1991-04-09

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Frank Oberle (Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour today to table, in both official languages, the first annual report to Parliament on the state of forestry in Canada.
In keeping with the commitment inherent in the new Forestry Act to monitor and to protect our environment, of which our forests are such an essential component, this report establishes a new era of national accountability for forest management and resources.
In receiving this document, Mr. Speaker, you will notice that the current economic status of the health of the forests are presented in a form which is easy to understand and which will provide the general public a basis on which to form an opinion so they can participate in the decision-making process regarding our forests in the future.


PETITIONS
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 28 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to present a petition on behalf of a large number of constituents from Kamloops and surrounding communities in British Columbia.
The petitioners state that whereas the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and private broadcasting stations are required by the Canadian Broadcasting Act to provide access to their broadcasting facilities to all Canadian citizens on an equitable and non-discriminatory basis, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has failed to act in good faith on behalf of three separate requests made by a Canadian citizen to have his views directed and presented over its provincial and national broadcasting facilities in direct context, the petitioners then are calling upon the Government of Canada to demand that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and all private broadcasting stations in Canada provide access to their broadcasting facilities to all Canadian citizens, said access to be in direct context.


Mr. Rex Crawford (Kent):: Mr. Speaker, once again I have the honour to rise in the House and present a petition on behalf of the young farmers of Lambton County who state that our Canadian citizens are being polluted by the ever-increasing automotive emissions and whereas ethanol can be produced from com, wheat, and barley and is a renewable resource, plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
They state that a minimum 3.2 per cent oxygen content in gasoline fuels should be mandatory and MMT should be banned.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and the privilege to present a petition signed by approximately 43 residents of Edmonton, Kingston, Calgary, Surrey, Stoney Plain, and Victoria. They have all petitioned Parliament to put Canada back on track and indicate their support for the NDP's plan to restore VIA Rail.
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April 9, 1991


Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and privilege today to present two petitions, both of which have been cleared through the clerk of petitions pursuant to Standing Order 36.
The first petition is signed by 32 residents, principally from British Columbia but from other points as well. It calls on Parliament to reject the goods and services tax and to ensure that if and when there is broad public consensus on a sales tax measure to replace the manufacturers' sales tax, this reform not be an opportunity for the government to impose a massive tax grab. The point of course is that the opposition of the Canadian people to the goods and services tax has in no way diminished.


Ross Harvey: Mr. Speaker, my second petition which is signed by 120 residents, principally of Edmonton, calls on the House and I quote from the petition: "We need Petro-Canada to remain 100 per cent Canadian thereby keeping the money it makes in Canada". The petitioners call on the House to defeat or repeal, which would be the more appropriate choice at this point, Bill C-84, an act respecting the privatization of the National Petroleum Company of Canada, and keep Petro-Canada as a Crown corporation acting in the best interests of all Canadians.


Mr. Rene Soetens (Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, it is my pleasure to present this petition from a number of constituents in my riding. In the petition, they comment that they know the Senate was established in 1867 to represent the regions of Canada and to provide a medium for sober second thought and, whereas the Senate now performs no useful function, is completely partisan and has proven, after many efforts, to be impossible to reform, the petitioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to abolish the Senate outright.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, April 8, consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19129) and the amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156).
Mr. Benno Friesen (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada)):: Mr. Speaker, you will recall at the close of debate yesterday, there was an exchange between myself and the member for Winnipeg Transco-na. I had agreed that I would take his questions and do my best to answer them today. I think there was unanimous consent yesterday for me to do that. If there is unanimous consent, I would be prepared to do that.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Do hon. members give unanimous consent to extend questions and comments period?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by prefacing my remarks with something I had intended to say yesterday. I had intended to mention of the good work done by a committee of the House in 1982-83, a committee headed by Tom Lefebvre who is now a senator in the other place. It was a committee on parliamentary reform and did some very good work. Among other things, it established a firm calendar to operate under and it got rid of evening sittings of the
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House. Both of those were very important to us. There was resistance to that change, but he did it. The committee persevered, the House accepted it and it has been good.
I want to make a point to my friend from Winnipeg Transcona. Not all of the recommendations of that particular committee were accepted, nor were all of the recommendations of the McGrath Commission accepted. Every time committees like this meet and bring proposals forward, some of them get accepted and there is a general trend line of improvement of the way the House operates.
I pay tribute to the Tom Lefebvre committee as well as the McGrath commission. I point out that we resisted change. Allan MacEachen, who was House Leader at the time, certainly resisted it, not because he was opposed to change, but because he would have to learn the rules all over again. He is like some lawyers; they are all in favour of legal reform until they realize they have to learn new statute law and build new case law. They then lose their zest for legal reform.
I want to make that point, sir. The member for Winnipeg Transcona was asking about when the government does things that are not part of the campaign promises. That is a legitimate question. He could have used better examples. He mentioned GST and free trade. Those were both prominent in the campaigns. The 1987 white paper on taxation, which was tabled in June of 1987, was debated for 15 months before we went into the campaign and debated during the campaign. Those people who were opposed to the GST are now helping the public to believe that the government had no mandate to bring it in. For that they have to answer to themselves because they are not being honest with the public on this.
There was plenty of debate and, believe me, I was on the griddle many a time on the campaign trail concerning it. Mike Cassidy, the former member from Ottawa Centre, spoke on that. For people who are opposed to the GST, to help perpetuate the notion that there was no mandate, are being a little bit politically dishonest. I need to say nothing about the free trade debate. However, there are cases that the member for Winnipeg could have mentioned. For example, issues come forward after the campaign is over, after the government is in office, which could not have been anticipated during the campaign. I think there is only one thing for the opposition to do and that is to make sure that the government, when it
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attacks and tackles those issues, does it within the confines of its own philosophy.
For a government like ours to promote decentralization and privatization and then bring in a bill that would create new Crown corporations would be a little bit contradictory. I think we would be rightfully taken to task for that. So they need to keep us consistent with our philosophy. That is fair.
There is another issue that is more difficult to handle, and that is when a political party allows its real agenda to be hidden during a campaign. That is a problem. The public needs to protect the whole democratic process of an election campaign by grilling each of the parties on what its real agenda is. That is the purpose of an election campaign. We have to get away from allowing the party hacks of all parties determining the campaign by way of slogans rather than substance. That is where democracy begins. We must not be bamboozled in any campaign by the superficial sloganeering.
The second question the member for Winnipeg asked was about the whole committee process. He said: "Would it not be better when the McGrath commission asked that committees deal with a process that would allow us to deal in principle and substance debated beforehand". He is right. He is absolutely right.


An hon. member:: This is a speech.


Benno Friesen: Well, I am simply trying to deal with his questions and I have done it. When we dealt with the Canada Pension Plan bill, the minister of health at that time submitted the bill in principle. It was debated outside the House. It was dealt with in committee and brought back to House and dealt with in one day. We need to do more of that. We did it with the gun control legislation and it works. We need to do more of that.
Third, the member asked about efficiency. I would agree with him that efficiency is bad if it deteriorates the role and the importance of the private member. It is good if efficiency enhances the role of the private member.
He asked about the staffing of committees and the role of parliamentary secretaries and the whips in bringing about substitutions. Both of those, I would submit to my friend, are problems within a caucus and the membership of the House itself. We make the system work or we do not. The whips have a job to do to make sure that their party is properly represented in committee. If we as members do not fulfil our obligations to sit in committees when we are challenged to do so, when we have signed up for it, then that system falls apart and the whip

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gets powers we do not want him to have. It is up to us to make the system work.
Finally, I would simply say that those committees that are aggressive get the resources they need to do the work and the rooms they need to do the work. Those that are passive and take direction lose that. Those that give direction get the resources and the committee rooms they want.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to participate in this debate today. I suggest in some ways it is a very important debate in this House, because it deals with the changes the government has proposed to our rules.
I want to say at the outset that I find the government's method of proceeding in this way to be contrary to the traditions of this House. My experience is that in most cases where substantial changes to the rules have been proposed, the government has dealt through a committee of the House and got a report from the committee.
I can go back to the last major rule changes, first of all rising out of the McGrath committee report, which are the most recent, but they go back to 1969 when the changes were made that provided for the time allocation rules of this House.
The government acted first through a committee of the House which considered the proposed changes, made a report, and the government then acted on the report. If you check the historical precedent in 1969, you will see the government in fact moved a motion, but that was simply to the same effect as the committee's report, and that motion was moved and proposed in the House after the committee had completed a detailed study of the rules.
This time we have had the government say in House leaders' meetings that it had changes it would like to propose to the rules; here they are; tell us what you think. I submit that it is contrary to the past practice of this House. It has denied the opportunity for public input on the changes that are being proposed which fundamentally affect the way this House operates. This House is, after all, the public forum of this country where
citizens have the right to express their views through their representatives and, on occasion directly, in the committees.
The government is changing the rules of the game to suit its own political purposes. We in the opposition object to that change. The hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond, the House leader for the Official Opposition, detailed our objections to those rules very carefully yesterday.
I am not going to review the same ground, but I do want to make a comment on the general approach of the government and suggest that it has been wrong-headed from the start on this issue.
Having said that, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Peace River for the active role he played in the negotiation process that led to the resolution that was tabled in the House. I was happy to work with him in the course of those negotiations. I acknowledge that some of the very sensible suggestions that were put forward from this side were accepted by him and included in the rules. He amended some of the government's original proposals to make them better in my view for all Canadians, and also more palatable for the members of the opposition parties in this House.
I submit that in the end, he was unable or unwilling to go far enough in making changes to the proposals. We have therefore moved an amendment to those rules to delete the particularly odious provisions that are included in the package that was tabled before the House. I recognize the efforts he made and I am sorry that we are unable to achieve more agreement. Had there been an opportunity for committee discussion on these rule changes, I believe that greater agreement would have been obtained on all sides. I am sorry that has not taken place. I am sorry it was not agreeable to him and to his superior, the government House leader, that in fact a reference on this motion be made to a committee so that detailed study could proceed in that body.
The essential thrust of these rule changes is to limit debate in this House. The rules seek to do it in two ways, first, by making the House sit less, and second, by streamlining-and I use the word advisedly-the closure rules.
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I am not going to run through all of the rule changes in detail, but the amendment we have moved, that deletes a series of the proposed changes, deletes the new scheduling arrangements. It deletes the provision in the rules proposed that limits to 15 minutes the opportunity to present petitions from the people of Canada in this House. We deleted the changes in the closure rule that restrict the hours of debate by a further three hours after closure has been imposed. It is one of the most Draconian closure rules in the British Commonwealth, and yet the government is seeking to cut off another three hours of debate.
We have objected to the further change in the time allocation rules which will save the government another day of debate and will enable it to force through legislation in something like five days in this House, not counting first reading. We have objected to the reductions and limitations on budget and throne speech debates and on borrowing bills. That is the thrust of the amendment that we have moved. We have suggested that all of those rather odious provisions be stricken from the package that the government has put before this House.
In some ways I suppose it is not surprising that the opposition has taken this view, but I must say I was shocked to hear the government House leader, or read of the government House leader's comments in respect of the rule changes the other day. In his speech yesterday afternoon, he was protesting the outrageous comments of the hon. member for Kamloops. Well, I think everyone in this House knows that the hon. member for Kamloops has a tendency to exaggerate, a tendency to hyperbole, and tends to blow things out of proportion. In other words, I think making a mountain out of a molehill is a commonplace for the hon. member for Kamloops, and I think everybody here knows that. Having said that, the government House leader I thought protested too much yesterday, especially having regard to what he said in the Globe and Mail on March 23.1 would like to quote the government House leader. I quote the article by Susan Delacourt:
Mr. Andre says the opposition's planned fight against the rule changes is just for the sake of appearances, since the three party leaders have been actively negotiating the changes since December.
I presume he meant by that that just because you have been negotiating means you somehow agree. I think the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond in his very able speech yesterday made it very clear that we did
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not agree. This is pure pie in the sky rubbish coming from the government House leader. He ought to know better. He went on to say:
"They will battle for show, but they're glad we're going ahead with it," he said. The government hopes to have the changes approved by the time the Commons adjourns on Wednesday,-
That was of course several weeks ago:
-but is prepared to have MPs come back on April 8 if more time is needed to get approval."
Since we only started the debate yesterday, it is obvious that more time is in fact needed.
For the government House leader, having accused the member for Kamloops of being unfair in labelling these changes as Fascist or dictatorial, to suggest that somehow we are opposing these for the purpose of show is a bit far-fetched. In fact, I suggest that it was a most improper suggestion. He ought not to have made it. We are not opposing these for show. We are opposing these because we believe in practice and in theory that the changes are bad.
We believe that this country functions best when it has a strong and effective opposition. In fact, that was the view of the Conservative Party until very recently when its ideas of Parliament and its role and its importance changed dramatically. I am going to deal with what I think are the reasons for those changes a little later in my speech, but I want to talk first about their attitude to the importance of opposition, which they have done so well for so many years in Canada, particularly throughout this century.
After all, it is only since 1984 that we have had any Conservative government hold office for any length of time in the course of this century, since Borden's government collapsed in 1921. Nevertheless, their role as an effective opposition is well known. Now, having found that government is less comfortable, they have decided that perhaps oppositions should be muzzled and controlled. That is the purpose of the rule changes that are before us today.
I would like to read a quotation from the book, the leading work I suggest, on the Parliament of Canada by Charles Edward Selwyn Franks, one of my distinguished constituents, and a good friend of mine, and a former professor of mine, who wrote in his book, The Parliament of Canada, on page 5 the following about the functions of Parliament. I will not detail the first four, which I believe the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond in

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his very able speech yesterday mentioned. I will simply read the other two. He said this:
There are two further functions of parliament which are so important that they deserve to be identified in their own right, though they might also be subsumed under the general rubric of making a government work. The first of these is the function of parliament as a recruiting and training ground for political leaders; the second is the function of political communication, where the processes of Parliamentaiy discussion, in Bagehot's terms, express the mind of the people, teach society, and inform both government and citizen of grievances and problems.
That exposition of the importance of an opposition in Parliament to inform the people and to express their grievances in Parliament is a deep rooted one in the British parliamentary tradition. Over the years governments have sought to curtail the rights of oppositions to present grievances and to argue their case. Governments resent oppositions that look like a government in waiting because it is perceived that all the weaknesses of the government are shown up by a skilful and competent opposition.
What this government is facing in this House is exactly that, a skilful and competent opposition. It is suffering in the polls as a result of that fact and so it is seeking to close down Parliament, shut the opposition up so it cannot present itself as a reasonable, sensible and viable alternative.
If any greater authority on the role of an opposition is needed, I do not think I could find one, other than looking beyond perhaps the most famous of all opposition leaders in this century, Mr. Diefenbaker.
He used to lead hon. members opposite when he was Prime Minister, but he was better known as Leader of the Opposition. He was a disastrous Prime Minister, but as Leader of the Opposition, everyone acknowledged his effectiveness.
I am sure that Mr. Stanfield would acknowledge his effectiveness because throughout the years that that gentleman had the honour of leading the Conservative Party of Canada, he was constantly overshadowed by the former leader, Mr. Diefenbaker.
I would like to quote from a little work called "John G. Diefenbaker: Those Things We Treasure". It is a little
book of his speeches. The unfortunate thing about the book is that it does not give the source. It is just a selection of speeches on freedom and in defence of our parliamentaiy heritage published by MacMillan of Canada.
I am sorry that it does not give the source because I am sure that the speeches were delivered in important places and would add weight to the veracity of the statements contained in them.


Mr. Dick:: Are you filling in time?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I see the hon. member for Lanark-Car-leton is waking up. I am glad he is enjoying my speech.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Are you filling in time?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I am filling in a good deal of time. If the hon. member would pay attention to it, I think he would find that he might change this resolution and realize what a mistake the government is making in proceeding this way.
I will read from page 5 of the little work: "On the Role of an Opposition". I quote:
Only a strong and alert opposition can hope to check and control the excessive powers contrary to the Constitution that may be assumed or conferred upon governmental administration, the so-called bureaucracy.
Only an alert opposition can prevent the short-cuts through democratic procedures that cabinet ministers and bureaucrats frequently find attractive. It is only the opposition, functioning as a recognized part of parliamentary proceedings, that stands opposed to the degeneration of the governmental system into a form of arbitrary direction of public affairs by the executive and the bureaucracy.
Without it, minorities woul stand unprotected. Freedom would wither. Individual liberty would be in jeopardy. Unwarranted and oppressive invasion of private rights would grow unchecked.
Without an effective opposition, the administration in office could and would carry on the task of running the country under circumstances identical with the totalitarian one-party state. To some, this may seem an efficient way of running the country, but the first victim under such a regime as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini demonstrated is freedom itself.
Without an opposition, it is not too much to say the parliamentary system of government would fail in its primary task of protecting the rights of individuals and minorities, and of ensuring freedom and democracy. In the parliamentary system, an opposition is as necessary as the cabinet itself. One without the other would mean tyranny or chaos.
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It is commonplace that governments view an effective opposition as an obstruction. That is a view that is too often and too lightly taken up by unthinking critics of Parliament. An opposition that discharges its parliamentary responsibilities may appear in the superficial view to be obstructionist.
Extended opposition means lengthy debate. It was the British Labour Party chairman, Professor Harold Laski, who wrote that the alternative to the talking shop is the concentration camp.
I suggest that these words of the former Leader of the Conservative Party, the former Prime Minister of Canada and a distinguished Leader of the Opposition, are words that the government should be paying attention to.
It should follow the advice contained in Mr. Diefen-baker's words and heed them. I quote again from his works, on page 36 of this book:
Professor Ivor Jennings, the great English authority on Parliament said, and rightly, that the function of Parliament is not to govern but to criticize, to modify government policy and to educate public opinion.
To those who say that Parliament should be turning out legislation in quantify, my answer is that its mission is freedom and the assurance that all the people shall receive justice. It is not a slot machine into which one drops a slug to see the legislation come out.
I suggest that this government takes the attitude that Parliament is a sausage machine or a slot machine into which one drops a slug and watches legislation come out. The evidence of that is manifold throughout the list of changes that it has proposed to the Standing Orders.
I could quote further from the book, but like many of Mr. Diefenbaker's speeches, it is very repetitious.
I do commend hon. members, though, to read the work. I think they will find that instead of sitting there supporting this resolution they will stand up and admit that they are wrong, make changes in it and agree to the amendment that we have proposed in this House.
I would like to go back in time to 1969, because one of the changes this government is proposing to the Standing Orders is a change to the time allocation rules. Time allocation rules were brought in in this House in 1969 by the then Liberal government over the profound objections of the opposition. The hon. member for Peace River can correct me if I am wrong, but in 1969 there was no member in this House sitting on the Conservative benches who is currently sitting here. I believe all have moved on to greater things. Sorry, the hon. member for Annapolis Valley-Hants was here. He is now an independent member. I can see he recanted from his views and has moved on to greater things. The government
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finally used closure to get these rules through, after 12 days of debate. After 12 days of debate. I want to point that out to the parliamentary secretary. I can assure him that if closure is applied on this debate, he will hear about the 12 days of debate that went on in 1969. We are quite prepared to debate these for 12 days, I can assure the hon. member.
Pardon? The hon. member asks how many hours a day. I will get the information and check, but I assure him that it was very similar to the hours of sitting that we now have. Because, of course, there were night sittings in those days and they sat late and worked at night. Oh, this is a phoney point of order.


Mr. Hawkes:: Point of order. Just on behalf of the government, we accept his offer to extend the sitting this evening so that more debate can occur, and I hope the unanimous feeling exists in the House.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's kind intervention. He knows it wasn't a point of order; it was just an attempt to disrupt my speech.
I wanted to read from Mr. Diefenbaker's speech on the occasion of the debate on these rule changes. What happened was that Mr. Diefenbaker and the members of his party-and at another time I may quote some of the other members-but the changes that were brought in by the time allocation motion were said to be a total disaster for Parliament. The Conservative Party at that time took the view that this was going to destroy the institution. We all know that somehow Parliament survived those changes and the rule has been used from time to time, although not extensively.
What Mr. Diefenbaker said on that occasion was this: "I ask this of the ministers-and I am faced by a galaxy of two, two ministers sitting across the corridor when Parliament is discussing a matter that, if carried into effect, will be the death sentence of this institution." I see I have one so he doubled that.
He went on to say: "They sit and they smirk." This is what Mr. Diefenbaker said about the attitude of the government to the rule changes that the government was proposing and that, in fact, have been used and adopted in this country for many years. This government, which used to say this was such a disaster, is now proposing to reduce the time available to members to discuss rule changes, even under the present time allocation rules. It is cutting by one day the time available for debate at

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report and third reading stage as a result of these changes.
The hon. member looks surprised. Read the rules. It cuts it by 24 hours. I say that it is a shocking abuse of the government's authority in this House.
Why is the government flying in the face of these historical principles that give the opposition an opportunity to oppose?
I see that my time has run out, Mr. Speaker, so I am going to have to answer that question myself, either in questions and comments or in my next speech on the subamendment that I expect will be moved later.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Ten minutes, questions and comments period. The hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley.


Benno Friesen: I would just like to ask the member, who understands rules and procedure very well, why he chose to give us a history lesson instead of dealing with the technical difficulties he sees in the rule changes. Why would he do that when we are debating rule changes, and he does not deal with that?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond gave an extremely lucid and very clear exposition on the technical difficulties with the rule changes. Perhaps the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley did not understand when I said in my speech that I was not going to traverse the same territory he had. I have tried to explain the thrust of the the very technical rules. I did give a list that we are objecting to in our amendment. They are all being objected to because they cut the time available to members of the opposition to speak in this House and for this House to work through three methods: By shortening the times of sittings; by reducing the number of sitting days by about 41; and by reducing the number of days available to the opposition to debate the matters it chooses. There are five days taken away from us as supply days. There are two days taken away from the debate in reply to the speech from the throne, and there are two days taken off the budget debate. In addition to
that there is a two-day limitation on second reading of the borrowing bill.
All those are effectively opposition days. They are days when the opposition can choose to move amendments and debate subjects of its choosing, not subjects dictated by government order and decree.
What I am saying to the hon. member-he may have missed this in the early part of my remarks-is that I was not going to go through the technical aspects of it. I am dealing with the question of general fairness.
While I am on my feet I will tell him why I think the government has changed its mind on this. In 1984 throughout the campaign the government kept saying how it was going to change the rules of Parliament, reform Parliament, and make it a better institution. It did make some changes. Now it is going back on all that. As the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond pointed out yesterday these changes are not along the lines of the McGrath reforms. They are retrograde steps in most cases and the government has found that its members must stay in Ottawa now. When they were in opposition for 50 years before 1984, with the odd break, they found they could run back and forth to their ridings all the time. Now they have to be here to maintain their majority otherwise they would get defeated in this House and there would be an election in which they would all lose.
When you are at 12 per cent in the polls you do not keep many seats. Even the hon. member for Peace River knows-and he must be quaking in his boots-that he would lose his riding if there were an election tomorrow. So they all stay in Ottawa.
They are down in the polls and they say: "Boy, if we could only get to our ridings we could get up in the polls". They will not because the policies they are pursuing are so bad they cause them to be down in the polls. It is not their presence in Ottawa. It is because their policies are so terrible.
They say: "Well, if we could go out and sell the policies across the country, if we could get out around Canada and tell Canadians what a great job we are doing, they
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might believe us and maybe we would go up in the polls". They will not. They are going down, and they are staying down, because their policies are so rotten.
We are here exposing those policies day after day and it makes them nervous. So they say: "We do not want our bad policies exposed. We want to spend the time in our ridings instead where at least we can commiserate with the misery we have inflicted on Canadians with our disastrous policies of free trade, GST, high interest rates and all that sort of stuff. Let us shut Parliament down; let us curtail debate; let us limit the right of the opposition to raise subjects of interest. Then we will be all right. Then we will go up in the polls". That is the purpose of these rule changes. That is why they are being done now. Instead of in 1984 or in 1989, they are being brought in in 1991 because they know an election is around the comer. They see how far down they are in the polls and they say: " We have to salvage something from the wreckage of six years of disastrous government."


Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, I certainly listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. member from Kingston and the Islands, and I also watched on television the interesting exchange by the member for Winnipeg-Bird's Hill and the member for Surrey-White Rock. I must say that did get more into the atmosphere of debate on something that is pretty important. Those are the rules of this House.
I did subtly remind the former speaker-I have to confess I was here-when we had the last major rules changes in 1969. I think that is when Thumper Macdonald, our present high commissioner in London, got the nickname Thumper. We did have that long debate; it went into the summertime. There were many hours of debate; morning, noon, and night. Then finally the government invoked closure to amend the rules in a more fundamental way than I perceive in these changes.
I have other things I would like to say at some time but I was very interested in the references made by the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. I was here in the House during his leader's speech which was certainly lengthy and did cover points in an arresting way. Frankly I think the opposition is really off base on a lot of its concerns. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands blessed in a government role, would say the same thing the Parliamentary Secretary to the House leader and the member for Peace River would say. I shudder and shake to think what a fellow called Erik Nielsen would do if he
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were in this House regarding these rules in view of some of the debates we have had on minor rules changes.
You get it both ways, but frankly it depends where you sit.
I am very interested as an independent member, and frankly there are going to be more, regardless of the whole thrust of the Elections Act which does not allow independent members to collect money in the same way that members of registered parties collect money. That is going to involve an interesting law suit in the federal court to in effect have an injunction against any collections unless there is a change. I hope to question the Government House Leader in Question Period today on that. There are so many things.
These rules are for the recognized parties and the role of an independent is very remote to say the least. We have heard a lot about the tentative agreements or all the preliminary discussions. In the motion that the loyal opposition filed, I noticed that it does not refer to paragraph 20.
My direct question to the member for Kingston and the Islands, who was involved in these discussions is: Was his party in agreement with clause 20? The very fundamental change in the question of unanimous consent goes out the window unless there are 25 members who will stand up and say: "Hey, you cannot go ahead". I heard and understood the House Leader yesterday talk about someone mentioning that this was only done in Routine Proceedings. This is the greatest charade in the world. Routine Proceedings can start in this House on Monday under the new parliamentary calendar which started today. You can hardly have 25 people in the House.
You can have a Government House Leader stand in this House and do this under the new suggested change in unanimous consent. I say with all respect to everything that has been said. I know my time is up, but I would like to ask a specific question: Since the loyal opposition did not refer to paragraph 20, can I assume that the Liberal opposition is in favour of paragraph 20 which fundamentally changes the whole concept of unanimous consent?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, to answer the hon. member's question about the elections procedures governing donations to his party, I have a Private Member's bill before this House to amend substantially the Canada Elections Act. If he could convince his former colleagues on the other side of the House to allow that bill to proceed, I would be happy

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to deal with the issue in committee, if it is not already in the bill, that would cover the problem he has raised.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: It is a good charter case.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Well, I hope we do not have to do it by charter. I hope we can do it right here in this House.
With respect to paragraph 20 of the Standing Orders, the proposal was discussed and was more or less agreed. As I said, there was agreement on very very few things. Most of the items were discussed and as the hon. Parliamentary Secretary will say there was part of a package and, therefore, there was not specific agreement on any one item. The proposal we found favourable in respect to unanimous consent was this proposal. Instead of 25 members, it was, I believe, 15. We preferred that.
I want to make it clear that this does change the unanimous consent rule. The minister must rise, ask for unanimous consent to put his motion and it must be refused. During Routine Proceedings at a subsequent time he may then put his motion. The notice is there. Members should realize that the motion will then come up in Routine Proceedings. Generally, we assumed there would be more than 15 members, which was what we thought, or 25 members present to object and therefore it would be stopped. It is a change in the rules, but we think it is a worth-while one. We feel there are many routine motions that are dealt with in this House on the basis of unanimous consent which are denied for frivolous reasons. The House ought to have some mechanism of allowing those motions to go through without the necessity of 48 hours' notice.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to participate in this debate. I do want to say, at the very outset, that the tone of the debate for the last couple of days has been good and has really reflected the kind of attitude the House needs to take to its rule changes.
There are, however, a couple of exceptions. The first day was entirely wasted by having the Speaker read the motion before this House. Members could have better
used that time to discuss the issues that are so important to us.
I am a little disappointed that the member for Kingston and the Islands chose not to discuss at length and in detail some of the changes. Having worked with him at great length over the last few months on these rule changes, I know he has a very clear understanding of not only of the rules as proposed, but of the implications of those rules and an understanding of the tradition which has been part of the process that has brought us to where we are today in the House of Commons.
It has been a fascinating process to go through these negotiations in the last few months, to look at a number of Standing Orders and to come up with a package which I think is a significant package, a package which is good for the whole House. It is not a package designed, as the hon. members opposite would have you believe, to protect a government on the run. It is anything but that. It is is consistent with the McGrath reforms. It builds on those reforms and brings some of them up to date to face the reality that we live with today.
It is consistent with some of the work begun by Tom Lefebvre as chairman of another committee on rule changes back in 1980-81. That was my first experience with rule changes. I was privileged as a new member of this house to be a member of that committee and found it a very enlightening experience and a great opportunity to get a bit of an understanding of the traditions of this House.
I think the rule changes we are dealing with here in the House today are consistent with those traditions.
There are about four particular elements that I want to address in my remarks today. I want to begin by looking at the changes to the committee process. I begin there because, for me, that is one of the most interesting and exciting elements of the House of Commons procedures and processes. I begin there because one of my favourite times as a member was the time that I spent on committees.
I was a member of the McGrath task force when I thought that committees, for the first time, were given powers and opportunities which they never had before. When I was a member of a committee in opposition, the only things we could work on were those items referred
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to us by a minister of the Crown. We, as a committee, never had the opportunity to discuss anything that was controversial or anything that would have in any way pushed the government.
This government changed that significantly with the McGrath task force by allowing committees to become self-starting, by allow committees freedom and latitude to work within their subject areas to develop policy ideas and to develop a process that could have an influence on the government process in this country.
Out of that flowed two very significant elements. One was that standing committees would be self-starting; with the ability to move, to act and to explore. The other was to put in place legislative committees. Those legislative committees were to, at that point, deal strictly with legislation, to deal with it in a technical way and to accept the fact that the House had already adopted, in principle, the legislation that was referred to the legislative committee.
That is where McGrath started. It is where McGrath put forward a proposal which was accepted by this House.
Unfortunately, since that time a couple of things have happened. The legislative committees, not in all cases but in some cases, began to view themselves, not as legislative committees, but as standing committees.
They began to fuzz the two lines that were to exist between these committees and try to get them both to function in the same way. It undermined a very fundamental part of what I thought the McGrath task force was trying to establish.
The McGrath task force had recommended that the number of standing committees be reduced and that the membership of those committees be small, preferably around eight members. Since then we have gone from the 17 or 18 committees that the McGrath task force recommended, to some 21 to 23 today.
We have also gone from the majority of committees being eight or nine members to 14 members. As a result, we have once again undermined some of the fundamental elements of the McGrath task force.
That brings me to the changes we have here. We asked that the committees be developed into five envelopes. The committees remain. We do not change them.
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However, they are gathered into five envelopes. Each of those envelopes has a consistency which flows through it-a thread of common interest. Whether it is an economic interest, a human resources interest or a natural resources interest dealing with things like oil, gas and forestry, there is a common thread there.
The reason for that is to pick up on what the McGrath task force tried to accomplish: To develop an expertise in our standing committees that would serve as a resource for both this House and for the government in the development of policy or legislation that would affect this country.
I think that by bringing us back to this envelope process, we encourage the concentration and the development of that expertise. We do not in any way change the membership rights which members enjoy under the McGrath task force. In fact, it is the member who, under these proposals, continues to have the say over his or her substitutes on a particular committee. Within an envelope dealing with that substitution list submitted by a member, it is very easy to make an exchange.
Consistent with McGrath, we have tried to bring the legislative committees it back to what was originally suggested: Legislative committees will be legislative committees. They will not try to act as standing committees. They will not try to be something they were not designed to be. They will look at technical witnesses and they will meet with them. Technical witnesses may include members of a department, people who work for a department, lawyers who are familiar with the subject area, or interest groups that have a technical response to a bill. The fundamental goal of the McGrath task force was to see that those legislative committees would accept that the House had already dealt with that bill in principle. There is a thread there.
There is another important aspect in this rule change package. Right now, if the House were to decide to send a specific issue to a standing committee, for example, but there was not consent to do so, the House would have no choice but to refer the bill, or the subject matter of it, to a legislative committee even though there may be widespread support on all sides of the House to send it to the specific standing committee, or a special committee. One of the rule changes we provided for in this particular package, is that now by vote the House can decide to

