1991-11-04

Mr. John Brewin (Victoria) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should serve notice on the government of the United States of America that the current NORAD agreement is to be terminated by May 31, 1994, and that in the meantime, the government should institute a thorough public review of Canada-U.S. defence relations, including discussions between U.S. and Canadian parliamentarians.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I especially thank the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca for the alacrity with which he moved to get to the point where he could second my motion. I thank him for that.
The motion I have put before the House, which I am inviting the House to support, has two essential parts to it. First, in the opinion of this House, the government should serve notice on the Government of the United States of America that the current NORAD agreement is to be terminated by May 31, 1994.
Second, in the meantime, the government should institute a thorough public review of Canada-U.S. defence relations including discussions between United States and Canadian parliamentarians.
The motion arises from the discussions that took place last fall before a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade. The subcommittee was considering whether Canada should proceed to renew the NORAD agreement on May 31,
1991.	The committee heard briefs from citizens across-
Canada, had a special panel of experts that prepared some useful material for the committee and debated the issue at some length internally.
The results of those deliberations was that the committee could not agree on the issue as to the renewal of the current NORAD agreement. The committee did agree unanimously that there should be a thorough public review of Canada-U.S. defence relations. The precise terms of the committee's recommendation I would like to put on the record. All members agreed with the following. Given the extraordinaiy changes of east-west relations and the ending of the cold war, the government should carry out in the first two years of any NORAD renewal period a comprehensive public review of Canada-United States defence co-operation and the future surveillance needs of Canada, the United States and their northern neighbours.
As part of the review process there should be a full and frank Canada-United States political dialogue about NORAD's future, about Canada-United States defence co-operation and about the future surveillance needs of Canada, the United States and their northern neighbours.
To that end, Parliament should initiate an exchange of views and information between Canadian and American legislators with the first of the meetings for this purpose taking place before the termination of the NORAD agreement on May 12, 1991.
The Canadian relationship with the United States in defence matters has been a critical part of this country's foreign and security policy since the early days of the Second World War. Prior to that, those who have some historical interest should note that, in fact, there was no specific agreement between the two countries on defence matters. Canada took responsibility for its own military security. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Canada responded quickly in September of 1939 to the outbreak of war in Europe. Canada declared war against Germany and proceeded to play a very critical role in that war.


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The United States, as all will know, did not enter the war until December 1941. In that intervening period, however, there were agreements reached between the two countries on defence relations. During the Second World War, of course, there was intense co-operation between the two countries. Following the Second World War and with the rise of the perceived threat to North American security by the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe, Canada entered into co-operative agreements with the United States under two main headings. The first was NATO, with the other western European countries, under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But for Canada in the mid-fifties, we reached a very specific agreement in respect of North American defence. This has always been seen as a subagreement under NATO, but in fact it is not necessarily under NATO. It stands on its own as an agreement between the United States and Canada.
Initially, the perceived threat to North American security was that of the U.S.S.R. attacking North America using manned bombers, carrying nuclear weapons and conventional bombs. As we got into the sixties and seventies, the nature of the threat changed to essentially a missile attack. This was not only from land-based missiles in the Soviet Union, interballistic missiles going from the Soviet Union to North America, but also sea-launched, sea-based missiles from submarines and other forms of attack on North America.
As the nature of the threat proceeded, the defence to that threat began changing. Initially there was the thought that we could put fighter planes up into the auto actually knock down the manned bombers coming into North America. But we fairly quickly got into missile defences against those who were attacking or perceived to be potentially attacking North America. But again, as we got into the sixties, seventies and eighties, it became very clear that there was no possibility whatever of defending against an attack in the sense of defeating an assault on North America. So the focus moved to surveillance, to knowing what was happening in the approaches to North American air space.
All of this has been predicated on the cold war and the proposition that the Soviet Union, which is the only country that had any capacity to attack North America in this way, might conceivably attack North America. We
should be prepared, primarily through deterrents to respond to such an attack.
What is now critical for this House and for our country to acknowledge is that the fundamental premise that has shaped NORAD and U.S.-Canada defence relations in respect of North America has completely and unalterably changed.
The premise that has changed is that the Soviet Union has any intention or any capacity to launch an attack on North America. I give you the words of the then Secretary of State for External Affairs on November 28, 1990 addressing a major international conference in Ottawa in which he said the following: "In region after region, on problem after problem, the Soviet Union now brings a welcome flexibility and assessments remarkably similar to Canada's. We see this at the CSCE, in the Pacific, in Cambodia, in Central America, in Angola, in South Africa, Afghanistan and the gulf. We see it in the fight against drugs, in the struggle against terrorism, in the pursuit of arms control. Disagreement with the Soviet Union was once the rule. It is now the exception. What disagreement does exist is often one of degree, not kind, and flows from national interest, not ideological intransigence or ambition. We are no longer enemies. We are no longer foes in a cold war one could win. We are friends. We are partners in building a structure of co-operative security and prosperity in which we all win".
These words were stated in November of 1990. Since then movement has been even more dramatic to underline the truth of the words spoken by the then Secretary of State for External Affairs.
The Soviet Union is no longer a military threat to North America. It retains some marginal capacity. We deal with that problem, not by building expansive defence systems, but by negotiating down, through arms control and disarmament measures, the Soviet capacity to attack North America.
We build in controls that would flow in the break-up of the Soviet empire and we ensure that there is no attack. We also remember that we cannot protect ourselves against the outside possibility of a single madman in the Soviet Union sending missiles to North America or some accident triggering a launch of a missile. There is no possibility, scientifically or technologically, to protect ourselves against that by the kind of system that

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NORAD has now in place or any other system that might take place.
The so-called star wars of the United States, the Strategic Defence Initiative, does not even claim a capacity to provide protection against that kind of accidental or terrorist attack.
The time has come to completely review and change our approach to the North American air defence system. The key to how we change that comes in the comments of the then Secretary of State for External Affairs because the time has come for us to begin urgently to build a polar security arrangement.
The Soviet Union now needs our economic and social help desperately. It would not be unreasonable, in fact, it ought to be a required condition of that assistance that the Soviet Union join with Canada, the United States and other polar countries to form a completely different form of security than that which has served us for the last 40 and 50 years and which is now obsolete.
The government has pointed the way to that. I would expect the government to respond more quickly.
Gorbachev himself said in 1989 in Murmansk that this was the direction he wanted to go. The then Secretary of State for External Affairs accepted that in the very speech from which I have quoted, but we have heard nothing from this government since then to respond to those initiatives. In fact what we see is the government renewing the NORAD agreement without any condition as to this being the final term of the agreement. We see no sense of urgency from the government in changing the approach it takes to North American defence.
The government has not done what the committee asked it to do, which was to launch a full public review of these policies. It has remained absolutely silent on that. The government continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on NORAD. In the current fiscal year we are proposing to spend something in the order of $500 million on NORAD. We have in train a very expensive capital upgrading of NORAD facilities which is costing the Canadian taxpayer $1,214 billion, of which $500 million is still to be spent.
There is no sign whatever of the government getting off the train and saying that the time has come to save
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Canadian taxpayers this money and to look at different ways of approaching the issue of Canadian sovereignty, of surveillance in the north and of polar security.
This motion calls on the government to start the clock running on the end of NORAD by advising the Americans now that the termination of this agreement must take place and set in motion a process of discussion most particularly with the Government of the United States of America. Clearly one of the key problems is that the Americans perceive that NORAD should just continue as if nothing else had happened.
It is important that we make it clear to the Americans that we see a different future for the north and a different future for Canadian participation in continental security.
The requirements have changed. The world has changed. It is now necessary for the government to change. I would ask the House to endorse the motion that is before it, to give its wholehearted support to it, and to see if we cannot get some of these issues finally moving.
Many questions need to be asked and if I can, Mr. Speaker, let me quote from Ken Lewis, president of Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, who when he came before the committee posed some of the questions, and this is from the aerospace industry.
Is there a likelihood of an attack by the Soviet Union or others against North America? If so, under what circumstances? If not, what is the threat? If there is no perceived threat, or one of little consequence, should Canada disengage from the joint defence of North America by not renewing the NORAD agreement? If disengaged, what kind of an aerospace defence system would be needed by Canada?
That is the nature of the questions being posed by our aerospace industry. We say to those on the government side who perceive themselves to be friends of the aerospace industry that that industry needs some assurance as to where things are going. The government can no longer keep its head in the sand on these issues. It has to move and this House could give leadership to the government by agreeing to the motion today.


Mr. Patrick Boyer (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, our Prime Minister has said that Canada does not want to be a super power, just a super country. However, it has been our

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Private Members' Business
geographic fate to have been between the two super powers, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. throughout the cold war. Now that that has changed and the cold war as we knew it has ended, the time has come to reappraise and reinterpret a lot of the relationships that developed during that time.
The resolution before the Canadian House of Commons this morning is a very timely and important one because it deals with one aspect of the furniture of the cold war, the North American Air Defence Agreement, NORAD. I would like to make some general comments as a Canadian, as a parliamentarian, and someone speaking also for the government on this issue.
First I would like to address specifically the provisions of the resolution which the hon. member for Victoria has asked this House to support. There are two elements to this resolution. The first is that the Canadian government should unilaterally notify the United States that we want to terminate this agreement which exists between our two sovereign countries. The hon. member sets an outside date for that of 1994. Then he goes on and says that in the meantime the government should institute a thorough public review of Canada-U.S. defence relations including discussions between U.S. and Canadian parliamentarians.
The member is suggesting that we cancel a long-standing treaty between our country and the United States and then begin to hold hearings, discussions and public debate as to whether or not that treaty is valid, whether it has a continuing role. I cannot understand the logic of giving notice of an intention to annul an agreement today and then calling for discussions about the appropriateness of it that would begin tomorrow.
Second, as I read this motion, I see that this parliamentarian from the New Democratic Party wants the government to institute a public review, including discussions between Canadian parliamentarians and the United States elected representatives. I have a serious problem with that as a parliamentarian. I think one of the great difficulties we find in Canada today is the diminished role of our House of Commons, this Chamber of the people's elected representatives. We have lost our historical position in relation to power, going to the
cabinet; policy, going to the senior public service; and public opinion, going to the opinion pollsters.
We have abdicated our role for far too long to these three other elements. It is little wonder that today Canadians have a low view of the Canadian House of Commons because we parliamentarians have not adequately asserted our right, our position and our voice on behalf of the Canadian people.
When we have a motion brought to the floor of the House of Commons by a New Democrat member urging that the government get parliamentarians to have these discussions rather than parliamentarians themselves, who after all populate the committee on defence, who after all have the capacity to debate right here on the floor of the House of Commons, as we are doing this very moment, these important issues affecting the future of our country, then I think this is certainly not worthy of a party that includes the word democrat in its name. I think we can expect better than that from a so-called New Democrat.
These are the problems I have with this motion. These are the reasons I cannot not support it. I do think it is very timely that we discuss this issue and bring into perspective what is happening for our country's future in relation to defence. The hon. member has outlined some of the history of the cold war threat and how the initial response was to manned bombers and with changes in technology shifting that to rocket technology, intercontinental ballistic missiles and, over time, although he did not go into it in great detail, the shifting role of NORAD in response to that.
I think it is important to stress not only the historic evolution, the technological changes and the military and political dynamics in this relationship, but equally the fact that the NORAD agreement itself has not stood still, frozen in time in relation to this evolution. The NORAD agreement has been revised and renewed on six or seven occasions, most recently in April. These have been opportunities to take into account the changing world around us.
If we were so good in the past at being able to negotiate treaty changes with the United States when circumstances warranted, why should the New Democrats throw overboard the whole approach of co-operation and negotiation between two sovereign countries and say now that things are changing yet again, we are no longer going to change the agreement yet again to
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reflect it. Instead, we are going to give them notice today that by 1994 this whole agreement ends, it is over, it is done with.
When the New Democrat spokesman for defence was giving the reasons for his motion this morning, I jotted down his fundamental premise so as not to misquote him. He turns a phrase well and argues with logic. He said: "The fundamental premise has changed". The fundamental premise for the NORAD agreement was put in the context of the end of the cold war.
If it is viewed, as apparently the New Democratic Party views NORAD, as existing entirely in the context of the cold war, yes he is right. The fundamental premise has changed. If it is viewed, as I do and as I think other party spokesmen and other parliamentarians do, that the fundamental premise of Canadian foreign policy and the fundamental premise of Canadian defence policy is co-operative action, a shared responsibility, a sharing of the burdens, a sharing of the costs, a collective approach to security, then most assuredly the fundamental principle has not changed.
The fundamental premise of our policy is that Canada does best as a relatively small power in a complicated and aggressive world to share with others through treaties and other arrangements on a shared basis. That is why we are active in the United Nations, why we are in NATO, why we are in the Conference on Co-operation and Security in Europe, the Commonwealth la Franco-phonie, the Organization of American States and yes, even NORAD. This is all part of a piece.
I want to make it very clear that the Government of Canada, now, today, no longer views NORAD from a cold war perspective. That is very clear. We do not view NORAD from a cold war perspective any more. We view this international treaty as we view all of our others, as part and parcel of the well developed Canadian tradition, developed by governments led by Prime Ministers who were Liberal and Prime Ministers who were Progressive Conservative, who felt that co-operative security and playing an internationalist role was the greatest basis for Canadian long-term success and dedication to the fundamental interests and the fundamental values of Canada as a strong and sovereign country.
Private Members' Business


Hon. William Rompkey (Labrador):: Mr. Speaker, as befits a middle of the road party, I am torn on this issue. I see a lot of merit in the motion. However, I cannot support the unilateral termination of the agreement in 1994. I want to say, parenthetically, that if the Liberal amendment before the House of Commons committee that was reviewing NORAD had been accepted, we would only have a two year agreement. I find it very unfortunate that that amendment was not accepted so that we could have realized the changing world and the changing circumstances and been able to review our policy accordingly.
I agree that there is need for review. I accept what the parliamentary secretary has said about sharing. We are a mouse living next to an elephant. It is tough for a mouse to share with an elephant. The elephant has to be a bit more sharing, a bit more caring and a bit more co-operative.
Nobody has mentioned the Straits of Juan de Fuca and nuclear submarines transferring through Canadian space. The Straits of Juan de Fuca are not an isolated incident. We have had similar incidents in the Arctic with American ships going through Canadian sea space, not to mention submarines, but we do not know where they are and we seem to be powerless to do anything about it. Although, high on the Canadian agenda, it seems to me, is Canadian sovereignty. Canadians want us to get control over our own territory and that includes the north.
Co-operation and sharing is all very well and essential. It makes no sense at all for a power like us to be living on the North American continent with the United States and not have a joint defence policy. It is meaningless. It does not make any sense at all. Sure, we have got to have a joint defence policy, but it has got to be a two-way street. We cannot always be saying yes to the Americans and we cannot always be letting the Americans do exactly what they want because that is not co-operation, that is simply subservience. I do not think Canadians want subservience.
There has got to be a fundamental review. I agree that the cold war is over, but let us remember that the threat still remains. I want to quote from the submission of the Arms Control Centre before the standing committee. They say that they support the renewal of NORAD, but they say: "You simply cannot say yea or nay". The threat

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may have diminished, but there is still instability. The threat today is not so much the cold war as the instability that exists in that region where the threat from the cold war originally came from, and that is the Soviet Union.
There is still in that area in a time of instability a great deal of armament that is threatening to us. Through no motivation, because the motivation for the cold war and the motivation for attack is gone obviously, but inadvertently, in a time of instability and in an area of instability, there could be a releasing of weaponry that is potentially dangerous to us and that is what the Arms Control Centre pointed out.
It says that it agrees that Canada, in light of that, should renew the NORAD Agreement for two years. It also says that Canada should complement its role in NORAD with a more activist approach to strategic arms control as it relates to air breathing weapons and air defence and to confidence-building measures for the north.
I liked what my friend said and I think he and I were in agreement about the kind of thing that must happen in the Arctic, and the weakness.
Let me deal with one point before that and that is the role of parliamentarians. It is all very well for the parliamentary secretary to say that Parliament must initiate this review. If Parliament is to initiate the review, why is the government having its review on constitutional matters? There is no call for Parliament to initiate a review of the Constitution. The government has a paper, the government gives that paper to a parliamentary committee, it travels across the country, it hears Canadians, it reports, it advises and it recommends. Why cannot the same thing happen in defence?
We have been asking, I have been asking and my friend has been asking, the government for the last two years to initiate, to put down its policy similarly in defence as it has on the Constitution so that we can examine it and so that Canadians can examine it. Unlike constitutional matters, the government has refused to do the same thing in defence matters.
I think it is facile to say that you can do it with the Constitution, but you must not do it in defence.
The government is the government. It is responsible for initiating policy. Our role is to review policy and I think that is what must happen.
In that review, I agree with my friend that we have got to go beyond the present NORAD. There is instability and we have to come to grips with that instability and the need for security in the polar area. We are a polar country and it is time we stopped looking to the south of us so much and started looking to the north. There is an opportunity now for us to do that, for us to change our vision and to go far beyond the present NORAD.
Why can we not have a NORAD of the sea for example? Why can we not have NORAD of the sea? The government policy did not address that at all, did not show any initiatives for getting together. It talked about the Murmansk speech but where is the Canadian initiative for getting the super powers together in naval arms control? Where is the initiative for bringing together the United States and the Soviet Union.
The United States travelling through Juan de Fuca, travelling through the Northwest Passage, still thinks that its role, its right, is to travel anywhere it wants in the world. I think we have to talk about that with the Americans to say there is such a thing as Canadian space and there is such a thing as Canadian sovereignty. Maybe it is time for the United States, in view of the fact that the cold war is over, to look at the policy of the American navy and to see whether in fact it should be defending the United States and maybe the polar region too, but that it is not the naval policemen of the whole world.
Why can we not have in the polar area a security force? There is an Arctic Council that exists now. Canada is part of an Arctic Council and that Arctic Council has taken a very interesting initiative in the environment.
I ask the question: How can you take initiatives in the environment, multinational agreements in the environment, and have them become effective unless you have security? There is no security in the polar area at the present time. Why can we not have a multinational force? Why can we not have, first of all, confidence building measures and then going beyond confidence building measures, a security system like the Arctic
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Council in the same way as we have in the environment. Why can Canada not take that kind of initiative, and why can Canada not say to the United States and to the Soviet Union that they, the United States and Russia, Canada, the Danes, the Norwegians, should have a multinational sea security system, a surface and air security system in the polar region. That is absolutely necessary and its time has come.
After all, if we can do that in the Persian Gulf, why can we not do it in the polar area? What we had in the Persian Gulf was in fact a security system, a 16-nation or more security system. It was not attacking anybody, at least in the beginning it was not. It was simply establishing security. By the way, a lot of that was due to the experience of NATO, of which we and the United States are both partners, and part of the success of the gulf was the fact that we had worked together over the years. We knew our communications systems and we knew our strategies and we were operating jointly. If it can be done in the gulf why can it not be done in the polar areas?
That is the kind of initiative I would like to see. That is the kind of review of NORAD that we need. That is why I am in a dilemma. I like the motion but I cannot unilaterally say just to terminate it and let us see where we go from there.
I have to say in conclusion that if our amendment before the external affairs committee had been accepted, we would have only a two-year agreement and possibly we could have supported the motion.


Hon. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, I had not realized the matter that was before us until about half an hour ago. I came over because the mover of the motion, the member of the New Democratic Party, knows that I have some interest in the issue of NORAD renewal, NORAD treaty matters, given in fact what did happen in the external affairs committee. I will come back to that in a minute.
Before I get to that, the hon. member for Labrador has made a statement that I hope he did not mean because it flies in the face of some of the things we have been trying to develop around here for some time. I made the note and wrote it down that the government's
Private Members' Business
role is to initiate policy, our role in the House of Commons is to review policy. I know the hon. gentleman has been here for a long time and has been an esteemed member of the defence committee for a long time. I am sure he does not mean what that says, that it is not the role of members of Parliament in the new capacity of committees to initiate policy reviews on their own and to make policy proposals on their own.
I hope that that is what he meant to say, because that is certainly what the committee on which he serves and the committee that I chair regards as our proper role. I think he may have meant that he wishes the government had come forward more quickly with a defence policy paper, and I accept that that is his concern. I am sure he does not want to leave on the record the idea that the only role of members of Parliament is to review government policy initiatives. If that is in fact what he meant to leave on the record, I would be surprised.
He may want to respond to that. I will leave him a minute at the end to respond to that on a point of order, Sir, because that is precisely what he said.
Let me, however, come back to the subject matter that is here. It is true that the standing committee of this House deliberated on the matter of the NORAD renewals here for quite a long time. If I remember correctly, the composition of the joint committee was members of both the defence committee and of the external affairs committee. Certainly the hon. member who proposes the motion today was a member of a distinguished group of members of Parliament who spent some time reviewing this matter. If I remember, they also commissioned a fairly substantial and lengthy piece of research, and on at least one panel I know four experts met. I should say that while I chair the parent committee, I did not participate in the deliberations of the subcommittee but I value the work they did.
That subcommittee commissioned a panel of four experts to prepare a series of papers examining in great detail five aspects of the renewal issue. Those were, specifically, Soviet Strategic Developments and their Implications, United States Strategic Developments and their Implications, Strategic Arms Control, Aerospace Surveillance and U.S.-Canadian Interests in Consultation.
That panel of experts wrote a long report which they asked our consent later to publish, which we happily gave

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them the right to do. In that particular report, Sir, they made a specific recommendation, and I quote it:
Taking all considerations into account, the panel believes that
NORAD serves Canada well and, therefore, ought to be renewed
for a further period.
That is a precise quote.
The debate at committee, as the previous member so carefully characterizes it, became a question of is it possible to find some way to agree on a period of time during which the defence policy review and the foreign policy review that we all wanted to see happen could be conducted? In fact, the external affairs committee report specifically recommended a review of policy in both those areas, and we are still interested in pursuing that matter.
I only make this point, Mr. Speaker: At the time we thought we had an understanding. It wasn't that we would pass the Liberal amendment for two, it was that we thought we would be able to agree in the interests of encouraging a defence and foreign policy review, to some period of time less than five years, in order to express our sense that, I think collectively, it could not just be business as usual in the development of policy in the foreign affairs field with regard to security and strategic interests; that the key issue had disappeared and that we had to now find some way to make urgent the necessity to talk about what you do in conflict resolution in the new world order; what do you do in Arctic surveillance issues, and all of the things that the previous member has spoken so eloquently about and knows so well.
Those were the matters that motivated us. As the hon. member for Victoria knows well, there was an attempt to come to some conclusion. He knows full well why we did not get there. I am constrained, because if I remember correctly, those votes were held in camera and I will not, therefore, talk about what happened in camera. The hon. member for Victoria will know that I believe there was an understanding that was breached in that room. The hon. member knows I believe that. And, so, he will not be surprised. I do know that.


John F. Brewin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is a very serious point which the member has made because he has suggested that I know there was a breach of some understanding in the committee. I want to put it on the record of this House that, first, I had no idea that that is
what the member believed was the situation in that committee; second, I want to state categorically that there was no understanding whatever on that issue.
There were differences of opinion on the issue of how long we should recommend the continuation of the agreement. I understand that but there was no understanding nor was it my knowledge, until the member just got up and said it, that he believed otherwise.


John William Bosley: Mr. Speaker, that is an unbelievable statement.
The hon. member has had five discussions with me on this matter. They started before the committee reported. They began in this Chamber sitting in these chairs. We talked about the possibility of building a consensus around the NORAD report.
I indicated to him and I will indicate it here that there were two or three of us on the government side who thought there was some virtue in the position of recommending a shorter period of time if we could get a unanimous committee report to adopt that position.
The hon. member undertook, and I say it here on the record, that if it were possible to obtain a shorter period of time, three years was the agreed number, he would support a position which said in that case he and his party take it upon themselves to support a NORAD renewal for three years at a time.
I say precisely, without saying what happened in committee, that is what he and I discussed in this Chamber in these two chairs. He knows full well how furious I was because he has heard me personally on this before.
It came time to deal with the subcommittee report which would have adopted a shorter period of time and urged the foreign policy reviews. I am constrained from describing what actually happened in votes in committee.
It was not possible to obtain the necessary majority of the votes in that committee to adopt the three-year figure. He knows why because he was there.
I have never been able to understand how it is possible thereafter for the members of the New Democratic Party, particularly my good friend, when there was a chance in their hands to deliver a shorter renewal period in order to get both that shorter renewal period and the defence policy review, which they chose to say they wanted to meet here, but somehow did not get it, to now
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Government Orders
come back and put on the record this motion. It is quite incomprehensible to me.
If people at the time wanted both things, the defence policy review expressed through an agreement on a shorter renewal of the NORAD agreement, they were there to be had. It was not the members of the government side or the members of the Liberal opposition who made that not possible.
NORAD had served this country extremely well, it will continue to serve this country extremely well, and we have every right to try to move our security arrangements into the new world. That is our obligation to our children, and it is not credible to try to have one position on this issue here, and another position on this issue when it is time to deliver in votes and proceedings. I say that with respect.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I simply cannot believe that by my silence on the record of this House, I made any agreement with the hon. member in the terms in which he described them.
There may be an honest difference of understanding of what we did agree to. I will concede without hesitation that we were seeking to try to find some way in which we could get a solid and useful report before the House.
In the end, we did not succeed but I must say categorically, because my friend put it categorically, that his recollection of what we agreed is not mine.


Bill Rompkey: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am not sure that the hon. member has a point of order. I am in doubt.


Bill Rompkey: Mr. Speaker, I just want to clarify the record. My hon. friend across the way suggested that I had said only the government can take initiatives, only the government can initiate policy and it is the responsibility of Parliament simply to review.
It is quite obviously untrue. An individual member can take initiatives, as my friend is doing today, but let me remind the House the government controls not only the government itself, but committees.
It is very difficult for an opposition.
The numbers are such that the government controls not only the House but the committees. Unless the government is willing, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the opposition to initiate reviews. I suggest to you that while-


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



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Doug Lewis (Solicitor General of Canada) moved: that Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of Correctional Investigator, be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee G.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to speak on second reading of Bill C-36 which will create the new Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
There are few issues more emotionally charged or of greater concern to Canadians than that which is at the very heart of this bill, crime and public safety. The need for government action in this area has become increasingly apparent in recent years as public sentiment has been aroused across the country.
Increasing violence in our streets, much publicized abuse and just plain stupid errors in our criminal justice system have aroused considerable and justifiable anger and apprehension among many Canadians. In a nutshell, public confidence in the system's ability to protect society has been severely undermined. There is a very real and disturbing perception within society that the balance is all wrong.

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As well, particular public attention is directed to the plight of victims who are perceived as being victimized twice, once by the offender and then by an uncaring system.
This bill seeks to address these perceptions by dealing clearly and forcefully with the issue of public safety. We have made public safety the number one principle in this bill.

The interpretation of this one important principle is this-if the release of an offender threatens society, the offender will not be released. The government wants to get a message to two groups. First of all, the government wants to assure the public that from this point forward, they, instead of offenders, will get the benefit of the doubt. The government also wants to send a strong message to all those who work in the parole and prison system that law-abiding citizens come first and that at no time should public safety be put in jeopardy.
Now having said all that, I want to turn briefly, for the record, to explain who is responsible for what in this complex and huge process known as the criminal justice system.
First of all, as Solicitor General, I am the minister responsible for a number of federal agencies but most important and of direct relevance to this bill and the criminal justice system, I am the minister responsible for the Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board. To make the point, I am responsible for criminals after they have been sentenced by a court, and my colleague, the Minister of Justice, is responsible for the Criminal Code and the development of sentencing procedures, both of which are administered by the provinces through the provincial court system.
Members will realize that a great many of the proposals which are in Bill C-36 were put forward last year in the consultation document or Green Paper that was widely distributed called "Directions for Reform".
This document was jointly released in July 1990 by the then Solicitor General, Pierre Cadieux, and by the Minister of Justice, Kim Campbell.

As well, the bill reflects the recommendations of the June 1991 report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General on Bill C-67.

This bill contains significant changes concerning parole.
It may come as a surprise to many members-because it certainly surprised me-to learn that this bill represents the first comprehensive review of correctional legislation since the Penitentiary Act was passed 123 years ago.

