservative Party, the present Prime Minister, who said: "Do not talk to me about free trade. I will never lead Canada down this road". Do you remember that my friends?


Some hon. members:: Yes, yes.


David Barrett: Yes, they all remember that. Do you remember that over there on that side, my friends? They do not remember that, Mr. Speaker. I am shocked. They do not remember the wise words of their own leader that had misled some of them to think that when they supported the present Prime Minister he would keep his word and never get involved in free trade. How shocked they were.
They were so shocked they lost their ability to think and they have blindly followed him ever since he changed his mind. It was the now Prime Minister of this country who said he would never allow free trade to take place. He said not to talk to him about free trade.


An hon. member:: Unfair.


David Barrett: Ah, my dear friend. Mr. Speaker, I am under attack. Why am I under attack? They are attacking me for repeating the words of the Prime Minister. I want to tell you I am shocked. I know that all Canadians attack me for repeating the words of the Prime Minister. I know the Liberals attack me for repeating the words of the Prime Minister. But when the government criticizes the words of the Prime Minister, I am shocked.
He said "Don't talk to me about free trade". Now it wants to amend it and add words to it. Don't give me that stuff. The reality was that was its agenda and that is what caused the problem.
Now the consequence of that is anger, frustration, and general disappointment in this country. It has even spawned a new party called the Reform Party. The Reform Party is a right wing reaction to what it feels is a betrayal by the Conservative Party. The right wing has left the Conservative Party and threatens to throw into the ashcan those moderate Tories who have more sense and more reason from a tradition known as the red Tories.
One of them is the minister in charge of the Constitution. Here he is spending his time trying to put this country back together when he may not even win his own seat again.
Why is that happening in this country? I will tell you why it is happening. Canadians from coast to coast have lost faith in this government because it cannot solve the problems it created by its policies.
December 10, 1991

This motion deals with the fact that the economy of this country is in a shambles. There are 1.5 million people unemployed and the same excuses are being given after seven and a half years in office. It still stands up and blames the Liberals. After seven and a half years there are only 33 more years for it to go in the wilderness like Moses before it comes to its senses, but at least it is a beginning to separate its record from this record. To stand up in the face of this debate from the Official Opposition and blame the Liberals is even too much for me to stomach, and I am prepared to take any kind of criticism given to the Liberals.
This is too much. Seven and a half years and the Reform Party is spawned. The BQ is spawned and it has this country on its knees economically. All it can do is stand up in the House and attack the Liberals for the mess that they left it. That is what it got elected for. It claimed it was going to be different. It claimed it was going to create a new economy. The Prime Minister said he would not talk about free trade and he is the one who led this country into it.
Do not blame the Liberals with fictional nonsense. The truth condemns the Liberals more than fiction.
I think it is unfair of this government to blame the Liberals for the mess it created. It created its own mess and it lives with it. But has it said one thing today that offers hope, succor or comfort? Even my good friend over here, the member of the Liberal Party for Willow-dale, came up with some thoughtful analyses of problems and approaches to resolve them. One of the things my friend spoke about was the simple work where we have lagged behind in this country since the last Liberal administration. I give it credit for its winter works programs. It started fumbling and bumbling in its own way toward the step of resolving the problems with municipal infrastructure. It is a serious problem in this country that my colleague talked about. There is very little political romance in talking about roads, sewers and sidewalks. Although it is alleged that the government is familiar with sewers, it is roads and sidewalks we are talking about. We are talking about the need to rebuild an infrastructure in this country. I want to tell you that the member for Willowdale is being modest when he suggests $5 billion. We should be spending $15 billion a year right now.
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Now, of course, comes the cry: "Where will you get the money from?" There comes the cry. As a matter of fact, it was the Minister of Finance himself who said to this humble backbencher: "I liked what you said about the RRSPs. Come up to my office and we will talk about it". He did say that today. He did, today. Did he not say that? Yes, he did, thank you very much. Well, why should I go up to his office? I am right here in the House of Commons where the people of Canada should know about the alternatives. If he wants to come to an office, I have an office. If he makes an appointment I will see him. But, is it not ironic that in defence of a lack of a single action the minister gets up and says: "Well, that is a nice idea. Come up to my office and tell me about it".
What in the heck are they doing? They are the government. They have all the bureaucrats. They have all the genius experts. They have all the economists and all they could say today was to blame the Liberals and ask me to come up and give him some advice. He has to be really hard up to ask me to come up to his office and give him some advice.
Now that he has shown how hard up he is, I will give him some advice. First, if he really wants to take my advice, he should quit. That would save us all a lot of trouble. Just quit. Just get the heck out of here. You have outlived your usefulness. There, he is gone. No, no, to be fair, he does not have to quit. The Reform Party is going to take care of him.
There is $90 billion in this country in RRSPs, half of which is in undirected general deposits. The United States has a municipal bond system that pays 5 per cent of purchased municipal bonds and the interest earned from those bonds over a 10-year period is not taxable. This is not radical socialism. This is not dangerous liberalism. It is right here with Conservative fiscal management.
Now, listen quietly because I only have another minute and a half. Mr. Speaker can only hold up a finger, but I know it is a minute and a half.
These five per cent municipal bonds out of RRSPs lent to the federal government with a 10-year minimum earn $30,000 interest. At the end of that 10 years we have used their money at 5 per cent. We allow people to take out the $30,000 tax-free from their RRSP to be used any way they want. It is tax-free my friend and I will tell you why. If we tap into that half of the undirected RRSPs it makes a pool of funds of approximately $40 billion available to