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send a bill or an issue to a special committee, to a standing committee, or to a legislative committee. This is very consistent with the kind of goals the McGrath task force was trying to accomplish.
There is one exception in the area of committees which caused me some concern, and I know will have caused some concern to other members familiar with the work of McGrath. One of the things we had recommended during the McGrath work was that parliamentary secretaries not be part of standing committees. Mr. Speaker, we did that based on the experience that all of us had come through in that period. From 1980 to 1984, it was the government which directed what issues any particular committee would or could discuss. When an issue was before a standing committee, the parliamentary secretary started acting like a policeman or a director. He or she had tremendous control over that committee. As a result, members reacted by saying they did not want parliamentary secretaries on committees.
Since the McGrath reforms, what has happened is that opposition critics who are expert in a given subject area are members and active participants in the committees. But on the government side the one individual who is not a member of cabinet, yet has the most experience with a particular subject area, bill, or issue, the parliamentary secretary, is excluded from the process.
So, Mr. Speaker, we have come full circle. We have now said that we saw where McGrath was going; we understood what McGrath was trying to accomplish at the time; but it was not working. It was not working because the committee was being robbed of an individual who was a tremendous resource to the committee in terms of information, in terms of access to the department, and all that is going on within that particular department.
We have now come to the point where we feel it is time to put the parliamentary secretaries back into the committee, to give them an opportunity to build bridges between the committee and the department, and the department and the committee. I hope this will fulfil the very goals the McGrath task force set out to accomplish, which was to give backbenchers in the House of Commons an opportunity through the committee process to develop policies, legislation, and direction on any issue that this country may be faced with.
I referred very briefly to the requests of McGrath to reduce the size of our committees from 14 members to 8. We have renewed that request in this package. We have not done it by changing the rules and by restricting in our Standing Orders the sizes of committees. We did not do that for a reason which is very simple. It is something we want negotiated and discussed by the members of this House. My own experience was that when I have been a member of a small committee, that committee worked well. It built a relationship within itself that often ended up with a unanimous report which then was reflected in the legislation of the day.
Therefore, we have once again put the request to members on all sides of this House that they seriously consider reducing those committees that now have memberships of 14 members, and reducing them to eight. It is an option of the House. It is not something the government has any intention to direct, or wants to direct. It is a process we hope the members themselves will develop and see the opportunity that we think exists.
The last matter I want to mention about committees is the question of televising committee hearings. That has been an issue of controversy in the House and for good reason. There are some very strongly held feelings on both sides of this House. For example, I am concerned that when the television cameras came into the Chamber-I was not here before-one of the things that began to happen and is part of our everyday experience here now is that many of us play to the cameras when participating in debate. We do not play to the audience, or talk to the people here in the Chamber, or to the Chair. We play to the cameras. As a result it changes our behaviour.
What happens if we go into a committee environment and the same thing happens there? The one area in our parliamentary process that has been very active, very influential, what if it too becomes another stage? Then we have a problem.
Nevertheless, we must recognize that we are in a new world today. It is unfair to allow print media to have full access to committees and yet not allow electronic media
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the same access. We shut out radio and television. We have to recognize that reality.
That is why in these rules there is now a change to develop experimental guidelines for the televising and radio linkage of committee hearings. We use the word "experimental" because it is very fundamental. It is very important. We have to build an experience together and we have to decide on a type of system that will allow the committees to function to their maximum ability, yet provide, as much as possible, equal access to all media, electronic or print.
The second thing that I want to touch on, briefly, is the calendar. That has been one of the areas which has received significant media attention. We have heard all sorts of arguments about it. The proposal in this particular package is that we move to the three and one formula, where the House would sit approximately three weeks and then it would not sit for one week. That time could be used for one of two things: first, members could return to their ridings to meet with their constituents, to hold public meetings, private meetings, whatever they choose to do; or, second, that time could be used for committee work.
I heard yesterday the member from Hamilton going on and on about how this was running away from responsibility. He had no problem being here in the House of Commons. He could be here Friday. He could be here Monday. Therefore this was a gross example of a government trying to duck and run.
Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you as a member that was sitting in this House listening to that speech, I was very much offended by it. Why was I offended? Because I cannot travel to my riding in two or three or even six hours. To get to my constituency takes me 12 hours. If I want to be back in my riding to hold meetings on Saturday morning, I have to leave here Thursday night. If I am going to be here Monday, I have to leave Sunday night.
So, Mr. Speaker, you can see very quickly for someone like myself, who lives in a northern and a western riding, why this kind of formula has a great deal of appeal. I can then stay here through that three-week period. I can focus and dedicate my time to the work of the House, committees or whatever particular role I may have at that moment, but then I can take a week-and in fact, if you take in the weekends, which gives you a little bit
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more time-I can go home and do some concentrated constituency work, listening to my people, gathering their concerns and bringing them back with me and hopefully have those reflected in the debates and the issues before this House.
I was offended when I heard a member, who can be on a plane and probably in his riding in two or three hours, or even jump in a car and be there in five hours, tell me that I am neglecting my duties and my responsibilities and I am somehow ducking the issue by asking that instead of giving me a weekend, that I get from time to time a week to work in my riding.
Mr. Speaker, you are signalling that my time is about to expire. It is unfortunate because I am just beginning my remarks.
There are a number of things that flow from those changes. There is the reduction in the budget days from six debating days to four. There is the reduction in the throne speech from eight to six days. There is the reduction in the allotted days from 25 to 20. All of those flow from the calendar, not because we are trying to limit debate. If I were to buy the logic of the opposition, then to have the perfect democracy we would sit 365 days. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, their whole argument is that democracy is based on the number of days that we sit. So we are going to go for perfection in Canada. We will sit 365 days.
The problem is, Mr. Speaker, that if you look at what happens in the opposition benches, they are on a roster system. One-third of their members at any one time are back in their ridings. They are not here working in the House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, my time has expired. I wish I had more time to continue with my arguments. I believe very strongly this package is consistent with the work began by Tom Lefebvre and is consistent with the reforms brought in by the McGrath task force. This is a package that is designed to help all members of the House, whether they are on the opposition benches or the government benches.
It is not a Draconian package. It is not fascist as we heard it described. It is a fair package and it is one that I am very comfortable defending in any forum, including the one where it is going to have the most impact, here in the House of Commons.

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Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the parliamentary secretary's speech, as I thought I would. As the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-Langley indicated, it was not a history lesson. I am sorry that he did not enjoy my history lesson. I thought he might have found it helpful to fit these rule changes into the context, particularly when I was quoting most extensively in my speech from his former leader, Mr. Diefenbaker. I am surprised he was disappointed in that.
The hon. member for Peace River in his speech talked about the wonders of the rule changes and particularly the change that allows the one week off for the member to go to his riding. I think he misconstrued the remarks of the hon. member for Hamilton West, and I admit it was open to this misconstruction yesterday. But the point the hon. member for Hamilton West was making so effectively was that he did not object to members having a week off, his objection was to the cutback in the number of days of sitting.
Surely the parliamentary secretary, who was after all instrumental in discussing these matters, I presume, with his boss the government House leader, could have said: "Look, the opposition has trouble cutting the number of days from 174 or 175 to 134. Maybe another way to do this is to sit an additional three-week period. Give another 15 sitting days in the summer, at some other time of year." But what the government did was say, keep the holidays we now have, let us add to them.
I use the word "holiday" advisedly, because like the hon. member for Peace River, when I go to my riding I work quite hard. I spend time there and I spend many hours working there. I think most hon. members do exactly that. So I do not call it a holiday but it is a time away from working in this place. The public, naturally, regards members as working only when they are in Ottawa, it seems, but that is not always the case, and I acknowledge that as well as anyone else.
If the government was serious in its suggestion that it really wanted to give members time to be in their ridings, why did it simply deduct sitting days from the calendar and take an extra week off here and there? Why did it not add another three weeks of sitting, in September or August or July, or January which now is free of sittings,
and continue at least something close to the number of sitting days? Why did it reduce the sitting days so much in order to achieve its end? Because we could have had three weeks of sitting in January and another week or two before the scheduled resumption date in February. All that could have been done quite easily, but the government chose not to. They simply reduced. Could the parliamentary secretary answer that?


Albert Glen Cooper: Yes. I am very pleased to answer the concerns of my hon. friend from Kingston and the Islands.
He will know from several of the meetings that he and I had with Mark Houlton from our office, who worked so hard on this package.
As a government, we put forward two proposals; one was to sit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and the House not to sit on Fridays and keep roughly the same parliamentary calendar as exists today; or the second proposal which was to go with the three and one option.
What the hon. member should recall is that it was the request and the feedback from the opposition members which indicated they preferred the three and one.
There is a difference between what is said in private and what is said in public. I want to be very specific and I do not want to accuse anyone. I am not saying that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands supported the three and one proposal. I want to be very clear about that. What I am saying is that the feedback from the opposition benches indicated the one that had the best consensus on both sides of the House-


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Most palatable.


Albert Glen Cooper: Most palatable-that is the word I will accept-was the three and one proposal. That is why we chose to go with it. It was not an arbitrary decision of the government; it was part of the discussions and negotiations that had been going on for months.
I am glad the hon. member asked the question as it gives me an opportunity to put on record the facts of what really happened in terms of the calendar changes.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I appreciate the hon. member's response, Mr. Speaker. I think he stated it correctly. He asked which of the two we preferred and we said that we did not like either, but if we had to chose we would take
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this one. That is what we said. It was the more palatable Richmond pointed out yesterday, but, by and large, we of the two.	can agree with the package.
What I have indicated, and what we have indicated throughout, is that we were not in favour of reducing the number of sitting days of this House. I hope he has got that message.
To put the negotiations in context, I think it is fair for the hon. member to know, and he may want to comment on this, that when the government makes a proposal to change rules without going through the usual committee routine of coming up with changes, as happened with the Private Members' Business changes which the government has included in this package and which were the result of an all-party committee meeting and which were unanimously recommended to this House by the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. Even the New Democratic member sitting on that committee agreed with the changes that were proposed. We have made no amendments to all those changes that have been proposed. We agree with those changes. They were the result of all-party work in that committee.
Had the parliamentary secretary gone to a committee, I suggest, as I said in my remarks, we might have achieved more consensus. But what the government does when it says: "We are going to change the rules", is say to the opposition: "You can negotiate with us to the extent that we are willing to bend but, in the end, with our majority, we are going to do what we like."
What happens, as an opposition, is that we are put in a position of trying to get the best deal we possibly can, but knowing that if we do not try to do that the government will go and do exactly what it wants anyway and then we will really get kicked in the teeth.
What we did, in the course of these talks, is try to soften the blow that the government was delivering in the form of these rule changes, to get the best package that we could live with by indicating our areas of strongest disagreement, of strongest dissent so the government would know where it is going to find itself in difficulty.
Does the hon. member for Peace River not realize that when a government starts negotiating on rule changes, something that is fundamental in this House, is negotiating from a position of tremendous strength and that the opposition has very few levers with which to play? Does he not realize that those negotiations would result in answers and in responses that perhaps would lead the government to think it has agreement when it does not?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, my friend was obviously a successful lawyer in his private life before coming to this institution. He makes a bad argument sound pretty convincing and pretty good.
The truth is what has happened in this case. We start out, as a government, putting forward a proposal. We put that proposal on the table and we discuss it with the opposition parties. We change that package and that proposal to the point where it is hardly recognizable. We take that package and bring it into the House. But what happens then? The opposition takes the things that it was not successful in changing and chooses to highlight them and oppose the final result.
Members do not mention the fact that we, as the government, have made significant changes. I am sorry, in fairness you are right, the hon. member did say that. What they do, and I think the House leader for the government put it very well yesterday, is they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to go through all of the discussions, all of the negotiations, get all of the changes they can and then, in the end, oppose the package. They call it things like fascist, Draconian and all sorts of negative terms when, in fact, it was a very, very effective and good negotiation process which I think resulted in some very positive changes. I am not trying to take credit for those. I am quite prepared to give the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands a great deal of credit because he did make a number of suggestions. He and Mr. Yanover put forward a number of really positive suggestions which we have incorporated into the rule changes and, I think, have strengthened the package.
Our amendment indicates those areas where we feel It is unfortunate that once again the opposition men-the government is wrong. We have some reservations in tality, rather than support the package, is trying to other places, as the hon. member for Cape Breton-East manipulate us as a government into a position where we

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are forced to use closure to put what I think is a very good package through this House of Commons.


Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise and add my perspective to the particular changes that are being proposed by the government, some of which are certainly of interest and some of which were long overdue. I personally would love to see much more free voting on the part of members so that they do not have to be following the Whip's line all the time.
That is something that I have found very hard to accept. In fact, I found it very galling at certain moments in the course of my last two mandates in this House.
In speaking to the rules of order of change in the House, I think that if they were passed as they have been presented by the government, they would permanently alter Parliament as Canadians have come to know it. I think that Canadians have come to be much more aware and sensitized to the House through what Mr. Warren has explained to them as he puts on our television tube the procedures of the House.
I think that has been very important in helping people to understand what is fairly complex as a procedure.
I see one of my colleagues from Alberta across the floor. I recall our coming in here together and doing a bill on chips and costs. We all had difficulty learning how the House operated. We in this House had difficulty learning and adapting. We did not know we were supposed to be partisan in this House. A colleague from the Conservative bench helped me as I was trying to address a bill that I knew very little about at that given moment.
I think I came out with some enlightened observations, both from my own side, that of the opposition, and the government side. I think that that is what it would allow us if there were more free votes in this House: To have and to be able to express joint and common views which we share that do not necessarily require the kind of party line vote in areas that are quite diverse in what we address in this House.

So, the changes this government is proposing to the Standing Orders are a further proof that the Prime
Minister is trying to dismantle our national institutions, as he just did with the CBC. It makes absolutely no sense! The new rules undermine the legitimate role of Parliament, that is to confront the government with its responsibilities. The proposed changes are intended to stifle the Parliament of Canada.
The government proposal relinquishes altogether the notion of consensus between parties in this House. The McGrath reforms, and the earlier Lefebvre reforms, as well as the 1969 amendments, were all based upon full ranging debates with a view to reaching a consensus in a spirit of co-operation. Parliament is the latest victim of a dictatorial decision-making process that is what my colleague from Kingston and the Islands was discussing with the member opposite.

While some say that the Conservative government lacks direction, purpose and a clear vision of Canada, I do not say that I particularly share that point of view in this Parliament. I would argue quite the opposite.
I would say that while it appears to be bungling its way through almost every issue that faces this country, the Conservatives in my view have a very clear agenda that seeks to fundamentally change the structures and the institutions of this country and not in the best interests of the unity or well-being of this country, or in the forward agenda of Canada for Canadians: men, women and children to be distinct on the global map.
That has been the hidden agenda. That is the forward agenda, and that is what it does when it dismantles the institutions like the institutions of this House. The proposed changes to the rules are just that other step of closing down Canada.
I would call this the dismantling of the strongest national institutions, Parliament and the House of Commons. Parliament to me is a sacred trust. If it is to be altered, it must not be done in a way that is in the best interest of the government of the day, but what is in the best interest of the people of Canada, Parliament's shareholders.
I speak knowing that we are going to be the government of today tomorrow, and I say that it is not good for us as Liberals as it is not good for the Conservatives.
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It is bad decision making on the part of this Parliament to allow this kind of dictatorial decision making.

Under the proposed changes, the House would sit eight weeks less every year and there would be fewer days to debate the budget and the throne speech. The number of opposition days where motions on sensitive political issufes can be debated would also be reduced.

The government may argue that it has a majority mandate from the people to govern, but I would argue that the government did not put its full agenda before Canadians during the last election. I heard my hon. colleague-who is about the walk out of the House-say that the government's agenda has always been frustrated. I would suggest that the government's agenda was not always forward in the course of a political election.
For example, did the Prime Minister say that if elected-come on there, Don Blenkam, I ask you-did the government say that if elected it would eliminate 50 per cent of our national railway? Did it say that?


An hon. member:: No, no.


Sheila Finestone: Did the Conservatives say they would close CBC stations from coast to coast, from one end of this country to the other, and dismantle that institution?
Did they say that their government would introduce a new major sales tax on everything from reading, intellectual property, the right to knowledge, to taxi cabs and to one yoghurt that they had to go and-


Mr. Blenkarn:: Yes, they did.


Sheila Finestone: No, they did not. Did he say his government would introduce-


An hon. member:: And unanimously too.


Sheila Finestone: Never mind. That is not so, I do not believe. The answer is no, no and no. Let us remember that the role of the Official Opposition is today in a working democracy, something perhaps they have forgotten about. A democracy only works when there is opposition. It does not work with the tyranny of the majority.
I quote a man of great stature and influence in the business world, as a deputy minister within the structure
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of the government that makes it work, and as a minister of this House, the former Mitchell Sharp, who said that the role of the opposition is to play the role of the defence lawyer, to be sure that the government proves to the public every point and every policy beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I would say the government under its new rules will not allow the opposition to play that role and to hold the government to account, for with less sitting time, shorter debates, restraints and restrictions of powers of legislative committees, the government will become even more tyrannical. Perhaps it did not realize that. However, that is the end result, the bottom line.
The government, since 1988, has known the depth and breadth of the unpopularity of its economic agenda. Its political agenda has not been popular. Look at the polls and then tell me I am wrong. As a result, it has short-circuited parliamentary debate on important issues, in large measure through the use of closure, the cutting off of parliamentary debate, both in the House and in the Senate.
One former Conservative minister, and I think he was quite well respected in this House at that point, Erik Nielsen, said and I quote: "The procedure of closure had been repugnant to the Canadian people. My own personal view is that never in parliamentary debate should there be a muzzling of free debate." That is a citation from him. Yet the government has used closure on an unprecedented scale, especially since 1988.
On the second day this House sat after the 1988 election, the government introduced closure to ram through the free trade agreement, even though a majority of Canadians, 57 per cent, had voted for parties opposed to the trade deal.
Then closure was used at three different stages on Bill C-21 under which the government will eliminate the federal contribution to unemployment insurance, thus abandoning its responsibility to job reduction-


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Sheila Finestone: You know, you are such a nice guy. Why don't you just button the lip and listen to what I have to say, and then you can argue afterward.
Closure was used twice on the notorious clawback bill which taxed back our senior's pensions, twice on the GST and twice on the bill to privatize Petro-Canada. In total, the Conservatives have invoked closure or time

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allocation no fewer than 21 times in 29 months since the 1988 election.
The Conservatives invented closure under Sir Robert Borden in 1913 to get passage of their naval aid bill. It was strongly opposed by Liberal opposition leader Sir Wilfred Laurier, who, during the 1913 debate on the closure proposal said that he was going to feel much more comfortable in a defeat at the polls, rather than using closure, because he felt it was so Draconian, so anti-democratic, so far from any of the principles that he supported, that he went the whole way. I quote what he said: "Heaven is my witnesses that I would rather stand here today defeated and in opposition by that appeal to the people than stand over there in office by the power of the gag".
I will admit that there may be times when the use of closure or time allocation is justified. From 1913 to 1984 closure was used fewer times in those 71 years than the Conservative use in the last 29 months.
Finding that closure was not sufficient for the government to get its way, we now have more Draconian measures being imposed. The proposal will cut the sitting days of the House of Commons by almost 25 per cent. At a time when this country is facing a constitutional crisis, when there are rising tensions among our aboriginal peoples and international military actions are increasing and there is destabilization in the international world, increasing levels of unemployment, this government is now proposing what they call "holidays". Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would suggest that it is not a holiday to go back to one's riding. It is a responsibility. I see a particular pleasure to go back to your roots, to the people who elected you to hear what they have to say so that you can, in essence, come back here and report.
I would suggest that if you have Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, certainly in most cases that would be adequate. I understand my colleagues from the far west, the far north and the far east would prefer the one week every three weeks. I would say that neither of these proposals is what we have in front of us. We have some other kind of a scheme that lengthens periods that were already on the calendar to even longer periods. It does
not see us come back to this House during enormously long periods of holiday during the summer season.
I would say that the proposals that were made, the options that were given to us were not very palatable, so we picked the lesser of the evils. There certainly was a way in which we did not have to cut from 175 to 134 sitting days. All this is at at time, as I have said, when Canadians are searching for leadership on these issues, when Canadians are listening to hear what their members have to say on these issues of burning concern.
I do not believe that MPs are going to be comfortable with this kind of change. It is a recipe for the rebirth of Canadian values that will not be found in the choking of debate in this House.
As well, it would appear that the government thought longer sitting days would equal the loss of one week a month in sitting time. But tell me, when will the committees meet? When will we meet in legislative committees? Is the government's plan to make them completely inactive or meaningless too, or to hide the issues from public scrutiny to avoid the test of proof beyond a shadow of a doubt?
Checking the government is an obvious task of the opposition party and one I believe the committees of the House have undertaken constructively in areas of legislation, spending and administration. The government always believes its legislation to be good, but that opinion is not always shared by those who are affected by it.
For example, and I can only use the things I have been intimately involved with in this House, the legislation on broadcasting and on copyright, both considered good by the government, had in excess of 50 amendments each. Obviously, these two bills have benefited from committee study and from the amendments which were brought by both sides of the House.
I personally felt that we, the government members and the opposition members, worked constructively together, along with the minister and the parliamentary secretary to improve both of those bills. In scrutinizing the legislation and in prodding the government to take action, we effectively made changes that were very constructive.

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Other examples of strong committee work involve the review of political appointments to boards, commissions and agencies. I just have to talk about the John Crispo appointment-


An hon. member:: Shocking appointment.


Sheila Finestone: -as opposed to the Bill Neville appointment, just to name two, or David Colville to the CRTC. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, I do not care what your party party partisanship is. You can be a good strong Conservative, a good strong Liberal, a good strong NDP. As long as you are a considered and thoughtful Canadian, I do not care what your party policy is, but have some knowledge of the dossier which you are considering, the committee on which you are going to sit and have some constructive sense of the role in society. Do not do some of the silly things that this government has done in bad partisan politics. In good partisan politics, I have no objections.
That is why the power of committees to review and to arouse public interest is very important. They do not have that power, as I have said, to rescind or overrule, but they certainly can have a degree of moral suasion when bad appointments have been made and we would hope would make the government more prudent in their nominations.
I would suggest that we try to make committees examine the issue, raise public awareness and, as well, examine every dollar of government expenditure. That is a very important role that opposition must play. It is not easy to find the errors and it is not easy to find the misjudgements, but it is important. We work hard on an opposition bench, with very small staff, to find those errors. That is why we have to be in this House as well to carry out that responsibility. We do spot checking, as you know Mr. Speaker when you were on committee, and you did it very effectively as well.
I believe it could be said that we do have a salutary effect on government when it knows we are on the outlook for waste, for inappropriate and unbalanced regional spending or non-spending. For those kind of extravagances, I could allude to the Department of Communications and its minister, but I will not bother the House at this particular moment. I have done it at other stages.
After all, it is the people's money. I think we have to be more frugal and more prudent with that money than we are with our own money and our own pocket-book.
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That is a commitment that every member takes and should observe when they come to this House, and it is their responsibility.
I think that we have to look at government administration of its departments and its agencies. By the very nature of things, we are the receivers of complaints from public servants, public people and taxpayers. I hear from the film makers, the broadcasters, the artists, the performers, and the business people. As well, I hear from people about the ordinary problems in my riding: employment, pensions, all kinds of serious concerns from people who are dissatisfied, from refugees and immigration, et cetera. It is our job to be in the riding, hear about these issues related to our portfolio and related to our ordinary people and bring them back and ask questions in this House.
Recent investigations by the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture involving the National Arts Centre, Telefilm Canada, the National Gallery and the CBC have been very important. How committees undertake their work I think is equally important.
Mr. Speaker, you have advised me that I have very little time left. I want to talk about just two other things. One is the importance of opposition days, that we are able on opposition days to take initiatives, to discuss issues that go beyond partisan politics and look at societal issues of concern. We had a marvellous debate in this House on violence against women. Even though it was brought before this House by the Liberal Party, that was not the point. Every member on all sides who participated added to the understanding and awareness of the community out there through an opposition day of this nature.
The development of human resources, education, job training, research and development, agriculture and fishing were very important. That is why opposition days must be maintained, because they are vital. Losing those 40 sitting days will also require us to reduce those opposition days, the number of question periods, our debates on the budget and on the throne speech and certainly on other aspects of our daily work.
In summation, I would just like to make the following points. There is no protection in the simple title of democracy. Even the best intentioned rulers in any kind of a democratic society, if they are left unchecked, they become very autocratic. I would remind hon. members

April 9, 1991
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that Lord Acton said that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
I finish with a quote from Benjamin Disraeli who says that "the function of the opposition is essentially one of criticism". It is critical that we allow for the kinds of sitting days-just find other opportunities and other ways-which allow the House to expose the issues, which allow constant probing, and which allow us to play the role that we were elected to play in this House.
I thank you very much Mr. Speaker and I hope that the public will be aroused enough that it will let the government know that this is not acceptable; we must have consultation and it must go to a committee, it cannot be done arbitrarily as we plan to do it today.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate, the hon. member for Calgary West.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to move the following:
That the House continue to sit during the lunch hour for the
purpose of continuing consideration of government motion No. 30
regarding amendments to the Standing Orders of the House of
Commons.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Would those members who object to the motion please rise in their places.
And fewer than 15 members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 26(2), the motion is deemed to have been adopted.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I guess another example of government brutality is the need to move that motion so we can have freedom of speech.
Going back two weeks ago, we made the offer to sit for extended hours to debate these rules. I myself tried to get the House to agree to that yesterday on more than one occasion. I have tried already once today. We need a
rule to force the House to sit so that debate can continue.


Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
I just wondered if it is appropriate within the present rules for the member to move a motion to extend hours at the beginning of his speech, and then continue to speak afterwards.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I will remind the hon. member that, when the member for Calgary West rose to move his motion, I had just recognized him as the next Speaker in this debate. Once the motion had been agreed to, he continued his speech, having been recognized by the Chair. He did not lose his right to speak as a result of moving his motion.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I would point out to my hon. friend across the way that just for extra protection I indicated that I would stay on my feet so I would not lose my place. There could be a technical glitch if you do indeed give up the floor to move a motion.
I would like to get back to the importance of rules.
In 12 years of observation, of coming to this place with high hopes and a lot of concern and of caring, it is with some sense of sadness that I can go back to most ridings in this country, certainly to my riding, and find that the work we do in this chamber is held in low regard. The opposition would have us believe from time to time that it is government members who are held in low regard, but I say we are all held in low regard. We are seen out there in our communities as self-serving.
The whole notion that this is perhaps the best place in the country to be in the sense of offering service to our communities and to our country may exist in our hearts, and I would hope in the hearts of all of us in this Chamber, but it does not exist in the heads of the voters of this country.
What exists in their heads is the notion that we are greedy, that we do not work, that the decisions we reach are bad ones and that we do harm to this country. Who tells Canadians that? I suggest the House leader for the
April 9, 1991

New Democratic Party is rather consistent at telling Canadians that that is the level of concern that goes on in this Chamber.
When we try to change the Parliament of Canada Act to make it function just a little more sensibly, when we try to change the rules of the House, it is as if we have no positive motivation. It is as if we do not care for the people of this country.
Canadians are a pretty sensible bunch. If they were not busy in their work places today and they had the opportunity to watch the House of Commons debates from start to finish and not through the filter of national media, they would come to some different conclusions about this place.
If they had a camera that panned all these empty benches at this point, they would realize how few people are sitting in this Chamber at this very moment. If they were able to watch that day after day, they would see that there is seldom a day when three quarters of the New Democratic Party are in attendance in the Chamber.
The NDP has a system inside its party-


Mr. Prud'homme:: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The hon. member for Saint-Denis on a point of order.


George Albert Proud: Mr. Speaker, I think that my hon. colleague who is promoting new Standing Orders should at least recognize and accept the present Standing Orders that strictly forbid-it is contrary to all parliamentary traditions-

-all British parliamentary traditions to comment on the presence or absence of a member or a group of members. It is not really helpful to conduct a very pleasant debate on a very important issue.
He knows he cannot do it. Why does he insist on doing it? Perhaps he wants to provoke a political party and show that since there is no agreement I might as well apply la guillotine.
I am not on duty today. I am here to listen to certain points of view on these rules. If the hon. member wants to make this a partisan issue, he knows he will get a reply. We will lose a lot of time. He is already asking for an hour more during lunch time. We did not object.
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Why does he not apply the spirit of the rule? I am worried, if he starts this way, about these new rules. If he is awakening us, we may participate much more vigorously with regards to these new rules.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the very experienced hon. member who has, I believe, served in this Chamber for 27 years.

