1992-02-04

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 17 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings. ]



POINT OF ORDER


Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I simply seek your guidance on whether or not the Minister of the Environment should be making a statement as Minister of the Environment in relation to the alarming announcements of the observations of atmospheric decline over the northern hemisphere that were made yesterday, with a 35 per cent decline in the ozone layer. This is extremely alarming, Mr. Speaker. As you know, each 1 per cent decline in the ozone can be accompanied by a 4 per cent increase in skin cancer. I believe there is a responsibility on the Minister of the Environment to indicate to this Chamber and to Canadians exactly what he and the government intends to do about it.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The issue raised by the hon. member is a very important one. However, I
think it would be more appropriate to raise it during Oral Question Period this afternoon. When the hon. member wishes to question the Minister of the Environment, he will have an opportunity to do so. I suggest he take advantage of that opportunity.



ASIAN INTERPARLIAMENTARY ORGANIZATION


Mr. Gilbert Chartrand (Verdun-Saint-Paul):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34, I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report on the IWelfth General Assembly of the AIPO, held in Bangkok, Thailand, from November 18 to 23, 1991.


PETITIONS
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of constituents, and I mean a large number of constituents, pages and pages. I have not counted them, but there must be at least a few thousand here.
There is an ongoing concern about what the goods and services tax is doing to them personally, their families, their businesses. They say it is literally the death knell in terms of the local economy in Kamloops. They are asking the government to, for goodness sake, at this last gasp as we begin the new year do the right thing, send some symbol of hope and withdraw this dastardly tax.


Nelson Andrew Riis: On another issue, Mr. Speaker, a number of constituents from British Columbia have heard the announcement that a firm is requesting approval to divert the North Thompson River into a variety of channels and eventually down to the Los Angeles area. They are saying to the Canadian government: "Please stand up and say on behalf of Canadians that our rivers are not for sale".

February 4, 1992
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Nelson Andrew Riis: On another matter unrelated to the previous petitions, a large number of petitioners from Kamloops are concerned about the rumours they hear that the government plans to freeze RCMP funding on an ongoing basis. They want to ensure that law and order is upheld. They are asking the federal government to ensure that the RCMP is adequately funded.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition from a number of people, primarily in the Windsor, Ontario, area. They humbly pray and call upon Parliament to pass legislation establishing mandatory minimum sentences for all violent crimes which would apply uniformly to all regions of Canada.
This petition has been duly certified by the Clerk of the House.


Ms. Joy Langan (Mission-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, my petition is from a number of British Columbians living in rural areas who are urging the Minister of Communications to oppose Unitel's bid to compete with Canada's telephone companies in long distance service. They are urging the minister to consult with rural communities and those people who live there as to the effects of that kind of deregulation, and they are asking the minister to hold hearings in their communities regarding that matter.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 from over a hundred residents of Thunder Bay who are asking the government to reduce the down payment on homes from 10 per cent to 5 per cent, which was done yesterday, and stating that they continue to support the policies of Canada Mortgage and Housing.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present some petitions from my riding. The petitions are from constituents who continue to urge this government to reconsider its approach to tax reform in this country. Having gone through the Christmas season where the GST has just caused disaster after disaster for small and medium-size businessmen, we now have proof positive that it is not working. They are humbly asking this House to cancel the GST.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk)
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 127, 144,178,180,181, 184,186, 190 and 201.


Mr. Waddell: Since July 1, 1990, were there any (a) meetings (b) telephone conversations (c) other communications between the PMO, PCO and FPRO and the Business Council on National Issues on the subject of the Constitution and, if so, (i) what were the dates of these contacts (ii) who took part in the meetings (iii) was there an exchange of documents and, if so, what were they?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Privy Council for Canada and Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Insofar as the Prime Minister's Office, The Privy Council Office and the Federal-Provincial Office are concerned:
As part of its broad strategy of consultation on unity issues outlined in the May 13, 1991 Speech from the Throne, the government has developed a program of ongoing consultations with provincial government and non-governmental organizations. In this context, between July 1 and September 30, 1991, officials involved in the unity process consulted extensively with a wide range of non-governmental groups, such as volunteer organizations; academia; aboriginal groups such as the Inuit Ihpirisat of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations; business organizations including the Business Council on National Issues, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business; and labour organizations, such as the Canadian Labour Congress.
The objective of the consultations with non-governmental groups was to obtain their views on key constitutional issues. In this regard, governmental officials received a variety of speeches and position papers from organizations such as the BCNI and held general discussions with them.
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In addition, as part of this ongoing process, a number of these groups, including the BCNI, were provided with copies of the government's Unity Proposals after their release on September 24, 1991.


Ms. Callbeck: Since November 1988, has there been any government expenditures to assist individuals, business and industries negatively affected by the Canada-U.S. Free Hade Agreement to adjust to the agreement and, if so, (a) how much money was spent (b) under which programs was the money spent?


Albert Glen Cooper: I am informed by Industry, Science and Technology Canada and Employment and Immigration Canada as follows:
The advice which the government received from the Advisory Council on Adjustment was that no free trade agreement-specific adjustment programs were necessary. The council, made up of labour and business representatives, was established to examine adjustement issues arising from the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It noted that close to 400 programs were already in place and concluded that FTS-specific programs would be "unworkable" since it would be impossible to determine which workers and businesses were affected by the FTA and "unfair" as it would create two classes of workers or firms.
In light of this evidence, the government has continued to use existing programs to facilitate adjustment and foster international competitiveness rather than to create FTA-specific adjustment programs.
Employment and Immigration has long had programs in place to assist individuals, businesses and industries negatively affected by structural adjustments in the Canadian economy.
a)	Since 1988, Employment and Immigration has spent approximately $5.2 billion providing training and adjustment assistance to Canadians and their employers.
b)	Since November 1988, Employment and Immigration Canada has delivered this training and adjustment assistance through the following programs: Job Development, Job Entry, Skill Shortages, Skill Investment, Community Futures and Industrial Adjustment Service. These costs also include the Developmental Uses of the Unemployment Insurance Program which include Work Sharing (Job Creation), Training (Income Supporty), Training (Course Costs/Supplementary Allowances) and Self-Employment.


Mr. Blenkam: Does the government pay provincial sales taxes and, if so, how many dollars in sales taxes were paid to each province in the fiscal year ending March 31, 1991?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Prior to 1991, the federal government had reached agreements with all the provinces, except for Saskatchewan and Alberta, whereby each government agreed to pay the other's sales taxes, or an equivalent amount in lieu of taxes. Alberta had no sales tax, and the government did not pay the provincial sales tax in Saskatchewan. With the coming into force of the GST, new agreements were reached with all the provinces, except for Alberta which still does not have a sales tax, whereby neither order of government would pay the other's sales tax. Please refer to the attached annex for the specific amounts of provincial sales tax paid to each province pursuant to the former agreement from April 1, 1990 to December 31, 1990.

Provincial sales taxes paid by the government in the fiscal year 1990-91
Province	Central sales tax payment1	Departments sales tax payments2	Total sales tax payments$	$	$Newfoundland	10,044,000	1,355,945	11,399,942P.E.I.	3,861,000	323,716	4,184,716Nova Scotia	21,714,000	3,385,653	25,099,653New Brunswick	23,724,000	2,187,932	25,911,932Quebec	46,632,000	5,232,116	51,864,116Ontario	104,847,000	17,026,356	121,873,356Manitoba	12,303,000	3,158,906	15,461,906British Columbia	15,390,000	4,202,728	19,592,728Total	238,515,000	36,873,349	275,388,3491.	Payments made by the Department of Supplies and Services on behalf of the other Departments.2.	Actual amounts paid by each Department are not yet available, estimates were made based on amounts paid in previous fiscal years.
February 4, 1992
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Mr. Blenkam: Does the government pay automobile licence fees to the provinces for federally owned vehicles of all nature operated within a province and, if so, how many dollars in licence fees does the government pay to each of the provinces in the year ending March 31, 1991?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Prior to 1991, the federal government had reached agreements with all the provinces, except for Saskatchewan and Alberta, whereby the federal governments paid an amount in lieu of the automobile licence fees to participating provinces for the federally owned vehicles operated within these provinces. The government did not pay Alberta's and Saskatchewan's licence fees. With the coming into force of the GST, new agreements were reached with all the provinces, except for Alberta, whereby the federal government pays provincial licence fees in each participating province, exept Alberta, it does not pay automobile licence fees in this province. Please refer to the attached annex for the specific amounts of automobile licence fees paid to each province pursuant to these agreements, for the year ending March 31, 1991.

Provincial automobile licence fees paid by the government in the fiscal year 1990-91
Province	Central licence fees payment1	Departments licence fees payments2	Total licence fees payments$	$	$Newfoundland	200,423	Not applicable	200,423P.E.I.	28,590	1,375	29,965Nova Scotia	223,265	7,520	230,785New Brunswick	310,790	16,092	326,882Quebec	1,834,139	24,640	1,859,224Ontario	1,348,139	Not applicable	1,348,139Manitoba	139,192	20,150	159,342British Columbia	472,454	24,522	496,976Total	4,557,437	94,299	4,651,736
1. Payments made by the Department of Supplies and Service on behalf of the other Departments.


Mr. Boudria: With respect to Studio D of the National Film Board (a) since April 1, 1985, what is the total amount of funding for its operation
(b)	what is the amount of funding spent on production preparation and distribution of films in the "Women and Spirituality" category
(c)	what was the total amount spent on (i) production (ii) preparing (iii) other costs associated with the production of the film "The Burning Times"?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of Communications):: This matter has been brought to the attention of the National Film Board (NFB). We are informed as follows:
a)	total NFB allocations to Studio D from April 1,1985 to fiscal year beginning April 1, 1991*: $14,927,807;
b)	Total cost of production, preparation and distribution of films in the "Women and Spirituality" series (Goddess Remembered, the Burning Times, and Full Circle): $1,785,212;
c)	The cost of production, preparation and distribution of the film, The Burning Times: $578,481
* Fiscal year 1991-92 is based on initial allocation.


Mr. Harvard: Why, in calculation of total non-refundable tax credits for the 1990 tax returns (line 314 in the Guide), does the $1000 credit exclude pension incomes paid under the Old Age Security Act or any similar provincial programs, the Canada Pension Plan, Quebec Pension Plan or Saskatchewan Pension Plan and what is the rationale for such a policy?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The $1,000 pension income credit was introduced as a means of protecting pensioners from the effects of inflation since few private pension plans provide more than partial inflation protection. This credit is one of several government measures designed to be of principal benefit to elderly Canadians.
All Canadian seniors are guaranteed a basic level of income through the Old Age Security (OAS) program, the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), and the Spouse's Allowance (SPA). In 1991-92, the federal government will spend about $18.9 billion providing benefits to seniors through these programs.

A basic level of earnings replacement is provided for working Canadians by the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans (C/Qpp).
In 1992, the basic personal credit will exempt from tax the first $6,456 of income for all taxfilers. For all Canadians over the age of 65, the age credit will exempt an additional $3,482. In 1992, the age credit will cost the federal government about $1.1 billion in foregone tax revenues.
The federal government also provides tax assistance for retirement saving through the deferral of tax on contributions to registered pension plans (RPPs) and registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs), as well as the investment earnings in these plans. These tax concessions are estimated to cost the federal government $6 billion per year in foregone tax revenue.
Benefits provided to Canadian seniors under the OAS and the C/QPP are fully indexed for changes in flation. In addition, the tax system already provides substantial benefits to Canadian seniors at a large revenue cost to the federal government. For these reasons, there is no need to provide further tax relief for OAS and C/QPP benefits under the pension income credit.


Ms. Callbeck: Is plant and animal health as it pertains to a quarantinable disease
the responsibility of the federal government and, if so, (a) what
precisely are the federal responsibilities, (b) under what regulations or
legislation can they be found?


Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Agriculture):: Yes, the Plant Protection Act and the Health of Animals Act are both federal legislation.
a)	Animal Health:
Depending on the disease and its science, these responsibilities involve investigation, inspection, testing, quarantine, ordering destruction, awarding compensation, cleaning and disinfecting, and sometimes treatment.
Plant Protection:
The reponsibilities are to enforce control and eradication regulations and inspect plants and plant products, by prohibiting movement, ordering treatment, destruction and removal from Canada of plants and plant products which have or are suspected to have quarantine pests. Agriculture Canada is not obliged to control or eradicate a pest. Any control or eradication action usually is carried out upon a balanced consideration of economic benefits and costs.
b)	Animal Health:
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These responsibilities and authorities are found in the Health of Animals Act and Regulations.
Plant Protection:
These responsibilities and authorities are found in the 1990 Plant Protection Act and Plant Quarantine Regulations.


Mr. Milliken: Does the Government financially contribute to the Canadian International School in Hong Kong and, if so, what has been the amount of the contributions during the current and three prior financial years?


Albert Glen Cooper: Canadian International Development Agency, External Affairs and National Defence did not make any financial contributions to the Canadian International School in Hong Kong.


Mr. Wappel: What are the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's specific policies and guidelines with respect to the personal use of its assets and equipment by employees?


Henry Perrin Beatty: This matter has been brought to the attention of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We are informed as follows:
CBC's capital assets are sometimes relocated to sites off the corporation's premises, both temporarily and on a continuing basis, either in order to facilitate operational efficiency or on loan to employees or others. The policies which govern such relocations are:
a)	The relocation of capital assets to sites off CBC premises must be authorized in writing and supported by appropriate written records.
b)	Network/regional heads, or officers acting with their approval, must issue the authorization, ensure that the relocations are documented, and put into effect adequate arrangements for the ongoing safe custody of the equipment involved.

February 4, 1992
Routine Proceedings
c)	If the relocation is occasioned by loan to an employee, the authorizing officer must obtain from the borrower a signed receipt and a guarantee that any loss will be reimbursed and any damage repaired at no cost to the corporation.
d)	To the extent possible, the continuing existence of capital assets located off CBC premises must be physically verified by periodic inventory checks, in the same manner as for assets located in-house.
e)	The capital assets sub-ledger must indicate assets are off-premises.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if question No. 119 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 119 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Dionne: For each year since 1969, what is the amount of government purchases from (a) each province or territory (b) each foreign country?
Return tabled.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to call Starred Question No. 167.
Mr. Speaker, due to the length of this response, I ask that it be printed in Hansard as if read.


Mr. Saint-Julien: With regard to call for tenders no. 3911-0718-1, project no. 628233 by Public Works Canada, (a) at what date was the call for
tenders published in the newspapers and, if so, which ones (b) at what date were the tender documents available in the offices of (i) Association de la construction in Montreal (ii) Association de la construction in Anjou (iii) Association de la construction in Rouyn-Noranda (iv) A.P.C.H.Q. in Val d'Or (c) were there any tenders and, if so (i) which ones (ii) what was the amount of each tender (d) was the contract awarded and, if so, to whom was it awarded?


Hon. Elmer M. Mackay (Minister of Public Works):: (a)	1. (F) Journal Constructo-1991-10-17
2.	(E) Daily Commercial News-1991-10-17
3.	(F) Les Echos Abitibiens-1991-10-22
4.	(F) La Frontiere-1991-10-22
(b)	(i) Construction Association in Montreal -sent by Purolator -1991-10-11
(ii)	Construction Association in Anjou -sent by Purolator -1991-10-11
(iii)	Construction Association in Rouyn-Noranda -sent by Purolator -1991-10-11
(iv)	APCHQ in Val d'Or -sent by Purolator -1991-10-11
(c)	(i) Construction C.P. Inc., 1663 Boulevard St-Paul, Chicoutimi, Quebec
(ii) $225,994.
(i) Installations G.M.R. Inc., 745 Route de l'Eglise, St-Romuald, Quebec (ii) $320,000.
(i) Electro Pompe Saguanay Inc., 550 Boulevard Saguenay Ouest, Case postale 562, Chicoutimi, Quebec (ii) $347,300.
(i) Construction des Trois-Monts Inc., Route 232, Trinite-des-Monts, Quebec (ii) $387,000.
(i) Construction Gart Inc., 1600 Boulevard St-Martin est, piece 650, Tour B, Laval, Quebec (ii) $411,000.
(i) Construction R.F.P. Inc., 159 Boulevard Caouette sud, Case postale 125, Thetford-Mines, Quebec (ii) $470,000.
(d)	Contract awarded to: Construction C.P. Inc., 1663 Boulevard St-Paul, Chicoutimi, Quebec.
Award Letter dated November 13, 1991.


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


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


An hon. member:: Agreed.
February 4, 1992


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I have a motion under Standing Order 52 to present. It was deferred from yesterday.
I am moving the adjournment of the House for an emergency debate under Standing Order 52. The Government of Canada is considering proposals arising from negotiations on the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. These 500 pages of proposals will affect virtually all segments of our society, including the role that the provincial governments play in our Confederation.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order. It is my understanding that the hon. member filed notice that he would present a motion under Standing Order 52 yesterday, but he did not do so again for today's sitting. This means the Chair cannot rule on the matter. According to the Standing Orders, notice must be sent to the Chair for the sitting during which the motion is to be presented. Consequently, I cannot entertain the hon. member's request, since the Standing Orders are very clear in this respect.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate and accept what you have just said. I must say that there was an understanding yesterday. I think the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader and the House leader for the Official Opposition would concur that there was some understanding there would be some discussions. The impression left with us by the Speaker yesterday was that he would consider the notice given yesterday to be applied today in the hope that there would be a chance for some discussions.
Unfortunately, discussions have not been held to the extent that we had hoped for. The understanding, Mr. Speaker, to be clear, was that the notice given yesterday would apply for today as well. Of course, there is always the option of seeking unanimous consent to allow the member to put his request. In all fairness, on such a critical issue, I would seek unanimous consent of the House to allow my colleague to put the request for an emergency debate.


Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just spoken is correct in most of what he has said. I was not part and
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parcel of any deliberations that took place with Mr. Speaker, nor with the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader. In view of the subject matter, which I have discussed with my hon. colleague, I would have no difficulties on behaif of my party in giving unanimous consent in order to waive the provision of notice in order that you may entertain this particular motion on emergency debate.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I would like to confirm that in fact there were some discussions yesterday. I, on this side of the House, wish to indicate that we did expect that the notice of the intention to do so would stand over for today.
We on this side have no problem with the hon. member proceeding with his presentation, but I do not want to in any way imply that it somehow signals to the Chair that we expect him to behave in a certain manner.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: As there seems to be unanimous consent, I will recognize the hon. member for Mackenzie so that he can present his motion under Standing Order 52.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: The Government of Canada is considering proposals arising from the negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Some 500 pages of proposals will affect virtually all segments of our economy, including the role that provincial governments play in Confederation.
The proposals embrace new sectors under GATT. For instance, trade, agriculture, services and intellectual property rights would be fully included for the first time. Thus there are special implications for Canadians working in these fields of economic activity.
The concerns of those individuals, the potential impact on our economy and on the nature of our Confederation cannot be adequately discussed because of a lack of opportunities available in the House before the government is required to make a decision whether or not to sign the GATT proposals. It is of the utmost urgency that the broad implications of this question be debated in the House. It is the responsibility of the members of this House to inform the government of the positive and negative implications of the decision that lies before it and of the concerns of all Canadians.
Govemement Orders POINT OF ORDER


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I wish to serve notice to the Chair and to the Table with regard to the whole concept of emergency debates. I will not pursue it today but give notice to the Chair I would like to have an opportunity on the floor of the House of Commons to intervene in the whole concept of emergency debates and the procedure which we follow in this House.
Certain acts have taken place over the last 12 months which I think would change, if you will, some of the restrictions which are tied in with the concept of emergency debates. On a future day this week I would like to give my views to the Chair in order that the Chair could have a full understanding as to where the Official Opposition is on this particular subject matter.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am intrigued by my hon. friend's intervention. I think it is a fascinating one and I assume what he is talking about are some of the reforms or changes to the rules.
I suggest to him we have a couple of options. First, we could pursue it through the management committee, whose mandate this falls under or second, he could indicate to me whether he intends to use an opposition day for such a discussion.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I would like to lend my support to my hon. friend's suggestion. Certainly I think we are all interested in reforms of the Standing Orders to allow more flexibility.
We saw a good example-I see my friend nodding in approval-earlier today when the hon. member for Skeena rose on the matter of the astonishing news of the depletion of the ozone over Canada. Obviously it is something we should be dealing with as quickly as possible. I want to lend my support to these great ideas as well, Mr. Speaker. The sooner we get on with it, the better.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I put through you to the government side yesterday a proposal for an emergency debate led by the government to have unlimited hours in order to figure out ways by the end of
the week that we could put Canadians back to work. I wonder if the government could respond to that request.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Considering the nature of our Standing Orders as they relate to emergency debates, I must inform the hon. member for Mackenzie that his motion does not meet the requirements set forth in our present Standing Orders.
However, the Chair is the servant of the House, and if hon. members would prefer to see a little more flexibility, the Chair will of course be glad to accept any changes the House may decide to make.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, February 3, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, be read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: At the adjournment of the House yesterday the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon had four minutes remaining for debate.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I certainly will not comment on the four minutes. I thought it was longer but I will abide by the request to maintain my remarks to four minutes.
As the debate closed last night I was trying to illustrate those areas of the economies of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia that would be affected by the capping process in this legislation that is presently before the House. Homes for the aged would be affected, as would nursing homes, hostels for transients, child care institutions, homes for unmarried mothers, residences for physically and mentally disabled persons, residents for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and rehabilitation services for substance abusers.
February 4, 1992

There is no question that the health care system in our country would be reduced for those so much in need, especially those among our elderly who require medication and dental care services.
Child welfare payments would be curtailed. What will happen to these children when these cutbacks take effect? We have all heard in this House the overwhelming support from all sides about the need to protect the children in this country in every way, particularly economically.
Welfare services of all types will be hampered: adoption services, rehabilitation services such as life-skills training, services for the aged and physically and mentally disabled persons, homemakers, home support and similar services to individuals and families in emergency situations, or as an aid to independent living in our communities for seniors and the disabled.
I could go on and on to state in unequivocal terms what this type of legislation is doing to those people, not only in those three provinces but in all of Canada that will be seriously affected if this legislation is allowed to go through.
Let me state this in closing. If Canada is to stay unified, if Canada is to stay as one nation, if Canada is to stay together to differentiate between the provinces over economic issues that will certainly affect each and every citizen, not only in the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, but throughout this whole beautiful, wonderful country of ours, I implore this government today, in the spirit of the unity that we are trying to create, to withdraw this legislation and not bring it back until this recession period is over.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from Thunder Bay for his remarks on how wrong it is to put this cap on the Canada Assistance Plan at this time.
As we mentioned yesterday, we are not just criticizing the government here, we are also trying to put forward some ideas that hopefully will put people back to work. As we put people back to work, there will be less need to even think of putting a cap on such a fundamental program as the Canada Assistance Plan which looks after the most disadvantaged.
Government Orders
My question is to my colleague who has spent the last three years in this House doing some fabulous work in the area of transportation. He has seen all kinds of opportunities through our transportation systems and infrastructure where possibly we could invest in the human capital and in our infrastructure to put people back to work.
I wonder if he would be kind enough to enumerate to this House and to the people of Canada some ideas in the area of transportation which could put Canadians back to work if the government had the political will to do so.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood for his remarks with respect to how we can assist this country in putting forward a system for our infrastructure, particularly in transportation. I also thank him very much for his kind words about the work in transportation that I have done.
Let me answer my friend by saying that what Canada lacks is a national transportation policy that would extend all modes of transportation: rail, water, air and roads into an infrastructure that would cause this economy to come back to what it once was.
Let me talk for a moment about the roadway system. In my particular area, VIA Rail has been cancelled from Sudbury right through to Winnipeg. As a result, we do not have any passenger rail service, which is so vital to any area of this country, but particularly in northern Ontario. With the absence of passenger rail service on days like today when the planes are not flying, we only have one means of transportation, roads. It is with trucks and cars that people move back and forth in all of the communities in that particular area and I am sure it is synonymous with every other area in Canada.
What we find now, Mr. Speaker, is that the infrastructure of our roadway system is deteriorating to a point where we have more accidents on our roads than we have ever experienced before. This is due primarily to the fact that the roads are not maintained as well as they once were. Coupled with the fact that the roadways are taking the excess transportation that should have been going on railways, it means that we have huge trucks on the roads. We have an economy that is resource based and we have logging trucks and so on.

February 4, 1992
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We do not have the will through either the provincial government, although it promised that all kinds of great things were going to happen in the north, or this government which does not have the resources to provide for all of those communities in northern Ontario and other areas of Canada to spend on the infrastructure that is so vitally needed.
I just heard from my friends on the side here, Mr. Speaker, that they spent a fortune on northern Ontario. Let me say unequivocally and without fear of contradiction that all we have heard in northern Ontario is words and the promises that are made. We get ministers there making all kinds of promises and it has not, like other governments before it, followed through. That is a dilemma that all people in northern Ontario are facing, the dilemma that governments promise things that they cannot deliver. That is what is happening in Ontario, and we see it happening on the other side of the House.
Getting back to the point of my colleague on transportation needs, we need rail transport, additional roads and more access to the air systems of Canada. Thank you very much for asking that question.


Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to speak on Bill C-32, although I am not too happy with the consequences of this particular bill.
It allows for the extension of a 5 per cent limit on CAP for the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, the province from which I come. It is a continuation of Bill C-69 which limited the 5 per cent cap until 1992. Bill C-32 extends this until 1995. May I suggest that this is the only mechanism by which the federal government assists in funding social assistance and social services in the provinces.
individuals and as a society by the manner in which we care for those unable to care for themselves".
Our Prime Minister said those words and, as is so often the case, we can agree with his words but we certainly cannot agree with his actions. In fact only 12 per cent of the population in this country would agree with the Prime Minister these days.
The historical perspective has to be pointed out. This dates back to 1867 and the Constitution Act wherein it was decided that there would be an agreement or a pact between the provinces and the federal government to share 50 per cent in social assistance for the provinces.
As the years have progressed, the development of these policies has caused problems between the provinces and the federal government as to constitutional powers. It is suggested: "It is not my responsibility; it is yours" and vice versa. As a result the disadvantaged people of this country, the people who require the assistance, get caught in the middle.
The federal government often says that the municipalities are creatures of the province, but surely it begs that the three levels of government co-operate. One cannot function without the other, and therein is part of the problem. The federal government is no longer participating or is not fulfilling its obligations to the pact which began in 1867.
There is a history of changes where the social assistance system in this country became better and better and improved as years went on.
The Canada Assistance Plan of 1966 broadened the basis of support to those in need of financial assistance, regardless of the cause of that need. It was one of five elements of a program designed to abolish poverty. Obviously it is not working.
I want to quote someone here: "And then there is what I call the dimension of tenderness. It is the vital responsibility of government to demonstrate compassion for the needy and assistance for the disadvantaged". "It is the equalization of opportunity for all and an elevated sense of social responsibility that must continue to find favour with every thoughtful Canadian. Of all the challenges of government, no cause is more noble, no obligation more sacred. We shall be judged both as
Some of the benefits of this program, the transferring of funds from the federal government to the provinces, to the municipalities, goes on and on. Although I do not agree with some of the things the previous speaker indicated, I certainly acknowledge that services are going to be severely cut: the rehabilitation services, including services to the chronically unemployed and to meet the special needs of persons at risk of being socially isolated, particularly the aged and the physically and mentally disabled.
February 4, 1992

There are people who vocationally want to be rehabilitated. The waiting list in my community is over one year. These people desperately want to be retrained and rehabilitated to get back into the work force. Bill C-32 perhaps renders this possibility impossible.
Community development services are to encourage and assist members of deprived communities to improve their social and economic conditions. The major employer of the community of Sault Ste. Marie is certainly under siege. We are not sure of tomorrow, next week or next month. Our social assistance rolls grow and grow and grow each and every day.
What has happened? The federal government says no to the province. A year ago the Ontario government increased transfer payments to the municipalities and the federal government was screaming: "You can't spend that kind of money". We quickly found out without the assistance of the federal government that we cannot spend that kind of money.
Where does it come to? It comes down to the municipality that is forced to hire more staff to handle the caseloads, and at the same time the tax base is being eroded. Our major employer cannot pay. With the assistance of the provincial government $4 million of tax arrears was paid by the provincial government on behalf of the employer. How can the municipality take up the slack if it does not get assistance from the provincial government that in turn has not received assistance from the federal government?
Of course the indication is that it is only the have provinces that have a cap. It is fortuitous or very timely that in The Toronto Star today it is stated "Cap on welfare costing Ontario $900 million". That is the financial effect this year on the Ontario government-$900 million.
The Minister of State for Finance says: "Ontario, Alberta and B.C. are the best places to bear the extra burden". What a cynical comment to make when Ontario was a have province and we hope that it shall be once again. Presently our manufacturing base has been eroded dramatically. We read day after day the litany of plant closures and plant layoffs. How can the federal
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government suggest, even intimate, that Ontario can best bear the burden? We can no longer bear the burden; $900 million is definitely an impact.
If we just want to talk about caseload, in metro Toronto the caseload for social assistance has reached
102,000	in one month, up from $98,000 in December. Any suggestion that the recession is over is not true. The proof is in what is happening in communities across the country.
There is almost unanimous consent that the timing of Bill C-32 is totally inappropriate. When you are in the midst of a recession you do not hurt the people who can least afford to be hurt. It should be noted that 50 per cent of Canada's poor live in B.C., Alberta and Ontario.
The recession has forced people out of work and on to UI. Believe me, my experiences with the UI program of this country have not been pleasant. The government has abdicated its responsibility in UI. It has made it more difficult for workers to qualify for UI. It has shortened the time period for which they will qualify. Believe me, if there is any doubt in the regulations, the workers will never ever get the benefit of the doubt.
I have been to the board of referees on behalf of hundreds of steel workers in my community. It was an unfortunate experience. The regulations point out that it is very difficult to win appeals. We shall go on despite this, but when these people run out of UI they are forced to go to the social assistance program. They do not want to, but will the help be there? It is becoming more and more difficult to provide that help.
In Canada, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and I think we all still accept that, there are close to one million children living in poverty. We are second only to the U.S. in the level of child poverty in the industrialized world. These children are being asked to pay for loopholes that are offered to big corporations.
I want to cite a particular example. I think examples have to be used to hit home the severity of the problems in our communities in this country. Sault Ste. Marie is only a microcosm of what is happening in so many other communities. We are not in it alone certainly, but I think we are a case study of what is going on in this country.