December 10, 1991
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us. The first year up front we make the money available to municipalities at 5.5 per cent and the local taxpayers have the right to decide democratically on how the money is to be spent.
My time is up but if someone were to dare ask me a question on the rest of this program, I will make this my commitment to you.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Questions or comments. The hon. member for Haldimand-Norfolk for five minutes.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, I listened quite intently to the hon. member's statements in talking about the free trade deal and how it has adversely affected Canadians. But he must have known when he was speaking that regarding supply management and regarding article XI of GATT we really lost a lot of the power we had with marketing boards because of the free trade deal.
If he takes the position that supply management then should be supported, why is it that he is quoted in the paper a few weeks ago as saying that consumers would benefit greatly if supply management was done away with? That really concerns me because there are members of the New Democratic Party who stand up in this House and say that indeed they do support supply management. When I read something like that in the newspaper, it concerns me that maybe members within the New Democratic Party do not understand the importance of supply management to all of rural Canada, not only to our dairy and poultry farmers.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact it was a Liberal researcher who pointed that article out to me. Frankly it is something that happens on occasions to politicians. It is a misquote. I have always, in all my 30 years of public life, supported marketing boards. My father was in the business. My father's dear soul would not rest at peace if he thought that I had changed my mind. That is incorrect in the newspaper. Thank you for the opportunity to correct it.
Your second question was about the RRSPs.


An hon. member:: Where are you going to get the RRSP money?


David Barrett: Where are we going to get the RRSP money? I already demonstrated that to you, my dear friend. As a cabinet minister half the money in the RRSP is not directed.


An hon. member:: It is used somewhere.


David Barrett: Oh, it is used somewhere. I am glad the bells are ringing in the Toiy's head. Where is that money used now? It is used by the private banks that are making usurious profits off that money. That is where the money is being used now.
He does not understand that. I am saying give the depositor the freedom of choice to make a decision about how they can best use their money. Give them an option of a municipal bond that pays that 5 per cent and let the government in turn make it available to the municipalities. We can thereby use indigenous funds, as my friend from Willowdale clearly spelled out, because social purpose and municipal rebuilding does not cost megabucks like stupid megabuck projects. It is a social investment with indigenous funds that actually makes more in terms of tax revenue generated back to the government than any subsidy the individual lender gets at the end of 10 years.
As a matter of fact, the kind of revenue generated by having a $15 billion a year municipal works project means that we diminish unemployment significantly. We add to the local tax coffers. We add to the provincial tax coffers and we add to the federal tax coffers. There is an option. If that is not clear then you do not understand anything.
May I say in conclusion, if that minister with his question represents what this government knows about how banks use our money then God help us all.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I give the floor to the hon. member for Restigouche-Chaleur for 10 minutes to implement the last opposition round.