The proposals set down in this bill come at the end of a prolonged period of study, evaluation and consultation. They are the product of experience. Some of that experience, tragically, is the result of miscalculation, misadventure and the slow widening of deep cracks between components of the criminal justice system.
Historically we have turned away, as we have had to turn away, from prison regimes that produced riots, unending bitterness and an inmate code of permanent non-co-operation. A prison system that represents neither justice nor humanity will not transmit our values to inmates and therefore cannot protect the public.
While we have placed a properly needed emphasis on rehabilitation, we have also seen the development of some very serious deficiencies which have led to some horrific and tragic results. Much work has been done to correct this and we believe the bill has achieved the right balance. Now is the time to act with resolve and dispatch and to take the very best the present system has to offer and mix it with these necessary reforms.
We will put into place a corrections system that will not only protect the public but will serve to rehabilitate and assist those who can be helped. It is a tall order and we think we have it right.
Let me briefly explain the bill, which I concede is complex and not an easily understood piece of work.
Bill C-36 is in three parts.
Part I sets out correctional legislation and is a modernization and a replacement of the Penitentiary Act. In
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essence this section provides the prison service, known as the Correctional Service of Canada, with its operating mandate and its rules of operation.
Part II defines the system of parole and the operation of the Parole Board. It will replace the Parole Act.
Part III establishes the office of the correctional investigator in law.
I anticipate that part II, which deals with conditional release, will be of most interest to the House. However, before turning to the provisions of part II, I would like to deal in a little more detail with the essentials of part I and part III.
As I said before, part I tells us how the correctional service will operate and under what rules. It is a complete modernization of correctional legislation, representing a decade of intensive work in collaboration with voluntary and professional groups, judges, Crown attorneys, the police and provincial governments. It reflects recent jurisprudence and the impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Part I also sets out a very important guiding principle, the protection of the public within its statement of principles of correctional law.
Along with this all important principle, protection of the public, there are a number of other principles enunciated in the bill: staff powers, the right of search and seizure, inmate rights, procedural safeguards , principles that compel the different parts of the justice system to stay in touch. Understanding this part of the bill is essential to understanding the entire bill. It is important to emphasize that the principle of protection of the public is fundamental.
Part III of the bill at long last establishes the position and mandate of the correctional investigator in law. Since 1973 this office has operated under part II of the Inquiries Act. Part III clearly describes the correctional investigator's mandate, investigative powers and procedures, which are essentially to act on behalf of inmates who feel that they have been dealt an injustice while they are within the corrections system.
The correctional investigator will have full discretion in determining when and how an investigation will be
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conducted. The bill establishes the power to hold hearings, the right of access to information and documents, authority to examine persons under oath, and access to correctional premises as required.
In general terms part II of the bill will toughen the existing rules of eligibility for parole, in particular in relation to violent offences, serious drug offences and sexual offences against children. However, as a necessary balance, first time, non-violent offenders will have a chance to gain regular parole when they are first eligible at one-third of their sentence.
It is a curious truth that sometimes society is better protected by moving certain offenders through the system and out of prison faster rather than leaving them behind bars where hope, job prospects and family support can fade away all too quickly. The rationale for doing this, while well supported as a rehabilitative measure, will also allow us to free up almost $1 billion which we spend each year to lock people up. By doing so we can place a greater emphasis on keeping the violent and dangerous offenders behind bars longer. Again, as in part I the protection of the public is the paramount principle.
Since the proposed changes to the different types of conditional release are not easily comprehensible without reference to the existing system, let me quickly set out its fundamentals.
Currently offenders receiving a sentence of more than two years will normally serve their sentence in a federal penitentiary. Under the old system an inmate was eligible for day parole and unescorted absences at one-sixth of sentence, full parole at one-third of sentence and release on mandatory supervision at two-thirds of the sentence. Escorted temporary absences could also be granted from the start of the sentence, although this was rare and release on mandatory supervision could be denied through the operation of a review hearing established under Bill C-67 in 1986.
Most of these provisions in the bill have been altered to reflect our commitment to deal more severely and effectively with violent offenders. We believe that the release for most offenders at one-sixth of a sentence is simply too soon. We propose therefore that the minimum time in prison before consideration for day parole

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be set at six months before the normal full parole eligibility date of one-third of sentence.
Furthermore, the purpose of day parole would be limited to preparation for eventual release. Other activities, such as training, attendance at educational or health related programs or work detail, would be transferred to the temporary absence program where release periods are shorter and supervision more intense.
With this change, for example, the minimum possible time in prison for a six-year sentence would be 18 months instead of 12 months. For a nine-year sentence the minimum to be served in prison would be 30 months rather than 18 months. Those serving sentences of three years or less would be unaffected.
The unescorted temporary absence regime will be changed to alter the emphasis from preparation for release to programming and training. Maximum security inmates will not be eligible at all for unescorted absences. The National Parole Board will be responsible for conditional release decisions respecting lifers, schedule offenders and detained offenders who have been classified to other levels.
Additionally we believe that the court, having heard all the evidence and having had before it the police, the victims and the expert witnesses, should not be limited in setting the over-all sentence. Therefore the government proposes a new provision called judicial determination whereby judges will be able to specify that offenders convicted of a schedule offence or a serious drug offence must serve at least half their sentence behind bars instead of the current one-third of sentence before parole review.
We do not propose this role for judges because they have demanded it or even because they favour it, but because they are best placed within the criminal justice system to say whether there should be a higher guaranteed minimum prison term in some cases. This proposal is in recognition of the fact that there is a wide gap in our sentencing and correctional system, to put the problem politely. To put it less politely, the problem under the current system is that judges are seen by the public to set a certain period of punishment and then the parole board later applies a different set of criteria that sometimes result in parole decisions that do not seem to follow the intention of the court.
I acknowledge that this provision places a burden on the courts, but it is one that they alone are equipped to fulfil and one I hope that they will not hesitate to accept and apply where warranted.
Further, I think this provision gives Canadians the assurance that the view of the court will be more accurately respected and reflects the government's view that early release may be just too early in some cases and does not, I hasten to add, signal a change in our belief that parole is an essential part of the criminal justice system.
We have signalled out some offenders for a potentially longer period of incarceration, but we believe that it is desirable that others, the first time non-violent offenders, have a final chance to show that they can and will take steps to straighten out their lives and quickly become law abiding members of society.
This group is the one already most likely to benefit from release on parole at the earlier date, but unfortunately the failure to release them is too often the result of the complexity of the bureaucratic process of determining parole rather than the merits of the case.
Therefore this bill proposes a new provision to the House to be called accelerated review which would set out a more efficient review process for eligible offenders. The process would work in the following way. There would be in the first instance a review of the files by one parole board member accompanied by the recommendation of correction officials. The essential criteria, as with everything in the bill, would be public safety and whether or not the offender has the potential to commit a violent crime if released.
If an offender were accepted under this process release on parole would take place at exactly one-third of sentence. If during the accelerated review, evidence were put forward suggesting that even though the offender was not serving time for a violent offence the potential for a violent offence was there, then the offender would be referred to a full panel hearing for a decision in the normal way. Evidence of the potential for violence might be suggested by a previous conviction which did not result in a penitentiary sentence, behaviour while in prison, or any other factor relevant to future behaviour.
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It is important to remind the Elouse at this point that release on parole is not a right but is a privilege to be earned. Parole is a form of conditional release, meaning that any release must be accompanied by supervision and strict conditions which relate to the original crime, the parole location, persons not to be associated with or provisions relating to the use of drug and alcohol. Violation of these conditions may mean a return to prison and future parole determined by a full and very sceptical panel.
The next important changes being put to the House are in the regime currently known as mandatory supervision. Earned remission has with the years become virtually automatic. Other disciplinary procedures such as loss of privileges or confinement in segregation have proven more immediate and more effective.
The Bill C-67 regime itself is an incentive to good behaviour because the potential lengthening of the sentence through absolute denial of remission is far more drastic for the inmate than a slight reduction in earned remission. In effect the entire earned remission scheme has evolved to a point where it is unnecessary and release at two-thirds of the sentence is almost automatic, with the very important exception of the detention provisions.
Offenders on mandatory supervision who violate the conditions of release are of course returned to custody. The first proposal therefore is to recognize the evolution of the system and accept that earned remission has become effectively statutory. Recognizing this formally means a shifting of resources to the programming, classification, parole supervision and security activities which can directly enhance the security of the public.
Second, I propose a further modification of the detention provisions to include serious drug offences which are set out in schedule II to the bill. It is our government's view that the major drug offences, trafficking and importing, for example, do enormous physical harm to Canadians. This violence which often may end in the death of a person is no less violent because it is indirect. Offenders convicted of serious drug crimes will be liable to a hearing if by virtue of their past record continuing associations or links to the prison drug trade it is likely that they would return to the active participation in the illicit drug market.
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These same offences, as I described earlier, will also make the offender liable under the judicial determination provision to having parole eligibility set at one-half of the sentence.
Compare this to the present system with the possibility of day parole at one-sixth of the sentence and a very good chance of parole at one-third. Drug offenders often have external characteristics which might suggest good parole performance and release at two-thirds is almost a certainty unless a crime of violence was also committed. The reality is quite different and this amendment recognizes the very real harm that is done to society.
I also want to announce in connection with detention that the government will be adding five new offences to schedule I, all directly related to sexual offences against children. The offences are: incest, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation, anal intercourse and oral intercourse. Adding these offences to the schedule not only means that the offenders could be detained if the harm done and possible repetition were serious, but the offenders would be liable to the imposition by the judge of parole eligibility at one-half the sentence instead of one-third and would not be eligible for the accelerated review process which I described a minute ago.
I would like to turn my attention to the victims of crime. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I believe that victims are often victimized twice: once by the criminal and again by a system that is unable to recognize the trauma and the suffering that they endure. What we are proposing is a fundamental change in favour of victims' rights. As I have set out, the different forms of temporary release and conditional release will continue to be a key element in the reintegration of the offender in society.
However, in the past our justice system has not given enough attention to the anxiety of victims who frequently cannot legally be given information which is essential to their peace of mind and cannot be sure that their voice will be heard once a trial is over.
There are therefore several changes to the operation of the National Parole Board and the Correctional Service that deal with openness of the system and go to the heart of what the victims want.

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Provisions I am going to describe add up to the first formal recognition of victims as legitimate and real players in the parole system's decision-making process.
I want to say that I am very pleased to bring forward these provisions. Currently if the victim of a crime writes to me or to the board and asks that a victim impact statement be put before the board, I cannot guarantee that is going to be done. Statements are considered a matter of policy only.
If the request is to attend the Parole Board hearing, the inmate has the right of veto. If the request is to find out when or where or under what circumstances and conditions an inmate will be released, the Privacy Act will frequently prevent a disclosure.
Under part II of the bill these provisions will be changed. In future, the National Parole Board panel that is hearing a case will determine who may attend. The inmate will be consulted but will not have a veto. With the passage of the bill, victims will be entitled to have their statements become part of the inmate file on which the hearing will be based.
Currently, very little information can be released even to victims who want to know if an offender is likely to be released. We are unable because of the Privacy Act even to assure a victim that the offender will not be released, which is frequently the case.
Under this bill, if a victim contacts the board or CSC and asks to be kept informed, he or she can be informed of the release eligibility date, the hearing date, the offender's destination and any conditions imposed. This will apply to temporary absences as well as conditional release decisions.
In addition, the board will maintain a decision register containing information on board decisions and reasons for those decisions. Together, these measures will give victims information about hearings that are relevant to them and contribute to informing the public about parole.
I want to mention one last thing before beginning my concluding remarks and that is the issue of paperwork. Paperwork, whether we like it or not, is at the heart of this very large and sometimes very cumbersome system. With such diverse groups as the courts, the police, parole officers and provincial agencies all working as part of the
criminal justice system, the chance for error can be very real. As we know, they can be deadly.
Everywhere in this bill, the emphasis is on the requirement that accurate and complete information be obtained and exchanged between the various elements of the criminal justice system.
There is a requirement that courts provide reasons for sentencing to the correctional system, and that all information collected by the Correction Service of Canada and the National Parole Board be shared.
This will help to ensure an end to those tragic instances in which a failure to keep files complete has led to escape from custody and even murder.
The changes proposed in this bill also complement others currently under way. As members will know, the prison for women in Kingston is being closed. The process for choosing sites for the regional centres that will replace others is advanced. Other changes are being developed as part of the response to the task force on federally sentenced women. Action is also advanced on many initiatives respecting aboriginal offenders, and correctional programming for them is rapidly expanding.
Certain provisions of this bill will facilitate progress on these files but much is under way already.
As I said earlier, this bill constitutes one part of the program set out in the consultation document Directions for Reform. When reinforced by sentencing legislation currently in preparation by the Minister of Justice, we will have reformed the criminal justice system from sentencing through to the end of the penitentiary sentence. This is no small feat and it is an issue that I am sure will go a long way toward restoring sagging public confidence in our criminal justice system.
Finally in closing, let me say that I am anxious to work with members from all sides of the House to have as full and effective a committee process as possible. I know that the justice and solicitor general committee members will be thorough, thoughtful and constructive when considering this bill.
I have told everyone I have met, including those many groups I have spoken with, that I sincerely want an informed discussion to take place on this bill. I want the best possible product to come forward from this process.
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Therefore I appreciate that the motion was to send it to a legislative committee, but I would think that perhaps at some other time it might be appropriate for the House leader, in conjunction with the opposition leaders, instead to refer this bill to the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General. I am sure members from all parties with their backgrounds will give the bill a very full hearing. We contemplate the calling of witnesses, a very detailed clause by clause examination, and the bill coming back to this House a refined product benefiting all Canadians and speaking to the public safety of all Canadians.


Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to make submissions on Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of correctional investigators.
I suppose an editorial headline in a newspaper in Ontario, the Whig Standard sums it up: "The parole system overhaul a big scam on public". That is the headline of an article written on October 12, 1991.
I have been the solicitor general spokesman for the Official Opposition for the last seven years and you will have to forgive me for my cynicism and the cynicism of a great number of people interested in criminal law reform when we approach this particular government initiative with considerable scepticism.
This is the third attempt or the third time this government over the last seven years has said or announced to much fanfare that it intends to reform the criminal justice system. I remember about three years ago, it was just a few months before the general election campaign in November 1988, one of my friend's predecessors, Mr. Kelleher, had a huge press conference at the press theatre on Wellington Street and announced parole reform.
Many of the same or similar headlines were in newspapers right across the country: "The government intends to get tough on parole", "The government intends to change the parole system".
What happened to that legislation? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was not even introduced in the House of Commons and it appears obvious now that what the government was engaged in was a public relations scam. What the government is doing this week is again trying to
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manipulate the process and it is involved in a public relations scam again.
This is crime prevention week. Crime prevention week has been in effect for close to 10 years. It is a week set aside by municipalities and police forces right across the country to focus attention on matters affecting crime prevention.
This government has chosen this week to debate and discuss a number of different pieces of legislation affecting the criminal justice system. We have to ask why the government waited so long. Why has it waited seven years before bringing in legislation to deal with the criminal justice system?
I will speak more specifically about the legislation before the House but before doing so I have to call into question the government's credibility, its sincerity and commitment to meaningful criminal law reform, given its track record over the last seven years.
We know that this government is desperate. The government's popularity is at an all-time low. We know that the Reform Party is now a more popular political party than the governing party. This government is trying to do whatever possible to try to gain some public support. As part of that desperate attempt to gain some public support, it has decided to bring in a series of law and order pieces of legislation, at least to bring them forward this week when a lot of these bills have been on the Order Paper, have been discussed and debated at committee for the last seven years. All of a sudden the government decides that it is going to bring this legislation forward this week.
At the very same time it claims to be committed to criminal law reform, what does the government do? It cuts $2 million in funding for crime prevention week. This week is crime prevention week and this government has decided to axe $2 million.
It is fine for the Prime Minister to go abroad as a buffoon, whether it is in the Caribbean or elsewhere, and write off multimillion dollar loans and grants to other countries. It is fine for the Prime Minister to say that and to try to score some cheap political points overseas, and yet when it comes to programs in Canada that have had a positive effect, the government decides to be chintzy in cutting $2 million from crime prevention week. Groups

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right across this country see right through this government's agenda and they have justifiably criticized in a very severe fashion the federal government's credibility and commitment to crime prevention. On one hand, the minister stands in his place today and says: "We are concerned and we are moving with dispatch and resolve", and on the other hand the government has cut $2 million for crime prevention week.
It was a Liberal government that started this program in 1983. It has been extremely successful. Municipalities and police forces right across Canada have come to rely on this federal funding in order to increase the profile of crime prevention week, and here the government cuts it back, totally eliminates $2 million in funding for crime prevention week.
I would like to comment briefly on the government's approach to criminal law reform. Over the last seven years this government has ad libbed its way through criminal law reform. It does not have an over-all plan to fundamentally change or reform the criminal justice system in Canada. The government is in a piecemeal fashion addressing problems, attempting to resolve problems, as they arise in the criminal justice system.
When one considers the legislation presently before the House, a number of bills are not here as a result of an initiative by the Government of Canada. The bills are before the House because the Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision or in a number of decisions, has said to the Government of Canada that it had better start acting, it is a legislator and it is essential that it deal with certain aspects of the criminal justice system.
For example, we have before the House on the Order Paper legislation that deals with the criminally insane. The law was struck down in May by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court said to the Minister of Justice: "You have until November 1 to bring in new legislation in order for it to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms". The government obviously had to act. It introduced a bill. It did not act quickly enough and then it had to go, cap in hand, back to the Supreme Court of Canada for an extension. Now the Supreme Court has granted an extension.
The point I am making is that in the area dealing with the criminally insane, the Law Reform Commission over 10 years ago recommended changes. There was a bill some four or five years ago that was considered, and yet nothing happened until the Supreme Court of Canada in
effect instructed this Parliament to act with regard to a law dealing with the criminally insane.
Regarding the rape shield law, another piece of legislation or at least a proposed piece of legislation, why is the government acting? Not because it took the initiative and said we have to reform this aspect of criminal law in Canada, but because the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a decision considered to be an inequitable result, a result that does not meet with favour with a great majority of Canadians. The government again has to act in this particular area.
With respect to matters dealing with young offenders, it is not because the government has taken the initiative and has said it wants to reform the law as it applies to young offenders, but rather it is responding to public concern. The minister admitted in his place today that what has sparked the introduction of this bill in the House is not the government's leadership, it is not the government's initiative, but it is because the public is pushing the government into acting and acting swiftly.
Some four or five years ago this Parliament was recalled in the middle of summer to pass Bill C-67, the gating bill, to deal with gating or issuing detention orders. Again, it was not because this government took the initiative and provided the necessary leadership, it was because the public was pushing the government to act. We on this side of the House have been pushing the last seven years for the government to act. I was on the justice committee, and I note that the present chairman of the justice committee is present in the House today. He was on that committee as well.
In the spring of 1987 we began a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system in Canada. The committee reported in August 1988. The title of this report is "Taking Responsibility". It cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. This report of the justice committee, which was tabled in this House, had 97 recommendations for reform. It was well received in the criminal justice community across the country. What has it been doing over the last four years? It has been sitting on the minister's desk gathering dust. The government has done absolutely nothing over the last three or four years with this expensive piece of work by the justice committee.
Now the minister comes forward and says: "Well, we want you to do it all over again, we want to send this matter back to committee". The pushing has not only
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come from the public and those interested in criminal law reform, but also from a standing committee of this House which has, over the last seven years that I have been a member of that committee, repeatedly demanded that the government take some action with regard to criminal law reform.
At the end of it all, here we are in November 1991 at the beginning of crime prevention week and the government says; "Well, we are taking the initiative, we are going to provide the leadership, and look at what we are doing. All week long we are going to be introducing and discussing and debating changes to the criminal justice system".
That is absolutely no way to deal with criminal law reform; a cynical, manipulative, public relations-driven way of trying to score some cheap political points in the middle of crime prevention week to pretend to the public that this government is concerned about criminal law reform.
I refer back to the headline "Parole System Overhaul a Big Scam on the Public".
Bill C-36 is certainly a lengthy bill. As we can see here and as the minister said, it is complicated legislation. I carefully read this a number of times and I have come to the conclusion that again, as was the proposal in the fall of 1988, it is tinkering. It is tinkering with the criminal justice system. This government has no over-all comprehensive plan to deal with criminal law reform in this country. Again, it is an example of the government ad libbing its way, almost with a blindfold on, ad libbing its way through criminal law reform when what is necessary in this country is some fundamental reform. I am afraid that this government has not approached the problem in a comprehensive way.
The minister says his counterpart, the Minister of Justice, will be introducing legislation dealing with sentencing reform. With all due respect to the Solicitor General, how can the legislative committee or the justice committee that will be dealing with Bill C-36, and the witnesses that appear before the committee, adequately and intelligently deal with reform of the parole system without looking at sentencing reform at the same time?
Therefore, what we have here is only half the package. Correctional law reform is only half of the package because it only deals with people once a judge sentences
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an offender to a period of incarceration. What we need is the other half of the package at the same time so we can move forward together with a comprehensive proposal and we can look at the sentencing structure in Canada, look at some of the veiy good recommendations that were made in this report Taking Responsibility and to look at ways of changing the system so that the public in Canada starts having some respect and confidence in the criminal justice system.
The sad reality is that today the public has very little, if any respect at all or confidence in the criminal justice system. Is it any wonder when you pick up the morning paper and read about the latest murder or the latest rape or robbery in your particular community?
I picked up The Toronto Star this morning, and what are the headlines? "Disabled man slain by intruder in home". The lead paragraph states: "A partly paralyzed North York man was beaten to death in his bedroom by an intruder as his elderly wife ran for help".
A headline right beside it; "Motel guest found by maid is metro's 74th homicide", 74 homicides this year compared to 46 murders at this time last year.
The public is justifiably alarmed at what is happening in our communities and in particular in metropolitan Toronto. I represent a riding in west metro, and my constituents have told me time and time again, and more so now, that they are afraid of what is happening in our community.
Just down the street, a few doors away from my constituency office a few days ago a couple of people walked into an after hours club and shot and killed two people. We see that day in and day out in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax. The crime rate is increasing. People are becoming afraid to walk in their own communities. Women in particular are afraid to walk in the evenings. If you will recall, it used to be a concern walking in downtown Toronto in the evening. Now people are afraid to walk in their own communities. They are afraid to take an evening stroll after dinner in their own community because of a fear that something may happen.	'
In a community not far from where I live, a business woman by the name of Caroline Case has gone missing. She disappeared a number of weeks ago and foul play is suspected there. I can say that my wife and other people

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in our community are afraid to walk alone at night and in fact are afraid to walk in groups.
There is a fear out there, a concern that the criminal justice system is not working. Whether it is justifiable or not, whether the evidence supports the perception that there is an increase in crime and a lack of feeling of security, whether it is justified or not, the reality is that people are afraid. The people are looking to governments, whether it is municipal, provincial or federal governments, to take action immediately in order to at least show them that legislators care about what is happening.
Yet we in this Chamber seem to be preoccupied with the Constitution, Meech Lake here and Meech Lake there, Constitution here and Constitution there. The reality is most people just do not care about the Constitution. They just do not care about constitutional reform.
What they would rather see is this Chamber and members of Parliament talking about the real issues that are of concern to people. They want to see a preoccupation in this House with economic concerns. People want to get back to work. That is one of the key issues that people are concerned about.
The other key issue is crime, law and order. They want to see this government, they want to see legislators, parliamentarians, politicians standing up and talking about issues of real concern to people, rather than simply taking crime prevention week as an opportunity to highlight a problem and then come Friday afternoon all the MPs will board their planes, buses and leave this place and the issue again will be buried on the Order Paper.
Criminal justice reform should be on the agenda every day in this House as long as people are concerned about what is happening on the streets in urban centres and even in rural areas right across the country. Toronto this year will set a record in terms of the number of homicides. As of today there have been 74 homicides in Toronto compared to 46 last year. We are breaking records in metro Toronto. The previous record for murders in metropolitan Toronto was 60 for all of 1987. We are already at 74 murders and we still have two months to go in metro Toronto.
The police estimate that there will be anywhere from 75 to 100 murders this year. We are looking at 25 more people who are living and breathing today who will be murdered, who will be killed over the next two months in metropolitan Toronto alone.
Toronto is number three in per capita violent crimes in Canada. Violent crimes are up 22 per cent so far this year. Some blame the rise in crime on drugs and the proliferation of guns in metropolitan Toronto. I spoke a little earlier about how people feel about walking in the evening. According to a recent poll 56 per cent of women are afraid to walk the streets at night alone. We are talking about streets in their own community and 75 per cent feel that the courts are far too lenient with criminals.
The point is that the public does not have confidence in the criminal justice system, that there is a concern out there and the concern is that the government is not doing what is necessary in order to deal with the problem.
I indicated that the government was not taking a comprehensive approach to criminal law reform and in fact was tinkering with the system. For example, the government by introducing this legislation has accepted that parole should remain a feature of our criminal justice system in Canada. It has not addressed the question of whether or not we should abolish parole all together, as has been done in jurisdictions outside of this country, in particular south of the border in the United States. Should we carry on with parole as we know it today?
I do not believe that we should carry on with the parole system that we have. This government has already accepted that rather than abolishing parole all together, it wants to retain it, tinker with it a bit to change the time periods. This government has not addressed the whole concept of mandatory supervision.
If I can just take a moment to talk about mandatory supervision, I support the complete abolition of mandatory supervision, and let me explain why.
Right now in Canada, if an individual is sentenced to a period of incarceration, they become eligible for day parole after serving a sixth of their sentence. They become eligible for full parole subject to certain exceptions after serving a third of their sentence, and they are automatically released subject to certain exceptions
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after serving two-thirds. That is called mandatory supervision.
Even though a judge says that this person is to serve nine years for an armed robbery or a violent offence, the law says that this person should be released after serving only six years, unless the government can show that a detention order should be issued to keep the person detained longer.
When we deal with those who are considered for mandatory supervision, we are dealing with the worst offenders. We are dealing with the bad apples in the system. It is these individuals who cannot convince the Parole Board that they should be released any earlier.
In fact, they are automatically released by operation of law. It does not make any sense at all. Again, is it any wonder that people do not have confidence in the criminal justice system. You have to ask yourself, Mr. Speaker, when you consider these time periods-one-sixth, one-third, one-half-what is the scientific rationale or the reasons why these time periods have been pulled out of a hat to say: "Someone should become eligible for full parole after serving one-third of their sentence".
The government now is saying: "For certain offenders, they should serve at least a half". Why?


An hon. member:: There is no real supervision.


John V. Nunziata: As my colleague says, there is no real supervision once inmates are released on mandatory supervision.
The whole concept of mandatory supervision is an experiment that has failed. It was introduced by a Liberal government over 10 years ago. It just does not work. People confuse it with parole when in fact it is not parole.
This government should have read the writing on the wall and abolished it altogether. That will be one of the amendments that the Liberal Party proposes at committee.
With regard to parole itself, the Law Reform Commission in Canada, a number of very prominent criminal lawyers in Canada, a number of groups and organizations in the criminal justice system have recommended the abolition of parole. It is a far-reaching proposal, but it is a proposal that makes a lot of sense because right now the whole system is warped.
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Judges sentence individuals not because of the crime they committed. They sentence individuals trying to take into consideration when the individual might be released on parole and for that reason, the sentencing system in Canada has gone haywire. There is no rhyme or reason to it.
What has been recommended in the proposal that I support is the abolition of parole with some release period, say six months before release that the person be released into the community in order to reintegrate, that that be part of the sentence, that sentencing be reformed so that rather than handing out a nine-year sentence and people only serve five years, let us make the sentence more realistic and bring sentencing in line with reality and inject some certainty.
I note that I have just a few more minutes to talk about the particulars of this legislation. I would like to start talking about some of the specific provisions of this bill.
We will support this bill going to a legislative committee or the justice committee. We support that proposal because a body of expertise has developed. There are a number of members of the justice committee who have been there for a number of years.
We do not support a full blown cross-country tour in order to reacquaint ourselves with the problem. We know what the problems are. We already spent over a year putting this report together. A lot of good work went into this piece of work, and we believe this should form the basis of the committee's consideration.
We look forward to this bill going to committee. This party, the Official Opposition, will be moving a significant number of amendments. We will be asking the more general questions about parole, for example, and whether or not we should continue to hang on to the parole system in Canada. We will listen attentively to groups that appear before the committee. We will also consider some of the specific provisions in Bill C-36, first with regard to the first item that is listened on the government's propaganda here. It says: "Protection of the public will now be the paramount consideration in all decisions relating to the treatment and release of inmates".
What is new, as my colleague asks? Protection of the public will now be the paramount consideration. Has it not always been the paramount consideration? If it has

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not been then something is pretty screwy when it comes to the parole system or the penitentiary system in Canada. Yet the government makes it its first highlight as if something new is about to be introduced, that the protection of the public will now be the paramount consideration.
The second point the government highlights is the role of victims in the system. For a number of years I and my colleagues on this side of the House have pressed for more involvement by victims as well as for victims' rights. Victims simply did not have any rights in the criminal justice system. The system was too heavily weighted in favour of the offender. Finally the government is listening, but it has not listened completely.
The government has indicated that victims will be kept informed of an offender's prison and parole status. This is a good point. Information from victims can be considered at a parole hearing. We say it should be considered, not that there should be discretion, if a victim or the families of a victim want to be considered. Then the government says: "Victims can attend a parole hearing at the discretion of the parole board." We ask: "Why should it be at the discretion of the parole board?" At present, it is at the discretion, believe it not, of the offender. The person who is seeking parole, up until now, decides whether or not the victim or the families of the victim can appear before the parole board hearing.
The government says: "We will move a little in the direction of victims and will allow victims to appear or for their submissions to be considered at the discretion of the parole board". We on this side of the House say that the victim should have an absolute right to appear before parole board hearings to make submissions. We also say, and we will be moving amendments accordingly, the parole hearing process should be opened up to the public and to the media.
Right now, the parole system is a system which is behind the scenes. It is a private little affair between the parole board, the offender and a caseworker at a penitentiary. What we say, on this side of the House, is that the system should be open, just as a court case, a criminal trial, is open to the public. In order for there to be confidence in the system, the parole board hearings should be completely open and public so that anyone who wishes to attend can attend and that certain people, and in particular the victims of crimes and/or their
families, have the option to attend if they so wish to attend.
A few years ago, I had a call from a constituent who had been raped in her community. She went into the local grocery store to do some grocery shopping. She paid her bill, turned around and who was standing behind her in line but the person who raped her. He had been, just a few weeks earlier, released on parole. If there was an open system where the victim had a right to be represented at parole board hearings that would not have happened. If this person qualified for parole at all, the parole board, in this particular case, as a condition of parole, surely should have said: "You are not to go back into the community where you committed the crime". Surely that should have been a condition. If this woman would have had the opportunity to appear before the National Parole Board, she would have done, and she would have made those submissions
We also have the case of John Rallo who is now in a federal penitentiary. He murdered his wife and two children. He was convicted of three counts of first degree murder. He has served about 14 years of his term. A few months ago, he was seen in the Hamilton area. The parents of the murdered woman were told by others that this John Rallo character was in the community. He was released on day passes. The parents of the murder victim, the grandparents of the two children, did not have an opportunity to appear before the National Parole Board to say that this person ought not to be released. This person, John Rallo, still has not admitted to the crimes, still will not co-operate with the police to indicate where the body of one of the young children was stashed or buried, or whatever. Yet the person is released on day parole. Is it any wonder there is so little confidence in the criminal justice system? If parole board hearings were opened up, that would not happen in the future.
We will be moving amendments with regard to parole eligibility. We will be moving amendments with regard to comprehensive reform of the parole system and the abolition of mandatory supervision.
With regard to the specific provision of the government to delay parole eligibility to one-half of the sentence for those inmates who are violent offenders and serious drug offenders, the government proposes to leave this up to judges to determine. Right now, inmates are eligible for full parole after serving a third of their sentences. What the government says is: "For certain
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individuals, leave it up to the judges to decide whether or not these people should have to serve one-half their sentences".
At the very least, it should be mandatory. Rather than giving more discretion to judges when it comes to parole eligibility, there should be less discretion and as a matter of law, if that is the direction we are going, then people who commit certain violent offences and serious drug offences, should be denied parole automatically until they have served at least one-half of their sentence.
We will be proposing a number of other amendments at committee. Some of the provisions in this bill are provisions that we have been pressing for the last seven years, and we will support those provisions. We will be insisting that this government take a comprehensive approach to the problem of criminal law reform. We will want to have all the legislation, all the different aspects of the criminal justice system considered at the same time in order to show that we are serious about what we are doing. We will ask, for example, for a single streamlined system when it comes to corrections in Canada.
Right now there are two systems of penitentiaries, or prison systems, in Canada. If one is sentenced for a crime and the sentence is two years or less, then one serves the time in a provincial penitentiary. If the sentence is two years or more, the time is served in a federal penitentiary. It makes absolutely no sense at all. It is time that the federal and provincial governments get together to introduce a streamlined system so there is a single penitentiary system in Canada. It is an area that has not been dealt with by this government in this bill and we believe that there should be some further co-operation in that regard.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, criminal law is a federal responsibility. The administration of justice is a provincial responsibility. Again we believe that in certain areas there can be some streamlining in order to better deliver criminal justice in Canada.
In conclusion, let me say that the Liberal Party intends to support, in principle, this legislation, not because we support the details of this legislation but because we believe that it is high time this government moves ahead with criminal law reform. A great number of us will be
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participating at committee. We will be participating in second reading debate. A number of my colleagues will also be speaking. We will be introducing amendments which we believe will make this bill better. We will be introducing amendments which we believe will go a long way in allowing the Canadian public to once again have some confidence and respect and support for the criminal justice system.


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to participate in this debate today at second reading of Bill C-36 known as the corrections and conditional release act.
I hope I can present a more positive critique of this bill than the previous speaker and I will try not to indulge in the cynicism to which we just listened.
The criminal justice system in this country certainly is not perfect but then again it is not perfect in any jurisdiction of which I am aware. When we are dealing with the criminal elements in our society, particularly the violent criminal elements, it is extremely difficult to balance what is fair, what constitutes, first of all, safety to society and what also provides rehabilitation of those who have committed the offences.
We have to take a long, hard look at what we are attempting to do. There are no fast fixes. There are no easy solutions. The previous speaker made reference to the fact that in the United States they have done away with parole and mandatory supervision.
Let us look briefly at the situation in the United States of America which is statistically the most violent country in the western industrialized world. It is manifestly clear to me, and I think most experts-and I am not one-that the problem of crime in society cannot be solved by simply extending sentences or denying parole or mandatory supervision. If that was the case, the United States should have one of the lowest crime rates in the western world. Instead its prisons are bulging and it has just introduced a bill in Congress which will cost the American taxpayers $25 billion to build new penitentiaries. Yet the crime rate, the murder rate, the rate of rape and violent assault in that country is going up and up and up as the prisons get bigger and bigger and bigger.