February 4, 1992
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I received a call from a nurse in a hospital suggesting that the number of cases of malnourished babies in our hospitals is growing. It took time to find out why. What was the problem? It was found and proved that parents of babies of underprivileged families, through no fault of their own, are forced to cut comers. One way to cut comers is rather than buying very expensive formula for their children, they dilute Carnation Milk and say: "I hope that this will do the trick for our children". It does not.
What a condemnation of our system if we cannot provide the basic food for children in our country. That at this point in time is not addressed and I suspect it cannot be addressed. I was in China. What most impressed me about that country that has, I believe, 7 per cent arable land and 1.14 billion people was that, as far as I could see, everyone ate. I could not see people going hungry. We did see a lot of that country. Yet in Canada babies are going hungry. That is a condemnation certainly of the system. Bill C-32 will only exacerbate the problem.
We have talked about timing. This along with Bill C-21, the changes in UI, the clawback on family allowance and pensions, the attack on medicare that we are only too aware of, all of these factors are happening at the same time, which puts a tremendous load on the system. As I have said before, unless we co-operate, unless we get this country back to work, the problems will only continue and get worse.
May I talk about something that is difficult to talk about, which is mental illness in this country, something that is elusive, but we know it is out there and growing. When people are distressed economically, they are distressed mentally.
In my community, depression not only means economic depression. It means mental depression. The suicide rate has increased dramatically among young people. This will not be addressed by attacking the deficit. Attacking the deficit will not make people feel better. People have given up hope. There is no hope. They cannot see the government participating in the rehabilitation and reactivation of the economy.
Certainly there are ideas out there. If we can put people back to work, that despair will subside and hope will come forward. I think the best idea is this public works project. The FCM agrees with it. They initiated it. George Bush, that right winger, even says it is a great
idea. Our Prime Minister says that it is a silly idea. Once again, when everyone thinks it is a great idea, the Prime Minister describes it as silly.
Obviously we are on a course that we cannot continue to follow. We can restructure an economy. We can restructure businesses, all with difficulty. We can restructure industry, as we will have to do in my community with Algoma Steel. We can restructure the responsibilities, although it begs co-operation. We can restructure the debt. We can do all of this with great difficulty, but we can do it.
But we cannot restructure people's lives. We cannot restructure families. We cannot restructure educational opportunities without a loss of opportunity for the people and the country. We cannot restructure medical services without mental and physical pain. Restructuring is the buzz word, and they say that we have to do it. We realize that, but you cannot restructure people. It is impossible, but it is happening. Families are being forced to restructure in ways that fly against what is human nature. We cannot restructure people's feelings when they are down. They will remain down unless there are changes in what the governments of the country are doing. They see no change. "We are staying the course", says the federal government, "We are staying the course, despite what is happening around us". It says, "We understand". Well if it understands then bring about change and Bill C-32 does not bring anything to us.
'
I have said it before, it cuts and it cuts and it cuts, and it cuts some more, and then it says "we are wrestling inflation to the ground". But if the country is wrestled to the ground, if it wrestles the manufacturing base to the ground, if it wrestles people's hopes to the ground, when it is finished with all of the things that have been done in the name of policy, what benefits it and what benefits the country if at the end of it there is nothing there?
It can say, "Well, we went through with our policy and it is the only policy that we know". But what are the benefits when there is nothing left at the end of the exercise? It benefits no one.
I beg the government to get off this course because the country is asking you, imploring you. It goes from begging and asking and imploring to one of great anger and cynicism. So it is time to stop staying the course and do something to address the problems, and we can only address the problems together.
February 4, 1992

I ask the federal government to co-operate with the so-called have provinces like Ontario-which no longer is a have province primarily because of this federal government.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the member that I agreed with most of what he said. I understand the great frustration that he must be going through because of the problems with Algoma Steel. But he is a member of the New Democratic Party and right now that party probably has more influence with the premier of Ontario than any one of us in this House of Commons.
When you talk about this government staying the course, its plan of wrestling inflation to the ground-by the way, I think there is no inflation in this country-it has more than wrestled it to the ground and you basically indicated that. But my point to you is that I get a sense that the premier of Ontario is basically following the same course that this Conservative government is following.
I want to stress a couple of things. First of all, there are close to 400,000 entrepreneurs in the province of Ontario. These are people who are highly creative and highly motivated. Right now they are saying that they need some inspiration, they need a push, they need a spark from the province of Ontario. Quite frankly, there is a sense that the premier of Ontario would rather pay people not to work than try to take chances on the human capital and the entrepreneurship that is there.
I do not want to give a big long list in this House of Commons today, because this is a national debate and my specific examples are basically from my own province. I would like to meet with you privately. There are literally dozens of examples where entrepreneurs want to do things to create jobs, but they are looking for a little bit of spark, not in terms of taxpayers' money but things going through the process.


An hon. member:: Name one.


Dennis Joseph Mills: You ask me to name one. I will name one. Last Friday in the province of Ontario the minister of municipal affairs put the hammer and closed down an affordable housing project, 5,000 affordable homes, $110,000 to $140,000 homes, five minutes north of Newmarket. It would have created 17,000 jobs. It was not
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going to cost the taxpayers of Ontario a nickel-17,000 jobs over four years.
Let me be very accurate. I personally faxed the premier, tried to phone the premier, wrote to the premier, wrote to all those people and I could not get a response.
The premier of the province of Ontario went on national television- I was not here when he gave his pitch; I was in the Middle East-but I heard that he was asking for ideas and ways to create jobs. Then a week later he put the hammer on it. There is a bit of inconsistency here.
I am not trying to do anything other than to suggest that when you throw a shot across the floor at the Conservative government, how about re-examining the opportunities that we have within the province of Ontario for creating jobs.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order. I fail to see the relevance of the hon. member's comments. The bill before the House today concerns the Canada Assistance Plan, and I would appreciate it if the hon. member would get back to the subject and finish his remarks.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, the relevance is this. If we had people working again there would not be a necessity for this cap on the Canada Assistance Plan because if there were full employment in this country we would not be needing to cap bills that are as fundamental to the fabric of this country as this is. My plea is that we get people back to work.
Legislation like this can be withdrawn from the floor of the House and so I plead with the hon. member for some help.


Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, I think there were some cynical comments there and it is unfortunate that this kind of debate would get that partisan. I think it became a little partisan. I would say that at least this government is consistent.
I suspect the party that the member represents could espouse what it says, and as full employment really is our party's policy, I think he is espousing our policy which never surprises me about the Liberals, opportunistic perhaps.

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Last year when the New Democrats and the premier of Ontario put out this anti-recession fund, the federal government would not get on side. I am sure that the Liberal opposition at that time did not say "Premier Bob, that's not the right idea". It probably criticized him. At that time when they were spending money you were criticizing and now when they are coming back you are saying they cannot do that either. Well you cannot have it both ways. It begged co-operation last year when the New Democratic government said that it was going to spend its way out, and the federal government said no way. The Liberal opposition in Ontario said, "No way. You can't do that".
I think that Premier Rae has reached out to the business community and many times, for whatever reason, has had his hand slapped. Absolutely. I do not think they want to co-operate. But he will continue to reach out to them. In the end, without cynicism from the other parties, this will work. I do not think that Bill C-32 has anything to do with what the member was talking about and I commend the speaker for bringing that to the attention of everyone.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, the member first of all accused me of being cynical when I gave him a specific example that would create 17,000 jobs. He then went on to say that he did not see what Bill C-32 had to do with job creation. I cannot believe a member of Parliament would say that. If we had full employment in this country we would not have such a draw on the unemployment insurance fund and we would not have such a draw on the welfare fund. My goodness, his leader's first question in the House of Commons yesterday was: "What about the $30 billion on UI and welfare? Let's put it into productive labour and then we would not have to worry about Bill C-32." He is not even listening to his own leader.
I put forward a specific, sincere question to the member of the New Democratic Party. I asked him for help to get people back to work. It was not cynical. I gave him a specific example and he stood up and made a mockery of my question. That is why people think this House does not work and they are right.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, the previous discussion is very revealing. I think all of
us on this side of the House are trying to do our best to turn this country around and to get this country back on track, but let us keep our eyes on the ball and let us not forget who is tearing this country apart. It is the Conservatives across the way and let us not forget that.
Let us turn to the matter at hand. The other day I was reading a story in Time magazine. It was a cover story titled: "The Fraying of America". It spoke of the unravelling of that country. The United States of America is literally coming apart at the seams. It is coming apart at the seams because it has had far too many years of conservative administration.
I think many of us even on this side of the House would argue that perhaps in a period of 100 years there may be a time for a conservative administration. But history will tell you that having any more than about four or five years of a conservative administration in a longer period of time is far too much.
If you look at the United States it goes back to the Reagan years starting in January 1981, and that country has come apart. It has come apart to the extent that George Bush, who was riding high in the polls and nearing a 90 per cent approval rating a year ago has now slipped below the 45 per cent level. Who would have thought a year ago that George Bush could be facing defeat? It is now a possibility. I do not predict it, but it is a possibility.
That magazine cover story was addressing the very serious issue of the fraying of America, the coming apart of America. The same thing is happening here. Reaganomics did not work in the United States and Thatcher economics did not work in the United Kingdom. I am going to say that Mulroney economics does not work in this country.
Canadians know very well-they say it every day in the coffee shops, it is reflected in the polls, and even the Tories cannot deny it and they certainly cannot ignore it-that there is something terribly wrong with this country. They are searching for answers. They know that the Conservative government, going back to September 1984, has done something irrevocable to this country, or perhaps irrevocable. We are hoping if we get to power that we can turn it around, but the damage inflicted on this country by this government continues unabated day after day, day after day.
February 4, 1992

The first thing this government did was to begin damaging and tearing apart the social contract. We have had a social contract in this country for decades and decades and decades, something that separated Canada from the United States of America. There was a partnership in this country, a partnership involving government, the business community and labour. It can be called a partnership or a social contract, but we had it in this country.
It made a difference in this country, certainly a difference between this country and the United States. It made us one of the best countries in the world, but we are losing it. We are losing it very quickly because we have a Conservative government that wants to turn this country into a country governed by the laws of the jungle.
It has its favourite buzz-words like competitiveness and globalization. If we would only become competitive, everything would be just fine and dandy. Just leave us to the vicious forces of the marketplace. If we are competitive, everything is going to be fine. Just let big business have its way and all the benefits of that hard work will trickle down to us, the masses. What a wonderful dream. But it does not work.
Let us talk about the cap on CAP. The Tbries tell us that there has to be this cap on CAP, this ceiling on social assistance and transfer payments to Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia because, after all, they are here to cut the deficit. They tell us we must have restraint on government spending and the government budget must be trimmed. They say with this particular measure they are going to save $340 million. We have heard that story many times. Almost everything this government does is in the name of cutting the deficit and yet, strange as it may seem, the deficit remains. It hardly moves. After almost seven years of this Tbry administration, despite some of the best economic years, the deficit sits there. But the debt goes up. It never stops going up. What do we get out of these Draconian measures from the Tories? Not a lot.
It raises the question of fairness. Under this measure the Tories are saying to the poor in Ontario, to the poor in Alberta, to the poor in British Columbia: "You are going to have to live with less". Where is the fairness? In free trade, what did the Tories do? In the free trade
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agreement they gave big business, particularly the international companies, a blank cheque. "Go out and do your thing."
For a while small business thought there was a lot in free trade for them. If big business prospered from free trade, so would small business. It has not turned out that way. People in small businesses are some of the most disillusioned people in the country today. It is because they realize that the corporate agenda followed by the Tories is not for small business. It is for the big business people, most of whom reside in places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London. It is not your small retail outlet or retail operator on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg, for example.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, is that fair? They ask the little guy to tighten his belt and to live with less, but when it comes to the big guy, they give him more. Is it fair? What about the GST? It certainly gave a break, and perhaps a rightful one, to our exporters when it removed the old manufacturers' sales tax and imposed the GST, but what about the ordinary Canadian? What does he get out of it? He is paying more taxes. He is being gouged. He is being asked to pay more. I ask the question: "Is it fair?"
Here we have a government cutting back, constantly retrenching, constantly asking Canadians to give a little bit more and to bleed a little bit more. In the process we have 600,000 Canadians dependent on food banks. One-third of those are children.
We have 1 million Canadian children living in poverty. Is that fair, especially when we measure it against some of the Draconian measures instituted by this federal government? Is it not interesting that at a time of economic difficulties when people are feeling the hurt and the pain of the recession and feeling the pain of the measures of this government that we do not hear anything from the government when it comes to the huge stipends and salaries earned by chief executive officers of some of the largest corporations in the country? We do not hear a word.
I read in the paper the other day that the salaries of CEOs in Canada were going to go up this year 7 per cent on average. I wonder how many workers are going to enjoy a 7 per cent increase in their salaries this year. Not very many. A lot of workers will lose their jobs.

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Do we ever hear anything from these fat cat Tbries when it comes to high salaries of chief executive officers of corporations? We never hear a word. Is that fair?
A few years ago the federal government used to be the leader when it came to the minimum wage. Provinces lagged behind. Who is taking up the rear these days? Who is last in the line of providing a minimum wage? Is it little P.E.I., Newfoundland or Manitoba? No. It is the federal government. These parsimonious Tories have not adjusted the minimum wage for almost six years. It has not been adjusted since 1986.1 ask you the question, Mr. Speaker: "Is that fair?"
What about the monetary policy? What about the policy of this government to wrestle inflation to the ground? None of us likes inflation. I do not know anyone on the face of the earth who likes inflation. The Ibries stand up very bravely and say they are going to wrestle inflation to the ground. They have not done a bad job. But who was the pawn in this process? Who was used in the process to fight inflation to the ground? It was the little guy, the worker. The anti-inflation policy was carried out on the backs of little people. I ask you, Mr. Speaker: "Is that fair?"
What about the cuts in transfer payments to the provinces, cuts which are going to have and already have had a serious impact on health care programs in the provinces? I ask the question, Mr. Speaker: "Is it fair?" Is it fair to pass on more and more of the federal government's responsibility with respect to health care to the provinces? Is it fair to take federal cash out of the medicare system which will leave the provinces with an absolutely unbelievable burden that they will not be able to bear?
Mark my words, Mr. Speaker. Consider when there is no more federal cash for medicare, when the federal government loses its lever to apply the Canada Health Act. That will happen. The provinces will soon be adopting or instituting user fees and other measures like extra billing, and that will be the end of medicare. That will be the beginning of a two-tiered system where the rich will have their system and the poor will have their system. Of course the system of the poor will be a poorer one because they will not be able to afford the kind of
system that the rich can enjoy. I ask the question again, Mr. Speaker: "Is that fair?"
I can take you down this long line of issues and I can raise the question every time: "Is it fair to be preoccupied with cutting and tearing apart the social contract that has existed in this country for so long?" What about the clawback of pensions? What about the clawback of family allowances?
Of course the Conservatives get on their soap box and say: "After all, we are just going after people with the wherewithal. We are just going after people with means. We are not going after poor little people. We would never do that". That is not true. The clawback is not tied in any way to inflation.
Even though the Tories wrestle inflation to the ground, I can assure you that as time moves on and as inflation takes its toll, the clawback to family allowances and the clawback to pensions will hurt more and more and more all the time. As you well know, the threshold right now is $50,000. That does not sound too bad, does it? It does not sound too bad, but when it comes to pensions, in eight years from now, $50,000 will be $40,000 because there is no indexation. That is what the threshold will be in eight years, $40,000. In 30 years it will be down to $20,000.
Can you imagine after 30 years of inflation, 30 years down the road? Canadians are going to have an old age pension worth $20,000. Is that fair? Is that the direction they should be following? Canadians know. They know and they say it every day. That is why the polls show that the Tbries will be turfed out at the first opportunity. Canadians know that their policies are the ruination of this country. They have never heard of the word "share".
You will grow old, Mr. Speaker, sitting on this side of the House and waiting for the word "share" to come out of their mouths. The Tories do not believe in sharing. They never heard of sharing. In fact, if you ask them what sharing means, it means thievery to them. It means having to share some of what they have with other Canadians. That is what sharing means to them. It means thievery.
This idea of building two tiers in our society is achieved by the clawback. The clawback does that. The cuts in transfer payments to provinces build two tiers. This

divides our country and our people. This sets off rich people on one side and poorer people on the other.
I will tell you the price that is to be paid for that. When you take upper middle income people and rich people out of mainstream programs like family allowances and pensions, they do not feel that those programs belong to them any more. They do not feel that they have anything to do with those plans. They have their own plans. Consequently, what happens when you cut those people from the mainstream programs is that they do not support you any more. They do not support you with their cash any more, and they do not support you with their politics and their votes.
Is that what we want? No. I would like to have a social contract. I would like to have a social contract that calls on all Canadians working together and sharing together.
I do not want Canadians rushing off in different directions. Yet that is what Tory policy dictates.
Is it fair, I ask again? No. The Tories privatized the unemployment insurance scheme. It is harder to get into UI now and you get less out of it if you are lucky enough to get in. Of course, with privatization the Tories according to the 1989 tables removed their $3 billion contribution from unemployment insurance. Again it is the unravelling and the fraying of the social contract. There was a time set up by the Liberals that there would be a role for the worker in UI, a role for the businessman, but there also would be a role for general taxpayers through the instrumentality of government. That has been destroyed by this government.
In closing, I say there has to be a turnaround. If there is no turnaround we will lose absolutely eveiything we have. We will lose our social contract. We will lose the partnership that existed for so many years in this country.
The cap on the CAP is a reflection of the fraying of Canada and I just hope to God that we can put a stop to it.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House today to address this extremely important legislation which I believe will impact negatively on the whole of Canada, not only Canada's poor but Canadians generally.
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All of you will know that Bill C-32 is an act respecting the Canada Assistance Plan. That is a rather cold description of it. Let us look at what it really does.
It deals with the Conservative government's cap on the CAP, a cap on the Canada Assistance Program. Specifically, it is a cap on the transfers to British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. This particular measure is a flagrant and highly visible example of the failure of the government to be able to come to grips with the balance between economic policy development and social policy development. What it attempts to do is bring some order into the economic policies of this nation by attacking those provinces which on a per capita basis are richer than others by limiting assistance to those who need it. I would argue, and I shall, that this is not the way to proceed.
It also raises a number of other important questions. If the government can do this to this particular program, what is to prevent it from expanding and broadening it? What is to prevent it from reducing the amount of transfers or to approach other programs with a similar philosophy? We have no guarantee that it will not do so.
I want to raise a number of questions. The first one is, who will this bill affect? It will affect Canada's poorest citizens. They will be the ones who will suffer the most from the Conservative government's extension of this cap on the CAP.
Members will recall that originally there was a cap of 5 per cent put on transfer payments to assist social assistance program recipients. This is an extension of that Draconian measure and it is completely unacceptable, particularly in view of the more difficult economic situations through which we are now passing. It is the wrong thing to do. It is the unjust thing to do. It is the insensitive thing to do.
It will be recalled that this penalizes not only British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario because it reduces the assistance they get, but it penalizes the people who are the recipients of those particular programs in those particular provinces.
There is an article in today's Toronto Star entitled: "Cap on welfare costing Ontario $900 million". That is almost a billion dollars. This is the effect of that particular bill. This $900 million will be money that the poor will not be able to get. Those who need assistance will not get-$900 million-almost a billion dollars. It is unconscionable. It is totally and completely insensitive.

February 4, 1992
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Under CAP, the federal and provincial governments share equally the costs of basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, utilities and households. The federal government does not set up these particular transfers for social assistance programs but it helps provinces in setting them up by responding to the needs of those Canadians who require assistance most.
Many of the services which will be affected are essential to Canada's poor. Let me give an example of some of them: dental care, essential living services for disabled persons, foster homes for abused children, safe housing for abused women, and subsidized child care for low income families. These are basic essentials that will be denied. The federal government will prevent these provinces from doing as much as they would like because it will not be matching, as it ordinarily would, the expenditures that provinces would undertake in those particular areas and in a number of others.
What is worse about this-a point that has never been talked about much-is that this was originally initiated in the 1990-91 budget year but has now been extended. The government got its foot in the door and now that it has its foot in the door it is going on and on. This ceiling has now been extended and it will continue to reap the same kind of effects that I have just mentioned in this Toronto Star article-$900 million in this one province alone, fewer dollars for those particular individuals.
I want to mention as well, and I think it is an important point, that this particular plan is going to result in transferring the debt and some of the economic difficulties on to the backs of poor Canadians. I think this is something that we often forget. It is easy to talk about statistics, it is easy to talk about these kinds of programs in a sort of cold, analytical way, but it is sometimes difficult to understand that there is a control going on here, an attempt to control debt, an attempt to control deficit, on the backs of the poor.
Some of you will know-and some people feel rather good about this-that because this was challenged in a court of law and the government was found not to be outside of the law, that somehow there is a moral victory.
I suggest that this is not a moral victory; quite to the
contrary, it is the extreme opposite. Even though there was a legal win, it does not give the government the moral right to abandon its responsibilities to the poor and disadvantaged Canadians.
Another point we often forget is that this kind of program pits those who are richer, on a per capita basis-and we all know that those richer provinces have become poorer recently-against other provinces. It heightens the tensions in this country at a time when the situation is particularly tense. It really does pit one part of the country against other parts of the country. It simply makes people more angry at the system because they feel it is not being fair, that it is not working, that it is not sensitive, that it is not sharing in a fair kind of way.
Let us talk about our current situation today. [Translation]
You surely know that right now in Canada, about 5 million people live at or below the poverty line. Unfortunately, most of them are women. These 5 million include 1 million young people, children and youths. I find this situation deplorable in a country like ours which is rich compared to other countries in the world.
Right now, 2 million Canadians are on welfare; here again, many of them are women and children. I find it absolutely deplorable that in our country, Canada, with 27 million inhabitants, 2 million, or almost 10 per cent, receive social assistance. I find that unfortunate.
Nearly 1.5 million people are said to be unemployed, but the actual figure may be higher because some have given up looking for work-they feel it is no use.
I will give some concrete examples from my constituency. In my riding, I could name at least seven young men who have worth-while university degrees, masters in public administration, in economics or in other very important fields, and who have been unable to find work. They get contracts for a month or two, something like that, but nothing long-term, nothing promising. Can you imagine these young people who have studied for years to ensure a promising future for themselves and have lost hope?
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I met a young man who has a bachelor's degree in economics. He had to go to the United States because there was no work for him here in Canada. He is a very intelligent young man who had great success in university, and there is nothing for him here in Canada.
In my riding now, there is a man of about 50 who lost his job because of cuts in the place where he was working. It was not because of his ability-he was very competent, very loyal, very hard-working-but cuts were made. He has been looking for work for more than a year and he has not found anything yet. Can you imagine the despair he feels and the despair in his family because he cannot find work?
I know an electrician who has worked for a number of companies, is very competent, and has all kind of references indicating he is very good at his trade. He is still looking, but there are no jobs.
And what about small business people who have gone bankrupt? And what about all those people who during the past year tried to set up a business and invested a lot of money in the process, and because of the recession, because of our very high dollar in relation to the U.S. dollar and also because at the time, interest rates were very high, were unable to survive?
We have food banks operating at this very moment, where 1.8 million Canadians will go this year if they do not want to starve. As you know, 40 per cent are children and teenagers. In this country, food banks are running out of food, and I think that is appalling.

I want to talk about tax increases because that has been a burden for Canadians. We all know that there is less ability to purchase now what we could a few years ago, in spite of some increases in certain sectors, because the tax increases have taken away more than we have received in almost every single area. The losses by the middle class, the very motor of Canada, the people upon whom we count in order to finance a number of the programs that we have in place, are suffering. They are losing faith. They are being crushed by that taxation burden. I am talking about the 34, I think it is, tax increases and the goods and services tax which is not any more popular today, I can assure you, than it was when it was implemented. I predict that tax is gone.
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What is worse, I am talking about the middle class and the crushing burden that they are suffering. If we look at the taxes that are being paid by the poor, proportionately they are paying a greater share. That is happening in spite of the fact that there are a number of Canadians who are earning extremely high remuneration and who are paying very little or no tax. In a number of cases there are companies that are doing very, very well but are paying very little or no tax.
Canadians are angry. They are tired. They feel that this system is not fair. When you see a cap on CAP, such as this program, you see the unfairness. It is simply exacerbated by tax measures such as those.
Some of you will recall the clawback on the seniors, the clawback on the family allowance programs and the fact that it will become increasingly serious over time. Initially a lot of people looked at it very quickly and said: "Well, what is the problem?" The problem is that over time more and more people will be clawed back at a much smaller salary. That will become increasingly serious. Those Canadians who took it lightly will realize in another 10 to 20 years that that was another Draconian measure.
The whole system is rife with unfair taxation measures. Let me give a couple of examples. Between people who are married and people who are living in a common law relationship, there is an advantage in being in a common law relationship from a taxation perspective. I do not want married people to suffer more and I certainly do not want the people who are living in common law to be penalized as are the married people. I think, however, if one has a legal relationship, and those are legal relationships, surely the taxation should not favour one or the other. Surely what is good for one ought to be good for the other.
Let me give another example. People who have receipted day care receive certain taxation benefits, while those who choose to stay at home, are able to stay at home or want to stay at home do not get the same kinds of benefits. People know that. People get angry when they see this kind of unfairness, this kind of injustice, and they want change.

Often, we hear that certain measures are taken or bills introduced in order to control the deficit and the debt. However, the deficit has been about $30 billion for a number of years and this year it seems it will probably be more than that. I have here a document signed by the former Minister of Finance, Mr. Wilson, in which he

February 4, 1992
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indicated that the debt was $170 billion-which is a lot of money-in 1984, when the Conservative Party formed the new government. I believe the debt is now well over $400 billion.
So Canadians are saying: Look at all those tax increases. If those tax increases had been instrumental in reducing the deficit and the debt, I am sure they would be far more willing to accept what is happening now. But there has been no improvement. Things have got worse, and they do not like that.

What really gets me and a number of Canadians angry is the boast of the Conservatives that they are controlling their expenditures. They argue the cap on CAP and fewer transfers of dollars for health and education is helping to control the deficit and the debt. We have talked about the billions of dollars over the period of time that those transfer payments have been changed for health and education. From 1986 to 1995 we are talking roughly 30 billion fewer dollars for health and education.
I think it is $20 billion less for health and $10 billion less for education.
What is happening is that they are exercising a certain amount of control, but it is on the backs of the provinces, territories and the citizens in those particular localities. Tb boast that one is controlling the debt by transferring it to one's neighbour is a very empty boast indeed.
Let me say to you, Mr. Speaker, to my colleagues and to those who are listening, we need to relook. We need to examine again. We need to study in a very serious kind of way the linkages that there are and ought to be between economic development and social development. We need to be sensitive to those who have less. We need to recognize that by denying them that which they need to contribute to a greater quality of life, one that is often lacking in many instances, we are denying ourselves. We are denying the whole country. We are not only penalizing them but penalizing Canadians generally because they cannot participate fully in the work force. It heightens the tensions that we already have in this country.
We need a balance. We need a balance between economic development and social development. I am delighted that my party has taken this question very seriously, as well as the question of fair taxation and that it has been working for months to try to advance something that will be more sensitive, fairer and more acceptable to Canadians. I look forward to those announcements very shortly.
I want to complete my address on two notes. I want us to realize that when we are not sensitive to those who have less, we are in fact cheating ourselves as Canadians and cheating our country. That is not the intent. That is what is happening. If you look at children who are poor, you recognize that it is a vicious cycle and that they do very poorly in school, generally speaking. What is the future for them?
I know that I have come to the end of my allotted time. I am saddened that this appears to be proceeding because I see no positive benefits whatsoever. I think it is particularly sad that this year, 1992, when Canada will be celebrating its 125th birthday and we ought to be celebrating that which we have accomplished for those who have less, unfortunately, ce n'est pas le cas.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for articulating so well the linkage between social and economic development in this policy-making process. That was precisely the point I was trying to make earlier with the NDP. If we have a strong focus on the economic development instruments in this country, it is much easier to meet the social objectives that I know all members of this House are trying to achieve.
One reason I am so disturbed about this particular debate is because I believe that we are going beyond the power curve in our cutbacks. In other words, it is like an airplane that is taking a deep dive and, as can be seen during air shows, if that pilot does not turn it around at a certain point and it goes beyond the power curve, it is impossible to pull it out. Indeed, it is a year and a half ahead of its inflation targets. It has gone beyond the power curve in terms of ratcheting down inflation and other things. In terms of unemployment, I think we are only 200,000 or 300,000 people away from a revolution in this country. People are starting to say quite openly that our institutions are not working. They are not functioning.
February 4, 1992

My question is to the member who articulated so well about the despair that many people in his community are feeling. It is the same despair that people in my community are feeling. Does he believe that our focus in this House of Commons this week should be figuring out ways to put people back to work immediately so that once the economic equation is working productively again, it would be much easier for us to meet all the social objectives and values that we have held so near and dear in this country?