Guy H. Arseneault: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity today to take part in this debate on the economy.
The motion before the House asks:
That this House condemn the government for economic
mismanagement that has led to an intolerable and tragic level of
unemployment, business failure and poverty in Canada.
December 10, 1991

It is clear that the Mulroney government is responsible for the first made-in-Canada recession, with its high dollar and high interest rate policies. The results of these short-sighted measures are even more disastrous for the unemployed and for all Canadians who must depend on food banks to survive.
With an unemployment rate in this country of up to
10.3	per cent, in other words 1.4 million Canadians, and with the number of bankruptcies totalling 62,969, which is 45 per cent more than last year, the government has a clear indication of the seriousness of the problem and how urgent it is to take steps to deal with it.
However, that would be too much to ask of a government that has done everything in its power to cause this disastrous situation. In fact, if we go back to September 1990, when it was becoming increasingly clear that we were in for a made-in-Canada recession, the government denied any responsibility, saying that this phenomenon was part of the usual economic cycle and that there was no cause for alarm.
To top it all, the government made the situation even worse in January 1991 when it introduced the infamous goods and services tax. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the GST is like an albatross around the neck of the Canadian economy. This tax has had the effect of discouraging consumer spending, the comestone of any vigorous economic recovery.
The GST is also an incentive for Canadians to shop across the border in the United States, which has had a great impact on our tourism industry. The latest figures released by the Minister of Finance show that introducing the GST cost Canadian taxpayers $900 million.
On top of all that, the government completely ignored the major issues of the day in the budget tabled on February 26, namely national unity and the recession. Right in the middle of the recession, this budget provided for no assistance whatsoever for the 1.3 million unemployed and the half million people who have to rely on food banks.
This budget did nothing either to make Canada more competitive in the context of a global economy. No wonder that in its analysis the Toronto-Dominion Bank found that in economic terms the 1991 budget was the most absurd and destructive since the 1930s.
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In their last budget the Conservatives did not pay any attention to the plight of the unemployed, acknowledging that the rate of unemployment would remain above 10 per cent for at least two more years. It contained no new job creation policy. Instead, the Minister of Finance cut the Canadian Jobs Strategy funding by $100 million while at the same time hiking employee UI contributions by 24 per cent and cutting regional development funding.

Today I have heard many speakers talk about the economy, which is a very important issue. I want to relate that to the local level. We have talked a lot about the national economy. I want to give you a perception of what is going on in Restigouche-Chaleur and then get away from that and give you maybe some possible solutions.
The Restigouche-Chaleur area is a natural resource based section of Canada. We have a major problem with the forestry industry, as you well know. We have a mill in Atholville, New Brunswick, that has closed its doors indefinitely. We have a committee in place now that is working furiously at trying to get it reopened. Maybe there will be a new investor or a new buyer. Maybe they can diversify the product and end up with an added value product.
The Dalhousie mill has been in operation for many years. It has gone through some renovation, but it again has had some lay-offs over the years. If we go back 10 years ago there were 1,500 employees in the woodlands and mill operations. Now it is down to less than 1,000. We see our sawmills in Kedgwick and in other parts of the riding suffering from down time and having some economic problems.
The mining industry in the riding is in a downturn position. In fact the Belledune fertilizer plant has been shut down, I am told, for a two-month period. There have been lay-offs at Brunswick mining. Over the years, if we look at the operations of the federal government through CN in the riding, at one point in time not too long ago we had well over 1,200 employees. We are down to less than 200 right there now. That all has an effect on the area.