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It is not a quick fix. By simply extending the sentences and removing the criminals from society, the problem of violence in our society is not being solved. It is manifestly clear that we are not doing that.
We support and always have supported the number one principle of public safety in the criminal justice system: to protect the innocent. We support this bill at second reading. We hope we can improve this bill at committee but we support it at second reading.
We also agree that rehabilitation is important. We agree with the principle that even violent offenders, if we think it is safe, should be gradually released into society if it is possible. In some instances it is not. The Clifford Olson case, I think, is a prime example. There are sometimes when we, regrettably, simply have to throw the key away, as they say, in the interest of public safety.
However, that is not true in every case. The door should be left a little open where it is possible to reform and rehabilitate. We also agree with the additional offences listed in Schedule I and Schedule II to include sexual offences involving children, arson, and serious drug offenders. I am not quite sure what is meant by serious drug offenders, whether it is a quantitative thing, the amount of money involved, or the size of the illicit drug empire.
These things have to be addressed with greater resolution.
While we are on the subject of drug offences, let us not forget that there is a certain hypocrisy in this country. We talk about illicit drugs, hard drugs, heroin, crack cocaine and so on that are devastating. They are devastating to youth in particular.
Let us not forget that tobacco, which is a drug, and alcohol, which is a drug, account for the deaths of 50,000 people a year in this country. Hard-line drugs account for the deaths of approximately 350 to 400 persons. I am not accusing the government of being hypocritical, or any previous government, but that is something that some government is going to have to look at one of these days. I have had some experience as well.
I am not cynical so much as I am perhaps a bit disappointed, because we do have some really basic social problems in our society and other societies that, of course, this bill does not address. It cannot address them, I suppose. But let us not forget, Mr. Speaker, where and
how violence begins in our society. Good heavens, the overwhelming majority of violent offenders in our society were born into violence. Their parents were violent. Their parents were either drug addicts or alcoholics, under-educated or non-educated or they were not raised by their parents. They were introduced to crime on the streets as teenagers or even younger. They became exposed to drugs and alcohol at an early age, illiterate, no respect for law and order or authority. These are the ones who end up in our prisons. They end up as serious violent offenders and we are left, of course, with legislating as to what we do with them and how we try to rehabilitate them.
We also, of course, have the problems of people born mentally ill, or people who become mentally ill. There is no legalistic safeguard against that except, of course, medical treatment. Then, of course, we have this whole growing problem in our society of guns, of weapons, and this is on the increase. Violent crime is on the increase in our country, and we have to do something about it. This bill goes part way toward doing something about treating the offenders as well as punishing the offenders.
I hope that the public who are watching today and the public who are reading our speeches or the editorial writers who write editorials will not confuse passing laws, statutes and regulations, with actually tackling the problems in society that create violence and that are acting as a momentum to the increase in violent crime. This bill will not do that, or it will do very little to prevent or to ameliorate that situation.
It seems that you cannot turn on television these days at any hour of the day without seeing violence portrayed on television, violence against women, sexual violence, violence against children. It seems that you cannot sell a program, you cannot get advertisers without that kind of stoiy being portrayed in all its ugly graphics on television.
That is something else that knowledgeable people, experts, psychiatrists and psychologists in the field are telling us more and more, both in the United States and in Canada, that that kind of programming is bad for young people to be subjected to. Yet I do not see us regulating. I do not see this government or any other government bringing on stream regulations that would try to reduce that impact by regulating the kinds of programs that the young people in our country are subjected to today.
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At the outset I am simply saying that in tackling the problem of violent crime in our society, it is one thing to keep prisoners in jail longer. It is one thing to add to the list of violent offenders, the types of crimes they commit. Unless this government is completely committed toward newer and better programs of rehabilitation, unless it is committed to really getting to the very core of the problem of violence in our society, it will make very, very little difference whether an offender spends one third of his time before parole or one half of his time before parole in jail.
Bill C-36 introduces changes to the rules of parole eligibility, making it harder for violent and sexual or drug offenders to obtain parole releases. Unescorted temporary absences will be denied to the most serious offenders. Day parole will be intended specifically for preparation for release before parole eligibility.
That may be good, but let us take a look at some of the statistics. For example, under the heading "Successful completion of escorted temporary absences" presently, without this bill, we have a 99.93 per cent success rate. Also, unescorted temporary absences, a 99.18 per cent success rate. So, let us not be in too great a hurry to throw everything out the window and start over again. Our system is working.
The unfortunate thing and the very tragic thing is that every now and then somebody gets through it and commits a heinous crime. Gingras is one very good example, Legere is another one. He was just convicted, I believe, over the weekend for murdering four people while at large. There are others. I am not saying that this is all part of the success rate. We have to think about the other 99 per cent as well.
I believe that inmates have to be gradually reintroduced into society. If you are going to throw the key away, their expiry date is still going to come. I would suggest to members of this House that it is better to try to rehabilitate, it is better to encourage inmates to rehabilitate themselves and to release as many as possible, as safely as possible. Risk management is not an exact science. Let us face it. It is not exact. But at least attempt to get as many through the system as is reason-
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ably possible, based on all the criteria available. That is better than to keep them locked up for their full sentence, knowing they are going to come out anyway, probably in some cases animals, certainly more animalistic than they were when they went in.
The highlights of the bill have been mentioned already. I do not want to repeat them here. I want to mention the clauses of the bill that we are prepared to support and mention areas where we are convinced that change or additions have to be added on to the bill.
We support the tougher criteria of the detention provisions of the parole process, making it harder for violent criminals to get out on parole.
We support the opening of the parole process so that victims may have an input into that process.
We support the streamlining of communications between the judiciary, Corrections Canada and the National Parole Board.
While I am on this topic, I differ with the previous speaker, the hon. member for York South-Weston. I want as full a committee process as possible. I want to listen to many groups and individuals, expert and nonexperts. If it means going to the west coast or the Northwest Territories or the east coast, I am going to support that.
I am going to push for that. The member said he has been a member of the justice committee for seven years. Maybe he is tired of looking at penitentiaries. I do not blame him. I was a member of the defence committee for six years and I do not want to see another naval shipyard for a while either. If he does not want to move with the committee, he can send a replacement. That is no problem there.
What we are concerned about is basic government policies with respect to the changes introduced in this bill: rehabilitation, drug and sexual offender programs, skills programs, upgrading programs and so on. Programming is very important.
I know you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I think we can do more in our system to encourage those people behind bars to take advantage of the rehabilitative process. If they do not take advantage and learn from it, that is another matter. I am convinced with greater resources, and this means more money, time, effort, commitment and personnel, it can be done. It certainly can be improved upon.

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It means that resources have to be properly assessed to make absolutely certain that those resources result in the proper people being released prior to expiry and as few mistakes as possible made. There will be mistakes. I cannot argue on this side of the Elouse and condemn the government, or any government, when a mistake is made in terms of a person going out and recommitting. As I said a moment ago, it is not an exact science. You do not know. You have not got 100 per cent proof that somebody will not recommit.
The statistics again are very interesting on this point. For example, the figure of those who are in breach of parole, that is for technical reasons, is only 18 per cent. That is a lot but they have not recommitted. Eighteen per cent of those people who are on full parole break the parole agreement and therefore are recommitted.
Twelve per cent reoffend. That is high, I know. If your son or daughter or your wife or your loved one happens to be one of the victims of that 12 per cent, it is damn serious and it is very tragic but I do not know how you establish or write a perfect system in this respect.
I want to see a greater number of National Parole Board psychologists. National Parole Board staff competence has to be improved upon, certainly in the face of allegations of massive patronage appointments of completely inexperienced, unqualified staff. We are going to have some amendments here.
It is not right that somebody who goes out and knocks on doors for a government candidate ends up on the National Parole Board as a temporary or a part-time member of that board, or ex-MPs for that matter who probably have no experience in that field at all.
I do not like the idea. I am not mentioning political parties. It can be and it usually is. When the Liberals are in, they appoint Liberals. When the Tories are in, they appoint Tories, and when my own party is in at the provincial level, we appoint too damn many New Democrats.
I am not being hypocritical on this issue. What I am saying is that people should be appointed according to their ability, their merit. Let us get rid of this old patronage system which has existed for far too long.
I said a moment ago that all parties at all levels do this. It has got to be addressed and can be addressed in this bill. There will be an amendment on that.
There should be a careful review of the details of this complex bill in committee, which I mentioned a moment ago, and the participation of members of all communities interested in and involved in the criminal justice process from a corrections and a parole point of view.
This brings me to a very vital omission in this bill. Quite a bit has been said lately about native problems in relation to the criminal justice system. We are making some progress.
The Six Nations Reserve which used to be part of my constituency now has its own police force and it is doing an excellent job.
We are making some progress on the law enforcement side of it. We are making very little progress on the corrections side of it.
My personal view is that we should be looking much more seriously at a separate corrections system for native offenders. I am not totally convinced yet that it should be a separate system but we should be much more serious and much more vigilant. We should be looking at it much more seriously because I am truly convinced, when you consider that aboriginals in our country make up about 2.5 per cent of the total population and yet 10 per cent of the prison population in Canada are native Canadians, that something is wrong. We are somehow not addressing the problem.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member's time has now expired.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: I was wondering if I could have three or four minutes more.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank my colleagues. I will finish just as quickly as possible.
The native community, I think, has to be brought into the process. I am anxious to listen to as many native community leaders as possible with respect to the correctional system and how it impacts on natives in our
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system. I am also deeply concerned about women in the prison system, women offenders, and whether the programs are adequate. I do not think they are in many cases. I hope that this bill, through amendment, will have a positive impact in this category.
We are also going to have to do something about increasing the number of experts in the whole system itself. We just do not have enough trained people to work with severely disturbed inmates, severely handicapped inmates and the violent offenders.
I know that in psychiatry and in medicine and in psychology this part of their regiment and this part of their professional field is one that most shy away from. There is not much glamour and money in it and many of them treat it as an almost hopeless dead-end kind of professional practice. It does not have to be that way. We have to encourage more and better people to become involved in the correctional service and also with the National Parole Board itself.
Those are some of my concerns about this bill. I simply want to conclude by saying that there is much more I would like to have said but I do not want to indulge on the time of the House because I know my time is up. All one has to do is watch the American TV programs. Every state prosecutor and every judge who is up for re-election in New York state says: "I am tough on law and order. I put x number of people away behind bars. I kept x number of people behind bars for 20 years or 50 years or whatever it is".
Keep in mind that politicians can very easily stand up at election time or just before an election or in a pre-election period and preach the virtues of being tough with offenders in society and yet if you look at the reality and, as I said at the beginning of my speech, at the real causes of crime in our society, it is little wonder that we are really emphasizing the wrong thing.
We are not really getting to the causes of crime before it is committed. We are not trying to do something about poverty, about slums, about lack of education, violence on television, violence in the home, sexual molestation in the home. All of these things are what ultimately lead to the prosecutor, the defence attorney and the judge. We are left, we meaning the Correction Service of Canada and the Parole Board, with finding a way of
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trying to deal with these people so that we can bring them back into society as law-abiding, useful citizens.
Longer sentences, the absence of parole, supervision and no release before expiry, are not going to reduce the crime rate. I do not have any divine knowledge on the subject, all I have to do is look at the facts and figures before us in the media day in and day out to know that in the United States and in other countries that is not the case. You can be tough on law and order in the courts and in the jails and yet the crime rate continues to increase.
In conclusion, one of the profound ironies of the 20th century is that Europe, which gave the world two great world wars in which millions of people lost their lives, innocent civilians lost their lives, is a far safer place to live at night on the streets no matter where than the western world which has been at relative peace in the political sense, in terms of war. Violence on the streets is increasing, violence in some areas of the United States is virtually out of control and now there are indications that in our larger cities in particular in Canada, violent crime is not out of control, but it is certainly on the increase and causing the citizens of our country grave concern.
Our number one concern is public safety, but we are also very concerned that this bill does not mislead the public, certainly at second reading, into thinking that by simply passing it we are somehow going to reduce the crime rate. It is going to take a lot more than that.
Mr. John Nunziata (York South

Weston): Mr. Speaker, the member seemed to misrepresent my position with regard to parole and the whole issue of whether parole should be abolished altogether. I should remind the member that the Law Reform Commission of Canada and a number of other groups in the criminal justice area have debated and discussed the idea of the abolition of parole. A number of prominent criminal lawyers have recommended the abolition of parole. Inmate groups have also supported the abolition of parole. The inmates do not like the uncertainty that is associated with lengthy sentences and the uncertainty of when they might be released on parole.
To accompany the abolition of parole, I am sure the member will agree, and he is not misrepresenting my position, you would have to reform sentencing at the same time. Let me just take a hypothetical situation. If

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we are dealing with armed robbery, the average sentence may be nine years. The average length of time served in a penitentiary may be four or five years. Those who are advocating the abolition of parole say when you abolish parole you would also bring into line sentences so that you would take the average length of time served and make that the new sentence for armed robbery, for example. The maximum sentence for armed robbery would become five years as opposed to nine years.
I am not advocating lengthier sentences in a general way in the abolition of parole but rather the abolition of parole with a reform of the sentencing structure. In certain areas sentencing ought to be reformed and sentences ought to be increased. For example, if you drink and drive in Canada and if you are convicted for the second time, you automatically serve seven days or a week in jail. There is a mandatory period of incarceration, and yet if you are caught for the second, third, fourth, fifth time and convicted of selling drugs to kids in school yards, there is no minimum sentence. It does not make any sense at all why a drug pusher should not be treated at least as severely as someone who drinks and drives.


An hon. member:: At sentencing.


John V. Nunziata: At sentencing, that is correct.


An hon. member:: We should reform that too?


John V. Nunziata: The reform should be here now. Let me close by asking the member a question with regard to the position of his party. The New Democratic Party traditionally has favoured, or its philosophy is more supporting of, inmates rather than the protection of society. What I sense from the member's submission is that he is not seeking greater rights and more lenient sentences for inmates. He is not recommending that our prisons be emptied.
There seems to be a shift in the position of the New Democratic Party toward an emphasis or priority placed on public safety and that aspect of the criminal justice system. Perhaps the member could comment.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I want to make a point very clear, that where we have advocated lesser sentences or
greater acceleration through the prison system, is in the non-violent area. We believe, and I continue to believe, that we have far too many people in prison today who could be released and be no threat to anybody else in society. I am not saying they should be free, but we believe that they should go through the system faster, to halfway houses, do community service work, do public service work. If they are found guilty of very large frauds or serious frauds, so-called white collar crime, maybe at sentencing a prohibition of staying out of the business community for three, four, five years after release could be part of the sentence. We still maintain that there are people behind bars today who should not be there because they are non-violent and they would not be a risk to society.
We have never been opposed to being severe in our sentencing of those who are violent and those who continue to show violence while they are in the prison system. We do believe that no matter how mean or miserable a human being may be, and we are not perfect beings-and as one philosopher said, we are the only beings capable of reason and not rational beings-we still think that there is often hope that people will rehabilitate themselves and can re-enter society. Emphasis should be put on that, but not ahead of public safety and the security of law-abiding citizens, but that other process should be part of the correctional system.
That I think is very important and that is our position on it.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for clarification in his response to my colleague from York South-Weston. He seemed to be suggesting that white collar crime was not really putting society at risk, there was not as much of a danger. It seems to me that if we send out a signal that white collar crime is not as serious in the community, we tend to promote the idea that someone will tamper with this white collar crime because the sentencing is not as severe, and even if that person is sentenced there is really no form of incarceration or no sentencing that is going to have a sustained penalty.
White collar crime is really serious in this country today. If we send out a signal that we are not going to really consider this crime as just as dangerous to society

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as some of our other crime, we are not going to do anything about minimizing its presence.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Yes. I am not suggesting for a moment that white collar crime is not important and does not hurt people in a material way. I am suggesting that there are other ways of punishing many of those who have offended as white collar criminals other than putting them in our prison system. That is what I have said.
Repayment is one way of doing it, if it takes a lifetime. My God, what a sentence to repay the money stolen by fraud or by cooking the books.
I also want to make it very clear that I am not including organized white collar crime in that category.


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, having been a prosecutor and a defence counsel, I am hard put to find out where exactly the member is coming from. It seems to me that what he is really saying is he likes the status quo just the way it is in the criminal justice system, in which case I would ask him if he has ever spoken to a victim or to the family of someone who has been raped or murdered. What planet is he living on when he gives a speech like that?


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


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I am very glad I only have a brief time. A question like that really does not warrant any kind of intelligent answer.
I am just as concerned about the hapless victims of violent crime as any other reasonable human being is. The question, as phrased by that member, unfortunately is all too common from that seat and is not worthy of a responsible answer.


Mr. Bob Horner (Mississauga West):: Mr. Speaker, I understand I am allowed 20 minutes. I only have 15 minutes before Question Period resumes. I hope you will allow me time later to finish. I will do my best to tell the reasons why I am supporting this bill fully, the corrections and conditional release bill.
The role of government is a lot of things, such as providing a framework for economic prosperity, providing infrastructure to support all citizens in their efforts to develop skills in order to play an active role in society, and providing social programs to provide the basic needs
Government Orders
for Canadians. It must also provide a system of fair laws that are enforced by the courts and police and provide for the safety and well-being of our people. It is this issue of safety of security of Canadians that we are addressing today.
For the past seven years, since I was elected in 1984,1 have served on the Standing Committee of Justice and the Solicitor General. For the past two and one-half years I have chaired that committee.
It is a great honour for me to chair that committee, because it is the first time in the history of Parliament that committee has ever been chaired by someone other than a lawyer. I am not a lawyer. I will admit that lack of legal knowledge is somewhat of a hindrance in that capacity.
However, I do have great support from the legal system such as the very fine clerk who is a lawyer and some people from the Library of Parliament who are lawyers and who assist me and make it very easy for me to operate this committee. I am very hopeful that this bill will be referred to our committee because I feel we have an area of expertise developed through which we can give a fair hearing to this bill.
I listened with great interest to the Solicitor General, the hon. member for York South-Weston and the hon. member for Brant giving their various positions. Some of them surprised me.
I joined the justice committee the same day as the hon. member for York South-Weston. He talked at great length about the Taking Responsibility report which was a unanimous report of that committee. At no time did that report say we should get rid of parole or mandatory supervision. As a matter of fact, it stated we should keep parole and mandatory supervision.
Now he says that he believes we should get rid of them. I do not believe it will serve any purpose. During crime prevention week this government is moving to bring in bills that I have been advocating since the day I came here.
People will agree that the most interesting work that MPs carry out is the work of standing committees. I also have found it rewarding, but sometimes frustrating. Frustration comes when, after months of research and hearings, a document is produced and tabled in Parliament and it receives limited acceptance from the

November 4, 1991
Government Orders
government. We have had this happen. It happened with numerous situations we have studied.
I have openly criticized the government for failing to adopt the recommendations produced by committees, not only the justice committee but other committees. These reports collect dust in a maze of bureaucratic bookshelves. This is not the case with this bill.
Let me explain exactly what happened. We were asked by an order of reference from the House of Commons to study Bill C-67. We studied it. We came up with 16 recommendations. We tabled a report in the House of Commons. The government came back and accepted 13 of those recommendations and many of them have been integrated into Bill C-36, the corrections and conditional release bill.
Canadians have always felt threatened by a parole system that jeopardized their safety. Other people have spoken of the Gingras case. It is absolutely ludicrous that we should have a justice system where a murderer, who is known to be dangerous, should be allowed to go to the West Edmonton Mall to celebrate his birthday, overpower a guard, and murder two more people. One man was shot in the back of the head, execution style, and a young girl was strangled with her own shoelaces. This is a terrible, terrible situation.
There has been reference to the Legere case. There were mistakes made there. It is no wonder that the public does not have confidence in the judicial system, in the penitentiary system that they should have.
There is talk about a 99.93 per cent success rate. Any failures are too many and this bill goes a long way.
Let me tell you other things the government is doing. The importance of public safety is reflected in other areas. The firearms legislation restricts possession of dangerous weapons and provides better screening of firearms acquisition applications. Surely that will help. It is supported by so many people, the police chiefs association, among others. We are bringing in amendments to the Extradition Act to allow a more streamlined extradition process to prevent criminals from using our courts to avoid facing criminal charges in other countries. Is there something the matter with this? Why should Canada keep Charles Ng and Joseph Kindler in this country?
Who is bringing it forward? This government is bringing it forward. Canadians have witnessed a disturbing increase in violent acts carried out by young people. Bill C-12 proposes amendments to the Young Offenders Act allowing the courts better flexibility in sentencing youths who commit murder. Bill C-30 is before my committee right now. We will be meeting Wednesday morning on clause by clause study. We hope to report to the House very soon. There was great to-do made about being late. We were late not because we could not have reported on time, but because committee members would not come out and go through clause by clause. That will be done Wednesday morning. I just want to point that out to the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam. I hope he will be there Wednesday morning at 8.30.
Our commitment to public safety is clear and is reflected not only in Bill C-36 but in these other bills as well. I do not need to go through the highlights of this: the victims of crime to be formally recognized, judges may delay parole eligibility of violent offenders and serious drug offenders to half the sentence, and so on.
Other members have gone through a review of the literature on this thing. Let just read you a few of these things. I am quoting from The Ottawa Sun of October 10, 1991:
But remember we are living in a world where justice reform continues to move, sometimes rightly, it must be said, in the favour of the accused and the convicted. It is an achievement for the Tories to come up with a bill that would increase sentences for violent offenders and give victims a bigger say in how long they stay in jail.
This is the important part. He is referring to the fact that it took this Tory government to make even these few changes in favour of victims. "Mr. Nunziata", and I am quoting so I have every right to use his name, "can call the proposed legislation weak-tinkering by a weak minister, but it was the Liberal years in power which led to the tipping of scales in favour of criminals. While the NDP has given cautious approval to Lewis' bill, judging by the party's general policies, one suspects they would have followed the Liberal route if they had ever managed to gain office".
I will grant you there has been a terrible increase in crime. Last year there were 270,000 violent crimes in Canada, well above the 219,000 average for the 1985 to 1989 period.
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There were 60,101 youth cases heard in Canada, 9,013 for violent offences, an increase of 14.7 per cent. This is why we have to bring in amendments to all of these bills.
I just want to go through what some people say about this bill. Gary Rosenfeld, executive director of Victims of Violence International, said in an interview from Ottawa that the proposal is a helluva step forward. He is confident that most government and opposition MPs will support it.
In The Times Colonist on Saturday, October 12, 1991 it is described as sensible and overdue.
The bill which Mr. Lewis said could be law by next spring is being described as the first comprehensive review of the Penitentiary Act since 1868. It also proposes the greatest changes in the parole system since the Parole Act was passed in 1958.
We heard this morning that the hon. member had a chance to read The Toronto Star.. I wonder what other papers he does read. But The Toronto Star cannot find anything wrong with the bill. It did not say anything bad about it. Even the The Toronto Star cannot say a bad thing about it. "Tougher parole planned". Not a bad thing about it.


Mr. Milliken:: Is this a speech or an apology?


Robert Nesbitt Horner: It is certainly not an apology. It is no apology at all. It is an apology for what your government has done to take away victims' rights. I want to tell you that the only way to wipe the smirk off the criminal face of this nation is to come down hard and long.
What we were pleased to see in Lewis' bill, however, is the recognition of victims' rights finally. Their voice should be the loudest voice heard.
I could go on and on with these reports from what various people say about this bill. As legislation goes, this is not a highly partisan issue, at least it should not be, and the Lord knows there are enough lawyers in Parliament to offer ideas. The ideas will come when this bill goes to committee.
I would recommend that without further speakers we refer this to the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General. Let us make the few small amendments we have to make. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recommend that this bill be referred to-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to refer Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders
and to establish the office of Correctional Investigator, to the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General?


Some hon. members:: No, no.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is not unanimous consent.


Dennis Joseph Mills: The
member seemed to suggest that we on this side of the House were not supporting the general thrust of this legislation. I would like to clarify that. For our side of the House, we are supporting reform here. However, we also believe there are areas in this package that can be improved.
I have a specific question for the member. Do you not find it a little bit contradictory that during this week of safety in the streets, crime prevention, we come before the House with all kinds of legislation, yet at the same time you cut the budget by $2 million in terms of a National Crime Prevention Week? Is there not a little bit of a contradictory action there?


Robert Nesbitt Horner: Mr. Speaker, we do not like to see any reduction in the moneys that will be spent for National Crime Prevention Week. We certainly abhor having to make these deductions, but we were left with an horrendous debt which must be reduced. I am convinced that these bills which are before Parliament now will do an awful lot more towards reducing crime than the $2 million given to interest groups would have ever done.


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
[Stage Direction]
CRASH OF HERCULES AIRCRAFT Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):
[Editor's Note: Member spoke in Inuktitut.]
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honour the victims of last week's Hercules air crash on Ellesmere Island.
I also want to pay tribute to the rescue team. This tragic event of life and death and survival is filled with
[Stage Direction]
November 4, 1991
S. ft 31
heroism. We know from the survivors that there was courage and caring and selflessness of the highest order.
We honour all these brave men and women, those who lost their lives, those who survived and those who gave their lives so that others might survive.
We honour those who risked their own lives in the rescue efforts. We honour Captain John Couch and Master Corporal Roland Pitre posthumously, Captain Wilma Degroot and Sergeant James West for their heroism and bravery.
Our sympathy is extended to the families of those who did not survive.
With great respect and admiration, we salute these truly Canadian heroes.

Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Louis-Hebert):: Mr. Speaker, Saturday night, at the 16th Annual Convention of the Gens de Tair, it was my privilege to award the Prix BILCOM 1991 to Didier Feminier, a federal public servant.
This award is in recognition of his skills in French and his efforts to promote the use of French in his profession, in the field of aeronautics and aviation technology.
He has produced, in French, a number of outstanding manuals highly prized by aviation professionals, and has always tried to promote full recognition of the French language at work.
Our sincere congratulations to Mr. Feminier and to the two winners of the Prix Roger Demers, Pierre J. Jeanniot and Pierre Rivest-


ATLANTIC LIVESTOCK FEED INITIATIVE
Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Miramichi):: Mr. Speaker, for the last year and a half, the farming community has been waiting anxiously for the Atlantic Livestock Feed Initiative phase II agreement, better known as ALFI II.
This program was put in place in order to help Atlantic farmers reach self-sufficiency in grain production. It is extremely important for the future of agriculture in Atlantic Canada.
At the present time, Atlantic farmers pay a lot more for their feed grains than other Canadian farmers because of the very high transportation costs. ALFI II will help our agricultural community to become less dependent on transportation costs.
A couple of weeks ago, the Minister of Agriculture decided to maintain the ALFI II program for Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
I call on him now to make a positive decision for New Brunswick because Atlantic Canadian farmers are awaiting his decision.


CRIME PREVENTION WEEK
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I have a statement.
Before I give it, I would like to acknowledge what the member from the Arctic said. I hope the government or perhaps even the Speaker as well would speak on behalf of the House for that heroic rescue.
My statement is on another matter.
The government announced a law and order agenda for Crime Prevention Week.
Canadians want strong measures to keep our country safe, but this Conservative agenda is as phoney as a $3 bill. I call it the blue box agenda. All these measures are basically recycled bills.
The Young Offenders Act, Bill C-12, was tabled in 1989 and cleared a committee a year later. It could have been called any time in the last year.
The same with the mental disorders act. It was drafted in 1986, and only a court decision forced the tabling. Also, with extradition, it is being delayed. Gun control is being watered down to satisfy the gun lobby.
If you want to prevent crime, let us be honest: You tackle illiteracy, you tackle child abuse, you tackle poverty and unemployment, you control guns and you face up to the problem of domestic violence.
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That is the way to tackle crime, and the government should get serious about it.


STEWIACKE, NOVA SCOTIA
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland -Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, for decades the residents of Stewiacke, Nova Scotia have been fighting for improved safety at the very dangerous rail crossing in their town which has been the scene of many accidents, injuries and deaths.
I am pleased to report that the system works. Even though Stewiacke is not a major city, not even a major town, it got the attention of the Minister of Transport and his officials who have just announced that safety will be improved at this crossing. The plan includes a realignment of the intersecting roads, the installation of barrier gates and an educational program for students in the area. A cost-shared program has been proposed with the federal government assuming 80 per cent of the total cost. On behalf of the people of Stewiacke, I want to thank the Minister of Transport for his personal attention to this matter and the quick and positive action which will now result in a much safer crossing.


THE ECONOMY
Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, seven years ago today the Tory government released its blueprint for action: "A New Direction for Canada: An Agenda for Renewal". That document urged that Canadians brace themselves for unbounded prosperity. Their new government was to ensure that Canadians could compete on world markets. Indeed, that same view was widely expressed by the Prime Minister during the election campaign in 1988.
Canadians know that prosperity is not unbounded. We are in a recession. The government's plans for increased competitiveness have led to the deindustrialization of Canada's manufacturing heartland. After seven years of gross mismanagement, the government has finally realized what Canadians have known all along. Its policies have been disastrously wrong.
Now it will spend $25 million of our money asking Canadians to tell it what it should do. This is not a government capable of leading anybody anywhere. Before it wastes any more money, it should resign and allow the people to elect a group of men and women of ability, many of whom now sit on the opposition benches in this House.


CANADA CAREER WEEK
Mr. Walter Van  De Walle@St. Albert: Mr. Speaker, a high school student put it very well when he said: "Be cool, finish school". Canada Career Week is being held November 3 to 9. As part of the national stay in school initiative, Canada Career Week theme is "Start to finish". The emphasis is on students finishing high school and pursuing post-secondary education in a career he or she has chosen.
By the year 2000 it is estimated that two-thirds of all new jobs will require at least grade 12 schooling, and fully 40 per cent will require 16 years of schooling. These statistics only serve to illustrate the need for the government's stay in school program.
This government will continue to promote this initiative by strengthening partnerships between business, educators and young people. Youth are our future. We must ensure that they are well prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century.


MIGRAINE AWARENESS MONTH
Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, November is Migraine Awareness Month. Migraine is a far more serious and costly condition than many imagine. Almost 3.2 million Canadians over the age of 15 suffer from some form of migraine. Doctors are still unsure about what causes the attacks. Seventy-seven per cent of migraine sufferers have had to restrict their normal activities because of an attack.
There is currently no universally effective medication available for migraine, although many migraine sufferers can learn how to recognize what triggers the problem and regain control over their lives. The occurrence of migraine in Canada has a significant economic impact. Almost 4 million work days a year are shortened or lost due to migraine, resulting in an annual work place productivity loss of almost $500 million.
The purpose of Migraine Awareness Month is to focus public attention on this devastating problem. I urge all

November 4, 1991
members of Parliament and all Canadians to support the Migraine Foundation in its efforts to promote awareness of migraine and the appreciation of its impact on its sufferers, their families and on society as a whole.


CROSS-BORDER SHOPPING
Mr. Ken James (Sarnia-Lambton):: Speaker, I rise to express my concern about a federal government employee passing on to the media that the federal government might be considering a fee to be paid by cross-border shoppers to help pay for the emergency farm aid package. Today I would like to voice my strong opposition to such a measure. A surtax at the border will be interpreted by my constituents as a simple action by the federal government to inhibit cross-border shopping.
What we need are policies which address the roots of our uncompetitiveness, not measures which can be interpreted as attempts to close off or set up artificial road-blocks. A levy of this type also appears to overlook its potential impact on our customs officers. It would increase their workload significantly and seems to me runs counter to our efforts of maximum efficiency.
I strongly believe our government must not be entertaining any notion of a levy or fee on cross-border shoppers. I hope that members of the House of Commons will join with me in voicing their concern on this important matter.


NORTH THOMPSON RIVER
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, just last week a spokesperson for a Vancouver based company confirmed that they are proceeding with plans to construct a dam near Valemount, British Columbia, on the North Thompson River, which is a tributary of the Fraser River, in an effort to divert water flow into the Columbia River watershed and then using a series of canals and pipelines to transfer this water into southern California.
This is part of a plan to divert a number of western Canadians rivers into the southwestern United States and northern Mexico known as the North American Water and Power Alliance Proposal.
Canadians have always been worried that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement may eventually end up giving Americans access to our fresh water and now, with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico negotiations under way, the worry is even greater.
Water is not another commodity to simply sell to the United States. It provides the very lifeblood for a delicate ecosystem.
Therefore, I call upon the Prime Minister and the Government of Canada to state categorically that our waters are not for sale, that our waters will not be dammed and diverted into the United States.