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question.

Yes, I believe that it is extremely important. I would even say it is essential to devote this week and whatever additional time we need in order to see how we can get people back to work for a number of reasons. Obviously, quite apart from the benefits that come from employment, there is a satisfaction that people would feel about being back to work. The impact it would have on the families and on the partner and the children can never, never be underestimated.
I talked to my constituents before Christmas and just recently. The single greatest concern they have is making sure that people who are unemployed are back to work, that they have meaningful jobs. Second, that they are able to keep their own jobs. There is a great fear out there as you see your neighbour lose his or her job that you are going to be next.
It would re-establish confidence in the future for themselves because they would feel "I have had a productive life. My neighbours have. We want to retire with some dignity". That is being attacked as well because there is such a lack of confidence in the country.
The people not only fear for their jobs today, their jobs tomorrow, but their future. As well, they fear for the future of their children. They wonder whether or not their children will be able to get jobs and, if they are able to get jobs, whether they will be meaningful jobs that will tap the potential and the talents they have and whether or not that will be able to continue into the future.
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For all of those reasons, I would suggest that we have to spend this week and as much time as we need to develop creative ways to ensure that people get jobs, that people are put back to work and are off social assistance programs, that people no longer need to go to food banks, people can find a vitality, a new reason for living and a new hope that this country will in fact provide for all of those who want to work, who want to contribute significantly to this nation and to its future.
Yes, there can be no more important goal this week than have this whole House attempt to determine ways of getting Canadians back to work and to restore confidence in our nation as we celebrate our 125th birthday together.


Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to again speak on this bill which is an attempt by the government to pass on to the provinces and, therefore, to the more unfortunate people of Canada budgetary cuts. It is also an attack on one of the pieces of social legislation that has united Canada and brought Canadians together. It comes at a time when Canada is having to debate its very existence.
We had better go back and take a look at what the Canada Assistance Plan is and what its implementation meant to Canadians. There are two or three aspects of it that I have not heard anyone raise in this House. The Canada Assistance Plan sets out very clearly that the aim is the provision of adequate assistance to and respect of persons in need and the prevention and the removal of the causes of poverty.
The act goes on to say that it will provide services like food and shelter, special care homes and a range of welfare services. These welfare services are aimed at the removal and prevention of the cause and effect of poverty, child neglect and the dependence on public assistance. We are talking about services that are directed to the most disadvantaged Canadians.
One thing that is fundamentally flawed about this bill is that it is inequitable in its application. It singles out the poor children and the unemployed in three provinces only, Alberta, B.C. and Ontario, at a time when we are trying to build a concept of national unity. We are being asked to pass a piece of legislation in this House that fundamentally attacks and singles out people in three provinces. It applies a different standard to them.

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The preamble to the legislation says that these are the concern of all Canadians. That is in the preamble of the Canada Assistance Plan, and yet this government presents a piece of legislation that says: "We are not concerned about all Canadians. We are going to single out Canadians in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and handle them differently". This is particularly galling at a time when at least 50 per cent of the children living in poverty are living in those three provinces, at a time when deindustrialization that is taking place in Ontario because of the mismanagement of the economy by the government is causing untold personal tragedies as well as economic tragedies.
There are other elements of the Canada Assistance Plan that I think are equally as important that I have not heard people discuss. I have been involved in public welfare administration for most of my adult life. When I first started out working in public welfare, prior to the introduction of the Canada Assistance Plan, we had all sorts of resident requirements for people applying for assistance, for children coming into care.
In British Columbia you had to determine whether the person was the responsibility of the province of British Columbia. You had to determine their last place of residence for one full year without drawing public assistance. If that was in Ontario, you billed back the province of Ontario.
All sorts of bureaucracies grew up tracing who was legally responsible for providing assistance to that person, not only by province but often by municipality. The Canada Assistance Plan came in and as part of that package, it said you will receive assistance where you are, the costs will be picked up by the federal government, 50 per cent, and we will get rid of this terrible bureaucracy that tries to treat Canadians not as Canadians but as a residents of Ontario, Manitoba or Saskatchewan.
This government by this act is opening up the whole question: Should these provinces which are now limited to 5 per cent expansion sit there and determine that a person is really a resident of Saskatchewan. He has come to B.C. to look for work but we are now forced to pay 100 per cent of the assistance for this person. Maybe we had better repatriate him to Saskatchewan, which they used to do, or bill the government of Saskatchewan for its
share of the income assistance, or Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.
I do not think this government understands the path it has started down with this type of legislation. It destroys the whole concept that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian regardless of where they are and that they are entitled to services in every part of this country, regardless of where they lived in the past, and there will not be financial billing back and forth between the provinces based on individual cases.
It would be a shame if another one of our social safety nets was eroded such as the threat that is now going on to our health care system because of this government's unilateral cutbacks to transfer payments.
What is the effect of these transfer payments? In Ontario this year under the cap on CAP there is a loss of revenue of $415 million. In 1991-92, it is $1.2 billion. In British Columbia it was over $40 million the first year. This year it is about $160 million and over the five-year period of this bill it will be $1.2 billion.
This government talks about the deficits being run up by some of the provincial governments, but these deficits are in large part simply the deficit that this government has transferred on to them.
This year in the province of British Columbia, the deficit of $1.7 billion is made up 67 per cent by the loss of transfer payments for EPF and CAP to the provincial government or the loss of revenue of $1.1 billion out of a total deficit of $1.7 billion.
The government has not solved the budgetary crisis or the debt crisis. It has simply passed it on to the provinces. The provinces are having to try and provide the services in a particular context. What is that context? It is a context of a shattered economy, a context of dramatic growth in unemployment, a context where many people who are working are still entitled to public assistance because the wages have been driven down, where there are part-time jobs, minimum wage jobs on which you cannot support your family.
Ontario has suffered the worst because of this recession. Because of the free trade agreement, the GST and the high Canadian dollar, the industrial heartland of Ontario has been devastated. Don Richmond, the commissioner for the Metropolitan Toronto Commission, points out that we are about where we were in 1938-39 in the midst of the Depression.
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The number of people on income assistance rose from a little over 750,000 to well over 1 billion by 1992. The case load in Toronto is over 100,000, 3,000 more people a month; total individuals just under 300,000.
Ottawa-Carleton, an area that has suffered equally, has had an increase of 42 per cent. The increase to property tax owners is going from $290 million to $350 million; $12 million of that will be on property taxes. This government has taken programs and transferred them not only to provincial costs, but down to the municipal costs.
We talk about affordable housing. Anything the government did yesterday to make housing more affordable, it has undone with this piece of legislation because the costs in some provinces go directly on to the cost of owning a house. In Ontario it is through increased taxation. It is as important to be able to maintain that home as it is to purchase the home.
In British Columbia there is also an increase in people seeking income assistance. It has now reached the same point that it was during the recession of the early 1980s. Up until this point, B.C. has not felt the same impact of the recession as the industrial heartland in Ontario. In spite of that, it is now experiencing income assistance case loads that were equal to the height of the recession in the early 1980s.
At the same time, there are all sorts of other services other than direct assistance to individuals in terms of income assistance that are provided on our Canada Assistance Plan. I want to talk a bit about the flimflam and the hypocrisy of the government's actions in this as it relates to one of its pet things, which is violence against women or within families.
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About the same amount is for the next fiscal year and the rest is for some time off in Never Never Land.
At the same time it is taking $1.2 billion from Ontario and $1.2 billion over five years in British Columbia. In Ontario it is $1.2 billion in one year and somewhere in the neighbourhood of several billion dollars over the five-year period. Here it is making this to-do that it is going to put in $137 million for violence within families and against women while it is cutting back hundreds and hundreds of times more money which is used for those specific services. These are the services that provide transition houses for battered women. These are the services that provide counselling for families. These are the services that provide protection for children who have been battered, abused and neglected.
It has the gall and hypocrisy to stand up and with much fanfare make an announcement it is spending this money when in fact it is putting children at risk by ensuring that services are not available at the provincial level. It is cutting back the moneys by hundreds and hundreds of times. It is putting children at risk. It is putting abused women at risk. It is putting families at risk. I think the Canadian public is sick and tired of this approach.
The government says: "We have no alternative. We have got to get control of the deficit". Yes, the deficit is a serious problem. It is a problem that has been put upon Canadians by two successive governments over the last 10 years. Yes, the government should have had control over it but it was not expenditures on social programs that have driven up this deficit and this debt. Six percent of the increase is because of social programs. Forty-four per cent is because of tax breaks to the multinational corporations and to the wealthy that have been brought in by the last two governments. Fifty per cent is because of debt charges mainly due to the policy of the Tbry government. High interest rates have been maintained and are still being maintained to this day by that government. We have to solve the problems. We have to get people back to work. I want to outline two or three things that we in the New Democratic Party are suggesting be done immediately.
.	.	. .	Get the dollar down. Let us get our export industry
With a great ballyhoo, five different cabinet ministers working. Let us have the dollar drop down to a realistic made parallel announcements across this country that vaiue. Let us get rid of the GST. The GST is the single they were going to spend $137 million over five years. most destructive thing for this economy in the last 10 The bulk of that money is going to be spent long after years. Canadians are going to the United States to shop, they are defeated and gone from power. Very little of I have talked to people in my constituency. Surrey that money, less than $20 million, is to be spent this year, borders on the United States. These people tell me: "It

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may even be costing me money to go across the line to buy something, but by God I don't have to pay the GST. I'm going to show the government what I think of the GST by going across the border to shop". They are voting on the GST with their feet by crossing the border to shop. The government does not seem to get that through its head. The impact of that is tremendous on Canada because the bulk of the Canadian population lives within 50 miles of the American border.
Get rid of the free trade deal.
Those are three concrete things. I could go on with other alternatives. This government has simply got to ensure that Canadians in every province are back working.


Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, first of all, no matter what side of the House one is on or what side of the question one is on, I think everyone would agree that the member for Surrey North shows great tenacity and at the same time sincerity on this issue. He has brought this to caucus on more than one occasion, saying this is an issue that we should address and give higher priority.
My question is very simple. Consider Bill C-21, Bill C-28, Bill C-69, Bill C-32 and other bills which I do not have the appropriate numbers for. Basically they are saying and doing the same thing. How long do we have? How much time is there before the erosion becomes literally an avalanche and our social assistance programs are completely deteriorated to a point of no return?


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: It is very difficult to say exactly how long we have. My feeling is that we have maybe one or two more years, particularly if the economy remains the same as it is now. What the Tory government has done is create a recession. It has changed the UIC rules which meant that fewer people qualified for UIC for shorter periods of time. Therefore, they had to go on income assistance sooner and for longer periods of time. They have simply changed the UIC rules in a manner that put the load again on the provinces and the local governments.
I think the real reason why we are short of time deals with the concept of Canada. Canadians could feel proud of their social programs. That was one of the things that united us. They knew that they could go to British Columbia and be entitled to income assistance no matter
where they were from. This government, however, has said: "No, we are going to make a differentiation among Canadians by province. We are going to penalize the poor in three provinces. We are going to penalize battered women in three provinces". It is this concept, the erosion of our social fabric, that is probably the single greatest threat to Canada.
People are saying: "We had a concept of Canada. We had an understanding of services such as health care, income assistance, job training programs and services to children who were in jeopardy. It was based on the federal government being involved and being concerned about all its citizens. It has destroyed all of that".
One hears the provinces saying: "If you are going to cut off our money and we are still expected to pick up the people who are coming from Newfoundland and Manitoba why don't we just pull out and run on our own? What is the point of belonging to Canada?"
That is what is undermining a great deal of Canadians' confidence in this government. They do not see this government understanding the fabric of the Canadian society and the commitment that Canadians have to social programs.
Canadians will express this in the next election by bringing the greatest defeat of any Canadian government in the history of Canada.


Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in this very important debate. I have to say it is one of the most important debates that I have ever heard in this House. The government opposite will have a lot to explain to Canadians particularly as it relates to this bill.
Most Canadians who are listening know that this is Bill C-32, just a simple and innocuous bill. We have had 17 minutes in third reading from the Opposition. The Minister of State for Finance, oddly enough, is from Ontario where this bill is going to hurt so many, at least 1 million people, because of this minister's lack of ability to understand what this problem is all about.
I cannot believe on third reading that we have not heard from certain Conservative members of Parliament: 46 from Ontario, 12 from British Columbia and 22 from Alberta. This bill is directly affecting the people in those provinces.
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I am not talking about new programs. I am not taking about day care which was promised by this government in two elections and should have been in the Canadian system by now. I am not talking about that. I am talking about social assistance.
Because I am talking about social assistance I wish to go back and explain for the benefit of the Canadian people what the Canada Assistance program is. The best place to take this definition from is from the government's own Canada Assistance Plan annual report. I will say something about this before I give the people an explanation of the Canada Assistance program.
The basis of the annual report is four pages. This is an annual report on one of the best programs and one of the best models of federal-provincial co-operation. It is the best program for a social safety net for Canadians. It is an example to the world of what our social programs are.
Oddly enough the annual report for this was combined. This is what the government loves to do. I have seen it for Fisheries and others. It combined three fiscal years in four pages. What fiscal years did it combine? The most prosperous years that Canada has had in probably 15 years were 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89. This government could not even take a report in one year and tiy to see how the Canada Assistance program in good times might be made more flexible for tough times. But no, it comes in February of 1990-and I spoke immediately after that in the House on it-with a cap on the Canada Assistance program for the have provinces.
Canadians should realize, and we have 10 provinces and two territories, that when the Canadian government collects all the taxes, it has agreed to provide under the Established Programs Financing a return and a transfer payment to the have not provinces under the equalization program. In February 1990, seven provinces received transfer payments under the Established Programs Financing. The three provinces that did not need it were Alberta, B.C. and Ontario.
Mr. Wilson, the then Minister of Finance representing downtown Toronto-where there is so much suffering today with the economic policy and programs of the Conservative government-capped the payments under
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Canada Assistance at 5 per cent for two fiscal years for those three provinces.
The federal government may have wanted to stop any growth in new payments to provinces that it would have to pay out, but I am sure it did not mean to cap the social assistance that is needed in tough times. That is exactly what it did. Then the next year in the budget the same minister capped it again, or was it the new minister. I cannot remember. That is the bill that we have before us. The government capped it until 1994-95.
We see here an unimaginative government which combines the reports for the Canada Assistance program into one report given at the end of 1989 without any imagination. It is the largest cabinet we could possibly have with the least amount of work coming from it. We see a report of the most important universal program that we have in Canada, combined into three reports, with no new ideas coming from it except a budget in 1990 that puts a cap on the have provinces.
Who would have expected what happened as a result of this? I will get to that.
However, because my area is perhaps quite aware of the Canada Assistance program, I want to tell Canadians that this was a model in Canada of the federal and provincial governments working together. In 1966, my party's former government of Mr. Pearson came up with the Canada Assistance program. I am reading from the report, and I wish the government members would read it: "The Canada Assistance Plan was enacted in 1966 to encourage the development and extension of assistance and welfare services throughout Canada. Under the plan, the federal government has entered into agreements with the provinces and territories to share the costs incurred by the provinces". There you have the first safeguard: The province must put up the dollars first. The province must put up the 50-cent dollars before the federal government has to enter into a national type program.
This applies not only to the provinces, but to municipalities too. As everyone in this House knows, the municipalities first see the people in need at that local level. They see the need for social assistance and welfare services for needy Canadians.

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I do not think I can stand here in this House and believe that today we are seeing the worst of what we call needy Canadians. We do not see jobs. We do not see an application of money to job creation and we do not see any new ideas. The Minister of Finance says that interest rates have gone down. Why have interest rates gone down? There is no demand. Interest rates will have to go down a lot further before ordinary Canadians can take advantage of them. Maybe big business or the government's friends who like to spend their Canadian dollars in the United States are benefiting. Certainly the Canadian dollar has not gone down enough to enable it to be spent on our natural resources to keep the people working.
Let me just tell you what the CAP covers. It covers persons who benefit from assistance and welfare services, including children who are in care or are in need of protection due to abuse or neglect. There are more children in Canada being neglected, particularly in the have provinces because their CAP has expired. It expired in Ontario and we heard the premier say that he cannot go it alone. Lift the cap and give us our social assistance under CAP.
In B.C. it expired and in Alberta it expires in early March. Do the people have to suffer because of the inability of this government to be flexible? I cannot say that this is an example of good government. I can say that I only saw one person rise on the other side to justify this government's policy. I would like to hear them tell me that people are not going to bed without shelter or food. I would like to hear them say that the 1 million who are on social assistance in Ontario are not hungry tonight. I would like to know if they have gone to a welfare office in the last week and asked how many people came to that door or how many people came looking for assistance from their constituency offices. That is the hard crunch that members of Parliament, members of the legislature, municipal council and town councillors have to go through because of the cap.
In February 1990 they did another thing. Under the established programs they capped a limit. Perhaps in many respects that is needed. But I do not feel it is needed when it is truly social assistance.
In my own province the government of the day brought in PharmaCare for seniors. This year seniors were asked
to contribute. I can perhaps see the rationale for asking seniors to contribute a $3 fee for their pharmaceutical needs. It is perhaps justified in tough economic times. I cannot see cutting back to welfare recipients.
I just want to go back to some of the other programs that were capped. I think Canadians should see this. It was interesting, if anyone saw or read about what happened in Montreal this weekend. People came out and talked about federal-provincial programs that worked. Why are we, without a big debate, talking about doing away with this universality here in this House?
What else does it provide? It provides assistance for one parent families, the aged, the unemployed, and families or individuals in crisis. It provides for low income workers, battered women and mentally and physically disabled people.
It goes back to its primary objective. It was to support the provision by provinces of welfare services designed to lessen, remove or prevent the causes and effects of poverty, child neglect or dependence on public assistance.
It is capped in a province like Ontario supposedly because we were told by the minister that we have to taper.
We had the high interest rate because Ontario was in an overheated economy. They cap CAP. A year later Ontario is in a depression because there are no jobs. Free trade has done away with most of the jobs. It was implemented in such a way that the government absolutely could care less about where the jobs were being lost. There was a high Canadian dollar when the free trade agreement was being implemented, and a high Canadian dollar for our natural resources was just not going to keep most of those jobs going.
Rio Algom just closed because of the high Canadian dollar and the international price of tin. You may not be able to control the international price of tin, but this government can control a high Canadian dollar. It does nothing to help or protect fisheries, the price of fish or the price of anything we export.
The only time the high Canadian dollar helps is when you want to go to the United States to spend our Canadian dollars. I say that if Canadians can afford to go to the United States, they can afford to take the breaks of the lower dollar.
February 4, 1992

Mr. Speaker, I know my time is running out, but I just want to go back and challenge those 46 members from Ontario. I challenge them. If you look at the press today, it reports on the court's victory, but this is the government's victory, and people misinterpret it. The government can do what it wants to do. The Supreme Court said it could cut its assistance under the Canada Assistance program unilaterally, but that is not what you call federal-provincial co-operation.
It cut it unilaterally to Ontario, B.C. and Alberta. Since the court victory, Ontario and B.C. have had to pay back because they took out of CAP. They were paid by the Canada Assistance program 50 cents to match their 50 cents. They had to pay back last month in Ontario. Ottawa made its last payment to Ontario for its 1991-92 fiscal year because it had already reached its cap. Social assistance demands in Ontario rose by more than 17 per cent.
When Ontario is not feeling good, Mr. Speaker, it affects my area. Because of the way our country is, if Ontario is not in a prosperous mode, then the Atlantic is not going to be. We have always benefited from Ontario being in a prosperous mode. As Ontario goes down, you can imagine what it is going to do to the general revenues that would go into the equalization program.
I can imagine what is going to happen in the budget. It does not take much, but at the same time, with some degree of imagination this government could have looked at CAP in the good years when it only did a four page report for three fiscal years. It could have looked at some way of putting flexibility within the Canada Assistance Plan. We have not had the devastation of those who are most in need today: the poor, the jobless, the single woman under 65 and those people right across Canada who are suffering from a lack of imagination.
Why can it not take the money it is going to put into the UI fund because it is being over-run? Why can it not put the money into the UI fund for job creation as my leader has said so well. Put it into infrastructure, sewers, the environment and water supplies. Let the infrastructure be there in all those communities across Canada because people want to work. Give people work and we will be able to go on when the good times come back because, from all reports, they are just around the
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comer. But it is getting to that comer that is so devastating to the people across Canada.


Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West):: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to challenge anything my hon. colleague from Nova Scotia has said about social assistance and other social programs, but I want her and others to know that the reality of life in Canada is that the greatest threat to social programs is a bankrupt national treasury. If our financial statements show horrendous debts and our annual financial statements show horrendous deficits, we will not be able to fund the social programs that Canadians have enjoyed in the past and it is as simple as that. There is no money. There is no money available for new social programs. All members who advocate greater expenditures at this time on the social programs and increased payments for social programs are simply heading the country toward bankruptcy. Then there will be no social programs whatsoever. I hope the beneficiaries of the social programs realize that they will receive no benefit from those who advocate expenditures of funds that the public cannot produce through taxes and other means.
I want to ask the hon. member a question. Let me explain it this way. The New Democratic Party members constantly demand greater expenditures and when you ask where we will get the money, they invariably say two things. First they say to reduce expenditures on national defence. We have a world-wide situation which may mean that we do not have to spend as much on national defence. This is the so-called peace dividend.
I want the member to stand up in the House and answer this question. Does she believe we should dramatically reduce expenditures on national defence? She knows the havoc that can wreak at Cornwallis.
Second, I would like to ask her if she thinks we should increase taxation to pay for social programs. Never mind the sermon about infrastructure. We all know about that. That has nothing to do with the matter before the House.
What she has contended is that we can continue to fund and increase the funding for social programs. I want to know where she thinks we should get the money. Does she believe we should get it from national defence expenditures or should we tax the rich as the NDP say?

February 4, 1992
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Coline M. Campbell: Let me just say to the hon. member that as far as cutting defence, this government came out with the statement in September that it wanted to do more cutting. It had a new white paper that would set up a new committee, but two years before it had a white paper that said it was going to do something else.
I do not want to get really tied up in that.
Cornwallis, in case the member does not realize it, is our only basic recruit training base. It serves all three forces very well and is not costly in terms of a $12.8 million budget.
I just think that a $12.8 million budget today may have to be looked at in light of the changing world. We are always going to need new recruit training, so let us leave Cornwallis with that. I am sure the hon. member would agree with me.
You could find other needs for Cornwallis. You could put in the UN peacekeeping, as the committee to save Cornwallis has said. I do not want to waste my time because he has challenged me on other things. I have a list and I will send it to him and any newspaper that wants it. I presented such a thing to the minister's committee.
There are areas of taxation that we could perhaps do away with. We would have to do away with all the business lunches and all the perks that businesses have and cut back there. Maybe that might give us a little more revenue somewhere else. Maybe we have to look at other things that the Economic Council of Canada has recommended and not been acted on by this government.
I want to say something on the other side, and I want to be positive about this. If we cut and reduce the Canadian dollar, we will allow our natural resources and businesses to get going again and create jobs. As jobs are created there will be more people who pay taxes which come back into the coffers. Use the UI fund for job creation instead of paying people UI out of general revenues. You can do so much training and then there is no job after their months or year of training. There have to be jobs. Get people working. Put in an infrastructure. Finally, do not believe that this government or any government can put its ills and its lack of imagination to find a way out of this, on the backs of the needy, the poor, the children, the old, the women under 65 with no
income and the jobless. We have never seen so many permanent jobless with nothing coming to them from any level of government. You just have to go to Yarmouth and see what has happened to a town that was supposedly booming, according to Maclean's three or four years ago.
We do not have to put that burden on the poor. If you want to sit down, I will tell you some of the other areas that I would cut.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I may point out that we have now had five hours of debate.

It is now time for 10 minute speeches without a question or comment period.


Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks by complimenting my colleague, the hon. member for South West Nova, and say that I am proud to serve with her. I agree 100 per cent with every comment she has made and I salute her.


Howard Edward Crosby: Including cutting national defence.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I do not think the hon. member for South West Nova, who happens to be the member for one of the largest training bases in this country, was saying that, but if the hon. member for Halifax West understands it that way, I suggest he check his comprehension.
I begin my remarks by saying that during the Christmas break I happened to read a new book called Conversations with Canadians by Knowlton Nash. One of the conversations was with Robin MacNeil of the U.S. Public Broadcasting System, MacNeil-Leher Report. He is a son of Nova Scotia, as many of you may be aware, a writer and broadcaster. They talked about George Bush's theory of a kinder, gentler America. Robin MacNeil responded that there is a kinder, gentler America and that place is Canada.
I agree with that up to a point. There is a kinder, gentler America that is Canada or, sadly, there was. Unfortunately what we are seeing and what we have seen over the past six years is an attempt to dismantle this kinder, gentler country. One of the things that will dismantle it very quickly is the end of the social safety net upon which Canadians depend and of which Canadians are so justly proud.

February 4, 1992

Putting a cap on CAP effectively is saying to the citizens of this country that we as a country and a nation are one of the most favoured on the face of the earth. We are one of the nations with the highest standard of living and the largest number of resources. Everyone of us in this Chamber knows what our benefits are. Yes, we have problems, largely of our making, and I am not apportioning blame on that side. We of all political stripes, from every region, province and territory of this country have to take a share in how we might be messing up the country. This is why we now have to work together to pull it together. But we are a favoured and blessed country, no question, on the world scene. We are favoured and blessed as opposed to our neighbour to the south.
A country will only maintain its greatness and its favoured status when it can be judged favourably in the way it treats its least fortunate and weakest members. There are Canadians who are never going to be able to function in the Thatcherite, Reaganite, Mulroneyite free market kind of economy that this country has been pushed toward.
My colleague from Halifax West said, in response to my colleague from South West Nova, that you cannot do anything with a huge deficit and a bankrupt government. I could not agree more. No one disagrees with that. The deficit is a terrible burden.
It has been six years, and the deficit grows. There have been six years of these policies and it is not getting smaller. It is not helping-


Mr. Gustafson:: Who created the deficit?


Mr. Halliday:: It is the interest rates.


Mary Catherine Clancy: I thought the interest rates went down, my hon. friend over there, the hon. doctor. But you will have your time, the hon. member from over there. If you know the answer, why can you not fix it? You have had six years and you have not done anything. It is getting worse. I must have struck a nerve. They were not talking at all for a while, now they are all talking. I think they should speak on this in their own time. However, they have not solved this.
The Minister of Finance told us the other day we are faced with a 60-day freeze, and what is cut? What is always cut? Social programs to help the less fortunate; programs that reflect on our national characteristic of compassion are cut. Why?
I do not believe that my colleagues on the other side of the House want to think about people who are forced out of their homes and living in piano boxes, if they are
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lucky. They are living under bridges, if they are lucky, and in the streets from one end of this country to the other. I know that none of the members over there approves of that or wants to see it, but it is happening. You cannot pretend it is not happening. It is there.
Let me tell you this. The other night in Halifax, when we had the biggest snowfall in the maritime region in 30 years, I was talking on the telephone to my friends because none of us could come out of our homes. We were lucky we had homes to be in. A number of people wondered what was happening that night to those homeless people that we see on the streets. Where were they? Three feet of snow fell on the city of Halifax. Thank God there were church shelters, temporary shelters, Salvation Army shelters and the like to take them in.
This is a temporary response. The churches and the charitable institutions cannot be expected, with their limited means and limited base, to take over what is the responsibility of every Canadian, and consequently has to be the responsibility of government. You cannot back off and abdicate your responsibility and say: "Let them starve. Let them eat cake. Let the charities take care of it". It will not work. We have seen more poverty and want in this country in the last six years than we have seen since the Great Depression.
I was bom many years after the Great Depression, but my family lived through it, mostly in the coal mining towns of Cape Breton. I heard about what it was like. I heard about children starving to death. I heard about people freezing to death for want of heat and light. It is programs like the Canada Assistance Plan that provide a buffer against that kind of horror.
I stand here today proud of my country. I am passionately committed to my country and utterly determined that it is going to come through the crisis it is in, a better place than it was before. It will be a country that comprehends our regional, language and cultural differences. It will be one in which all Canadians can be strong together. But you know, it does not matter if we preserve our cultures and our two great languages. It does not matter what we do with any of these things, or whether we have asymmetrical federalism or an elected Senate. It does not matter to any of us as the duly elected representatives of the people, if there are people starving, going without, and living in want from Victoria to St. John's, from Windsor to Inuvik, because we are responsible. As responsible people we must continue to support the Canada Assistance Plan and not see it diminished nor allow our social safety net to be taken away. This is a Canadian heritage and a Canadian trust that is as important as our languages and our cultures and any of

February 4, 1992
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our other institutions, and we must preserve it. It is not a question of "should we", it is a question of "we must". Anything less is unacceptable.