-because he underlines the fact that we have some conventions. There is nothing in the rules which says we cannot talk about attendance in the Chamber.
There is something in our practices. Speakers have ruled it that is not a good idea to talk about motivation or attendance. The rules are here and the practices are there.
The only point-I will make it quickly-is that Canadians have a right to be upset when we say one thing and do another. When the New Democrats stand in this Chamber, each one of them knowing that they have a basic pattern of being here three weeks and gone one week, and when we say that should be the rule of the Chamber, they say that it is awful, it is nefarious and it is a plot.
That is what they do, and they have been doing it for two years. That is what brings us all into disrepute.


Mr. Fisher:: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not know whether reference to a member's presence in the house is in the rules of order. I have certainly heard Speakers- every one who has sat in that chair since I came to this House-upbraid members for making those kinds of references. Maybe it was only because they were specific.
I guess the member can ramble on as long as he wants about whether or not New Democrats are in the House. I think the people who voted for us certainly know that we serve them well.
Mr. Speaker, there is a-


An hon. member:: That's not a point of order. [Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Order! Just a clarification. I think it is correct, as several members pointed out, that the practice under our Standing Orders is not to indicate the absence of any member. You understand the nature of the present debate, where we are considering changing the Standing Orders, in a way calls this practice into question, because this debate obviously involves whether members are present in the House or not. The Chair does not wish to take a stand on

April 9, 1991
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the substance of the debate but he recognizes that it is not unlikely that during the debate, members feel the need to mention the presence of members in the House or in their riding. In this regard, the Chair intends to be understanding and hopes that on both sides of the House, members will try not to get personal. I understand that it is hard to draw a line between what the Standing Orders say and what is at issue in the debate.
The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands has a point of order?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to clarify a point. When the hon. member for Calgary West moved that we sit during lunch hour, we did not object to that motion. Now the hon. member made a speech. And as the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing said, the fact that the hon. member moved the motion and started to speak after it was adopted causes a problem. I hope that the only reason he is speaking now is that he kept his right to speak after the motion, and we did not object to that motion. That is surely why he has the floor now.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. I greatly appreciate the request for clarification from the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. Generally the practice is that moving a motion includes the right to speak. But according to parliamentary practice, when the member in question took the trouble to indicate that he wanted to continue his speech and there was no opposition to that-I took it for granted that the House agreed to give the floor back to the hon. member for Calgary West. But again, you understand that I would not want to create a precedent and for that, I appreciate the comments from the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands and the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing.
So the hon. member for Calgary West again has the floor.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the difficulty the Clerks at the Table have in judging my 20 minutes because so much of it has been taken up by the opposition.
My own timetable tells me that at least five and a half have disappeared with points of order and I am sure that the Clerks at the Table will adjust that time accordingly.
The point I was making is that what the rule changes do in terms of the parliamentary calendar is essentially capture what the opposition has been doing for two years. There is a certain loss of credibility for all us when members of the opposition stand up and complain about it because Canadians like the actions to correspond with the words. When you say one thing and you do another, you hurt the credibility not only of yourself, but of the institution, of the democratic process and of the country as a whole.
The person who spoke before me complained about the use of the rules in this House in December of 1988. That was the most vicious election campaign in my life in terms of the misinformation that was spread in places like senior citizens' homes and caused sleeplessness and illness throughout this country. The voters decided that the opposition was wrong and the policies should be adopted.
The people who stand in this Chamber and say: "We believe in democracy", completely ignored the most important element of the democratic process: An election. They would not simply come to this Chamber and approve the voters' choice when it came to free trade; it should have been done in an hour. It had been done by the Chamber before. We had a complete national election in which millions of dollars were spent. They had used every nefarious, incorrect argument in the book and been rejected by the voters. Then we had to come to this Chamber and use the rules to make the passage.
If you think that does not do harm, you are wrong.
My training, before coming to this place, was as a psychologist and I know that the human mind is very, very important. When you say one thing and you do another you cheapen this place.
I want to get to committees because we have said a lot about committees this fall. At our caucus last May we said that the committee system was not working. It was asked why the committee system was not working. They say to me and to each other that the opposition, in part, is responsible because you do not get the same members coming, you do not get the willingness on the part of the opposition to meet on Mondays or on Thursdays or Fridays. They want you always to meet on Ibesdays and Wednesdays. That is the opposition. There are arguments like that of the Deputy House Leader of the Liberal Party: "Well that is the government."
April 9, 1991

I just happened to put my staff to work on some attendance records. I thought that might enlighten the Chamber. Let me just start with the New Democratic Party. It is concerned about health and welfare. Its attendance at health and welfare is 38 per cent. That is out of their entire caucus of 44, and not just the member on the committee.
Let us look at the solicitor general. We have got a lot of concern about justice and solicitor general. The NDP's attendance at justice and solicitor general is 29 per cent.


Some hon. members:: Oh, shame.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Oh, shame. Well the Liberals are better, it has 55 per cent attendance. The bad old government has only at 80 per cent attendance.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: These books have been cooked.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: These books have come right from the table. That is another way in which they impugn this institution. It is as if they were saying the clerks at the table bias the information for the government. Well that is not true. Those clerks serve us all well and impartially and these figures come from them. They care about the economy and they care about jobs in this country. They just ache and they bleed every day in Question Period. We have a committee on industry, science, technology, regional concerns. The poor people in Atlantic Canada and in northern Quebec et dans tout le pays.


An hon. member:: And western Canada too.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: They do get better. The New Democrats are up to 47.5 per cent attendance. Almost half the time they have somebody out of their 44 people. Almost half the time. And the Liberals have 50 per cent. Half the time they come to this committee that is concerned about science, technology and jobs and the poor, old, terrible government is only at 88.75 per cent.


Some hon. members:: Shame.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: The poor chairman is missing government members almost 10 per cent of the time. Of course,
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we only have to send eight. The New Democrats have to send two and the Liberals have to send four. But they cannot even get one person there a portion of the time. Not one out of 80 some odd. But they will stand in this Chamber and say: "The government is cutting off democracy. It is making the committees smaller when we need them".
Canadians lose faith in this institution when you say one thing and you do another. That is not helping us in the national unity crisis.


Rex Crawford: Go to the environment.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Do you want to know what the environment is, Mr. Speaker? The Liberals have a 67.5 per cent attendance. The government is worse. It has 66.2 per cent.


Rex Crawford: I do not even believe that.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Well then you do not believe the Table. It met 20 times. We had an average of 5.3 members at environment. The Liberals had 2.7 and the NDP was 1.8. Those are the facts.
What we are dealing with here today is a package of changes that I think will get changed again. I am not sure that we have the exact right system for committees. I am not sure that we have the exact right timetable. But when my record over 12 years for any single year in 12 years has never fallen below 90 per cent in terms of my being here for votes-for 12 consecutive solid years, both opposition and government, never.
There is nobody in the New Democratic Party who has a voting record in this Chamber in the last two and a half years that exceeds 75 per cent. I can make that statement without even looking at it, because we keep attendance records of all parties in my whip's office. There may be one or two Liberals actually, who represent Ottawa area ridings. But I will take the oldest person in this Chamber, who has been here since 1972 and drives five or six hours back to his riding and his voting record will be in the neighbourhood of 95.

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of will reduce to a large extent the time available to any order, the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex. particular member to speak.


Mr. Ferguson:: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is talking about voting records of members of Parliament. I would like to take him up on that challenge. He said one or two members from the Ottawa area-I do not live near the Ottawa area. I would like to suggest to him that my voting record is well above 75 per cent.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Calgary West, one and a half minutes left.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: I say to the members of this Chamber, on this Parliament of Canada debate, there are some debates that affect our lives more than they do the voter's lives. Those debates should not be long because we have been sent here to deal with the interests of the voters. But these are important debates to the future of our country. We should watch what we say because through our words in this Chamber and with the media out there to define the public perception of this institution and this democracy and ultimately, and perhaps very quickly, the continuation of this country.
If we stand in this Chamber and say to each other that we are bad people with bad motivation and bad consequences, and we are doing it to score cheap political points, we may succeed, but ultimately we do damage to the entire system, to our nation, and I think it is inappropriate.
Mr. Speaker, I would say that the powers we have for taxation, criminal law, the Constitution, are awesome. The voters of Canada would like us to behave better and the rules can help but they are not the answer. The way we conduct ourselves will have more to do with our acceptability as an institution and a Parliament than any change in the rules will ever do.


Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government whip how he thinks both opposition members and his own backbench members can better serve their constituents in this House when presenting the concerns of their constituents. These Standing Order changes, among other things, will reduce the number of days of debate on the throne speech, will reduce the number of days for debate on the budget, will reduce opposition days, and
Perhaps he could explain to us how, by reducing the time available for debating issues, we can better serve our constituents and better deal with the issues here in the House.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, it is my real hope that with a 27-week calendar that almost all members would be here for 27 weeks so that we can listen to each other, so that we can dialogue, so we can spend 25 weeks where we come from in our home community, and that we get this interchange. That would be a significant improvement.
If we better understood each other in this Chamber and in the committees, it would be better.
But when we insist on a calendar that requires members to fly all night long, to arrive tired, to have pressure to leave to catch an airplane, we miss each other and we miss each other far too often.
The silent group in House of Commons terms is government members. Neither the rules nor the practices allow us to participate with any sense of equality in Question Period, which is obvious, or in debates. There is always the pressure of time.
When you meet with the opposition House leaders they always want five speakers, seven speakers. They state: "If you let me have my five then we will stop and you can pass it. Of course if you put government members into the mix and they talk about their view, not the government's view, on behalf of their constituents, that will delay it. Then you will have to use closure; then we will stand up and we will pound you".
What we have said in these rule changes is that we will get to 10-minute speeches more quickly. Instead of taking 30 minutes per speaker, which is a 20-minute speech and a 10-minute question and comment period, each of us on each of the public issues must be able to have 30 minutes in this Chamber which means opposition and not government, we are simply saying that after the first five hours of debate in this Chamber instead of eight we will move to 10-minute speeches. Then in 30 minutes, three members representing their ridings can make a presentation to the House in an attempt to be persuasive.
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If there is something wrong with allowing more of our 295 members to participate in a debate instead of allowing fewer people to speak longer, then I do not understand how this violates democracy.
Surely it is better to give more members an opportunity to speak more often on behalf of their constituents in this Chamber. Surely it is better to have smaller committees where the role is meaningful and where one does not sit and warm a chair but can actually participate.
Surely those two things operate in the public interest better than the system we now have.


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I was in my office and watched the speech on the tube that my hon. friend from Calgary made just recently.
I must tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I was very disappointed in the tone that he set and the so-called factual information that he gave the House. It was coming from a person for whom I have a lot of respect. I have worked with him in a friendly and what I thought was a constructive manner over the years.
I did not hear from that member any substantive argument that Canadians would understand why this government wants to change those rules, except that he took his 20 minutes to do something which the government could have done in committee if it had those facts and those kind of statistics. I could quote all kinds of other statistics because I was there for seven years as Whip also, showing him how his members were lax in their duties in committees.
It does not accomplish much in creating the kind of atmosphere of parliamentarians' decency. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we had to plead with the government to get a committee going here on consumer and corporate affairs not very long ago, because it refused to call it. He has his reasons, and we have ours.
Parliament was paralysed in terms of committee work. The transport committee was also. A lot of things could be said that are negative of the government Whip. I must tell him sincerely that I appreciated the work he did on trying to get this so-called reform going.
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I do not think he succeeded in convincing any of the members of this House or of the public that this was the right move. I think he played partisan politics all through his speech. He tried to denigrate the NDP and the Liberals, knowing very well that what he said could be termed-I cannot use the word because the book says I cannot use it.
The government is now saying that members have to go back to their homes, their ridings and meet with their constituents. If I recall yesterday, the House leader, his boss, said on page 19133 of Hansard'.
People are demanding more contact with members of Parliament
and more involvement.
I agree. In 1988 when the majority kept the minority Official Opposition of 40 members or less going all through the summer of 1988, it did not give a damn about the people in our ridings. It did not care because it was platooned.
It had 70 members away and 140 members doing something else. That is why I cannot use the word. Understandably, the government knows what I am talking about. Let us have a constructive debate. I will talk on this thing this afternoon and I will not use that kind of crap.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Anybody watching will have trouble believing how we respect each other in this Chamber.
This is not a time in Canadian history and simply not the moment when partisanship should dominate. What should dominate at this point in our history in this Chamber is an attempt to come together to resolve problems.
When we were in opposition we used the rules to delay the government. We hoped and felt we did it judiciously. We delayed government where it should be delayed and we approved where it should be approved. We did not, I do not think, stand in the House and berate the government for going on longer because we blocked it.
It is so difficult for someone watching television to believe that we get speeches on the need for more debate and more freedom of speech and when we stand up-and I will do it again in closing-and ask for the unanimous consent of the House to continue this debate this evening beyond the normal hour of adjournment for another five, six or eight hours, from six o'clock until midnight? Would you, Mr. Speaker, simply ask the members of this Chamber whether their conviction about the importance of freedom of speech extends to

April 9, 1991
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the notion that tonight on this very important issue, we can debate between six o'clock and midnight. Six extra hours of freedom of speech is all the government is asking for. Mr. Speaker, would you please ask the House if there is unanimous consent for that motion?


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, my friend from Calgary West knows the rules very well. Standing Order 26(1) and (2) says that a member must have the floor and be in his seat. The member for Calgary West did not have the floor. We are on comments and questions so the member does not have the floor when we have that kind of a situation. The member for Calgary West is not seeking anything. He is just trying to play politics again.
If he comes in here at 5.55 p.m. or from four to five this afternoon and puts that motion to the House, we will deal with it then.


Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I will try to be a little more constructive than the last speaker and deal with the motion that is before the House in both some general introductory terms and in some specifics.
As a relatively new member to the House of Commons, I came, as most new members, expecting the debate to be meaningful, the government to listen, to respond to constructive suggestions and criticisms, and not only to listen to us but to listen to the Canadian people.
That does not happen. There is no sign of it happening. These rule changes will make it even more difficult for those of us who are bringing forward these arguments to have the opportunity to put pressure on the government and to hopefully get it to change its mind.
Since 1988 the government has disregarded accumulated parliamentary practice and has unilaterally changed the way the House of Commons operates. It has made routine the use of closure and time allocation by which debate is curtailed and bills are forced through the House. Closure was used as we all know only 21 times between 1913 and 1988 and yet it has been used 13 times in the last three years by this government.
In addition, by stacking the Senate, by using closure illegally in committee, the Conservative government has
changed Parliament from a forum for debating and amending government proposals to a legislative rubber stamp. That is why the Canadian public finds Parliament difficult to understand, because the government is not responding to arguments which are presented, arguments which the Canadian public support.
On March 25, as we all know, the government House leader presented a new Conservative vision of Parliament contained in the 64 amendments to the Standing Orders that we are discussing today. Individually, these sweeping changes range from the relatively trivial to the totalitarian. Collectively, they will shut down Parliament and shut out its members from any meaningful legislative role.
Canadians want changes to Parliament. There is no doubt about that. They want parliamentary reform. They are fed up with the Parliament which fails to respond to their needs or reflect their concerns. Sometimes they are embarrassed by some of the behaviour such as that we just heard from members and senators. They are angered by the indifference of governments and the inability of their elected representatives to effect change.
But these changes, the changes proposed by the government House leader, will not deal with the real concerns that Canadians have about the operation of Parliament. These proposals are designed to preserve the quickly eroding authority of the government which is within 11 votes, as we know, of losing its parliamentary majority.
Many of the proposed changes have the goal of keeping the House closed whenever possible. After all, when Parliament does not sit, government cannot be defeated. By reducing the number of sitting days to 135 from 175, the government is cutting two further months from the parliamentary calendar. For 24 weeks a year there will be no opportunity for Question Period, no opportunity for regular press activities and questioning of MPs and leaders, no committee hearings and no ability to debate or question government policies. In short, there will be no accountability. The government will escape the scrutiny of the House for almost half of the year.

The shortened calendar though will not impede the government from enacting its agenda because a government which has invoked closure after only seven hours of debate on an issue as sensitive as the GST will find 135 days sufficient to ram through the legislation it wants to pass.
The argument appears to be that for reasons of efficiency, we need to restrict the opportunities of members to bring forward the considerations and concerns of their constituents.
We are going to increase by 25 per cent the time spent each day passing government motions and bills, but we are going to reduce the number of days spent debating the budget, the throne speech and opposition motions. We are going to reduce the number of committee meetings by requiring several committees to share two committee rooms. We are going to restrict the testimony before legislative committees to purely technical matters. The government is going to facilitate the use of closure and time allocation limits on debate, cut the length of most speeches to 10 minutes and remove the right to vote on certain stages of bills.
In the name of efficiency, these are the sorts of measures that the government is tabling and proposing to restrict the activities of members in the legitimate pursuit of bringing forward the concerns of their constituents.
In fact, the government will be able to avoid sitting for all but a few days. Currently, the House must sit for 25 days a year before the government can get approval for money for operations, in others words, for supply. In order for the supply to be triggered, these 25 House sitting days must be scheduled. But under the Conservative government's proposal, the government will be able to reduce the number of supply days when it shuts the House down and passes an appropriation act with only a few days sitting.
If the government does not get its own way through all of these restrictions on the activities of the members, the government has invented or presented us with an ultimate escape clause, a rule that lets it invent new rules.
Last year, we will all remember, whatever our position might have been on the constitutional question, that Elijah Harper, a member of the legislature in Manitoba, showed Canadians how powerful a single elected mem-
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ber can be on certain occasions when unanimous consent is required. Mr. Harper could not block or defeat the Meech Lake Accord, which he and which most Canadians were so opposed to, because our system ensures that the will of the majority prevails, but he could refuse to let the Manitoba legislature suspend the rules agreed upon by all of them and he denied unanimous consent to waive notice before the debate began.
Unanimous consent, both given and withheld, as we all know, is a crucial check in the balance of power between a government and its legislature. Yet, almost daily, the House of Commons agrees, by unanimous consent, to set aside regulatory procedures, to speed Routine Proceedings or to reach an agreed decision. This flexibility ensures that limits on which there is a consensus are treated differently than truly opposed issues.
No individual member can stop the will of the majority, but our parliamentary procedures guarantee that any one member can prevent abuse of the process. The government wants to change this. It wants to redefine unanimous consent. Unanimous consent now will mean at least 25 people. In other words, 25 members of Parliament must be present to block government proposals to change the rules and arrange government business in a way it sees fit. If fewer than 25 members get to their feet to oppose, these motions will be adopted without debate and no member could even utter a word of opposition.
With such a rule in place, the government, at appropriate times, could pass certain bills or even constitutional procedures, establish or abolish committees or get parliamentary approval to controversial government appointments. In other words, it would be able to short-circuit the entire legislative process. I think there are reasons why it is appropriate for the opposition to delay the process of government business. Although the government dislikes that and finds it frustrating, nevertheless it is appropriate in certain circumstances for the opposition to give the public the opportunity to consider the government's measures fully, to fully understand the issues and give them an opportunity to mobilize their opposition if that seems appropriate.
It is appropriate that the opposition have the opportunity to from time to time use whatever procedural measures are there to delay the government's business, not just to be a nuisance, but in order that the public can

April 9, 1991
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fully understand and appreciate the issues and respond to them.
I think in the context of the present political climate, there is another point which is worth making in regard to these changes. That is, they are irresponsible in a very real way. It is irresponsible to change the rules which will work well in a two party system when, as we can all see, it is almost certain that there are going to be five parties in the next Parliament. To try to work these rules with a Parliament comprising of five parties is going to make it very difficult to facilitate the operations of Parliament. In addition, with those five parties, it will make it very difficult to change the rules to effectively respond to those five parties.
I think the government in a very real way is closing its eyes to the realities of the country, the realities of what is going to take place in the next Parliament, and in that sense will harm future parliamentary action.
The most pressing issue for us and for our constituents I think is that these changes will make it very much more difficult for MPs in opposition, as well as on the backbenches of the government, to represent the views of their constituents. I have mentioned a number of those situations in which less time will be available for members, reducing the time for speeches, reducing the scope of investigation on committees and of course this particularly undesirable resolution regarding unanimous consent.
I have concentrated on the parts which we have difficulty with, assuming that the government will spend its time on the parts it sees as desirable. I have spent time on the problems. I think what it does is take parliamentary reform in a direction away from what will be meaningful to this House. It is rather like the government's tax reform which makes the tax system less fair.
In closing, I would like to make reference to a point I raised yesterday with regard to dividing this complex motion. Mr. Speaker, you will remember that I made a suggestion or I called upon the Speaker to use his discretion to divide this complex motion, discussed reasons why we find it difficult to offer a clear position on a motion which contains so many elements, some of which are desirable, some, as I have indicated, of which are quite undesirable.
The Liberals have offered their amendment and the House will be able to decide whether or not it agrees with their concerns. I would like to offer a further amendment to the motion. We have a situation in which this matter is still under some consideration, but I trust that the Chair will reserve on whether or not these amendments and any other amendments which might come forward are in order, pending the Speaker's ruling on the various points of order which have been raised concerning this motion.
If I may, I would like to move an amendment, seconded by my colleague from Saskatoon-Dundum:
That the motion be amended by deleting paragraphs 8,15, 20, 22,
23,24 and 55 and amending paragraph 13 by deleting the words "the
member speaking in reply" and substituting with "the two members
speaking in reply".


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Chair therefore receives the subamendment, takes it under advisement and hopes to make a decision as soon as possible.


Chris Axworthy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I would hope that you would reserve the classification of what I have just presented.
My intention is for the proposal that I put forward to be another amendment to the motion, pending any recognition that you might have, of the desirability to split the motion into parts.
There might be some problems with regard to it being a subamendment as a result of the rules with regard to amending other amendments. My intention was to put that forward as an amendment, pending your consideration of the point of order that I raised yesterday, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Chair has heard your additional information and will surely take it into account in the decision he will render.


Mr. Howard Crosby (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, the member from Saskatoon in addressing the House raised once
April 9, 1991

again the issue of the reduction in the number of sitting days proposed in the new Standing Orders.
I would like to make a comment on the matter of sitting days as they relate to the House of Commons.
The Parliament of Canada Act makes it very clear that there is an obligation on every member of Parliament to attend each and every day that the House of Commons sits. In fact, there is a financial penalty for missing a sitting day, even though if it is on public business and so on there is an exemption.
That exemption is resorted to universally by members of Parliament. In fact, I do not think there have been any reductions'in sessional indemnities by way of penalty for not being in attendance in the House of Commons.
This is something the public should know. Every member of the House of Commons is required to be in his or her seat when the House of Commons is in session. We know that that is simply not the case. We do not attend every time that the House of Commons is in session.
We do pursue other interests, be they constituency or party interests or other forms of public interest. The point is that we should take a more realistic approach to sitting days. We should recognize that members of Parliament, members of the House of Commons, are required to do things other than be present in Ottawa at their seat in the House of Commons.
They are required to attend at various functions around the country and in that way serve the parliamentary, public and constituency interests. I do not see anything wrong at all, morally or otherwise, with being realistic about the number of days in which the House of Commons should sit because it is not necessary in the public interest to have the House of Commons open 365 days a year.
If that was the case, why would members not be arguing for a 12 month session of the House of Commons, a five day week and for them to be present at all times except through statutory holidays the same way that government offices are open? If that was in the public interest and if the public had an interest in Parliament being open on all those days, why would members of the opposition not be seeking that as a resolution of the problem?
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Why would they be objecting for a reduction from 175 days to 135 days? Why would they not be looking for an increase? Why would they not have the House of Commons open every day that government offices are open so that people could come, watch the proceedings in the House of Commons and see the government in action?
We all recognize that there has to be some kind of sensible limitation on the days in which Parliament sits. The only question is: Is the limitation to benefit members of Parliament, or to benefit the Canadian public?
I say very clearly that the Canadian public benefits from a reduction in the sitting days. I would like members to address that point. Do they really think the public really benefits from keeping the House of Commons open as long as possible? Does the public benefit in other ways?
Let me just briefly mention that point because I think the public benefits if they have an opportunity to see their members of Parliament in their constituencies at functions to that they can address their concerns directly to their member. I do not know why members want to hide themselves in Ottawa and turn aside the opportunity to go back to their constituencies one week in every four when everybody knows where we are.
They know that events and appointments can be scheduled to accommodate that. I ask this of the member from Saskatoon: Is that his idea? He does not want his constituents to know that he is available once a week in his constituency office? Does he want to take advantage of the Parliament of Canada Act and say: "I have to be in Ottawa. Parliament is open. You cannot see me."
I think if we are going to be fair with our constituents, we would set a situation where people know where we are. They would know when we are going to be in our constituencies and when we are going to be in Ottawa pursuing the national interest.


Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, in terms of the theme of the member's comments, we clearly have a good deal of agreement. What we both seem to be saying, what I am saying and what I took him to say, is that we need to ensure that the rules which apply to the operation of Parliament facilitate the

April 9, 1991
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operations of our activities as members of Parliament representing our constituents and so on.
We represent our constituents in different ways and in different places through different activities. Some are here in Ottawa in this Chamber and some are here in Ottawa in other circumstances, in committees and so on, and some are back in the ridings meeting with constituents and dealing with their concerns. Then we have our other responsibilities to our parties and to the system as a whole to spend some time in other parts of the country also.
My point is that we need to spend as much time here in Ottawa as is necessary to effectively pursue our constituents' concerns and interests and to effectively represent those concerns and interests. By reducing our opportunity as members of Parliament to put forward those arguments, this government is making life more difficult for members of Parliament to do that part of their work which is done here in Ottawa.
I do not understand how anybody could argue that by having less time to debate issues in the House of Commons that our activities as an MP will be improved. How is it better for me to have only 10 minutes to speak rather than 20 minutes? How can that possibly enable me to represent my constituents effectively? Why is the government always interested in ramming legislation through? Why is it not interested in letting all members have an opportunity to speak?
There is one illustration arising from my province. When the New Democratic government in the late 1970s nationalized the Potash Corporation, that debate took 120 days. When the Conservative government in Saskatchewan privatized the Potash Corporation, it used closure for the first time in Saskatchewan and rammed it through in less than a couple of weeks. That is not the way to effectively deal with the issues and have the issues debated. We should be looking for ways to facilitate opportunities for MPs to fully contribute to the debates rather than narrow them, rather than to reduce the days of debate on the throne speech and the budget and the length of speeches. How many times have we heard members stand up and say: "I am not able to really say very much in 20 minutes", or "My time is up and I have so much more to say". We need to respond to those concerns too.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing. There is an extension of hours, in my understanding, in the sitting days so that the total number of hours are not decreased by very, very much.


An hon. member:: They are increased. The total hours are increased.


Ross Belsher: The total hours are increased, I am told. My friend beside me has some notes.
Is it not true that the party of which the member is a part has a sort of a semi-form of platooning so that members have three weeks here and one week off. They are almost following this sort of a format. We should like the rest of the members to be able to take advantage of such a format. Is this not a fact of what the New Democrats have actually practised for the last several months?


Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that is the case and it has been the case with me, that on occasion I have been able to spend a week in my riding at one period of time. It is not very often I am able to do that, but I try to do it whenever I can. There is certainly no formal procedure within the party which provides each of us with an opportunity to be in the riding for one week a month. Some of us are able to do it. Most of us try to do it because we think it is appropriate for the reasons mentioned by the member for Halifax West to be in the riding and responding to those concerns.
If it happens, it happens. There is no formalized process for it. We do make every effort to be there in the riding so that our constituents can reach us. I presume that every member does the same thing.


Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: I feel privileged to be able to rise and present a few words in the House, particularly to my distinguished friends opposite, many of whom have sat in the House for as long as I have.
I am coming at this from 12 years' experience. I have now had some eight years on the government side in two separate Parliaments and I also spent a long time in opposition. If there was one constant throughout my
April 9, 1991

entire 12 years, felt by members on both sides of the House on a personal basis, it was that the Standing Orders of the House were not satisfactory. When I arrived, in 1979, some of the strongest critics of the rules were members of my party on the government side then and when we were in opposition, individual Liberal members were unhappy with the Standing Orders because the Standing Orders were outmoded. I therefore want to commend the members who participated in the process to change these Standing Orders. The House leaders from all three parties played a very valuable role for which they should individually be commended.
There is an outline set forth as to the discussions they had. They were very detailed discussions; proposal after proposal to change the rules. The package we are debating today reflects the negotiation that took place. One does not get everything one wants. The government certainly had to back down on many things and the opposition did not get everything it wanted either.
The point is that at some point the House has to decide. I can remember the grand experiment in 1980 tried to give individual members more authority, more say in what happens in this House by developing task forces. As a relatively new member then in opposition, I had the privilege of sitting on a federal-provincial finance task force. We crossed the country and heard evidence from all sorts of provinces and of witnesses. We made a unanimous report and many of the provisions of that report have now worked their way into the substantive law of the nation. I sat on one on Senate reform and we had some very creative ideas that came to us from Canadians and which we incorporated into our report. They are gradually being seen as more and more sensible as time goes by, and I think will become part of the next change of the Senate when that change occurs.
In 1984 the McGrath committee made substantial recommendations which were adopted by the House and which I think have benefitted the House in terms of the standing committees and the legislative committees.
Having had more experience with those, having identified more weaknesses and needs for change, we have this package before us today which represents a detailed negotiation flowing out of the practical, real-life experiences we have had as members.
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I recognize the reality and I would not expect the opposition members to stand up and vote for this because when you are in opposition, and we used to do the very same thing, it often is in your best interest to negotiate changes behind closed doors. You make your recommendations, you get the government to change its proposal package, but when it comes time to vote in the House, as an opposition party you simply cannot be seen to be agreeing with the government. Indeed, there is a narrow, partisan political advantage to being opposed to the government because the government over time becomes unpopular because governments have to make decisions. Oppositions never have to make decisions, that is not their role. Their role is to obfuscate and to bring up minor points, and we used to do it admirably well.
I remember in opposition when we agreed to 90 per cent of a bill, we would stress in our debate only the 10 per cent-one or two items out of 10 items that we disagreed with. That is all we would talk about. We would vote against the bill because, when you are in opposition, you try to keep all of the people out in the country who are opposed to something-the special interest groups usually-on your side so they will vote for you in the next election.
I think Canadians need to understand that on this package the opposition parties played a very meaningful role in getting up to the final package, but of course they cannot be seen to stand in the House and vote for it because that would anger so many of their own narrow partisan supporters-and that is just the way it works, that is democracy.
I want to say to Canadians that they ought not to worry about the allegations being made just now about the lack of efficiency, and about how we will not be here and accountable, and about their rights being cut back. That just is not so.
When you look at the realities of the thing, even under the new proposals where the average sitting days will be reduced from 155 days to 134 days, what you really want to look at is how many hours Parliament will sit over the course of a year. Under the new rules Parliament will sit for more hours than under the existing rules. So in a sense what you are getting from the opposition parties

April 9, 1991
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when they stand and vote against this package is opposition to working harder. Are they opposed to working harder? I would like them to answer that. That is what the new rules do, they provide more hours-albeit under a less number of days. Look at the number of days other Parliaments sit.
We have to put it in the context of the legislative jurisdiction of this Parliament. We are a federation, and the whole range of sovereign powers that Parliaments operate under in this country is split. The provinces have a huge number of jurisdiction items that only they pass laws on. We have a limited number that we pass laws on. Essentially, we have about half the constitutional jurisdiction, and yet we sit more hours than governments that have the whole package.
Look at the example of France. France is a unitary state and its Parliament has full constitutional jurisdiction and yet it only sits 149 days a year-substantially less than we do. Australia, which is a better example because it too has a federation and therefore a split constitutional authority, sits for 66 days.
I have no hesitation in telling Canadians that I am sure we will get as much work done as we do now and I want to put the argument to my friends that we can actually be superior under the new model if we, as members of Parliament, do our jobs the way I think we should. I will speak to that in a minute.
I believe these changes are important and necessary. I would be prepared to live with them as a member of the government, or as a member of the opposition.