VIOLENT CRIME
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, during the last few months, the citizens of Delta have become more and more concerned about the increasing violent crime and vandalism in our community. I am sure the people of Delta will be encouraged by the federal government's initiatives recently introduced before the House, as well as those forthcoming changes which will be proposed in the near future.
Changes to the Young Offenders Act were long overdue. I am also pleased with the amendments to the extradition laws and to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act.
While controversial in many areas, the firearms legislation is a step forward in controlling violent crime and the use of dangerous weapons.
The government is to be commended for taking these steps to protect its citizens against those who would abuse the freedoms we have and destroy the way of life and freedom which we cherish. Law-breakers in Canada must be made responsible for their own actions and
November 4, 1991

Canadians must again be able to feel safe on their streets and in their homes.


AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, the Cyrus Eaton group has offered to buy the American Piper Aircraft Corporation and move it to Canada where it could eventually employ some 3,000 people.
Experience shows that for every job created in the aircraft industry, two more jobs are created in supply and service industries. Because of Canada's relatively high wage rates, we need high tech jobs such as those in the aircraft industry if we are going to compete internationally. Jobs like this are particularly important right now because the Toronto area alone has lost 175,000 jobs during the past year and now has double digit unemployment.
The government must do everything possible to encourage Piper to come to Canada. Let us not blow this one.


EMPLOYMENT
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-
Canso): Mr. Speaker, the jobless situation in my constituency of Cape Breton Highlands-Canso and indeed all across Cape Breton Island is reaching crisis proportions.
Instead of acting to alleviate this situation, this government is putting additional road-blocks. A good example is the changes to regulations and procedures for qualifying and receiving UI benefits in the wake of Bill C-21. Not only have the provisions for receiving UI been tightened, but the red tape required to explain and administer these new rules has created additional barriers.
As a result, the numbers of unemployed calling on the services of our local CEIC and Revenue Canada offices to deal with outstanding claims has multiplied in recent months. The resources to deal with this demand simply cannot cope. Constituents are waiting six to eight months for decisions to be rendered by understaffed government departments.
Several months without a decision on an unemployment insurance claim quite simply can mean several months without money for rent, food and clothing.
When will the ministers of these departments act to cut back on these lengthy delays?

Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute and honour to the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces who, over the last few days, were part of a tragic accident and an heroic rescue in the high Arctic.
For more than 30 hours, a group of survivors of the crash of a Hercules aircraft struggled to cling to life. Outside the fuselage were the bodies of four others who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Overhead and ready to leap into the blindness of an Arctic storm were search and rescue technicians who did not blink in the face of an incredibly dangerous and selfless assignment.
'There are many heroes in this story, but none greater than the captain of the aircraft, John Couch. In the words of his co-pilot, Lt. Joseph Bales: "If anybody was a hero it was John Couch who threw so much into surviving and keeping us going and keeping people organized. If you are going to paint anybody a hero you should paint John Couch. He worked the whole time like an extremely dedicated professional. He just did not give up one single bit and when he had finished helping others, John Couch closed his eyes and died".


CHILD POVERTY
Mr. Mike Breaugh (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, according to The Toronto Star, the Minister of Justice has announced that this week the Commons will have a blitz of law and order legislation. Last week we had a conference here on Canada's children and they reported that one child in six in Canada is poor, that half of the Canadians who rely on food banks are children. There are still more poor children than there were 10 years ago, that many poor children in families are struggling on 50 to 60 per cent of poverty line income and that in 1988 almost two-thirds of the children in families headed by single mothers were living in poverty, that more than half of all aboriginal children in Canada are poor.
How about equal time for the children of Canada? If we can afford a week of legislative time to blitz for law and order, how about two weeks for our children?

November 4, 1991
Oral Questions MERCHANT SEAMEN



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

['I think this closes the incident. All parties have had their say. I am sorry, but I do not think we can reopen the debate. You have given your point of view; the other party has given its point of view, and the people listening and other members of the House are now in a position to make up their minds. I am sorry but I consider the incident closed.']
Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I simply cannot believe this government's continued refusal to recognize merchant seamen as veterans. With what went on in the other place, it is evident to me that there is no commitment on the part of this government to recognize these people and extend their rightful benefits to them.
I am particularly upset that even though support for such recognition has come from all quarters, the government continues to turn a deaf ear to this serious problem. The invaluable contribution made by the merchant seamen during the Second World War must be recognized by the Government of Canada. More than 45 years have passed since the end of that war and time has definitely arrived for this government to take the just and long overdue step of recognizing the efforts of the merchant mariners as veterans.
I strongly urge the government to take prompt action in recognizing the heroic contributions made by merchant seamen to the war effort by extending to them the full range of veterans' benefits.



Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the Elouse to Canada Career Week which will take place from November 3 to 9. It is a national event that promotes the importance for young Canadians to focus on future careers while they are still in school.
This year's theme, Start to Finish reinforces how important education is to career planning. Communities all across Canada are pitching in to stage a range of imaginative events such as career fairs, exhibits, poster contests and conferences. Students, teachers, parents, the government and the business community are all taking an active role in helping young Canadians to look ahead to their career opportunities and a smooth transition from school to work.


THE ECONOMY
Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. Every day Canadians are saying that the main problem facing the country now is the state of the economy. However, the government doesn't seem to listen. This morning, for instance, workers in the construction industry in Quebec heard some bad news: one-third of these workers are unemployed, and the situation is expected to get worse in the months to come.
At this very moment, unemployment is also widespread in the pulp and paper and forestry industries. Yesterday, lay-offs were announced in Dolbeau, in the riding of the Minister of National Health and Welfare, and there will be more. And at this point, all the government has to offer in the way of programs is publicity stunts.
When will the government, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance start concentrating on the real problems that concern Canadians, and when will they take steps to ensure that our goods are competitive, instead of keeping the dollar at 90 cents as they are doing now?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated to the House on Friday, the economic strategy of the government is to bring down inflation and inflationary pressures so that interest rates can come down. That is the key to economic recovery.
The hon. member shakes his head negatively but I hope he would not disagree with the fact that interest rates in Canada have come down by over six percentage points. The spread has narrowed and continues to do so. As long as we can continue on that track, I am sure the hon. member will agree that that is the recipe for economic recovery.
I am sure that he will also be interested in knowing that today, for the fifth consecutive month, the leading composite indicator, which covers everything from housing to stock markets, has again shown an
November 4, 1991

increase of 1 per cent. That is the broadest rate of growth in six years, and the hon. member should be applauding that rather than criticizing it.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the minister does not realize that the survey of 153 companies showed that corporate profits are down 33 per cent across the board, down 88 per cent in mining, down 47 per cent in his own province in oil and gas, down 29 per cent in manufacturing products. Everything is down.
We still have a dollar that is around 90 cents. Interest rates are down in Canada, yes, but they are down in the United States and the spread is still the same.
When will he change his policies and make Canadian products competitive so that Canadians can go back to work? They have been out of work for more than 18 months as a result of the policies of this government.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what the policy of the federal Liberal Party is with respect to the exchange rate. The last I heard it is the same policy that the hon. Leader of the Opposition had when he was finance minister. He said back in 1978, and I quote: "We believe that market forces should continue to determine the appropriate exchange value for our currency. What we are doing as we have done consistently for the past eight years is to smooth out erratic fluctuations in the value of the dollar as they occur in the marketplace". That is precisely the policy of the federal government.
The issue is not to manipulate the exchange rate. He knows that. If he is calling for a fixed exchange rate or if he is calling on us to adopt the American currency as our currency, why does he not stand up and say so. Canada is sovereign in its own power to determine and maintain the value of the currency and that is one of the most fundamental aspects of any economic and monetary policy.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the main economic problem we face is that the people of Canada want to work today. Everybody knows, and every commentator says that the Canadian dollar is too high. The only recipe this government has at this
Oral Questions
moment is to maintain the high dollar and to put forward their advertising campaigns. The only people doing well these days in Canada are the people in advertising.
There was a program for advertising the Constitution last month. There was one on productivity last week. There is one this week on law and order. When will the government give jobs to Canadians, and not only the people who are friends of its party who work in the advertising business?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. Leader of the Opposition might advise us what his policy is with respect to the exchange rate.
If he does have a view on the value of the dollar, what is it? How would he get it there and how would he keep it there? Perhaps he might want to take us into his confidence and advise the House. Come clean with Canadians. Do not just stand there. You cannot have it both ways.


GAINES PET FOODS CORPORATION
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
Gaines Pet Foods Corporation of Cobourg, Ontario, employs 110 people, exports two-thirds of its product, yet faces a crisis today because of the high dollar.
Despite aggressive business strategies, the company tells me it loses $150,000 in potential profit for every penny increase in the value of the Canadian dollar, causing Gaines a $1 million profit loss this year alone.
Gaines has to make an important decision; stay here or shift its production to the United States. What is the minister's advice to Gaines Pet Foods Corporation?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, there is more to being competitive than just simply looking at the exchange rate. There are many components that go into making a business competitive and productive and show a profit.
The hon. member does express a point of view and it is one that concerns us all. There is in fact a depression in commodity prices throughout the international marketplace.

November 4, 1991
Oral Questions
I remind the hon. member that our merchandise trade balance for this year is $8.1 billion. The merchandise trade balance rose $8.1 billion at an annual rate to $13.5 billion in August. That would indicate to me, Mr. Speaker, that Canadian concerns are in fact meeting competition. They are cutting their costs. I am sure that with the reduction in interest rates, the lessening of inflation and inflationary pressures, that competitive opportunity will be all the more fruitful for them.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is to the same minister. I would be happy to share with the minister the fact that statistics show that this company has been very aggressive and has taken on some very innovative policies to improve its ability to compete.
Gaines Pet Foods Corporation is in jeopardy; 110 jobs in a small Ontario community are in jeopardy. Across Ontario, over one-third of our businesses are looking to moving out. Staying here means shutting down.
Will the government explain why it refuses to take direct action to lower the Canadian dollar or provide other emergency relief today to Gaines and other Canadian businesses in distress because of the high dollar, in order to give them a fighting chance to survive here in Canada.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, we have taken definitive action, first of all, in bringing down inflation and inflationary pressures and the corresponding reduction in interest rates that have come down by over six percentage points. That trend is continuing. We have addressed the problem of prosperity and competitiveness. Of course that is an issue that all Canadians must face in the form of a partnership.
The hon. member talks about all the firms that are leaving the country. I said in the House the other day that Chrysler Corporation was putting a third shift on its Windsor plant for the manufacturing of mini-vans.
Imperial Tobacco announced a $16 million retooling and expansion plant in Elgin-Norfolk County about two weeks ago.
Dupont Canada triples profit. It is adding that the free trade agreement with the United States enabled the company to boost its profits.
Piper Aircraft, Mr. Speaker, chooses Canada. Dupont opens a world-scale plant.


NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Contrary to the Deputy Prime Minister's statements, this country has lost 410,000 jobs because of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
Bankruptcies are near an all-time high. Le Soleil has just done a poll which shows that most Canadians are opposed to the Canada-U.S. deal and are opposed to the Mexican deal.


An hon. member:: You better believe it.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Deputy Prime Minister this question. Is he prepared to table in this House all the documents, all the research and all the back-up papers that this government has prepared in dealing with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico deal. Where is the evidence that Canada will benefit out of this proposed deal? Are you prepared to document it?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, in terms of the free trade agreement we already know that over the last two years our exports to the United States have increased substantially. Interestingly enough, some of our exports to other parts of the world have not increased at all. Surely that would tell you that the free trade agreement as such with the United States is working.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I did not wish to embarrass the government, but now I am compelled to.
Mr. Speaker, in my hand is a document the government spent-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member knows the rule against using props. Perhaps the hon. member will put his question.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I will not use a $1 million document presented by the government as a prop, even though I may think it is a crock. But, Mr. Speaker, in the document that the taxpayers of this country paid $1 million for, Mr. Porter says unequivocally that thousands of jobs have left Canada because of the free trade agreement, and I refer to page 69. This is not my
November 4, 1991

argument but Mr. Porter's argument in this document which I will not use.
I put the question to the Deputy Prime Minister. In face of this government's own evidence after spending $1 million on the Porter report, what research is available to this House and to the people of Canada that shows that entering into an agreement with Mexico will be any better than the one we got with the United States?


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, it is quite interesting that members opposite did not want a free trade agreement with the United States presumably because the United States would outgun us with its high-tech and its power. Now they do not want a free trade agreement with Mexico for exactly the opposite reasons.
It is kind of hard to know what they really do want.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, what the Canadian people want is the 410,000 jobs back right now.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


David Barrett: What the Canadian people want back are the industries and the spinoffs we once had from those branch plants. What we want is our place in the economy.
I ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether or not this government is prepared to table all the documents and research it has done, if any, which show that the Mexican deal will be a good one.


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, it is kind of interesting to go back and look at what we wanted out of the free trade agreement with the United States.
We wanted for example a dispute settlement mechanism, which we got. We wanted economic benefits, which we have and I have just given the numbers. We wanted market access, which we have got.
Just last Friday afternoon I had a firm in my office in Guelph saying: "The reason we are here talking to you is because of the FTA". I said: "Come on and talk some more".
Oral Questions


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
Over the last two years this government has increased UI premiums by 44 per cent to $1.95 per $100 in 1989 to $2.80 per $100 in 1991.
Given the desperate state of third-quarter profits of Canadian businesses outlined by the Leader of the Opposition, given that Canadian workers in this country are already taxed to the teeth, will the Minister of Finance tell this House, and through this House tell Canadians, that the government will say no to an increase in UI premiums at this time?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I would only indicate that while premiums have indeed gone up so have benefits. Benefits have improved by about 55 per cent. As I indicated in the House the other day-


Some hon. members:: Nonsense.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Hon. members say: "Nonsense". They may just want to check their facts and figures on this because that has in fact occurred.
With respect to UI premiums, as I indicated in the House the other day there is a process where the recommendations are brought forth by the commissioners for ratification. I have not received such a recommendation at this time.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, the only thing the government accomplished in Bill C-21 was to withdraw the government from funding of the unemployment insurance account and to force the unemployed to pay for their own retraining program. That is all the government accomplished, and the minister should admit it up front.
Given that 10,000 Canadian small businesses must change their computer software to accommodate any change in the UI premium, a change that is supposed to be legally in place by January 1, will the minister tell the House today that there will be no increase in the UI premium? Will he make that news available to the Canadian business community as soon as possible, a

November 4, 1991
Oral Questions
community that is bleeding under excessive taxes and poor fiscal and monetary policy by this minister?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I have indicated to the hon. member earlier that I have not received a recommendation from the commissioners. There is a process that is to be followed and we will follow it in the usual manner.


SHIPBUILDING INDUSTRY
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin -St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
As he will know, the shipbuilding industry in this country has been brought to its knees by the government of which he is a member. The national ship building policy that was promised by his Prime Minister in 1984 during the election is nowhere in sight.
Will the minister undertake now to wipe out all the tariff exemptions on boats entering Canada? Will he now require that all fishing boats fishing in Canada be built in Canada?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the hon. member that one thing we are thinking about is making sure the ships of one of his fellow members eventually bear the Canadian flag.


Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the same minister.
The minister can create a lot of confusion and wave his arms, but the fact remains that thousands of construction workers are unemployed, all because of this governe-ment's broken promises.
Will the minister implement measures today to guarantee that all goods now being shipped between domestic ports are carried by ships built in Canada, manned by Canadian crews and sailing under the Canadian flag?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to the hon. member opposite who, like many of his colleagues, has been practising in front of a mirror. I am sure I will never achieve his degree of skill in making gestures, but I
repeat that perhaps he could use his influence on his colleague to ensure that owners of Canadian ships start by flying the Canadian flag.


NUCLEAR VESSELS
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
According to confidential briefing note JLO-1006, a U.S. submarine made an illegal submerged passage through Canada's internal waters at Dixon Entrance in June 1990. On Friday the minister denied knowledge of the matter despite the fact that a formal written protest was made by External Affairs.
Is the minister suggesting to the House that last Wednesday she approved blanket consent for U.S. nuclear subs in Dixon Entrance without knowledge of the earlier illegal activity?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would reflect on what was actually said on Friday, what I said was: "Not to my knowledge but I will look into it".
Indeed there were transits through the Dixon Entrance in 1989 and in 1990. There was a formal protest lodged by the department through diplomatic notes and indeed that led to the discussions which enabled us to provide guarantees for Canadians as a result of the new policy and the co-operation on the disputed waters.
I think that the hon. member should at least be relatively more open about his questions.


James Ross Fulton: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.
It is the minister who signed the Order in Council on Wednesday providing blanket prior consent for the U.S. subs to go through Dixon Entrance, and on Friday she was trying to tell Canadians she had no knowledge of previous illegal activities by the U.S. sub fleet.
During the furious debate over Arctic sovereignty on the illegal voyage of the Polar Sea in March 1987, the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs gave categoric assurances as found in Hansard that "there will be no secret agreement sprung upon anybody" and to

V:

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November 4, 1991

"consult extensively with all those Canadians who are interested".
Why the double standard on Dixon Entrance: no consultation and a secret agreement?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, it was hardly a secret agreement since we announced it.
What we did was get guarantees from the U.S. concerning the transits through Dixon Entrance because the United States co-operated with us. We had registered protests. The Department of National Defence found out through normal discussions with the U.S. defence authorities the potential for SEAFAC. We were able then to get some guarantees from the U.S. as a result of that, and then we announced it. It was hardly a secret agreement.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. In his annual report the minister announced that he intended to facilitate access to this country for immigrants with a trade, at the expense of the family reunification program. How will the minister explain to a mother who has been waiting two years for her son to come to Canada, that she will now have to wait a little longer because the government has changed its priorities?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member and I am sure he would not want to mislead his fellow citizens. The proposed changes certainly do not imply there will be a longer wait for family reunification in Canada, but that is what the hon. member is trying to make people believe. I hope he will correct this impression.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, when the minister increases the independent class it automatically decreases the family class because the
Oral Questions
number is now fixed. Maybe he should read his annual plan closely.
Family reunification has taken a back seat to the Tory economic agenda as a top priority of Canada's immigration law. How can the minister justify increasing entry into Canada of other groups when it now takes three years or more for a husband and wife to be reunited in Canada?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, it takes some gall. I mean this is the political party, following the tabling of the immigration level for the year, which said that the family class was in jeopardy.
In the family class this year 100,000 people will come into Canada for family reunification. Perhaps I could just add this: in 1984 the Liberal Party that formed the government at that time was welcoming 88,000 people to Canada. This year we will be welcoming 250,000 and I do not think that he should be complaining.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister concerning the environment.
Evidence from the government's own environmental experts shows conclusively that 47 pulp and paper mills using chlorine bleach are pouring toxic substances into Canadian waters.
Since the Minister of the Environment agrees that the entire effluent from these mills is poisoning fish and causing birth defects, why has the government refused to regulate these substances and protect our water from these poisons?


Hon. Pauline Browes (Minister of State (Environment)):: Mr. Speaker, I say to the hon. member that we will be bringing forth very shortly the new pulp and paper regulatory issues. The substantial increase in the AOX, which is the 350 chemicals within that effluent, will be decreased substantially to 2 kilograms per tonne from 5 kilograms per tonne which was in 1988.
I think the member will see on the regulatory system that is coming in very shortly that we will have good success on that.

November 4, 1991
Oral Questions


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, the minister of state is referring to regulations that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has been sitting on for over four months.
We are talking about something different. We are talking about toxic substances and the entire toxicity of effluent from mills. Knowing this, knowing that the entire effluent is toxic, will the minister of state admit that the Minister of the Environment has made a mistake by saying he will not regulate this effluent? Will she assure the House that regulations will be brought in?


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, yes, I will assure the member that regulations will be brought in concerning dioxins and furans. That is going to have a substantial effect on the whole soup of chemicals of the AOX. We expect about a 60 per cent decrease in all of those.
At the present time there is a tremendous amount of research going on in terms of the kind of process to have the paper the whitish colour that we want, the substitute for the Kraft process. There is a process going on in British Columbia which is really quite excellent. We are pleased about that. The peroxide and the ozone being used in that process is certainly a result of some good technology.
I am veiy pleased that science and technology is doing a $60 million report on some of the new technology that can be used in order to reduce this effluence.


HERCULES AIR CRASH
John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Associate Minister of National Defence.
I am sure all members of the House and all Canadians will join in offering our deepest condolences to the families of those who were killed in last week tragic accident near Alert and paying tribute to those who were involved in the heroic effort to rescue the survivors.
Major Lloyd Clifton, the chaplain at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton, said yesterday speaking of Captain John Couch's self-sacrifice: "It is the kind of stuff the Victoria Cross is awarded for".
Will the government be considering giving this country's highest honour to those who were involved in that heroic effort, in particular to the late Captain John Couch?


Hon. Mary Collins (Associate Minister of National Defence and Minister responsible for Status of Women):: Mr. Speaker, again I thank my hon. colleague for his thoughts.
As I said in the House on Friday, I know that all hon. members join in condolences to the families of the five who lost their lives in this crash and to the survivors. I had a chance to visit with most of them this morning and talk to them. They are coming along very well. What they went through in this ordeal is an incredible story. Of course we also express appreciation to the search and rescue people who did an outstanding job.
I know all of these issues will be reviewed. Where honours can appropriately be given, I can assure my hon. colleague that appropriate consideration will be given to that.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for that as do all members of the House.
I would just like to ask a follow-up question. On Friday the minister indicated that there was a report being prepared on the causes of the accident. As the minister knows, four other Hercules were involved in earlier crashes. There have been some questions arise about the cause of this, about the adequacy of the equipment available, about the potential involvement of the Innu people in the rescue operation, and various other questions.
Will the minister table a report on all of these issues with the standing committee on national defence so that the committee can decide whether a further public inquiry can take place on the events surrounding this accident?


Mary Collins: Mr. Speaker, there is a board of inquiry which has been established to investigate what the causes of the accident were and what the contributing factors were. The black box has been found and interviews of course will take place with all the survivors and others involved.
November 4, 1991

I think it is too early to say just how long that process will take. Obviously it has to be a thorough process. As in the past the information about the causes of the crash will be made available to the public and to the standing committee in the course of making that information public.


PIPER AIRCRAFT CORPORATION
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister who is acting on behalf of the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology.
The American Piper Aircraft Corporation has offered to create up to 3,000 jobs in Canada and has indicated at the same time that it would prefer to do so in the Toronto region.
I would like to ask the minister if it is true that the government is trying to discourage Piper from establishing in the Toronto region? If it is not, what is the government doing to help Toronto get those jobs?


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to that question because neither Investment Canada nor the Department of Industry, Science and Technology attempts in any way to indicate where it would be most appropriate for businesses to locate in Canada.
In this particular instance the company wanted to know something about regional development programs, so WED and ACOA were there to provide that kind of information. We certainly do not want in any way to be directing jobs to Toronto, to Montreal or to any other place.
It happened that in this instance there was no provincial representation at all on the request for people to go down to Florida to talk about this issue.
We understand that there has been no deal made at the present time and that there are still four countries in the running for this particular plant.


FORESTRY
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Forestry I will put my question to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Oral Questions
The Deputy Prime Minister knows that the Canadian forestry industry today is facing the worst crisis with the lowest commodity prices in a decade, with a countervail duty on softwood lumber and with an overvalued dollar.
In the face of this crisis the government has reduced the support program for its federal-provincial forestry agreement with the province of Ontario by 66 per cent from the previous five-year agreement.
I wonder why the government is cutting support to an industry like this that is drowning in a sea of red ink.


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to tell my hon. friend, who should be aware of this since his riding is in northern Ontario, that we announced this morning, the provincial government of Ontario and the Government of Canada, a major new agreement for northern Ontario: $95 million over the next four years. It includes a large forestry component which the Minister of Forestry also signed this morning.
This will give a tremendous boost to forestry in northern Ontario and is just one tangible example of the kind of action the hon. member is looking for. He should have been aware of that announcement this morning.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the people in northern Ontario are too aware of an agreement that cuts support by 66 per cent.
I would like to ask the minister about the forestry agreement. The previous agreement planted hundreds of thousands of hectares of seedlings to reforest areas in northern Ontario. Why, in an agreement that was signed today in Sault Ste. Marie, is some 12 per cent of the agreement being spent on public relations and advertising rather than on long-term benefits to an industry in very serious trouble?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, the problem with the party opposite in just about every industrial component in the Canadian economy is that they overlook the importance of research. They overlook the importance of new technological adaptation. They overlook the importance of developing consciousness among the people of Canada about how to improve the industry and to make it more competitive.

November 4, 1991
Oral Questions
That is what this agreement does.


NAPPAN EXPERIMENTAL FARM
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture and it refers to the commitment to expand the Nappan Experimental Farm in Nappan, Nova Scotia.
Although the commitment was reaffirmed in March of this year the original commitment was made in 1986.1 do not want to rush the minister, but I wonder if he could indicate when this important project might proceed.


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Agriculture):: I can
inform my colleague, Mr. Speaker, that Nappan is in a group of 10 research stations which we studied. I can inform him also that further to that study as to necessary capital expenditure, some $100,000 has been spent to upgrade Nappan research station. We have identified other research locations which must be included in the study. Public Works has been contracted to carry the studies out, and we hope to have our major capital construction plan available for the hon. member before the end of fiscal year 1991.


CRIME PREVENTION WEEK
John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, one of the most important concerns of Canadians right across the country is the increase in crime, whether it be in our urban centres or in rural communities. Canadians are concerned about the proliferation of guns and drugs in their communities.
This week is Crime Prevention Week. At a time when the government says it is concerned about the increase in crime in our country, it has totally slashed, cut the budget for Crime Prevention Week.
I would like to put this question to the Deputy Prime Minister. Can he explain why at a time when Canadians are crying out for reform, at a time when Canadians are crying out for some leadership from the federal government, that this government has totally eliminated the budget for Crime Prevention Week?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, if my hon. friend had reviewed the 1991-92
Main Estimates he would have seen that in fact the announcement was made at that time that our participation in National Crime Prevention Week was going to be eliminated. Contrary to media reports the figure is not $2 million. The funding was in fact $340,000.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the government is not contributing one single solitary cent to Crime Prevention Week, and that is the travesty.
Canadians are concerned, and in particular in metropolitan Toronto. As of yesterday there were 74 murders this year already in metro Toronto. The previous record was 60 for all of 1987, and there are still two months to go in this year. Canadians are concerned about crime prevention.
I would like to put this question to the Deputy Prime Minister. When is this government going to show some leadership as far as criminal law reform is concerned? If it is truly concerned about criminal law reform, why has it cut completely the budget for Crime Prevention Week? Why has the government totally washed its hands of criminal law reform?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend not only missed the Main Estimates. He missed the question immediately in advance of his question from the hon. member for Algoma wherein the whole point of the Liberal Party was: Why are you spending money on public information?
In fact many of the original aims of National Crime Prevention Week are completed. We have outside groups involved in it. For that reason, since they are working with police forces across Canada, we decided to use our money elsewhere.


SOFTWOOD LUMBER INDUSTRY
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George -Bulkley
Valley): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister in the absence of the Minister for International Trade.
It concerns the softwood lumber tariff memorandum of understanding. News reports have quoted Canadian officials as saying that the government was going to present Canada's case on the softwood lumber tariff and
[Stage Direction]
November 4, 1991
[Stage Direction]
its dispute with the United States to GATT. Given the high dollar and the loss of many jobs in this important sector, can the minister confirm whether this is actually happening and/or what steps the government is taking to fight this regressive action by the Americans?
William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, we have said in this House before that we are taking every step we possibly can under the free trade agreement and under GATT to ensure that this memorandum of understanding causes us no further difficulty.
We believe that there are no subsidies in the Canadian softwood lumber industry and we believe we can prove it.


Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
Canadians are concerned that this government will sell out Canada's forest industry as it did in late 1986 when this was negotiated before.
My question is: Can the minister tell this House and Canadians, all of those people who are involved in these negotiations, to have the broadest possible consultations? Would he speak to his colleague, the Minister for International Trade, and have the minister appear before the Commons forestry committee to give a detailed briefing to members so we might be aware of the complete approach the government is taking on this?


William C. Winegard: Mr. Speaker, what the government is doing in this instance is precisely what industiy wanted us to do. It wanted us to take this approach.
I remind the hon. member that in terms of the countervail in 1986, the methods we are now using going through the free trade agreement were not available then. We wish they had been.


HOUSING
Garth Turner: Mr. Speaker, despite very low interest rates and lower real estate prices now, a lot of would-be, first-time home buyers have a tough time raising the capital for a down payment. My question is for the Minister of Finance. Can he tell the House what the status is of proposals to allow the use of RRSP funds for the purchase of homes by first-time buyers?
Oral Questions


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's ongoing interest in this very important subject.
As he knows this is a proposal that has been brought forward by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I have had officials in the Department of Finance examining this very closely. I am myself somewhat intrigued by the idea and the principle.
My understanding is that the finance committee is going to be studying this issue as well. I certainly look forward to its views and recommendations on that. As soon as this review is completed I will be in a position to advise the hon. member and other hon. members in the House.


OCCUPATIONAL TRAINING
Hon. Jean Lapierre (Shefford):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
Last Friday, the minister again proceeded with a unilateral announcement, over the objections of the government of Quebec and that province's employment minister. The minister announced another occupational training program, although he knows perfectly well that in Quebec there is unanimous support for patriating all this money to make the program more effective.
My question is this: Why this unilateral gesture, which is an insult to all groups in Quebec, since they are all agreed the minister should get out of this area?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, regarding the government initiative referred to by the hon. member, when he says that the provinces were not consulted, he should recall, if that is not too much trouble, that when we proposed amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act by tabling Bill C-21, all the provinces, employers and unions in this country were consulted. In fact, they indicated that they approved of these amendments, and on that basis, decisions are being made on how to make the allocated funds productive. The Bloc Quebecois is

November 4, 1991
Points of Order
asking us to let Canadian workers suffer for the sake of the constitutional process, at a time when these measures are needed to train the labour force in Quebec and the rest of Canada.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the attention of members the presence in the gallery of His Excellence Sir Clement Maynard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Commonwealth of the Bahamas.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


POINTS OF ORDER
Michael James Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, you will be aware that on last Wednesday evening during the course of the taking of a vote on a private member's matter concerning senior citizens a number of members raised the very point that they were unable to vote because the vote occurred slightly earlier than they had anticipated.
Without casting aspersions on anyone, I would simply like the House to know that we intend to pursue the matter and to raise it at the House management committee where the rules are being reviewed to make sure that members are not prevented from voting on matters and that if we have a repeat of that incident we will all know precisely when the vote will occur.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I may remind the hon. member that I was in the chair during that incident. My ruling was that the Speaker had no choice but to proceed with the vote when, in accordance with the Standing Orders, the two Whips indicated to the Speaker that members on both sides were ready to vote.
If hon. members wish to change the Standing Orders, I think the hon. member made a very good suggestion, and perhaps the committee could consider this matter. That being said, I do not think there can be any further
discussion in the House about the incident and the ruling I made last week.


USE OF FRENCH IN THE HOUSE
Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I imagine that during Question Period, you also noticed the valiant efforts of the hon. member from Burin-St. George's in French. In fact, I strenuously object to the fact that the Minister of Transport and other government ministers laughed at the hon. member's performance when he made a very special effort to speak French. Mr. Speaker-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am not sure what part of the Standing Orders the hon. member is referring to.


Jean-C. Lapierre: I am referring to the fact that the Speaker asked us to show some decorum and respect for other members in this House during exchanges in the course of debate, and the leader of the government did as well. Today we witnessed a valiant effort while the other side of the House indulged in rude behaviour. I think that if we want both languages to be used in the House we should respect those who make the effort.


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, I just want to make the record clear. There was nobody on this side of the House within my earshot who was at all critical of the attempt by the hon. member to use French. In fact we applaud it.
We do not applaud the substance of the question. The fact that it was articulated in French does not make it a good question.
We do applaud the fact that he asked the question in Canada's other official language and there is no criticism of that whatsoever. The substance of the question is a different thing.