Mr. Len Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, as we resume debate on this bill today, I just want to reiterate a little bit of history here. It was back in 1966 when this bill was introduced into the House. As a matter of fact, on April 4, 1966, the Hon. Allan J. MacEachen, who was then Minister of National Health and Welfare, rose in his place in this House and stated that he was moving:
That the House go into committee at the next sitting to consider the following resolution which has been recommended to the House by His Excellency.
It went on to outline in that resolution the things that were going to be covered by the bill that would follow. The resolution stated:
It is expedient to introduce a measure to be known as the Canada Assistance Plan to establish a program for sharing with the provinces in the cost of assistance, including health care and welfare services provided to or in respect of persons in need, including mothers and children, older persons, disabled persons and unemployed persons who are in need, and in the cost of developing and improving assistance in welfare services programs, including child and youth welfare programs throughout Canada.
At this stage I would just like to comment that these provisions were necessary because after coming out of the Depression of the 1930s, it was clearly visible in anybody's mind that the provinces could not afford all these social services that were required by the residents of their individual provinces. This was another way during the Pearson administration in 1966 that the government of the day provided for assistance to those provinces to help them out in the tremendous costs that they had to bear in these fields.
The bill also stated and I quote:
-provided for the making of arrangements for extending provincial welfare programs with the approval of Indian bands to Indians with reserve status and for the making of payments to the provinces with respect to the cost of so extending those programs, to provide for the making of payments to the provinces with respect to the cost of specialized projects for assisting and rehabilitating persons in need or likely to become persons in need who have unusual difficulty in
obtaining or holding employment, to provide for amendments to the Old Age Assistance Act, the Blind Persons Act, the Disabled Persons Act and the Unemployment Assistance Act, that are incidental to or consequential on the introduction of the Canada Assistance Plan, and to provide further for the extension of the Established Programs (Interim Arrangements) Act to the Canada Assistance Plan.
The reason why I listed those was simply to put right up front the importance of this legislation that is before the House today. If the federal government is going to move away from that kind of support to the provinces of Canada then with the pressures that are on all levels of government today, which is unfortunately sifting right down to tremendous pressure on municipal governments across the country in terms of social programs, I think it is incumbent upon the federal government to keep faith with the provinces in this country.
My hon. friend from Broadview-Greenwood today got into some economics of what people can afford. People who are employed will provide funds to help finance things such as the Canada Assistance Plan. In this legislation the three provinces that are affected very negatively financially are Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.
I had a constituent, a businessman, tell me he had been to Toronto recently. He had not been there for some time. He took the usual route from Toronto to Oshawa and on down 401. He said that he could not get over the number of empty office buildings, the number of empty office spaces, the number of empty manufacturing plants in that 40-mile space from Toronto to Oshawa. This tells a story in itself and relates directly to what we are talking about here today.
Ontario has always been looked to in past years to finance at least 40 per cent of the cost of social programs right across the entire country. It is obvious that today Ontario has serious economic problems. Many noted in the press last week that 469,000 jobs have been lost in Ontario. That means those people are not paying income tax to the extent they would normally.

It means that the businesses for which they worked are not paying corporation taxes or business taxes of any kind. That is taking away from the financial structure. It is taking away from the tax base of Ontario. It means that the economic base, the tax base here in Ontario, is eroding terribly. It means that the very tax base of a large part of the Canadian financial structure is not there today.
This is no time for the federal government to be saying to the provinces, and particularly those three provinces that are negatively affected by this bill: "You are going to get less. You are going to be nailed down to a flat sum and at a time when your economic base has eroded, you are going to have to find a way on your own to provide those services for your people", all those services which I originally mentioned when I started my speech.
This is not what you call national leadership in the country. It is saying to individual segments in the country: "You must go it on your own". That is not the way that the constitutional framework of Canada works. Going right back to the deep Depression of the thirties, the Rowell-Sirois commission report of 1937 was put in place to rearrange the taxation methods of the country, to say what taxation areas the provinces should have, what taxation areas the federal government should have, to put the tax system in place because the Depression years totally destroyed the old framework of taxation in Canada.
In closing, I simply want to make this very valid point. History will prove I am correct. There is no way that the national government of this country can go on neglecting its leadership in the financial administration. I maintain that in very short order we will need another royal commission of highly qualified people of this country-judges, financiers-to bring in a new report and to fix the damage that has been done to the allocation of the tax structure of this country by this government.
I hope this report will be done as well as the Rowell-Sirois commission report. If this is not done, this country is in serious straits. The provinces will tend not to look to Ottawa as the leader and this will be bad for the national unity of the country.
The bottom line is that the government must be there to lead.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I had a number of comments I wanted to make on this bill. In order to be able to make my full remarks, and it being five minutes to one, I wonder if the House would be disposed to call it one o'clock, given that there are only six minutes left. If not, I will interrupt my remarks and make them in part this morning and in part this afternoon. Can I ask for the unanimous consent to call it one o'clock so that I may be able to make my remarks uninterrupted?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent for suspending the sitting and resuming debate at 2 p.m? Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I will therefore suspend the sitting until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 12.46 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, the proliferation of drugs in our communities, school yards and playgrounds has become the calamity of the 1990s. Our youth have become the prime target for the drug trade which not only saps their youth but all too often causes anguish for the families involved.
The increase in the illegal drug trade in metro Toronto, accompanied by the related violence, has worsened of late and has stretched the resources of our local police forces to their limits.
In an effort to help those on the front lines continue their battle against drugs, I urge the government to amend the Narcotics Control Act and share the seized assets as a result of a drug conviction with the local police forces and community organizations, instead of returning all moneys to general revenues.

Along with York West constituents who have helped collect thousands of signatures on petitions to support this campaign, I call upon the government to immediately act upon this community initiative and help end this plague.
This problem will be won or lost on the local battlefields and therefore those waging the fight locally must be given the tools with which to overcome and to ensure victory.


OLYMPICS
Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, as we are on the countdown to the Olympics which officially begin this weekend, I would like to commend and wish our athletes well.
Many of us, including golfers and/or tennis players, took heart with what our Davis Cup team almost did in Vancouver last weekend. Our athletes at Albertville in the Alps are looking and dreaming of their gold, their bronze and their silver. I think it is only correct that as we are spaced out in this country on constitutions that we know we have those athletes who are not spaced out on constitutions but are spaced out on their own physical achievements. We wish them well.
We in this House, Mr. Speaker, deserve special credit because the daughter of a colleague of mine, the hon. member for Calgary Northeast, is on the official Olympic team as a freestyle skier. We wish her and all her companions well. They have faith in themselves, they have faith in their country. We have faith in them, we have faith in this country. We put our hopes in them and we wish them well.


AEROVOX CANADA INC.
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, the town of Amherst was shocked to learn of the planned closing of Amherst Aerovox, a subsidiary of an American firm. After the initial shock, the town and area are gathering up its resources and fighting back.
Already the Amherst Aerovox Community Committee has raised $100,000 to be used to search for products,
partners or new owners for this factory. The team is made up of local business and development people who have knowledge of the industry and contacts which hopefully will prove successful in finding a solution.
The provincial Department of Economic Development is assisting with funding, resource people and material. The federal Department of Industry, Science and Technology has also provided information and assistance. The Cumberland Development Authority is acting as central office for the group. The Amherst and Area Development Commission has provided funding and manpower. The company has added funding as well. Canada Employment and Immigration is providing an industrial adjustment program to help the employees adjust and ACOA has acted quickly and significantly to provide funding and resources.
The search for products, partners and matching businesses has begun and will continue until a solution is found. We will leave no stone unturned to solve this issue in the interests of the 62 employees affected.
 * *


INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT WEEK
Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, this is International Development Week in Canada. Again, Development Week falls in the midst of a global recession but this is not the time for Canada to reduce her budget for ODA.
This recession is hurting Canadians deeply, however, as usual the hardest hit are the world's poorest. Rarely have developing countries needed our help more than now.
The United Nations Development Program continues to highlight dramatic disparities between North and South, and UNICEF tells us that one quarter of a million children died last year from starvation or disease.
Canada must not back away from her obligations to the developing world. We must ensure that our development assistance provides the greatest possible benefit to the recipients. The government must work more closely with Canada's development NGOs to ensure that our ODA goals are met.
February 4, 1992

As final preparations are made for the budget, the government must be reminded of the negative effects for Canada and for developing countries of any cuts or dilution of Canadian ODA. As Canadians, we can make a difference if our government will help us.


OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, we are off to a bad start for Canada's 125th birthday.
When invitations for the festivities were sent out to Canadians, Quebec's anglophone Canadians received theirs in French only, and one million francophones outside Quebec received theirs in English only. Was this an oversight?
Mr. Speaker, the fact remains that this country has two official languages, and we should respect that fact. One would expect an agency receiving $50 million from the federal government through the responsible department, the Department of the Secretary of State, to do better than that.
The government argues that the organizing committee is independent and accountable only to itself, but the fact remains that it is spending public funds. I think the Official Languages Committee, which has not met since last October, should shed some light on this matter and prevent further unfortunate incidents of this kind. This is an invitation to celebrate Canada's birthday, which is celebrated in both official languages of this country.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, the Aur Resources mine in Abitibi, which is part of the Aur-Lou-vem group, will be operational in 1994, as soon as the infrastructures have been built: two exploration shafts, one pithead and one concentrator with a capacity of
5,000	tons per day.
This represents an investment of $326 million that will stimulate the economy of Val d'Or, located about ten kilometres from the mine. It is expected that 500 well-paying jobs will be created immediately, and the spin-offs of the exploration costs are estimated at $950 million over 14 years.
Mr. James Gill, president of Aur, seems to have succeeded in financing the mine without losing control
over the company or diluting its stock. This was a complex operation that required months of negotiation.
Mr. Speaker, the mine's proven reserves are expected to produce revenues totalling $2 billion in Canadian funds during the 14 years it is expected to be in operation.
It is the biggest deposit ever found in this country since the Hemlo deposit was found in northeastern Ontario in the early 80s.


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, the procedure of the environmental assessment hearings into the construction of three additional runways at Canada's most overcrowded airport, Pearson International in Tbronto, is quickly drawing to a close. Presentations to the review panel note that Pearson is at its capacity and noise is intolerable.
Transport Canada says the new runways will solve all the problems, but it fails to understand that 3, 5,10 or 15 new runways will not make a bit of difference. The runways will allow more planes to fly in and out but passengers will not be able to board or deplane because there are not enough gates for the planes.
There is an opportunity to be had here. Instead of wasting millions on new runways at Pearson, Hamilton airport can be developed to handle more air traffic. A GO link could shuttle passengers quickly between Hamilton and Pearson International as is done in other major centres around the world.
Transport Canada and this government must develop a multimodal strategy on transportation with a view to future need, not short-term political gain.


MACEDONIA
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch-Stouff-ville):: Mr. Speaker, last Sunday I had the honour of attending a luncheon in Toronto hosted by businessman John Bitove to meet Macedonian President Kiro Gligo-rov. President Gligorov was elected to head the newly independent Republic of Macedonia on January 27, 1991.

February 4, 1992
In 1944, Macedonia was taken over by the federal Yugoslav government. Finally, after a long, suffering struggle spanning almost five decades, Macedonia held a referendum on independence and declared itself independent on November 17, 1991. The overwhelming results freed Macedonia from the shackles of communism and the yoke of Yugoslavia.
It is time for Canada to recognize this proud, independent republic. Without the world's recognition, Macedonians cannot be properly represented on the world stage.


HOME OWNERSHIP
Mr. Yvon Cote (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and our government have just taken a timely initiative that will enable 200,000 Canadians to own a home, by allowing a down payment of 5 per cent instead of 10 per cent to buy a house. This will benefit over 200,000 Canadians, including thousands of Quebecers, who, especially in isolated regions, did not have the income that was previously required for home ownership.
Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, this favorable measure will help get the economy out of our present recession. This finally shows our government's great ability in taking tough measures to fight inflation and to lower interest rates when they were called for. It was unthinkable to bring in such a measure any sooner. However, this government can present incentives for home ownership. I say bravo. There will be more in the budget.


CHINESE NEW YEAR
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, today is Chinese New Year. Chinese Canadians are celebrating the Year of the Monkey while Vietnamese Canadians celebrate Tete.
The past year has seen more Chinese families reunited through immigration, business investments have increased and young Chinese Canadians continue to excel in scholarship and in professions. Canadians of Chinese origin are making a rich contribution to our multicultural Canada.
Chinese New Year is a time of hope and renewal. Chinese Canadians have waited patiently and worked hard for recognition of past injustices that early settlers suffered as a result of the racist head tax and the Chinese exclusion act. Once again, I call on the government to acknowledge these injustices with appropriate redress.
I also urge all parties to support constitutional amendments that will protect minorities from future discrimination.
May the Year of the Monkey bring a renewed Canada with health, happiness and prosperity for all Canadians. Kong Hai Fatt Choy.


HOME OWNERSHIP
Mr. Garth  Dimer@Halton-Peel: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the government approved a plan to allow firsttime home buyers to get 95 per cent financing on their real estate purchase.
That is great news. What was not so great was the attempt of the Leader of the Opposition to claim credit for an idea the government has been working on for a very long time. Canadians do not care where the ideas come from. They just want good ones.
Five per cent down is good, as long as home buyers are careful not to over-mortgage themselves. The lowest mortgage rates in over two decades is also a good idea, making this an excellent time to buy.
Finally, being able to use RRSP funds for first-time home purchases is another good idea, supported by many MPs on both sides of the House. We all urge the finance minister to listen, to reflect and just do it in the next budget.


INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT WEEK
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, yes, this week has been proclaimed International Development Week, but it will only be meaningful if the government commits and restates its policy targets of directing Canadian aid to benefit the poorest populations in developing nations.

Linking human rights to aid is laudatory, but only if those already oppressed are not further victimized. It cannot be used as an excuse to cut back on Canada's total aid budget nor cynically to target those developing countries for linked cutbacks that do not bring immediate economic benefits through trade to Canada.
When determining aid policies particular regard must be given to recipient government budgets and policies, their military versus social expenditures, women and child support initiatives, and environment and population problems. The economics of globalization must not continue to dominate our development efforts. Aid must not be conditional to a debt ridden country accepting punitive structural adjustment measures. The emphasis must be put on more substantive debt relief to the world's poorest countries, particularly those in Africa, and on direct poverty alleviation through health and education programs.
Canada's and global security depend on our continuing commitment to the poor of the world. International Development Week can be an important opportunity to strengthen Canadian resolve to that end.


HOME OWNERSHIP
Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Mr. Speaker, $5,000 is now enough to buy a $100,000 house.
The federal government, through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, is doing its part to help individuals own a home.
The Loan Insurance Program for new home owners will reduce the minimum down payment required for buyers of a first house, whether new or previously built, from 10 per cent to 5 per cent for mortgage loans insured by the Canadian government.
This initiative, which takes effect immediately, will boost the construction industry in Canada for the next two years and give about 200,000 Canadian households which now rent their accommodation the chance to own their home.
Together with lower interest rates and the present state of the real estate market, this program should
stimulate the economy and increase the chances of home ownership for many Canadians.


SMALL BUSINESS
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, small business is under considerable strain today for a variety of reasons, one of which I strongly believe is the paper burden we place upon it. Small businesses in my constituency continue to press me to get our government to attack this problem.
I am well aware of the commendable efforts being undertaken by my colleague, the hon. Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism. We must not only support his initiatives but assist his efforts by providing feedback to his department from all constituents.
I urge all members of this House to participate in this effort, not to only facilitate productivity and growth in our small business sector but to reduce our costs as well.


CANADA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, prior to the free trade agreement coming into effect in January 1989, Employment Canada had a unit that was responsible for collecting information. Regional offices would phone in daily any closures occurring. This unit was cut due to government cutbacks just prior to the free trade agreement.
Once the free trade agreement was in place, demand for information increased and the government produced a report every two weeks.
In trying to track down this list recently I found that there is only one being compiled. In fact Labour Canada uses this list for its purposes. For example, earlier this month Labour Canada requested a list of closures in Quebec and a handwritten list was supplied.
I think my question is one that we all must ponder. Is the government trying to hide how many permanent lay-offs and lost jobs there have been due to the free trade agreement? If it is not, it has a responsibility to make sure not just parliamentarians but all Canadians know what permanent lay-offs have taken place.

Oral Questions BUY CANADIAN


Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, if we are as concerned about plant closings and manufacturing job losses as we say we are, why don't we buy Canadian?
In 1980, 73 per cent of the manufactured goods purchased in Canada were made in Canada. Today it is down to only 56 per cent and falling.
The Hudson's Bay Company says it wants to import more U.S. goods to compete with cross-border shopping on price and selection. If Canadian distributors do not market Canadian products and if Canadian retailers do not carry Canadian goods, Canadian consumers do not even have the option to buy the fewer and fewer products that we do manufacture. Sure, price and selection are important, but if we do not have jobs we cannot afford to buy no matter what the price and selection may be.
Fortunately Eaton's has announced a buy Canadian promotion campaign. Will the government join it?



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

[Stage Direction]


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, in a new spirit of co-operation I would like to thank the minister responsible for housing for doing his part in implementing the Chretien plan to get this country working again.
My question, however, is for the Minister of Finance because I would like to know whether other ministers are prepared to put partisan politics aside and do their part to put Canadians back to work. Will the Minister of Finance allow the use of RRSPs to finance first home purchases?
We know the minister is looking at the plan. We are even willing to let the minister take credit for this plan if he will just put Canadians back to work. Why is he stalling on adopting this idea? Why doesn't he make the
announcement today to put thousands of Canadians back to work?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated to the House yesterday, that issue is under active consideration.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I don't know where the minister spent his time during the Christmas vacation, but I do know that there are 1.5 million unemployed Canadians, including some who just lost their jobs in Sarnia, and that 700,000 children depend on food banks. We need a program to rebuild this country. The Liberal program for public works will help rebuild roads, clean up the environment and give industry work to do. Is the Minister of Finance prepared to adopt the five-point Liberal plan and put Canada back to work?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member asks what I was doing over the Christmas recess.
I was working with my colleague, the Minister for International Trade, putting together a deal that helped bail out de Havilland and put it back on a viable sound financial basis. I was working with my colleague, the Minister of Communications, on a book publishing program. I was working on reform of the equalization program for the provinces which particularly helped the poorer provinces, and I was working on a number of other initiatives that we are announcing on an ongoing basis.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, I asked whether the minister had a chance during his busy schedule to meet with a million and a half Canadians who are looking for work.
The government has found emergency money for massive polling programs and massive advertising programs. Doesn't the Minister of Finance think it would be a lot smarter to get manufacturing and construction back on track with a national public works program rather than sit there while unemployment increases and food banks multiply?
February 4, 1992

Since the government has created the recession, why doesn't this Minister of Finance break from past policy and for once adopt the Liberal Party's five-point plan?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in the House and on other occasions, I have had extensive consultations with various groups from all walks of life in the preparation of the budget. The seven meetings involved representatives from labour, social groups, poverty groups, the disabled, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, the Canadian Bankers' Association, trust companies and insurance companies. We heard from them all and they all came through with some very clear themes. One was a very clear theme that Canadians want governments to live within their means. They want us to pay as we go. They do not want new taxes and the do not want higher deficits.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Reports on the depletion of the ozone layer right over Canadians' heads and its impact on the number of cancers are alarming. Last October, in spite of our pressure here in the House, the government refused to act more quickly, which is quite incomprehensible.
Will the minister promise immediately here today to eliminate by 1995 all chemicals that threaten the ozone layer and to put pressure on the rest of the world to do the same?


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member refers to an environmental situation, or problem, that well illustrates the challenges awaiting us in years to come. We have a problem of ozone depletion, which according to scientific studies is very serious. Canada has always taken the problem very seriously. However, Canada accounts for about 2 per cent of the ozone-depleting gases. Mr. Speaker, that illustrates the kind of problem we will have in future years.
The hon. member seems to be saying that Canada or the government has not paid attention to this problem. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you very clearly that that is absolutely not so. In fact, Canada is four years ahead of the timetable it set for reducing these substances. We
Oral Questions
reduced them by 45 per cent from their 1986 levels and we played a leading role, since the first environmental treaty, the Montreal protocol, was signed under this government's authority in 1987.
The Canadian government, Mr. Speaker, intends to maintain its leading role in fighting ozone depletion.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: My supplementary question is for the same minister, Mr. Speaker.
Unfortunately we have lost that position of leadership. This is a problem which exists now about Canada. The Germans, the Swedes and the Norwegians are well ahead of us.
However, there is also another question which is of immediate urgency in dealing with the depletion of the ozone layer. The green plan states that Canadians will be provided with warnings of ultraviolet radiation, but only in 1993. That is not good enough.
Will the government undertake to provide Canadians with daily alert warnings as is done in Australia by this April, following what NASA predicts will be a 30 per cent to 40 per cent depletion in the ozone layer and a major rise in the incidence of cancer across the country?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, let me use this opportunity to update the hon. member on what Canada has been doing in this area. In fact we have been instrumental in putting together the Montreal protocol signed in 1987, the world's first environmental international treaty.
We have reduced by 45 per cent the amount of CFCs going into the atmosphere. As a result of that we are now four years ahead of schedule according to what the Montreal protocol has set as a deadline. We think that we can in fact go faster than that. At the meeting of the countries involved in the Montreal protocol next November we will be pressing other countries to accelerate the phase-out of CFCs. Canada intends to maintain that leadership position.
I recently announced, I think it was in August, a $25 million initiative to assist us in meeting our objectives. Among the initiatives announced in August was in fact an initiative that will enable the Government of Canada to put out warnings of ultraviolet rays. I will be more than happy to look at anything we can do to accelerate that process given that financial commitment and some resources.

Oral Questions


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
There is increasing concern on the part of Canadian farmers and food producers that this government is letting down our farmers and producers at the current GATT negotiations.
The industry estimates that 100,000 Canadians will lose their jobs if the government signs a GATT deal that does not protect the Canadian supply marketing board system. For those 100,000 Canadians who could lose their jobs, in financial terms alone it would mean $243,000 a week in unemployment insurance. That is $12.5 million next year.
Is the Prime Minister prepared to sign such a deal and, if he is prepared to sign it, where will the extra funding for unemployment insurance come from? From a higher deficit or higher taxes?


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is aware, the position put forward by the Government of Canada in the GATT negotiations was a position derived from consultation with the stakeholders, those very producers she is talking about.
Our position is to have GATT clarify and strengthen article XI. That was the position the supply management industries gave to the Government of Canada. That is our position today.
The hon. member also knows, as do the supply management industries, that under the existing GATT agreement and article XI they are very vulnerable. We as a government have taken their suggestion and we are putting forward their position.
That is the position of the Government of Canada and we will continue to work for it.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I understand the Government of Canada is trying to get a clarification but it seems to me the message coming clearly the last few days and weeks is that the government is not strong in its position and is presenting other alternatives. I want to ask the minister-

Did the government study the impact of this proposal? If not, how can it think of signing such an agreement without knowing what its impact will be? If so, why not share this information with the farmers and the House of Commons?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity personally to meet farm leaders, particularly from Quebec, two or three times since December 20. The UPA in particular asked us to share with them figures on the impact of the Dunkel report.
Of course, our government did not change its position at GATT one iota, Mr. Speaker. We continue to advocate zealously that article XI be clarified and strengthened. Nevertheless, it is very important that, at the farmers' request, we do check on all the ramifications of the report so that we can defend them properly in Geneva.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: I have a supplementary question for the minister, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that Quebec farmers are very concerned because if article XI of GATT goes through, 30,000 milk producers may be out of work.

At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, the government will have to sign or not sign a deal. We need to have good negotiators there. There are people in Canada who believe if we lose the supply management system through a GATT deal, this deal will do the same to rural Canada as the trade deal has done to urban Canada and we do not want to see that happen.
I want to ask the Prime Minister what he is prepared to do for the 100,000 Canadians who could lose their jobs if we do not stand up for Canadian farmers and producers in this GATT negotiation.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member is aware, one of the important aspects of supply management is the quota. The quota those people have is derived from the revenue they received from a supply managed industry. What I have just seen and what I have just heard is certainly one of the most damaging statements ever made by a political leader and will bring down the quota value for those very producers that she is talking about supporting.
February 4, 1992

What I would like to say, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member is that the Government of Canada developed a position with the stakeholders. The stakeholders understand that the present article XI leaves them very vulnerable. They have said: "This is one way of maintaining it.". We say: "That is the way we want to have it maintained". However, the hon. member understands something else.
The support we need is what we are continuing to request and seek of other countries but Canada alone, out of 108 countries, is not able to change the negotiations. Canada, joined with other countries, is able to be successful and that is what we will continue to do.
This government has no intention of changing the position. It was developed with the stakeholders. It will be consistent in the benefit of those stakeholders and if they support us, we will be stronger in presenting our position.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade. The minister should be aware that the head of Canada's supply management commodities said today that the government's acceptance of the GATT would destroy their $10 billion industry and put in jeopardy nearly
95,000	Canadian jobs.
They have also requested that the government not submit tariff schedules for supply managed products March 1 as requested by Dunkel. Will the government table or not table these tariffs by March 1? Canadian farmers have a right to know.


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, it might be of interest to the hon. member that while I was in Switzerland this past weekend, I had a number of meetings with my counterparts from other countries and presented the position as set out by my two colleagues on what we are seeking through the GATT negotiations in relation to the supply management system.
We have meetings of agriculture ministers this week, trade ministers next week. There will be meetings of the government with the supply management sectors and based on that series of meetings we will be able to
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develop in concert with all the interested parties the answer to the hon. member's question.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his response, but my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister should be aware that farm leaders of supply managed commodities have requested that he meet with them in February to discuss this very important issue. Will the Prime Minister meet with these leaders in February and will he reassure them that he rejects the present GATT proposals as they relate to supply management?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I have met with the agricultural leaders on a number of occasions.
The Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of State for Agriculture are setting up precisely the meeting that my hon. friend is seeking. I think it is very important that the leaders of all of the farm groups, particularly these days in respect of marketing boards, have an opportunity to discuss with the government in a very full and open way the concerns that they have about international negotiations.
I point out to my hon. friend, the NDP and others from the Liberal Party who is raising it, that in questioning the conduct of negotiation policy by the Government of Canada at GATT, it might have been appropriate to mention that the premier of Quebec who was also actively involved with this farm problem indicated the day before yesterday that

Premier Bourassa has full confidence in the Minister for International Trade to negotiate the new GATT agreements and he thinks that Quebec is better protected by the plan on which we are now working than with the present formula.

I was very glad of that statement by the premier of Quebec because it represents confidence in the policies that we have been following. But we have to do more and we have to make sure that all of the farm groups are more actively associated with our initiatives so that we can better defend their very legitimate interests at the GATT.

February 4, 1992
Oral Questions UNEMPLOYMENT


Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North):: Mr. Speaker, the economic crisis that Canada is going through has been particularly damaging to our youth.
While this government speaks at length about global competitiveness and its prosperity agenda, over 350,000 young Canadians are unemployed and many others are on the welfare rolls of this nation.
My question to the Minister of Employment is this. When is he going to realize that his government's policies are creating a lost generation of young workers condemned to a life of chronic unemployment? When will he introduce a meaningful program that will put our young people back to work?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the government and the Department of Employment and Immigration have a host of programs trying to be helpful to Canadians of whatever age who are facing the downturn of the economy.
If the hon. member thinks that the $3 billion we spend to help these people is not enough, he could tell us where to take it from. Should we increase taxes or do we increase the deficit? If he has ideas as to how we could better spend that $3 billion I would be ready to listen to him.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, everywhere I go, in every community, in every town and in every city throughout this country, I find young people who fear for their future and the future direction of this nation.
My supplementary question to the same minister is this. What does the future have in store for Canada when 350,000 young people are being denied their rightful opportunity to a job and training? Who does the minister think will guarantee our future prosperity?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, over 470,000 Canadians take advantage of the programs that we have at Employment and Immigration. The way for these kids to tackle the future is to embark with all social partners in society into making Canada a more competitive country. This will
ensure prosperity. That will be done through learning. That will be done through acquiring new skills. This is exactly what the initiative of the government is all about.


THE ENVIRONMENT
James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.
The alarming discovery of 30 to 40 per cent ozone depletion over northern and eastern Canada cries out for both government action as well as for early warnings. Since most of the ozone destruction results from the release of man-made chemicals such as CFCs and since this level of measured ozone destruction increases cancer by 120 to 160 per cent, increases eye damage by 18 to 24 per cent, reduces crop yield by 30 to 40 per cent and simply kills some forms of life, will the minister show leadership on the seriousness of this issue and implement an immediate national full cycle mandatory CFC recovery program, a program that this caucus will pass through this House in one day?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Skeena for his question and having had the courtesy of informing me of the thrust of his question before Question Period.
It is important to reiterate the fact that this is an illustration of the global environmental challenges that the planet faces in the years to come. On the one hand we are faced with a problem that may have very dramatic effects on all of our country because of its geography while on the other hand we contribute 2 per cent to the total problem.
As I pointed out before, Canada has really been in the forefront in dealing with this issue. We were instrumental in putting together the first environmental treaty at the 1987 Montreal protocol. We have reduced the amount of CFCs by 45 per cent since then and we think we can eliminate at least 85 per cent of CFCs by 1995, away ahead of schedule.
We are dealing with the provinces on the issue of mandatory recycling. I will be happy to keep my friend abreast of the developments in that area.