December 10,1991
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The unemployment rate that we have heard so much about today and the figure that has been quoted has been the national figure. The figure in my riding is 18.5 per cent. That is unacceptable in this day and age. With that, I just want to mention some of the possible solutions that we could have and some of the things that are going on in the riding that are very positive. I want to mention a group of individuals who have got together and developed what they call an economic conference. The Nepisiguit economic conference was just held over a week ago after a two-year planning stage. They have developed through self-analysis a strategy to be implemented for that region to help put the region back on track.

I would like to use this opportunity to congratulate Ian Oliver and Gerald Mallais, co-chairmen of that conference on the economy in Nepisiguit. I would also like to congratulate the co-ordinator, Georges Marcoux, and his team for having organized this conference.

I should also say there is another group busy at work in another part of the riding with another economic conference. They also have co-presidents, Madam Luminas Senecal of Campbellton and the mayor of Dalhousie, Sandy MacLean, who are going to co-chair that economic conference. I wish them well.
There is a group of individuals that realizes there is a problem in the region and is ready to try to find a solution through self-analysis.
I want to mention specifically that I honestly believe there has to be a federal presence, not only in my riding but in every riding across Canada. I honestly believe that federal expenditure should be used as a tool for regional development. I also think we have to start developing programs and an attitude in government circles that will allow new positions to be developed in departments where there are new programs set up and where it requires new people to be hired. Those positions should be placed in areas of high unemployment, a decentralization of sort so to speak.
I would suspect that in Restigouche-Chaleur we should be looking at 200 new federal positions to help stimulate the economy and give some confidence back to the area. It would send a message to the entrepreneurs
that want to invest in that area that the federal government is there and is ready to help out.
I would also like to mention in closing that we have heard a lot of solutions today. Some of them have been very good ones. I want to echo the comments of the hon. member for Willowdale who talked about municipal infrastructure. I believe quite strongly that it is a very useful and reasonable tool. The other area is new homes, reducing the down payment to 5 per cent and allowing people to use RRSP money to invest in those new homes.
In conclusion, when we look at the economy and the motion today we should just ask ourselves if we are actually better off now than we were in 1984.1 guess the answer for my constituents is a plain no. I rest my case.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I will just ask a very short question of my colleague for Restigouche-Chaleur.
I remember visiting New Brunswick about a year and a half ago. One of the things that I noticed when I was there was the tremendous tourism potential in the province of New Brunswick. We all know that tourism is probably one of the largest job creators in this country. I wonder if the hon. member could maybe take a minute or two and speak to the people of Canada-this is a national forum we are debating in today-about some of the tourism ideas and the potential that I know exist in his province.


Guy H. Arseneault: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Broadview-Greenwood for his question. I would like to say from the outset that in New Brunswick, like eveiy-where across Canada, Canadians are very proud people. They are not looking for handouts. There is a misconception out there that when we talk about hard times and unemployment the people just want to stick their hands out and say: "Give us some money and we will go away. We will be quiet about it".
What I am hearing out there and what I see with individuals coming into the office to talk to me is that they are all looking for work. They want to work. They want to be put to work.
It is the responsibility of the federal government to put people back to work, to develop programs. If they cannot develop programs, they should not be the government. It is as simple as that. It was this government that promised jobs, jobs, jobs. We do not have jobs, jobs, jobs. We have
December 10, 1991

no jobs, no jobs and no jobs. That is the problem we are having right now.
As far as tourism is concerned, I believe like the hon. member that small business is the motor of the economy. It is up to the government again to stimulate that motor and make sure that there are oil and fuel for that motor. Right now it is working in reverse.
The government is not stimulating. There is no gas in the tank. One of the small businesses that can be developed is the tourism industry. I spoke about economic conferences a while ago in the riding. Those are two priorities of the economic conference that I spoke about. They are going to continue to be priorities.
It is a priority in the province of New Brunswick but we need a partnership. There has to be a partnership of the people, the municipal governments, the provincial governments and the federal government. People cannot do it alone. We have to take a full share, a full partnership in that job.


Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on the motion of the Leader of the Opposition that condemns the government for economic mismanagement that has supposedly led to an intolerable and tragic level of unemployment and bankruptcy in Canada. I must tell you that when the Leader of the Opposition was Minister of Finance in 1981 the Bank of Canada rate stood at 22 per cent, whereas it is now 7.54 per cent. In August 1981 the prime rate was 22.75 per cent under his governance, whereas it now stands at 8 per cent.
At that time the mortgage rate for five years was 21.75 per cent and it is now 9.9 per cent. The rate for one year was 21.25 per cent then compared to 8.75 per cent now. All this to tell you that in spite of unfavourable conditions, we took the necessary steps to try to alleviate the recession and revitalize the economy.
Mr. Speaker, it requires a lot of courage on the part of my leader to take measures which will bring back prosperity to Canadians. As you know, we reached rock bottom with 12 per cent in the polls, but if we stopped talking about the Constitution and solved this problem,
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maybe interest rates would go down even more in a next week, perhaps even by 2 per cent.
We made important achievements since we took power, but nobody talks about those today. As far as the free trade agreement with the United States is concerned, some members opposite have said a moment ago that it was not beneficial to Canadians. I understand that there can be losers in this agreement or trade, but there are winners as well. I can tell you that my community, Drummondville, was chosen industrial city of the year in Quebec in 1991, and it is precisely because industry people and firms of my community did business with the United States and increased their trade with them.
There was also, as you will recall, Mr. Speaker, the tax reform and there was the much acclaimed removal of the
13.5	per cent tax that eroded our exports. Now you will see the positive side of the implementation of the new tax. There was also the deregulation and the privatization of several Crown corporations, and you will soon realize all the changes and the well-being it implies.
You saw the critics recently, the reduction of federal government expenditures, and the freeze in the public service. We were courageous enough to introduce similar systems which also-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member.

It being 5.45 p.m. it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 81(15), to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

Therefore the question in on the amendment of Ms. McLaughlin.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.

December 10,1991
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Call in the members.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare
Dorin
Duplessis
Epp
Felt ham
Ferland
Fontaine
Fretz
Gaffney
Greene
Guilbault
Halliday
Harvard
Hawkes
Hockin
Holtmann
Horner
Hudon
Jacques
Johnson
Jordan
Kempling
Kilger (Stormont-Dundas)
Koury
Langlois
Layton
Lee
Littlechild
Lopez
MacDonald (Dartmouth)
MacKay
Maheu
Manley
Marin
Martin (Lasalle-femard)
Mazankowski
McDermid
McKnight
Mifflin
Mills
Nault
O'Kurley
Parent
Phinney
Plourde
Pronovost
Redway
Reimer
Richardson
Robitaille
Roy-Arcelin
Schneider
Shields
Simmons
Soetens
Speller
Stewart
Tetreault
Thompson
Tobin
Tremblay (Lotbiniere)
Vanclief
Vankoughnet
Vien
Walker
White
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek- Wilson (Etobicoke Centre)
Worthy


MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
the motion lost.
December 10,1991
[Stage Direction]
Supply
Mr. Riis:: Mr. Speaker, I want to suggest that although there has been absolutely no discussion among the parties, you might find a willingness to apply the vote that we are about to hear now to the main motion as well.


Mr. Speaker:: The next question is on the main motion, standing in the name of Mr. Chretien. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.