An hon. member:: Absolutely. Well said.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I simply want to confirm what the government House leader has indicated. Sitting on this side, certainly in good view of the cabinet benches, while the hon. member was speaking in French and at the completion of his remarks there was genuine applause, I think by all sides of the House on that initiative.
November 4, 1991


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I think this closes the incident. All parties have had their say. I am sorry, but I do not think we can reopen the debate. You have given your point of view; the other party has given its point of view, and the people listening and other members of the House are now in a position to make up their minds. I am sorry but I consider the incident closed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


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


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to outline the steps Canada is taking in the international effort to restore democracy in Haiti.
The winds of democratic change that have blown stronger around the world have been a source of much hope to all of us. Real progress has been achieved in many countries, including dramatic change in this hemisphere where for so long military dictators dominated political life.
In December 1990, less than one year ago, Haiti joined the community of democratic nations with a free and democratic election. This election was clearly a source of much pride and joy for Haitians. It was also a source of much satisfaction for Canadians who had watched the people of that troubled country tormented for so long under the oppressive yoke of dictatorship.
Routine Proceedings
Canada, along with other countries from the OAS and the UN, helped this transition to democracy through direct electoral assistance and observation to ensure that the election of President Aristide was free and fair.
The conclusion of all international observers was that President Aristide had won by a landslide in remarkably fair elections.
The coup that overthrew the legitimate and democati-cally elected government of President Aristide flew in the face of the will of the Haitian people and the democratic achievements throughout the Americas. It was totally unacceptable and remains totally unacceptable.

Canada moved quickly and decisively in response to the coup. The government immediately suspended our CIDA bilateral government aid, government-to-govern-ment assistance, the whole program in Haiti.
We supported an early meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of American States, which this government had joined less than two years ago, to develop an effective regional response to this threat to democracy in our own hemisphere.
The OAS acted. Within days of this coup, foreign ministers met and sent a delegation of foreign ministers to Port-au-Prince to demand the restoration of democracy'.
I was a member of the delegation which flew to Haiti on a plane provided by the Canadian government. On our return, OAS foreign ministers met again and passed a second resolution calling on member states to impose trade, economic and financial sanctions against the illegitimate authorities in Haiti.
There can be no doubt of the resolve of the OAS countries. These resolutions were passed unanimously by all 34 OAS members.
I would like to outline in the House today how Canada will give effect to these OAS resolutions.

First, the government has placed Haiti on the area control list and the import control list under the Export and Import Permits Act; this will halt bilateral trade with Haiti. The government will only allow exports of food we judge are required for humanitarian reasons.

November 4, 1991
Routine Proceedings
Second, the government has suspended all other bilateral development assistance in Haiti that has been executed by NGOs. Since 1987, this has formed the bulk of our bilateral program in Haiti.
Third, the Export Development Corporation, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, the CIDA Business Cooperation Division and the Trade Facilitation Office of Canada have been instructed that funds, credits and advice are no longer to be made available for applications involving Haiti.
Fourth, activities relating to Haiti are no longer eligible for funding under the program for Export Market Development.
Fifth, the Trade Commissioner Service of the Department of External Affairs and International Trade has suspended all assistance to exporters to Haiti.
Sixth, Canadian representatives at the multilateral development banks have been instructed to oppose any proposals for new credits or loans, or the provision of technical assistance to the illegitimate regime in Haiti.

Canadian representatives at the International Monetary Fund have also been instructed to impose any standby or credit or any other arrangement for Haiti.
Seven, federal government departments and relevant Crown corporations have been instructed to suspend activities involving Haiti.
Our aim in implementing these measures is not to increase the suffering of ordinary Haitians who are having a difficult time, our quarrel is with the perpetrators of the coup and not with the Haitian people.
For this reason, and consistent with the OAS resolutions, Canada will continue to provide humanitarian assistance through multilateral and non-government organizations.
Finally, this government will shortly introduce legislation that will allow Canada to freeze all assets of the Haitian government in Canada. We have already advised financial institutions in Canada to exercise special pru
dence so as to ensure any unauthorized transfer of Haitian government funds does not occur.
It is especially heartening that the Organization of American States has seized this occasion to assume its proper role in the maintenance of hemispheric security and the defence of democratic values so newly won in many parts of this hemisphere. All active OAS members, with the exception of Haiti, now enjoy democratic government.
Many countries in this hemisphere, however, have military establishments with a tradition of interference in civil affairs. The governments of these countries share our determination to send a clear message to military establishments and to others. The nations of this hemisphere, acting through the OAS, will not tolerate any longer interference in the democratic process.

Canada's goal is simple and through these actions our determination must be clear to everyone.
With the measures I have just announced, we have gone as far as any country in the hemisphere in responding to the OAS call for a strong signal to the regime in Port-au-Prince that we will not tolerate that the will of the Haitian people be thwarted.
Together with our OAS partners, we are determined to restore democracy in Haiti.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak in this debate.

It is important. As Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the President of Haiti, said himself in an article which appeared in the New York Times dated Sunday, October 27, the public should not forget about the dreadful situation which exists in Haiti.
To quote him directly, it said: "As news of massacres and repressions slip off the front pages, there is a danger that active support will wane, and with it, the hopes and dreams of the Haitian people for democracy".
On December 16, 1990 the people of Haiti fulfilled a dream that they have felt, many of them, could never happen. Democracy came to Haiti with a free democratic election that brought to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
November 4, 1991

the first democratically elected president to that country in over 200 years.
It has a population of over six million who had been cowed for over 200 years by the likes of the dictatorship of the Duvalier family and the Tonton Macoutes who together brought to the Haitian population a misery unknown certainly in the western hemisphere.
We are very pleased today to accept the minister's statement of her commitment to follow through on the resolution that was made and voted unanimously upon by the OAS on October 8 to bring in sanctions against the illegal government that now exists in power in Haiti.
However, the power of the regime in Haiti is tenuous but only if we continue as a country to mount pressure against that regime and try to assure the restoration to power of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The people of Haiti today under this new illegal dictatorship are being routed by the army in the countryside. I have had conversations with people involved in relief work, charitable work at the grassroots level in Haiti who talk about new terror in the countryside as the army goes out killing, for example, church workers, people working with non-government organizations who are trying to build up the people in Haiti from the grassroots.
They however are willing to confront the army and the dictatorship in that country for the first time, and this is a remarkable change in attitude for the people of Haiti who for too long have been cowed into silence and submission by very cruel and abusive regimes.
They are willing to try and confront the illegal dictatorship which exists in that country today. They do need our support. They do feel that they cannot do it alone. I understand through my sources that they welcome our imposition of sanctions against their country, but they wanted our action to come before now.
It is unfortunate that it has taken until today for our own government to make its announcement of sanctions. We hope now that the statement has been made the government will proceed quickly to make sure these sanctions have effect.
Routine Proceedings
I am also concerned with the legislation the minister alludes to which will come forward shortly and will allow Canada to freeze all assets of the Haitian government in Canada. I am very concerned that legislation must be brought forward to the floor of this House as quickly as possible because in Haiti, the disparity between rich and poor is enormous.
It is the rich who must be convinced that Aristide must return to their country. They can be so convinced if we make their affluent lifestyle difficult to achieve. Already it is shown that in Haiti there are cracks in the ruling elite families in that country. Of those who traditionally would have been opposed totally to Aristide, some of them are now changing just with the threat of sanctions to thinking that perhaps Aristide must return to their country.
One of the issues that was also raised by the minister was that of Canadian aid delivery to Haiti. The announcement was made within days of the coup in Haiti that our government would be immediately suspending bilateral government to government assistance to Haiti. I think it is very important to point out that by far the bulk of that bilateral government to government supposed assistance to Haiti, or what we normally think of as government to government, in this case of bilateral aid, was the Canadian government acting through Canadian non-government organizations for assistance programs to help people in Haiti at the grassroots level. It was not the Canadian government's direct funding and assistance to the Haitian government that was cancelled. It was Canadian government assistance which, in the majority, supported Canadian non-government organizations in their work at the grassroots level in Haiti.
It is very important that, as the minister says, we are not applying sanctions to damage or bring damage to the Haitian people, the grassroots, the more than six million citizens of Haiti who live in stark poverty. We are bringing in sanctions to try to bring back their democratically elected president.
We therefore must be very careful when we say that we will cut aid to that country, we are not unnecessarily jeopardizing the very people in Haiti who support Aristide. It is important perhaps to review some of the

November 4, 1991
Routine Proceedings
programs that might have brought direct assistance which is still necessary to the grassroots at this time.
We have a long list of Canadian NGOs which are receiving funding through that program. For example, there was a program to Ameliorer la viabilite economique des micro-entreprises rurales et urbaines. Another project that was proposed to bring about Vaugmentation de la production agricole ainsi que l'amelioration du niveau de sante de la population, the improvement of the health of the population. That is of concern to us as well.
It is important that this country also follow through on the agreement to send an observer mission into Haiti. There has been a promise of 1,000 people going into Haiti. I would like to know what Canada's particular role is and what proposals there are for our involvement in that team in the country at this time. As we want to protect against human rights violations in Haiti, it is important that this observer team be in there to help the growth of the democratic process in Haiti. We want to be assured that our government is also committed to that action.
In conclusion, we are pleased that at last we have heard from the government very specifically about the sanctions it is bringing into Haiti starting today. We hope the government will continue to add to the program which was supported by the Organization of American States to assure that President Aristide is returned into power in Haiti.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, we as New Democrats support wholeheartedly the measures announced by the government. The international community, including Canada, must do everything it can to restore the government of Jean Aristide. For many years, Haitians were denied social justice.

We fully and completely support the measures the government has announced today in respect of Haiti. I would just like to make it clear that we have a couple of concerns, but before I do just let me restate our complete support for any effort the government can make to try to see that the democratically elected government of Jean Aristide is restored to power as quickly as possible. The government has our complete support on that and on any measures it can take in this
respect. Let me ask a couple of questions indirectly. This is not really Question Period, so I cannot do it in that way. Perhaps I could encourage the government, in whatever way the minister can do so, to clarify a couple of points.
First, in respect to humanitarian aid, the government seems to define this as food but presumably there would be other items that might well be included in humanitarian aid, such as medicine.
Second, I wonder if the government could also clarify the situation in respect of existing bilateral development projects undertaken by NGOs. It has come to my attention that there are still some questions about the extent to which government measures affect those existing development projects and the existing lines of credit and loans.
I should say that we do understand and support sanctions in this context. I would find it helpful if the government could also, at some point in the near future, indicate to the House the context of this as part of an over-all strategy, including the timing the government would anticipate to keep the pressure on the regime now in power in Haiti. Sanctions alone are a tool. They are a difficult tool because they create problems for the people involved. The government will be aware of the reflection, the echo in this Chamber of the debate of a year ago about sanctions in Iraq. Then we had the government saying: "These are not going to work quickly enough, therefore, we have to be prepared to move in with military force".
Obviously all members of this House would agree that military force here should be only used as an absolute last resort. It is important that sanctions be seen within a timetable, within a general strategy that the OAS and other countries that are focusing on this problem are using.
Let me conclude with a couple of comments about the larger context. All countries which are members of OAS, particularly all the rich countries and the industrialized nations in general, have to share some responsibility for the plight of the people in Haiti. For too long governments in rich societies have essentially participated in the exploitation of the people in countries like Haiti, and Haiti in particular. It is very important that we learn the lesson here. We are in an almost intractable situation unless these sanctions can work.
November 4, 1991

We could have intervened long ago to respond to the efforts of those people when they had the opportunity to build social justice and to recognize the causes and to see that. In the larger world picture, we are going to have to change our ways in the rich part of the world if we are going to build a world of social justice so these terrible tragedies do not happen.
I particularly plead with the government and with this minister to take a second look at the direction CIDA is going in terms of its development, the moneys and funds available for development assistance and for the direction this government is going in terms of the international economic world order. We need a change whereby social justice for the poor and disaffected in this world have an opportunity to be heard. This would be a place to start.


George Albert Proud: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I attended the presidential inauguration in Haiti of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and I want to express my regrets- and I believe I am not alone in this respect-that under the present Standing Orders we cannot take part in this debate.
I see my friend, the hon. member for Saint-Leonard, the whip who allowed me to go to the inauguration in Haiti, and I simply wanted to give the House advance notice-and I see here my colleague, Mr. Cole, who was in Quebec City with me and also in Toronto-I simply want to give notice that I, as a member of the House management committee, and my friend, the hon. member for Saint-Leonard, the vice-chairman of this committee, intend to raise this question, because so many people are asking us why we cannot take part in a debate that is really important to all members. This is an opportunity for all members to take an active part in debate in the House.
We herewith give notice that we intend to raise this question before the House management committee, at the first opportunity. Thank you for your patience.


PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official
Routine Proceedings
languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Chapter IX of this report deals with the Auditor General's Report for 1990. The report that I am presenting deals in particular with verifying the security of information. Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee asks the government to table a reply within 90 days.
Furthermore, I would like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the committee which I chair studied veiy carefully the whole issue of the security of information contained in the government's computers. The committee would like to have a debate on this question. I will publish a notice to have this report debated and, hopefully, adopted by the House.
[.Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


CANADA-FINLAND INCOME TAX CONVENTION ACT, 1991 MEASURE TO ENACT
William C. Winegard: that Bill S-2, an act to implement conventions between Canada and Finland, Canada and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic and Canada and the United Mexican States for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to income tax and the prevention of fiscal evasion and a convention between Canada and the United Mexican States for the exchange of information with respect to taxes, be read the first time.
Motion agreed to and bill read first time.


PETITIONS
Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise under Standing Order 36 to present a petition to the House signed primarily by the residents of the interior of British Columbia. It is on the very important matter of water diversion.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to state categorically-because as far as we know that has not been done yet-that it will not permit our freshwater rivers to be dammed and diverted into

November 4, 1991
Routine Proceedings
the U.S.A. and to state that our Canadian rivers are not for sale.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I too have a similar petition signed by a number of residents mainly from the Shuswap Lake area in British Columbia. They also point out their concerns with plans announced by a Vancouver based company to dam the North Thompson River at Valemount and sell water to the San Diego, California, region.
The petitioners are asking the government to state very clearly to all the principals involved that our waters are not to be dammed for export purposes.


Nelson Andrew Riis: On another matter, Mr. Speaker, petitioners from Kamloops, and that region, point out their concern regarding the continued service of the RCM Police and note that they want to ensure that the RCMP have the proper financial support to fulfil its mandate.
The petitioners are urging the government to properly fund the RCMP.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition that was circulated by Mrs. Hazel Gontier of 90 Falstaff Avenue. This petition is about national responsibility as far as education is concerned.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to commit itself to the importance of accessible education for all Canadians and urge it to increase Established Programs Financing for education and remove other barriers from preventing students from obtaining a quality education.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I too have a petition signed by several constituents, mainly from British Columbia, who urge the government to consider restoring proper funding to the RCMP so that it can fulfil its mandate and role as the only visible police force for communities across British Columbia and remain as a viable symbol of Canadian unity.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. John E. Cole (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 3 and 75.


Mrs. Maheu: Since February 9,1990, (a) how much has the government spent on the Canadian Multiculturalism Advisory Committee (b) how much has been spent by each member of the committee (c) has the committee reported to the Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship) and, if so, will the minister table the report?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: (a) Amount spent by the Canadian Multiculturalism Advisory Committee for the carrying out of its mandate inclusive of 5 national and 11 executive meetings held across the country from February 9, 1990 to May 13, 1991 is: $463,882.50.
(b) Members' expenditures from February 9, 1990 to
May 13, 1991:	
Alex Yeung	$ 6,352.78
Jill Wyatt	6,837.60
Fran Williams	3,054.95
Morton Weinfeld	4,906.20
B. Sandhawalia	5,543.23
George Saine	7,326.28
Ellen Sacoco	7,220.87
Valmond Romily	21,464.69
Gail Roberts	7,628.70
Alan Rose	2,324.31
Peter Rekai	2,574.40
Darlene Rebello	7,278.72
Marcel Quirion	5,591.51
Phares Pierre	5,949.12
Thi Ngnoc Lan Phan	6,137.16
Roman Petiyshyn	6,333.48
November 4, 1991

Jean Pelletier	4,668.50
Don Oliver	500.00
Karen Mock	25,230.03
Joseph Miller	5,539.49
Bhupinder Mahal	5,407.86
David Langtry	1,583.70
Robinson Koilpillai	6,083.03
Rita Karakas	1,217.50
Tracy Lee Jones	4,320.77
Corinne Jette	7,662.45
Arno Jansen	7,753.04
Heather Irving	5,268.70
Maggie Ip	10,548.43
John Harker	6,833.20
James Harding	5,225.76
Gail Grant	4,861.77
Khadiga Fahmy	5,214.15
Don Dobrijevic	5,799.99
Enza Colavecchia	6,880.66
Maria Campbell	1,571.60
Yvonne Blackwood	6,008.87
Morton Beiser	14,772.11
Pierre Anctil	11,040.53
(c) The committee will be submitting its report to the minister in November, 1991.


Mr. Gardiner: For the period October 13, 1989 to February 28, 1991, did the government receive any (a) communiques (b) messages (c) formal advisories (d) letters from any level of government, commission or private organization in the United States respecting the memorandum of agreement regarding the softwood lumber tariff and, if so, in each case (i) how many (ii) on what date (iii) which department received the information?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TYade):: In so far as External Affairs and International Trade Canada are concerned, the reply is as follows:
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For the period October 13, 1989 to February 28, 1991, External Affairs and International Trade Canada received 26 communiques, messages, formal advisories, and letters from the U.S. government, commissions and private organizations in the U.S. regarding the softwood lumber memorandum of understanding. A list of dates of the correspondence received is attached.
Correspondence on the Softwood Lumber MOU received from U.S. sources
Received by EAITC	Received by Canadian
Headquarters	Embassy, Washington, D.C.
October 16, 1989	November 16, 1990
November 2, 1989
December 1, 1989
December 1, 1989
December 11, 1989
December 22, 1989
December 22, 1989
January 17, 1990
February 7, 1990
February 14, 1990
March 22, 1990
April 11, 1990
April 13, 1990
April 18, 1990
June 25, 1990
July 6, 1990
July 12, 1990
July 25, 1990
July 27, 1990
August 15, 1990
September 19, 1990
September 26, 1990
October 12, 1990
October 17, 1990
January 14, 1991

November 4, 1991
Government Orders


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The questions as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered.


John Cole: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 106 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 106 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Ms. Hunter: Does the Department of the Environment distribute news clippings to persons and/or organizations and, if so, (a) what is the cost per page (b) which persons and/or organizations have been (i) deleted from the distribution list (ii) added to the distribution list since the appointment of Jean Charest as minister?
Return tabled.


John Cole: I ask that the remaining questions be allowed
to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I have a very short point of order, Mr. Speaker, following up on my colleague, my hon. friend from Oshawa.
There have been some informal discussions between the parties regarding the items and actions that led up to the mace incident. Regarding the whole matter of bells, when they should ring, for how long, and the role of the Whips and so on, this matter is now being referred to the appropriate standing committee for reconsideration, study, and presumably some recommendations back.
I would like to make that point clear and hopefully the management committee will look into that whole matter and bring back recommendations for the House.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, November 1, 1991, consideration of the motion of Mr. Blais that Bill C-22, an act to enact the Wage Claim Payment Act, to amend the Bankruptcy Act and to amend other acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations; and the amendment of Mr. Rodriguez (p. 4192).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I remind all members that the order of the day is Bill C-22. Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


Mr. Hawkes:: Mr. Speaker, it might save some disruption to members if you understand that we will be deferring the vote until shortly after three o'clock tomorrow.
November 4, 1991

I know that the bells are supposed to ring, but with unanimous consent of the Elouse I think we can forgo the ringing of the bells on the understanding that the recorded division will be held at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: So ordered.


CORRECTIONS AND CONDITIONAL RELEASE ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Lewis that Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of Correctional Investigator, be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee G.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: When the debate was suspended at two o'clock, seven minutes remained in the period for questions and comments after the speech by the hon. member for Mississauga West. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Scarborough- Rouge River.


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: Mr. Speaker, in the remarks which were made by the hon. member for Mississauga West just prior to Question Period, I took note of the fact that he mentioned the concept of crime prevention.
Lest anyone be under an illusion that the government's bill here addresses crime prevention, I wanted to ask a question of the hon. member. I know that he is the chairman of the justice and solicitor general committee here in the House. He does a real good job in that capacity.
We all know that simply passing a law or amending an act does absolutely nothing to prevent crime. Since the
Government Orders
hon. member did mention crime prevention, and I am sure he would acknowledge that simply passing a bill does not prevent crime, perhaps he could give us the benefit of his wisdom and experience in explaining some of the crime prevention initiatives that the government has undertaken in the last while, at least since I have been elected in 1988, and in the near future.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: Mr. Speaker, he is absolutely right. I did mention crime prevention only by saying when it was brought up that the $2 million budget set aside for crime prevention was to be cancelled.
I have since found out that that $2 million in the budget was in fact $340,000, and crime prevention week had been so well received that it was possible to cancel the program. It has been taken over by community groups.
However, the hon. member asks: What does this bill do for crime prevention? We all know that this bill does not do a lot for crime prevention, but during crime prevention week, we are bringing in other bills. Does he not believe that the bill to increase gun control will help? Does he not believe that the amendments to the Young Offenders Act will help? Does he not believe that some of the other initiatives that we are putting forward will help?
Maybe this bill will not directly reduce crime, but think about it. If you have a dangerous offender that cannot be rehabilitated and you keep him in jail longer, surely it cuts down on the danger and the crime that will be heaped upon the public by this person while he is out.
We will keep him within the penitentiary system.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale -High Park):: Mr. Speaker, I would also like to question the hon. member for Mississauga West. In the whole process of parolees, the idea is to make sure they are integrated back into the community-
I would like to ask the hon. member how many halfway houses does he have in Mississauga West, and where does he recommend that these halfway houses be established under the present legislation?


Robert Nesbitt Horner: Mr. Speaker, I believe we only have one halfway House in Mississauga West at the present time.
These are established in various places around the country in accordance with where the present population is so that they can have support of their families and

Government Orders
their friends when they are being reintegrated into society.
They must be set up where the largest prison populations are. Right now, the largest prison populations are in Ontario.
I will admit that one of the things we must be working toward, striving very strongly toward, is rehabilitation.
I believe that rehabilitation must take a back seat to protection of the public. That is what this bill does, it does protect the public.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Very briefly, the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park.


Jesse Philip Flis: I would like to ask a short supplementary.
In 1986 when his government was in power it did open up an Exodus Link in Parkdale-High Park without any consultation with the community. The community was up in arms because it was getting fed up with trying to integrate parolees, very severe former convicts, sex offenders, murderers, et cetera in Parkdale-High Park.
My point is this. Should not all communities accept their fair share in integrating these former convicts into their communities? I submit to the hon. member that maybe he should have a talk with Peel county because I do not believe Mississauga has taken its fair share of halfway houses and as a result poor Parkdale residents have to shoulder the burden.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: I well remember the Exodus Link situation and I do agree that there must be consultation with communities before halfway houses are set up.
We must remember that Parkdale-High Park is within metropolitan Toronto and if it is the largest group of penitentiary inmates coming out to halfway houses, the inmates must be able to go to a halfway house close to their families so that they can have family support. Family support is very important. I beg your pardon?


Jesse Philip Flis: They do not all come from Parkdale-High Park.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: They must come from close to Parkdale- High Park then.


Jesse Philip Flis: From Mississauga.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: No, they are not all from Mississauga, I can tell you that. Mississauga will certainly do its share, I can tell you that.


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity after being in this House now for almost three years to address a bill that approaches a reform initiative, one that my constituents and I and all other members of the House have been waiting for for a long time. It has been a little bit too long in coming, but let us pass over the niceties here and get down to the bill itself.
In 1987 and 1988 members of the justice committee at that time devoted long hours of labour and study to produce a report entitled Taking Responsibility. Today in the House the member for York South-Weston, the member for Peterborough and the member for Mississauga West were on that committee. That was actually, I thought, a bit of a landmark. It was comprehensive, it was direct and to the point.
That report was not replied to by the government because of the election which occurred about two months after it was reported to the House. The justice committee which was formed after the last election, and I have been an active member of that committee, found that report so good and comprehensive, it readopted the same report, and it reported it to this House.
The government did reply and as part of the reply it included a number of initiatives. Although much belated, they did appear to address a number of the problems, at least optically.
The background of this is more than just a committee report. There are, in the corrections area, a whole litany of tragedies which I do not want to dwell on for too long, but they are an essential part of the understanding of what has brought the government to this reform initiative. They are tragedies, they are horror stories, they are sad, they involve innocent victims, and they involve individuals who were serving time or on parole in the correction system. The names involved are, and I use the name of the offender as opposed to that of the victim, Stanton, Gingras, Legere, Fredericks, and there are others.
These cases and others are the worst of them. They involve homicides. They involve the deaths of innocent Canadians, men, women and children in those four
November 4, 1991

cases, totally innocent individuals who fell victim to individuals who, with 20/20 hindsight should never have been free, whether they escaped or whether they were released on the streets in Canada.
These cases involved errors in judgment and systemic errors, gross systemic errors, some of which have been rectified. But there are others which remain to be rectified through this legislation and, in my view, in other things that still must be done.
These unfortunate cases manifest flaws in the corrections system and in the criminal justice system. They manifest an insecurity on the part of the Canadians in our criminal justice system. This sense of insecurity is really there and it is there for good reason.
We must remember that the public safety issue is much broader than corrections and conditional release and parole. It is much broader than that. The public safety net includes the Criminal Code and sentencing. In all of that, I would point out that the government's promised Criminal Code reform initiative has not yet been brought to Parliament. I have been here three years. It has been promised and it is not here yet. I take note of another part of the criminal justice system which is not solely a federal responsibility. That is criminal procedure, which is the responsibility of the provinces. In the province of Ontario, where my riding is included, a relatively recent Supreme Court decision, referred to as the Askov decision, is now resulting in the dismissal and withdrawal of numerous criminal cases, criminal charges. This is not just a few but thousands of charges. The numbers are still accumulating.
Is it any wonder that Canadians feel insecure when they read that thousands of charges against alleged criminals, many of them repeat offenders, are being withdrawn and dropped because the Crown is not able to proceed?
The Criminal Code, the sentencing regime, the Young Offenders Act, the Extradition Act, mental disorders reform legislation, gun control and other aspects are in front of this House. Some of these reforms attempt to address problems in the system. Others try, but in my view they are not going to achieve the goal intended. At least the initiative has commenced.
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Historically the people in our democratic society cut a deal with their king and their deal was: "We will give you tax dollars; you must take care of public safety". If that did not happen, the ordinary Canadian was going to go out and take care of justice himself or herself. That is a system that leads to chaos. We opted for another one and we did it many years ago.
Canadians are not going to accept a system that delivers anything less than the public safety they bargained for in the social contract that was built up over centuries in the western world.
The government's reform agenda now, including corrections, I submit is not simply their own initiative. The motivator for much of what the government is presenting to the House this year is media driven and Supreme Court of Canada driven. You do not have to look very far to see what pushed the government to address these reforms. It was not an awareness that problems existed. It was media and decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Swain decision in the Supreme Court of Canada was the factor that prompted the government to introduce its reforms in the mental disorder and insanity area. It was the Gingras case, which took place principally in the province of Alberta, that made the government come forward with reforms in the corrections area. There was also the Stanton case. It was the Ng decision in the Supreme Court, the Charles Ng fiasco, that caused the government to finally pull the Extradition Act off the back burner. It had been sitting around long before I came to this Parliament.
I understand that it was addressed in the early 1980s and it sat and sat until that unfortunate incident involving Mr. Ng. There were other offenders as well.
I want to address for a few moments in my remarks the concepts which lay behind the parole conditional release system. They are important to keep in mind as we address this bill. When the corrections system operates properly, it depends on a balance of factors. There are at least three which should be kept in mind.
The first one is public safety, the second is rehabilitation and the third is deterrence. Number one on that list is public safety. It was number one on the list of Canadians when they made the bargain with their government. This was the social contract that was conceptually made way back in the 1300s, 1400s and 1500s with the king. In any event, that was number one

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on the list. Somewhere between then and now it went down the list. I do not know how far down but somewhere along the line someone in government forgot about public safety.
I am pleased to see at least in the press releases accompanying this bill public safety is touted as being back up in the number one spot.
I want to note for the record that I am not under any illusion that by reforming or amending the corrections system we are perhaps going to solve all of the public safety problems. We are not. By dealing in the corrections area, with one exception, we are only treating the symptoms of crime and public safety. We are not dealing with the causes. That one exception is when the correction system succeeds in the rehabilitation, or assisting in the rehabilitation, of an inmate who does not come back, who is not a recidivist.
I do not have any illusions and I hope that neither Canadians, nor anyone in this House, have any illusions. The reforms must be there and we have to address them.
This has been a terrible year in metro Toronto. There has been a large increase in crime. We have had more murders than we have ever had before.
I noted a 34 per cent increase in youth crime across the country. Those figures do not include Ontario. For reasons which have not been explained to me, Ontario was not able to get its statistics organized in time for that survey. I have already mentioned the fiasco in criminal procedure as a result of the Askov decision, whereby thousands of criminal cases are not being proceeded with or prosecuted.
I do not think that dealing with this corrections and conditional release bill at committee, we are going to solve all of the problems. We are going to start to work on some of the obvious systemic problems that have developed over the years.
On the issue of deterrence, which is one of those three factors, I wanted to spend a moment or two on the issue of deterrence and white collar crime.
As part of this bill there is a proposal that access to parole would be expedited, that the parole eligibility date would be accelerated for non-violent offenders.
I am trying to understand if the government has lost sight of deterrence for white collar crime. By white collar crime I am talking about crime where there is no violence. I am talking about fraud, the so-called victimless crimes potentially involving millions of dollars. What deterrence is there for a white collar criminal who might receive a sentence of five years or seven years? That is pretty heavy for fraud, but let us say that is what the sentence is. Who knows that because they are non-violent they are going to get out sooner? They would get an accelerated parole date which would even be earlier than the one-third of sentence threshold which is usual now. Even under this bill it will continue to be usual for consideration of parole eligibility. I think the government has lost sight of deterrence in this bill, at least in regards to that type of crime.
There are a few other elements of the bill I thought I would address quickly, if for no other reason than to signal my friends opposite that the provisions in the bill may present problems. I took note of clause 22 of the bill which indicates that the government may pay compensation for death or disability attributable to a person's participation in an approved program for an inmate. This is compensation for an inmate who gets hurt in a penitentiary.
I do not have a big problem with that except I wonder what happened to the victim. I do not understand how the government can put this forward as being an important element of its bill when it has not bothered to stop and ask about any compensation to the victim. I do not believe that this bill addresses restitution, which is part of sentencing. I just have a sense that that particular provision, which the bureaucrats may think is needed to help them address problems within the system, has not been well thought out.
In clause 25(2) there is a reference to notifying police at the time of a release of an offender. It does not say which police. If the offender is released from a prison in British Columbia, will every police force in the country be notified: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Surete? It does not say; it is a little vague.
Last, concerning the placement and transfer of inmates there is possibly a very alarming signal in the criteria set out that will be considered when an inmate is classified as being maximum risk or medium risk. The bill lists the criteria that the correction service will take into account. Here are the three in order: the safety of the
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person and the persons in the penitentiary, the inmate; the security of the penitentiary; and, the third criterion, safety of the public.
I am sure I read in the press release accompanying this that safety of the public was first. Even if I did not read it, I think we all agree that safety of the public is first. That is why the penitentiary was built in the first place. Someone in drafting this bill has the criteria upside down. As the committee goes through this bill I hope that is just an isolated incident.
In wrapping up I want to indicate that we all know that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work and a lot of work quickly. I did not mention sentencing. We were promised a sentencing reform package almost as soon as I began sitting as a member. It has not reached the House yet.
In fairness, the justice minister is promising it soon. The Solicitor General has said it is coming. Let us say I am anxiously awaiting it, we all on this side of the House are, because sentencing goes hand in hand with corrections. It is an integral part of the justice system.
There is a lot more than this particular bill in addressing the field. The Young Offenders Act is before this House now. I want to point out something about the Extradition Act. It has been referred to by members on the government side as being a really important part of this.
The Extradition Act does not permit this country to get rid of anybody. The Extradition Act only is triggered when another state requests that Canada send somebody out of the country. We cannot use it as a tool to get rid of anybody. We can use it as a tool to get someone back into Canada from another country, and so let us not overrate the importance of the extradition system.
The problem in that area is the Immigration Act. That is where the problem is. This bill has been a long time coming. Someone said that the public seems to like this particular bill. Some of the newspapers have said that, but when you are in the Sahara desert there is no more important commodity than one cup of water. The public certainly does want to see this bill. It has been waiting a long time and it is very thirsty.
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I will conclude my remarks there and I look forward to being able to deal with this bill in committee in the near future.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question.
I should say I have asked the page, if the member does not mind, to send him a glass of water, and two for the government, plus I stole the line from the Solicitor General.
I have this question to the hon. member who last spoke. He mentioned the Extradition Act. He said the Extradition Act was sitting around.
I do not know what he meant by that. Where was it sitting? I think he must be in the Mental Disorders Act. It was passed in 1986 and then the court a few months ago said in the Swain case: "You have to bring in a new act. You have to change the procedure". It was the Mental Disorders Act. The government has brought in a new act and then claimed it was part of its fight on crime. It was forced to bring it in by the courts.
There was a private member's bill from the member for Peterborough. We debated that in the House and so on. That act was not really sitting around that way.
One of the criticisms if I might say, and I do not want to be too partisan here, is that people say the Liberal Party does not have any position on anything. It is always on both sides of every issue, and there is never any position for the Liberal Party.