James Ross Fulton: The problem is that in some sectors, such as with scrap refrigerators, 100 per cent of the CFCs are being vented and are leaking into the atmosphere.
Part of the NDP plan I am talking about to protect the ozone layer would require the implementation of full cycle national recovery. You need laws to do that. This is a plan that would create thousands of jobs in the private sector. It would create a private sector industry of over $100 million in value. It would protect the ozone and it would not require one new dollar of federal taxes, not one new dollar of federal expenditure.
That sounds like a pretty good plan to help protect the planet. Will the minister implement it?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, the member will know that in fact we are a bit ahead of the game. Not only a bit, but very much ahead of the game in this area.
Last August the federal government announced through the green plan a $25 million initiative which has as a specific objective the acceleration of regulatory programs in this area. We are working very closely with the provinces to determine whether or not a regulatory regime would be necessary, given the fact that we will be reducing by 85 per cent the amount of CFCs we put in the atmosphere by 1995. We are away ahead of schedule.
That being said and the seriousness of the problem, given the leadership role that this government has always played on this issue and the seriousness of the issue, I will undertake to communicate directly with my provincial colleagues on the suggestion made by my hon. colleague to see whether or not the Canadian Council of the Ministers of the Environment would want to undertake some specific action, given the new scientific information we have.
Furthermore, at the next meeting of the countries that signed the Montreal protocol in November 1992, Canada will ask that we accelerate the schedule for phasing out CFCs.


BANKRUPTCY
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. The 1991 bankruptcy statistics are in and they are truly devastating. Over 75,000 Canadian men, women and businesses
Oral Questions
have gone belly up, the true victims of this government's insane high interest, high dollar, high tax policy.
How much economic devastation will we have to endure before the government abandons the destructive economic policies which have directly resulted in the highest level of bankruptcies in the history of this country?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, that last conclusion is absolutely false because the incidence of bankruptcies was much higher in the 1981-82 recession.
While I share the hon. member's concern, I have to tell him that what is encouraging is that month over month there has been a decline in bankruptcies. Business bankruptcies have declined by roughly 100 and personal bankruptcies have declined by over 1,100 for a total of 1,133 fewer bankruptcies in December than in November.
I realize that does not provide a whole lot of comfort, but I think we should take some encouragement in the fact that the incidence of bankruptcies is on the decline. With some of the initiatives that have been announced and an increase and improvement in confidence, that will be reduced further still.


Ronald MacDonald: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, for the Prime Minister. We seem to have heard this song before.
Last February the then Minister of Finance said the recession would be over by June. In August of last year the current Minister of Finance said that we were well on the road to recovery.
The 62,000 Canadian consumers who were forced into bankruptcy in 1991 have completely lost faith in this government's ability to either predict or manage the Canadian economy.
Given these cold, hard facts, is the Prime Minister now prepared to endorse and fully accept the five-point recovery program put forward by the Leader of the Opposition?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, what the member chooses to overlook in the substance of his question is the fact that when we compare 1981 to 1991 we see that the number of businesses in Canada almost doubled. In 1981 there were 780,000 businesses. Today there are
1,730,000.	The aggregate numbers are up but indeed the percentages are down.


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The hon. member talks about whether we are in recovery or we are still in a recession. The Canadian economy grew by 3.3 per cent in quarter 2 and quarter 3. It slowed down in quarter 4, largely because of the serious deterioration in the economy of the United States and of other industrialized nations. All industrialized nations have revised their growth figures downward for 1992. That is not a Canadian phenomenon; it is a world phenomenon.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. Last week the chief negotiator at the open skies talks announced he was retiring. This came after the departmental task force released its report in which it rejected the concept of open borders for air services. This happens at a time when there is public concern about the future of Canada's airlines. Could the Minister of Transport clearly explain his government's position regarding the open skies negotiations and the financial problems expected by Canadian carriers?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I may point out to the hon. member that there is absolutely no connection between the decision of the federal negotiator, Mr. Harris, to resign his position and the report that was released last week. We embarked on these bilateral negotiations with the United States in order to increase the amount of transborder air traffic between Canada and the United States. We are pursuing this policy, and we are convinced that by improving the situation for Canadian carriers, we will in fact improve their financial situation.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, the minister is surely aware of the widespread apprehension among the public and airline employees in particular about the uncertain future facing the Canadian airline industry.
Surely the government should be willing to state clearly now, for the public, what it views as being in the
national interest with respect to this industry and how it intends to ensure that the national interest is served in the months to come.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the federal government's position on this matter has always been the same. At the present time, some rather unfortunate things are happening in the aviation industry throughout the world.
However, our position has not changed. It is in the best interests of consumers and the travelling public in this country to have two airline companies that are in the best possible shape, and that is what we want to achieve in the months to come.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was able to raise in this House some questions about the draft bracketed agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico regarding a proposed free trade agreement.
The draft bracketed agreement is confirmed to be in existence by the press secretary of Carla Hills and also by the press secretary of the Mexican Ambassador to Canada.
Although this draft bracketed document has been kept secret from the Canadian people, it has come to my attention that there are proposals in that draft bracketed treaty that would seriously affect the viability of Canadian automobile manufacturing and indeed Canadian auto parts manufacturers.
I now ask the Minister for International Trade if he is prepared to table the document in this House that has been made available to Mexican politicians and to tell this House and all Canadians, particularly those in Ontario and Quebec, that their jobs will not be at risk because of these negotiations going on?

February 4, 1992


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, first of all let me say that I have not been keeping this matter a secret. I do not know where my hon. friend has been. I have referred to this text on a number of occasions.
This, I should say to my hon. friend, has not been made available to members of the Mexican Congress as I think he was saying yesterday.
The final point that I make is that there is nothing in the automotive chapter in the agreement. We have yet to come to a set of negotiations on which we can base a chapter on the automotive industry.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I know that the minister does not wish to misinform the House, but it is my information that the Mexican government, through its negotiator, Mr. Blanco, has shared with members of the Mexican Congress the draft bracketed treaty which Carla Hills' office acknowledged exists.
During the discussions leading up to the free trade discussions with Mexico, United States and Canada, the government's negotiator, Mr. John Weekes, said that full consultation would take place with all Canadians including labour and including manufacturing sectors.
This document is in existence. It is being discussed by Mr. Blanco with Mexican senators. Why is the document being kept secret from Canadians? Why is it not tabled in front of members of this House who are responsible for at least being aware of what this government is selling us out on?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, as I have said on many occasions, there is a draft text that has been developed. It has been consolidated. There are now a number of differences that have come to light between the three countries in that text. That is why it is called a bracketed text, because those differences are in brackets. This I have made clear on many occasions and I am sorry that my hon. friend has not been aware of those.
I also say to my friend that we have had full discussions with the SAGITk, the sectoral advisory groups on international trade, plus the International TVade Advisory
Oral Questions
Committee, as well as the provinces, in developing negotiating positions that we have on this.
As my hon. friend is aware, I am going to be appearing before the external affairs committee on trade and I would be happy to discuss the matter further at that time with him.
*  *


NATIONAL PARKS
Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Mr. Speaker, on July 14, 1988 Treasury Board directed the Ministers of Public Works, Environment and Transport to address the question of which department should be responsible for making expenditures on highways in national parks.
My question is to the President of the Treasury Board. When will this decision be finalized so that highways throughout the national park system can be given the attention they deserve?


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Wild Rose is very right. There have been ongoing discussions between the three Departments: Transport, Environment parks service, and Public Works.
I can tell her that a number of scenarios have been established and we are now presently looking at them. We have to reconcile this with a lot of other pressures in the system. The discussions are ongoing and I should be able to come back to her soon.


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Agriculture. The government was committed to defending the four pillars of Quebec agriculture and to reinforcing GATT article XI. The minister even said that he would rip up his shirt and put his seat on the line if any of these five components were affected. On January 13, Canada's ambassador to Geneva accepted the Dunkel report which destroys those four pillars and abolishes article XI. How can the minister justify this betrayal, this outright breach of promise?

February 4, 1992
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Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I am rather surprised at the comments of the hon. member for Lac Saint-Jean. He ought to know that our position in January was the same as it was on December 20. We still support strengthening and clarifying GATT article XI. It is a vital measure that has allowed our marketing boards to operate for years.
The Canadian position was a joint effort. We prepared that position with Canadian farm leaders. I have on many occasions met with farm producers, even in the hon. member's riding, where I had a chance to visit quite often. I have met practically all the producers in his riding. Quebec producers especially are in a position to know that we defend the interests of Quebec producers and that we will continue to do so. There is nothing to be worried about on that score.


Lucien Bouchard: What matters, Mr. Speaker, is the final position. And the final position is that this government accepted the Dunkel Report, while expressing some mild disappointment about parts it found less palatable. Mr. Speaker, the minister knows perfectly well this about-face will dismantle crop insurance and the mechanisms for setting prices for milk, eggs and poultry.
The minister knows perfectly well this will cost farm producers in Quebec at least $350 million over the next six years. So tearing up his shirt is just not enough, and the minister should tell the House what he intends to do to save thousands of Quebec producers from disaster.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, as far as about-faces are concerned, I think the hon. member is quite knowledgeable on that score. I don't need any lessons from him.
Mr. Speaker, Canada's position has not changed. Canada did not accept the Dunkel report. When the hon. member says what he said just now, he is mistaken. I don't think he did it on purpose. He was probably misinformed. We are defending the interests of farm producers, Mr. Speaker, and we will continue to do so. And I think the hon. member should stop spreading information which, as he knows perfectly well, does not reflect the real situation, Mr. Speaker.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mrs. Lise Bourgault (Argenteuil-Papineau):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. During the Oka crisis in 1990, the regional director at the time signed a letter committing the government to acquiring the properties located in the Jardins d'Oka and south of Highway 344. Mr. Speaker, I hope the minister realizes my constituents are upset because they have yet to receive a formal proposal for dealing with the serious psychological and financial problems they experienced as a result of the invasion of their property and land by masked warriors.
Could the minister confirm he is about to submit proposals to these owners and to the municipality of the village of Oka? And when will he do so?


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, first I would like to compliment the hon. member for Argenteuil-Papineau for the diligent work she has done, together with the Minister of State for Indian Affairs, to seek a solution to this veiy difficult problem.
I can confirm that indeed a very creative proposal has been brought together by our officials and is presently being discussed among the four parties to an agreement with respect to the land issues at Kanesatake and Oka. I believe this proposal will be of great benefit to the land owners she speaks of and to the Mohawk community at Kanesatake.
As soon as the preliminary discussions are completed, further details will be forthcoming.


HOME OWNERSHIP
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance.
In the Montreal area, the total number of housing starts has dropped 15 per cent, compared with last year. Yesterday the government co-opted a proposal made by the Leader of the Opposition when it announced that it was reducing the downpayment required to buy a first house from 10 to 5 per cent.
February 4, 1992

Is the Minister of Finance willing to implement another component of the Liberal platform that would allow Canadians to use up to $7,500 of their Registered Retirement Savings Plan for the purchase of a new home?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member will admit that the government has already taken a large number of very positive measures, more than were taken by the Liberal government when it was in power several years ago during another recession.
I suggest he look at the interest rate levels we have today which have given us our lowest mortgage rates in 20 years. That is a positive contribution.
Dropping inflation plus the measure announced by my colleague yesterday are pointing us in the right direction.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, Jean Cantin, director general of the Association de la construction du Quebec for the Montreal area, said that the option of using RRSP funds for the purchase of a first home would have a far greater impact than reducing the initial downpayment from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.
Considering the extent of the recession, Mr. Speaker, is the government prepared to commit itself to introducing legislation that would allow Canadians to buy their first home with the money they put in a retirement savings plan?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had paid attention to the results of the conference of finance ministers in Quebec City a few days ago, he would have heard my colleague, the Minister of Finance, point out that we were going to give this matter active consideration.
Perhaps the hon. member would care to recall some of the comments on this use of RRSPs, which were intended to help Canadians save enough money for their retirement. We must be very careful about the way this money is used. Other provinces have told us they had a housing surplus.
We are now looking at all these factors, and we will let you know what we decide in due time.
Oral Questions


HIBERNIA
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
The seriousness of the economic recession is evident in every community throughout the country. We have had the recent announcement of Imperial Oil laying off 1,700 workers and just minutes ago we learned that Gulf Canada Resources is pulling out of the Hibernia project because of the bad economic environment.
I want to ask the minister of energy whether or not he can confirm this particular information and if he can assure this House that every step will be taken to ensure that the Hibernia project will proceed without any delay whatsoever.


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question.
I can confirm that Gulf Canada Resources served notice of withdrawal to the other three members of the consortium as well as the Governments of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador at approximately 1.30 p.m. today.
I want to assure the hon. member and this House, as well the premier of Newfoundland, and my counterpart in Newfoundland that the Government of Canada intends for the project to go head. As the hon. member and the House know, we as Canadians are standing behind the project with over $1 billion in grants and over $1.6 billion in guarantees and loans.
There is a structure in the unanimous agreement of the consortium, a method or a mechanism, whereby it will continue putting money into the project. It is the government's intention that the project continue.


FORESTRY INDUSTRY
Mr. Guy H. Arseneault (Restigouche-Chaleur):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance and concern's layoffs in the Atlantic provinces.

Routine Proceedings
The government's economic policies have ravaged the forestry industry in my riding, resulting in 300 layoffs in Atholville and 400 layoffs expected for the Dalhousie mill. The Government of New Brunswick has unveiled a strategy to help the forestry industry. What new measures does the government intend to take to solve the problems in the natural-resource sector, and when?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the forestry industry has indeed experienced a downturn not only in Canada but throughout the world. Commodity prices have been seriously depressed. As well there is reduced demand.
This is an issue that will be helped to some extent by the reduction of interest rates. I believe the lower burden of debt servicing will be helpful. My latest indication is that there does appear to be some upturn around the comer.
The housing initiatives that were announced south of the border and the housing initiatives that are being taken here in Canada will obviously provide some help in that regard.
I do not underestimate the seriousness of the problem and I can assure the hon. member that we are taking that matter seriously.


POINTS OF ORDER
David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, my point of order refers to the second part of an answer during Question Period by the Minister for International Trade. The minister referred to a document. At first he did not acknowledge it existed but then he began to refer to it.
I want an explanation of the rules of this House on whether or not the minister, once referring to that document and perhaps alluding to quotes from it, is obliged by the rules of this House to table the document in the House.


Mr. Speaker:: I can assist the hon. member, and I will hear the minister in a moment. If the minister is reading from a document then of course the general rule is that he would be required to table it.
I will hear the minister.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I want to take issue with what my colleague has just said. I have never in this House not acknowledged that that text did exist. I have said on a number of occasions outside this House that the text did exist.
I am sorry that my friend is not reading the newspapers and understanding what is going on around him.


David Barrett: My point of order is not a dispute over whether or not the document exists. I have always maintained it exists.
My point of order is once a reference is made to it by the minister, is he obliged to make that document available to all the parliamentarians?


Mr. Speaker:: The point the hon. member is making is an interesting one. I have said that if the minister reads from the text of the document then the general rule is that it be tabled. If the minister, on the other hand, makes some reference to some document somewhere, the same does not apply.


MEMBER FOR RICHELIEU-PARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE
Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: Mr. Speaker, my question is whether you have taken a position on the words "hypocrite" and "stupid" which the Prime Minister used last November. If you have made a decision, I would like to know what it is.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member asks whether the Speaker has made a decision on a matter of concern in this House before Christmas, more specifically in October. The ruling was brought down yesterday.


INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATIONS
Mr. Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to table the report of the official visit that I, accompanied by a delegation of members of the House, paid to the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, from November 10 to 16, 1991.



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[Stage Direction]


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-32, an Act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan, be read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: When the House took recess at one o'clock, the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell had the floor. We are now on ten-minute speeches, without questions or comments.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to take part in the debate on a bill whose purpose is to amend the Canada Assistance Plan.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is the government's second attempt to amend this legislation. The first time, the matter ended up in the Canadian courts, and unfortunately, the government won its case. However, although according to the courts the government was acting well within what was permissible under the Constitution, that does not mean it was the right decision. In fact, the opposite is true.
We are going through a very difficult period in this country. We are now in a recession that is worse than the one we had in 1982, and one remembers what the Conservatives had to say about that one at the time. Unlike 1982, the 1991 recession started here in Canada. This is a recession we created ourselves here in this country, or at least most of it, because the world-wide recession occurred several months later.
The Tory government opposite was trying to slow down our overheated economy with its economic policies, but it did this so drastically that the economy went into reverse, and now the engine is stalled, and we still haven't found a way to get it started again.
Tbday, in one of his questions in the House of Commons, the hon. member for Dartmouth mentioned the bankruptcy rate in Canada. I think he told us there had been about 62,000 personal bankruptcies in this country. I know this is a concern not only for my colleague from Dartmouth and every Liberal member in
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this House, but also for all Canadians who are going through these rough times.
One of the regions in this country worst hit by the recession, Mr. Speaker, is my own province of Ontario, where we have two main problems. First, the Tory government opposite and, of course, the provincial NDP government. What a nightmare it is, Mr. Speaker, to have such a government in Queen's Park. They are almost as bad as the people across the floor of this House, which is hard to beat. I must say, however, that Mr. Rae and his friends are on their way there, very close to succeeding as a matter of fact. This is something you understand, Mr. Speaker, I am sure.
The Premier of Ontario announced a few days ago that the province was in such dire straits that the socialist government of Ontario might have to cut social programs. Can you imagine such a thing, Mr. Speaker? At any rate, I will let Mr. Rae come to terms with his conscience over the next few days. Meanwhile, we could at least support its economy by granting Ontario its fair share of the Canada Assistance Plan, bearing in mind that the bill before us would limit to 5 per cent the increase in transfer payments to this province. That, of course, is a maximum.
In my riding, Mr. Speaker, the unemployment rate reaches 15 and 18 per cent. My colleague from Stormont-Dundas was telling me earlier that, in the Cornwall area, it would be closer to 18 per cent. That is terrible. The riding of my colleague from Renfrew-Ni-pissing-Pembroke is no better off, and the situation is as bad, if not worse, in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, as all hon. members must know by now, considering how many times I have raised this issue in this House.
Last night I had the opportunity to meet in Hawkesbu-ry, with the Advisory Committee on Employment for Prescott County, and its members were telling me how bad unemployment was in their region. Considering that people have little hope of finding work in the near future, what is going to happen when their unemployment insurance benefits run out, now much faster than before thanks to Bill C-21 passed by the government opposite? These people will go on welfare, or "on the dole" as we commonly say in Hawkesbury. That is when the Canada Assistance Plan comes into play by providing the funds for welfare. Traditionally, counties or regional municipalities paid 20 per cent, the province 30 per cent and the federal government 50 per cent.

February 4, 1992
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Now, with the cap on increases for the three provinces of Alberta, B.C. and Ontario, in my province of Ontario the provincial government will have to bear a larger share of the Canada Assistance Plan. What is going to happen, then? Other things are going to suffer. The provincial government might cut school funding. It will cut in various places and with the NPD in power at Queen's Park, we can expect anything in the months to come.
Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, Canadians will have to do with less and less. The number of individuals living below the poverty level will increase, and all that as a result of the cap on the Canada Assistance Plan.

I remember that day last year. I believe it was last August 15 when the government won before the courts the so-called right to impose these limitations on increases to the Canada Assistance Plan. Just because it won that right in the courts does not mean that the government is morally correct in what it is doing. I could think of other words to describe this government, but in the new spirit of co-operation I will not use them in this House. I will just think them.
Here is what a few others had to say. Lise Corbeil Vincent of the National Anti Poverty Organization said of that day last summer that it was a very black day for the poor. She said further: "The poor will become more and more defenseless than ever as the already meagre level of government supports are cut further".
Viola Robinson of the Native Council of Canada added: "Many native Canadians already living in Third World conditions will only suffer more as cost cutting continues to be more important than human lives". That expresses what is going on and what this government is up to.
There is still time. The Conservative backbenchers across the way could use this new year and be more objective and less partisan than they have been in the past. They could look at this objectively and say no to this bill: "We will not put up with the Minister of Finance's nonsense".
We will not stand for this. We want the poor in Canada to have a decent living. We want those poor people who
are living in the three provinces affected not to have further cutbacks imposed upon them.
That is what the government could do now. We are all holding our breath for the day when the vote will come, several days hence, because many of my colleagues have important remarks to make about this issue.
When the vote comes I hope that I can count on all Conservative members to repent, to change their minds and to vote with us in the opposition to defeat the bill in question rather than to support the Minister of Finance and his wrong ideas. They could represent their constituents, for a change, instead of representing the government.


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House to oppose this legislation which is designed to place a cap on Canada Assistance Plan payments to the so-called have provinces.
Since 1984 when the current government took over, many of those have provinces have been operating on the margin. It is hard to characterize them as have provinces any more largely as a result of the policies of this government. This bill in conjunction with the other limitations imposed on transfer payments and other series of mean-spirited Tbry policies have reduced many of those provinces to become unable to service the needs of those who require the services of the provincial treasury. I am thinking of students, the sick and the poor.
It is not unusual for Tory governments and for governments of this stripe to focus their attack on those who can least afford to share the burden: the poor, the sick, those who have very low incomes, and also those who are not responsible for the depression and for the economic circumstances that this country finds itself in.
We pointed out before in this House that the real fault and the real problem of the debt and the deficit do not lie with the poor, the people who are in receipt of the Canadian government programs. Statistics Canada has already told us, and perhaps it bears repeating in this House, who is responsible for the problems that Canada is experiencing with the imbalance between its revenues and its expenditures. It is not the poor. It is not the beneficiaries of social programs and government programs.
February 4, 1992

The real culprits who are responsible for creating the deficit have been demonstrated in the Statistics Canada report. That report showed that 44 per cent of Canada's deficit problems are due to tax concessions to the rich, the very rich and to profit-making corporations.
You can trace back through the years the increase in those tax concessions to those corporations with the growth of the deficit. That is where the problem lies.
Statistics Canada also said that 50 per cent of our debt problem and our deficit problem lies with the high interest rate policy that was followed by both the Liberal and the Tory governments over the last 10 or 15 years. That has created 50 per cent of our debt problem in this country.
Interest rates have now come down. Unfortunately, the people in Canada who are in the middle class-the workers in Canada-have been bled dry so they can not even afford to borrow money to kick-start the economy again. Fifty per cent of the problem of this country's debt and deficit are due to the high interest rate policies pursued by successive Liberal and Tory governments.
What percentage of the problem is attributable to social programs and to government programs? According to Statistics Canada it is 6 per cent.
I cannot understand why this government continues to look through the wrong end of the telescope and why it continues to attack those social programs and government programs rather than dealing with the real culprits who created the debt in the first place. These are the tax concessions that were granted to the rich and to large corporations and, of course, the high interest rate policy of the federal governments, Liberal and Conservative. That does not come from the NDP. It does not come from labour. It comes from Statistics Canada, the government's own statistics-gathering and analysing agency. That is where that information comes from. Why does the government not take a look at the advice provided by the people who were paid to give it advice and provide it with information and statistics?
I will tell you the reason. It is because this government is not driven by accurate information; it is driven by
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ideology. That is why it is looking through the wrong end of the telescope and that is why it is focusing its attack on social programs, transfer payments, things like health care, education and programs for the poor in this country. Dealing with those programs is not going to solve the problem of the deficit.
Look at what has happened in this period between 1982 and 1992.1 watched a program called The Compton Report on one of the national networks coming out of the United States. It pointed out that between 1982, when the recession was in full force down in the United States, and 1992, when again it is in full force, the wealthiest 1 per cent of people in the United States doubled their income.
They were able to double their income through easy tax policies granted to them by the Reagan government and by the Bush government. The wealthiest 1 percent were able to double their income. For them, there was no recession. Recessions for us are boom times for the very wealthy. That is because of the programs that are brought in by Liberal and Tory governments, both in Canada and the United States.
We have to start looking through the other end of the telescope and identifying the real culprits. That is, we have to start taxing those who have never experienced a recession. We have to be getting the revenues back from them so we can start paying down the deficit.
I found an article in our Quorum magazine a few days ago which talks about the entertainment tax credit for business people in this country. It seems that one of my Liberal colleagues got in touch with the Revenue Canada people and he discovered such things that are given tax credits in this country are the pleasures of escort services, which are deductible as a legitimate business expense, the masseuses and lavish booze parties.
Companies can claim all of these things as entertainment expenses and deduct them from their income taxes. For those large companies, we are paying for escort services, we are paying for masseuses and we are paying for booze parties on their behalf.

February 4, 1992
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It is quoted in this article that Phil Jolie of the tax department's audit branch has told The Sun that anything- escort services, a car, a trip to a hockey game, all of these kinds of things-can be deducted as entertainment expenses for business purposes. I am told that these kinds of entertainment expenses cost the people of Canada $1 billion a year in terms of tax credit.
Imagine, we are talking about allowing those kinds of services which amount to one-thirtieth of the total deficit in this country. We are told by the government when it makes an attack on these social programs that everybody has to sacrifice a little bit.
Why do we not make those business people sacrifice the odd escort service, the odd masseuse, the odd trip to the hockey game, paid for at government expense to the tune of $1 billion so that we can reduce our deficit by 30 per cent? That would be a beginning; that would demonstrate some sacrifice on the part of those people who, as I pointed out, have never experienced a recession along with the rest of us in this country.
Tory governments deal with depressions and recessions in precisely the wrong way, by going about a cost-cutting program, a restraint program. I think it is instructive if you look back in British Columbia during that period from 1983 to 1986 when the premier was Bill Bennett and his two most important advisers were Kim Campbell and Norman Spector.
That government at that time went through a process of cost-cutting that eliminated human rights legislation, that eliminated support for families, that eliminated all sorts of programs that were directed to improve the lives of ordinary people. Unfortunately, the government at that time said the reason it was doing this was to try to prevent the deficit from going up. In fact, those kinds of mean-spirited cost-cutting programs resulted in the deficit in British Columbia increasing and the debt of the province increasing rather than going the other way.
It is time we learned a little bit from history rather than having Tory and Liberal governments constantly copying history and making the same mistakes. I call on all members of this House to defeat this legislation and let us start attacking the real culprits who have created the deficit and the debt in this country in the first place.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be given the opportunity on behalf of constituents in my riding to speak for the allotted 10 minutes on Bill C-32.
This bill emanates from the February 26, 1991 federal budget which essentially limits the federal contributions to three particular provinces in terms of social assistance, federal-provincial shared social assistance programs, namely to British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.
In terms of the financial consequences of this particular bill, it will mean that cumulatively over a five-year period those three provinces will suffer in the neighbourhood of some $2,135 billion in losses. In my province alone, estimated this year it will be close to $1 billion.
I would like to say just a few things in the permitted time. First, there seems to be a mind set in this government, in this capital, and Ontario being one of the three provinces, I will speak for my own province. There seems to be a prevailing attitude that somehow it is oblivious to the serious economic winds that are prevailing in the province of Ontario.
There is a feeling that somehow there is the belief that this province is somehow a fat cat province. I am not saying that it is clearly down and out or that it is even on its knees, but there seems to be an absence of reality that when we look at Ontario, or when we look at metropolitan Toronto, there is another tale to the economic realities.
I am just wondering whether anyone on that side of the House of Commons recognizes the record number of job losses, the record number of plant closures, the record number of people who are going from full-time work to part-time.
Does anyone recognize the record number of older workers who are being displaced and have nowhere to go? No one wants to invest or has less of an incentive to invest in a worker who may not be by any means old but 50 or 55 years old, who still has a mortgage to pay and an education for children to pay before retirement age, in terms of no adjustment programs for plants affected by the free trade.
What I am saying is that the economic picture of Ontario is not very healthy. At the same time we have a government that is very resistant to any kind of national stimulus. We had the announcement yesterday that the government has agreed to one of our proposals to go from a 10 per cent down payment when it is federally insured to a 5 per cent down payment. That is one aspect that is good, but it is only one aspect of many which should be implemented.
February 4, 1992

But the message basically is that government wants to stand back and hope that the market adjusts itself or that somehow it will be a consumer-led recovery.
When we and our colleagues are out in our ridings we know that it will not be a consumer-led recovery because people do not have the confidence nor the certainty to either invest or to spend that extra dollar. If they are doing anything, they are saving those dollars in their mattresses for a rainy day that is even worse than today. We cannot blame consumers, particularly given the strangulation of taxation at all levels that those consumers, those Canadians, are feeling right now.
Perhaps it is not going to be a consumer led recovery. Perhaps the Government of Canada does not wish to enter into stimulating the economy so that people can be put back to work, so that people can come off unemployment or welfare, so that revenues can increase. If we are not to have any economic blueprint, we on this side of the House are saying that the bare necessity, for goodness sake, is for the Government of Canada at least to maintain its commitment to funding social assistance programs that can assist those three provinces and the Canadians living in them.
If the government were to come through with a federal assistance package that would stimulate jobs, that would speak to some kind of adjustment programs for Canadians displaced by such things as the many plant closings in Ontario's backyard, if the government were to come through with some kind of retraining program for our young on one end of the spectrum and for our older workers on the other, perhaps some people in this House of Commons could begin to understand and rationalize why because of the national purse some of the moneys for social assistance can be moderated somewhat.
We are speaking of reducing federal transfer payments to the provinces to help Canadians with a number of social programs. At the same time the government is not willing to move on the economic front as its citizens, business and bank presidents are urging. You cannot have an attack on your social assistance programs while
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you are also standing pat and doing basically nothing in terms of federal economic stimulus.
I would prefer to have the stimulus and a reduced infrastructure for social assistance. Why? Because I find that there would be a greater dignity if Canadians were to go back to work, if Canadians would be offered jobs, if Ontario can once again begin to export its goods, if the displaced worker can be retrained for a job of tomorrow.
I would rather prefer that initiative than having to argue on the floor of the House of Commons today for Ontario to get its federal dollars so that Canadians can be assisted through these dark times. I would rather argue for putting Canadians back to work.
We have argued month in and month out. We are having a First Ministers' Conference. We will be having a federal budget. I hope there will be some answers, practical answers, pragmatic answers, for putting Canadians and Canada back to work.
I am also saying that in the interim, before any real national initiatives, this purported national government has an obligation to its citizens, a contract with its citizens. A program was started in 1966 for a very good reason. The reason is that while you work you pay your dues in a variety of ways and deductions are put back into our social service infrastructure for a rainy day.
It is not only raining in Ontario and across the country, but it is pouring. Canadians in record numbers are becoming increasingly in need. All of us know that our riding offices-at least it is the case with mine in Ontario-are virtually being turned into unemployment offices. For the first time the middle class citizen is coming to our offices and we have to make calls to the food bank, the North York Harvest Food Bank, to provide at least a shopping basket for the weekend. These are not individuals who are irresponsible or feeding off the so-called trough. They are decent, hard-working Canadians who have never seen a day like they are seeing today. I am not saying this for dramatic purposes in the House of Commons; it happens in our offices week in and week out.