Mr. Brewin:: The opposition. I hope you have the opportunity to experience that again.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Well, I think around the turn of the century we will have a session in opposition, but it will not last long I hope.
This Parliament, with only half the constitutional authority, actually sits many more days than other Parliaments with the full range of constitutional authority.
Let us look at it from another perspective. What about the number of bills passed by other Parliaments per sitting day? Canada passes, on average, one bill per sitting day. That might seem like a lot, but Australia with the same constitutional jurisdiction as ours, passes 14
bills per sitting day. In short, its committees meet, get all these bills ready to go and when the members hit the House they do not need the same amount of time because they have had input before. That is the major point I want to put forth.
Under these changes, these 20 standing committees, divided into these five envelopes, can spend the time on what I think we are elected to do by our constituents; to sit on those committees and develop policies, to review departments, to review areas of the law and to make recommendations as to how these bills can be changed and how the laws can be changed so that they are more effective.
It is having input up front, before a legislated bill, a proposal hits the House.
Once you get a specific proposal it is not easy to change the principles and the broad philosophy behind it. I have always enjoyed the work at the policy level to try and get this input when it is at the bureaucratic level before it is put in the form of a bill. That is what the new rules will permit us to do.
There is not much political gain from that because it is often difficult in a final bill to say: "I am responsible for this clause or that clause." I can assure you, having been here for 12 years, that most of us as individuals have had an impact on the bills and on the broad policy thrust that the government has been prepared to pick up and change. I am very proud of our accomplishments.
Look at some other countries in terms of their production. The United States, which has an awesome jurisdictional authority, and because it is a super power, has a million different things to deal with; more than we do in Canada. It passes an average of 10 bills per sitting day.
The Netherlands passes 14 bills per sitting day. New Zealand, with its socialist government, passes eight bills per sitting day. Sweden, another socialist government, passes seven bills per sitting day. We pass one.
I think the case is clear that under the new proposals we will be able to pass more bills per sitting day, but that is not unusual because we are still only one per day compared to 14 in Australia, 14 in the Netherlands, 9 in Japan and 10 in the United States. Let us not think we
April 9, 1991

are wasting our time or somehow abusing Parliament under the new proposals.
The final point I want to make is that the reason I think the new rules are important is that they will permit the laws of Canada to be changed at a rate which will keep the nation up to date, modem and in full competition with other countries that are changing their laws much more quickly.
The reality is we are behind because over the past few years we have wasted so much time in this country debating bills in this House and delaying change. I want to give some examples.
In the area of intellectual property a question arose when some drug companies started to charge too much around the world for drugs. Different countries responded in different ways. Every country except Canada responded with a price review board so they could force these drug companies to justify their increases. Canada took away their patent rights and so no research and development was ever done in this country. If a drug company wanted to develop a new drug, it would not be developed in Canada. It would be developed in Germany, the United States, Britain, or Switzerland because there would be patent protection.
We made that change. The opposition parties both opposed it.
Plant breeders rights legislation existed in every other country of the world.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: That's rubbish.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Well, not every country, but the major ones. Not in this country. I remember when Mr. Whelan introduced that bill for the Liberals. A large number of us in the Conservative opposition were prepared to vote for it, but the NDP and the church groups in that case were so effective in their opposition that they were able to block that bill for 15 years. We finally got it through but our researchers are 15 years behind these other countries in developing new crop varieties. That means our money goes off-shore to get new varieties rather than our own scientists developing them here.
The point is that the rules permitted the opposition to block that bill for 15 years. I think that was unfortunate and a mistake.
I must concede that both opposition parties learned their lesson when we came to the Integrated Circuit Topography Act, which was under intellectual property.
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That bill went through with all parties agreeing to it because we finally got the point across that we had 25 companies in this country designing and building microchips, but they had no patent protection. Therefore they were going to close down and go off-shore. All three parties agreed to rectify that and so we are moving ahead.
We are behind on aboriginal rights, on constitutional change, on the issue of transportation, and on agriculture. It goes back to the rules of the House, and in my view it is not in the best interests of the country or even in the best interests of the opposition parties. I can remember being in opposition when the Liberal government proposed the National Energy Program and proposed all sorts of other bills. We opposed those bills with a passion. In the case of the National Energy Program, we delayed it for a year.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: You took away our right to oppose it.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Yes, you are absolutely right. I do not think that was correct. I do not think that was proper and I did not agree with it at that time because my view was that if these bills are so bad for the Canadian public then what we should do in opposition is to want the government to pass them quickly, get them out and get those bills laws so that they are oppressing our people.


John F. Brewin: That is a terrible argument.


Blaine Allen Thacker: I think that is a very good argument. I would like to hear my friend from Victoria put the opposite. Mr. Speaker, I just want them to hear my point. If the bills are so bad, surely the role of the opposition is to stand up, to identify, "we think this is a mistake, that is a mistake". It goes to a legislative committee. "We think it could be changed here and here ahd here." In my experience, the government will accept many of those changes, but, if it does not, the bill becomes the law. If it is as bad as the opposition says, then it is going to be hurting Canadians. When we get to the next election, every one of those hurts will be brought to its attention. They will be able to judge the government and throw them out.
I think what would have happened is we delayed a lot of bills, whereas had they come in sooner or if the new rules were in place where committee members had input much earlier, the bills that come before the House would not be as defective as they are now where the bills come primarily out of the bureaucracy, out of the special interest groups who are proposing change without having

April 9, 1991
access to the elected members who are going back to their ridings one week out of the month.
So, I am hoping that the new process will just simply be superior. I am prepared to live under it even if I were in opposition. I think it will be good.


John F. Brewin: What does it do to the committees?


Blaine Allen Thacker: I think the standing committees will now spend their time on the policy issues trying to have input to the bills before they actually are proposed in the House. A Standing Committee on Agriculture will take up some of these controversial questions, will make proposals that a government would be foolish to reject because it reflects the good work of all three committees.


John F. Brewin: Just like it was foolish to reject the CSIS report.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Absolutely. My friend is absolutely correct. I think governments are foolish when they reject the committee reports, but my experience has been that those committee reports ultimately work their way into the public policy.
Then we have the legislative committees that will spend more of their time on the specific technical details of the bill. Whereas now what is happening is when a bill goes before a committee, the committee gets in witnesses who are speaking really to the principle of the bill and to other broad policy issues that are not related to that bill. I think that is a waste of our time. I think it is a waste of money and it does not really change the bill that is before the committee at that stage.
I have to say to you, all things considered, I believe this package is worthy of our support. I am happy to stand and support this bill. I know the members of the opposition will probably not be able to stand and support it, but I know, having spent many years in opposition, that I bet you if you could poll them privately, if you could search their minds so to speak, we would find that a lot of them are in agreement with the vast bulk of these changes.
I think, because I am prepared to live with it if I were in opposition, that it should be good reason for many other members to come to the same conclusion. The opposition should take a longer term view and support
this package, although I realize they will not for narrow partisan reasons. I suppose, if I were sitting there, I would not either.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I listened, with interest, to the hon. member's speech and particularly the comment that he made about the longer hours that the House is sitting. He suggested that members of the opposition somehow opposed these because they did not want to work harder. I could see his tongue sticking out the side of his cheek almost at that point. He knows that the opposition in this House is extremely hard working and very diligent in its duties. I am sure that he knows that the five additional hours a week that the government has thrown into the sittings of the House are really not designed to make the House work harder. What they are designed to do is make up additional time for government business because it is taking away so much of the time by cutting 40 days from the sittings of the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. It being two o'clock, the House will now hear Members' Statements pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S.O. 31
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of National Soil Conservation Week from April 8 to 14 is to make all Canadians aware of the importance of soil conservation.
This is a unique opportunity to encourage farmers to ensure sustained economic growth for their farm while they improve and safeguard the quality of the soil.
The federal-provincial national soil conservation program, with a $ 150-million budget, offers farmers financial and technical assistance to adopt soil conservation methods.
Mr. Speaker, farmers from all over the country have successfully adopted various practices: green-manure crops, field windbreaks, grassed waterways, extended
April 9, 1991

crop rotation, stripe cropping and conservation tillage. These are all essential for sustainable agriculture.


GOODS AND SERVICES TAX
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, did you know it is the policy of the Conservative government to apply the goods and services tax to medals won by Canadian athletes competing outside of Canada?
A case in point: a constituent of mine from the Leander Boat Club in Hamilton coached his rowing crew to an impressive fourth place finish at the Head of the Charles regatta in Boston. The team members did not receive their medals at the regatta. They were subsequently shipped to Hamilton. Do you know what happened? Customs Canada sent an invoice for the GST due on the awards.
The constituent wrote to the Department of National Revenue asking for an explanation, but the department did not even have the courtesy to write him back a letter. The government spends millions of dollars telling Canadians how to pay the GST, but all this constituent of mine got was a scribbled note on the bottom of his own letter: "Awards duty free, but pay the GST.".
While it is the policy of the government to charge GST for bronze medals, it is not for the gold medal. The same constituent ran into Brian Boitano at a reception and asked whether he paid for his gold figure skating medal. Boitano, was amused and said: "Of course not".
The medal winning Minister of National Revenue knows well the spirit of competition. I say to him: Do a favour to our athletes and not tax them for their awards.


FRASER RIVER
Ms. Joy Langan (Mission -Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, the mighty Fraser River in British Columbia is one of the busiest waterways in Canada. It is used for fishing, shipping, boating and by the forest industry for its mills and booming grounds.
There is multiple use and multiple responsibility. Those who live and work on the river depend on each other to assume that responsibility.
Because the Council of Forest Industries and the federal and provincial governments benefit from the forestry's use of the river, all three have committed funds to a debris control board.
The board clears 75,000 cubic metres of wood waste from the Fraser River and another 75,000 cubic metres from the Strait of Georgia every year. Without this work, fishing boats, pleasure craft, float planes, bridges, docks and houseboats would be at risk.
As of April 1, the federal forestry and fisheries departments have both eliminated their $45,000 share of the annual cost of debris control board.
No one seems to be able to explain why. No one seems to be prepared to tell the users of the Fraser, especially the fishing fleet, why these federal departments have abandoned their share of the responsibility for an inexpensive cost-effective program that potentially saves millions.


Mr. Nic Leblanc (Longueuil):: Mr. Speaker, those who have business experience know that trade today is international.
Quebec's business people know that very well.
That is why they massively supported the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
These days, we have the honour to receive the President of Mexico and on behalf of the business people of Quebec, I wish to welcome him.
I also want to tell him that we Quebecers strongly desire developing our trade relations with Mexico in a harmonious way.
At the present time, the success of this initiative depends, for now, on the federal government.
That is why, as a member from Quebec, I intend to be vigilant.
Quebec's present and future interests are at stake and we must ensure that the federal government discharges its responsibilities to Quebecers.

April 9, 1991


S. Q 31   JUVENILE CRIME
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, last week in Burnaby, B.C., a jewellery store manager was gunned down in broad daylight in a shopping mall by two teenage thieves.
In March, four teenagers, one brandishing a 25 calibre semi-automatic pistol, walked into another Vancouver jewellery store and walked out with jewellery estimated at $400,000. One of them was only 13 years old.
Vancouver police say these are examples of a growing number of serious and violent crimes being committed by children. A report in The Vancouver Province says that more than two dozen similar crimes have been committed in lower mainland B.C. in the past few months, mostly by children. Many gangs are using children to commit crimes because under the Young Offenders Act the worst that can happen to a juvenile is three years in jail.
This government has proposed amendments to provide for increased penalties under the Young Offenders Act. Those changes, and perhaps even stronger ones, are needed to prevent and help deter our youth from choosing a life of crime.
I call upon the Minister of Justice to take a serious look into this growing problem and take decisive action before many more violent crimes are committed.


CANADA POST
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, for many small towns and villages in Canada, the distinctive brick post office building is the one tangible presence of the federal government. But this presence is being systematically dismantled by Canada Post Corporation with the full support of this government.
In my riding the communities of Monastaiy, Orange-dale, Margaree Harbour, and St. Joseph du Moine have recently lost their post office.
Last .week the residents of Mabou were notified that their post office was next on the chopping block. The Mabou post office, serves 410 households in this proud community, in existence since the 1820s where the
inscription "Mabou-House of Letters" in Gaelic is eloquent testimony to a rich Scottish tradition. This community is to lose a post office it has had since 1871. No consultations and no appeal.
This carnage has to stop. It is time this government reined in its Crown corporation run amok.
It is time Canada Post listened to the residents of Mabou, Orangedale, St. Joseph du Moine, Margaree Harbour and all those other communities which want to preserve their rural post offices, this fundamental badge of nationhood.

Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, according to the media, senior federal civil servants are meeting regularly to plan a new decentralized Canada.
If we ever do transfer federal responsibilities to the provinces they will certainly need additional taxing powers as well. That would clearly weaken the federal government's ability to manage our national economy. The Minister of Finance has often pointed out the problems we have now when provincial spending policies conflict with federal economic policy. Greater decentralization will mean even greater conflicts and ultimately could lead to economic chaos and the disintegration of Canada as a viable nation.
That is not what most Canadians want. Most Canadians, and I am one of them, want a strong national government.


SHIPBUILDING
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that Canada's shipbuilding and repair industry is in a severe crisis.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to ensure that domestic requirements for vessels used for transport, coastal trade, defence, the fishery, our national resources, offshore petroleum development, and search and rescue patrol would be met by Canadian shipyards and Canadian workers.
The Liberal government of the early eighties, through their then finance minister, now the Leader of the Opposition, cancelled the last amount of shipbuilding
April 9, 1991

subsidy offered to Canadian shipyards for new vessel construction.
The Conservative government has totally reneged on its 1984 election promise to adopt a national shipbuilding policy as a top priority and has instead presided over the further erosion of the industry through a rationalization policy of delay, neglect and downsizing.
And now the final insult: the motor vessel Arctic, 51 per cent owned by the Government of Canada, is going to a Spanish shipyard for major repairs at a time when thousands of shipyard workers in Canada are out of work.
It is time that Canada matched shipbuilding support offered by our competitors' countries. It is time that shipyard work goes to Canadians.


TAXI INDUSTRY
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to defend taxi licence holders at Montreal International Airport. The director of Dorval Airport raised the price of operating permits by 84 per cent plus GST. Many tax licence holders who did not pay these additional charges by April 5, 1991, lost their right to work at that airport. Most airport licence holders report that their income has dropped 46 per cent on average because of the GST and the recession created by this government. The higher licence costs mean that each licence holder must earn nearly $2,000 a year more on average.
Mr. Speaker, I urge the director of Montreal International Airport to reconsider this huge unjustified increase. Let us give taxi drivers at Dorval Airport a chance during this period of economic crisis.


AIR CADET LEAGUE OF CANADA
Mr. Jean-Guy Hudon (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, today marks a special event for an important group of young Canadians. On this date in 1941, the Air Cadet League of
Canada received its charter authorizing it to set up a reserve of aviators who would be trained for service in the Royal Canadian Air Force, which was then participating in the war effort.
More recently, the League and the Canadian Armed Forces worked together to provide a series of aviation-related training programs for young men and women aged 12 to 19, with the aim of producing better citizens for Canada.
The Air Cadets now have some 27,000 young people in 440 squadrons from coast to coast, in communities such as Bishop's Falls, Acton, Abitibi, Peace River, Don Valley East, Yukon and Valleyfield, in my riding, to name only a few.
The Cadets provide our youth with very valuable civic training and in many cases are the most significant activity for young people in the outlying regions of Canada.
I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that all members of this House join me in offering the Air Cadet League of Canada our sincerest congratulations and best wishes for success in the future, on their 50th anniversary.


HOUSING
Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, some politicians would have Canadians think the economy is in tatters and investor confidence is in shreds.
However, numbers released yesterday tell a different story. They tell a story of renewed hope for the future and the willingness of average Canadians to ignore the rhetoric here and go about their lives.
Those numbers came from the Toronto Real Estate Board, and show that the sales level of resale homes in that city was up 120 per cent in March over the same period a year earlier. Almost 5,800 homes changed hands in a single month and that is up 64 per cent from the month earlier, the fifth best month ever. Why? Because interest rates have come down, inflationary house prices have come down, and buyer confidence has gone up. Times may still be tough, but I find it hard to think of a more powerful symbol that there are better days ahead.

Oral Questions


CITIZENS' FORUM ON CANADA'S FUTURE
[Stage Direction]
April 9, 1991
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: When this government created the Spicer commission, it did so in an apparent attempt to elicit the opinions of Canadian citizens and to move away from the closed door, secretive approach that characterized previous constitutional discussions.
Just last week in my riding of Nipissing, we learned that commission moderators can ban the media if they so desire under the guise of making the participants feel more comfortable. The public is footing the bill for this forum, the most expensive in Canadian history, yet the media can be prohibited from covering and publicizing the proceedings. Wasn't the purpose of this forum to listen to what Canadians have to say and to engage in dialogue with one another?
Perhaps this is why the government suffers the image problem it has. If the people want to be heard, they will be, regardless of who is present. It is not by banning media from public hearings that encourages citizens to speak up. On the contrary, debate will be enhanced when other people see and hear what their fellow citizens have to say.
When this commission was created, it was termed the biggest exercise in democracy. They should have called it "demockery". What was supposed to be a country-wide public opinion search has become the government's $27 million and counting patronage fund.


CANADIAN ARMED FORCES
Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Mr. Speaker, as a Canadian, and as a member of the Standing Committee on National Defence, I was fortunate this past Sunday morning to have been in Halifax with many of my colleagues who, along with His Excellency the Governor General, the Right Hon. Ray Hnaty-shyn, the Prime Minister, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, the Minister of National Defence, Bill McKnight, and the Associate Minister of National Defence, Mary Collins, welcomed home from the Persian Gulf 950 Canadian forces personnel who served on board HMCS Athabaskan, HMCS Terra Nova and HMCS Protecteur.
I felt equal pride later in the day when I joined a reception party at CFB Uplands to officially greet 90 of our Canadian forces personnel flown in from Germany en route from the Persian Gulf.
In both situations, for the loved ones of these courageous men and women, fear and uncertainty gave way Sunday to tears of joy. Beyond a doubt, we as Canadians are extremely proud and thankful for their contribution to peace.
Governor General Hnatyshyn summed up admirably the feelings of all Canadians toward all our returning personnel when he said Sunday to the waiting families in Halifax that their loved ones: "remind us that Canada is blessed with skilled and courageous service men and women who are prepared to defend peace whenever and wherever it is endangered".


FORESTRY
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, today the Government of Canada and the Canadian Institute of Forestry are sponsoring a parliamentary forum to discuss forestry and its issues across this country.
As well today, the Minister of Forestry tabled his first annual report on the state of our forests. Our forests need attention now from this government. The same government that talks about supporting our forest community is at the same time unwilling to stand up to the American administration and terminate the softwood lumber memorandum of understanding that is crippling our forest industry.
Hundreds of communities are dependent on the forests for their survival. We need some action now.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
Today the Conference Board of Canada released its most recent report which said: "The latest federal
April 9, 1991

budget is also contributing to the weak outlook for 1991" and will have a "dampening effect on the economy's return to health."
When will the Prime Minister admit that the February 26 budget was a mistake? More than 1.4 million Canadians are asking the Prime Minister for a new budget so that we will create the jobs that are needed, or a new Minister of Finance who will know that we need a new budget in Canada.


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend refers to a report of the Conference Board. Immediately post-budget, the Conference Board predicted that recovery would occur in an April-May timeframe. In the budget itself the government had said that the economy will recover in the second half of this year and grow strongly in 1992.
Other economists support the government's view. What appears to be happening is that the Conference Board is now bringing its forecast into line with the forecasts that were set out very clearly by the government in the budget in 1991 where there is no doubt-I think this will dishearten my hon. friend-that there will be substantial economic recovery by mid-year 1991. There will be very strong growth in 1992 and the same in 1993.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, that is not a very good answer for the 1.4 million Canadians who are looking for jobs.
Neither is it very good for the 73,000 children who depend on social assistance in Toronto alone. Food bank officials in Toronto say that the number of people using food banks today has increased 30 per cent to 120,000 people.
Will the Prime Minister do something about this problem? Will he make sure that his Minister of Finance stops talking about inflation and keeping a high Canadian dollar? Will he make sure that there will be jobs for the parents of these children who are the innocent victims of his made-in-Canada recession?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, this is a remarkable statement by someone who was a former Minister of Finance. He urges me to tell the Minister of Finance to stop talking about inflation. I will never do that. Inflation is an insidious illness-


Ms. Copps:: So is unemployment.
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Martin Brian Mulroney: -that affects most of all the elderly, the poor and people on fixed incomes. We want to keep inflation down and not let what happen when the Leader of the Opposition was minister of finance. We do not want a repeat of that.
Now, with regard to the very serious question my hon. friend raises, the bank rate is down by some 409 or 410 basis points.


Sheila Maureen Copps: The polls are down.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says the polls are down. Well, I cannot quarrel with that; the polls are down. But you know what? They have been down before and as long as they are up on election day, that is what matters. It means we have stuck to a very serious economic game plan that has brought about recovery.
In point of fact, apart from the very significant decline in interest rates, my hon. friend who raised questions about Toronto will acknowledge that housing is one of the most important indicators of economic growth or decline. In March, sales of existing homes increased by 64 per cent in Toronto. The March sales were the highest total since April 1988. This indicates that the beginnings of a recovery are there and all Canadians can look forward to better economic times.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the Prime Minister decided to answer my question on interest rates. Yes, there was a slight drop in the interest rates. However, they remain four percentage points higher than in the U.S. So, the Canadian dollar is very high and therefore our Canadian products cost too much on the international market. When will the Prime Minister come to realize that, if we had a more competitive dollar instead of a high interest rates and high dollar policy, jobs could be created across the country which would allow the 223,000 Montrealers who today are looking for jobs to regain the dignity they are entitled to as citizens of this country.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the interest rates dropped not slightly, as the hon. member said, but by a full 4.5 points over the last 11 months. That is quite substantial! I recognize without hesitation, though, that interest rates of 11, 11.25, 11.50 and 11.75 per cent are still too high. I readily admit it. I

April 9, 1991
Oral Questions
think, however, that the hon. member will agree with me that 11.5 per cent is much better than the 22 per cent, which was the level at which the interest rates were when he was in power.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am about to talk about Diefenbaker.


Martin Brian Mulroney: The Leader of the Opposition wants to tell me something about Diefenbaker, and I will talk about Mackenzie King afterwords-


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Tell us about the unemployed, Mr. Prime Minister.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Go ahead, talk about Diefenbaker but, please, do not bring up interest rates!


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: You are like the Blue Jays yesterday, Brian. Not the Expos.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I also have a question for the Prime Minister.
Today the Conference Board in its forecast said it expected the rate of inflation to go up 5.7 per cent this year, up from 4.8 per cent last year. If the Prime Minister is so concerned about inflation, why are he and his government pursuing policies which the Conference Board said are making inflation worse rather than better?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, no one said what my hon. friend suggests has been said. The government acknowledged when it brought in the GST, that there would be an increase in the inflation rate. Notwithstanding that, we were seeking to bring about in the second half of this year renewed economic growth in a non-inflationary climate.
We agree that inflation rates at 5 or 6 per cent are still too high. My hon. friend will sympathize with me I am sure because he was a member of a government where inflation went to 13 per cent. We are keeping the rates down to 6.5 per cent or 5 or 5.5 per cent. I think we should be entitled to a few words of congratulations from my hon. friend.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the close to 1.5 million people who are out of work due to the policies of this government are certainly not going to find any words of congratulations for the Prime Minister.
We have high unemployment, a too high dollar and, in spite of the Prime Minister's words, a still too high interest rate. Is this not proof that the government's budget is the wrong budget for the wrong time? Why will the Prime Minister not admit that his budget is making the economy worse rather than better? Why will the government not bring in new policies, a new budget to create jobs and get the economy moving again right now? Why will it not give those words of encouragement to the 1.5 million people this government has put out of work?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, in recent weeks the IMF, the OECD and the World Bank, among others have expressed support for the policies being pursued by the Government of Canada.
If my hon. friend has an alternative to the policies that are being followed by the Government of Canada, we would be happy to hear from him unless it is a typical Liberal recommendation to spend more money and to tax not only our children but to start taxing our grandchildren. That Liberal policy we will not follow.
I share my hon. friend's concern in regard to any degree of unemployment. In the first five and half years of this government, some 1.6 million new jobs were created, 87 per cent of them full-time and some 65 per cent of those jobs went to women. I think that is a good record.
As we come out of this recession in the summer and the autumn, it is the hope of this government that Canadians will maintain that kind of job-creating record which I point out to my hon. friend, in the first five years, led the OECD countries with the exception of one. I think that is a powerful record and it is one that Canadians can achieve again.


REFUGEES
Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
April 9, 1991

A few months ago, the world watched as the coalition countries went into war and today we are watching a human tragedy, particularly of the Kurdistan population. For the Kurdistan population certainly the new world order must look very much like the old world order.
We found almost $1 billion in Canada to fight that war, $600 million of which was allocated in the February budget. What kind of real humanitarian aid are we now prepared to give? Clearly, we cannot walk away from this situation. What kind of humanitarian aid, above the $3 million already committed, is Canada prepared to give to the suffering of these people?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, there may well have been some Canadians who, faced with the various problems in Iraq, were prepared to have Canada walk away from its responsibilities.
This government has never walked away from its responsibilities. We do not intend to do that now. The hon. member will know that in August of last year, Canada announced something in the neighbourhood of $77 million in humanitarian assistance to deal with-


An hon. member:: You make a partisan play out of eveiything.


Charles Joseph Clark: If you cannot stand the heat go home to Victoria.
As I indicated, the Government of Canada made available some $77 million in August, particularly to Jordan and to Egypt, but also to other countries. We not only made that commitment, we delivered on the money.
On Friday my colleague and I announced a contribution of $3.3 million to various international humanitarian organizations. I am pleased to announce today that an additional $4 million will be provided to international humanitarian organizations to help ease the suffering of the Kurds. I should say that about $2 million of that additional continuing contribution by Canada will be to the Canadian Red Cross to expand its operations in Turkey. Others will be to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for operations in Turkey and
Oral Questions
in Iran, and UNICEF will receive some $300,000 for its operations in Tbrkey.
I am also pleased to announce that the first consignment for the International Red Cross will be carried to the region by a Canadian Boeing 707 which will leave Trenton tomorrow.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the minister.
There was a good answer to a very simple question and eventually we got to it. I am glad to see that the government is giving more aid in this area. That was simply what the question was about.