An hon. member:: You know better than that.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I am just telling the members what people are saying to me. The Liberal Party has no position. I want to know from the hon. member, what is the position of the Liberal Party on the new Extradition Act?


Derek Vincent Lee: I want to thank the hon. member for his question about the Extradition Act.
I said the Extradition Act reforms were sitting around for a long time and I meant it. The hon. member has been here a lot longer than I have and maybe he was asleep at the switch.
We have signed extradition treaties with countries in South America. They are called imperial treaties. They were entered into with Spain. The whole extradition area

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is hopelessly out of whack with reality and we have been flying along by the seat of our pants with our neighbour to the south, hoping that everything would fall together.
It is only some of the more recent cases that have finally pushed the government, the bureaucracy, the Department of Justice to make reforms in their treaties and acts. This Extradition Act is not the responsibility of the Solicitor General, and it is perhaps out of order to get into a debate now about our position on the Extradition Act.
Make no mistake about it, Liberal members on this side of the House are eagerly awaiting completion of the Extradition Act reforms. I have been waiting ever since I entered this House in November 1988.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Toronto for speaking on this very important bill. It is nice to see so many of our Liberal members from Toronto here today, participating in this bill because we in Toronto right now are in a desperate state. The seniors in our community have never been as nervous because of the lack of control in terms of the crime that is running rampant. Children are afraid to take subways at night in Toronto now. Their parents are meeting them at subway corners. They do not want to walk the streets at night.
Last week in my riding alone in Danforth we had something like 29 break-ins. Many of the police in the metropolitan Toronto area believe that the lack of attention to reforming bills such as today is one of the reasons why their job is a lot more difficult to do.
I wonder if the hon. member would give us an opinion as to whether these reforms, these amendments that are being put forward, are going to make the job of police officers not just in Toronto, but coast to coast, a lot easier.
Some people are purporting that this is basically tinkering and it is really not going to address the substance of the issue.


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Broadview-Greenwood for that question. A short answer in my view is that the amendments proposed will improve the system for people working in the corrections system. It may help the odd police officer in the odd jurisdiction.
There is certainly provision for more communication between the corrections system and the police community. It is actually mandated in the bill.
The question that the member asks points up another question which had been addressed a little earlier and that is the whole issue of crime prevention. Every one of these bills with one or two minor exceptions addresses the symptoms of breaches in the criminal justice system, and not the causes of crime.
I know that other jurisdictions have been able to successfully commence programs targeting crime prevention. France has done it. The United Kingdom has commenced and a few United States jurisdictions have. One or two of the Scandinavian countries have. They have federal programs that address crime prevention, programs that attempt to go to the causes that turn individuals to crime.
That is something which this government is not addressing. I concede that about a year ago the Royal Canadian Mounted Police hosted a conference on crime prevention. It was a good initiative but I was stunned by the fact that hosting this and having spent all the money on it, it did not invite one member of Parliament. Shame on the RCMP.
If it really cared about this initiative on crime prevention, the issue that has been raised by my friend from Broadview-Greenwood, it would be doing more now, it would have done more then, and we could accomplish more in the future.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I too would like to thank my colleague from Toronto for making submissions. He has worked diligently over the last three years since his election in this particular field of criminal law reform.
Much to my chagrin, and this is my question to my colleague, I understand that the government will no longer participate in this debate. It does not intend to put up any more speakers. It has some 170 members in the House and yet it does not have any other members who wish to address this most important issue facing Canadians.
Can the member for Scarborough-Rouge River shed some light on the reasons why Conservative members of Parliament just do not appear to care about criminal law reform?

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before recognizing the hon. member, I may recall that according to the Standing Orders there should be no reference to the presence or absence of members in this House.


Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, I had no intention of addressing that very sensitive issue.
I know there are members opposite who do care a lot about the area that we are dealing with here today. I think the goal of members opposite is to get this bill through quickly without too much debate. However, without any reference to my own remarks, but with reference to the remarks of my colleague from York-South Weston and there will undoubtedly be some very positive constructive remarks of other colleagues, there are issues which we believe must be brought to the floor of the House for inclusion in debate and consideration with this bill.
The silence of members opposite need not be taken as a lack of interest but rather as a belief that their minister, the Solicitor General, and the government's bureaucrats have it all down perfectly right now and there are no mistakes. We take a different view. We want to try to improve this bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. Solicitor General on a point of order.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise the House that this bill had plenty of discussion in our caucus and comes forward with the full support of the government. We have not spun out the speaker's list in order to give the opposition a full chance to speak.


Some hon. members:: That is not a point of order.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I rise and would ask for unanimous consent, as agreed upon between the parties, to refer Bill C-36 not to the legislative committee, but to the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General. Therefore, I move:
That Bill C-36 be referred after second reading to the Standing
Committee on Justice and Solicitor General.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.
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David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, with respect, a minister cannot get up on what is patently not a point of order to make a motion. He has to have the floor legitimately. It is I think clear to all of the members here, I hope including yourself, sir, that the minister did not have a bona fide point of order and was simply trying to get the floor so he could move his motion.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: According to the Standing Orders, a minister of the Crown may rise in the House at any time. To find out what the subject is, the Speaker must first recognize the minister, and when I saw the Solicitor General rise before debate was resumed, I felt it was entirely proper, considering our Standing Orders, to recognize the Solicitor General, who presented a motion under Standing Order 73. Of course, the consent of the House is required for tabling this motion.

Is there unanimous consent to accept the motion of the Solicitor General of Canada?


An hon. member:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for York-South Weston.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, we do not object on this side of the House to referring this bill to the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General rather than the legislative committee when the debate at second reading is concluded in this House. We do not agree at this point to that particular motion.
We would like to see how the government conducts itself over the next few hours.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is not unanimous consent and the matter is settled.
On a point of order, the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, 1 think the reason we are having a little difficulty here is that the minister rose on a point of order. He started the point of order by objecting to some comments that were made by the last speaker. That was not a point of order. Liberal members were shouting at the Chair on that. The Chair should have ruled, with respect, that it was not a point of order and told the minister to sit down on it. Then the minister

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could have risen on a point of order and put what he originally wanted to put.
If the minister does that again, on behalf of our party I would be prepared to-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member is right, but when someone raises a point of order, the Speaker must listen to find out what the point of order is about. I recognized the minister, and he raised a point of order which may not have been in order, and subsequently presented his motion, which did not receive the unanimous consent of the House. Consequently debate is resumed.

But before resuming debate, I wish to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 33(2)(b), because of the ministerial statement Government Orders will be extended by 22 minutes.

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: The hon. member for Burin-St. George's-Fisheries; the hon. member for Don Valley East-The Economy; the hon. member for Ottawa West-Great Lakes; the hon. member for Victoria-Yugoslavia; the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie-Algoma Steel.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to confess at the outset that this is a bit different, perhaps for some members. I actually know something about this subject so I want to be very careful in my remarks.
I had the very good fortune or misfortune early in my career before becoming a politician of having spent my professional time as a worker in prisons. I worked in the prison setting, in corrections and in probation and parole at a very beginning position as a corrections officer. Prior to entering politics I worked in a private agency as a supervisor, and prior to that I was responsible to staff training in the province of British Columbia.
The tragedy of this particular bill has been partly touched upon by the previous speaker. This is a global
problem in a community, and we pick away at it bill by bill by bill. The problem of crime in society is very complex. While we focus during a week that some suspect has political overtones on law and order for political purposes on this particular bill and other bills, we still have not dealt with a range of fundamental problems in this area.
My good friend, the Liberal member, touched on white collar crime, and I commend him for that, but I also want to talk about corporate crime. When we talk about violent crime against the individual, it is horrible, it is often amoral, it is reprehensible, and we want to punish.
However I have yet to see the director of a corporation who has poisoned water in a community knowingly and not done anything to clean it up, go to jail for that violence against the community. I have yet to see corporate directors, board members and chief executive officers who allow poisons to spew into the air from their factories go to jail. I have yet to see anyone from the corporate sector accept the moral responsibility of criminal acts such as the Ford Motor Company when it produced one of its automobiles, the Pinto, with the knowledge that the car would burst into flames unless it had a shield around the gas tank and that shield cost $1.50 and it did nothing about it.
Let us understand what we are talking about in broader terms than just an individual crime and an individual act of violence. As horrible as it is, let us understand that we have not one standard of law, not two standards of law, but perhaps three or four.
When I talk about the global picture I make the claim that one of the areas in the global picture that has been absolutely neglected is the criminal aspect about corporate decisions that violate the health of individual citizens in our society.
The white collar criminals to whom my friend alluded tend to get off with a a light slap on the wrist for offences that destroy the lives of tens of hundreds of people in our society: witness the failure of financial institutions by fraud, witness the failure of large savings institutions where the corporate offenders have been quietly slapped on the wrist and walk away from their responsibilities.
Let us look at who is in jail, the people who are in jail. I am not making a plea for them just because someone else is not in jail, but frequently people who should be in jail are not in jail because the global view of responsibility in our society is not all encompassing. Having said
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that and the government having listened, I know it is going to bring in redeeming legislation immediately.
Turning to the matter at hand in this bill, my good friend, the Liberal member from Toronto, also touched on another aspect of this that he was perfectly correct on, and that is prevention. Since 1936 this Chamber has authorized at least eight separate royal commissions on the question of crime and punishment, our federal penitentiaries and our dealings with probation and parole. In almost every single instance none of those recommendations has been followed by any succeeding government since 1936, be it Liberal or Tory.
Let us understand who the victims are, who the criminals are and our response to both. I want to deal first with those who end up in our prisons. It is a fact that rich people do not go to jail. Rarely do they go to jail. On occasion when they do go to jail for violent crimes, frequently they end up as the focus of a television show or a movie because it is so rare.
But when poor people go to jail it is just to continue the system and the system does just as much harm to the people who are the victims, the criminals, the staff of the institutions, as well as society.
Let me deal with one glaring fault of this kind of legislation, although it is a step forward. When we talk about parole, the whole parole system is based on the concept that if you behave yourself in jail you will get out earlier.


An hon. member:: Not any more.


David Barrett: "Not any more", my friend says. Let me tell my friend that those who learn to adjust in prison, those who learn to play the game, those who are able to manipulate, are the ones who get the recommendation that they are at low risk in parole.
Let us talk about low risk. If somebody is at low risk in parole, should they have been in jail in the first place? I submit that there is a significant number of people who should have been placed on probation in the first place with the loss of time and the loss of income.
In my province of British Columbia we modelled a program on a scheme of weekend jails. We sent people to jail on weekends once they were convicted of a crime of a minor nature. During the week we asked those
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people to continue at their jobs and pay back the money they stole or pay for any damage they created. On the weekend they went to prison and their social time that was most valuable to them was taken away as a punishment. While they were incarcerated on the weekends, not in a full-fledged prison but incarcerated nonetheless, we demanded they pay room and board while they were in jail.
Is that a novel idea? People within the normal range who bend the rules and commit minor offences should understand that the first obligation is back to the victim in society. You pay back, you make restitution, and you do that by working, not by living in jail. Second, if you are going to be deprived of your weekend because of this crime, we insist you pay for your own room and board. The state should not do that. That concept came out of Holland and it is known as diminished responsibility.
Why were the Dutch still leading in the world and still continue to lead in the world in the concept of diminished responsibility? It was because at the beginning of World War II most of the Dutch politicians were thrown in jail. As that horrible experience ended at the end of World War II, those politicians came out and changed the whole criminal justice system in the country of Holland.
Far be it from me to suggest that everybody in this place be locked up for a while. It might have a salutary effect in an understanding of what prisons are all about.
Now let us talk about the unspeakable, what happens in prison when we talk about rehabilitation. When a young male of 16, 17 or 18 comes into a prison setting in a federal penitentiary after being convicted of a crime, and especially if he is from a poverty background, the first thing that is done is that straws are drawn to see who that young male will service in homosexual acts perpetrated on new young offenders in the prison, simply because they are without guile, they are without experience, and they become the prey of older, wiser men in prisons.
This may come as a shock to my colleagues. Prisons are not a pretty place. We have made no conscious effort to separate young offenders from adult prisons and, as a consequence, some of the most unspeakable experiences

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that happen to young people happen in the two or three weeks after they enter prison.
That is not discussed in committee. That is not discussed with the parole board. We do not make physical separation between the older, tougher prisoners who really run the institution in many instances. We must remember that the prisoners are there 24 hours a day. The staff is only there doing life on the instalment plan, eight-hour shifts as they go along. The institutions are generally hopeful that they will be run quietly, and the way to run an institution quietly is not to have any trouble and to turn the other eye.
I want to commend this minister for having the good sense to have at least condoms made available in our adult male prisons. It was he who did that, was it not? I want to commend the minister for realistically dealing with the fundamental problem.


John V. Nunziata: How about needles? Do you support needles in prison too?


David Barrett: Wait a minute. I am very serious about this. I am not talking about needles, but I will come to drugs in prison in a minute.
I want to be very clear about what I am saying. I want to support the minister for making condoms available, because at least it is a realistic, honest statement about part of what is repulsive that happens in prisons.
The public should understand that these things go on. When there is an effort within a prison setting to teach people on this word reformation, we must understand that we have to separate who we are dealing with and how we treat people. Violent sexual offenders are the most dangerous offenders in our institutions. Generally they are psychopathic or serial killers who are also psychopathic and are extremely dangerous.
Some of these people should never ever be released, never ever be released. We must devise a system that recognizes we cannot be successful in rehabilitation in every single case. When we give a mandatory sentence to particular offenders who are absolutely out of control and when the sentence is over we do not give such persons parole. We close the gates behind them and release them in most instances sicker than they were
when they went into jail. That is no protection for the public.
I plead with the Solicitor General to deal with the problem of the right of individuals to end a sentence and to know that they can get out of prison.
I also appeal to the Solicitor General to look at the Dutch model, a diminished responsibility, and understand there are some people, in our limited capacity as human beings, whom we simply do not know enough about and they should never ever be foisted back in the community again. At the same time, those people should be separated, isolated and not blanketed under the habitual criminal rule that is a failure in this country, but examined on the individual basis of each offender.
For those we are going to release, and this act of parole, it is all very well to say that this particular offender has not behaved himself or herself in prison, this particular offender is a high risk and therefore should not be allowed on parole, but we cannot justify that in every case if we still continue a system that permits very sick people to come out at the end of their sentence anyway.
I think it is a shame on this Parliament if we diminish our role of supervision of a parolee closer to the end of their sentence only to have authority of perhaps the last six months or year of their limited time in prison and put the community at risk for a repeat of the crime.
Not every parole is a risk. Most paroles are safe and can be covered and adequately supervised. But for dangerous offenders it is a risk and that is where the maximum support, supervision and control must be maintained and that costs money. That costs a lot of money. You cannot do it when you have parole officers who have cases of 100 or 200 or 300 parolees.
In the case of seriously ill people whom we release, the parole officers should not have more than 10 or 15 cases, period. I allude to the horrible serial killing in Milwaukee recently. It did not happen in this country but I think we have to understand that we have a comparable social and cultural pattern, certainly on television.
The parole officer involved in that case did not have the time to go to that individual's home to check out complaints. It is a known fact that as one reviewed publicly the horror story and the build up around that serial killer, human body parts were being cooked down
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in that offenders own apartment and the parole officer never visited once. Why? Because he was frankly too busy with 200 and 300 cases. That is not good enough.
I appeal to this government to understand that if you want proper parole supervision, sexual offenders, dangerous sociopathic or psychopathic offenders, who are going to be paroled, must have maximum supervision and the caseload of highly qualified parole officers should not exceed 15 or 20 at the very, very most.
What kind of parole officers? In my day you had to be very highly trained to be a parole officer. The job paid a reasonable amount of money. Now I would ask the government to see what a parole officer earns. Check the turnover of the staff, see how many cases they carry and check on their qualifications.
When I first started as a social worker at the Children's Aid Society I had 78 children in care. Most of these children faced the trauma of being separated from their natural parents and put into institutions or into foster homes. When I left that first experience I knew very well, as a social worker dealing with 78 kids, that it was impossible for me to do the job properly.
Today, social workers in almost every province of this country deal with caseloads of 200, 300 and 400 children who need care.
I leave parole and go to preventative work.
If you track back to the primary beginnings of most of the offenders you find in many instances child abuse, neglect, poverty as common symptoms around which crime seeds itself and spawns.
The services to children in this country have actually been diminished by this government and other governments by putting a cap on transfer payments, by cutting back on services to children, by cutting back on auxiliary help in educational institutions.
You do not have to be an expert. In any home, in any community of this country, people sit down and over their own dinner table say: "If somebody does not do something with Johnny or Susie soon they are going to be in trouble". Unfortunately and regrettably most of our predictions are correct.
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I make an appeal to this government to understand that we are talking here about a global picture. I have touched just a little bit on a number of points that stick out. All of this bill is meaningless, all of the bill on youthful offenders is meaningless unless we are prepared to go back to the very foundations of our community and guarantee every single child housing, food, education and access to love and to care.


An hon. member:: Utopia.


David Barrett: My good friend says "Utopia". I agree it is Utopia, but God help those who do not strive for Utopia, especially in the face of the facts of neglect that is now taking place in the social services and corrections in this country.
I have so much more to say, not because I am correct, but because I have seen it. I make this plea on the basis of what I have seen.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I was very much interested in my friend's comments about the government's approach to white collar crime. I too share his concerns. The government seems to be placing less emphasis as far as the penitentiary service is concerned with regard to white collar crime.
When we talk about white collar crime, the government refers to it as accelerated review so that first time offenders convicted of non-violent crimes can go in and out of the system as quickly as possible.
The concern I have and the concern that a great number of people have is with regard to the issue of deterrence. What is there to deter a white collar criminal from perpetrating a major fraud, let us say, a lawyer or a banker from defrauding thousands of people of their life savings? What is there to deter a company from polluting the environment? That would be considered a white collar crime.
This government wants to send out a message that we are not going to treat these offences as seriously as we have in the past. I am a bit perplexed at the member. On the one hand he seems to want to come down heavy on the white collar criminals and then on the other hand he says that a lot of people who are in prison ought not to be there.
Would he not agree that we have to continue to jail white collar criminals in order to send a very clear message out that society does not tolerate these types of

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crimes that could be perpetrated on a large number of people?


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for an earnestly put, very serious question. I want to go back to my very brief comments about the Dutch system which I would recommend to this House in committee in dealing with these problems. There is a particular psychiatrist in Holland who was the founder of this approach, Dr. Audubon and it was diminished responsibility.
My good friend raises the question about punishment and deterrence for white collar crime. If deterrence were a factor, say, in the Arabic code or in the Justinian code or our code, then it would have worked. Some societies cut people's hands off for stealing. They still steal. Other people still do it. Other places have capital punishment. It does not stop crime except for that particular person who has had the capital punishment.
In this country alone you will see that the absence of capital punishment has relatively no influence whatsoever on the incidence of commission of violent crime. I want the member to look at the statistics.
What do we do with white collar criminals? The first thing that I think must be done is a message must go out that we do not have a wink and nudge approach to white collar crime, that anybody who pollutes or steals from other people is going to be dealt with severely.
How do we deal with them severely? If you look at recent cases in the United States, in which people have stolen $10 million, $20 million or $30 million on the stock market and get fined, like Mr. Boskey or others, a million dollars, they are still nine million bucks ahead, or $10 million ahead. Every single penny that can be recovered from white collar crime should be immediately a part of the fine. Let it be understood that there is no reward, that you cannot buy your way out of the system and that if you hire the best lawyers in the world you are still going to lose your ill-gotten gains. I think we should make that as a basis.
Second, and the more serious one, the polluters of the atmosphere, the poisoners of waters or the continuous manufacturer of threatening goods such as the Ford Pinto should go to jail and taste what it is like to be in those abominable social situations at some of the worst penitentiaries in North America. Let them experience it,
because on the basis of diminished responsibility, they will understand far more clearly the situation they are in than somebody who has been a repeat offender.
To my colleague, I will commend the Dutch system. My time is up, apparently.


Mr. Vincent Della Noce (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and to Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the floor. I listened very carefully to what the hon. member said, although I had some trouble following his speech, and I also have a few questions.
I do not know whether the hon. member has any penitentiaries in his riding, but my riding happens to have the biggest correctional centre in Canada. In fact, there are five in my riding, all next door to each other. If I may refresh his memory, I could name one that is very well known: the old Saint-Vincent de Paul "pen", the old penitentiary, a lot of escapes and a lot of problems for the community.
The hon. member referred earlier to cases of suicide among correctional officers and parole officers who I think are doing a wonderful job. Of course, these people are not perfect, they are only human, but we cannot afford to make mistakes. And above all, we must not try to buiy the answer in the files, as is being done today. The truth is often buried in the files, and no one can find it, which makes it hard for people to do their job.
Earlier, the hon. member also referred to capital punishment and the negligible impact it has on our society. With respect, I do not agree. I voted in favour of restoring capital punishment, and I would still vote the same way.
Perhaps I may refer the hon. member to a case we had in Laval, where someone was given a maximum sentence of 25 years as we saw recently in New Brunswick. This was the case of a man who had been given a life sentence, subsequently commuted to 25 years without parole. As soon as the man was released he committed a murder. He took one of his girl friends hostage, and after this hostage taking which involved the whole city, the police and the neighbours, the woman was killed. This man killed a fourth, fifth and sixth time. We don't know how many times, but in any case, he was convicted at least once. Upon his release, he even had the nerve to


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hug the police. I do not know whether the hon. member remembers that, but it made the international news. He even had the nerve to hug the police. He was a character. I say he was a character once too often.
I have a very simple question for the hon. member. I do not know why he criticizes the government for giving petty criminals a chance to get out sooner and for using the expertise available inside our prisons to keep other inmates from getting worse, because some day, these people will be released. The government's purpose and the purpose of the minister's bill is to release them under more normal conditions than is the case today.
My question: Is the way we operate today better, in other words, when people commit murder, if they commit murder four or five times, it does not really matter, because they were sentenced to life in any case?


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his very good question.
As I said in my speech, there are some people in my opinion who should never be released. They should never be released. We owe it to the community to say honestly that some people are so much out of control that as earnestly as we try in a society, we are incapable of understanding their violence or dealing with it.
On that basis, we have to make judgments in terms of protecting their rights, an appeal system, but still in the final analysis, not release them.
We may not always be right in our predictability, but the best way of ensuring the kind of protection you want is each individual case reviewed by itself, not the case fitting in the system, but the system fitting the case. That is a fundamental error we make.
I am not blaming this government. Let me go on record saying that it was this government that closed the British Columbia Penitentiary and began moving people into camps, and modified approach if you are going to incarcerate.
Why do you still have that many prisons? I do not know, but I would suggest to you that the same approach that the government took with the B.C. Penitentiary
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could and should be used in disseminating the inmates in a variety of institutions rather than one major centre.
The member and I do not share the same reading of statistics, but it has been my experience-I will end with this-that violence does not end violence. In a mature, thoughtful, worried society as we are concerned about our children, we know that violence is not the answer, back to the individual or to society.
I do not envy the government in this task. I am glad I was not a federal cabinet minister concerned with this. All I am doing is sharing an experience and making an appeal.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to follow a member who has had first hand experience on a subject and shares that experience with other members in this House.
I do appreciate the hon. member's intervention. I wish to add the strong voices of Parkdale-High Park to Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of correctional investigators.
In my riding of Parkdale-High Park, I have many constituents who are veiy concerned about the Canadian criminal justice system not giving them adequate protection.
Whenever I see a new bill coming on the floor of the House, I look to see what is the purpose of the bill. I would like to refer members to page 3: "The purpose of the federal correctional system is to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society.
(a)	Carrying out sentences imposed by courts through the safe and humane custody and supervision of offenders.
(b)	Assisting the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law-biding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and the community".
This is where Canadians can see which party can deliver what the public wants. This is not the first time that the government is attempting to improve our correctional system. It has done it before. It did it in 1986 when I was not in this House. I had returned to education. The government tried something called privatization. It wanted to demonstrate that hard-core criminals, sex offenders, murderers, et cetera, can better be integrated into the community by a privately operated

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half-way house than one operated by the government. I think many members of this House who were in this Chamber in 1986 and 1987 heard about the fiasco around Exodus Link. This was the government's model of moving former prisoners from the jails into the communities-privatization. But it failed, it failed from step one.
Why did it fail? Because, as always, this government in its arrogance failed to consult with the community. It thought it would sneak it in. Because communities such as Rosedale and Peele and others would put up such a fuss, it was going to sneak in this Exodus Link into Parkdale-High Park thinking that the citizens of Park-dale-High Park would not notice this. Well they did.
To prove how the government neglected to consult the people of Parkdale-High Park, the Solicitor General of the day did not even consult the sitting member for Parkdale-High Park. He admitted publicly in public meetings in my riding that he did not know anything about it. Here is a government sneaking in a half-way house for hard-core criminals into a community, never checked with the community and never even checked with the sitting member. This is the government's approach of providing, as the purpose of the bill says, a just, peaceful and safe society.
This is the government that says: "The purpose of this bill is to carry out sentences imposed by the courts through the safe and humane custody and supervision of offenders".
I am pleased to announce that this year Exodus Link closed. The government, again not being honest with the people, forced Exodus Link to close by not giving it any funds, but I and the community know there were other reasons for its closure which I will not have time to get into now.
Another incident is happening in my riding that is happening because of the government's deregulation. This is the government of deregulation and privatization. This government decided that to own a CB radio you do not need a licence. Let us deregulate. So the government did. It deregulated. You no longer require a licence
to own a CB radio. So a 10 or 12 year old can go and buy one and use it.
What is happening in our community is sexual harassment over the airwaves, death threats over the airwaves, jamming of the airwaves so that no one can speak to others, even in an emergency. I wrote to the Solicitor General about this matter. Do you think he has done anything about it? I am pleased he is sitting here today. I see he is running out to get some information. I hope he will and I hope he will come back to this House and say: "Yes, Mr. Flis, I have listened to the residents of Parkdale-High Park and I will reinstitute the licensing of CB radios". Because, Mr. Speaker, this again-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member but what does this have to do with the Parole Act? It sounds to me like a cheap way of getting some local publicity in his riding.


Jesse Philip Flis: If the hon. member would just listen he would know what connection there is. The people of Parkdale-High Park are so fed up with the lack of law and order in this land that they do not want a piecemeal approach to tightening up the laws in our society. It is ail these things that are happening.
It is my area where the three-year old girl was abducted, sexually molested, and murdered. What does that have to do with parolees, you might ask. It is all integrated. Some of these people who are using CB radios will also be offenders. They may even now be ex-offenders. They may be pushing drugs through the CB radios.
If the hon. member will just be patient he will see the linkage I am making. He will have an opportunity to express his voice.
Privatization, deregulation, yes in some aspects it works, but when it means to protect the people on the streets, that is when the government must act. You cannot turn that away to a private organization and the purpose of that organization was to make money on that halfway house. As I say, I am glad it folded.
At least this bill is a first step. It is about time. It is a first step, so let us support it. Let us get it into
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committee, and let us improve it with our amendments and let us get on in making it a safer society for people in all communities.
I am glad to see that this bill provides for the rights of the victims to participate in the entire process, from the initial trial through the parole board hearings. I think we must recognize that individuals are suffering as a result of criminal actions of others. As well, we must realize that society suffers.
In areas of metro Toronto where there are particularly high rates of drug and prostitution related crimes, the people who live in the areas are being held hostage. They are afraid to walk to the corner after dark. They are afraid to let the children walk to school on their own. They see crack houses operating on their streets, and they see the police watch helplessly as the dealer arrested in the afternoon deals again in the evening. My constituents give me street and number where cocaine is being sold and purchased and the police are helpless to do anything about it.
I attended a public meeting on this issue. What is happening at these meeting? The police blame the city because the city is not giving them enough resources, enough foot patrol, enough money to lay further charges.
This is something else the government fell down on. I have recommended, again from my community, from the mayor's task force, that when there is a drug bust and there are assets to be sold that some of that money be returned to the local community so that the police can continue their work.
Elere I must compliment the Solicitor General because in one of his replies in Question Period he said that he is looking at doing this exactly. Through you, Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Solicitor General.
The police were blaming the city. The city blamed the province. Implementing the law, et cetera, is provincial jurisdiction, so the city is blaming the province. The provincial MPP gets up. He is blaming the federal government. The federal government has to toughen up the laws for us to implement.
The buck stops here. We cannot blame anyone else. A government was elected for four or five years. Now seven years in office, the situation is getting worse. At least if there was a halt, at least if there was a trend to better street safety, less drug pushing, we would see
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some improvement, but there isn't. So we must all accept the blame. I feel as a federal member of Parliament I am letting down my constituents if in co-operation with the three other levels of government-metropolitan Toronto, Toronto, the province-we cannot bring a resolution to providing safer streets for our children so they can walk to school without fear.
Because the citizens feel trapped and feel that the system is letting them down, they are in a mood to do something instead of just waiting for us politicians. What they have told me at a public meeting is this: If you cannot provide the law and order, we will do it ourselves. They are talking about forming vigilante groups to bring protection to their communities. I have had two calls now, Mr. Speaker, because some people in the community want to bring in the Guardian Angels from New York to patrol our streets.
So far, reasoning with the people, they agree with me that that is not the route to go. My constituents of Parkdale-High Park are counting on this and other bills. I hope we do not stop just with this bill. Looking at all the bills, be it the Immigration Act, the Privacy Act, our Constitution, I hope that Canada again can be a country where immigrants come and they just cannot get over what a safe country this is. Tourists come and they cannot get over what a safe country this is. I hope we can get back to that just, safe society, because we are losing it. We are losing it.
I am concerned about what is there in the bill that is respecting corrections? Where is the funding for the corrections? I do not see it. On any programs that were started up, the funds dried up and the programs went downhill. Where is the funding for rehabilitation, training and skills so that criminals do not have to go back to a life of crime? Where is the treatment for drug addiction, so that the drug dealers do not have to go back to dealing drugs, treatment for sex offenders, so that they do not repeat their crimes?
I will never forget the call I received from one of my constituents, a father over 60 years old. His son was picked up for peddling drugs and got 10 years. The son served his sentence. The father has no bitterness to that, he felt the son did commit a crime and he served his sentence. But now, the son is in his forties and the father is worried that if he dies who is going to look after his son? Because the drugs damaged his brain and he cannot go and get a job. He cannot look after himself. He must

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depend on someone to look after him. The father is saying: "When I go, what is going to happen to my 40-year old son?" Somehow, in that 10 year sentence, our system failed. We did not prepare that son to return him back to the community. In this case it was our community and we are willing to take this person back. Ele is a vegetable, 40 years old. If his life span is 70, society has to look after him for another 30 years.
Just this week I received a letter and to protect the constituent's identity, I will not use the person's name. It says: "Dear Mr. Flis: Greetings. My name is-and I am a 29-year old Canadian citizen, born and raised in metropolitan Toronto, Parkdale area. At this writing I am presently incarcerated in the state of Michigan, serving two life sentences for possession and conspiracy to possess 650 grams or more of a controlled substance, cocaine, and have been for the last three and a half years" and on and on.
This constituent is asking me to intervene so that he can serve his life sentence in Canada and not in Michigan.