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What is the message we can construe from that? The message I get is that they want this economy humming again and, if the government cannot or will not do that, then it should at least have a basic dignified commitment to a social infrastructure and a social net that will allow Canadians to land on their feet, to be prepared to survive and to be able to address the future with some degree of dignity and confidence.
It cannot take away the social programs and at the same time not stimulate the economy. That is not national leadership. It is an abdication of leadership of the worst kind.


Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to rise and speak on the debate of Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan.
The Canadian Assistance Plan is a program that was created back in 1966 to permit the federal government to enter into some cost-sharing agreements with provincial governments for the provision of social assistance and for social welfare services for Canadians in need.
What does this bill really mean? It reaffirms that this government has failed to learn that it has to consider, along with the country's economic and financial deficits, the tremendous social debt and deficits we also face. It cannot ignore one in favour of the other as this government has done. It cannot abandon its social targets and social policy goals in order to accommodate some sort of blind, narrow-minded view that the deficit should be our strait-jacket. This government has made the mistake of not forging a balanced approach.
Another interesting thing is that so far the government has allowed only 17 minutes of debate at third reading of the bill. None of my 46 colleagues from Ontario in the Conservative government has spoken in defence of this bill; nobody from Alberta and nobody from B.C. They would be up here defending this bill if they really believed in Bill C-32.
Deficit reduction alone is not going to answer many of the real needs of this country on job training, on education and on research and development. Deficit reduction is not a policy that improves the skills of one member of our work force, nor does deficit reduction feed people waiting in line at food banks. For these challenges we need other policies: strong social policies on things like child care and balance with economic
policies. If we are to build a caring and compassionate Canada, we need those policies.
This government mistakenly believes we have the luxury in this country of waiting for the deficit to go down before we help the million and a half unemployed. We do not have that luxury.
This government mistakenly believes that if it sits idly by watching the deficit the line-ups at the food banks, as my colleague just mentioned, will disappear. They are not. They are growing longer.
This government mistakenly believes that blindly paying attention only to the deficit will somehow magically stop children from having to go to school hungry each morning. It will not.
What does this government say to the thousands of people thrown on to the unemployment line since free trade came in? "Sorry, we can't deliver the massive adjustment programs promised by the Prime Minister because we are watching the deficit". That answer is really not good enough. I say we simply do not have the luxury of playing which comes first, the deficit or the strengthening of the social safety net, a tradeoff this government is making every day.
While this government is focused blindly on just the financial deficit facing this country, what about the social deficit we face? One and a half million are unemployed. Thousands of more lay-offs are being announced every week from CP Rail to Air Canada, and today 1,700 at Exxon. Manufacturing plants are being shut down all across the country, moving to the U.S., and now the prospect of more moving to Mexico also looms.
I simply say again deficit reduction is not a social policy. Deficit reduction has obviously failed at making Canada a more just society. Just recently Statistics Canada realized and confirmed that despite world-wide prosperity while this government has been in office, the economic and financial well-being of middle-income Canadian families increased less than 1 per cent. Is that what the Prime Minister meant by imposing prosperity on every region of the country?
The government's narrow-minded focus on the deficit can disappear on notice it seems. Two days after this bill which cut social benefits for the neediest of Canadians was first introduced, the government found $236 million for a science project in B.C. on the eve of an election. In the same week it announced it would move 200 Public
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Service jobs to Saskatchewan, again on the eve of an election.
For those Canadians who will suffer as a result of Bill C-32, this government's encouragement to belt-tightening while it locates hundreds of millions of dollars for chosen projects is really hard to believe.
Canadians are still a compassionate people. Their commitment to a caring, compassionate society remains. Their belief in equality of opportunity remains. Only their government has abandoned these traditions in the name of a narrow-minded short-sighted preoccupation with a deficit at the expense of a more balanced social economic and financial agenda.
The government uses the rhetoric of equality to mask an agenda that widens the gap between rich and poor through archaic tax changes and the slow elimination of programs. This is unacceptable.
In the end, what is Bill C-32? It is one more instalment on the Tory agenda which Canadians have been living with for seven years. It is an agenda which has as its main focus a sort of blind narrow-minded preoccupation with the financial debt and deficit, ignoring the social debt and also the deficit. It is one where market forces alone are supposed to carry the day and where survival of the fittest replaces the goal of a caring compassionate Canada and a more just society.
The result has been an era in Canada when tremendous social and infrastructure needs have been ignored. Quite simply, the issue we face today is one of restoring the sense of balance between economic and social goals on the national agenda. We cannot ignore the financial debts and deficits we face as a country, but neither can we focus on them exclusively and ignore the tremendous social debt and deficits we also will face as a country.
The message is that we in Canada have always had a balanced agenda focused on the long-term and in the national interest. We still need an agenda in this country which maintains the social contract by pursuing social polity goals along with economic policy goals.
In the end I hope Canadians will agree that deficit reduction is but one challenge we face and it is one goal among many.
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A fair and equitable social policy agenda at the same time will keep our children fed, housed, and healthy. That will boost families, make our cities more liveable, and our hospitals and schools better able to provide services. A more balanced agenda will help prepare our work force for tomorrow and will do these things in balance with economic objectives.
In the end I believe Canadians will agree that deficit reduction fails miserably as constructive social policy or as a social polity of any kind.
I also think that Canadians agree that you cannot substitute deficit reduction for policies that actually help people. People are suffering from unemployment after seven years under this government. There were hundreds more in Montreal in recent weeks lining up at food banks. There are those needing clothing for their families, and those who must send their children to school hungry in the morning.
Are these the images of Canada that most Canadians think about each day? I dare say it is not, but it is another side of the reality being faced in this country every single day.
In the end I fear this government will never learn that you cannot pursue deficit reduction alone at the expense of all other policies: policies for the family, for the worker who needs retraining, for the single mother who would like to work but also needs child care. This government mistakenly believes you can, as a countty, throw out your social polity goals whether it be on child care, services to the poor, or adjustment programs needed because of free trade. You simply cannot do this and be left at the end of the day with the kind of Canada we have been trying to build for more than a century.
The Canadian people look to their national government to reflect their concerns and respond to their needs. That is why they were elected. Unfortunately Bill C-32 not only fails to reflect the true needs of Canada, it also reaffirms this government's failure at balancing deficit concerns, our economic and financial debt and deficit with social concerns.
This government would do well to consider a more civilized approach, one that takes account of deficit concerns but also accepts its social responsibilities. I would recommend that the government take its ideological blinders off, withdraw Bill C-32 and go back to the drawing board so that Canadians might again be able to look to their national government as a true reflection of values that we all share as a people. We need a more equitable society where economic as well as social concerns are part of the national agenda.

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Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, the Canada Assistance Plan was the legal implementation of an agreement reached between the provinces on one hand and the federal government on the other. It was an agreement that recognized something that one of the early leaders of our party, Mr. M. J. Coldwell wrote about in a little pamphlet called Am I my Brother's Keeper?. Over the decades, Canada has been one of the leaders among world nations in saying that we are indeed our brother's keeper. We have been in the forefront in bringing in new legislation and programs to try to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Members of Parliament should be very much aware of that history and record and very anxious to maintain our reputation among world nations, quite apart but in addition to wanting to help those among us who are not able to help themselves.
We all know some of these people. In every one of our ridings there are individuals who need some help from the rest of us. We cannot do it individually, so we do it collectively and through our governments.
The legislation before us now, Bill C-32, limits the amount the federal government will increase payments to certain provinces to 5 per cent. Where did that figure come from? Why 5 per cent? Why not 4 per cent? Why not 6 per cent? Why not 40 or 60 per cent? It is simply because the Minister of Finance of the day was trying to balance his budget. What about the budget of the people who are in receipt of social assistance?
This plan was the federal government's recognition and acceptance, public confession if you like, that it has some responsibility for people being on welfare in the first place. Certainly there are some who will always be there. Unfortunately, in times like this when there are a lot of people receiving social assistance, history seems to show that the longer they are on social assistance the longer they will remain there. When it goes from one generation to another, it is likely to go for further generations unless something is done to break that cycle. The way to break it is not by cutting back.
The provinces mentioned in this legislation, British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, had booming economies at one time. Whose fault is it that the economy is not booming today? We all remember the Conference Board of Canada saying that for the first time in the history of Canada we are experiencing a made in Canada recession. It is a recession that was made by this government to further its own monetary policies, regardless of the cost to individuals, provinces, corporations in those provinces, and workers in those industries.
The government was determined, as part of its plan, to keep the value of the Canadian dollar up, and keep interest rates up in the hope that it could control inflation.
The people bothered by inflation were not the people on the lowest rung. They were barely getting by and inflation generally hit goods that were not of most interest to them.
These people are hurting more now and they are also hurting in what used to be called the have provinces. As someone said earlier, when those provinces were booming there was an inclination for people to travel to B.C., Alberta and Ontario because those were the best places to look for jobs. It did not always work.
I recall being in Newfoundland and hearing the story about the chap who went to Toronto because he heard there was work there. He stayed there for 15 months and then returned home. He never found a job. His statement to his fellows was: "I guess I must have been there in the wrong season".
It was not always easy to find work in those provinces, but certainly for a time they were the best places to go if you were looking for a job. People did flock to all three provinces and the population increased there. When the government tightened the screws and managed to create a made-in-Canada recession, there were far more people there going on social welfare than had ever been the case. The higher population loaded a greater share of the cost of looking after our brothers on those provinces.
February 4, 1992

The federal government created this mess by manufacturing this made-in-Canada recession. It is not fair for the government to wash its hands of the problem and say those provinces can afford to look after these people within their borders. At one time they might have been able to pay for the social programs, but they cannot now. It is not fair to those provinces, but more than that, it is not fair to the individuals involved. The governments within those provinces in particular are the ones that are hurting. The word is spreading across the country, of course. One wonders where the federal government is going to go next in this matter of cutting back on social assistance.
The governments in those provinces are having to keep down the rates of welfare paid to people on social assistance. They are cutting back on social assistance programs generally, which makes it even more difficult for them to survive. It is not only hurting their chances today, but spoiling their chances of improving their position at any time in the future, even when the economy does turn around.
The government is concerned about the cost of these programs. What about the cost of what we are doing to these individuals? What are we doing to our country when we increase the number of people depending upon social assistance who may never get out of that net again? That is hurting us. Can we afford not to look after those people properly? I suggest not.
Some of my colleagues have mentioned different ways the cost could be met. It is a relatively small amount. It is a lot of dollars in total but it is a relatively small amount that the federal government is saving by holding back on the money that is going to these provinces.
There are ways in which the government has let up in other areas. The government has let up, for example, in the way of taxing capital gains. The government has cut back on the rate of income tax being paid by the highest income earners. Of all people, they are getting the break. The government has given more tax breaks to people in the highest incomes by increasing the amount of money that they can put into RRSPs. They can pay tax on it some day in the future with the possibility that the government will give them further relief somewhere down the road.
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It seems to me the government is making it easier for the people in the highest income brackets, while pleading poverty when it comes to helping those most in need.
We are our brother's keeper. The government has created this recession and has a responsibility to do something to make it easier for the people in the lowest levels of our society. Government created this mess and has a responsibility to do something positive. Cutting back, as we are, to those who most need help is not the way to go. It is setting a poor example in our whole community. It is building up problems for the future, not just for the individuals and the families of those concerned, not just for the children who far outnumber any other single group in the total social assistance group, but for us as well. When they suffer, can we really go around and pretend that all is well with us?
Canada has had a good reputation. More importantly, we have looked after those who need help most to some level. We could do better and we should do better. Any money that is given to people to help them survive is spent within Canada. It is not spent on holidays abroad. It is not spent on purchases of expensive imported goods.
The money turns over and over within our own country. We can finance it, we can do it, we must do it, we owe it to ourselves to make sure that we look after those in our own community who cannot look after themselves. We are our brother's keeper.


Mr.   Benoit@: Mr. Speaker, the question one must ask itself today is why did the federal government wait until 1991 to control the growth of transfer payments to the richest provinces?
As early as 1987, Ontario was experiencing a full employment situation and was beginning to generate an increasingly stronger inflation which led to the recession that we now have. Following a long study on the nature of unemployment in Canada, the Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre said: "The main conclusion of our study is that, except for Ontario, the unemployment rate in 1987 is well above that which could explain a mismatching of vacancies and individual unemployed workers. In other words, there are still enormous possibilities for growth outside Ontario, to reduce unemployment through economic expansion".

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What did the federal government do in 1987? The federal government capped equalization payments for the poorer provinces. It must be mentioned that since the Conservative Party was elected, transfer payments from the federal government have increased by 8 per cent in Ontario and by 3.5 per cent in Quebec. At a time when Ontario still had full employment, the federal government was still supporting the economy of that province by adding hundreds of millions in transfer payments while it had decided, as early as 1987, to cap the equalization payments to provinces that could still create jobs and that needed those jobs. Since Ontario enjoyed full employment, it was obvious that to promote economic expansion in that province would necessarily fuel inflation. That inflation would have to be controlled some day and, of course, it was controlled in an excessive way.
Today, a province that was prosperous before, namely Ontario, finds itself in a relatively catastrophic situation from a budgetary point of view. For this year only, the federal government just cut $3 billion in transfers, when we are in a recession and when the unemployment rate stands at 10 per cent. How can you explain that this government did not take appropriate action as early as 1987? If it had, the inflation rate would have been much lower in Ontario and we could have implemented an expansion policy elsewhere, as well as create the necessary jobs. Whether in the maritimes or in Quebec, there were still great possibilities for expansion because the unemployment rate was high.
Rather, the government immediately reduced the transfer payments to the poorer provinces and then waited, probably because Mr. Peterson was a friend, until the situation got out of control. Why do this in 1991 when, on the contrary, we should promote economic recovery? Mr. Speaker, the reason is simple: The federal government has no room to manoeuvre. The federal government is no longer able to stimulate the economy and to dissipate this gloom among consumers. The only option left now for the federal government is the one it is implementing, that is to discourage even more those who have lost their jobs and to make the budgets of the provinces unbearable. In the next few weeks, we will have a chance to see the federal budget. We can indeed expect the deficit to be contained now. Why will the federal deficit be contained? For a very simple reason: Because \vith legislation like this and previous decisions to limit equalization payments and payments to the
provinces for health services, the federal government has transferred its deficit to the provinces.
From now on, the federal deficit can be controlled, but people will not feel any better about it. The provinces will have to pick up the slack. They will have to overtax and do what they have started to do, pass the buck to the municipalities, which will also have to raise their taxes.
In his New Year's message, the Prime Minister told us that Canadians are taxed enough. So of course the federal government won't impose any new taxes. Of course the federal government has done everything to ensure that the provinces and municipalities will have to tax in future.
People who live in Montreal or any community in Quebec will soon receive their municipal tax bills. Wait till they see the percentage increase. The Government of Quebec, of course, will pass this bill on to the municipalities because it has been burned by the federal government's refusal to maintain the tax agreements it had made.
Today a parliamentary committee on financing health services began in Quebec City. A shortfall of $200 million to $400 million is expected next year if health services are to be funded at their present level.
The federal government's cuts in transfer payments alone amount to $1 billion. Of course, spending must be limited across the board. The deficits must be limited. When the federal government passes this deficit on to the provinces, it does not solve the problem for the public. People have to live somewhere. Quebecers will have to pay more to Quebec or to their municipal government. That does not solve the problems, Mr. Speaker.
The federal government's drastic measures take much more from the provinces than from itself. Transfers to the provinces make up 22 per cent of the federal budget, but cuts to the provinces account for 33 per cent of the federal spending reductions.
Give Quebecers the choice now: Do you want to cut health services or the military budget? That's not hard, the answer is obvious. However, we do not have that choice. We do not have the choice because the federal government has decided to cut health care in an underhanded way, despite the fiscal agreements with the provinces. On the contrary, the minister of health goes around saying, "We want to maintain national standards." He is sure that everyone must have services, but they do not pay anymore-the provinces do.

February 4, 1992

For us in Quebec, there is a simple solution for that: We want our own military budget. We want to be a real sovereign country that controls its total budget and can administer all its taxes and the people will be able to decide on a clear vision. Do you want to cut defence? Do you want to cut health care? Do you want to cut international travel? At present, it is a total mess with shared jurisdiction. You can announce generous intentions, as Ottawa does, fine health care standards that others pay for.
The Prime Minister, who adoringly follows President Bush, should at least take a passage from his latest speech. Mr. Bush asked Congress to stop giving member states of the American federation any mandate without the money to carry it out.
We have the opposite situation in Canada. National standards are to be raised. The federal government wants to increase its power with a little politicking, to give itself a good image; it will impose very high standards for health care, but the provinces will have to pay, the municipalities will have to pay.
You cannot make rational decisions or pass responsibility on to the citizens if one government can impose standards and another government has to pay.
Of course, we agree that in the present Canadian context, as long as we are in it, it is unacceptable for federal transfers to the richest provinces to continue to grow as rapidly as in the past-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. I must tell the hon. member that his time has now expired. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Stormont-Dun-das.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to join in the debate today on Bill C-32, an act to amend the Canada Assistance Plan.
When the CAP was first introduced in 1966 by the Liberal government of the day, it facilitated a cost-sharing arrangement between the federal, provincial and
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territorial governments in order to provide welfare and other forms of social assistance for Canadians in need.
The plan enables the federal government to provide financial support for the provisions of social assistance and institutional care for Canadians across the country, as well as the provision of welfare services designed to lessen, remove or prevent the causes and effects of poverty, child neglect and dependency on public assistance.

By helping the provinces assist the needy, Canada Assistance Plan ensures a social safety net for those who need it. That makes CAP a cornerstone of Canada's social security system.

The Canada Assistance Plan helps many Canadians. In times of poor economic conditions and especially during the current recession, demands placed upon provincial and municipal governments to deliver social programs and services are increasing steadily. However, instead of stepping in to provide additional help, the federal government in its 1990 budget froze for two years any increase in federal Canada Assistance Plan contributions to provinces which do not receive any equalization payments. The provinces affected by this decision are Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.
In its 1991 budget, the federal government indicated it will extend its cap on the Canada Assistance Plan for another three years. It is this extension which Bill C-32 seeks to implement.
Canadians must surely be wondering just what kind of federal government we do have. At such a serious time in our country's economic history, the government has decided to further restrict federal social welfare assistance. Part of the government's rationale for capping CAP is that the three provinces concerned are considered to be the richest in Canada. It is truly amazing that the government is ignoring the fact that approximately 50 per cent of Canada's poor families and 54 per cent of all welfare recipients reside in these provinces.

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Another Conservative reason for the cap on the Canada Assistance Plan is that we have to cut federal spending and reduce the deficit. I want to make it very clear that we in the Liberal Party find such logic totally unacceptable. We cannot support the government's decision to transfer the burden of the federal debt squarely on the backs of Canada's poor.
I believe the government is abandoning its responsibilities to the poor and disadvantaged of Canadian society. The government has gone so far as to single out these people on the basis of where they reside in Canada. Accordingly, this government seems to believe that the poor in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have an easier life than those in other parts of the country. Being poor or being in need of social assistance is still the same hardship, irrespective of where you live.
Canadians have witnessed this government's previous attack on unemployment insurance. It has withdrawn its UI contributions and established a system whereby employees and employers pay higher UI premiums and workers have to have more weeks of work in order to achieve less UI benefits.
Canadians have also witnessed this government's reductions to Canada's health care system and post-secondary education. Now Canadians are witnessing the government once again turning its back on the needy.
There is nothing on the horizon to suggest that anything this government will put forward will be a positive step to address the social and economic problems that are besetting the country.
Once again, it will be Canada's poorest, most dependent citizens who will suffer the most from the government's extension of the cap on the Canada Assistance Plan.
According to the government's own figures, over the five years of the 5 per cent ceiling on the CAP, the three affected provinces will lose over $2.1 billion in federal transfers. It is difficult to determine how this revenue loss will be replaced by the provincial and municipal governments in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Certainly social services and welfare programs will be adversely affected. As a matter of fact, some will be eliminated altogether.
In my riding of Stormont-Dundas, the child abuse centre in Cornwall was forced to close in September of last year, due in part to the inability of the provincial government to adequately fund it. A heavy demand is being placed on the city of Cornwall's welfare and social service agencies. At the present time, there are 2,027 individual welfare cases in the city. These cases directly affect a total of 3,537 people as of January 31. Unemployment in Cornwall is nearly at the 20 per cent level and this has had a severe impact on the welfare rolls.
In addition, I recently received a letter from Reverend Allen Tysick who is the director of the Matilda Resource Centre in Dundas county. Reverend Tysick's centre is one of the few operations in this rural section of my riding which offers assistance to the needy. In his letter, the Reverend writes that the ruling government, having the complete power to overturn longstanding social policies, traditions and Canadian culture at will, erodes the very social fabric of Confederation.
He goes on to say: "I ask you on behalf of the poor in your riding to yell at the top of your lungs that the direction of the federal government in relation to the cap on the Canada Assistance Plan is unjust and totally unacceptable".
In conclusion, the objectives of Bill C-32 proves once again that this government has lost touch with the people of Canada. With this bill, the government has indicated to Canadians and especially to the poor just how far it is prepared to go in order to achieve its objectives.
The people of Canada will not forget this callous and totally unacceptable attack on the social welfare services in three of Canada's provinces.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to participate in the debate on this Draconian measure, I have several points to make about the serious implications of this bill in my own riding of Kingston and the Islands where the government's disastrous economic policies have caused recent economic turmoil.
The figures I have and would like to present to the House concerning the economic situation in Kingston are mirrored across the province of Ontario and are obviously ones that cry out for assistance instead of the kind of bill that we are being asked to pass today.
February 4, 1992

From the Labour Market Information Report published by the Canada Employment Centre in Kingston,
I would like to quote some figures about welfare caseloads in the city itself. It is estimated that in Kingston one of every 25 people is collecting welfare benefits. This does not include those receiving family benefits or unemployment insurance. In 1989, Kingston's welfare payments totalled $5.2 million. In 1990, the figure was $8.6 million and in 1991, it will be approximately $14 million by the end of December.
It is predicted that this upward trend will continue with an estimated further 60 per cent growth in caseloads over the next year. This could bring welfare payments over the $26 million mark by the end of 1992, compared to only $5.2 million in 1989. The welfare caseload in this area is up about 140 per cent compared to last year, with the provincial average being slightly higher.
In the light of conditions like that, the fact that the federal Parliament is being asked to pass a bill to cap the transfer payments to provinces which are experiencing this massive growth in welfare costs is absolutely amazing. What is more astounding is that this Parliament has already been asked to pass another bill by this government which helped create this situation. That was Bill C-21 which the government says is such a wonderful thing.
Part of the reason for the increase in welfare caseloads is because so many people are no longer able to collect unemployment insurance because of the shortened periods in payments and the longer qualification periods.
If you look at the welfare caseloads in Kingston, you will see that already they are far higher than they ever were during that much talked about recession of 1981-82 of which the Minister of Finance is so keen to remind Canadians. He talks about it as though it was a great disaster. We know that the current recession is worse.
In a community where the official unemployment rate is at 10.2 per cent as of December of this year, as I have already indicated, the welfare rolls are at their highest in the last decade, one would think that the government would take some action to alleviate the situation instead of causing deeper distress, but it does not. Let us look at
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the record of the provincial government because that is how we see how the other party that sits in this House would act when it is confronted with a similar situation.
Day after day the New Democratic Party members rise to condemn the government, as we have, for bringing in this kind of measure. They, like us, opposed Bill C-21 and said it was wrong and very bad. But the moment their colleagues get into office in Toronto they start acting exactly the same way. It is a most unbelievable thing.
We know that the premier of Ontario received his tutelage in socialism here in this House. He was a member of this House and I presume talked to his colleagues in caucus from time to time and learned something about the tenets of the party's approach. Yet they took office in Ontario and we hear these criticisms today of this freeze on transfers to the province of Ontario for welfare. In Toronto we see the government apply a 1 per cent increase to the municipalities. The municipalities pick up a large part of the cost of welfare in Ontario, in case the members who are here from British Columbia and Saskatchewan do not know that, and the fact is that those payments are now at 1 per cent from the provincial government in Toronto.
The province of Ontario recently published a statement "Ontario Fiscal Outlook". The premier went on television and I quote him. He said: "Today we told municipalities, hospitals, colleges, school boards and universities that they are being held to the lowest increase ever". Those were his words: "the lowest ever". Yet they were given by the NDP premier of Ontario.


An hon. member:: It is because of the Liberal deficit.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: There we have the help. The hon. member for wherever it is says it is because of the Liberal deficit. Does that not just sound like the people across the way? Every day the Minister of Finance stands up in answer to questions and says: "The reason we are in this trouble is because of the Liberal deficit. Seven or eight years ago when we took office we could have solved it. We did not and it is because of the Liberal deficit".

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When Bob Rae took over, Ontario was doing just fine, thank you very much. The deficit was very small. It was grossly inflated by the premier of Ontario by adding in a whole bunch of charges he felt he should stick in, in one year to make it look bigger. It was effectively a balanced budget that he was left with when he took office.


An hon. member:: Shame on you.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member says shame on me. I have some figures here that back up every statement I am making.
Ontario's revenues throughout the Liberal years, and I do not like to be too partisan in this, grew by 12,8, 14 and 11 per cent, enormous increases because the province was booming. In 1990 it grew by 4.2 per cent. In 1991, the first full socialist year in Ontario, it declined by 1.5 per cent. Tory times are hard times. NDP times are worse.
I want to go back to the figures I have to deal with here. A 1 per cent increase has been given to the municipalities by the NDP government in Ontario and they are blaming the Liberal deficit. The Conservatives here blame the Liberal deficit for a freeze. They are saying the reason they have to go through this freeze on the transfers to provinces is because of the Liberal deficit. They have been in office seven years. The NDP has been in for a year and a half in Ontario. They have had lots of time to solve the problems. The difficulty is they are not taking any steps to do so. I have additional evidence.
I want to quote from an outstanding socialist thinker, Mel Watkins, a University of Toronto economics professor and NDP activist. He must have received a lot of support from the hon. member who was heckling me a moment ago.
In The Globe and Mail on Saturday, January 25, he had this to say. He said in an interview, and I quote: "Austerity policies should be avoided like the plague. I do not know what the point is of having a social democratic government if it does the same thing that any other government would do". Well, he made a mistake. It is not the same as any other government would do, it is the same as a Tory government would do. That is what it is.
What we see here is the Tories doing exactly the same thing as the NDP does and the NDP doing exactly the same thing as the Tories do. There is no difference between these two parties. Why vote for one instead of the other? As soon as they get into office they do the same thing.
They talk a great line when they are in opposition. The Tories spoke the same line in opposition that the NDP members are speaking today, but when they get into office in Ontario, we see that they behave in exactly the same way. It is a shocking thing that the Canadian people are hoodwinked by these parties when they are in opposition.
The Liberal Party is one of generosity and spirit. Sure, other members complain about the deficit and they all complain that they have to fix it after we leave office, on very phony grounds in the case of the province of Ontario, but the fact is that we display a generosity of spirit that makes this country grow as the growth in the figures in the Ontario revenue prove. They grew enormously throughout the period of Liberal administration and I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that has been the practice in Canada generally.
We do not have problems today that are different from the past, but what we do have is a meanness of spirit displayed by the freeze in this bill, this cap on CAP. It is displayed in the 1 per cent freeze, 2 per cent next year and 2 per cent the year after that has been imposed by the New Democratic Party government in Ontario. When you look at those combinations of self-interest, the effort to protect the one group each represents instead of trying to do something generous for the whole population, you really see the difference between the Liberal Party and the way it operates in government, and the Tory and NDP members who act exactly the same.
Protect the group that you feel you owe your protection to and then forget everybody else, cut them all to the bone. Cut the poor to the bone, help your business friends. Cut the poor to the bone, and help your union friends. That is what the New Democratic Party is trying to do in Ontario. That is what the Tory government is trying to do in Ottawa. Mr. Speaker, we need a Liberal government in the worst way.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before recognizing the hon. member for Kamloops, 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 Halifax-Goods and Services Thx; the hon. member for Calgary Northeast- Croatia; the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond-Unemployment Insurance; the hon. member for Don Valley East-The Constitution; the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie-Hibernia.
February 4, 1992

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The hon. member for Kamloops now has the floor. [English]


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in today's debate on Bill C-32 which is called a cap on CAP.
It is important that we understand just what is occurring here, particularly those folks who are watching on television and listening to the debate today. We are dealing with a very cruel piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that is, if you like, attacking the victims of the recession. We do not have to elaborate. Everyone in the country is aware of the tremendous economic downturn that we have experienced for the last number of years, the deep recession that we are struggling through these days and in some parts of the country, it is very, very close to depression-like conditions.
There appears to be a sense of hopelessness across the country because the government does not seem to be doing anything about getting us out of this recession. It has announced, of course, that it simply plans to stay the course and do essentially what it has been doing. People across the country are saying that it is not enough, that it is certainly not adequate and we have to change course.
On top of all of that-I want to elaborate here on what is a very pessimistic and gloomy history-the government now plans to introduce legislation to make things even worse, particularly for those people who are suffering the most. I am thinking of those families and individuals who are now dependent upon various social service programs, dependent on welfare. The government is now saying that it is not going to contribute as it has in the past to these programs. It is going to offload its responsibility on to the backs of the provinces and on to the backs of municipal taxpayers.
Over the years, the Canada Assistance Plan has been a shared program, a 50/50 program where 50 per cent of the cost of social programs came from the federal government and 50 per cent came from the provincial governments and so there was, in the Canadian spirit, a sharing of responsibility to provide for those folks very seriously in need.
The government a few years ago decided to get out of the sharing business and say: "We are not going to continue 50/50 cost sharing. We are going to reduce our share of the financial cost". It introduced Bill C-69 which capped the payments from the federal government at 5 per cent each year. If the costs went up 20 per cent or 30 per cent, the government said: "Tough beans, the provincial governments have to pick up the tab".
This 5 per cent cap, which applied to British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, now through this particular bill, Bill C-32 which we are debating today, extends this principle until 1995. The costs of welfare are escalating in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and throughout the country generally, and the government says: "We are not going to in those provinces contribute as we traditionally have".
British Columbia as a result is having to accept hundreds of millions of extra dollars in costs because of the provincial government reneging on its traditional commitment. Let us face it, the number of people dependent on social services is increasing by the day as a result of the free trade agreement and the goods and services tax and other federal government programs. The newspaper today said that in this year alone this particular bill is going to add to the provincial taxpayers in Ontario $900 million in additional costs. That is almost $1 billion in this one year alone.
In the province of British Columbia, it will result in hundreds of millions of dollars over the next handful of years that traditionally would have been borne by the federal government. Now the government is saying: "British Columbia taxpayers, you have to pay twice. You have to pay now through the normal tax dollars but also special additional funds coming from provincial taxes".
The British Columbia government thought that this was actually not even constitutional and that the federal government did not have the right to break this 50/50 cost sharing. As a matter of fact, the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled recently that the federal government did not have the authority to unilaterally alter the Canada Assistance Program agreement.