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the Kurds in Canada are very worried about their families in Iraq. I would like to ask the minister what the government will do to help Kurdish families, the Kurds here in Canada, obtain information about their families in Iraq?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, there have already been conversations between representatives of my department and spokespersons and representatives of the Kurdish community in Canada. We intend to continue these consultations.
Of course, it is difficult for us or for anyone to obtain accurate information on the Kurds in Iraq. Much of that area in Iraq is in upheaval; there is a great movement of people: more than a million are now travelling to the borders of Iran and Turkey.
I think that the best guarantee we can give Canadians and others is to find ways to stop Saddam Hussein's activities, to stop the attacks on the Kurds. In the United Nations and through our humanitarian acts, we are seeking ways to end this tragedy.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, certainly we all agree that it is necessary that the Kurds be protected and be given the protection of the United Nations. I am sure that the minister would agree that part of that in the long term is to ensure that we have arms control in the world. The United Nations should take a strong stand on arms control and let Canada be a participant in that.
In particular on the whole issue of arms control and disarmament, I would like to then ask the minister who

April 9, 1991
Tt-
Oral Questions
has made very good comments about arms control and disarmament why his government just this week slashed by over 50 per cent funds to disarmament groups, down to a meagre $111,000. Is this a commitment to peace that this minister and this government have by slashing funds for disarmament?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, no one questions the commitment to peace or to practical methods of arms control by this government. There is a program of restraint in place. It does apply to certain activities, including the Disarmament Fund.
The hon. member has raised questions with regard to the role of the United Nations in this crisis with respect to the Kurds and I think the House may be interested to know the current situation as Canada sees it.
The House will know that the European Community has proposed a sort of enclave under UN protection. We share some of the concerns of the Secretary General of the United Nations with respect to jurisdiction. But in the circumstances, we would nonetheless support that European Community proposal.
However, if the enclave idea is not acceptable, we have set out an alternative Canadian proposal. There was a discussion on Saturday between my office and Ambassador Yves Fortier. Yesterday afternoon, Ambassador Fortier, on behalf of Canada, made a formal proposal to Jean Claude Aime, the Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, regarding an alternative Canadian proposal, which we believe avoids the problem of sovereignty. That proposal would involve-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I assume the House is interested in the nature of the-


Mr. Speaker:: The right hon. Secretary of State.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, our proposal involves two elements. It involves the sending into Iraq of a civilian United Nations presence which would have in the first instance a responsibility for ensuring the co-ordination of delivery of humanitarian and other assistance. It would also assign to that civilian United Nations presence a sort of ombudsman role which would be able to guarantee, as best the world can, that undertakings with respect to amnesty are being honoured and would be able to offer some indication to
citizens of Kurdish origin in Canada and to concerned citizens around the world.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I think you would agree that as much as we may welcome the proposals by the Secretary of State for External Affairs, it would be much more helpful to the members of this House if he had given a statement in the House and we had time to properly consider and respond to it.
I would like to put a question directly to the Prime Minister. Last fall the Prime Minister acted as the co-chair of the special summit on children. At that time he declared very directly that Canada was committed to the eradication of suffering of children around the world.
I think the Prime Minister would agree that there is no greater spectacle of children suffering than the many thousands of wounded and hungry children in the hills and mountains in the boundary areas of Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
I would ask the Prime Minister: In his capacity as the Chairman of that summit, will he not accept that he has a special obligation in the case of the suffering of the Kurdish children, and will he under the auspices of the UN organize a special meeting of all the participants who were engaged in that children's summit to come together to mobilize a major, comprehensive aid effort on behalf of the suffering children of Kurdistan. Is that not the kind of responsibility and leadership the Prime Minister could show today?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, indeed Canada co-chaired the World Summit for Children at the United Nations, and along with some 70 or 75 other countries, we undertook some obligations, all of which, with the support of members of Parliament, the government will respect.
My hon. friend raises a most serious question about not only the tragedy unfolding in Iraq, but also the special implications for children. It was with this in mind that the Secretary of State for External Affairs instructed the ambassador at the United Nations, Mr. Fortier, to meet yesterday with James Grant, the Executive Director of UNICEF, to discuss with him a series of options that would indeed help children in these circumstances. Canada made at that time a signal to the Executive Director our intention to make a very substan-
April 9, 1991

tial financial contribution to assist the progress of the UN plans along this way.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister would agree that a commitment of $300,000 to UNICEF is not exactly the kind of commitment that would meet the proportions of the tragedy we now see of the tens of thousands of children who are suffering.
I think what we have to understand is that this is not just a problem of immediate relief, but is a long-term problem dealing with resettlement, refugees and reconstruction. In that case, in addition to the actions that I am asking the Prime Minister to take as Chairman of the Children's Summit, would he also agree to set up an all-party parliamentary delegation to go to the region, to look at the issue, to come back with recommendations about how Canada-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Lloyd Axworthy: I suppose Tory members are not concerned about the case. It is tragic that on that side of the House they are so indifferent.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Lloyd Axworthy: Will he set up a delegation in order to go over there and come back with a unanimous recommendation on how Canada can make a commitment on the long term to help the Kurds who are currently suffering the kinds of tragedies we all see daily on our TV sets?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I have no difficulty at all in asking the government House leader to examine the suggestion made by my hon. friend.
I think in the circumstances, all of us who have been watching television know the enormity of the tragedy there. Perhaps the money that we would spend for that parliamentary trip would best be spent by sending it right to the children and their parents.
I can tell my hon friend that the Secretary of State for External Affairs and I view, as do all members of the House, very seriously this enormous tragedy that is unfolding. I will acknowledge that our financial re-
Oral Questions
sources are tight. We are strapped, like many other governments around the world.
This will not be an excuse for the Government of Canada not to do more than its share to make sure that this enormous burden is alleviated and that children, and innocent men and women who are fleeing oppression are not made to pay the price.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister about the economic situation in Manitoba, which is grave.
Unemployment has soared in my province in the past year. There are 48,000 Manitobans who are looking for work. When it comes to attracting private investment, Manitoba is dead last in Canada.
In other words, Tory policies are killing Manitobans. I want to ask the Prime Minister: When is this government going to become pro-active and devise a plan that will produce jobs and investment for Manitobans?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to say that this government has been as generous with Manitobans as any government in history. It is certainly doing well relative to the rest of Canada.
We understand very significantly the needs of Manitobans. That is why we have increased our job-training funds there under the CJS, and will do more through our new programs under the unemployment insurance program.
I should say that Manitobans as well will benefit from economic policies that include lower inflation, lower interest rates and greater housing starts and better construction permits. The kind of economic recovery that this government is encouraging will benefit Manitoba as well as everywhere else.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell this minister that the very future of Manitoba is at stake.
Our young people, who see little incentive to stay in our province, are being punished by a 20 per cent increase in their university tuition fees. On top of that,

April 9, 1991
Oral Questions
we are now told that we face massive lay-offs in the provincial civil service.
All of this comes after this government reduced federal transfer payments to the provinces. I want to know from the Prime Minister: When is the government going to move? Is it going to wait for more economic disaster?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, what the hon. member is doing is fearmongering, and all this is pre-budget speculation.
What he might consider looking at are things that are happening in other provinces, including under the Liberal Government of Newfoundland.
What this government wants to do is ensure that Manitoba and other provinces will benefit from the kinds of programs we put in place. I think that the hon. member, rather than speculate, should look at the tangible benefits that have come about.


Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister.
The Conference Board of Canada has, I guess, confirmed what Canadians already know. This government's fiscal policies and in fact all policies are a dismal failure.
I cite a litany of these failures. The latest federal budget is contributing to the weak outlook for 1991. The real Gross Domestic Product is forecast to decline. The Consumer Price Index rate is forecast to increase to 5.7 per cent. I could go on.
When is the Prime Minister and this government going to admit that its policies are incorrect and address the issues to give Canadians some hope rather that despair?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, what the Conference Board of Canada has done is essentially come into agreement with the Government of Canada concerning the outlook for the economy. We know that the country is going through difficult times. That is why we have a plan for economic recovery.
Even the NDP Treasurer of Ontario says that the government cannot create jobs for everyone. Even the treasurer of the NDP Government of Ontario says that it is time that people were better trained, that interest rates came down, so that the economy could move ahead.
Surely the kind of economic recovery that we have put in place is the kind of thing that even the NDP talks about in those few moments when it has an intelligent comment to make.


Steve Butland: I do not think that is an answer, Mr. Speaker, and I do not think Canadians will accept it.
I want to talk about the North American free trade agreement which will only exacerbate the Canadian problem. Sugar producers are now on side with wheat producers, pork producers and steel manufacturers in this country. With regard to pork producers, the Minister for International Trade said: "We won a great victory". That victory is going to be superseded by American political intervention.
When will this government protect Canadians and develop the political will and stomach to deal with Americans as they deal with us in trade issues?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I do not know when between the question of the hon. member's leader and the question of the hon. member opposite the NDP lost its interest in developing countries and in poorer countries that need our help and need work.
I remind the hon. member as well that, when we brought in a bill with job training in it, they stood in the way and did everything they could to ensure that the bill did not pass and that we could not provide adjustment and training for our workers in a new global training environment.
We know that this is important for the future of Canada. We know that we cannot wish away the deficit. We know that we have to trade in order to survive and that trading with the United States and Mexico under these agreements is going to be good for Canadian workers. If that member's party had not stood against our training programs, we would be much further ahead today.


STEEL INDUSTRY
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, just part of the ongoing tragedy of this government's program for deindustrializing Canada is our steel industry. Over the past two years it has lost 8,400 or fully 19 per cent of all its permanent jobs. Last year American steel producers
April 9, 1991

more than doubled their share of Canada's domestic market.
What will the minister of industry do to restore these 8,400 steel workers jobs to Canada?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, obviously that was the same kind of question that the member for Willowdale asked me at a committee recently. He knows very well what the steel industry has faced recently, in fact more than in the last 20 years, much more competition than before from many developing countries. For that reason the industry has to be restructured.
What we see today, particularly in Ontario, are consequences of that reality. We are working with the industry. The member knows very well what we did for Algoma. We are trying to find, particularly with the government of Ontario, answers to that kind of question.
He knows very well that the steel industry, as with any other industry in Canada, particularly exporting industries, has to have good conditions, including interest rates, the dollar and the inflation rate. With those kinds of conditions, they will face the reality they have to face and the industry agrees with us.
The member knows well that in the years that the dollar was higher than it is today, the steel industry did not face any problem because conditions were different. I believe he knows that very well.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: I am incredulous. Our steel industry has for a long time told us that it is more modem than the Americans. Our steel industry has repeatedly told this government that it's high interest rate, high dollar policy, has cost it a 20 per cent decline in competitiveness.
When will this government stop delivering on rhetoric and start delivering on jobs? When will this minister for industry stop his deindustrialization of Canada?


Benoît Bouchard: I am sorry, but I will have to give a few figures to my friend so that he can be very well informed as to what happened. In the 1960s the dollar was at $1.05 and the steel industry did not have any problems. But amazingly, the worst period for the steel industry in
Oral Questions
Canada was when the dollar was at 70 cents in 1982. That was a one-year period.


Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister. The free trade agreement does not define as yet what a subsidy is. Yet, Sydney Steel Corporation has been countervailed against for having received a subsidy-not after the free trade agreement was signed, or even while it was being negotiated, but long before it was even contemplated.
Why is this industry being punished retroactively for having in good faith accepted federal and provincial assistance which was in accordance with Canadian laws and international agreements? Why is this government not standing up against this injustice?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member on reconsideration would recognize that there is not prejudicial action being taken against the Canadian steel industry. There is, as my colleague has just indicated, a period of difficulty being experienced by that industry now in various parts of the country. We are in close regular contact with leaders of that industry, and indeed others involved in the industry, to ensure that full access is had to all government programs, and that they are able to take advantage of provisions set out under Canadian trade law.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to suggest to the Secretary of State for External Affairs that there is a double standard here.
During the 1980s, the U.S. steel industry received $30 billion in assistance from governments in the United States, while in Canada, Sydney Steel was the only one to receive such assistance.
I want to know when the government is going to organize a countervail against the importation of U.S. steel into Canada.


Charles Joseph Clark: I know the hon. member is a serious member. I would be interested in considering a response to that question in two pieces of information. First, I would like him to provide me with documentary indication as to the extraordinary sum of the subsidy that he alleges, and second, I would be interested in knowing about what I

April 9, 1991
Oral Questions
take is a new Liberal policy of retroactive countervail measures.


CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY
Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. The day after April Fool's, CIDA delivered by hand letters to CUSO and other NGOs announcing that their grants would be effectively cut from 3:3 for each dollar to 2 for each dollar, an effective cut of 25 per cent, and other amounts for other NGOs.
These NGOs had contracts with CIDA, some signed very recently. Yet CIDA has summarily broken those contracts, forcing NGOs to renege on some of their own development contracts for development and to lay off
staff.
Will the minister tell us why the government has targeted development NGOs, our most effective and efficient ODA delivery system, for such massive cuts?
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External
Affairs): Mr. Speaker, let me first say that I will want to look into the detail of the question. The Minister for External Relations is not in the House but she and I will look at the details of the question.
Let me say that there is no targeting of development NGOs. This government has demonstrated a very real reliance upon those organizations in a variety of ways, including facilitating development assistance to countries with which we do not want to have, for various reasons, a govemment-to-govemment relation.
The hon. member knows that the country faces very serious economic conditions. We have to deal with them. That requires some policies of restraint. No part of Canadian government activity, indeed no part of the Canadian community generally, can be exempt from the implications of trying to put a Canadian economy in shape today so that it will serve the interests of the Canadian future.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, our concern is with the people who require this aid in the Third World countries. In order that the NGOs can plan in the future, will the minister commit this government to review these cuts in consultation with the NGOs, and will he commit the government to
ensuring that no further cuts will be made in this particular manner?


Charles Joseph Clark: The government is always prepared to engage in consultation with NGOs and with others.
I would not want to leave a misleading impression in the House. We are dealing with certain very difficult conditions of restraint. We are taking account of those. I would not want leaders of any NGO organization to think that a process of consultation would be put in place that would reverse the necessity for CIDA, like other parts of the Canadian government, to be affected by the restraint program that economic circumstances and the profligate practices of past governments have placed upon the country.


HOUSING
Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Perhaps in the absence of the Minister of Finance I could bring the Prime Minister up to date with some housing statistics from his own housing agency, CMHC, and including the Minister of Employment.
Released reports today indicate that housing starts across this country are down 21 per cent in Ontario, and in western Canada and Atlantic Canada there has been absolutely no improvement, contrary to what the Prime Minister has indicated today.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister when his government, instead of making false assurances and giving hopeless rhetoric to the people of Canada, will admit that its policies on the economy are too little, too late and too painful?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the policies of the government are neither too little nor are they too late, nor are they too painful.
We are very sympathetic to the people who have lost their jobs. That is why we are trying to bring our training programs into line with what people will need for jobs in the future, not for jobs in the past.
I would like to point out to the hon. member that housing starts are running at a rate of 106,000 versus
104,000	the month before. It is very clearly the beginning of some signs of life.
April 9, 1991

There are also other signals that the economy is turning around in terms of new investment that was in The Globe and Mail last week, and so on. That shows that our policies are working.


Joseph Frank (Joe) Fontana: A hundred and six thousand housing starts this year is 56 per cent less than last year-56 per cent less-and 100,000 jobs have been lost in the construction industry in this country.
I want to ask the minister, or whoever speaks for housing in this government, when will the government put affordable housing in the neighbourhoods for this country and for the people who want to buy them, and put construction workers back to work?


Hon. Shirley Martin (Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, this government has been working on affordable housing. It will continue to work on affordable housing.
The housing market is starting to turn around. Multiple bids are now being made on houses that are on the market. The real estate people see a turn-around, and that turn-around will come. If the member will be patient, he will see that the statistics will continue to improve over the next few months.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the members' attention the presence in the gallery of Mr. Frank Stock, Solicitor General of Hong Kong.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Speaker:: I have a question of privilege from the hon. member for Verdun-Saint-Paul. I just might advise that there is another question of privilege and I will get to that hon. member in a few minutes.
* He *


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Gilbert Chartrand (Verdun-Saint-Paul):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a short statement. On May 22, 1990,1 rose in this House to announce my decision to
Privilege
leave the Conservative caucus. My action was motivated by my deep frustration with the process to ratify the Meech Lake Accord. A month later, Clyde Wells confirmed my apprehensions. He let Quebec down and endangered Canada's very existence. Such a dastardly act deeply disgusted me.
I have worked with the Bloc Quebecois for a year and I note that its parliamentary motivations are basically negative and aimed only at destroying the country.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Gilbert Chartrand: Mr. Speaker, being an essentially positive individual, I do not want to work with a group that has such a motivation. Furthermore, I am convinced that the Bloc Quebecois's strategy will ultimately divide the votes of Quebecers and make Jean Chretien Prime Minister of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh!


Gilbert Chartrand: Now one of the reasons I entered politics was and still is to fight everything that Mr. Chretien represents.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Gilbert Chartrand: The forceful unilateral repatriation of 1982 and the desire to put Quebec in its place.
Mr. Speaker, as a member from Quebec, I cannot go along with such a strategy and I can no longer allow myself to remain in the Bloc. Last May 22, I told the House: "I still consider the Prime Minister to be reliable and honest, because he made every possible effort to have the Meech Lake Accord respected in full."


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Gilbert Chartrand: On this point, I have not changed my mind. Despite everything, the Prime Minister has always behaved with dignity and has always been the only leader to seek new ways for a positive resolution of the Constitutional impasse.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Gilbert Chartrand: -an editorial of March 30, and I quote: "We unreservedly support the leader of the government of Canada who so far has been-".


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member is rising on a question of privilege, but is getting very much into debate. I would ask the hon. member to come to his point and close off his remarks.

April 9, 1991
Privilege


Gilbert Chartrand: Of all the Prime Ministers of Canada, he may be the one who has made the most sustained efforts for maintaining national harmony and Quebec's full participation in the common destiny of Canada.
Finally, I fear that the Bloc Quebecois is becoming a subsidiary of the Parti Quebecois. That worries me even more because two respected commissioners of the Belanger-Campeau Commission, Mr. Beland and Jacques Proulx, said recently that the Parti Quebecois places its partisan interests above the interests of the Quebec community.
I was not elected a member of a great Parliament to become a puppet of a provincial party.
Mr. Speaker, I inform you today that I have spoken with the chairman of the caucus and we agreed that I can return to the political party for which I was elected.
In conclusion, the only question I want to leave with all Quebec families is the question families really ask: Will I just act instinctively or will I really think before destroying it?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


OFFICE OF THE MEMBER FOR RICHELIEU
Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: Mr. Speaker, when I rose yesterday on a question of privilege-it had to do with my rights and privileges as a member of Parliament-you answered rather briefly that it was an matter of administration. It is indeed, Mr. Speaker.
Nonetheless, I would like to take a minute or two to clarify this administrative matter. You will recall that members complained a number of times about things like the bus schedule. That was a matter of administration, but you settled it by talking to the management in an effort to help preserve the rights and privileges of the members.
Let me remind you, Mr. Speaker, with regard to my office being moved in my absence and without my staff being present or notified, that I had written you on March 5 to advise you that there were people lurking around my office. Your secretary told me I would be receiving a letter from you stating your position since I was asking you to intervene to make sure that the
assignment of offices to members of Parliament would be processed in an unbiased fashion.
You told me it was a matter of administration. Let me remind you that Mr. Riedel wrote me on April 7 informing me that the authorization to move on Sunday morning, without my consent, came from the Chair.
My question of privilege-and I would like you to answer my question, Mr. Speaker, not necessarily today but perhaps at a private meeting where we could clarify the matter-was this: when you gave by phone the go ahead to Mr. Riedel to move my office, did you also authorize him to open it without permission and without a warrant, while the RCMP cannot even do that?
In my assigned office, I found my papers and confidential letters in envelopes such as these with a plastic tab on them. I brought two or three to show you. I found in boxes the entire contents of my own office which had been moved in my absence.
That is what I am concerned about, Mr. Speaker. I know it is a matter of administration, but I am asking the Speaker of the House to protect me against administrative decisions that affect my rights and privileges as a member of Parliament and give people access to my office without my permission, without a warrant, tamper with my computer system-they did-disconnect my telephone lines, take away my desk, open- I was even handed a new set of keys for my drawers after moving all that was under lock and key in my office. The locks were changed and I got the new keys only the following day. It is unacceptable to do that on a Sunday without notifying me. It is in that context that I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to look into this problem so that no other member ever has to go through the same ordeal. Never in the history of this country has a member of Parliament been insulted in this way. I trust your fairness, Mr. Speaker, in settling this matter when we meet so I can regain my full privileges as a member of Parliament even if I do not sit with a party with a whip- You, why don't you shut your face!


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Richelieu raised this matter yesterday and, as he correctly states, I felt it was not a question of privilege but a question of administration.
April 9, 1991

However, I have received very courteous messages from the hon. member for Richelieu. I have listened carefully to what he said and I would be very pleased to meet with him and also to arrange a meeting with some of the officials who took part in the move. As far as I am concerned, his right to hold his place open on this question of privilege will remain.
I will make arrangements with the hon. member. [Translation]


Louis Plamondon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to withdraw something I said at the end. A member pointed his finger at me and insulted me and I added one last word to my sentence which was not at all meant for you but rather for him. Nevertheless, I wish to withdraw that last sentence.


Mr. Speaker:: I thank the hon. member.


Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Mr. Speaker, further to the remarks of the hon. member for Richelieu, I do not think that we have to make it an emotional issue, or politicize it, but I believe that it raises a problem which should be resolved in that Parliament is a place where members have rights that must be respected and are protected by the Speaker of the House. We know the Speaker. We know you and hold you to be a democrat and someone who is particularly devoted to the interests of Parliament and the protection of members' rights.
But the question was raised, Mr. Speaker, and it is as follows: Does the Speaker of the House have the absolute right to have his assistants and subordinates enter locked offices when the member is absent and without his knowledge. The question might not concern members much today because it happened to a Bloc Quebecois member, but if it happened to a member from another party, perhaps members would be a little more concerned. I would ask this House to deal with the issue. Some administrative body should look into it, but there is a fundamental distinction between the administrative right to assign office space and the right to enter a locked office without a warrant.
Does this mean that members must from now on protect themselves by installing their own lock and having their own key?


Mr. Speaker:: I listened with some concern to the statement by the hon. member and naturally I took some interest in the subject. As I said, maybe after meeting the
Government Orders
hon. member for Richelieu, we can find a satisfactory answer.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Andre (p. 19027) and amendment of Mr. Dingwall (p. 19156).

Mr. Speaker:: On Tuesday, March 26, 1991, when Government Motion No. 30 to amend the Standing Orders was first before the House, the hon. member for Kamloops rose on a point of order to ask the Chair to rule that certain aspects of that motion were "in whole or in part improperly before the House" and "in whole or in part out of order".
His focus of attention was on paragraph 30 which he characterized as proposing "to amend the right of the Commons to debate supply before it is granted to the Crown", and on paragraph 20 which he said introduces "a new Standing Order which can over-ride the failure of the minister to obtain unanimous consent from the House".
The hon. member sought to establish four points which he set out as follows:
First, that these provisions seek to erode the historic authority of the House and the rights of its members and are thus contemptuous of the House as they will tend to diminish its dignity and impede members in the discharge of their functions.
Second, these proposals exceed those limits imposed by the Constitution and by statute and the power of the House to regulate its internal affairs.
Third, adoption of these proposals would be a de facto amendment to those limiting statutes and are thus an attempt to achieve by simple motion changes which should both be statutory and constitutional.
and,
Fourth, -our traditions and practice require that they be found out of order.
The hon. member's second and third points involving as they do a definition of the limits of the Constitution and other statutes have given the Chair some pause. The hon. member argues that acceptance of the proposals at issue would make a de facto change to the Parliament of Canada Act and to the Constitution Act by amending our privileges by means of simple Standing Order changes.

April 9, 1991
Government Orders
In his ingenious argument the hon. member likens this to changing statute by means of an appropriation act and based on the Chair's own recent decision prohibiting such a practice, invites the Chair to make a similar ruling in this instance.

The problem with that is that, were the Chair to agree to the hon. member's request the Speaker would then be placed in the situation of having to interpret the Constitution and the Parliament of Canada Act. There are many precedents showing that the Chair should not venture into such an area.

As my predecessors have so often reminded the House, the Speaker has no role in interpreting matters of either a constitutional or legal nature. On May 2, 1989, I had occasion to refer hon. members to citations 117(6) and 240 of Beauchesne's fifth edition and to a decision of Mr. Speaker Lamoureux of July 8, 1969. At that time I explained:
The reasons for these, citations are straightforward. The Speaker should not sit in judgment on constitutional or legal matters. That role belongs more properly to the courts and to the administration of justice. Previous Speakers have been very careful in strictly addressing themselves to matters of a parliamentary or procedural nature while avoiding dealing with constitutional or legal matters.
Again, on February 7,1990, as recorded at page 7954 of Debates when the hon. member for Kamloops had presented a detailed, intriguing argument, in fact, one not dissimilar to the present argument, to the effect that closure contravenes the Constitution of the country. I said:
I am not prepared to rule on it because if I did I would be straying into an area in which I am not allowed to go. He states that our rule in the House contravenes our Constitution. That may or may not be, but the authorities for many, many years back make it quite clear that I cannot rule on a legal or constitutional issue.

Likewise, the Chair must avoid interpretating in any way, even indirectly, the limits set in the Constitution or the Parliament of Canada Act. It must be noted however that the constitutional limits relating to our quorum and the need to get a Royal recommendation in relation to
any appropriation bill also appear in the Standing Orders of the House, being prodecural matters of course.

Accordingly, I would set aside the second and third points advanced by the hon. member for Kamloops. I hasten to add, however, that these arguments have not been dismissed lightly, nor is their disposition fatal to the hon. member's case for there is ample substance still to be considered in respect of the remaining two points he formulated.
The hon. member argues that the provisions in paragraphs 20 and 30 "seek to erode the historic authority of the House and the rights of its members and are thus contemptuous of the House as they will tend to diminish its dignity and impede members in the discharge of their functions". This aspect of the issue involving as it does both privilege and contempt is clearly and area into which the Chair not only may, but must, venture.
The hon. member for Kamloops takes objection to that part of paragraph 30 of the motion which proposes that:
-if the House does not sit on days designated as sitting days pursuant to Standing Order 28, the total number of allotted days in that supply period shall be reduced by a number of days proportionate to the number of sitting days on which the House stood adjourned -
The hon. member is quite clear in distinguishing between those aspects of the proposal which reduce the number of supply days in an ordinary session from 25 to 20 and the proposal to reduce the number of allotted days in proportion to the number of sitting days. The former, he quite properly recognizes as quantitative change which is not a procedural concern; the latter is, he submits, a qualitative change to the rights of the House over supply. As the Chair understands the hon. member's argument it is that in tying the number of supply days to the number of sitting days, the proposal ruptures the linkage between allotted days and the granting of supply and consequently infringes upon members' historic right to air grievances and petition the Crown before supply is granted. The hon. member supports his claim that the proposed new Standing Orders might lead to the government claiming supply
April 9, 1991

without hearing grievances or resort to a hypothetical example.
Although the Chair has no intention of dealing with hypothetical matters-that is not the role of the Speaker-and should not lay the rules governing House proceedings, the Chair does take seriously any claim that the fundamental rights of this House have been or could be misrepresented. So, the Chair has examined the proposal in question and its potential effect on the supply process.

The purpose of our existing Standing Order 81(8) is to establish for any calendar year three supply periods ending December 10, March 26 and June 30 in which different aspects of the business of supply are considered. In the proposed amendment, Standing Order 81(8)(a), this purpose remains unchanged, but the date of the June supply period is altered to June 23. The number of allotted days is reduced from 25 to 20, proportionately, within each period. Proposed new sections 8(b) and 8(c) are also added to the Standing Order. Section 8(b) introduces the concept that should the House not sit on days designated as sitting days in the Standing Orders, then the total number of allotted days in that supply period would be reduced proportionately. New Section 8(c) provides that should the House sit more than the prescribed number of days, extra allotted days would be added, again proportionately.
Viewed in context, it is very difficult to see these changes as any more than an adjustment to the supply process. Arguably, rather that divorcing the allotted days from the supply period, the proposed changes might make them a more integral part of that process by adding a condition which makes them more responsive to the actual process. In the past, when the House did not sit for extended periods during a supply cycle, as, for example, when a new session of Parliament opened in the middle of a supply period, adjustments to the number allotted days were subject to negotiation and were usually achieved through special orders of the House. Such special orders were passed in 1971, 1974, 1980 and 1989.
Government Orders

It seems that the proposed changes, by establishing a set formula to determine how such adjustments are to be made, would add an element of certainty in what has been, admittedly, an ad hoc process.

In this way it appears to the Chair that rather than detracting from the right of members to air grievances before supply, it might be argued that the proposed changes secure that right. Accordingly, the Chair cannot find that particular aspect of the point of order raised by the hon. member for Kamloops is well taken.
I turn now to that aspect of the hon. member's point of order which dealt with proposed Standing Order 56.1. This would be a completely new addition to the rules of the House. It provides that if, at any time during a sitting of the House, unanimous consent is denied for the presentation of a routine motion, then a minister of the Crown may request during Routine Proceedings that the Speaker put the motion. If 25 or more members rise to oppose the motion, it shall be deemed withdrawn otherwise it shall be deemed adopted.
The routine motions to which this new process applies are delineated in paragraph (b). They are those motions made upon Routine Proceedings, which may be required for the observance of the proprieties of the House; the maintenance of its authority; the management of its business; the arrangements of its proceedings; the establishing of the powers of its committees; the correctness of its records, or the fixing of its sitting days or the times of its meeting or adjournment.
Accordingly, there is a very limited range of motions to which this proposed process can apply.

The hon. member for Kamloops claims that the proposal would "override unanimous consent". In his opinion, that clause "proposes to change our notion of unanimous consent and to enable the rules of procedure and operations of the House to be changed by an agent of the Crown unless 25 members of the House object." He also pointed out that the proposal would establish "two classes of members, those who by virtue of being ministers of the Crown can obtain unanimous consent as long as 25 members do not object, and those ordinary

April 9, 1991
Government Orders
members for whom unanimous consent means no one objects".

In considering the hon. member's claims, the Chair's attention was drawn to the fact that there are precedents for the type of process suggested in the new proposal. Standing Order 26(2) deals with the conditions under which any member may move to extend a sitting and sets at 15 the number of members required to foreclose a move to extend the sitting. Similarly, Standing Order 53(4) provides for the suspension of certain Standing Orders to deal with a matter of an urgent nature. Only a minister of the Crown can propose such a motion and if 10 members rise the motion is deemed withdrawn; otherwise, the motion shall have been adopted. Similarly, Standing Order 98(3), which sets out the terms under which an extension of sitting hours during report and third reading stages of a private members' bill may be sought, also stipulates that if fewer than 20 members support the motion to extend, the motion is deemed withdrawn.
There are certain similarities also between the proposal and existing Standing Order 78 respecting time allocation in that both use a ladder-like type of approach depending upon the extent of agreement forthcoming to securing the right to propose a motion.
Examples also abound in our Standing Orders of discrimination among types of members. Ministers of the Crown have certain prerogatives that private members do not; private members may put questions to ministers of the Crown during Question Period, but ministers may not question private members; party leaders are afforded certain recognitions denied to all other hon. members; the government and opposition Whips have certain rights peculiar to them alone and finally, and perhaps most personally pertinent, the Speaker is denied the right to participate in a debate or to vote on any question before the House, except in the case of an equality of voices. So, the concept of affording differing powers to various groups or individuals is not foreign to our Standing Orders, and, while it may well be the subject of debate, is not reason enough on its own to cause the Chair to intervene on procedural grounds to prevent the proposal from being debated by the House.
During his intervention in the discussion of this point of order, the hon. Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons emphasized that the type of motion envisaged in the proposed new rule
could only be introduced during Routine Proceedings when this House is habitually full. He termed the 25 member requirement a significant and major inhibition to the abuse of the rule.
The hon. member for Kamloops is quite correct in stating that proposed new Standing Order 56.1 would "over-ride unanimous consent"-indeed, it is a condition precedent to putting the motion during Routine Proceedings that unanimous consent must have been previously denied. However, this "over-ride" provision can operate, as the Chair understands it, only with respect to a certain very limited range of motions offered at a specific time in our daily agenda by a minister of the Crown. What the Chair must decide is, is this proposal so offensive, does it challenge the authority of the House and impede members in the performance of their duties to such an extent that it should not be allowed to be put to the House for debate and decision. Based on the fact that we have similar procedures existing with respect to other types of motions and given the very limited application of the new proposal, the Chair cannot accede to the request of the hon. member for Kamloops that paragraph 20 of the motion respecting the Standing Order amendments be ruled out of order.
The Chair commends the hon. member for Kamloops for bringing his concerns to the attention of the House and for the cogency and seriousness of his argument. The Chair does not take lightly any decision respecting the privileges of this Chamber or of an individual member of it. It is only by constant vigilance that we can ensure the preservation of the privileges necessary to the carrying out of our responsibilities as elected representatives. In citation 21 of Beauchesne's Fifth Edition, it is stated:
The most fundamental privilege of the House as a whole is to
establish rules of procedure for itself and to enforce them.
In coming to a decision on the point of order raised by the hon. member for Kamloops, the Chair was very much aware that this House is about to embark upon an exercise of that fundamental privilege. In the view of the Chair, it would be incongruent to deprive this Chamber, by fiat from the Chair under the guise of protecting privilege, of the opportunity to fully explore the options available to the House in the exercise of its most basic privilege. The privilege which this House enjoys to set its own binding rules of procedure and to regulate its own internal affairs must be guarded just as jealously as the
April 9, 1991

rights, immunities and privileges of individual members of the House of Commons. When the two are in conflict, or apparent conflict, it should be the House and the members thereof who resolve the difference.
Traditionally the House has accommodated concerns about the text of its current and proposed Standing Orders through the process of debate, amendment and clarification through agreement. Furthermore, the House and all hon. members may seek to clarify, to modify and to interpret House rules and practices by recourse to points of order, questions of privilege and to the committee charged with the review of and report on the Standing Orders and procedures in the House and its committees.
So seriously does the House view its duty to review and to evaluate, to establish and revise its Standing Orders, that it has even designated by Standing Order 51 that they shall be automatically reviewed and debated at the beginning of the first session of every Parliament.
While the hon. member does not have a point of order, he will have several future opportunities to propose changes to the Standing Orders.
Again, I emphasize that the argument raised by the hon. member for Kamloops was obviously very carefully considered. The matters are important matters and I hope that he will be able to accept the basis of this ruling, which is that ultimately it is the House that must make up its mind as to the orders by which we are governed.
I thank the hon. member.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before resuming debate, I have a decision-

-to give you on the amendment or motion by the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing.
Unfortunately, I must rule the hon. member's motion out of order, because Citation 437(1) of Beauchesne clearly states: "An amendment setting forth a proposition dealing with a matter which is foreign to the proposition involved in the main motion is not relevant and cannot be moved."
Government Orders
We resume debate with the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier.