An hon. member:: Do you know why?


Jesse Philip Flis: An hon. member asks if I know why. He might raise this in Question Period and maybe he will get the answer.
Again, I point out this person has a life sentence. Let us suppose the person is paroled after half the sentence is served. What does this person do? He is almost 30 now, and may come out at age 50. What do we do with this person in our society if the person is paroled earlier. I do not know the laws in Michigan. Maybe they do not parole for drugs.
It is not enough to lock people up and throw away the key for a specific period of time. Even with more stringent parole laws and greater supervision it is simply not enough to assume that any person of a criminal mindset will get over that mindset simply by being locked up. I think this is a serious shortcoming in the bill.
However, it is long past the time for individual components of the entire justice system to be tinkered with and amended. The world has changed drastically in the last 100 years and the system which was designed to deal with the criminal element of society at that time is no longer relevant. The criminals have better guns than our police. They have better electronic equipment than
our police. They have better lawyers in the land than our police have.
We have for too long been papering over the cracks and putting a fresh coat of paint over rust. It is time, as parliamentarians, as representatives of different parts of Canada and different communities, that we took the time to evaluate the goals and priorities and expectations of our society with respect to the criminal justice system.
When I think of the chaos which will result from individual communities taking the law into their own hands, as my constituents wanted to do, because corrections do not correct and detention is at the discretion of individual judges, I get afraid for the very fabric of our society.
I can support this bill as far as it goes, but there are only so many times a leaky roof can be patched. I urge the minister to be aware of the mood of the nation and act soon to provide adequate enforcement of the system we have and new guidelines for the future.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, during his remarks, my hon. friend made reference to correspondence to me on a question of CB radios. I can advise him that I cannot quite connect how that might be a matter for the Solicitor General. We have checked our outstanding correspondence list and we cannot find anything from my hon. friend. We will continue to check. Perhaps he might provide me with a copy of the letter and I will follow it up.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Parkdale- High Park for his submissions. He and I represent two ridings in west metro that are adjacent to one another and the concerns of his constituents are the concerns of my constituents in York South-Weston.
I know many members in metropolitan Toronto share the same concerns. The hon. member has been in the House for a number of years and he knows that in the last seven years since this government took office, there have been a number of, shall we say, high profile cases involving the criminal justice system that has led the public to seriously question the criminal justice system in Canada.
Recently we heard about the Nina deVilliers case, the young woman who was murdered just outside of Hamilton. In the Klaudusz case, the young child who was murdered, the family resided in my colleague's riding.

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Over the last seven years we have had the Foster case in British Columbia where an inmate who was incarcerated proceeded, after being released on parole, to commit a number of other offences.
There was the Gingras case in Alberta where a convicted murderer was given a pass to celebrate his birthday at the West Edmonton Mall. He broke away from his escort and murdered two other people.
There was the Melvin Stanton case in Toronto where a convicted murderer was given a pass to Toronto and proceeded to murder a young woman. There was the Fredricks case. Mr. Fredricks, who had a record of child abuse and had been convicted or raping a young child, was released and proceeded to murder a young boy in Brampton. We had the Sweeney case here in Ottawa, a convicted rapist who was released on parole and proceeded to murder a young half-way house worker. We have the Rallow case in Hamilton and the list goes on and on and on. Over the last seven years the public has been crying for reform. Here we are in November 1991 and there really has not been any meaningful reform in the criminal justice area.
I would like to ask my friend about these high profile cases and whether his constituents have expressed concern to him about the crime in his particular community and could he share with us the concerns of his constituents in terms of the priorities in his particular riding.
Much is said in this House about the Constitution and other matters. As far as crime is concerned, how would he rate that as a concern of his constituents in Park-dale-High Park?


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I have a system of town hall meetings. Every time I send out a parliamentary report, I announce my next town hall meeting. This way every household ion the constituency knows of the meeting and can come out and share their concerns.
In the last two town hall meetings I have not had one question raised about the Canadian Constitution, not one. The top priority and most of my questions are around street safety, illicit use of drugs, prostitution,
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former offenders who come and pick up a three-year-old child, and not one question about the Constitution.
The next priority is the economy. I am flooded with questions and representations about people without jobs. These are university graduates who have been working three to five years and now are unemployed. They are embarrassed to come to their MP to say: "Help. Maybe you can help. Maybe you know of someone who needs a qualified architect or a qualified engineer".
This is why this government has its priorities all wrong. It wants to deflect the country's attention on to the constitution debate. We must have the constitution debate, but let us get our priorities straight. Let us get the economy rolling. Let us get the street safety in place and the Constitution will fall into place. Canadians will be more agreeable province to province, community to community once they have jobs and once they feel safe that they can walk the streets, that they can send their five and six-year-olds to school without having to walk them to school as they did before.
It can be done in this beautiful country. We did it before. What happened to it? Have we been watching Detroit and New York for too long?


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I did not want to interrupt the hon. member, but I agree with my colleague from the New Democratic Party that he was going on the wrong track, but in any event he came back to the bill. He spoke about everything. I want to hear more about the bill because at least he congratulated the minister and the government for this bill which has to go to committee.
I must tell my hon. colleague that my people were consulted for the last three years. Three ministers were working on the issue. My people, because of the fact that I have five jails, asked for more protection and also asked something I have not heard in this House today, and I hope I will before this bill goes for second reading. Nobody spoke about the victims. This must be respected too.
I had a case in my area where Collin- I will not even call him Mr. Collin- killed Mrs. Berard.

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Every day in the paper we had his picture and a full page on his history. Nobody mentioned the lady's name or what happened to his son who is all alone in my city of Laval while that man Collin was on a nice little vacation after he was in for 25 years. At the same time he was having a little hug with the police but nobody spoke about the victim.
I am glad when somebody mentions some names. [Translation]
In my riding, we have had a number of cases-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I would ask the hon. member to finish his remarks or ask his question, since his time is running out.


Vincent Della Noce: We have had prison riots, murders and assassinations. I therefore ask the hon. member whether he agrees with the bill or not. Does he want to advance the bill to protect my fellow citizens, the victims and their families?


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I support our critic and our party in getting this bill to committee to bring about amendments where needed, fine tune the bill and address the plight of the victims.
If someone is murdered, he or she is not the only victim. The victims are the whole family. The victim is sometimes the whole community. I am glad that he is very sensitive to that and I hope he will make the bill stronger when it is in committee. I am pleased he addressed that.


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about homicide, attempted murder, assaults, robbery, sexual assault, the statistics and, what is more important, the human cost to people.
I would like to address some thoughts as to how we could have a national strategy to reduce violent crime in this country. I might as a westerner point out that unfortunately generally speaking as we go west in Canada violent crime gets worse.
I do not know whether that will cheer up my colleagues from Toronto, but it is an unfortunate reality in Canada. As to the effect of the present state of the
economy and the effects the recession is having on crime trends, common sense would suggest that at least some crimes are being committed by economically desperate citizens.
A study prepared for the joint economic committee of the Congress of the United States about 15 years ago noted a definite causal connection between rising unemployment and increased crime. The letter of transmittal of that report contains the following interesting paragraph: "Table 2 shows in fact that the 1.4 per cent rise in unemployment in 1970 is directly responsible for some 51,570 total deaths, including 1,740 additional homicides, 1,540 additional suicides and 5,520 additional mental hospitalizations. These are not major portions of the total number of deaths, homicides, suicides and mental hospitalizations which occurred in 1972-75. Unlike most other factors which contributed to those statistics rising unemployment can be readily avoided".
It seems clear to me at least that the great depression of the 1930s did not produce a per capita crime increase of the proportions experienced during the 1970s, 1980s and now the 1990s. The American criminologist, George Silber has asserted that: "The general relation of economic conditions and criminality are so indefinite that no clear definite conclusion can be drawn".
Let me suggest what I believe are five probable causes of the increased crime we are witnessing including crimes of violence. First, youth attitudes: a larger majority of young Canadians today and elsewhere in the world is unfortunately failing to learn integrity, personal responsibility, respect for others' rights and property, and that one's right to swing a baseball bat in a free society ends just before the point of another's nose.
Parents, churches, schools, colleges, the media and above all young people themselves will all have to take a more positive role in reversing the current trend.
Illegal drug abuse: heroine addicts commit, I think from all indications, a large percentage of property crimes. Unfortunately again I have to refer to an American study. It found that 237 heroine addicts in the city of Baltimore committed more than 500,000 crimes over an 11-year period.
No doubt a similar pattern exists in our own country. Many addicts in both of our countries must steal enough
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goods to fetch the hundred dollars or so necessary to sustain their daily habit of crack or heroin on the black market seven days a week. The rule of thumb a few years ago when I was a drug prosecutor was that stolen goods fetch about 15 per cent of the replacement value on the stolen goods market.
Third is media violence. The media to many observers glamorize not only the use of cocaine, say, but hard core violence as well. The Lamarsh commission on television violence, for example, estimated that the average Canadian child, including your children and mine, I assume, see approximately 13,000 television murders by the time he or she graduates from high school.
A study a decade ago by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health noted that prime time American television currently provides an average of five acts of violence per hour and for weekend programs aimed at children, an astonishing 18 acts per hour. It concluded after a decade's research that there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that excessive violence on television leads directly to aggression and violent behaviour among children and teenagers.
Fourth is the demographic overload. Charles Silverman has pointed out in his seminal book Criminal Violence: Criminal Justice that a major reason for increased crime in his country, the United States, was the more than 50 per cent growth in the 14 to 24-year-old population between 1960 and 1970, with a resulting weakening of conventional social controls.
Relative to the growth of the adult population, a similar pattern is reflected in our country. Teenage peer pressures and the need for the right records and clothes, as Silverman points out, "combined with a weakening of adult social contacts has provided a lethal crimogenic force".
Fifth is social causes. It was a number of years ago, but I think it still applies, when the U.S. National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Crime said that the war against crime could be better waged by: "better schools, better teachers, full employment and fair wages, work opportunities for youth, especially those of the criminally prone ages, a rebuilding and restoration of the tax base of our cities, better housing, reduction of dope addiction and the ultimate elimination of the ghettos".
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Thank goodness we do not have as many ghettos or have many fewer ghettos in Canada, but I think this statement has at least a limited application to our country as well.
There are a number of proposals which should be made and have been made with respect to areas of major concern. The first is bail. It seems to me that Parliament should be providing clearer guidance to the courts than the legislation currently does. A text was proposed south of the border which was sponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy who is not usually identified as being a hawk on crime prevention. The text seems reasonable and I would suggest that some such wording might be adapted to our own situation. Basically it would say that several things should be considered. These include: the weight of evidence against a bail applicant, the nature and the circumstances of the events charged, and the history and characteristics of the person including his or her character, mental condition, family ties, employment, past conduct, length of residence in the community, financial resources, record of convictions, record of appearance, flight to avoid appearance or non-appearance at court proceedings, illegal drug use, whether he or she was on probation, parole or other release pending completion of sentence for the conviction under federal, state or local law at the time of the current arrest, whether he or she was on pre-trial release or release pending sentence or appeal for an offence under various legislation at the time of the current arrest.
With respect to hard drugs, the causal link between heroin and coke addiction and crime is about as well known as anything in this House. Organized heroin and cocaine traffickers thus constitute a prime target for any stepped up national fight against serious crime.
I just give three suggestions as to how we can make life more difficult for heroin traffickers and simultaneously better protect our most important national resource, our young people.
First is a more soundly based education program across Canada to mobilize parental, educational, youth and religious groups to reduce heroin, coke and other drug abuse. One of the United States has an excellent program which might well serve as a model for parents in Canada. More than 3,000 groups of parents have already

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formed a parent movement to counteract the drug culture as a whole by first educating themselves about drugs so they can avoid misconception, myth and error in their dialogue with children. There is also a video cassette called Consider the Source produced by the Ontario Chiefs of Police who suggest it be shown to children in grades 4 and 5. That is a step in the right direction.
I might point out since I see the Solicitor General here that my understanding is the only person at the head office of his department who was an expert in drug and alcohol abuse was let go about two and a half years ago. He was on a term contract and after I believe four years that individual, a Ph.D., was simply let go by the department to save a few dollars. They may have replaced him, but certainly as of two and a half years ago, they had nobody in the head office of the department who knew anything about drug and alcohol abuse.
Additional equipment, expertise and training are required for our customs and Coast Guard officials, although I think some steps are being made in that direction. The use of more trained dogs for airports to detect heroin in air cargo and passenger baggage has proven successful in West Germany, the United States and elsewhere. I think we should give more emphasis to that.
Third and last, a senior customs official told me some time ago that thousands of letters containing drugs are being delivered each year within Canada. Our current postal legislation appears to be unique in the free world in not permitting the opening of a letter, except in the presence of an addressee, no matter how overwhelming the indication that it contains heroin, coke or whatever.
It seems to me that customs officials should be given the legislative authority to seek a court order to open and stop mail in specified circumstances. If that law has been changed I will stand corrected. I wish somebody would get up and say that the law has been changed, but I do not think it has.
Finally on victims of crime I would like to quote from an article published in Policy Options of March 1991. It is called "The Rights of Victims" and it begins with this chilling paragraph: "In 1985 Larry Ihkahashi of Edmonton was charged with the sexual assault of 138 women across the country. After hearing the testimony of the
first 16 victims it was jointly decided by the crown attorney and the defence lawyer that enough evidence had been presented to guarantee a guilty verdict on at least 16 of the charges. The sentence that could be obtained at this point would presumably provide sufficient punishment for Takahashi, without unnecessarily prolonging the long and costly court room proceedings. The remaining 122 women were accordingly released as crown witnesses and their respective charges were dropped. The accused was found guilty on the first 16"- I think the author may be in error; I think it may have been 13, but it was 13 to 16-"of 138 rape charges and sentenced to a total of 86 years plus three life sentences. All 16 sentences, however, run concurrently. He could thus be eligible for full parole in seven years and for day passes in as little as two".
The author of that article goes on for many pages about the plight of the victim. I hope every member of this House, including the minister, is aware that Mr. Thkahashi was out playing golf with his friends on leave near Chilliwack in B.C.
I would like to say something about mandatory supervision which as other speakers have mentioned is an ongoing cancer in the system. The present system has been in effect since 1970, except for the provision that was added a few years ago with respect to gating. A study about a decade ago by the solicitor general's department indicated that during a five-year period examined fully 5,301 of 15,627 persons pre-released on mandatory supervision after fulfilling two-thirds of their sentences came from the maximum security status. Fully one-third of those pre-released on mandatory supervision by operation of law, that is before the gating provision, I should add in fairness for having earned remissions or for whatever reason, were not considered safe enough to be in the medium or minimum security institutions.
The success rate for those studied who left maximum security institutions is given as 48.6 per cent. In other words, approximately half were returned to custody for either committing a fresh violent offence or for breaking the condition of their release. The same study also indicated that mandatory supervision in its present form is about equally unpopular with the public, the National Parole Board, the police and offenders themselves. The same study also indicated that about 90 per cent of the people in the federal correction institutions "earned" all possible remission in each quarter of the year.
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My colleague spoke on the question of parole. I think we will have a very interesting debate on whether there should be parole as he indicated earlier. When we talk about violent criminals we are not talking about people who write bad cheques. We are talking about people who go out and maim, beat and kill other citizens of Canada-and I hope those who sell drugs would also be included-and whether they should be eligible for parole or whether those people should serve the full sentence.
I might make a comment on the question of judicial appointments because I believe ultimately, having spent 12 years in the courts either as a Crown or defence lawyer, the federally appointed judges across Canada and the provincial ones-but we have no jurisdiction there-have a pivotal role in our criminal justice system and that only the best qualified men and women should be appointed.
The present practice, it seems to me, is far too often still based on past political loyalty rather than merit. I would never release the name of the person who told me this, but I must tell the House about a Superior Court judge who when appointed asked for a computer for the office. The computer word processor was denied, and I think that most members of this House know that Charles Ng had a computer in his cell in Prince Albert paid for, I would assume, by the Canadian taxpayer. In other words, unconvicted accused mass murderers in our system get computers at taxpayers' expense but Superior Court judges, at least in one province, are not able to have computer word processors in their offices as of now. That is how upside down or inside out the system has become.
How do we ensure that all appointments to our Superior Courts across the country are the best qualified men and women in the 10 provinces and territories? I would respectfully suggest that the model in use in both British Columbia and Alberta would be a better system than we have now. In essence appointments are made only from successful applicants to councils representative of both the bench and the community.
If those opposite are going to get up and say that the system they have now is working the way the B.C. and Alberta models do, I would suggest they read Peter Russell's article of a few months ago in the University of
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Toronto Law Journal which basically suggests that the old patronage system is working unimpeded.
I guess I will end with a couple of thoughts on sentencing. A number of Gallup polls have indicated that Canadians across the land judge that the courts do not deal firmly enough with criminals. The regional breakdown in one poll I have here indicates that the prairies were the region where that was the most strongly felt.
What I call the confidence gap between the public and our courts is now, it would appear, at an all-time low. A careful look, therefore, at what is called-and I am only speaking for myself; not for the Official Opposition of course-presumptive sentencing for some violent offences would appear to be necessary. Under the model currently in use in California the legislature prescribes the range of penalty upon conviction, for example three, four or five years, for aggravated sexual assault and the court presumably chooses the middle figure unless the over-all factors indicate that the lesser or greater term should be handed out.
As other speakers from this party have indicated, we think the bill should go to the justice committee. I hope that the more glaring defects, and hopefully all defects in the bill from the standpoint of the safety of the public, will be screened out at that committee.


Jesse Philip Flis: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In my debate I falsely accused the minister because I said I sent him a letter on the licensing of CB radios. My apology. It was to the Minister of Communications that we wrote with copies to our critic and to Jim's CB Club that drew it to our attention. My apologies to the minister and to his staff who were trying to find the letter and could not. That will explain why.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I rise just briefly. I thank my hon. friend for his comment. I did not take any offence from what he said.
I want to compliment my hon. friend who just spoke on the research he obviously did. I think a lot of parallels could be drawn between research that is done in the United States and here. I think we can take instruction from him.

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With respect to the person who was supposed to have left the Solicitor General's Department, the only explanation I can have is that the government has split its efforts in terms of the war on drugs. The RCMP basically has the control and co-ordination of the interdiction in conjunction with Fisheries and Oceans and National Defence. Education and that type of thing would be done by health and welfare. Probably the expertise in the drug side of it in terms of pharmacology and that kind of thing would be in health and welfare. The effort is still being made by the two departments.


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his comments. The problem, as I am sure he knows, is that the solicitor general's department and Corrections Canada have a number of rehabilitation programs, thank goodness, across the country.
The person who was working in the Ottawa head office had a good deal of experience with alcohol and with drugs. He was acting as a resource person for programs carried out in penitentiaries across the country. I have every reason to believe, knowing him well, that he was a competent individual, worked extremely hard and was very dedicated to what he was doing. Yet he was the only person who had had, as I understand it, direct hands on experience with alcohol and drugs, which as the minister knows is the reason that a great many people are in our institutions. This man was hired on term for three and a half years, I think it was. Then the problem, as the minister will know, got to be if he was kept on for another matter of months he would be deemed to be permanent and have to be given permanent status. Instead of doing that, somebody in the department-the minister probably did not even know it had happened- decided just to let him go. Whether it was professional jealousy, whether it was incompetence, whether it was to save a few dollars at the expense of rehabilitation of programs, I do not know. Having written to his predecessor about it, I certainly was extremely unhappy that one of the rehabilitation programs in the department was in effect being decapitated.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, without commenting on the presence or absence of any member in this House, I find it rather curious that we have been debating this bill all day long and we have
not heard from a single solitary member from Alberta, other than the member who just spoke from our party. There are a number of Conservative members from Alberta who have claimed to be very concerned about criminal law reform and to be concerned about high profile cases. They label themselves as law and order type politicians, yet we have not heard a peep from any Alberta member on the Conservative side and there is every indication that not a single member will speak.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I again remind the hon. member that parliamentary tradition forbids mentioning the presence or absence of members in this House.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I was not commenting on the presence or absence, just the level of participation in the debate. I have not indicated any particular member but perhaps the member, when I do ask my second question, might comment on the silence we are hearing from Conservative MPs from Alberta.
I am glad that the member has spoken. He is a member from another major city. We have heard from a lot of members, Liberal members from Toronto. The member who has just spoken represents an Edmonton area riding. I would like to know whether the crime statistics in his particular community are anything like the crime statistics in metro Toronto.
Yesterday metro Toronto had its 73rd and 74th homicide, murder of the year. It is an all-time record so far. It has broken the record set in 1987. There were 60 murders that year. The 73rd murder was a North York senior citizen. I quote the newspaper article: "A partially paralyzed North York man was beaten to death in his bedroom by an intruder, as his elderly wife ran for help". That was number 73. Number 74 was a motel guest who was found by the maid in his motel room murdered.
There are still two months to go. Toronto is fast becoming the murder capital of Canada. At the rate we are going in Canada we will soon be competing with American cities as far as the crime and murder rates are concerned. Not only is murder up, but violent crimes are up 22 per cent so far this year in metro Toronto.
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Between January 1988 and December 1990, while the population in metro Toronto increased by less than 1 per cent, the robbery rate was up 84 per cent. There has been a proliferation of guns used in bank robberies or in robberies. That rate is up 207 per cent. Violent crimes, according to Statistics Canada, rose 59 per cent between 1975 and 1989.
All these statistics have been available to the government and it has done absolutely nothing for seven years.
I would like to know from the hon. member whether his experience in Edmonton is anything like my experience in Toronto.


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately I do not have the homicide, armed robbery and so on figures for Edmonton. I was hoping to speak tomorrow. I might have had them tomorrow, but I do not have them today. However, Edmonton has a very high crime problem, particularly violent crime.
If I may, I think members everywhere may be interested to know that I am sure this one study would apply to Toronto, Montreal or Edmonton. It found that 237 heroin addicts in one city in the United States committed more than half a million crimes over an 11-year period.
I am thinking of a person I once defended on a heroin trafficking charge. Basically he would get up in the morning at ten o'clock and he would go to work. He would break into homes and apartments all day until about two o'clock. Then he would take his $100 from fencing his materials and go down and get his two or three caps of heroin. He would go home and shoot up and spend the rest of the night watching television. That was seven days a week.
Many of the homicides in Montreal, Toronto or Edmonton are as a result of crack. In other words, I think drugs is the matrix of most crime and this influx of hard drugs is the reason the crime rate is going through the ceiling.


An hon. member:: Improve the bill.


David Kilgour: With respect to my friend from Montreal, I do not think this bill is going to stem the tide. I think we have to get very specific and go after drugs. I do not think this bill is going to do much about the hard drug problem.


John V. Nunziata: Just for the member's information, the murder rate in Edmonton is number four.
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An hon. member:: It has nothing to do with the bill.


John V. Nunziata: The member says: "It has nothing to do with the bill". It has everything to do with the bill. We are dealing with offenders in the federal penitentiary system in Canada. We are dealing with an increased crime rate. We are dealing with criminal law reform, and the dumbo from Montreal says it has nothing to do with the bill.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to interrupt my colleague, but he has been giving us a whole lot of statistics that Statistics Canada probably does not have yet, they are so recent. But that has nothing to do with the bill. I would like us to talk about prisoners and the bill before us today.


John V. Nunziata: One final statistic from Statistics Canada is the murder rate in Canada in 1990: 656 homicides which include murder, manslaughter and infanticide; 33 per cent of those victims were stabbed, 30 per cent were shot to death, and 21 per cent were beaten to death. Those were 1990 statistics and according to Statistics Canada that record will be exceeded this year.
I would like the member to comment. Obviously these statistics add to the public concern out there about our criminal justice system. Is he satisfied that the government has done anything meaningful in the area of criminal law reform?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The time for questions and comments has now expired. Resuming debate.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I will speak because it was agreed earlier that be two members would speak for each party. However, since everybody is talking, I will take advantage of this opportunity, but not because of the hon. member's invitation.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for York South-Weston.

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John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, the member has just indicated that there was an agreement that only two members would speak from this party. There was never any such agreement. Members on this side of the House wish to speak to this legislation because it is a priority with our constituents.
It may not be of concern to Conservative members but it is of concern to Liberal members of Parliament. That is why we are speaking. There is no such agreement to limit speakers to two.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I was sitting downstairs and I heard the member invite Alberta members to speak on this bill. Alberta members would rather see action than talking out of two sides of their mouths. What is happening here today is a filibuster. From the point of view of the Chamber it is a filibuster which will stop the legislation from coming into force if it continues by opposition members.
If they do not want the bill, they should have the courage to stand up and say it. If they do want the bill, they should quit talking so it can go to committee and we can do something about it.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would care to listen, he will get a lot of information, because I am going to talk to him about the bill, about inmates and about penitentiaries, because I have the privilege of having five penitentiaries in my riding, as I said earlier to one of our colleagues, and of course I am lucky in that I can come and go as I like. In fact, I have gone to prison often since I became a member of this House. However, when I go to prison, there are times when I talk to the inmates as well as to management and the guards. I have had the pleasure of going there several times with a number of ministers, and I can tell you that the subject of today's debate is the result of many years of consultation.
I can also inform hon. members that our people, perhaps unlike Parkdale, were consulted and said exactly what they wanted to say. I can tell you we have had our share of escapes and murderers and hostage takings, and if this bill could at least provide some security and
enhance the value of the system and restore the confidence of the people, it will be a success.
I also congratulate the government and the minister for the positive aspects that we added to this bill, but I still think there is room for improvement, because not enough is done for the victims of crime. Victims, unfortunately, are not as well protected as I would like, and I know this from past experience. Several times I have seen cases where people were accidentally caught up with inmates who probably were released at the wrong time, when they had a relapse. Earlier, hon. members were naming names and reading letters. Perhaps I may give an example of what happened during a prison escape when someone was taken hostage. Believe it or not, rifles and machine guns were used, and people were wounded. The inmates went straight to the hospital, which is practically next door to this detention centre, because I also have a hospital in my riding, the Cite de la [DOT]sante de Laval. The inmates were lucky to be able to go straight to the doctor. Can you imagine that my constituent, who was innocent, who was going to the Credit Union to deposit her paycheque, was taken hostage by these bandits-and hostage-takers are bandits-and when people asked what to do about the victim, the association in Quebec that takes care of victims, the IVAC, told her to take the bus to go to the hospital.
For the benefit of those who do not know the area, the bus at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul goes directly past the old penitentiary, right where the crime was committed. Imagine, the poor woman had to go past the scene of the crime! It just didn't make sense. However, thanks to Correctional Services, thanks to the people we put there and to Deputy Commissioner Jean-Claude Perron, who is to be commended for this decision, they boldly decided to give us a car because the victim's car had been seized by the police as evidence. Thanks to the deputy commissioner, we were able to get a car to take this woman to the hospital, because the association which is supposed to defend victims in Quebec was taking its own sweet time. Imagine, when you need medical care that is not very reassuring.
Another thing: if you have more centres, you get more accidents, and I could give a few examples. In Quebec, the Organisme pour la defense des detenus got exactly what they asked for. They said: "Let petty criminals out on
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parole, and keep people who need more attention inside and give them programs to put them on the right track". That is exactly what they have been asking since I went into politics, at least since 1984. Before that, it was the same, but nobody was listening. So that is exactly what they wanted.
I think this bill is reassuring for Canadians. I think there is not enough protection yet for victims, but it's a start, and victims are starting to have a say in what is happening. If they have any information for parole officers, that information will not be buried in a file, to help the case of those poor inmates who are to be released on parole.
The hon. member also mentioned that our Canadian system was not as bad as all that. I think it was the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park who said: I have someone who has a son in jail in the United States who would like to be transferred to Canada. I have many cases that are similar. You know why they want to be transferred to Canada? Because they are better off in Canada. They are treated better. Sentences are shorter and parole is more flexible. In some places in the United States, there is no parole at all, although I have no statistics to prove this.
I have also received a number of requests. I know that Canadians would rather be detained in Canada than in Florida. I know that by experience. There have been several cases. So it isn't as bad as all that. We do more than offer condoms in prison. Conditions are quite good. They are very well treated. I don't know whether I could say the same for the victims. When you see corrections officers bringing an inmate to hospital after a fight or an accident, and when you see them walking past 50 people who have been waiting for three hours-these are taxpayers who see these inmates. I agree, we cannot leave this inmate on a chair in front with two guards- but you can be certain, dear colleagues, that our telephone has not stopped ringing for three days with people saying: "I am a taxpayer. Why must I wait for three hours when a prisoner goes in directly? He does not even pay tax, he does not even pay his credit card". They may be right, but that is how the system is. Maybe that can be corrected some day too.
There is something else. My colleagues were just saying-I will not use up my 20 minutes, Mr. Speaker, I will try to be very brief, I just want to get some messages across. Correctional officers-
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An hon. member:: It's your bill!