February 4, 1992
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That is what the court in British Columbia said: the Government of Canada did not have the right to unilaterally break this ongoing tradition, this ongoing agreement of 50/50 spending. This is very serious because the government obviously is continuing. This has gone to further courts, but I will save that for another time.
The point is the following. This Canadian spirit of sharing in the cost of helping those in desperate need in many cases now has been abrogated by the federal government. It is getting out of the business of caring and sharing.
Let us also recognize, and I appeal to my Conservative friends opposite, that the greatest victims of this particular legislation will be the children of Canada. Today, unfortunately, 1 million children in this country are living in poverty. As a result of this legislation, their lives are going to be made even tougher and will result in more children living in a state of poverty in our country. I think that members should be aware of this. I only assume that my Conservative friends opposite have not read this legislation because I cannot imagine anyone supporting legislation that would impose more suffering, more cruelty, on those children already living in poverty in this country. This is exactly what Bill C-32 does.
We have had a number of witnesses who appeared before the committee examining this legislation. We have the long list of their testimony, pages and pages. Every single witness, every single group, every single individual who is expert in the area of social assistance said to the Government of Canada: "Do not proceed with this legislation because it is so cruel and it will punish those people who are the victims of these difficult economic times".
When every single witness says that, when every single witness had the same piece of advice for the government, to simply ignore that is the height of irresponsibility. No wonder the people across Canada feel that this government does not care any more. No wonder 88 per cent of Canadians said that they do not care for this government, that they have lost faith in this government. The government simply ignores every single witness who appeared before the committee on this piece of legislation.
I was originally going to go through and simply read out some of the critical points that all of the witnesses made about this legislation, but obviously time does not
permit and I think most members will have read this anyway. Particularly, I would encourage the members of the government to make sure they read these points because, for example, it points out that child care is under attack as a result of this legislation. For poor families desperately relying on child care this is going to make child care an even more serious issue because it is going to reduce funds available.
In closing, I want to simply say that a lot of people have suggested that we have got to cut back in social services because they are the areas that have added to our debt or have been causing our debt. I want to simply draw to the House's attention a new Statistics Canada study which shows that the large increase in the federal debt over the past 15 years was not caused-I emphasize not caused- by increases in program spending, as the government has repeatedly alleged. Instead, most of the increase was caused by corporate tax breaks and high interest rates. They are the culprits and we should be, if you like, closing off some of the major corporate tax loopholes so that we do not continue seeing tens of thousands of profitable corporations, in some years even including the banks of Canada, not paying their fair share of income taxes.
As Statistics Canada tells us, it is not the social programs that have caused our debt, it is the corporate tax breaks and the incredible high interest rates which have caused the high interest payments on our debt.
Let us at this last moment, this eleventh hour, acknowledge the fact that this legislation before us is painfully cruel legislation, and that it will hit the victims of the recession, those who have suffered most, even more. If for no other reason, let us be compassionate in this eleventh hour and vote against this legislation when the opportunity comes to ease some of the pain and suffering that Canadians are experiencing from coast to coast to coast.


Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, the issue before the House is another example of this government's endless cuts to the social safety net in Canada. In the 1989 budget the government announced that it would be limiting the growth of spending under the Canada Assistance Plan. In that budget the government said that it would not provide increases above 5 per cent for the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. In the last budget it extended it to a five-year period for the cutbacks.
February 4, 1992

The Canada Assistance Plan is a program which was set up under Lester Pearson in 1966 and was part of the Liberal Party's commitment to the well-being of Canadians in need. The program provided money to all provinces on a 50/50 cost-shared basis to cover general welfare programs in the provinces. This was a bold move designed to strengthen the social safety net in Canada. The program came out about the same time as our first national medicare plan, another important advancement for Canadians.
Since this government came to power in 1984, it has systematically attacked Canadian social programs. In its first budget this government tried to deindex seniors' pensions. A lot of thanks and praise must go to Canadian senior citizens. They stood up against the Minister of Finance and stood up against the Prime Minister and were able to convince the government to withdraw that legislation.
In 1986 the government started to change the funding for post-secondaiy education and medicare under the Established Programs Financing agreement. By the end of this decade the government will have saved about $100 billion through its changes to Established Programs Financing. In 1989 the government instituted the clawback on old age pensions and family allowances, taking them back if your income was too high. This government did this without providing inflation protection to those affected.
Last year the government started its attack on the Canada Assistance Plan.
All of us here remember the Prime Minister's famous comment about how our social programs were a sacred trust. We all know now what the Prime Minister means by a sacred trust, unfortunately. Now the government would have us believe that the provinces affected by this cut can well afford to pick up the slack, but I do not think that is the case.
The country is still in the grips of a recession which this government has created. Provincial government deficits are up across the land and the governments can ill afford the extra borrowing required to make the difference. From what I understand, welfare cases are up over 50 per cent in Toronto over last year.
A strong argument can be made that the federal government is directly responsible for those large increases in the welfare rolls.
Last year, the government forced through its changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act with Bill C-21. The
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bill reduced the unemployment insurance that people could collect, and after the unemployment insurance ran out they had no other alternative but to resort to the welfare rolls.
The members opposite would normally suggest to the people on welfare that they go out and get a job. Where do they go and get a job? Through the combined affects of the free trade deal, the government's high dollar and high interest policies, businesses are forced to leave Canada for the United States where the cost of doing business is lower.
Some people would suggest that I, as a member of Parliament from Prince Edward Island, have nothing to worry about. My constituents are not affected. That might be true right now, but what will happen next year?
We know that the government promises are not worth the paper they are written on. We know that next year it will possibly put the cap on CAP on three or four more provinces. In the next year, hopefully to God it will not be here.
The Canada Assistance Plan was a federal-provincial agreement, a contract signed between Ottawa and the provinces. According to the agreement signed, the federal government could only amend or cancel the plan with the consent of the province involved. After the first attack on CAP last year, the Canadian Council on Social Development said: "These requirements are important because CAP was established through federal-provincial collaboration and trust. By acting unilaterally, the government has betrayed this trust".
If the federal government has broken its promises with three provinces, as I said before, then certainly nothing is stopping it from breaking its promises with the other seven provinces. Since the Conservatives came to office in 1984, there have been a litany of cuts to our social programs, programs that our people depend on.
I challenge the government to justify its cuts. The Prime Minister should consider the young student who has possibly worked all summer to gain enough money to pay the tuition and then finds out, when it is time to go to college, that because of the cap on CAP tuition is higher and he or she cannot afford to attend university. This is cutting off the poorer people.
The government should consider the senior citizen or anybody else in the country waiting for a hip replacement. They might be waiting for three or four months and suffering. Possibly a doctor goes in and explains that because there is a shortage of funds, they will have to wait for another one or two months. This is just not acceptable.

February 4, 1992
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The government should explain to the fish plant worker who is getting three, four or five weeks less unemployment what she or he is supposed to do when the unemployment runs out. It should possibly explain to the woman on welfare in Toronto why her cheque does not go as far just because we could only afford 5 per cent.
These are the questions the government will have to answer if it is to justify CAP. This move by the government will endanger all Canadians, regardless of where they live.
As I stated earlier, the government has broken the spirit of trust and co-operation that existed between the federal government and the provinces. For the first time in the history of CAP, the government has acted unilaterally to change the contract.
While the court says that Ottawa is not legally bound to the agreement, it is morally obliged to keep its part of the bargain. This time when the country faces so much turmoil, I think it is very unfortunate the federal government would break a deal, break the trust with the provinces. Trust is something that we need between Ottawa and the provinces.
The country is going through tough times. The problem is the federal government puts it on the backs of the provincial governments and the provincial governments put it on the backs of the municipalities. In the end, it is the poor who suffer. For example, we have a large number of children in this country now who are in hospitals suffering from malnutrition. It is certainly not the wealthy. It is the poor children.
Possibly the mothers have to substitute the proper formula for something they can afford to buy. I certainly believe that most people in this country would find that totally unacceptable. Also, as I stated before, these are the children who cannot get to university. In fact, these are the people who will end up waiting and waiting in line to get medical treatment.
This is just not acceptable and I would ask the government members to please find a place in their hearts to look at this cap on CAP, withdraw this legislation and let us in this nation take care of our poor.


Joy Langan: Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged, but I also feel very saddened to be rising to speak to a piece of legislation that in fact entrenches wrong-headed thinking and the wrong direction this government has undertaken in the last number of years. Many in this House and in Canada will remember that as his last public act as leader of the New Democratic Party, the Hon. Ed Broadbent introduced a motion to this House calling for the elimination of child poverty by the year 2000.
Ironically, there was unanimous support for that resolution in this House and yet the largest single group of Canadians to be affected by this piece of legislation to continue the capping of the Canada Assistance Plan will be children. They are the largest single group receiving social assistance. Why should children be on the receiving end of this mean-spirited legislation that the government is introducing? Why should they be the first to take the brunt of the attack of restraint that this government is introducing? Children are powerless. They are unable to defend themselves.
In fact, there are several sectors of society that have not yet felt the government's restraint. One of them is the portion of big business enjoying incredible tax breaks. Yet today we are introducing and debating a capping of the Canada Assistance Plan for the have provinces, three provinces in this country and it will be children who are most affected.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: They are debating the same thing in Toronto, too.


Joy Langan: How will removing money from social assistance help children to escape poverty? How will that help us to eradicate poverty by the year 2000? It is particularly ironic that Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in December, since Bill C-32 will have an absolutely devastating effect on the health and well-being of Canadian children who rely on social assistance. The UN convention reads: "States parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development".
February 4, 1992

Canada's social assistance rates ensure none of the above, and the federal government is cutting the funding back even more. Canada is one of the world's wealthiest nations, and yet there are close to 1 million children in this country living in poverty.
We are second only to the United States in the level of child poverty in the industrialized world. These children are being asked to pay for the loopholes that are being offered to major corporations. I ask you, is this just?
The hon. member for Kingston was most sanctimonious about his party, the Liberal Party, and its role in protecting Canadians from cuts. I would like to remind the hon. member that the Liberals were the first to break the agreement between the provinces during the Thi-deau era by going from matching health care funds to block funding, and they did the same with post-secondary education. I would suspect that the hon. member might want to either review his history or rethink what he says in this House. The hon. member might also want to remember the six-and-five, the anti-inflation board, the AIB, after promising before an election that they would not impose wage controls. I would ask the hon. member to reconsider his remarks.
How can this government call provinces with huge deficits like British Columbia and Ontario have provinces?
The hon. member for Kamloops made some references to the federal off-loading measures that this legislation has provided and what the effect will be on those governments. In fact, federal off-loading will cost British Columbia over $1.1 billion in 1991-92. That is $1.1 billion that could be going into children's mouths, housing and education. It could ensure that the children in British Columbia do not go to bed hungry.
Over the period 1991-92 to 2000-01, the negative impact on the economy of British Columbia by federal government off-loading measures will be $32.7 billion. You can feed a lot of hungry kids on $32.7 billion.
The federal arguments are that the provinces are simply being asked to do their fair share, but that is not
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valid. Cuts in transfers to provinces account for 46 per cent of the federal expenditure control plan, for example, even though provincial transfers make up only 20 per cent of federal government program spending.
Future public sector spending pressures will rest mainly in the areas of provincial responsibility such as health care, education and social services. Provinces are not being adequately funded to meet their growing responsibilities and yet this government is continuing to cut.
I would like to note that since 1967 the federal government has provided funding for provincial expenditures on income assistance and other social services for persons in need through the CAP, but in 1990 the federal government started to nick away at the have provinces. The federal government is reintroducing this legislation and yet two of those provinces have large deficits left behind by outgoing governments and there has been no review.
In the have province of B.C., the average family income is less than the average family income in Canada and yet we are considered to be a have province. I would like to know what kind of rationale creates this kind of policy development. It seems to me that we have to ask why the federal government feels the need to off-load to the provinces.
Failure on the federal government's part to exercise prudent fiscal management has caused a serious debtload in this country. The federal government wants to avoid visible and direct association to those severe measures it needs to implement to restore financial help by dumping it onto the provinces. The provinces will then have to collect the funds that are necessary and the Tbries can walk away saying: "Those guys increased your taxes. We are clean. We are pure".
Canadians are not going to be fooled. Canadians do care about hungry children. Canadians do care about what this government is doing to those provinces, particularly the Canadians in those provinces. This government should stop and think about the impact. Quite frankly, it sounds very simplistic, but this government should be ashamed of itself.

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Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I believe I have 10 minutes allotted to me. I will not have time to complete this evening so I will resume debate the next time we come to this bill.
It is appalling to me that Bill C-32 is brought once again to this House and that the government has not realized that its priorities are all cockeyed when it suggests that it would reduce its deficit on the backs of those most vulnerable and hurting in our society.
Bill C-32 proposes to cap the federal government's contributions to the three supposedly richest provinces, British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario for three more years. This just does not match with the reality, especially as it exists today in Ontario and in my riding of Northumberland.
It said in the paper today that the cap on welfare is costing Ontario $900 million this year. The additional pressures of the need for social assistance have risen 17 per cent this year and yet our government persists in bringing forth this legislation to the House which would reduce government commitment to a 5 per cent cap on the Canada Assistance Plan.
The plan provides assistance, as I said before, to those most vulnerable in our society. The largest portion of the Canada Assistance Plan goes to those who are in need of social assistance or welfare. Almost 40 per cent of those welfare recipients are children. The government thinks it is penny wise, but to my view it is absolutely pound foolish.
Many studies have been done to show that if we neglect to provide the basic, essential needs for children, our costs today and in the future will continue to escalate.
It has been shown that children who are raised in poverty are early school dropouts. They have emotional and psychological problems, are prone to delinquency, and therefore accrue court costs to the government. Because of poor health from malnutrition they are a burden on our health system. Because they drop out of school and do not get adequate training and education, they become unemployment insurance statistics and statistics of social assistance programs as well. Not providing additional support to those most in need in our society is pound foolish in my point of view.
Besides those programs that occur in provinces and in my riding of Northumberland to help those on social assistance or welfare recipients, additional funding goes to our seniors. Those who are most in need are indigent seniors who reside in homes for seniors. Funds go to those programs that support the handicapped, abused women and children who not only live in poverty but are abused and in need of institutional support.
I would like to quote from some statistics. With regard to children, in my riding of Northumberland this past year, social service informs me that in 1984 they handled 590 cases of children needing assistance for protection. In 1991 that total had risen to 959 cases, an 88.4 per cent increase. In 1984 there were 82 cases of children who were taken from their parents and put under care. In 1991 there were 135 cases, a rise of 64 per cent. The actual days in care in children's services since 1986 has risen by 36.15 per cent. Child abuse cases have risen from 64 in 1984 to 243 in 1991, an increase of 279 per cent.
The police departments in my riding say that it is not drugs and alcohol that are the cause of increased traffic through their offices. It is violence that comes from family violence and a lot of that family violence is attributed to our economic situation today where families have such difficulty in providing for basic needs and maintaining a home, a car, any semblance of life with dignity. It erupts very often in family violence.
The director of the children's services agency in my riding attributes much of the increase in his case load in my riding of Northumberland directly to the recession, not alone to the recession but in large part to the impact of the recession.
In my riding over the Christmas holidays the social services agencies in the Northumberland County building had to hold special clinic days in which they had to find a large room, set up desks and have those who were requesting social assistance help file through because their normal procedure of interviews with social workers was just not adequate for the seriousness of the existing situation. The number of recipients of social assistance or welfare has risen very dramatically.
February 4, 1992

These people are in need. They are not people who are abusing our social welfare assistance. In my own office, day after day after day, I have cases of people who have never been unemployed in their lives coming into my offices desperate and destitute, unable to continue for lack of resources. They are the people who are finding themselves with much loss of dignity in many cases lining up at the welfare offices in my riding.
Your heart goes out to these people and you feel that again this government is being extremely pound foolish in trying to address the problems that exist in our country today in terms of the economy. It loads the burden of trying to accomplish something positive in this country on the backs of those who are least able to cope, our poor and those in need of social assistance and funding under the Canada Assistance Plan.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It being five o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 36, the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.

The member for Victoria, Mr. Brewin, has advised me in writing that he would unable to move his motion during Private Members' Hour on Wednesday, February 5, 1992. Since it was impossible to arrange for an exchange of positions in the order of precedence, pursuant to Standing Order 94(2)(a), I would ask the clerk to drop this item to the bottom of the order of precedence.

Pursuant to Standing Order 94(2)(b), Private Members' Hour will be suspended and the House will continue with the business before it prior to Private Members' Hour.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Joy Langan: that Bill C-293, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code and Public Service Employment Act (whistleblowing), be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee H.
Private Members' Business
She said: Mr. Speaker, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I introduce this piece of Private Members' Business, the act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code and the Public Service Employment Act (whistleblowing).
The purpose of this bill is to provide appropriate sanctions against retaliatory discharges by public sector employers of employees who report or blow the whistle on serious misconduct by their employers. In protecting employees acting in good faith, this bill would recognize that there are times when it is in the public interest to encourage employees whistleblowing, particularly when the public health and safety are an issue.
It is also important to note that this bill not only covers public sector workers, but because it would be an amendment to the Canada Labour Code, it would in fact protect all workers under federal jurisdiction.
The amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act in this bill would amend the act so that it would be discrimination for an employer to punish an employee who, in good faith, disclosed illegal or unethical conduct by an employer. The act would be further amended to provide for the Canadian Human Rights Commission to investigate and report on a complaint.
The Canada Labour Code would be amended by stipulating that retaliatory measures for whistleblowing shall be considered unjust dismissals for the purpose of the code.
The Public Service Employment Act would be amended so as to stipulate that an employee is not necessarily guilty of disloyalty for disclosing matters through a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.
This bill is not about establishing mechanisms whereby workers would seek revenge on their employers. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is to protect workers from the revenge of their employers. An independent assessment of complaints by the Human Rights Commission would quickly separate the vengeful or frivolous from the serious complaint.
This bill is not about encouraging workers to skirt the existing avenues available to them to address their concerns such as normal recording procedures or grievance procedures. The mechanism in this bill would act as an adjunct to what already exists. It is the last resort and when all else fails and every other avenue open has been exhausted, then this bill provides the protection for the employee to blow the whistle.

Private Members' Business
What this bill attempts to do is to remove from workers the untenable choice they are currently faced with of either turning a blind eye to wrongdoing or sacrificing their careers and jobs. What we are talking about in this bill is protecting workers who blow the whistle on their employers for wrongdoing.
Whistleblowing is a practice whereby workers disclose situations where they know about or suspect the involvement of other employees, the organization or an area of the organization in illegal, unethical or unacceptable activities. It is not so much a mechanism to expose wrongdoing, but rather it is the establishment of safeguards and procedures whereby honest workers have an outlet to discuss their concerns.
By establishing an outside reporting mechanism, in this case the Human Rights Commission, workers who are unable or unwilling to discuss issues which they regard as improper with their employers will be protected from reprisal as well as having someone else offer an independent and impartial assessment of their concerns. The purpose here is not to turn workers into work place cops, but when faced with issues such as discrimination, harassment, fraud, malfeasance or cover-up, workers need and deserve the confidentiality and security of an independent agent in order that they can be secure in the knowledge that their concern would be dealt with seriously and impartially.
What is desired is the right of ethical employees to work in an ethical environment.
In the public sector it is the job of politicians, in particular opposition politicians, to oversee and scrutinize the operation of government. Indeed, in our system of government it is our duty to do this.
We do not expect, nor does this bill anticipate public sector workers to do our job for us. What it would allow is public sector workers to fulfil the responsibility they are charged with knowing that if they report wrongdoing they can do so without fear of losing their jobs.
This bill is not about enlisting public sector workers in the cause of opposition politicians. It is about ensuring that public sector workers, all workers, can do their jobs
with the knowledge that the best interest of the employees and the public is being served at all times.
There is ample evidence to demonstrate that workers suffer emotional and physical turmoil in attempting to deal with their knowledge of fraud, conflict of interest, rampant waste, pollution violations or other forms of illegal or unethical conduct.
It was reported in The Ottawa Citizen not too long ago that workers have been fired for reporting illegal activity on the part of their employer and they have no recourse even when their allegations have been proved true and the employer fined. The corporation pays the fine and it is back to business as usual, but the worker has still gone down the road losing his or her job and that is a tremendous damage to one's career for being honest and open.
An American study found that in the absence of any protection, 90 per cent of whistleblowers lost their jobs, 26 per cent sought psychiatric or medical care and 10 per cent attempted suicide. This is a horrible price to pay for being honest and expecting honesty from one's employ-
We have a case right here in Canada, and I am sure there are innumerable cases, but I would like to cite one that has certainly been before the media a considerable amount in the last number of years. That is the case of Dr. Pierre Blais. He was a research scientist at the bureau of medical devices.
He prepared an article for a U.S. medical journal raising questions about the breakup of polyurethane foam on the Meme breast implant. A version of Dr. Blais' 1986 article on the breast implant appeared in a September 1988 issue of Transplantation Implantation Today, a Canadian journal.
In January 1989 Dr. Blais learned that the polyurethane foam used in the Meme was first developed for use in industrial products such as air conditioners and carburetors. On January 6 bureau scientists recommended to the bureau and asked the Meme manufacturer to voluntarily remove the implant from the market until its safety could be documented. It was overruled by Health and Welfare officials higher up the bureaucratic ladder and instead Surgitek was invited to submit data.
er.

In January 1989, Dr. Blais wrote a strong letter to his department superiors strenuously recommending the Meme be removed from the market. In March 1989, Dr. Blais was ordered to sign an edited version of his memo. On March 6 he signed the edited memo. On March 9 he was instructed by his immediate superior to destroy his original memo and report. In July of 1989 stating unsuitability for employment in the Public Service, Dr. Blais was in fact issued an immediate dismissal notice.
Now subsequent events have in fact vindicated Dr. Blais, and yet Dr. Blais is still not in the employ of the federal government nor does he have any means to become employed again by the federal government.
He is a man whose career was on the line and in his case he has overcome that. But that is not the way we want people who work for us to be treated when they raise serious concerns.
A survey published in Industry Week magazine noted that 25 per cent of its readers said that their boss had requested them to behave in a manner they considered unethical. Most simply swallowed hard and did what was asked of them as they felt that they had no choice but to comply. This bill would give workers that choice.
If we take a look at the whole concept of whistleblowing legislation, we really are asking for public sector workers or workers under the jurisdiction of the federal government to have the right to report wrongdoing by their employer without fear of reprisal and knowing that their jobs are secure.
It also provides that the reporting would be done through the Human Rights Commission. We are not suggesting that public sector workers go out and make unfounded statements in the public that could be very damaging to Canada. We are suggesting that there be a forum under the Human Rights Commission where that worker could go and take his or her complaint. It would be independently assessed by the Human Rights Commission. After the independent assessment and if it were found that there was validity to the complaint, the worker would not find himself or herself subject to dismissal for having blown the whistle.
Private Members' Business
It is veiy interesting that the United States has this type of legislation in place. It has not resulted in irresponsible actions being taken by American workers. We are saying that it is very important legislation. It is very important for us as lawmakers to ensure that the people who work for us and on behalf of Canadians have the ability and the vehicle through which they can raise concerns of wrongdoing by employers.
In 1986 the Ontario Law Reform Commission, in its report on political activity, public comment and disclosure by Crown employees, concluded that government employees should not have to rely on the limited common law public interest defence alone if they are disciplined for whistleblowing but rather should be given statutory protection. That is what this legislation seeks to do.
This type of legislation should complement, not compete with, the other obligations public sector workers have to their employer, including confidentiality. It is very important that it be understood that we are not suggesting workers violate confidentiality in a public way. We are suggesting that there be a vehicle to protect confidentiality and to protect the worker's obligation to report a wrongdoing.
This type of legislation would enhance the accountability of the public sector, federal jurisdiction workers and government to provide another instrument by which government action could come under public scrutiny. After all, this is very much what Parliament is about. We have a responsibility to be subject to public scrutiny as do the departments and the people who work for us.
Federal jurisdiction employers like airlines, rail transport and truckers have a responsibility to be scrutinized for the public good and for the protection of the public, certainly in the area of the environment.
In closing, I would ask the hon. members from the other parties to consider this legislation very seriously. As parliamentarians I believe we should take pride in those who labour on our behalf and on behalf of the Canadian public. At the same time we should protect those honest workers who feel duty bound to point out wrongdoing by their employer but are unable to so today because of lack of legislative protection.

February 4, 1992
Private Members' Business
I would urge hon. members to support this bill so that Canadian workers under federal jurisdiction would be protected in carrying out their duties.