CONCURRENCE IN SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES (B)
Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)) moved:: That Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1992, laid upon the table Friday, November 22, 1991, be concurred in.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Gilles Loiselle: that Bill C-47, an act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the Public Service of Canada for the financial year ending March 31, 1991, be read the first time and printed.


Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.


Gilles Loiselle: that the bill be read the second time and deemed referred to Committee of the Whole.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if there would be a predisposition of the House to apply the vote on the previous motion to the vote on this without taking the time of the House to stand.


Mr. Plamondon:: Mr. Speaker, there was no consultation with the Bloc Quebecois on that vote.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I think it is clear to the House that no one was consulted. The chief government Whip got up on his own and offered the House an option to apply the votes and I think that should be considered.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


PAIRED-MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
Supply
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
Bill read the second time.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order again. While there have been no consultations, I wonder if we would not find, considering the hour, that we could apply the vote we have just taken against the various clauses of the bill, including the reporting of the bill and including third reading.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the motion. There seems to be general agreement.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: So ordered.
Bill deemed considered in committee.
Bill deemed reported without amendment.


Gilles Loiselle: that the bill be concurred in.



[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.


Gilles Loiselle: that the bill be read the third time and passed.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
++NAYS

[Stage Direction]
Members
Allmand
Angus
Assad
Baker
Belair
Benjamin
Black
Blaikie
Boudria
Butland
CaUbeck
Chretien
Copps
Dingwall
Edmonston
Fisher
Fblton
Gaffney
Gerin
Grey (Beaver River)
Harvard
Heap
Hunter
Keyes
Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast) Langan (Mission-Coquitlam) LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands Lee
MacDonald (Dartmouth)
Manley
Marleau
McLaughlin
Milliken
Mitchell
Nault
Pagtakhan
Parker
Phinney
Plamondon
Rideout
Robinson
Romp key
Skelly (Comox-Albemi)
Stewart
Taylor
Tremblay (Rosemont)
Venne
Wappel
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
Althouse
Arseneault
Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre)
Barrett
Bellemare
Bevilacqua
Blackburn (Brant)
Blondin
Brew in
Caccia
Catterall
Clancy
de Jong
Du ham el
Ferguson
Flis
Funk
Gardiner
Gray (Windsor West)
Harb
Harvey (Edmonton East)
Hopkins
Jordan
Kilger (Stormont-Dundas)
Kristiansen
Laporte
Leblanc (Longueuil)
MacAulay
Maheu
Marchi
McGuire
Mifflin
Mills
Murphy
Nystrom
Parent
Peterson
Pickard
Proud
Riis
Rodriguez
Samson
Speller
Stupich
Tobin
Vanclief
Walker
Whittaker
Young (Beaches -Woodbine)-98
-Canso)

[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
The House resumed from Tuesday, November 19, consideration of the motion of Mr. Arseneault that Bill C-211, an act to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act (temporary community service), be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee A.
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, again. There have been no consultations but the next aspect of our proceedings today would be to deal with private members' hour.
I wonder if the member whose motion is up for debate might agree to postponing until tomorrow at three o'clock any recorded division that might arise. That will leave members free this evening to pursue the schedules they had in mind.
Otherwise there will be a bell in 45 minutes and members would have to come back. It would depend on the wishes of the private member because it is private members' hour.
I wonder if the hon. member for Restigouche-Cha-leur might agree to that kind of a deferral of votes if a recorded division is required.


Guy H. Arseneault: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I would even withdraw the motion and refer the whole subject matter to committee. If I had the whole approval of the House, I would be willing to do that.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Certainly from a government point of view we would be happy to have the subject-matter referred to committee.
It is an important subject matter, and we would agree with that.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the proposition. Is there agreement?
Bill read the third time and passed.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

December 10,1991
Private Members' Business


Mr. Speaker:: And so ordered. Accordingly the order is discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject-matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration.
Order discharged and bill withdrawn.


Mr. Speaker:: It being 6.43 o'clock p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock p.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.43 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, December 11,1991