Vincent Della Noce: My colleague says that it is our bill. Just because we are on this side does not necessarily mean that we always agree with everything. We call that being wimps. I am with the government. I am a team player, but in my riding there are responsible people who need my attention and who asked me to speak here. That is democracy. I will try to do so in accordance with the rules; if they like something, I will say so and if they don't, I will say so. I will try to work with the minister and with the government to improve it. I congratulated the minister. I congratulated the government. I say that it is good and inspires confidence. I also said that there was not enough for the victims. I do not defend criminals, I defend victims. I will never defend criminals. Where I come from, I have seen too many criminals, people who killed, raped, mutilated children and even threw them over the Jacques Cartier Bridge. One cannot defend such people. However, I am prepared to defend the victims who are alone and abandoned as if they were worthless.
I also want to say that we have people throughout Canada who do an outstanding job. Someone, I think it was the hon. member for Parkdale or York South- Weston, just told me that guards spend only eight hours a day in prison. Yes, that is true; it is only eight hours and not twenty-four. But it is eight hours every day. And those people do not do it just for the money. They are serving the country, Canada, and they deserve high praise from us because they work and have to put up with the insults and bad mood of those prisoners and cannot do anything about it because the law is the law and sometimes one just does not feel like answering back. So those people deserve a medal.
That is why when some of them retire from the penitentiaries in my riding, I am the first to go and give them a medal because they have served Canada for 30 and even 32 years. They have been paid for their service, I agree, but I assure you that they deserve a medal from Canada for spending 25 or 30 years with prisoners and criminals. I am proud to honour them when they leave their job.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I believe that society must do more. I also believe that the service, the police and journalists must do more. When there is a hostage taking too much is made of the one who got free but

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nothing is ever said about the poor victim or the children of the person who was killed by that man or woman-it is usually men-as in Laval, for example, where he had already killed or raped or mutilated and committed 10 to 15 crimes. And they are still given a chance, they are allowed out, although they are dangerous, to kill someone else. When will it end? Where does it stop, where do we draw the line?
That is the purpose of this bill. This bill tries to draw the line in the right place. Parolees are not as bad as all that. Their success rate is nearly 99.4 or 99.5 per cent-I checked the figures the other day. Sure, it is not easy to say who in advance, but those people do a darn good job. We must stop criticizing them. We must remember that it is not easy to judge a prisoner, a criminal who has spent 25 years behind bars, to try to make sense of his story and things did not always happen as they are reported.
Mr. Speaker, all I ask of committee members and all my colleagues is to try to do more, something to please everyone, especially taxpayers, the public, our fellow citizens who elected us and who want the most efficient system possible and to be safe. When you live in a place with 1,000 prisoners and hear about escapes or when something happens like a prison riot-we have seen that in Laval. We have had prison riots, crimes, jailbreaks, everything in Laval-I can tell you that it is not funny for society, for the people who live in the surrounding area.
My job is to make it as safe as possible for them and this bill will enable us to do so. I will keep on working to improve it even more and to think especially of the victims, which I recommend my colleagues also do.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Questions and comments. The hon. member for Parkdale-High Park.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased the hon. member did get up on behalf of his party. He did add some valuable contribution to the debate, but I think he missed the whole point of what I was trying to say. He was talking about the prisons in his riding.
That is not what I am talking about. Those people are under veiy close supervision. I know about the prisoners who have to go to the hospital. They go there under very close supervision.
I am talking about the people who leave the prison to be integrated into their communities. Let me give the hon. member an example. Again, this pertains to the Exodus Link in my riding over which there was so much controversy.
In 1988, Mr. Fredericks was hauled back to prison by federal Solicitor General James Kelleher because of a furore in Toronto over the presence of sex offenders in halfway houses. He was ultimately released on a mandatory supervision program and angrily refused to go back to a halfway house. Shortly afterward he abducted an 11-year old Brampton boy, sexually assaulted him in his apartment and then killed him.
This is what the community is afraid of and I want to ask the hon. member who is not listening how this bill will prevent these incidents. If it is mandatory supervision, mandatory means it is a must. He must be under constant supervision.
How did this offender, a former sex offender, under mandatory supervision go out and kill an 11-year old boy? That is what I am talking about, not the people who are in his riding under lock and key, under guard. I applaud the guards too. They are doing an excellent job.
This is what this bill is supposed to address.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I would like to answer my hon. colleague. Maybe my French was not very good, but I did speak about the person who came out and hugged the police after he killed his girlfriend and left the little kid alone. Nobody speaks about it. If the law existed as we propose to change it, these things would never happen.
I was ashamed to be from Laval when I saw this guy who got the whole city upset because he kept somebody inside who was dead for three days. When he came out with his sunglasses like a big shot, he hugged the policeman like a star. After one week we spoke about this guy. When he went inside the jail, he was a star because he kept the police on guard for three days.
That is what I am speaking about. This guy should never go out. If we had had the death penalty he would never have been out because he committed seven or eight crimes before he got out. He was on vacation, wearing sunglasses. That is what I am against.
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If I spoke about the inside as these people come in, I could give you some examples. I could give you dozens of examples. I was ashamed to be from Laval when I saw this man hugging the police and I wrote to the chief of police in my area and said that I could not accept this kind of thing because he is a criminal.
Do you know that since then nobody has spoken about the victim and the little boy who is all alone with no one to take care of him. I wish I could do something about it.
This law will do something but I wish we could do a little bit more. I said, and perhaps my French was not perfect, was that the first-time offender should not be there. We should give him a chance to go back on the right path.
I believe from my own experience that 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the young offenders who are inside could go out in a safe way.


Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the member with regard to the parole system. He bragged about what his government was doing and the changes it was making. I want to know if the member is proud of the fact that a former member for Kootenay East, a member of the government, whose only expertise to my knowledge was in the expertise of explosives and also sitting as a stock broker, after being defeated in this House was appointed to sit on the parole board in British Columbia.
I ask the member if he feels that that person, with those qualification, is the type of appointment that should be made. We have heard about the various appointments that are made, but the people in Kootenay East recognize this as patronage of the worst kind.
Also comments were made by the judicial system about the appointments of these parole officers because of their concern of the knowledge that these people have when they sit and serve on this board.
I want to ask the member if that is the proper qualification and if that is what he is proud of with regard to his government because the constituents in my riding have a great deal of concern about that.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to say to my friend that it is impossible to analyse one single
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case and it is impossible to have on this parole board all experienced chiefs of police.
I do not think they are all as experienced as they could be on that committee, especially the one I had in Laval who hugged the criminal who just killed maybe half a dozen times. It is not for me to judge, but the people who name these people are smart enough to know if they are doing a good job. Possibly my hon. colleague thinks only NDP people can do that job. I never put in doubt the NDP nomination of Ed Broadbent. Like the Prime Minister said in May, anyone is good as long as he has good information. This bill will provide the good information which was locked in a little file before. The victims who will be allowed to say a few words.


An hon. member:: Wrong.


Vincent Della Noce: It is not wrong. My hon. colleagues says wrong. Everybody will be allowed to say a few words and if the person in charge has good information, he will make a good decision.


Mr. Rob Nicholson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Chairman, I would like to compliment the member on his speech and ask him to comment a little bit about the process that we have here today.
Hon. members and those watching these proceedings could easily forget that we are talking about changes to the Parole Act, changes that will keep dangerous criminals serving their sentences longer.
The hon. member for York South-Weston is shaking his head. That is one of the problems that we have here this afternoon. They talk a great game here about worrying about the judicial and legal system. Now, when we could get a bill through here this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, you will notice one Liberal up after the next all making the same comments about how concerned they are about crime. Then when there is a bill on the Order Paper, something that will do something about dangerous criminals, a bill that puts the protection of the public paramount, what do they do? They want to extend the debate on and on and on.

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I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, and I will ask the hon. member to comment on this in a second, that one of the things we are not getting to as well by the members extending this debate, is the final reading of the Young Offenders Act. Again, it is a bill that puts a new test into the Young Offenders Act that makes it clear that the protection of the public is paramount.
The members of the Liberal Party bleating about how worried they are about crime are making it impossible here this afternoon to get both these fine bills before Parliament. That is why some of my colleagues on this side, because they are more responsible say: "Let's get on with this thing. Let's pass these two excellent pieces of legislation", which apparently are not going to be passed this afternoon because of the actions of the Liberal Party.
Could the hon. member comment on that?


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I am very upset when I see my colleague shaking his head. He did not even speak on the bill. He gave all the statistics about crimes in Toronto. I could give you, Mr. Speaker, those for Montreal. It is not better.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for York South-Weston.


John V. Nunziata: I would just like to correct the member. Perhaps you can, Mr. Speaker. He just indicated that I did not speak on the bill.
I do not know where he was this morning-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I apologize. It is not a point of order. The hon. member very briefly.


Vincent Della Noce: Mr. Speaker, I will conclude briefly and in very good French. I deeply regret what my colleagues are now doing; they are trying to put obstacles in our path when we present a bill so that people can regain confidence in Canada's prison system. That is what we want to do and I hope that all hon. members will co-operate with us.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I just listened with great care to the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice. I think he has made a very important observation and that is that members would like to discuss this bill.
I think what we would like to do on this side of the House is to make that opportunity available to members. The House is supposed to move on to the adjournment debate at 6.22 p.m. I would like to offer to members of the House that we continue sitting and debate this important issue this evening.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order. If this government had any credibility at all, we would be able to talk in a very constructive way about expediting this bill. I have waited patiently for seven long lonely years for some meaningful reform in the criminal law area.
This government introduced the bill-look how thick it is, Mr. Speaker, hundreds of pages-on October 8. The government has called for second reading today and it wants it passed this afternoon, a bill that has over 100 clauses in it.
Is that any way to legislate? That is pure nonsense. We take a responsible position on this side of the House and we want to debate the bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Does the parliamentary secretary have a motion?


Albert Glen Cooper: Yes, Mr. Speaker. If I understood the hon. member he said he wanted to debate the bill, so I assume that means we would sit beyond 6.22 p.m.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, we have debated this bill all day long. We have a number of other members who wish to speak to this bill. We will speak to this bill at 11 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning when the House resumes. We will be prepared to debate the bill all day tomorrow.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I am a bit confused here. I know the members would want to follow the traditions of the House, as I would.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: And being a bit of an expert, I want to ask, Mr. Speaker, if the parliamentary secretary is moving that we sit extra hours. I am confused here. Would he tell us-


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to move under Standing Order 26:
That this House continue to sit beyond the ordinary time of adjournment.


An hon. member:: A learned expert.
November 4, 1991


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Will those members who object to the motion please rise in their place.
More than 15 members having risen, pursuant to Standing Order 26(2) the motion is deemed to have been withdrawn.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to rise. I thought this was going to be dealt with this afternoon. I would have preferred that, but it has been sort of talked out by the hon. member over there. Obviously the Liberals want to keep debating.
I only have a couple of minutes, but I just want to add this. We are all concerned about crime. It does not matter where you live, whether you live in Laval or Edmonton or in Toronto, and especially in Toronto. I heard especially what the hon. member from Broadview-Greenwood was saying. I was listening carefully to what he was saying about people being afraid to go out, and so on. Quite frankly, we have similar problems. I am from Coquitlam in the suburbs of the greater Vancouver area. We have had murders there recently. We have had our share of the problems too. Canadians are concerned. As a matter of fact, as some members said, they are perhaps more concerned about this than the Constitution because they really feel this affects them.
The House really has to deal with it and the government has to deal with it. We support this bill. We think it is the beginning of dealing with very hard core offenders, but we want the government to commit itself to some procedure for effective rehabilitation.
We also want the government to be honest with the Canadian people. If you read The Toronto Star today, you see a big headline. The government has a law and order agenda. It wants to pass pretty well a bill a day to deal with all these matters.
As a matter of fact, the government has had the gun control bill. It has weakened it. It has had the Young Offenders Act bill here before the House for the last year. It had the mental/insanity provisions five years ago, and it only brought them forward because the court told them to do it. There are all sorts of other aspects that it has not brought forward.


Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member would not want to leave this on the record. He said that
Government Orders
the government has weakened the gun control bill. I believe that was a slip of the tongue, because in fact no such thing has happened to the gun control bill and I know he would not want to leave that on the record.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I only have a couple of minutes.
Here is how I suggest we deal with crime. I think we have to get tough on guns, especially hand guns in our major cities and we have to have another look, not only at this gun control bill we are going to debate this week, but maybe at another gun control bill later on.
We have to look at mental patients on the streets. What is happening in New York is starting to happen in our big cities. You mentioned High Park and Parkdale. I know that area of Toronto. If we dump a lot of mental patients on the street, we are going to have problems if we do not provide facilities for them. That is what is happening in the United States and it is starting to happen in Toronto and in other big cities.
We have to pay parole and probation officers properly. The federal government cannot just keep cutting back money to the provinces and expect good services. We have to get off all the political hacks and get a good parole board so that we do not just make it a nest for Conservative patronage.
We have to look at our judges and not make patronage appointments and we have to have this House of Commons or a new Senate look at the kinds of judges we want to have in this country.
Then we have to tackle poverty and provide jobs for people. We have to deal with illiteracy and child abuse and family violence. That is the way to tackle crime.
We can give all sorts of speeches in this House, and I am as guilty of it as anyone. Let us get tough on crime. I believe we should get tough on crime. All members believe we should get tough on crime, but let us look at the real causes of crime and let us tackle them and let us do it soon.


Mr. Boudria:: Mr. Speaker, a point of order was raised in this House earlier and on a point of order a motion under Standing Order 56 was moved. I believe that the Speaker recognized that motion as being valid. As a matter of fact, we voted on it.

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Adjournment Debate
The point I am bringing to the Speaker is that perhaps the Chair together with the Table officers could review whether that procedure was in order. It is my belief, Sir, that vote should not have been taken and that the motion was not in order because a motion to adjourn can be proposed at any time. The kind of motion we dealt with tonight can only be proposed when someone actually has the floor during debate.
I would ask the Chair to review that and report to the House tomorrow when it begins to sit at 11 a.m.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I acknowledge the comment by the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell and, if necessary, I will provide additional information subsequent to the ruling made this afternoon.

particular difficulties. I mentioned Lawn at that time and let me tell you why I did.
Lawn has 70 fishermen. One of them told me today that it is the worst year he had ever seen in the fishery in Lawn. Forty-five of those fishermen will not even qualify for unemployment insurance this year, plus about 70 plant workers in that community, a community which normally lands about two to three million pounds of fish and this year has landed 150,000 pounds.
I could mention another community, Lord's Cove, with 32 fishermen, 16 of whom will not qualify. One fisherman told me today that in his boat he has had less than $1,000 income over a four-month period from May to August. English Harbour East was saved by the lobsters. There were no groundfish, no mackerel and no cod. In Seal Cove, Fortune Bay, there were no ground-fish. It was saved by a bit of lump roe and some lobster. There was an unmitigated disaster all along just about every coast down there.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
This 10-42 syndrome we hear about, that those fishermen are supposed to be lazy and they work for 10 weeks so that they can get UI for 42 weeks, let me dispel that one more time.
[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Roger Simmons: Mr. Speaker, back in September I raised in the House a question of a report on the state of the inshore fishery which had been done by a former employee of the minister of fisheries, now working in his capacity with the fishermen's union and doing this report for the Industrial Adjustment Services Committee of that union.
The report found that the fishermen and the plant workers on the northeast coast and throughout Newfoundland were headed for one unmitigated disaster in terms of the fishery. At that time I appealed to the minister to bring in some kind of an aid package.
He subsequently did that. He called it an aid package. I raised the matter on several occasions, in particular on October 21, pointing out that many communities including the community of Lawn in my district were facing
I was in McCallum a week or so ago and I asked a fisherman how many weeks he had this year. He said: "Do you mean this year or the usual?" I said: "Well give me both." He said: "Usually I do not bother to draw UI at all. It is not worth my while because I get 43 or 44 stamps or weeks of insurable earnings and by the time they get around to applying them I am back working again. Sometimes I get two or three weeks UI a year and sometimes I do not bother to apply". I said: "How about this year?" He said: "I am scraping it to get 10 weeks". That is the difference down there.
Now the minister in his bravado said: "Anyone who can show a reasonable connection to the fishery or to being a plant worker is going to be assisted or my name is not John Carnell Crosbie". Maybe it is not when I tell the House the following. Just after he made that statement, he or his department issued a dictum wiping out, removing from qualification, a whole group of people on the west coast of Newfoundland, St. Georges Bay, St. Georges Bay South, Port aux Basques and the southwest tip of the island, and the Rose Blanch area. He removed the whole category of people who, heretofore, would have qualified because, under the minister's words, they
November 4, 1991

had a connection to the fishery, a very real connection. They had landed, in past seasons, millions of pounds.
What is his argument for removing them this year? He wants them to wait until the fisheries is over. He is saying to people down there now who do not have the money to buy groceries and who do not qualify for UI and have no source of income that he understands but: "Wait until the winter fishery is over. Would you wait until April because that winter fishery is, by law, January to the end of March".
The minister by his actions, by cutting off all those people, by changing the ground rules, is saying: "Wait another four or five months before you make the payment on the boat, before you make the payment on the mortgage on the house, before you pay on the car, before you buy the groceries, before you put clothes on the backs of your children". That is not good enough. I say to him, maybe his name is not John Camell Crosbie, maybe it is something else.
I had to go all the way to Roman mythology to find this one. I say to my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary, did he ever hear, and I am sure he has being an erudite, well educated man, of Janus Jemminus? I am sure he has. His modesty prevents him from saying so, but I am sure he has. Janus Jemminus is defined-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Order, please. Your time has expired.
Is there unanimous consent for the hon. member to continue?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Roger Simmons: Janus Jemminus, in Roman times, was always depicted as having a two-faced head, sometimes without a moustache, sometimes with a moustache, sometimes as having four faces. Perhaps his name is not John Carnell Crosbie. Whatever his name, I ask John or Janus Jemminus or whoever to do the right thing here and come to the aid of those people, the fishermen and the plant workers who, through no fault of their own, are facing the roughest winter ever and are looking to the minister to do something for them.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure we are all delighted to know who Janus Jemminus is. I
Adjournment Debate
am not sure the how hon. member invented this person or what history book he was studying.


Roger Simmons: Roman mythology.


Ross Belsher: It is Roman mythology, he says. It is mythology all right.
I know the hon. member opposite is very concerned about the total collapse of the fishery in many parts of the Atlantic area this past year, but I also want to remind the member once again that this government has been very concerned about responding to the people who are dependent on the fishery.
It was this spring that we responded to the ice program with the $18 million payouts for the people who could not get their gear into the water because of the ice and also because of the catch failure another program of $39.5 million was put into this and is being worked on right now. The people are applying for that right now.
This program will affect at least 10,000 fishermen and plant workers in Newfoundland, Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec and the lower north shore.
I might add that there is clearly a need to develop a long-term approach to income and employment problems of fishermen and plant workers. It is for this reason that the minister announced as part of the Atlantic Catch Failure Program that a task force will be appointed to address this issue and provide recommendations to government. We do not have the answers because it is a shame that year after year people have to depend upon the government to come in with a special program in order to elongate their weeks of coverage so that they can collect UI for the remainder of the year.
The Government of Canada is committed to those who depend upon the Atlantic fishing industry for their economic well-being, and the government is responding as quickly as possible in conjunction with the industry as well as the provinces involved.


THE ECONOMY
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, I want you to cast your mind back to some 10 years ago. That was a time of spiralling inflation, some 13 per cent, skyrocketing interest rates, 23 per cent, and double digit unemployment, 13 per cent. It was a frightening time, it

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Adjournment Debate
was a time that we have come to call "the great recession", the worst recession since the dirty thirties.
When our government took office in 1984 we did so on a platform of jobs, jobs, jobs, and we did take action. Interest rates fell, government expenditures were cut, Crown corporations were privatized, deregulation was put in place, a free trade agreement was signed, there was tax reform, all of which were aimed at getting the economy moving again, keeping it moving so that all Canadians could benefit. They did until last year when suddenly the economy started to slow down.
We were told that we were in for a mild recession, and that we were going to have a soft landing. The recession has been anything but mild and we have had anything but a soft landing.
Fortunately, although inflation went up, it did not go up as much as 10 years ago. Fortunately, although interest rates went up, they did not go up as much as 10 years ago. Unfortunately, again we have double digit unemployment. It is even greater in my own area, the greater Toronto area. Ten years ago in the greater Toronto area some 113,000 people lost their jobs, but within the last year, 178,000 people have lost their jobs in the greater metropolitan Toronto area. This has impacted on Toronto worse than it did in the early eighties.
What can be done to help the situation without increasing our deficit or our national debt?
I have suggested a few ways in which that can be done, ways to stimulate demand and create jobs. First of all, it could be done by reducing down payments on the purchase of a new home to 5 per cent as well as using the registered retirement savings plans for down payments on homes. I have also suggested that the Bank of Canada can help by reducing the differential between the Canadian and U.S. interest rates to bring down the value of the Canadian dollar and to let us be more competitive and sell more to the United States, our largest market.
According to the Labour Market Productivity Centre, a federal government agency, we are not competitive because our unit labour costs are too high. Our unit labour costs are made up of three things; hourly labour compensation labour productivity and exchange rates.
Two-fifths or 40 per cent of our unit labour costs relate to exchange rates. In the short run it is going to be easier to impact and change and reduce exchange rates than to make any changes in our hourly labour compensation or in our labour productivity.
Today the spread between the Canadian and the U.S. interest rates is close to 3 percentage points. From 1980 to 1988 it was only 1.92 percentage points and during the 1970s it was only 0.53 percentage points.
We can lower the differential, reduce the demand for Canadian dollars, reduce the value of our dollar and increase our sales of Canadian products and create jobs all without increasing the deficit or the national debt.
We are going to have to do that by narrowing the gap between those interest rates, the U.S. and Canadian interest rates. Do not let the parliamentary secretary or the minister tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to solve all our problems by lowering interest rates because without a job, no one is going to borrow money to buy a house or a car. No industry is going to invest unless they do.


Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member who has just spoken, I would like to remind him that it was back in 1990 that there was a difference in the interest rates of 565 basis points.
The Canadian dollar at that time was 84.6 cents. Today there is about a 290 basis point spread in the interest rates between the American and the Canadian dollar. These are the facts. You must deal with the facts as they are there. The Canadian dollar is now higher.
One thing about that is the Canadian dollar has been going up. Much to the chagrin of the people in Canada, and particularly the exporters, there are people in this House who say that we are propping the dollar up. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The very fact is that the Canadian dollar is being driven up because there is a demand for Canadian dollars. Changes have taken place in this world just in the last few months. The provinces also in the first six months of this year have been in the money markets and have borrowed over $10 billion. That is more than double the amount of what they had borrowed on the international market in the whole 1990s.
November 4, 1991

This is propping up our dollar. It is a message that the world financial community is sending to Canadians that their place is a safe haven for money. Money is something that is very scarce and it goes around. Yet this is the thing that is happening in our country now.


GREAT LAKES
Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow up on the question I asked in the House on June 4, 1991 concerning the Canadian government action, jointly with the United States, to protect the Great Lakes.
Let me begin by reminding the House of the significance of the Great Lakes. These contain 20 per cent of the world's fresh water supply, the largest reservoir of drinking water in the entire world. They are the major source of drinking water for more than 26 million people on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. If we include the St. Lawrence River as part of the Great Lakes basin, it is 40 million people.
Now the bad news. It is estimated that between 400 and 500 spills of hazardous substances occur into the Great Lakes every year. Toxic substances such as PCBs and DDTs have been linked to reproductive failure, population declines, developmental abnormalities and generational defects in fish and wildlife.
This summer's report of the International Joint Commission made it clear that the condition of the Great Lakes is a threat to the health of our children. It is producing infertility in adults. It is producing reproductive damage, poor verbal and memory skills in some 4-year olds and weakened immune systems.
Many of the scariest chemicals in the Great Lakes can be traced to one source, pulp and paper mills on the Great Lakes which use chlorine for bleaching. Along the St. Lawrence tributary rivers, and the Great Lakes themselves, 73 pulp and paper mills, out of the 150 in Canada, are discharging into those waterways. In Ontario alone nine mills are discharging 200,000 pounds a day of chlorinated organic substances into the waterways.
In the face of such alarming and well-known statistics, the government has still failed to announce a joint plan with the United States that was promised for last December, put off until March and in April postponed indefinitely. The goal is zero discharge.
Adjournment Debate
Even Lake Superior, a relatively pristine lake in the Great Lakes system, is still not protected to the extent it should be within the commitments that Canada has made under the international water quality agreement it has with the United States.
It is now September and the government has failed to protect the Great Lakes and other waterways in Canada, even from dioxins and furans, the first two substances it should be regulating under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act which was passed in 1988.
This week we heard the minister say that even though it has been proven that the entire effluent of chlorine used in pulp and paper mills is a toxic substance and he recognizes that, he will not regulate the effluent from pulp and paper mills using chlorine.
We have seen the loss of wetlands in the basin and now we have Great Lakes United going to the United Nations. This is a binational organization that is concerned about the protection and clean-up of the Great Lakes. They are saying that deadline after deadline under the international agreement between Canada and the United States has been missed. It is going to the United Nations to ask it to investigate. Surely it is time for the government to protect this international resource.


Mr. Lee Clark (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address what is a very, very important issue. I would agree with the hon. member when she talks about the importance of the Great Lakes. The importance of that body of water has been understood both by this government and her own party when they were in power with the implementation of some agreements that go back for some time.
More recently the present government has announced a number of initiatives which are extremely important and which will make a very significant contribution to both the clean-up of the Great Lakes and the prevention of further pollution in the future.
As I said in the House of Commons on June 4, 1991, when the hon. member asked the question, members on both sides of the House understand that this is a problem which has been building for decades and the reality is that there are no easy solutions, there are no quick fixes.

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Adjournment Debate
There are several things that have happened, Mr. Speaker, that I am sure you understand. But I think it is important to remind others who may be watching.
There is in fact, as you know, the formation of the Great Lakes action plan which has $125 million in place to assist with the clean-up of the Great Lakes.
The inclusion of the $110 million St. Lawrence Action Plan ought to be mentioned because that is essentially part of the same basin system.
More recently, there is the announcement in the green plan of the $25 million pollution prevention initiative. This is important because it will be addressing the problems of the future rather than trying to simply look at what has transpired in the past.
The hon. member speaks of co-operation with the United States. There was an announcement that came out of the meetings in Traverse City, Michigan on October 1, 1991, at which the Minister of the Environment was present with his counterpart from the United States. The announcement was of the Lake Superior binational action plan, I think this is important because there is a commitment in that plan for ensuring that the practices of the past are not followed in the future.
There is also some good news. I know my time is expired. Unfortunately, we only have two minutes. The nutrient loading in the lakes, which was such a problem in the 1960s and 1970s, has actually been reduced. We are making progress.


YUGOSLAVIA
John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, my comments arise out of a question I asked a month ago about the situation in Croatia. The situation, of course, has not changed or improved. It has become worse since the question was put in the House on October 8, 1991. The issues in Croatia continue to bedevil all of humanity who are concerned for human rights, for human life, for freedom and dignity. The Prime Minister in his answer to the question that I asked in the House said: "The Yugoslav army is absolutely out of control and has caused extraordinary damage both to the Serbs and Croats in Yugoslavia who have lived for some four or five decades in a state of peace and economic growth and prosperity in that country".
The people of Croatia in June voted 94 per cent in favour of independence. The Yugoslav army has refused
to recognize the validity of that vote and is using its armed might to move into Croatia and undermine the possibilities for the people of Croatia to have independence.
Unfortunately the world community has been powerless to prevent massacre, slaughter, innocent loss of life by innocent people, the destruction of some of the treasures of the world in Dubrovnik and there is no sign that I can see, and I hope the parliamentary secretary will be able to bring some news of hope, that there is some potential solution. We see almost weekly new announcements of cease-fires and nothing has happened.
There are three specifics that I asked the Prime Minister about on October 8 that I hope the parliamentary secretary can address in his reply to these comments. First, the question of humanitarian aid. The government did provide for some humanitarian aid through the International Red Cross, but reports out of Croatia say that humanitarian aid is not arriving in Croatia. I suggested at the time, and our party has put forward the proposition, supported by the Croatian Canadian leadership in this country that the aid should be routed through Slovania.
I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary to say whether any effort has been made by the Canadian government to route humanitarian aid through Slovania. I would like to ask whether any effort has been made to increase the aid from the amount announced. I think it was $250,000. Clearly the situation is they are heading into winter and the situation is going to be desperate for hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have relatives here.
The second point I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary about is economic sanctions and what has happened about economic sanctions. We had today in respect of Haiti an announcement of economic sanctions imposed there. The government was quick to support economic sanctions against Iraq. What is happening about economic sanctions?
The third question I would like to ask is what diplomatic initiatives is Canada taking within these days? We know about the diplomatic initiatives before and we fully support that. We know the strong statements the Prime Minister has made on this issue. We know the initiatives the government took a while back to have the matter

raised at the United Nations. What I would like to know is what is happening now when the situation is desperate.
I would like to see what initiatives the government is taking in recent days and proposes to take in the days ahead to try to head off further catastrophe and to give some hope to the people of Croatia.


Mr. Andre Plourde (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I may point out first of all that since the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis, Canada has spoken out firmly against the excessive use of force as reflected in the actions of the federal Yugoslav army in Slovenia and subsequently in Croatia.
Since June 27 this year, our government has criticized the use of the Yugoslav armed forces. In recent weeks, according to all observers, the army has reacted with a force out of all proportion to the acts of aggression committed against the army. Elowever, we must not assume that all parties have been guilty of breaking the many cease-fire agreements to which they were committed.
We have indicated on several occasions that strict and unconditional observance of cease-fire agreements is an essential condition for seeking a negotiated settlement. Canada still believes a comprehensive solution to the crisis is possible. I am referring to the twin track approach adopted by Serbia and Croatia on October 4. We believe that concentrating on a single aspect of the problem, such as withdrawal of federal forces, is not likely to be helpful in reaching a comprehensive settlement. An agreement between the Yugoslav republics should involve a set of guarantees including protection of human rights and minority rights and respect for the principles of international law.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs has already announced publicly that Canada was prepared to join the international community in imposing economic measures on those parties that obstructed the peace process. To be effective, such measures must be taken in close co-operation with all trading partners of the parties involved. Since Canada's economic ties with Yugoslavia are relatively modest, we can only act in consultation with our European partners, preferably under the aegis of the UN Security Council.
Adjournment Debate
If the House gives its unanimous consent, I would like 30 seconds to deal with a question that was raised by the hon. member with respect to Canada's contribution.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


André Plourde: Economic sanctions should only be applied if political negotiations fail. They must be imposed carefully to ensure that they have the desired impact, which in a federate country in that part of the world is not assured.
As you know, Canada contributed $250,000 to the International Committee of the Red Cross for Yugoslavia. We believe that the Red Cross is respected by all for its impartiality in providing services to those in greatest need. The Red Cross with its six local offices in Croatia and Serbia is the best way to send our humanitarian aid. We will keep in touch with the ICRC and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to assess their needs.


ALGOMA STEEL
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, on October 7, 1991, I asked a question that I think I have asked three or four times. I have not received the answer in Question Period. Perhaps in adjournment proceedings the parliamentary secretary will give more specifics, so I am looking forward to the response.
My question is with regard to the Canadian steel industry that everyone agrees is certainly at peril. It is the cornerstone of any country's manufacturing and everyone agrees that the steel industry in Canada is at peril.
I have spoken, no doubt, regionally and parochially about Algoma Steel at length, but also recognizing that Sysco Steel in Nova Scotia is about to close or possibly it shall close, and most of the other major steel producers in Canada are losing money. They are losing millions of dollars and in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars.
For one year now at Algoma the problem has been very real. It is a crisis that continues. I do not know if the community can withstand the crisis on an ongoing basis. We have lived from deadline to deadline, extension to extension. The last time we made a request to the federal government was for a $10 million loan guarantee. At that time, they waited and waited and spoke and said we are talking to players. They talked it out and there was no $10 million loan guarantee.

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This time we are again on a deadline. We are looking at December 16, an extension, to take a look at the restructuring of Algoma. We all recognize and we all know that there will be less people working at Algoma. I have asked the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology on numerous occasions as well as his senior staff what the federal government is prepared to do. It has suggested that it is still talking with all of the players and it is waiting yet again until the final proposal comes forward.
It is difficult for a community to stand on the edge for one year, and December 16 is precariously near the Christmas season. We would like some specifics from the government. I know it cannot say it will address 2,000 people for retraining and it will address 575 older working people under the older workers adjustments program, but it can do more than just say it will continue to talk with the players and it will help where it can help when the restructuring is in place.
I ask the parliamentary secretary to respond on behalf of the minister. Can he give us some specifics? Forget the generalities now and say that, yes, we are prepared to get involved in tax credits so that employees may buy out an ailing company. Just follow the Ontario government lead.
Will the government recognize the older workers adjustment package and introduce some flexibility?
I met with the Minister of Labour and he suggested that some flexibility is possible.
Will the government offer any assistance in some pension enhancement so that we can get older workers to step aside for younger workers so that the community is not really decimated with all of the young families forced to relocate?
I ask the parliamentary secretary if he can give us any indication, any solace, that there are some definite specifics in mind that the federal government is considering.


Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: November 4, 1991

My riding is an iron ore producing riding. We ship large quantities of iron ore to the Canadian steel industry. I have the same concern he has because when the steel industry goes down the shipment of iron ore goes down also.
I would like to assure my hon. colleague that we on this side are as concerned as he is about the steel industry and the iron ore mining industry and we will try
Adjournment Debate
to do everything possible to alleviate the hardships caused to the workers and the community. [Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Therefore the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.58 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, November 5, 1991