AMENDMENTS TO STANDING ORDERS
Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, in participating in the debate on my House Leader's amendment, I would begin by saying that basically, any privilege is based on a citation from Beauchesne which reads as follows:

I believe, from memory, the most fundamental privilege of the House is to establish rules of procedure for itself and to enforce them. I think that basic tenet is important to the debate today. I recognize the importance of the evolution of the rules and the procedures of this House; the written rules and the unwritten rules because we have unwritten rules, unwritten conventions. But I deplore the fact that this substantive proposal to change the rules of procedure of the House was not put to a committee of this House for study and consideration as it should have been by the government.
In 1985, the McGrath commission was asked by the House to look at in-depth change to the Standing Orders. A committee of the House worked hard and long, looked at the evidence and made some serious proposals which were, in large part, accepted by the House and adopted by us. I deplore that we did not go that route again and ask the House, through its committees, to give us the benefit of a serious scrutiny of the proposal put to us by the government.
The proposals are indeed serious and will probably cause some great difficulties for many of us.

Mr. Speaker, since the first day of this 34th Parliament, April 3, 1989, which is already two years ago, the present Standing Orders have all in all served Canadians' interests well. Minor modifications might be useful, no doubt, sustantial modifications, perhaps, after study and consideration, but not, to lessen the privileges, the legitimate right of members to participate in the Canadian democratic process of parliamentary debate- not at that cost. In the few minutes at my disposal, I intend to show you that these measures, this bill, if adopted, would gag members by reducing the time

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allotted to them to debate legislation proposed by the government.
I think that the effectiveness of Parliament would thus be reduced. The quality of legislation would suffer and, again the role of legislators would be diminished in public opinion.
With the present Standing Orders, the House has not at all been idle. We need only look at what has happened in the past two years. The House has not been paralysed, it has not been held up by the delaying tactics of the opposition as the government leader would have us believe. Since April 3, 1989, the House of Commons has sat 299 days. In that time, we have studied 100 bills and 30 government motions. We have had 48 opposition days. Nearly 150 public bills and 712 motions from members were presented. From April 3, 1989 to December 31, 1990, members debated 96 government bills for 569 hours and 37 minutes, an average of roughly 6 hours per bill, which is not excessive, Mr. Speaker. It is not what I would call delaying tactics by the opposition. Members made 3,701 statements under Standing Order 31. They asked 6,108 oral questions. One hundred seventy reports from standing, joint, special and legislative committees, were tabled. Eight thousand thirty-seven petitions were presented in the House. Mr. Speaker, in two years, that is a lot of work. Delaying tactics did not prevent members from working. Just look. Just ask. It is there, it is public. The records are open to everyone.
Therefore, it is wrong to say that the present Standing Orders have served this Parliament badly. And I ask why then, Mr. Speaker, repair something that works and that works well? To calm some people on the government side who are losing ground in public opinion? That is no reason. To hide the government's desire to muzzle legislators, the Standing Orders are being used to have us believe that it will improve the situation. Mr. Speaker, we are not that naive.
The most important privilege given to a member so that he can perform his duties freely is the freedom of speech, Mr. Speaker, and that is what we should strive for, to let more members express themselves and tell the House what their constituents are telling them, to express their constituents' opinions in the House.
With these proposals before us, the federal government is restricting the right to speak and, I think, hindering us in the performance of our duties.
The government has brought forward substantial changes to the rules. We in the Liberal Party oppose several of these changes, not all, several of them, and I will touch upon the main ones.
Many Canadians do not understand, and I do not blame them, all the rules of procedure of this House, the intent, the impact, and therefore cannot appreciate the changes. But take it from me, these changes will not improve debate. These changes will not give more members of Parliament more time to debate questions of importance to this country. We believe that Canadians must be made aware of what is going on in Parliament and to do that, we believe, Parliament sits and should sit longer.
I was here from 1972 until 1978-79. We used to sit at night. We did not like it very much but we sat until 10 or 10.30 p.m. and we thought we would improve things. We changed the system. We improved it by allowing members of Parliament to go home for supper with their children, by allowing members of Parliament to go to their ridings more often. It was an improvement which I think was successful.
Yet, here we have a proposal that in my view does nothing to restore or improve public faith in Parliament. In The Ottawa Citizen of March 23, the government House leader is quoted as saying: "The changes are needed to rekindle public faith in the institution of Parliament". He goes on: "The excesses of the adversarial extremes have brought disfavour on the House and reduced our reputation".
Coming from a member of a party that stormed the Chair, that rang the bells for two weeks, how much credibility does that have? Not much.
In The Globe and Mail of March 23 the same person, the government House leader, was described as believing, and I quote: "that Canadians are jaded with perpetual political bickering in Parliament. The people want their politicians to make a difference and they want them to spend more time closer to the voters".
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The government House leader, as usual, misreads Canadians and public opinion. What Canadians want is better leadership from the government. They are indeed tired of empty promises and secret deals and dice-throwers. That we agree with, but it is time we saw some leadership over there and less of this nonsense about people wanting to see their members in their ridings.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you from having been elected six times to this House that if you are not in your riding, and if you do not work, you do not get re-elected by the community. I would hope that most members here have that experience, that if you work, you get elected. If you do not work, you do not get elected. It is a heck of a privilege to represent 100,000 people as I do in Ottawa- Vanier, and I take it very seriously.
I do not think it improves my work in my riding, which fortunately happens to be close to this place, by saying to me that members of Parliament are demeaning Parliament by having adversarial debates. That is what debate is all about.
The proposals for change were put to the opposition in January of this year. Just to rectify some of the facts that were put to the House yesterday by the House leader, he said we have been dealing for a year with these proposals. That is nonsense. They were put to me as House leader of the opposition in January 1991, and I immediately circulated them to the members of my caucus for their consideration.
This battle is not for show. This battle is because we oppose the suggested changes, because we believe they will not rekindle public faith in Parliament. Possibly less partisanship as we saw this morning by the government Whip would help. I could agree with that. Possibly a little less gagging of Parliament. This is the government that in five years used the gag 34 times. Unbelievable.
The government is proposing to reduce the time of the opposition that represents the views of the millions of Canadians who may not always agree with government policy. They want to shorten the number of sitting days from 175 to 134 days. They are cutting many of the days of the Official Opposition, traditionally used to voice the concerns of our constituents in this House on the 25 or so days a year that the opposition has at its disposal to call the debate on a supply day of the government.

By cutting 41 sittings days, the government is sparing itself 41 question periods. Perhaps that will be an improvement, but I do not think it will change anything. It might do a little more to put to sleep the media concerned only with question period, this daily 45-minute exercise in partisanship, those who are not interested in following the proceedings of the House the rest of the time and who never or seldom attend committee sittings to see what is being done there, where in fact the bulk of the work is done by responsible members working on legislation, bills and reports referred for their consideration. No one talks about that, Mr. Speaker. Heaven forbid! During these 45 minutes when there can be a run-in between two members, if it is funny, they will laugh, but, if it is dull, if the opposition does not bring it off they will say that the opposition is not with it.
I wonder, if the cynicism-I am not sure this is the most appropriate term-that colours the media's perception of this Parliament and the House of Commons, is not indeed a serious cause for concern.
The government limits to 15 minutes per day the time allotted to presenting petitions from the Canadian people. This limit is pointless, considering the fact that petitions have taken on average 8 minutes per day over the past two years. Now the government wants to reduce it to 15 minutes. I fail to understand!
These petitions are drafted, circulated, signed and sent to be tabled in this House by Canadians from all walks of life, rich, poor, interested in politics or not. Petitions are a legitimate, legal and democratic means by which the ordinary citizen can make his opinion known on a matter that concerns him.
The government wants to reduce from 8 to 6 days the number of days to debate the throne speech. However, over the past two years, only 27 of the 1,611 hours of debate were spent to debate the throne speech. Yet, it is important. It sets the course for the opening session and indicates the direction the government intends to take. The members, both on the opposition side and the government side, find it important to take part in this debate, because it gives them the opportunity to address various subjects of interest to their riding.

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Mr. Speaker, the government muzzles the members during the debates, imposes time allocation on them and, on top of that, reduces without reason the time to debate time allocation. In five years, this government attempted 31 times, as I mentioned earlier, to impose time allocation, Mr. Speaker, a measure which had previously been used only 29 times over 19 years. It was not used more than 29 times over 19 years and they used it 31 times over five years!
The government reduced by two hours the debate time when closure is applied. This is by virtue of the motion dealing with Standing Order 57, which puts an end to the debate. During this 34th legislature, closure was applied 8 times on very important bills, namely the bills on capital punishment, free trade, the goods and services tax, unemployment insurance. The intent, I gather, was to give the greatest number of members possible a chance to be heard. That is not what happens when closure is applied.
The government is reducing from 25 to 20 the number of sittings days allotted to the business of supply, designated as allotted days. These days are a fundamental aspect of our work. Allow me to quote a few more statistics. Out of the 1,611 hours the House sat between April 3, 1989 and December 31, 1990, only 174 hours, or 10.8 per cent of the time, were allotted to this most important task of making the government accountable for the way it spends the Canadian taxpayers' money.
Also, Mr. Speaker, what irritates me in these proposed changes is the fact that if the House does not sit following a decision made by the majority, and the government as we know has the majority, then the opposition will have to give up one allotted day for every week the House is not sitting. In other words, we stand to lose allotted days if the government decides to adjourn the House for more than one week.
The government wants to reduce from six to four the number of days allotted to the Budget Debate. Can you imagine! Out of the 1,611 hours of debate we have had since April 3, 1989, the Budget Debate took only 43 hours and a half, that is less than 3 per cent of the time of the House. Yet, during the Budget Debate, members can talk about what policies the government wants to take to reduce the deficit, to decrease our national debt,
to create a better climate and bring the Canadian economy back on track. Mr. Speaker, since 1989, we have barely spent 3 per cent of the 1,100 sitting hours discussing the Budget.
The only reason why the government is limiting debate is that it wants to hide its poor financial performance from the Canadian people.


An hon. member:: That's right!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: In fact, the government has not reduced the deficit which reaches $30.5 billion in 1991. It has increased the national debt to $380 billion, and so on. Mr. Speaker, we have got to have a serious debate on this issue.


An hon. member:: Exactly!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: One of the most important points in the changes to the Standing Orders has to do with a new parliamentary calendar. I know that I do not have much time left, but I would like to cover this point. The proposal in no way favours a member who must return to his riding every week to see his constituents and his family on the weekend. It does not encourage that, Mr. Speaker. It gives a week every three weeks, and we know that the government will wait for that week off to make its negative announcements and those they do not want to debate in the House because we will see ministers making punchy statements or issuing press releases that otherwise could be examined seriously here in the House during oral question period or in debate.
Mr. Speaker, I swear that that is what will happen. You will see. They will use that week to get their negative messages across or to announce things on which the House will not have a chance to speak.


An hon. member:: That is true!


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, in my years here, I have suggested some things and I would like to conclude on that because what I have to say is positive. A while ago, I asked that any bill tabled in the House have a summary on the first page to help understand what the bill is about. Every legislature in the world that I know like those in France, England and several provinces do the same. They have the bill with a description, a brief concise explanation of what it is about. We do not have that here, eh? Many people spend their time unable to understand what it is about. If the bill were accompanied by such an explanation, we would be further ahead.
April 9, 1991

Mr. Speaker, I see that you are about to rise. Thank you for your attention.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Questions and comments?


Mr. Baker:: A question, please.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A question? [English]


George Baker: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member.
I wonder if he could relate to the House what he was going to say before he got cut off.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: That is a very good question. I was about to say that I have, over the years, given notice on the Order Paper of several changes which I would like to see. For example, I would like to see that when the bells of the House are ringing to call members for a vote that standing committees of the House should interrupt or suspend their sittings to allow members to come here and vote. There would be no great harm in doing that, and it would allow all of us to be here and do what we are supposed to be doing. I think it would be a positive step that committees would adjourn or suspend when the bells are ringing, calling members to the vote.


An hon. member:: Tell us more.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: I think that the changes proposed here would also be improved if, for example, the transparency of our work was more evident. I think committees could be televised. I believe that we should choose two or three committee rooms and improve the message by possibly televising more proceedings.

Mr. Speaker, one of the most important points in this reform proposed by the government is that it will reduce the time of debate; they would have us believe that by sitting less, we would give the people of Canada better value.

May I just end my remarks by referring to an editorial which the House leader used yesterday in this House which I think needs to be responded to and that is the editorial in The Ottawa Citizen of yesterday. The Ottawa Citizen had an article stating that the reforms may aid credibility and it goes on and gives its support to these proposals.
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This may be the opinion of the editorial board of The Ottawa Citizen, but they should try to demonstrate for us in this House how these proposed changes could restore the credibility of the House of Commons. I doubt very much that these changes would do this.
The proposed changes they mention give MPs more time to spend away from the House, reduce sitting days, cut the length of speeches, limit the time for debating bills or borrowing authority, limit the number of Commons committees meeting at one time or other. Does all this improve the credibility of this House? No, Mr. Speaker.
There are perhaps other changes that could restore credibility: a reduction in the level of partisanship, for example. The majority of MPs here are dedicated, hard working, serious men and women who do their best to represent their constituencies. Perhaps, and I alluded to that a few minutes ago, the media feels there is a lack of credibility. Maybe the cynicism that colours their perception of this House should be changed. That is possible also.
As well, they find it difficult to move, as I said previously, to more than the Question Period. They have not, in my view, given serious coverage to the committee work of this House. If Parliament is irrelevant, and I disagree with that statement that The Ottawa Citizen makes, it is in my view time for us all here, the four estates, to look at ourselves seriously. The editorial states: "Our political leaders are diverting attention away from the seat of democracy by relying on commissions". That is possible.
The Ottawa Citizen should be able to make the connection between the intent of the proposed rules and the desire of the government to draw less attention to its vastly unpopular policies and fiscal mismanagement. I do not think this editorial is very helpful. If the editors of The Ottawa Citizen could only have gone back to then-drawing board and, very seriously, put this proposal before a group of persons who could have helped them understand it, it would have been much better and much more fruitful.
In closing, I have one proposal. There are, as I said at the beginning of my speech, two sets of rules: the written rules, the Standing Orders, and the unwritten rules, the conventions, the practices, the methods and everything else. In the unwritten rules it is said that the opposition chairs three standing committees of the House of Commons: Scrutiny of Regulations, Public Accounts, Management and Members' Services. Those

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three committees have traditionally been chaired by the opposition.
I do not doubt the government's intention here. I suspect that it will hold to the convention that the opposition members will have the chair of these three committees. I would hope they would. I am worried because one of the committees, Management and Members' Services, is in an envelope and it kind of disappears within the management committee of the House. Therefore, I would like to ask publicly if the government intends to change this long-standing practice of appointing a member of the opposition as chair of those three traditional standing committees. There is no rule that says we have to act that way, but there is a convention, a practice, that has been with us for a long time. I would hope that they will continue this practice.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to address the House on what is obviously a very important subject to all members of Parliament.
I represent the constituency of Crowfoot. One of the rules that is recommended for change is that members would be serving in the House of Commons for a period of about three weeks, and then would have a week to receive constituency representations.
Mr. Speaker, when I look at my constituency, I see that my riding is larger than 33 nations in the world. Within my constituency are 113 individual communities and therefore when I am at one of them, there are 112 at which I am not. It should be obvious that that rule, bearing in mind that mine is far from the largest constituency in the country, if Parliament is to work, if we are to represent the people, we must be available to hear the views of our constituents in order to come here to place those views before Parliament.
I was in the House of Commons when the hon. member for Skeena made the comment that he had no difficulty in going home every weekend. For those persons who do not know where that member's riding is, he would have to fly to Vancouver, and I am not sure of the route today, but he would either fly north to Prince George, and then from Prince George into Prince Rupert and, not knowing where he lives, would probably have a car drive thereafter.
It may well be that this hon. member can travel some 12 or 14 hours and attend, as he said, some six meetings on a weekend. It may be that he, with his pectorals rippling, his latissimus dorsi all bulked up, crawling with power, and his deltoids and his triceps and his biceps all bulging and knotted masses of muscles, hardened, and going with his tight T-shirt on with a big S on it, is more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet and that big S stands for super-Skeena.
Everybody will not be like that member. Everybody will not be super-Skeena. I remember the predecessor to the hon. member for Skeena, the Hon. Iona Campagno-lo. I sat beside her on the plane once, shortly after she was appointed to the cabinet. She went home every weekend. She lamented the almost five-hour flight to Vancouver, waiting, then getting on the flight to Prince George, waiting, taking a small plane to Prince Rupert, and having a two-hour car drive to get home. She went home every weekend. However, she lamented how difficult and how hard it was on her.
Let us suppose that the hon. member for Skeena can go home every weekend. Let us suppose that no one cares about our physical condition when we do arrive. Is it not legitimate to ask the question: what about a Chamber of Commerce that meets, perhaps, every Wednesday, or a Rotary Club that meets every Tuesday, or an organization of professional women that meets every Thursday. If we go home on weekends, do we presume that everyone in our constituencies who invites us to address them or to make representations or to listen to hearings has to schedule the country within a Saturday and a Sunday time frame?
What about those persons who are somehow going to be elected to Parliament? Are they to go home every weekend and to have six or seven meetings as the member for Skeena attests, and then never once have an opportunity for some co-existence with their families? Yet, to be able to come down here and as one of the policies of an institution, to support Parliament and its move to help and assist and strengthen the families when, in fact, they are detracted from them by the very demands of the job. My constituency is large, but is not nearly as large as the Western Arctic or Eastern Arctic. It is not nearly as large as two other constituencies in my home province of Alberta or as large as most of the
April 9, 1991

northern ridings of the provinces or even some parts of the central provinces on the prairies.
It is appropriate for us to look at the whole matter of how we represent our constituents, our availability to them and the opportunity to be real representatives by the fact that we are among our people on a regular basis and can schedule meetings to hear their views.
What I also wish to address is that while there are some who lament the new rule changes that are being proposed, I am one who believes that this institution must focus more sharply on the rules that are already in place. We who have been here for a long time-and I have now been here for some 17 years-lament that there is a decay of Parliament. It came most predominantly when television came to this institution.
What has happened is, I think, an utter disgrace to the nation of Canada. Every member of Parliament should pause, reflect and to ask the question: Who is being served by how we behave here? I do not think it matters much if one member calls another a slanderous name or imputes a motive or suggests that they lie with respect to any of us as individuals. Obviously, it is a discourtesy, but to the extent that it weakens the institution of Parliament it is a national tragedy.
We must take a look at the rules of this place and examine the conduct of all members of the House, particularly when it comes to Question Period. There is real reason for further examination, for asking ourselves to enforce the rules that we have above and beyond the simple examination of some new rule changes. The notion that a question cannot be argumentative, the notion that questions cannot be repeated, the notion that we are not allowed to impute motives one to another, or that a question cannot intend to slander another person, those are all part of Erskine May or Beauchesne. Yet we feed, in a daily diet, of verbal conduct that simply would not be accepted in any other form of civil meeting procedures in some other part of our society.
This Parliament is the mirror through which Canadians see themselves. How we conduct ourselves here is how Canadians ultimately end up feeling about Canada. I might be accused by members of the New Democratic Party of being somewhat pro-American when I give the
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following example. I hope they will forgive me but it is not my intention. Many Canadian citizens leave Canada to take graduate degrees in the United States. They enter into cultural readjustment when they come home because they sense, after a period of time of working in the United States, that there is a negativism in this country which permeates through the society and leads people to the perspective and to the view that somehow we, in this nation, simply are a group who want to complain and complain about almost everything and anything. Whatever degree there is to that perspective of those who re-enter Canadian society after being away for a while elsewhere, it starts right here in this place. We have an adversarial system, separated by two sword lengths in which we develop as professionals in finding the negative.
I have been here 17 years, more than half of which I was on the opposition side of the House. When we watch the news and when we read the newspapers, we very seldom come away with a sense of what is good about our country. So seldom do we sense the pride and the joy of being Canadian. Very seldom do we accent the positive and certainly not on a continuous basis or in a full-fledged basis on a wide variety of issues. Instead, no matter what we all might be going right, there is a grovelling towards finding the negative. That is because the central institution, I believe, is one whose design is to find the negative. That is how Parliament was established, to find the negative.
While it may well be that there is some advantage to that-and I would be the first to concede that there is advantage in focusing in on those policies and acts of government that need to be improved. I also submit that the rules that have been developed over the years that we will find in Erskine May and in Beauchesne say that questions should not be argumentative, should not have preambles, should not impute motives. If we turn a deaf eye or ear to that, then what we are doing is ignoring the reason the rules were put there in the first place. Those rules are there because we must act with civility in this place. We must conduct ourselves in a manner that Canadians will feel pride in their country. We have to be able, through this institution, to reflect Canada in a way

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that Canadians can see this nation for the blessed advantage it really is.
The truth of the matter is that no one is more Canadian than at that moment when they arrived home from a trip elsewhere. When they come back to Canadian soil, when they have compared us with whatever else might be on earth, that becomes the point at which they say: "This is the land in which we have the greatest of opportunity".
We need to revisit not only the rules before us in this debate, but we need to expand beyond that to the whole question of individual relationships and conduct. We must treat each other with the kind of dignity that will come from orderly, parliamentary conduct. We need not enter into innuendo, into slanderous comments.
As an example, I think of a comment made by an hon. member some many years ago. He rose in this House and accused another hon. member of not having the morals of an alley cat. When Mr. Speaker asked him to withdraw his comments, he admitted that he was wrong and said: "Mr. Speaker, I withdraw. The hon. member does have the morals of an alley cat".
I use that example because it is of a period long before this present one, but the example can be found today. According to Erskine May, it is all inappropriate, you cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly. As an institution we need to focus on those kinds of statements. We cannot allow members, in some slanderous way, to simply twist things and achieve points in a political debate when the fact of the matter is that we are here for one purpose and that is to serve the common good of all Canadians.
We are entering now into a very interesting period of time, a constitutional crisis of our nation upon which this institution is going to be looked at for its relevancy and its capacity to be able to resolve issues.
If we took the Canadians who think Question Period is a wonderful part of the parliamentary process, that it really reflects their views, that it is a positive period of legislative process, and put all those Canadians on Vancouver Island; and then we got those who thought it was a negative process, that it was disadavantageous to Parliament, and we put them on Prince Edward Island, the weight distribution of this country would so change
that the poor people on Vancouver Island would be
30,000	feet above sea level.
There is virtually no one who will stand up and say, I saw Question Period last week on television and I just wanted to report to you that I thought it was tremendous, it was a great display. None of us hear that when we go home. People do not come rushing up, but every one of us when we go home hear criticisms about the conduct here.
We, as a chamber, need to look at the rules again, about how we conduct ourselves in this House. That has to be an aspect that must tag along with all of the other rule changes that are coming at this very sensitive time, particularly as we enter into this constitutional crisis in which Canadians are asking whether or not we want to remain united, whether we want to remain a nation.
Frankly, I don't think Canadians are asking that question; they already have the answer. What they want to know is that this place will conduct itself in a manner where they can look towards it with respect and with the full and absolute belief that we are all here with the common interest of each of them in mind. We are not here to subrogate any one individual, to impute motives to another, to use long preambles that are argumentative when Erskine May says that they ought not to be, and to use our time in Question Period simply to embarrass the other person as a person. It is time we quit debating personalities and started debating issues. That means you stick to facts and to statistics. It is a drier and duller debate, but, sir, I can tell you this; it is a lot more profitable and advantageous for all Canadians when that is the way in which this institution conducts itself. I would commend it to every member of the House of Commons.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the remarks and comments of the hon. member for Crowfoot. He has been a member of this Parliament for a long time. I listened particularly to his comments about Canada and think they would be well received on all sides of the House.
I would ask him this. He is the chair of the committee on which I sit, the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. I would like his comments on the impact of these rule changes on the work of the committees, as well as what is being left out, in terms of
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making this institution work more effectively for the people of Canada.
Let me call his attention to a very particular aspect of the committee work. First of all, as I understand the proposed changes to the Standing Orders, the effect would be that the various committees would go into what are called envelopes. Only two committees within the envelope can meet at the same time. If one of the committees is meeting virtually around the clock, this will put great limits on the time available for the other committees to meet.
The reform of the committee structure in Parliament before I got here back in 1984 was intended, as I understand it, to permit even closer scrutiny to the workings of the various departments than had been possible before the rule changes of 1984 went into effect. However, it strikes me that the rule changes proposed here will even further restrict the committees from doing the job that they were earlier intended to do.
The effect of the rule changes in 1984, before the current rule changes come into play, is as I see it, to really hobble Parliament in the role that it may have in scrutinizing expenditures.
Our committee is responsible for reviewing the expenditures of the Department of National Defence, $12.5 billion a year, billions of dollars on expenditures for military equipment which as far as I can see, given the end of the Cold War, are obsolete. Yet our committee has virtually no time, even under the present structure, to review these billions of dollars worth of expenditures. We have had one meeting at which the Minister of National Defence came to address the question of estimates.
As the spokesperson for our party, I had 10 minutes worth of questions, and that included the time given to the answers. We have a good chairman. He was ready to try to find extra time for us, but the minister's availability ran out.
We have very limited time to do that function. We also have limited time to study general policy. In particular, I would like him to address how these rule changes are going to make it possible for the committees to do the job they have to do. Surely, the direction of these changes should have been to expand the capacity of the committees, rather than restrict them.
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Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, my first comment to the hon. member-I anticipate that there will be some laughter when I say this-is that we do not live in a perfect world.
Having said that obvious fact, the truth of the matter is that we are not going to be able to do everything that we think ought to be done in every condition in all situations and at all times.
The hon. member for Victoria states that this is going to restrict the committee's capacity and then he said: "as was the case the last time that the rule changes were there". Maybe the hon. member is as mistaken this time as he was with respect to the last time.
I was here before the present rules changes came in. We could not study anything in any committee unless the minister mandated us to do it. If it was controversial, we simply could not get a mandate.
What happened with the rule changes out of the McGrath committee is that now committees on their own discover and develop their own subject area. That is what they researched. That is what they put forward.
When the hon. member says that this is going to restrict us like the last changes restricted us, first of all we need to bear in mind that he might just as well be wrong about this one as he was the one before, because it is a lot better now than it was in that first situation.
When my good friend from Victoria says that $12 billion of expense money is obsolete spending now that there is peace in the Middle East, he is absolutely right. As long as he can guarantee me that there will never again anywhere ever in the world be another agitation of one nation against another, then spending on military defence is absolete. I want a greater guarantee than somebody's word that somehow that expenditure is obsolete. The Kuwaitis sure do not believe that it is obsolete. We had the capacity within the world to give them back their nation after they were intruded upon by a dictator. I would submit that the obsolescence that he would attach to the federal expenditures for national defence are only accurate if there never again was to be a provocation by any nation against another.
He talks about the importance that he attaches to the estimates. He may very well attach importance to the estimates. Many members do. The hon. member is saying that I do not. Now I have not said I do not. He is saying that. That is the old thing I asked him not to do a

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few moments ago and that is to impute motives, because I have not said that.
At the end of the day, I think it becomes of equal importance, not only to examine the estimates, but for members of Parliament to help in the designing of policy by undertaking studies and by thoroughly investigating that policy with witnesses before committees. In the long run, I believe the emphasis ought to be placed on this.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. There are other members who want to ask questions or make short comments.


Mr. David Berger (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to a comment made by the member for Crowfoot. He stated that he does not hear in his constituency, compliments about Question Period. He said that he believes we should stick to facts and not be argumentative and so forth.
I would suggest to him that is a somewhat Pollyannish way of looking upon Parliament and the responsibilities of members of Parliament. Apart from my opinion of his comment, is it not really the voters who should decide upon the performance of members of Parliament and of the parties that are represented in this House? I thought that when I was elected to Parliament I was elected to come here to articulate the views and needs of my constituents in the best manner that I am able to, that I was elected to debate and I was elected to ask questions.
Does he not agree that is the role of a member of Parliament? As he knows, the rule changes he claims to favour, which were proposed by the Conservative government, will precisely provide fewer opportunities for MPs to ask questions, to debate and to articulate the views and needs of their constituents.
I would like to ask him how he feels that providing fewer opportunities to MPs will enhance the status of Parliament in the eyes of his constituents and in the eyes of all Canadians?


Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, of course the hon. member is correct when he says that his role is to come here and articulate views to the best of his ability on behalf of his constituents. That is right. That is why we are here.
But the hon. member represents a constituency that is very close to this Chamber. He does not have to travel very far. Canada is the second largest nation in the world; 4.5 time zones from east to west. Constituencies are long flight distances away. One of the rule changes
will allow for a period where we can go home to be in our constituencies and to hear representations.
The hon. member who asked the question said: "Isn't he right to be able to articulate on behalf of his constituents?" I submit to him who lives very close to his constituency that he has an opportunity that I, the hon. member for Edmonton East, the hon. member for Victoria and the hon. member for Arctic West do not have, and that is to get home with the same frequency, or even mid-week for important events. We are extending an hour every day so that the period we are at home is virtually made up in debating time by the length of time we have extended the debate here.


Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before resuming the debate, 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 Hamilton West-Airports; the Hon. Member for York Centre-Harbourfront Corporation; and the Hon. Member for Cape Breton Highlands- Canso-Fisheries.


George Baker: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could add a few words to this debate.
We have in our Canadian House of Commons a procedure for changing the rules that is not present in any other legislature, as we call it. This is a legislature. In the world, that I know of, we are part of the British parliamentary system. Parliament comes from the word parler, to speak. This is a speak shop here.
They have a procedure set down to change the rules. We do not have any such procedure. So, we cannot as government members do in this debate. They say: "Well, how about if you had Question Period and you had the British system where there is a question from the opposition and then a question from the government". That is what they do. In every question period in the British House of Commons, the questions go to the opposition member, to the government member, to the opposition member to the government member.
The House leader says: "Why do we not have that"? Then the deputy House leader stood up and said: "How about if we had a system like they have in Britain where
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the Prime Minister is only there for three days". That is true. Cabinet ministers only have to show up for one day, and you give notice to the minister about your question. You must give notice.
You do not tell the minister what your supplementary question is going to be, but you give him notice. The deputy House leader said: "How about if we had that in the Canadian House of Commons?". Then the Whip stood up and suggested the most revolutionary thing of all. I'm sorry, it was the member from Surrey, British Columbia, who suggested: "How about if every motion and every debate came to an end, not in seven days, but in seven hours as they do in some of these other parliaments". Of course that is true in Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Motions come to an end at the end of every sitting day. That is true.
But what these members did not say to this opposition was: "How about if we had the system of committees that they have in the British House of Commons? How about that system"? That is what they forgot to say. That is where the action is.
The committees are completely divorced from the House of Commons. They do not need terms of reference. They operate completely autonomously. That is where the action is in those legislatures throughout the world which have a system in place for changing their rules of procedure.
By rules I mean all of the rules. Some of our rules, as the hon. member before me pointed out, are by custom. For example, somebody bows to you, Mr. Speaker, in the chair. You often wonder why somebody bows to you. I mean, it is veiy unusual to have a member walking across the floor and he bows to you. He bows. You often wonder why, when the Speaker comes in, the Sergeant-at-Arms says: "Take your hat off to the Speaker". You often wonder why you cannot sit up in the gallery up there without having a tie on. You are not allowed. If a man tried to come into the House with a leather jacket on, with a shirt and tie, he would not be allowed. There are certain rules that are sometimes very difficult to understand.
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I imagine it must be difficult for people in the gallery to understand. If they took out a pencil right now, at this very moment, and started to take notes, they would be told they are not allowed to do it in any part of the gallery.


An hon. member:: Except in the press gallery.


George Baker: Yes, except in the press gallery, and except a portion of the gallery here to the right of the Speaker for ministers' assistants and a section of the gallery just next to the gentleman up there who is operating the console, operating the microphones, and there is a little section where the Speaker and the guards allow somebody to take notes.
The Canadian House of Commons has been very slow to change. I suppose we have been the slowest to change of any legislature under what we call the British parliamentary system. It was only in the 1950s that women were allowed to come into the House and sit here without a hat on. Members might be interested to know that at that time when two female MPs in the House of Commons stood up and asked why it was that whenever a woman comes to this House and sits in the gallery, she must have a hat on, the Speaker in a classic ruling for the Canadian House of Commons recited St. Paul in the first epistle to Timothy.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


George Baker: No, no,
then he made reference to the first epistle to the Corinthians, which I will not repeat here today. He made reference to those particular proclamations in giving his judgment. The Speaker then set the precedent by saying that as far as he was concerned, a woman should be able to come to these galleries and wear whatever she pleased. So that was the precedent that was set.
Mr. Speaker also in that judgment answered my question as to why people bow to you. It is because the first House of Commons was in a chapel and the Speaker's chair was on the altar. Because it was on the altar, people had to bow. They had to bend their knee when they came in front of the Speaker. That tradition has held until today in this Chamber. The tradition of not allowing anyone to take notes in the gallery stems back to when they did not want people to be sending out

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newsletters about what was supposed to be going on in the House of Commons.
Today, that is a rule in the Canadian House of Commons. You are not allowed to take a note when you visit the House of Commons.
We have been slow to change, to put it mildly, some of the rules of procedure that we have in this House. I believe that drastic changes are necessary in the way that the House of Commons conducts its business. Changes are necessary, but not these changes that have been brought in today. These changes that have been brought in today would not address the concerns that I as a parliamentarian have had for many years.
My concern is this. No matter how you look at it, this House of Commons has two main functions. You could draw up a list of 10 or 12 functions that we have, but there are two main ones: to pass laws and to arrange things in our rules that make the government accountable to the people. There is no other way that the government can be held accountable to the people of Canada, except through the Canadian House of Commons and the press.
What has happened over the years to our rules is that we have changed drastically in what we have accepted as acceptable. No longer can a government be defeated according to our precedents if a vote on a money bill is defeated. Mr. Speaker, you know the precedents that we have set there. No longer can a cabinet minister be held responsible for what happens in his department.
If we go back over Canadian history, we would recognize that cabinet ministers had to resign from time to time for things that happened in their department. I remember one case had to do with customs. Another case had to do with the post office. The assumption was made in our rules that a cabinet minister was held responsible for what happened in his department. If something happened that was completely unacceptable, that cabinet minister had to resign.
Today we not only do not hold ministers responsible for what happens in their department, but they need not
even know what goes on in their department. That is what has evolved over a period of years.
I suppose because the departments have grown so big that it would be ridiculous to suggest that the Minister of Transport would be expected to know every little thing that goes on his department. The rules have changed, the procedure has changed so that a minister does not have to know. He does not have to answer a question in the House. He could stand up and say no to every question. He need not stand up at all. He is not held responsible for what happens in his department. A government cannot be defeated as a government and have to call an election because of the defeat of a money measure. The accountability of the Government of Canada to the people of Canada has now become practically non-existent in the House of Commons.
The other thing which really bothers me, and I sure some of the other members, is the completely unacceptable manner in which we pass bills and some of the tragic errors that have been made. We passed an unemployment insurance bill the other day. Now we see under that unemployment insurance bill that if somebody were collecting unemployment insurance and if they worked part time and reported their earnings, and their earnings meant that the unemployment insurance was reduced by a dollar or two every two weeks, if they quit that part-time job that they were reporting the earnings from, they would now lose all of their unemployment insurance for 12 weeks. That is what was passed in this Parliament. The Parliament of Canada passed that law just recently.
It was under the provision that dealt with quitters. Nothing was said in the legislation that I could see about part-time workers who were working while they were collecting unemployment insurance. It did not say that when they were reinstated after 12 weeks they would not get 60 per cent of their income but it would be reduced to 50 per cent.
It was the former Minister of National Health and Welfare, who was around just a moment ago, who brought in the bill on the advance child tax credit payment. What an outrageous situation that has created. We passed a law in the Canadian House of Commons that said we were going to give people an advance on their child tax credit. The Government of Canada did not even think about the fact that the qualifications for
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receiving that would be determined the following January, because that is what was in the old legislation.
We have in Canada today this outrageous, completely unacceptable situation. Say a fire occurred in the house over Christmas and the children were away for the first week in January and not under her care. Now she, by law, has to pay back every bit of the advance child tax credit given by the Government of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Shame.


George Baker: That is what the Government of Canada passed in this Parliament.
The legislative function of the House of Commons has deteriorated considerably because bills are no longer examined as they used to be when the system was much simpler in this House of Commons. It should be the job of members of Parliament to have complete hearings on issues. If you are going to give a child tax credit you bring in the people who are to receive the child tax credit. If you are going to change unemployment insurance, you bring in the people who are going to get it and who know the system. Then you do not make those mistakes.
There are two main functions of the House of Commons. There is accountability to the people of Canada through the House of Commons. That has practically disappeared over the years. As a legislative body passing laws, we should not be proud of some of the laws that have been made by this legislature in recent years.
Because of that, Mr. Speaker, we have to change our procedures, but in the opposite direction to what is being proposed here today. We cannot take a portion of the British House, or as the hon. member said a few moments ago, what is happening in New Zealand, and transplant that rule to the Canadian House. You cannot take a spoke unless you take the whole wheel. And maybe what is in the socket is not going to work.
In my final minute, what I want to suggest to the Government of Canada is this. Let me say that this has been done in every legislature under the British parliamentary system and is quite a simple procedure. If you go to the British House and you ask them: "How do you change your rules?", they will tell you that they have a committee, not of parliamentarians, but a committee
Government Orders
that is there all the time examining the rules of procedure and constantly making suggestions for change.
You cannot judge another legislature.
You may go to another legislature in Britain, New Zealand or Australia and say: "Oh boy, this looks great.", but does it really? Do you know the rest of the story?
The rules have evolved to meet that country's requirements and those circumstances. I do not know why the Government of Canada would not then put in place this year a permanent mechanism for changing rules of procedure. I have been in this House for 17 years. I have watched the motions come forward one after the other as the years go on.
There are little games played with this rule, that rule or some other rule. Usually, as is the case here, the government is simply trying to remove a little more of the accountability from the House of Commons and its accountability to the people of Canada.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I know there is a lot of interest in this subject, and I am wondering if there might be unanimous consent of the House for us to extend the sitting this evening to allow more members to participate in this debate.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Deputy Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is no unanimous consent. The Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception for a question or comment.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TYinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question.
First of all, I want to say how much I have enjoyed the usual excellent presentation of my colleague from Gander-Grand Falls. I certainly found his comment, in a general sense, very instructive and very interesting.
Knowing perhaps a little bit more of my colleague's background than other members of the House, I know he speaks with great authority from both the House of

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Commons and indeed from the provincial legislature of Newfoundland.
His experience gives me even more confidence in the comments that he has made in a general sense.
If I may be permitted a comment, and one tries not to be very partisan about these kinds of things because there is give and take on both sides, what I have trouble understanding is that for as long as this country has existed, we have had changes in rules.
I find it very difficult to understand in the days when we are sending men to the moon, when we have telephones, video sets and conference calls why all of a sudden in this particular year of our Lord we need to now do things differently. I find that very difficult to understand.
An hon. member said last night: "You can do face to face what you cannot do by telephone." Yes, indeed. I would like to do all my business face to face, but by necessity of time, I have to do a lot of things by telephone.
I know also that the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls does a lot by telephone as well. I suppose one is never totally comfortable with rules. As human beings, I suppose we would always like to have total freedom, but I see rules as things that are applied to organizations and individuals which allows them to operate in a concerted, agreed manner that produces a better effectiveness in the over-all system.
Sometimes people suffer a bit. Sometimes people gain. I am not in favour of the rule changes, but I do not want to get into that right now.
Really, what I wanted to do was ask the hon. member if he could perhaps talk about some of the specifics that he is not very happy with. He may even be able to suggest in his vast experience and knowledge on this subject some of the things that he would like to see.


George Baker: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member from Newfoundland for his question.
I want to point out to the House that we do a lot of things in Newfoundland differently than we do them here in the House of Commons. I suppose I could use up my six minutes to tell others about the differences.
One of them that just occurred to me is that the government, in the House of Commons and everywhere
under the British parliamentary system and in the provincial legislatures, always sits on the right hand of the Speaker. In the legislature in Newfoundland they sit on the left-hand, and the reason for that is interesting. When you look at all the procedures, there are various times when you refer to the person on your right. In this particular case you have to translate that because as you know, all of our rules in the provincial legislatures, and really federally, all refer back to Erskine May. Provincially they refer back to Beauchesne and in between we have our Standing Orders.
Anyway, the reason for the change in Newfoundland was that back in the days when the first legislative building was built, there was only one fireplace. This was before the days of central heating. That fireplace was to the left of the Speaker. Of course, the government always claimed the warmer side of the House. That is where our tradition came from as far as sitting to the left of the Speaker rather than the right of the Speaker.
The hon. member asked me what changes I would like to see.


An hon. member:: I want to sit close to the fireplace.


George Baker: I want to sit close to the fire.
I will make reference to one change. Perhaps somebody might be reading this transcript, or might be in the process of changing rules provincially or federally. It refers to decorum here in this and other legislative bodies.
Mr. Speaker, have you ever looked at the decorum in certain provincial legislatures on television when they replay portions of their proceedings at night? You notice the considerable difference between that decorum and the decorum here in the Canadian House of Commons. It appears as if we are more orderly. It appears that way.
I want to say that where you find legislatures that have very poor decorum it is because the House rules permit the use of the word "you", y-o-u. That is interesting. The next time you visit a provincial legislature or visit another country that has a legislative body derived from the British parliamentary system, wherever you have a chamber that permits the word "you" to be used during Question Period or at any other time, the decorum is completely terrible. It goes out the window. It is personal.
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That is why all of the traditions of the House, all of the rules of the House, have an intermediary. People sometimes ask why we are always talking to the Speaker when we are speaking in the House. Why do we not talk to the minister? Why do we not talk to the people? Why are we always talking to the Speaker?


Mr. Epp:: He's the only one who listens.


George Baker: The hon. member said that perhaps he is the only one listening.
That is one suggestion I would make. That is to make the use of the word "you" completely unparliamentary, and if a member stands up and says "you", he should be told to sit down.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief question for the member for Gander-Grand Falls.
The number of members required to refuse consent, and this was put to you two or three times today in this House, to extend the hours past the normal adjournment is 15 under our present rules. It is proposed to increase that to 25.
When we were in opposition from 1984 to 1988, it was 25. There were 40 of us in opposition. The member for Gander-Grand Falls was there with me and he knows that it was difficult for us sometimes to get 25 members in the House. We are going back to that 25. Is that not what I would call an anti-democratic way of handling the smaller parties of this House? Is that not what I would call an anti-democratic way of handling the smaller parties of this House? Is that not the tyranny of the majority by asking those of us who have less to do more?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: It being five o'clock p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
Private Members' Business


PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS-BILLS   CRIMINAL CODE AND SUPREME COURT ACT MEASURE TO AMEND
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, December 6, 1990, consideration of the motion of Mr. Domm that Bill C-210, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Supreme Court Act (habeas corpus) be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
Mr. Girve Fretz (Erie):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill C-210 on the subject of Canada's extradition process as I was the seconder of the motion.
Extradition defined is the "handing over by one government to another government, upon the latter's request, of a person accused of or convicted of a crime in the requesting country."
Canada has entered into an extradition treaty or arrangement with 40 countries, including the United States. Our proximity to the U.S. underscores the importance of having an extradition agreement wherein fugitives fleeing from the U.S. into Canada and vice versa can be returned to the country where the alleged crimes took place and justice served. A fugitive must not be allowed to assume that by crossing a border into a foreign country that he has found a safe haven, free from prosecution.
Recently, Canadians were reminded of the alleged heinous crimes of Charles Ng, charged with the sex slayings of 11 people in California. We were reminded of these crimes because the families of the slain victims, the whereabouts of the remains of some of them are still unknown, came to Ottawa to request that the federal government extradite Ng to the U.S. so that he could be tried. I, along with others members of Parliament, met with these distressed families, at the invitation of the hon. member for Peterborough, the sponsor of the bill.
We are reminded as well, because on February 21, 1991 arguments were being presented before the Supreme Court of Canada as to whether or not Charles Ng and convicted killer Joseph Kindler should be extradited to the United States.

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Canadians who have been following the case of Ng know that he fled to Canada illegally in 1985 and was then arrested in Calgary for shoplifting. Ng was sentenced to serve four and a half years in a Canadian federal penitentiary. Canadians have been awaiting a decision on Ng and Kindler since 1985. It has taken five and a half years of appeals to get this far.
Why are Canadians saddled with the presence and the cost of incarcerating these individuals? While Ng, under the present extradition treaty with the United States, cannot be surrendered to American authorities until he has served his sentence in Canada, most would argue that our extradition process is too slow and in need of significant modifications.
The member for Peterborough has introduced this bill which would provide for changes to the Extradition Act, the Criminal Code and Supreme Court Act to make extradition to the U.S. a speedier process. I support and encourage the thrust of his bill because it reduces the number of appeals available to a fugitive.
Fugitives like Ng have more judicial options and opportunities open to them than does a Canadian citizen who is accused of committing a crime here in Canada. Clearly, there is a grave danger that our extradition process is being taken advantage of by fugitives who see Canada as a haven from justice where they can avoid possible execution, as in the case of Ng, where in the state of California he could face the death penalty.
I would like to quote from The London Free Press, February 7, 1990.
Capital punishment is a relevant issue. But while the death penalty
has been abolished in Canada, that is no justification to impose our
legal or social values on a neighbouring democracy, which
guarantees fair and open trials.
These are surely the thoughts of the relatives of Ng's victims; after all, justice delayed is indeed justice denied. It is also the sentiments of 100,000 Canadian petitioners who are in support of my colleague and seatmate, the hon. member for Peterborough.
Bill C-210 will limit to one the number of appeals available to such fugitives prior to the case going before the Minister of Justice for a decision. Canada's extradition laws have not undergone any significant changes or a review for over a hundred years. This bill will reduce
the number of processes and procedures currently at the disposal of an individual.
If these changes are instituted, a person attempting to fight an extradition order will only be entitled to the initial extradition hearing and one appeal to the relevant provincial court of appeal.
These amendments will effectively eliminate the fugitive's right to appeal the extradition by way of a writ of habeas corpus. It will also eliminate any possible appeal of the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada before the case goes before the Minister of Justice.
If these changes are adopted, the two court proceedings which will be available to the fugitive to argue his case will be as follows: first, an extradition hearing which is presided over by a superior or a county court judge will decide whether the fugitive should be committed to prison in view of the extradition; second, an appeal of the extradition judge's decision to the court of appeal in the applicable province.
Let us use the Ng case as an example of how these amendments then would be applied. With the amendments in place, Ng would have had only an initial extradition hearing and appeal of that decision to the Alberta Court of Appeal. Ng would not have been able to apply for a writ of habeas corpus, nor be allowed to ask the Supreme Court of Canada for permission to hear the case. After these two court proceedings, the case would then automatically go before the justice minister for a decision.
By eliminating these two steps, the time frame involved in an extradition case would be substantially reduced.
I want to conclude my remarks by saying to the House tonight that here we have an opportunity to let this bill go to a vote. I hope that as has happened previously the NDP will not continue the debate and will allow the House to vote on this very important bill.


Mr. Waddell:: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to put on record that it is not the members of the NDP who have spoken on the bill, it has been the government as well as some of the Liberals, but mainly government supporters. So please do not tell us falsehoods in the House, and check the debating time./
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Private Members' Business


Claude Girvin (Girve) Fretz: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this same point of order. If that is the case, we will watch the clock closely and see who is the last member to speak in the House in this debate.


Nelson Andrew Riis: This is a very important issue and I just want to re-emphasize the point. I have just looked over the record and it seems that day after day when we debated this issue it has been members of the government that have been carrying on the debate.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Right on. Right on.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Just to keep the record very factual, the overwhelming number of people who have "spoken out the bill" have been government members. Very few opposition members have spoken.


Mr. Nunziata:: Mr. Speaker, the record is also clear, that the government and the Liberal opposition support the speedy passage of this private members' bill, and it is the NDP that opposes it.
Perhaps the House leader of the New Democratic Party could stand up and indicate whether his party supports the private members' bill that we are debating this afternoon. If that is the case, then we can end the debate right now and call the vote.


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I wish all honorable members could cooperate. I think all parties have expressed their opinion. Messages have been sent from either side, so that we could come back, as required by the rules, to the heart of the debate. Has the hon. member for Erie finished his speech? Resuming debate?


Some hon. members:: Question! Question!


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, I have noted with interest that no member of the New Democratic Party rose to speak on this bill when you called for speakers. I suspect that when we near the hour of six o'clock, New Democratic Party members will rise in order to kill this bill, in order that it not proceed.
I do not intend to hold the bill up. A member of the New Democratic Party says that it is my intention to hold the bill up. That is not my intention.
I would simply indicate to members of the House that I support this bill. The Liberal Party supports this bill. The Liberal Party believes that the present extradition procedure is cumbersome. It is unacceptable. There are unacceptable delays within the extradition procedure and as an interim measure we would like to see this particular private members' bill passed in order to expedite the procedure.
We are dealing here with Bill C-210, which was introduced by the hon. member for Peterborough. This bill, in effect, would streamline the process. The explanatory note indicates that this amendment, which is an amendment to the Criminal Code and to the Supreme Court Act, would limit to one the number of recourses available to a fugitive committed to prison under the Extradition Act.
Under the rules of the House, this particular private members' bill is given an opportunity to be debated in the House. We are dealing with this bill at second reading stage. If no further member rises to further debate the bill at second reading stage, it is referred to a legislative committee. The legislative committee has the authority, the jurisdiction to call witnesses and to examine the bill.
If any political party opposes this bill or opposes any private members' bill, they can talk it out. In other words, an hour has been set aside. It is now 5.12. If no other member rises prior to six p.m., then the matter is put to a vote and the matter is referred to a legislative committee.
The government supports the bill. As I indicated we support the bill. The New Democratic Party is on record as opposing the bill. If I am in error, if I am wrong, then I am sure that once I have finished speaking, the New Democratic Party will correct the record.
As an hon. member has indicated, the Extradition Act has not been amended in over 100 years, notwithstanding the fact the extradition procedure in Canada is a cumbersome procedure. It allows for criminals to come to this country and, in particular, from the United States and

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Private Members' Business
seek safe haven, knowing that the extradition procedures, as cumbersome and lengthy as it is, it is possible for a convicted criminal, let us say a convicted murderer to come to this country and to escape justice.
It is also possible for a suspected criminal, someone who could be suspected of a mass murder in the United States, for example, to come to Canada and avoid facing the music in the United States for a lengthy period of time because of the extradition procedure. The delays are unconscionable.
In Canada today we have two very celebrated cases, two high profile cases involving individuals from the United States who have come to Canada to seek save haven. They have used the extradition laws of this country in order to avoid facing due process in the United States. In particular, there is an individual in prison here in Canada who has been in prison for the last six years, one Charles Ng, who is suspected-he is not convicted- of having committed multiple murders in the State of California in the United States.
Six years ago that individual attempted a robbery in Alberta, was apprehended, convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration in Canada. Since that time, the government of the State of California has sought the extradition of Mr. Ng to the United States in order to face trial for those murders, a far more serious crime than the crime that was committed here in Canada.
Given the procedures available to any individual, including Mr. Ng, here we are six years later and that individual has still not been subjected to due process in the United States. A trial has not yet taken place in the United States.
That is unacceptable and it is unconscionable. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Canadians, and in particular people living in the province of Ontario, will know of the Askov decision. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that if an accused person is not brought to trial within a reasonable period of time, then the state, or the Crown, could no longer prosecute, that these cases ought to be thrown out of court. In fact, thousands upon thousands of cases in the province of Ontario and elsewhere in this country have been dismissed because of the Askov decision, which says that because of lengthy delays involved in the prosecution of an offence, an individual is denied a fair trial.
That works both ways. If an individual, who might ultimately be held responsible for a serious crime, is not brought to trial within a reasonable period of time, the likelihood of the Crown being able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a very high standard indeed, and able to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is responsible for that crime, that likelihood is diminished. With the passage of time, memories fade, witnesses disappear, witnesses die, and it becomes that much more difficult to secure a conviction.
In the Ng case, the suspected crimes took place over six years ago. With every passing day, the State's case is weakened in the State of California. Is it any wonder that people like Charles Ng are using the Canadian judicial system in order to delay the trial in the State of California.
It is not acceptable. For that reason, I support and my party supports Bill C-210.1 should point out that I am a member of the standing committee on justice and that the chairman of the standing committee on justice, the member for Mississauga West is also present in the House today. The standing committee on justice has considered the issue of extradition and has made recommendations to the government in order to streamline the procedure.
On November 23, 1990, the Minister of Justice indicated in a press release and in a statement in this House-in fact, it was a response to the report of the justice committee-that an extensive and major review of extradition law was under way.
That was three or four months ago. The government has been in office for over six years now, and I think Canadians can justifiably ask where is this much-needed legislation that would streamline the procedure, allow for due process and justice in cases where individuals come to this country and are suspected of having committed crimes in other jurisdictions, or have been convicted in other jurisdictions and have escaped to Canada.
I know that I have but a minute left in my submission. In view of the urgency of this particular matter, in view of the cases that will in future come before Canadian courts, I would ask all members to support this private member's initiative. Also I would ask members to try and convince the Minister of Justice to have the government
April 9, 1991

bring in other amendments that would streamline the procedure and make it that much fairer.
I would hope that prior to six p.m. today, a vote could be called at second reading stage and that the matter can be referred to the standing committee on justice. The standing committee on justice could then expedite consideration of this bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, having spoken in this debate, I am not entitled to speak again, but I wonder if I could seek the unanimous consent of the House to pose a short question to the member.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I wonder if the member would answer this. I am concerned that because the member for Peterborough's bill really drastically reduces the process, the extra number of extradition hearings, including removing the process of habeas corpus, which is an ancient part of British and Canadian law, does the hon. member not think that this would probably make the bill unconstitutional?


John V. Nunziata: I do not believe that the bill is unconstitutional. The hon. member is a lawyer. He has his own legal opinion as to the constitutional validity of Bill C-210. He will have the opportunity, as will the Department of Justice and all other interested individuals, to make submissions before the justice committee as to the constitutionality of this particular bill.
The bill does streamline the procedure. It only makes common sense to allow an individual one hearing and several appeals, to the court of appeal in the province where the extradition hearing is held and ultimately an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Under the present procedure there are a number of different avenues of appeal open to an individual that is subjected to the extradition procedure.
Surely any reasonable person, including the nine justices on the Supreme Court of Canada would agree that an individual should have one avenue of appeal. If a person is convicted of murder in Canada today they have an appeal to the court of appeal in the province in which they were convicted and a further appeal to the Supreme
Private Members' Business
Court of Canada. No one is suggesting that the person should have a further avenue of appeal either to another country or to the Federal Court of Appeal. There should be one streamlined procedure. That is all we are suggesting.
If the member has an opportunity to speak again, we would like to know whether the New Democratic Party will allow this bill to get to committee, so we can more fully answer the question he put.


Mr. Lee Richardson (Calgary Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians were shocked by revelations of the Charles Ng case as referred to by the member for York South- Weston and by my colleague, the member for Erie.
Charles Ng was captured in Calgary in July 1985 by a friend and constituent of mine, Sean Doyle. Mr. Doyle had little idea at the time of just who he was capturing when he apprehended Charles Ng.
Canadians have been frustrated by the extraordinary and extended delays in the extradition of Mr. Ng. The U.S. requested extradition of Charles Ng in February 1987. Still Ng remains, at the expense of Canadian taxpayers', harbouring this fugitive in Canada.
The case raised a lot of attention in Canada and a lot of people were upset by this ongoing process. Many of us followed the cause taken up by the member for Peterborough in championing this cause to expedite the extradition process in cases such as the Charles Ng case. Like many members here, I circulated petitions in my constituency to encourage revision and repeal of some of these extradition matters.
The hon. member for Peterborough proposed Bill C-210 which is before us in the House today. The intention of the Domm bill is to streamline Canada's extradition process which currently provides a multitiered system of appeals. Specifically, this bill attempts to limit one of the number of appeals available to a fugitive in an extradition case before the Minister of Justice renders a decision.
The objective of the bill, to avoid delays in handling requests for extradition, is clearly commendable, just what all those who signed petitions were demanding. No one wants to allow excessive delays in the extradition process which could turn Canada into a haven for fugitives who have been accused of serious crimes in other countries. On that matter I expect we will agree, having heard the media attention that the well-publicized extradition cases have received during the last year.