Mr.   Brian@: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-293, a bill to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code and the Public Service Employment Act. This bill proposes what in common parlance is known as whistleblowing legislation.
This matter has been aired in this Chamber a number of times in recent years as a result of private members' bills and motions. Therefore not a lot new can be said that would in any other way add or clarify what has already been said. Indeed, in 1986 a bill almost identical to the one now before the House was tabled, was debated at length and was not passed.
I would like to say at the outset that I applaud the hon. member for Mission-Coquitlam for this expression of concern for efficiency and effectiveness in federally regulated institutions and particularly for the implied concern for the health and safety of workers employed therein. I share her concern and would be eager to support any measure that would contribute to the improvement of safety in Canadian work places.
Every year in this country about a thousand workers die and many more are seriously injured as a result of work place accidents and employment related illnesses. In addition to the pain and suffering that results, these accidents and illnesses take many billions of dollars out of the economy in the form of lost wages, lost production, equipment damage and compensation payments.
If Bill C-293 offered even a partial solution to this serious problem, I would gladly support it. Unfortunately the bill before us does not offer such a solution. If passed, Bill C-293 might obstruct an effective existing procedure under the Canada Labour Code for preventing potentially hazardous working conditions. It might even create an atmosphere of confrontation and hostility in certain work places, which could be itself a threat to worker safety.
I would like to explain how such a situation could arise by describing what happens under the present legislation when, in the words of Bill C-293, an employer is engaging in or is about to engage in conduct that would endanger the public health or safety.
In most such cases, under federal jurisdiction the employee would be protected by the right to refuse
dangerous work provision of the Canada Labour Code. If an employee has reasonable cause to believe that a particular work process or condition could be dangerous to himself, herself or to any other employee, the employee has the right to refuse to do the work without being subject to any discriminatory treatment because of the refusal.
In certain cases these conditions could have public safety implications. For example, a truck driver being required to drive in excess of the maximum permissible hours may pose a threat to employee and public safety. There are already clearly established steps that must be taken when an employee refuses to do dangerous work.
(1)	The employee must inform the employer of the refusal to work and the reason for it and also report the incident to the work place safety and health committee or representative.
(2)	The employer must then investigate the condition along with the safety and health representative or a member of the committee.
(3)	If the condition is not corrected to the satisfaction of the employee, a safety officer is called in to investigate the complaint.
(4)	If the employee still is not satisfied that the condition is safe or has been corrected, the matter may be referred to the Canada Labour Relations Board for adjudication.
Throughout this process the employee is protected from any discriminatory treatment, including dismissal because of the refusal to work in dangerous conditions. What is more, the Canadian Labour Relations Board has the authority to make the employer reinstate an employee who has been dismissed for this reason, rescind any disciplinary action and repay any wages the employee may have lost because of the employer's discriminatory action.
Furthermore, under the Canada Labour Code an employee who complains to the Minister of Labour about any irregular working conditions imposed by the employer may request that his or her identity be kept secret. In short, the intent of Bill C-293 in so far as it concerns the issue of work place safety in federally regulated institutions is already being met by existing legislation. The passage of Bill C-293 would not offer further protection to workers in these circumstances. In fact, it could even lead to confusion as to what process takes precedence.
February 4, 1992

Private Members' Business
This government takes very seriously its responsibility to improve safety and health in Canadian work places and over recent years has been implementing a policy to ensure that employers and employees comply with the occupational safety and health regulations that have been drafted into law. Fundamental to this compliance is the recognition that occupational safety and health is the joint responsibility of employers and employees. Mandatory joint health and safety committees have been established because we believe that whatever their differences at the bargaining table, employers and employees have a common interest in making their work place safer and thus more productive.
It is not assumed that all employers are model employers and that there are accordingly swift and strong measures that can be taken against employers when warranted. However, employers are given credit for acting responsibility in this area of common concern. It is recognized that it is the people who work in an establishment, employers and employees together, who are best able to ensure the health and safety of that establishment. Only an atmosphere of co-operation will help to ensure safer work places and less secretive management.
Bill C-293, if enacted, could well result in a hardening of attitudes that could work not for but against the speedy resolution of health and safety related problems in the work place. Instead of the co-operative resolution of work place concerns, this bill proposes resolving such matters before the Human Rights Commission quasi-judicial board with labour and management pitted against each other as adversaries. In my opinion this could only lead to more confrontation, less co-operation, less sharing of information on safety and health matters, and therefore greater secrecy and suspicion and more dangerous working environments for Canadians.
For these reasons I cannot support this bill. [Translation]


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I would also appreciate an opportunity to speak to Bill C-293.

I listened to the member from Elk Island with great interest. I was hoping that at some point he would get around to talking about the bill. Perhaps time ran out and he was not able to do that. Maybe in another incarnation at some other date he will be able to talk about the bill we are in fact debating today.
I cannot say that the bill has absolutely nothing to do with what the member talked about because there are one or two lines in the bill which come somewhat close, I suppose, to the issue referred. Again, it is only in a very general way.
This bill provides protection for people who are trying to act in the best public interest. That is what it has to do and little or nothing else. It provides for means to protect people who are employees of the public sector and who feel morally bound to protect the interests of the public.
There is always a difficulty for anyone who is a public servant. Who is the boss? The person who is a supervisor or the public, the taxpayers who are footing the bill? What happens when the two come in conflict?
Whose side does that employee who sees something wrong take, the side of what is good and proper or the side of the boss, when they believe in good conscience that those two sides are different from one another?
I think as a general principle all of us who represent the public interest in this House should believe in our conscience that it is not the side of the boss you take, it is the side of the public because it sent us here. That is a fundamental principle of our democratic system.
In order to provide that kind of accountability and those means, we need a bill such as this. Are there flaws in this bill? Probably. There are flaws in government bills all the time. That is not the issue. We can send this bill to committee and if we do not like it, we can defeat it there. However, I think in principle, I like it. I like some of the things it stands for.

Private Members' Business
If an employee, someone working for a Crown corporation, someone working in a government department, sees the boss bringing home the refrigerator that belongs to the office, what does he or she do? It is a question which should be of import to all of us.
As the member who proposed this bill said quite clearly earlier today, there are the general common law principles that apply, but they are clearly insufficient. Why should someone who is defending the public interest in good conscience have to then defend themselves in courts and everywhere else for having taken what was right to start with? That is the difficulty with the absence of any kind of law that protects whistleblowers, which is what we call people affected by this bill, people who denounce wrongdoing in good conscience, having the firm conviction that what they are reporting was a wrongdoing to start with.
On behalf of the Liberal caucus, last fall I put out a document entitled Public Sector Ethics. One part of the document refers to just that. I am the party's critic for public sector ethics. My colleague from Nepean is our critic for human rights and she, I know, has very important remarks to make with regard to this bill as well.
I quote from this document:

"Considering the government's recent problems in connection with action taken by public servants, it is imperative to implement a policy that provides effective protection for public servants who expose cases of waste, corruption and bribery. Public sector workers should be able to blow the whistle on this type of misconduct in the Public Service, without fear of retaliation".

If someone has a vendetta against the boss or against a colleague and he or she invents or concocts an alleged wrongdoing in order to get another person in trouble, that person should be properly chastised and reprimanded for doing so. That applies with or without such a law anyway.
What we should all want as Parliamentarians is to ensure that we have the laws to best protect the public interest. Other jurisdictions, the United States for one and possibly others, have such laws to protect the people who denounce wrongdoing.
As someone who has received-how should I put it-a number of brown envelopes in my years in public office, I
know dam well that the reason those envelopes are brown and come in under my door early in the morning, or are sent overnight now in the anonymous fax mechanism which is the new brown envelope system in this country, is that people do that because they want to denounce something that is wrong.
As parliamentarians we have to verify those facts, but it is strange to note that approximately 95 times out of 100 the information that is provided to us is accurate. It is dead on. People are reporting things which they believe to be incorrect and most of the time are incorrect when they do report it.
Even without that protection now people are largely providing information that is accurate, except that without that protection you do not have to be a genius to know that many people cannot and will not report incidents of wrongdoing simply because of their own personal fear. I do not blame them for having that fear.
If you are a civil servant or a sole support parent in the Public Service or elsewhere with two or three children at home and you see wrongdoing and you know that your conscience tells you that you should report it, your conscience also tells you that you have to put bread on the table. If you do report it and get caught and lose your job, then where are you? Then where is your loyalty toward your own family?
There are sometimes conflicting interests and it is our duty to protect the public interest. That is the reason this bill should proceed and go to committee.
If the member for Elk Island or anyone else thinks that the bill has to be corrected at that point, there is ample opportunity to do so at that time, but it should go ahead, in my opinion.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of my colleague's bill, Bill C-293, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code and the Public Service Employment Act.
At the outset I want to say that I was amazed by the remarks of the hon. member for Elk Island, who was not even talking about this bill. This does not talk about health and safety. This talks about everything else but health and safety in terms of providing the opportunity for workers to blow the whistle if they believe that actions of their employer, whether that employer is the Government of Canada or is covered under federal jurisdiction, are wrong.

In other words, without the fear of loss of job, loss of income, loss of ability to support their family, they can say to the appropriate authorities, not over the radio, not through television and not in the newspaper, that there is something happening here that is totally unacceptable.
A number of years ago I worked with an individual by the name of Bob Norbom who was a quality assurance inspector at Fleet Aerospace. He put his job on the line because he felt that the quality of the inspections, the quality of the products going into aircraft that were being flown by Canadians as well as others, was less than what it should be. As a result of his actions, as a result of his bravery, he lost his job. He received death threats. He received harassment and eventually he had to leave his own community to find employment elsewhere.
Workers in this country need some protection and my colleague's bill provides the basis for that protection. It may not be perfect. Heaven knows every time the government brings forward legislation it never comes out the same way it started because it learns through the committee process. What we are encouraging this House to do is adopt the concept in principle and send it off to committee for further study, for fine-tuning, and then we will see whether it is acceptable in a new revised form, or the same form, to the House.
There are other areas that we have to keep in mind. A worker in a shipyard who is told by his employer to dump environmentally unfriendly chemicals into the water should have the ability to report that without fear of losing his job. A health care worker employed by the federal government should have the ability to say he does not think the packaging on that shipment of blood to be shipped from the hospital to a lab is safe and there is a danger to those who come in contact with it, that is, passengers in commercial buses in the winter months when blood samples going from clinics or hospitals to laboratories over hundreds if not thousands of miles are stored in the travelling compartments, not in the holds underneath, but up on the racks above the passengers. A
Private Members' Business
health care worker should have the ability to report that without fear of losing his job.
The same can be said for flight attendants, for pilots who are being told to do things in a way that jeopardizes their lives and the lives of their passengers, not in a traditional health and safety issue context, but in the fact that someone has not de-iced those wings. I believe very shortly we will have a report from the Dryden inquiry that will show the systemic reasons why that crash occurred. In part it was because of the pressure on the employees to go past the fine line.
Another example, and I realize I do not have all that much time, is that late last fall after Nationair locked out its flight attendants and decided to continue to fly, questions were raised by myself and others about the safety of that airline using unqualified, quickly trained personnel to replace the experienced crews being locked out by the company.
I received an allegation from a flight attendant who found herself having to travel back on Nationair from where she was on vacation because that was the only way she could return. She observed a number of things that she felt were safety violations. She came to me and I reported those in writing to the Minister of Transport and asked him for an investigation because at the same time there was a Department of Transport inspector on that flight. There was a question as to whether he was observing the same things that she was.
The minister has since, as of February 3, got back to me and outlined his response. What I find interesting, and it relates to this whole question of whether employees need some kind of protection, is that on January 14 my leader got a letter from the president of Nationair, Mr. Robert Obadia, which says: "As you probably know by now all of Mr. Angus' allegations were found totally false by Transport Canada".
I get my answer today from the Minister of Transport and it is dated February 3. Nationair's letter is three weeks ago. It is no wonder that employees in the federal sector want some assurances because how did Nationair know what was going to be in the minister's letter?

Private Members' Business


An hon. member:: Three weeks ahead of time.


Iain Francis Angus: Three weeks ahead of time. Another reason, Mr. Speaker, why workers whether they be federal employees under the direct jurisdiction of either the Government of Canada or the Crown corporations, or workers in the private sector who come under federal jurisdiction need some kind of protection. They need some mechanism where they can go and say: "Look, I do not like what is happening. I am scared out of my wits that someone is going to be injured or someone is going to be hurt because of the actions of my supervisor or of my company," and they need that protection.
As my colleague said in her presentation in this House, it is not an automatic assumption, it is not an automatic publicizing of the allegations, it is a process that can be used to determine if what the individual is suggesting is occurring or is about to occur is fact.
I want to say in closing that the members on the government side should take a look at some of the other elements in government policy that provide for this very thing. In transport, when someone in the industry believes a safety violation is occurring, or a violation of the regulations of the act is occurring, there is a special phone number that they can call anonymously to report it, whether it is lack of de-icing, whether it is falsification of logs, whether it is falsification of maintenance reports. Any of those kind of possible violations can be reported.
All we are asking for is to give a similar mechanism to other workers in the federal Public Service, in the federal jurisdiction.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, I too am delighted to stand in the House and speak to Bill C-293, which is an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canadian Labour Code and the Public Service Employment Act on whistleblowing.
I,	as the human rights critic for the Liberal Party, feel quite strongly about this bill. I commend the member from the New Democratic Party for bringing it forward. Its purpose is to protect employees who in good faith report or blow the whistle on the serious misconduct of their employers. In this case the employer is the federal government.
The essence of this legislation has been called for over the past number of years and Canadians from coast to coast have grown more concerned with the conflict of
interest in public sector ethics as they have seen a dramatic rise in the allegations of misconduct. Public sector misconduct is directly related to public cynicism toward politics, the employees of the federal government and the politicians who are elected to this House of Commons.
Canadians have demanded better public policy to thwart incidences of abuse of public trust. Whistleblowing is but a small part of a much needed complete overhaul of legislation dealing with public sector ethics, but it is a very important step. As an example, in the United States there has been growing support for the protection of employees who act in the public interest by disclosing conduct by their employers that constitutes a breach of law or regulations.
Ten states within the United States of America have already initiated legislation that allows employees to whistleblow. Although all employees need whistleblowing security, the Public Service by its nature is even more susceptible to employer abuse. In the public sector, employees are working directly for those who pay their salaries, namely, the Canadian taxpayer and therefore have that much more responsibility to protect their interest to their fullest capacity.
Essentially, measures are needed to protect whistleblowers because whistleblowing can very easily become part of their jobs. Legislation such as that before us today is the starting point for bringing protection to those who know firsthand of government abuses. In protecting employees, this bill would recognize that there are times when it is in the public interest to encourage employee whistleblowing as long it is done in good faith. The Liberal opposition places public sector ethics high on the agenda. We have called for an effective policy to protect public servants who expose waste, corruption, graft and similar situations.
Public servants must be able to report illegal or unethical behaviour they encounter on the job without fear of reprisal. The Public Service Alliance of Canada has been calling for such protection for some time. Before the last federal election, they issued a questionnaire to all three of the major political parties. One question asked about whistleblowing. The Conservative Party responded that "adequate mechanisms are in place within the Public Service".
February 4, 1992

As the union representing for the most part non-management public servants, it is well aware not only of the misconduct that takes place, but of the retribution that can result when an employee feels compelled to report the waste or corruption or even the risk that results from that misconduct.
Following the forced back-to-work order that this government imposed on the PSAC workers last September, an abhorrent action in itself, the Public Service workers did in fact implement a whistleblowing system. Unfortunately, as it was in the interest of management for this system not to work, many public servants were afraid to use the service for fear of recrimination and reprisal. The incidents of misconduct that were reported, despite this fear, are evidence of just how necessary such a reporting system is.
As my colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell mentioned, quite often we, as members of Parliament, will receive via under the door the unmarked envelope with such indications of misconduct within the Public Service. The public sector work in areas that have a direct impact on the health and safety of Canadians. They are involved in meat and food inspection, transportation inspection, airport protection and environmental concerns. They must be free of the fear of recrimination.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada, in its questionnaire to all three major political parties, asked this very question. But the number of reported cases of wrongdoing in this government over the last few years is testament to the fact that there is a dire need for stronger measures.
I would like to mention one case in particular with Health and Welfare where a certain employee raised questions on the Meme breast implant and the dangers it posed to Canadian women and he was fired from his job. As it turns out now, we all know that he was correct in that assumption.
Of course, whistleblowing protection should not be allowed to contravene the basic common law principle that an employee owes his or her employer the general duties of loyalty, good faith and, in appropriate circumstances, confidentiality.
Private Members' Business
For instance, an employee should not be able to publicly blow the whistle without first using every internal means available to bring an end to the misdeed that is being reported. It is imperative that safeguards are also maintained for the employer. Concrete evidence of wrongdoing that affects public health and safety must be evident. This sort of legislation must not be used as a means of getting back at a manager in cases of personality conflict or as a means of airing personal grievances. If managers are to do their jobs properly, they must feel secure that they will not be brought up before the Human Rights Commission if, with just cause, they reprimand an employee for his or her misdeed.
I have already said that I support this bill in principle. However, I do question one aspect of its implementation. The bill states that an employee, with reasonable grounds for believing that the employer is engaging in or is about to engage in conduct that would be illegal or contrary to public health or safety, may file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
When the Ontario Law Reform Commission presented its proposals for whistleblowing legislation in 1988, it called for the establishment of an office of special counsel. This counsel would be an independent office that would investigate each complaint, decide whether there was just cause to blow the whistle and, if the whistle was blown, would protect the employee.
The Human Rights Commission should most certainly protect victims of discrimination due to whistleblowing. However, misconduct should not be reported to them but to a body formed expressly for that purpose.
It is not just the employees of the federal public sector who need to be protected. Also in the case of the federal body, we do not have an ombudsman where any person may go and try to correct a wrong. This is a very badly needed area within our federal system. I for one would certainly support an omnibus bill that would give anyone within the Canadian public the right to question what is happening in the Parliament of Canada.
I appreciate the opportunity of speaking on this bill in the House of Commons.

February 4, 1992
Adjournment Debate


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: There being no further members rising for debate, the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.
Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1), the order is dropped from the Order Paper.


SITTING SUSPENDED
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I therefore suspend the sitting of the House until six o'clock, at which time we will proceed with the adjournment debate.
At 5.56 p.m. the sitting of the House was suspended.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed at 6 p.m.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to deal with a subject that is certainly dear to some people's hearts, but I have to say it is not dear to the hearts of very many Canadians. What I refer to is the general suffering from our goods and services tax.
In this country today we have the world's most complicated tax system. This is passing strange when we recall that this government said that tax reform is essential to the well-being of the nation; tax reform, not tax penury.
We have heard from this government that harmonization with the provinces is essential to provide a fair tax. When he was referring to a GST for Canadians, the then Minister of Finance also said that harmonization would be the order of the day. However, we see that the gap between what was said and what was done is very large and this gap is very noticeable to very many Canadians because many of them are falling into this gap.
A few examples from the long rolls of misery caused by the GST are a two-tiered tax system, expensive to collect, nearly impossible to amend; a made-in-Canada recession, complete with an intractable economic malaise; the deindustrialization of our most prosperous
province and regional development a joke and an empty shell.
Small business has it right; small business has referred to the GST as a national tax tragedy. Compelling words from that sector which was supposed to benefit the most from the new era of tax harmony. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey estimates that compliance costs are in the neighbourhood of $10 billion. In general that $10 billion comes out of the pockets of the small business person, the man or the woman who runs a store, sells a product, the person trying to make a decent living in tough times, the person trying to make any living in tough times.
Big business did not have to pay for the system from which it has richly profited, and big business did not have to go out and assume the burden of the accounting costs or the other compliance fees; it already had the resources to do that. Did the government ever think of the comer store owner who used to do his or her own accounting until this bureaucratic behemoth was dropped into his or her lap.
Did the government ever think of someone in the service industry or the tourism industry or the transportation industry? Did the government think about cab drivers? I am sure that every member of this House at one time or another has to take taxies, and I can tell you and any of the government members opposite that if you want to know what the average Canadian thinks about this pernicious tax, come and take any taxi in the great city of Halifax. Let them know that you are a member from the government side and you will hear in words succinct and clear what the people of Halifax and Nova Scotia think about the GST. You will hear what they think you should do with it and you will hear why this government is held in such disrepute by ordinary Canadians trying to make a living, trying to survive, while their government appears to them to be systematically out to frustrate and defeat all their efforts.
Mr. Speaker, it is a shame and a scandal and the government has ,to act to make life a little simpler for ordinary Canadians.
Mr. Bill Domm (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister
for Science): Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the former speaker's constituents and the people in Nova Scotia will be happy to learn that the replacement of the manufacturers' sales tax-which this government did-was at the urging of all three political parties in all the committees which sat prior to the implementation of the GST.
February 4, 1992

She could spend her time to much more constructive advantage if she spent a little time talking to other Conservatives, Liberals and NDPs in the provincial legislatures. She could talk to our Conservative premier in the province of Nova Scotia and perhaps urge him to meld the tax with the federal tax. If she is really sincerely interested in saving taxpayers a lot of money she should do more to get the two taxes melded and therefore save 50 per cent.
She has already been advised by the minister responsible for the GST that the figures given by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business are a sham. I would refer the hon. member to Hansard of November 6 in which he makes those points, but I do not have enough time to repeat them.
Having said all that, it does not go unnoticed that our government now is getting letters back, as I am, from businessmen who find out that they like to get the GST back on their trucks and their cars and their phone bills and their heat and their rent and all of the things that they got no refund on when they paid the old manufacturers' sales tax.
There is a positive feeling out there despite the views of the member from Nova Scotia. There are positive views out there of the advantages of the refunds on the GST to businesses, and there are advantages out there to the tax credits given to those less fortunate and unable to pay the GST. I know senior citizens who pay no GST because their tax credit exceeds their purchases.
I think that she deserves to give this House more respect and spend more time lobbying the provinces and have the taxes melded to save 50 per cent of the GST.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, my concern is with regard to the premiums under the Unemployment Insurance Act which small business people must pay as well as employees.
On October 29, 1990, the then Minister of Finance stated: "If there is any shortfall, this will be made up by the government". He promised that the government would finance the deficit until the end of 1992 without raising the premiums. By 1993, it is supposed to be
Adjournment Debate
self-financing from the contributions paid by employers and employees.
That particular undertaking by the former Minister of Finance, who is presently the Minister for International Trade, has not been adhered to. The fact is that this undertaking by the government opposite has been broken time and time and time again. We are now in the midst of a major economic recession which has hit every community throughout this country. It is demonstrable in every region of the country. The economy is in a terrible recession, and what happened on January 1, 1992? The government across the way increased premiums for business people, employers and employees by some 14 per cent.
This may not appear to be a lot, but we are in the midst of a deep, biting recession today in Canada. There are increased costs for employers, and I make special reference to small businesses in this country. In my own constituency I think of all of those businesses in the service sector, the professions and anyone who has a job. Many of them do not have a job. The employees must also contribute substantially in this time of recession, thereby taking much needed money away from consumers, out of the economy, depriving Canadians and business from flourishing.
I hope the minister or the parliamentary secretary responding for the minister will give serious consideration to my request to have this particular measure revoked. It adds nothing to consumer confidence in this country. It adds nothing in terms of exacerbating the successes, if any, of small business in this particular recession. The government has adopted a very very negative measure with this increase in the premiums for unemployment insurance.
The Government of Canada has broken its commitment to the people of Canada time and time again. In the last number of years the unemployment insurance premiums have risen not by 14 per cent, but by 24 per cent. I ask the parliamentary secretary responding on behalf of the minister to give serious reflection, and in view of the present state of the economy, remove this increase for unemployment insurance premiums so that Canadians will have greater confidence and more cash in their hands. This would stimulate a very very weak economy.

February 4, 1992
Adjournment Debate


Mr. John A. MacDougall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has asked whether the government intends to increase the premium rate for unemployment insurance.
I have said in the past, and I shall repeat now, that the Unemployment Insurance Act specifies a process for determining the appropriate premium rate. That process requires the Canadian Employment and Immigration Commission to review the status of the UI Act and make a recommendation. The government will make its decision on the basis of the commission's report, the current economic climate, the fiscal situation and the financial integrity of the account. In short, the government makes a responsible decision based on all the relevant considerations once the review process is completed. The government refuses to look at the opposition's recommendation to make hasty or ill-informed decisions.
As the government stated in its last budget, the UI program is one of the most important elements of Canada's social safety net. It recognizes that the account must be maintained in a healthy condition. This means the rates will eventually have to be adjusted in a manner to ensure the fiscal integrity of the account.


HOUSING
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, do you remember just how you felt when you signed the offer to purchase on your home? Well, I do. I felt happy, excited, thrilled, but most of all I felt scared, darned scared because I really did not know if I was going to be able to afford to pay for that home. You and I are not alone and were not alone in feeling that way because most Canadians feel scared when they buy their home. They feel scared as to whether or not they are going to be able to purchase it or whether they will be able to finance it or find a mortgage for it.
That makes sense because in fact one third of all homeowners in this country could not have arranged a mortgage for their home if it had not been for something called mortgage insurance. One third of all of the homes in Canada were built with the help of mortgage insurance. The only mortgage insurance available right across this country was provided by the federal government
under the National Housing Act through the federal government's housing agency, CMHC.
Now, according to the cabinet's constitutional proposals, the federal government is going to get right out of housing altogether and hand it over exclusively to the provinces and the territories. If they do that, who is going to provide for the mortgage insurance which helped to build one third of all the homes in Canada? Certainly not the private sector. They will provide mortgage insurance in Toronto but they will not provide mortgage insurance in Calgary or Edmonton. Perhaps the provinces and territories will provide it. Perhaps we are going to have 10 provincial mortgage insurance funds and two territorial mortgage insurance funds instead of the one national fund that we have now. Perhaps, but do not count on it.
Who is going to provide for the home repair program that we have now for low income senior citizens? It is a program that is provided right across our country by the federal government. Who is going to provide for the urban and off-reserve remote housing for native Canadians that is presently provided right across Canada by the federal government through their housing agency, CMHC?
Who is going to maintain the 640,000 homes for low income seniors, for the working poor families, for disabled Canadians that form an essential part of our national social safety net?
If the federal government intends to get right out of housing and give it to the provinces exclusively, does it also intend to provide the provinces with more funding or with further taxing powers in order to enable the provinces to maintain the present national housing programs? If it does not provide more money and taxing powers, is it likely that the provinces are going to accept that housing responsibility?
Well, it is time to start talking about the facts. Mr. Minister, let us stop kidding the troops.


Mr. Jean-Guy Hudon (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the federal government does not intend to promote, and I do mean promote, any reduction in support for housing in Canada, but rather to recognize exclusive provincial jurisdiction in the housing field.

The proposal that the government put forward would retain federal responsibility for aboriginal people and for research and development.

In any case, it must be underlined that these are proposals that were put forward for discussion by Canadians. There has been opportunity for considerable public debate before the parliamentary committee and in the constitutional conferences. We hope that advice will emerge from the committee.
Depending on the views of Canadians, the government intends to discuss this matter with the provinces, including financial arrangements which may be necessary to enable provinces to carry out this responsibility. It would be premature to speculate on the outcome of discussions at this time.


HIBERNIA
Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, my concern is with the Hibernia project. I notice the latest development today is that Gulf Canada is pulling out of the Hibernia project. I suspect that is going to cause some concerns to the government and to all Canadians, perhaps.
The positive offshoot might be that there might be more Canadian content in the project.
It was suggested to me that 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the equipment and materials and products would be of Canadian content. The minister told me personally it would probably be in the vicinity of 60 per cent to 75 per cent.
My concern would be whether the percentage of Canadian content is skewed by the labour component which we certainly endorse and accept. We want people from Newfoundland to go to work. We appreciate that.
Tb test the waters, I went to St. John's to find out exactly why Algoma Steel lost a steel plate contract to a firm in Belgium when we feel that we are most definitely competitive in this product line. Our bid was so dramatically higher than that of the Belgian firm that we thought it had to be a case of dumping. We still believe that to be true.
Nevertheless, I was quite impressed with the people I met in St. John's, the government relations individual, the legal counsel, the project manager of contracts and
Adjournment Debate
the business manager. I met with all of them. I was very impressed and I think they are doing their level best.
At this time it is out of government control. It is at arm's length with deciding who shall get these contracts.
Without being too parochial I had concerns at first that only Algoma was concerned. But I have since had calls from other manufacturers, manufacturers that have spent as much as $100,000 and did not even get on the pre-qualifying bidding for the project. That has to concern everybody in Canada, but especially Canadian manufacturers who anticipated they would get some good solid contracts. Anyone who has spoken to me has suggested any other country would make dam sure that it would be extremely well represented and would gather the expertise so that it could export that expertise later on for other megaprojects across the world.
We believe that Canada has not been afforded that opportunity and many Canadian firms have been shut out simply because they could not gear up. They could not meet the very severe specifications of the project, which again we accept because they have to be very severe and stringent because of the safety concerns on the project.
Did this Belgian company buy or did it dump product into this country? Did it buy this initial contract so that it could qualify for all other steel contracts? The officials told me that they would rather deal with just one company than with all companies.
Algoma has suggested to ISTC, Industry, Science and Technology, that it should initiate a dumping investigation. That investigation I was told would take a week. Here we are a couple of months later. The investigation is not complete. I am not sure who is investigating.
Steel producers tell me they are in this together. They are concerned and they are saying Canada must be more involved, more representative of the firms that are losing these contracts. There is great concern out there and steel producers are in no financial position right now to proceed with these dumping charges. It is time consuming. It is very costly and they are asking the government for help. They need the help. The government must step in because they are just too cash strapped.
We are suggesting that the government has been too passive in this and we remain concerned about the Canadian content which is a target, not a regulation of the project.

Adjournment Debate


John Alexander Frances MacDougall: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the concerns that have been raised by the hon. member about Canadians not receiving sufficient benefits on the Hibernia project.
Like all Canadians, I am disappointed when Canadian companies are not successful in winning Hibernia contracts, but members should also be aware that literally dozens of Canadian companies have won contracts to supply Hibernia projects. Of the over $400 million in expenditures of the projects to date, over 70 per cent have been Canadian goods and services. This is in excess of the 55 per cent to 60 per cent of Canadian content targeted by the project set out by the Hibernia agreement.
Members also should be aware that local content for the first oil and gas development project in the North Sea was only at 25 per cent to 40 per cent. By international standards, Canadian companies are therefore doing better than their Norwegian or British counterparts in similar points of development of the offshore development.
The Hibernia project is providing substantial employment benefits to Canadians. At the end of December,
something in the order of 2,400 people are directly employed on the project. Eighty-three percent of these are Canadians. Over 600 were employed in Montreal designing the top side for the project and an additional 1,100 were working the bow arm in the Newfoundland building, the construction site of the Hibernia platform. Another 416 are employed in St. John's managing the project.
While many Canadians are benefiting from the Hibernia project, I am aware that some industries have been disappointed that they were unable to make major Hibernia contracts. The steel industry is one. I can tell the member that the government and the Canadian Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board are aware of the industry's concerns and we are working with the industry to ensure that its contracts are addressed at the time and moment. For example, Canadian steel producers are very much in the running for a contract to supply 70 tonnes of reinforcing steel for the project.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.23 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, February 5,1992