April 9, 1991
Private Members' Business
Beyond that, however, what we must seriously consider is how to best achieve the goal of sound and effective extradition law for Canada. Upon receipt of the hon. member's bill I asked the Department of Justice to examine its implications and the likelihood of achieving what we are attempting to do.
The Department of Justice advised that Bill C-210 would amend the Criminal Code to preclude appeals from decisions and applications for habeas corpus. At first glance the proposal appears to eliminate appeals to provincial courts of appeal and to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The reality of the bill is that behind the optimistic facade lurked grave dangers. When one goes beyond a superficial survey of Bill C-210 it quickly becomes apparent that the bill would create profound problems. Not only does the bill have the potential to exacerbate the problem of delay in extradition cases, it could have detrimental consequences which extend well beyond extradition cases.
Simply put, the bill is not what it seems to be and unfortunately does not accomplish what it was intended to do.
Allow me to provide some examples of the dire impact of passing Bill C-210 which on the face of it may seem to be what we have worked for, a positive response to the problem of delay. The bill appears to remove appeals from decisions concerning habeas corpus. However, these decisions would then become final decisions and according to section 40 of the Supreme Court Act, final decisions can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada if leave to appeal is granted by the court.
Therefore while the bill appears to remove two steps of appeal it opens up the possibility of a new level of appeal.
Furthermore, independent from appeals of judicial decisions in extradition cases, appeals of the decision of the Minister of Justice remain available.
I am trying to emphasize here that the appeal process in extradition matters is a delicate and complicated legal process. A slight legislative adjustment can create a ripple effect which impacts on related statutes, in some cases by opening up new avenues of appeal.
For example, Bill C-210 would repeal paragraph 39(a) of the Supreme Court Act. This amendment is simply supposed to be consequential to the amendments proposed to the Criminal Code. In reality the amendment would have serious negative results.
I am advised that Bill C-210 would remove a paragraph from the Supreme Court Act. That paragraph, however, is a particularly important paragraph because it removes two possible avenues of appeal that are created elsewhere in the act. Therefore, by removing that paragraph that prevents appeals in habeas corpus matters, the bill opens up two new appeal steps that are provided in sections 37 and 38 of the act. In other words two avenues of appeal would be open which do not currently exist. They are prevented at present by the paragraph that Bill C-210 would remove.
The Department of Justice informs me that another adverse consequence of the repeal of paragraph 39(9) of the Supreme Court Act is that it would not only aggravate present delays in extradition cases, the possibility of new delays extend beyond extradition cases.
It would not only open up the possibility of new appeal routes in extradition cases, but would also open up the same two avenues of appeal in any criminal case.
By creating new avenues of appeal that did not previously exist, Bill C-210 may increase the workload of the Supreme Court of Canada for all criminal cases and not simply extradition. Hence the bill which at first blush attempts to eliminate a single appeal route could have the opposite effect. It could create new avenues of appeal and have a far-reaching detrimental impact on the criminal justice procedures.
A further negative impact of the proposed amendments is that it could raise constitutional issues and be challenged in the courts on the basis of the Charter of Rights. Such challenges could increase the delays involved in the extradition process which would intensify the problem of delay which the bill professes to ameliorate. This demonstrates once again how the bill is not what it seems to be or what was intended.
Furthermore, Bill C-210 which purports to conclude appeals from habeas corpus decisions does not necessarily preclude such appeals. The bill allows for appeals in certain cases. There is an exception created by the bill; it allows for appeals arising from section 28 of the Extradition Act. This means that when a fugitive has not surrendered within two years after a habeas corpus
April 9, 1991

application the fugitive may appeal the habeas corpus decision. Therefore appeals from habeas corpus applications are not necessarily precluded by virtue of the proposed amendment.
Instead of facilitating extradition, Bill C-210 could result in fugitives being freed because the Crown also is left without the ability to appeal a habeas corpus decision. This could occur due to the fact that any arguments based on the Charter of Rights may be raised for the first time at the application for habeas corpus.
A judge at an extradition hearing does not have the authority to consider such arguments, given the nature of the proceedings. Consequently, if an error is made concerning a charter issue, or other legal issue, the appeals would not be available.
On one hand, if an error is made in favour of the fugitive, the fugitive may be released without any possibility of appeal by the Crown other than to the Supreme Court of Canada, if leave is granted by the court.
Of course, the fugitive might very well have left the country by the time the case is heard. Fugitives may be inappropriately released according to Bill C-210. On the other hand, if an error is made in favour of the Crown, the Minister of Justice may be faced with ordering the extradition of a fugitive on the basis of a questionable judicial decision.
By trying to plug a hole in the dike, Bill C-210 knocks down the dike. I trust that I have exposed the dangers in proceeding immediately with piecemeal amendments of limited effect to the extradition process such as Bill C-210.
It would be a grave error to adopt the bill which is not, unfortunately, what it seems and which, when closely examined, has unintended adverse effects. The bill in its present form is inadequate. It raises serious constitutional questions and is ineffective in streamlining the appeal process. Unattended ripple effects will undo the benefits the bill is trying to achieve.
In view of the complex nature of the appeal process for there to be sound and effective legislation, a comprehensive review which would fully examine all of the ramifications is required.
Private Members' Business
I am advised there is a comprehensive review currently under way which is considering a broad range of issues including, as its first priority, the means to streamline the present appeal process. In view of the ongoing review, it would be a mistake to adopt the bill now. It will not accomplish what it sets out to achieve.


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. I just have a few remarks to make.
The previous speaker has simply vindicated the position of the New Democratic Party on this bill. We have not been standing in our place arguing against the government's attempt to get Ng back into the United States.
We do not want people like Ng to remain in Canada, but we have said consistently that this bill is just bad law. That is all there is to it. It is bad law. It is a bad bill that is badly written.
Frankly, I think it should be withdrawn.
What we have asked for in this Chamber is for the Minister of Justice to expedite her processes in her department to bring forward to this House a bill that is not only constitutional, but that is workable. That is what we want, and that is what we have been arguing.
The hon. member for Peterborough has tried to use this bill for cheap political purposes. He has tried to spread the word across the country that the New Democratic Party is soft on alleged criminals like Ng. That is what he has done consistently. He said that in committee, elsewhere and in this House.
What we are asking for is better legislation. If the hon. member for Peterborough wants this bill to go to committee, fine. He can have it today. I am going to sit down in about 30 seconds, and I hope nobody else stands up. We will let it go on division, but if you want to vote, fine.
I think the hon. member for Peterborough and the hon. member for Erie know now that it is a bad bill. It is badly written, and it should be withdrawn.
I am asking at this point in time if the hon. member for Erie, who spoke a few moments ago, is prepared on behalf of the hon. member for Peterborough to withdraw this bill. His own party wants him to withdraw it. His

April 9, 1991
Private Members' Business
government does not support the bill. It has made that abundantly clear. I do not know where we go from here.
I am going to put it squarely back on the lap of the hon. member for Erie or whoever else wishes to speak at this time. We have no intention of blocking this bill, and from proceeding further.


Mr. Horner:: I do not know on what basis the hon. member states that this party does not support the bill. I believe that this bill should come to a vote right now and be referred to committee where it can be amended. I support the bill entirely. I do not think it is bad legislation. I want to say that the next speaker who stands up will have the voters to answer to because this is a bill that is sorely needed.


Some hon. members:: Question.


Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Science and Technology)):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to commend the initiative of our colleague the member for Peterborough who is trying, with this Bill C-210, to expedite judicial proceedings for extradition.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I cannot support the approach taken to make such proceedings as expeditious as possible. Therefore, I cannot support this bill, however commendable the intentions of our distinguished colleague. I intend to use the few minutes I have to explain to the hon. members present what makes this initiative commendable and more particularly why I cannot support it.
Over the past few years, it has become clear that crime knows no border and that appropriate measures must be taken to prosecute criminals where they committed their crime. I am sure my colleagues will agree with me that when I say Canada should not assume the legal costs relative to crimes committed abroad by a fugitive.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, the fugitive suspected of having committed a crime in the United States, for instance, must be extradited to that country to be tried and, if convicted, serve his sentence there.
Modem means of transportation allow fugitives to easily cross borders and find refuge in a foreign country. Canada prides itself for its open style of government and the fact that all can travel freely in the country. It is quite easy to enter Canada since we promote foreign exchanges and do not go out of our way to make entering
the country difficult. Our fellow citizens who would the first to complain about long line-ups at the border upon their return from abroad.
On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, this really makes it easy for a fugitive criminal to find refuge in our country and take advantage of the freedoms we cherish and all enjoy.
These past few months, we saw some fugitives come to Canada and try to prolong their stay as much as possible by using all sorts of legal appeals to delay the final decision regarding their return to the country requesting their extradition.
Therefore it became pretty obvious that we should try to limit the means of appeal and to avoid duplication and all the various levels which allow several years to go by between the extradition request and the time when the fugitive can be extradited.
So, Mr. Speaker, we try to keep our borders open while making sure that those who are foolhardy enough to take refuge in Canada will be promptly extradited. I am not unaware of the fact that appeals are necessary for justice to be done but also to appear to be done. I think it would be wrong to think of deporting someone by means of extradition without allowing this person to challenge the legal principles on which this extradition is based. However, we must keep a balance between repeated appeals and a complete lack of remedy.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, I consider bill C-210 as a very worthy initiative since its objective is obviously to speed up the appeal procedure in case of extraditions. The sponsors of this bill wanted to keep certain appeals possible while preventing others.
Unfortunately I cannot condone the approach taken in Bill C-210 because, in my humble opinion, it does not meet the desirable goal it had set. You have heard, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues try to explain the difficulties of revising the extradition appeal mechanisms. I have no intention of going back over this, except to say that I do recognize its validity.
Mr. Speaker, by trying to do away with certain extradition appeal mechanisms, we would create even greater difficulties which would make the extradition laws still uncertain for a long period, and this would of course
April 9, 1991

benefit those who want to use the laws to their advantage to take refuge as long as possible in Canada. Indeed, it is well known that uncertainty in the legislation fosters litigations which ultimately may have to be dealt with the Supreme Court of Canada. While these questions of principle are debated as they should be, many cases remain in abeyance. Surely, such a result is neither desired nor desirable.
I am confident, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Justice will be able to introduce in this House a bill dealing with this thorny issue of extradition appeals in the most orderly fashion possible. I understand that this legislation is in the makings and that this House will have the opportunity to examine it before long. This difficult issue must clearly receive special consideration by this House on a priority basis. However, I cannot agree with such a narrow approach as the one followed by Bill C-210 which would add new uncertainties to the act. Far from resolving the issue, Bill C-210 would be adding to the problem, and for this reason I cannot endorse it.
In closing I want to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, that our colleague's initiative should be commended by the members of this assembly and that it is more for technical reasons than because of the philosophy behind this legislation that I will have to vote against Bill C-210.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, as you noticed, I did try to get the floor quite a few times. Because this is a private members' bill, I feel it is my place to express the views of my constituents on this bill. They have lobbied very hard that the government do something to change the legislation so that someone committing a crime in one country will not look for haven in Canada or in other countries. So my constituents of Parkdale-High Park want to fully support this bill.
I do not buy the nonsense that the government members are giving, that it is not a good bill. That is why this process is referring it to a legislative committee. That is where all the kinks will be worked out. Anyone who will get up now and speak against this bill just to kill time should search his or her conscience and should report back to their constituents, because the message I
Adjournment Debate
am getting from my constituents is: "You politicians do something about this". They are fed up with criminals like Ng taking refuge in Canada.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed


Some hon. members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Does the House agree to call it 6 o'clock?
I give the floor to the hon. member for York Centre.


Mr. Kaplan:: Mr. Speaker, you know that there are three questions to be raised, requiring three answers.
I am here, but I do not know if the person to answer them has already arrived or even if the others who come before me are already here as well to make their statements.



PROCEEDINGS OF ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, I am privileged, as I always am, to rise this evening in debate on the adjournment proceedings.
On May 15, 1990,1 rose in this Chamber on a question in an area of great interest to me, my constituents and to

April 9, 1991
Adjournment Debate
many Canadians. The question I asked was in response to the series of tours the Minister of Transport undertook of federal airports at the time of his appointment to that portfolio.
The minister was interested in examining Canada's major airports with a view to not only learning about the capacities of the facilities, but of examining the problems with respect to air transportation of which, of course, there are many. However, no such action has been taken by the minister in relation to either solving air traffic problems or in developing an over all transportation system for the 21st century.
There have been many changes in the direction of air transport policies since I raised the issue a year ago. Negotiations into updating the 1974 bilateral air transportation agreement into an open skies agreement between Canada and the United States are set to begin this week here in Ottawa, which will significantly alter the way air transportation has managed in both Canada and the U.S.
While these negotiations will probably result in a new agreement that will bring increased air traffic into Canada, the government and the Department of Transport have not given consideration as to how they will deal with the problem. The shortage of air traffic controllers for one is well documented.
I believe that two things are essential in this debate. First, Pearson International Airport at Toronto is at maximum capacity and needs to have pressure taken off it. Second, Canada is a country built by transportation networks, first by sea and by rail, now in air transportation and, accordingly, Canada needs some kind of multimodal system of transportation which will work effectively.
On the first point, I have suggested many times in this place that the government must consider alleviating pressure on Pearson International Airport by diverting some air traffic to Hamilton Airport. There are many reasons for diverting traffic from Pearson International and there are many more reasons why the traffic should be diverted to Hamilton.
As you may recall, because of three losses of separation incidents at Pearson which occurred within a month of each other, a cap was placed on the number of flights that could arrive and depart from the airport, commonly known as aircraft movements.
There are presently only 76 movements per hour allowed at Pearson. Such a situation developed, some analysts say, because of the lack of adequately trained air traffic controllers at the facility.
In addition, testimony from the investigation into the Dryden inquiry air crash indicates that because of delays on the runway at Pearson International during the winter months, planes which are de-iced risk the reoccurrence of ice buildup as they wait on the tarmac for take-off.
Transport Canada has acknowledged that it will deal with the problem by installing more de-icing machines, but the implications for tragedy are obvious. Pearson has outgrown itself. Terminal 3 has added another 24 gates to Pearson and proposed new runways promise increased traffic.
As the President of the Air Transportation Association of Canada noted: "Runways at Pearson have a finite limit. That limit has been reached."
Practically everyone but the Minister of Transport is convinced that what is needed in southern Ontario is a second principal airport to meet the needs of the region to take pressure off Pearson. In fact, in his annual report ending March 31, 1990, Auditor General Ken Dye criticized Transport Canada for failing to deal with deregulation and for funding the network of airports in Canada without clear rationale.
One way to rationalize the system is to develop a network of transportation that meets the needs of the future. In addition, the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Panel charged with studying the environmental implications of new runways at Pearson stated that Transport Canada lacks a master plan to deal with the system of airports in southern Ontario and questioned whether it was appropriate for Transport Canada to be building new runways in the absence of such an over-all master plan. The review panel suggested to Transport Canada that it develop such a plan and consider the roles of other airports in the region.
This is the same view I have taken since having the privilege of becoming a member of Parliament and serving as a member of the transport committee.
In 1989 I chaired a task force meeting in Hamilton at the airport to examine its capacity to accept increased
April 9, 1991

traffic from Pearson. Hamilton airport has all of the basic infrastructure necessary to handle more air traffic.
When I hear the distant rumblings from the Department of Transport about building a new airport at Pickering or Buttonville, I cannot imagine why. Building a complete facility with all of the necessary modem components would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and would be a waste when all the region needs is improvements at Hamilton.
Even in a Transport Canada study Hamilton airport was shown to be the best alternative, priority number one, to Pearson International over Toronto Island, Buttonville, Oshawa and Downsview. The government may scoff at the idea of a second principal airport in the region, but by looking at many similar situations in cities across the world, we seem to be the only one saying that bigger is better.
For example, one analyst explained that Hamilton airport was unacceptable to handle more traffic than Pearson because it was too close. On the contrary, Hamilton is only 70 kilometres from Pearson, but that is much farther than the mere 16 kilometres that separates two of the world's busiest airports, JFK and Laguardia in New York. They transfer between each other by road for connecting flights.
Then there is the example in California. Passengers transfer between San Francisco International and Oakland International by both road and rail to catch connecting flights. Passengers also connect from San Jose from San Francisco, meaning that there are actually three principal airports in that region.
In conclusion, airline passengers are looking for alternatives. The alternatives are that there are other ways in which this government can help to establish a rational system in this densely populated area of southern Ontario which will see positive effects right across the country, a second principal airport and a multi-modal approach to travel between them and right across this country.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member from Hamilton poses a very important question for him as a member for the region. He suggests that the Hamilton airport be a second major airport in the region.
Adjournment Debate
I wonder if he has considered at least two very important questions in posing that as a solution for what he says is the large number of people who want to use that as a passenger terminal. One, if the air carriers themselves do not want to land there, or have not suggested they want to land there, how does he propose to divert the flights from Air Canada or CP to Hamilton if they do not want to go there? Does he want to have compulsory landing patterns or instructions for those airlines so that they have to land in Hamilton whether they want to use Pearson or not?
They may want to land at Pearson, but they have got to go to Hamilton. Is it going to be another Mirabel pattern? Is that what he is proposing? And if he is going to make it compulsory, for whom? Is it going to be Air Canada? Is it going to be Canadian, or is it going to be feeders? How does he propose to handle the whole matter of choice for the airlines if all of them want to go to Pearson, and presumably that is where the passengers want to go? How is he going to divert them to Hamilton? That is a legitimate question and he has not dealt with that.
The second question is what about the neighbours to Hamilton, his neighbours in Ancaster? I understand and I have here a clip from his own local newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, of May 24, 1990. The headline reads: "Ancaster may sue regional Hamilton airport nuisance". Are the people of Ancaster going to be happy with having increased traffic and landings at Hamilton?
I think those are two legitimate questions that we can ask the member if he has given thought to them. But it would be wrong to leave the impression that I think the member inadvertently left and that is that the minister has been ignoring the fact of Hamilton airport. In fact, the airport receives an annual subsidy for operations and maintenance which amounted to $700,000 in 1989, and $1 million in 1990. The facilities at Hamilton have also been upgraded and expanded by the department, including a $65 million program in 1987, and a $900,000 project to extend the regional trunk sewer in 1990, thereby increasing the airport development capacity. A $1.5 million program for apron and taxiway expansion was completed in 1990, and a $2.5 million modification to the air terminal building is virtually completed.
When you have those kinds of expenditures, you cannot say that the minister has been ignoring.

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Adjournment Debate
One more point, Mr. Speaker. I know he has raised questions about the ILS on runway 06. Yet the regional municipality has accepted the decommissioning of the ILS. It should be noted that it does not degrade the available level of service as an ILS is available on the
8,000	foot runway.
I think that the member, in order to be fair, ought to concede that the minister has been giving due attention and we ought to let the airlines do some choosing as to which facilities they want to use.


HARBOURFRONT CORPORATION
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, like the previous speakers, I am very happy to have a chance to expand on some points that are really hard to make in the context of Question Period and the issue about which I am glad to have this extra time is the developments at Harbourfront in the city of Toronto.
Harbourfront had a somewhat controversial launching, but there is absolutely no doubt that it is a very valued asset in Toronto today, something appreciated by the people to the point where traffic jams on weekdays and weekends are more the issue than lack of use.
There have been problems with Harbourfront. Its policies have been criticized, but none of them have been criticized as much as the criticism of the federal government's proposed solution to the problems at Harbourfront.
We rose in December to ask some questions about the government solutions to the Harbourfront problem and we certainly did not receive satisfactory answers. The minister told us that the mayor of the city of Toronto was happy about the solution of Harbourfront. He failed to mention that of the 16-member council only one member, the mayor, was happy about it. All the other members of council had objected to the imposed solution of the federal government and, in fact, as I rise now we are awaiting one further study-maybe one study too many-of what the solution to the Harbourfront problem should be.
I do not have a whole solution fleshed out to put forward. It is not the function of the opposition to do so, but I want to draw attention to the serious problems with the government's so-called solution and I ask these questions in the spirit that three months later, almost four months later, that have elapsed since the question
was asked, the government may well have come to recognize the problems with its so-called solutions.
This is a solution by the way which will result in the federal government, which once owned at the beginning when Harbourfront was established, 100 acres of land. Now at the end of it, if this solution is implemented fully, the government, the Harbourfront non-profit corporation, will only own 10 acres of land.
We are giving the park back to the people. We are going from a federal landholding of over 100 acres to a federal government landholding of 10 acres. We have complained that the cultural and recreational programming, which the government says it guarantees will continue, will in fact not be guaranteed.
There is not enough funding provided to ensure that these programs will continue. The government has made a commitment to maintain that programming, but the funding that they have provided will not do it.
It needs a better solution. It wants to pass the burden to the city of Toronto to sustain this programming, but the programming could be sustained by the use and development for commercial and other purposes of the rest of the land.
The second problem that I want to focus on is that instead of using the surrounding land to its full economic advantage for the programming at Harbourfront, the government is basically embarking on a program which gives it away.
Naturally, there is going to be some consideration paid for it by the private developers who are going to be acquiring some of this 100 acres of land. Coopers and Lybrand, an independent appraising firm which did an appraisal of it, found that the land that the corporation is disposing of to private developers in return for what we call the pipeline land is the land that is on the south side of Queen's Key and actually facing the water. It is actually worth $36 million more than the federal government is going to be getting for the favours that it is giving in return.
In other words, $36 million which might have been available for funding of the Harbourfront programming is instead being transferred to private developers. When I raised that question with the minister, you will not believe what he said in reply to me. He said: "We had to pay a premium to get that land back from the private
April 9, 1991

developers to whom long-term leases had been given by the former Harbourfront board."
I asked the question: "Why should the federal government pay a premium to get land back?", meaning pay more than it is worth. The federal government has the power to expropriate land. If the owners of these leasehold interests do not want to sell them back to the government at fair market value, instead of arranging to give them a premium, more than fair market value, the federal government has the recourse of taking the land back and having the court determine what a fair value is.
I think a fundamental error has been made in moving from dealing with land at fair market value to paying premiums to developers to get land back that it is determined should be put back into recreational and other activity related uses for Harbourfront.
I also feel-we raised this in our questions-that it is a mistake to give fee simple, that is, permanent ownership of this land to developers. The way in which the former Harbourfront board of directors was proceeding was to just give long-term leases. Eventually, these interests would revert to the people of Canada.
After the period when I asked my question took place, the board of Harbourfront, the members of which were all appointed by the federal government, refused to adopt the solution that the federal government is trying to impose. It refused to play ball with the government in allowing this transfer to take place. Even though they were federal appointees and good Tories, they refused to go along with it.
The government had to wait for the term of office of the Harbourfront directors to expire and then appoint nominal people who were committed to the government's agenda and to their transitional program to try to carry out this unpopular solution which is no solution because it will not work.
Hopefully, today we will be able to hear that the government is at least waiting for the city of Toronto's report and will not proceed with the program which we were so critical of last December.
Adjournment Debate


Mrs. Nicole Roy-Arcelin (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, the new approach to the management of Toronto's harbourfront announced last November by the Minister of Public Works is a fair, intelligent and progressive solution to a rather complex problem. It is the result of months of consultations with many interested organizations. It shows the foresight, imagination, and sustained effort of many groups and individuals.
The most important feature of this new plan is that it will give the Toronto waterfront back to Torontonians. As David Crombie recommended, all new construction south of Queen's Quay-West must cease, with the possible exception of small buildings that the city considers to be in the public interest. From now on, this area will contain only public land and buildings. It will be given over to Torontonians and the many visitors who go there every year.
Under this new plan, a public charitable foundation will be set up to fund the very popular, cultural, recreational and educational programs of the new Harbourfront Corporation.
This will allow its new programs to be put of a sound financial basis enabling the Harbourfront Corporation to plan activities more freely and with confidence in the future.
Mr. Speaker, the plan being implemented reflects the remarquable consensus arrived at by those who formulated it. It reflects the opinion of the hon. David Crombie who, for over two years, has been playing a major role in defining what lays ahead for the Toronto waterfront. The key elements of this plan were first set out in August 1989 in the first interim report of Mr. Crombie's Royal Commission on the future of the Toronto waterfront. This plan also contains ideas expressed in the study Mr. Duncan Allan, the Premier of Ontario's advisor on the development of the Toronto waterfront, commissioned by of the Ontario government. Throughout the development of this plan, there were consultations with the City of Toronto, including the mayor, the aldermen and representatives from various municipal services as well as with the Toronto Urban

Adjournment Debate
Community. Discussions are ongoing concerning the implementation of this plan.
Mr. Speaker, it is unusual for such a complex question issue to be endorsed with such unanimity considering the many organizations involved. In this case, it is really no wonder, since it is generally recognized that this plan will mark the beginning of a new and better era for Harbour-front. In this context, the people of Toronto and the millions of people who visit the city will benefit from a more accessible waterfront, more parks and recreation facilities as well as a cultural and educational program, the funding of which will be guaranteed.


FISHERIES
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to give voice to the tremendous frustration felt by the 6,500 residents of the island of Isle Madame, which lies off the southeast coast of Cape Breton Island in my riding of Cape Breton Highlands-Canso.
This frustration stems from a series of decisions taken by the Minister of Fisheries last December. One such decision reduced the offshore share of the cod quota in 4T-VN by 9 per cent, from 53,000 tonnes to 48,000 tonnes.
Isle Madame and its 6,500 residents are particularly reliant on one fishery, located in Petit De Grat, on Isle Madame, namely Richmond Fisheries, which happens to be the sole employer in Petit De Grat.
Imagine the horror of the people of Isle Madame upon learning last December that the Minister of Fisheries had reduced the enterprise allocation for Richmond Fisheries in 4T-VN, not by 9 per cent but by 37 per cent of the total allowable catch.
Since that time, the residents of Isle Madame and of Petit De Grat have asked one question of the Minister of Fisheries: Why? Why have you singled us out? Why are you putting at risk our very way of life?
Since that time the Minister of Fisheries has maintained a stony, almost contemptuous silence, as if to say "I don't owe you an explanation, I am the minister".
Since that time, I have risen in the House time and time again, asking the Minister of Fisheries for an explanation and asking him to reverse this disastrous decision for the sake of the people of Isle Madame. He
has either been unwilling or unable to provide an adequate explanation for his actions.
The last time I rose in the House on this issue was on Friday, March 15. That morning, Richmond Fisheries announced that it was tying up two of its four trawlers, putting 26 trawlermen out of work. The minister was not in the House at the time, but his parliamentary secretary responded to my question.
The parliamentary secretary conceded that, "the effects on Richmond Fisheries and so many others, are unfortunate, but they are in the long-term interest of all those who depend on the fishery."
It is indeed unfortunate that neither the minister nor his parliamentary secretary have provided an adequate explanation to either Richmond Fisheries or the people of Isle Madame as to why this company was singled out for a 37 per cent cut in its enterprise allocation, nor have they even attempted to.
I wrote to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on January 7 asking him for an explanation of why he had taken this action. I also pointed out to him that his action was in violation of his own management plan, specifically principle 10.1 have yet to receive a reply from him to my letter, or an explanation as to why he has chosen to violate his own plan.
On December 18 of last year I rose in the House of Commons to question the minister of fisheries on the subject of these cuts and their potential impact on the people of Isle Madame. I asked the minister then if he realized that he risked forcing Richmond Fisheries out of business. I also asked him that as the sole employer in Petit de Gras why he did not provide the people of this village an explanation beforehand.
Did the minister believe that the community was not worth saving. In the minister's response, he did not even mention the people of Petit de Gras nor Isle Madame, nor did he provide me or the people most affected with any sort of explanation.
At a time when Canadians in every part of the country are fed up with the way their views are ignored, and with the seeming inability of their elected officials to represent their concerns, could there be any greater symbol of that widespread discontent than the minister of fisheries' refusal to listen to the people of Isle Madame and the representations of Richmond Fisheries. These people want an explanation from the minister. The minister has
April 9, 1991
[Stage Direction]
simply not bothered to respond, most probably because he does not have an adequate explanation for his actions.
To virtually ignore the people of Isle Madame, to refuse to listen to their heartfelt concerns about the survival of their community and their way of life, represents the most dangerous form of arrogance and self-satisfaction on the part of the minister of fisheries.
In their communication with the minister the representatives of Richmond Fisheries and the people of Petit de Gras and Isle Madame have shown a tremendous degree of restraint. At a time when they could be angry and contemptuous of the minister, they have remained cool and collected. They have done so, because they realize the continued existence of their community may depend on their ability to convince this minister that he is dead wrong and that the results of his folly could be catastrophic.
Let me quote from correspondence sent to the minister by a community action committee in Petit de Gras, formed for the reasons I have just cited.
In a letter dated February 22, they write in the most plain and simple language as follows: "Our economic welfare is at stake and its fate is in your hands. The 1991 management plan, should it remain as it is, will destroy the economy of Isle Madame. We are not asking, Mr. Minister, for gifts of money, nor are we asking for make-work projects or grants or assistance packages".
Indeed they are not. They are asking for an enterprise allocation for Richmond Fisheries which is more in line with the total allowable catch for the 4T-VN region. Is this asking very much? Why is the minister doing this to Richmond Fisheries and to the people of Isle Madame? Again, I quote from the community action committee's correspondence:
We submit to you, Mr. Minister, that Richmond Fisheries is the model for the survival of the industry. On the capacity issue, look at the number of destructive bottom drag licences they have taken out of the fishery. Look further at their total compliance and agreement in stock-preserving cuts that have been applied to certain troubled quotas. Study carefully the rate of observer coverage maintained by Richmond Fisheries and compare it to any other element in the 4T-VN fishery. Seek out, if you can, any other operation which has an in-house, totally reserved, D.F.O. inspection team.
Richmond Fisheries is a model for the industry to follow, and yet it is being forced to tie up its trawlers and
Adjournment Debate
lay off its employees simply because the minister, for some unknown reason, has it in for them. Why? Why does he seem to harbour a grudge against Richmond Fisheries? They and the people of Isle Madame who rely on Richmond Fisheries have shown the minister courtesy time and time again.
The minister has taken this disastrous decision in contravention of his own management plan, in contravention of all available scientific evidence and despite the urgent and reasonable appeals made by Richmond Fisheries and the people of Isle Madame for him to consider.
Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the hon. member that it may be that the answer given by the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans or by myself may not be the one that the members in his community of Richmond or Isles Madame are looking for or can provide comfort to them. That may be. That is not to say, though, that the minister has ignored them or that he is arrogant or that he has singled them out.
I think it is grossly unfair for the member, who I think understands, to accuse the minister just because he cannot provide the kind of an answer he wants. He is accusing him of ignoring them or of being arrogant or having other things to do. I do want to provide an answer. Again, it may not be the answer that the constituents whom he represents are looking for, especially in the short term. I do think it is the answer in the long term.
The 1991 groundfish management plan has provided a reasonable balance between the conservation of the resource and stability for participants in the industry and for the economy of Atlantic Canada. The total allowable catch, the TAC for the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence cod in are 4T-VN, January to April portion was reduced from 53,000 tonnes in 1990 to 48,000 tonnes in 1991 and
43,000	tonnes for the years 1992 and 1993.
The decision to reduce the TAC for this stock was based on scientific information which suggests that most of the cod harvested in the deep waters of 4-VN during the period January to April originate from 4-T. The reduction in the offshore share was undertaken to preserve the cod stock at 4-T, as 4-VN, JA and 4-T are both part of one large cod stock.

April 9, 1991
Adjournment Debate
The decision to reduce the offshore share of this stock does not violate Principle 10 of the groundfish management plan. This stock is now under multi-year management. Over the next three years, 1991 through 1993, the TAC will decrease by more than 15 per cent. Under such conditions, guidelines in the groundfish management plan state that adjustments to the inshore-offshore ratio can be considered.
The effects on Richmond Fisheries are unfortunate, but the decision taken was part of the groundfish management plan for 1991. These decisions are based on the long-term interests of all those who depend on the fishery. For the cod stock in question the quota sharing arrangement between fleet sectors has not been decided upon for the final two years, 1992 to 1993, of the plan.
Departmental scientists are closely monitoring the fishery and should biological indicators suggest a change in the TAC, this advice will be considered. For 1991, an additional 500 tonnes of 4-VWX redfish will be available to Houston Fisheries as a result of the removal of 4-VWX redfish from the groundfish developmental program in 1991. This fish could potentially be processed at the Richmond plant.
For fishermen, plant workers and communities affected by quota reductions and stock depletion, the Government of Canada has developed the Atlantic
Fisheries Adjustment Program. This program has elements which will help rebuild fish stocks to ensure an abundant resource base in the future, provide adjustments to current realities through assistance to plant workers and trawlermen and economic diversification within the fishery and for fishery dependent communities affected by quota reductions and stock depletion.
Unfortunately, there is not a magic wand to make fish appear or reappear. This government is very sympathetic to those who are suffering from the effects of lower quotas. This government has taken measures that are responsible and sensitive, conservation for a sustainable and viable future and a comprehensive adjustment program for Atlantic Canada.
I hope the member and the members of his community will appreciate the fact that conservation is a very important ingredient in the management scheme, so that the people in his community in the long-term can have the livelihood they so richly desire and deserve.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.20 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, April 10, 1991