1992-11-16

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, May 15 consideration of the motion of Mr. Benjamin (p. 10825).
Ms. Nicole Roy-Arcelin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, the motion concerns the inability of municipal infrastructures to meet the current needs of Canadians with respect to water treatment and supply and to respond to their concerns about the environment and about threats to public health.
Infrastructures must be improved, expanded and modernized. This is indeed a tall order. To do so, it will be necessary to invest billions of dollars and to determine where the money should come from, which will not be easy, considering the economic situation all governments are facing today.
One point that should be made is the fact that water demand in municipalities is unlimited because there is no appropriate control system and no commensurate billing for this resource. Even if we did have commensurate rates without meters the many people who are connected to municipal water systems have no idea of the level of their water consumption.
Installing meters is essential for water conservation and to ensure this resource does not run out. All homes have meters for hydro and gas and most of the services we purchase are measured by weight and volume. A
supplier wants to know how much of his product is consumed and users should be able to check their consumption.
The federal government's responsibility for conservation and sustainable development of our water supply is limited to encouraging proper management of the resource and an appreciation of its value. Providing water meters or financing their purchase and installation is not a federal responsibility.
As was pointed out by my colleague, the hon. member for Regina-Lumsden, only 50 per cent of connections to public water mains in Canada have meters. Installing meters across the country would be the first essential step of any nation-wide program to renew Canadian municipal infrastructures. Without the ability to measure water consumption one cannot think of implementing a realistic rate structure to recover the full cost from the user.
Can we think of another multi-billion dollar industry that does not measure the usage of its main product? Can we imagine stopping at a filling station and paying the same price no matter the amount of gasoline desired? It is unthinkable.
Since measuring water consumption is of the utmost importance for recovering the full cost and setting a realistic rate structure and therefore is very important for municipal infrastructure, the minister will look carefully into the measurement of water consumption in order to see whether water meters should be installed in all Canadian municipalities and what benefits would flow from such action. The minister will first consider the current situation in Canada as far as water measurement is concerned and then discuss the costs and benefits.
In Canada only about half the public water service connections are metered. Furthermore, the smaller the community, the less likely it is to measure consumption, although consumption is not measured in large areas of some of the biggest cities, such as Calgary Toronto and Vancouver.

November 16, 1992
Private Members' Business
In cities where some connections are metered, 72 per cent of industrial use, 67 per cent of commercial use and only 31 per cent of domestic use are measured. This situation clearly works against any attempt to set prices for municipal water services that reflect their true value. It just cannot be done under such conditions.
Theoretically, consumers are as free to waste water when consumption is measured as when it is not. However, actual experience shows that the opposite happens. Volumes vary greatly between regions where consumption is measured and those where it is not. Households consume between 0.5 and 0.7 cubic metres per day where it is measured and 1.3 cubic metres per day where it is not. This is a universal phenomenon. This difference is due to the drop in consumption, often as much as 25 per cent, after meters are installed and users are charged on the basis of volume consumed.
We should understand that this drop in consumption does not follow an increase in unit cost but is because customers pay for each unit consumed. In Canada the prairies are far ahead of the other provinces in metering consumption. More than 70 per cent of prairie municipalities measure the consumption of all users and only 12 per cent do not measure it at all. By contrast less than 18 per cent of the cities and towns in British Columbia, Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and from 25 to 50 per cent of those in the other provinces measure what they consume.
We can thus conclude that much remains to be done before all Canadian municipalities adopt the principle of measuring water consumption. At $200 per connection it would cost nearly $800 million for equipment and installation to have water meters throughout the country. This is a small one-time expense to control the demand of an industry that brings in $3 billion a year.
Given the debate on water metering in many regions of the country and the size of the expenses involved, we must look into the costs and benefits. Several economic principles underlie the evaluation of water metering. As a general rule when the costs and benefits are thoroughly analyzed to judge the impact of metering on all water systems, including sewage treatment, municipalities find that the benefits far outweigh the costs, which are quickly recovered.
Many cities throughout the world have studied this issue and many very diverse studies are available. These give us a general idea of the economic costs and benefits of metering.
The Science Council of Canada examined the costs and benefits of water metering as part of the water guidelines it is considering for the future. According to one of these basic studies metering is cost-effective if water costs more than 21 cents a cubic metre and installing a meter costs less than $500. These two preconditions are met in most Canadian municipalities.
A 1984 report from the State of California shows that it costs only $80 to install a meter when a house is built.
A 1972 study in the Toronto area reported the results of a simulation of the costs and benefits of metering for the municipality of Etobicoke. Data taken from the simulation show a cost-benefit ratio of 1:1, indicating that metering is economically viable.
A 1980 Alberta environment study dealt with measuring water consumption in cities where water collection, treatment and distribution are centralized. The net benefit, after including all costs, was $29.47 per capita which means that metering is economically advantageous.
A study done in Perth, Australia, on ways to restrict access to water resources calculated the benefits each month instead of at the end of the year as is usually the case. The study produced a cost benefit ratio of 1:62, which again shows that metering makes good economic sense. We can therefore say with almost complete certainty that water metering saves money, not to mention the operational savings for the industry that supplies and treats water.
As well as being cost effective, water metering, combined with an effective rate structure, leads to a sharp drop in consumption. This drop is partly due to the psychological impact of metering, since consumers know that they can reduce their water bills. However, the reduction is also due to an economic factor, namely the rationalization of water consumption since users pay more the more they consume once the meters are installed.
Therefore, installing meters nationwide is an essential first step to restructuring the water industry in Canada in order to make it financially and environmentally viable. The studies done on metering have shown that it pays off. Water meters and realistic rates to recover the full

operating cost can lead to a 30 per cent drop in demand and eliminate the need to increase system capacity.


Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to support the motion relating to the infrastructure program.
It is important to note that all municipalities and provincial governments have tried to impress upon this government a number of things. First, the state of the infrastructure in this country demands immediate attention. Second, all three levels of government are prepared to work co-operatively and in concert with one another. All levels of government want to put the taxpayers' dollars into a combined effort and pool to invest in our infrastructure. This kind of a program is absolutely essential.
If one looks at the unemployment rate, especially in the construction industry throughout the country, one sees that this infrastructure program is not a frill, is not something we can postpone and do 10 or 15 years down the road. It needs to be done now.
There are good reasons to do it now. Interest rate costs and competitive opportunities now exist and municipalities could get good competitive bids to do water works, sewers, sidewalks, water plants, all the kinds of things we have acknowledged are very important to the quality of our lives.
If we truly believe in the environment, if we truly believe infrastructure is an investment in our people, in our neighbourhoods, in our communities, in people in terms of jobs, then there is no reason for us not to proceed.
I know the government is considering an infrastructure program. In its discussions with the provinces it has talked about highways. The provincial governments as well as the municipalities through their federation of Canadian municipalities have tried to convince the government of these priorities. It is not as if Canada and former governments have not participated in municipal infrastructure programs. In fact they were in place until 1984 when this present government came in and decided that it wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with investing in municipal and urban programs.
Private Members' Business
The precedent for a federal government to be involved in such a program is there. Canada has always done it. The federal government has always done it. All provincial premiers are prepared to put their taxpayers' dollars on the table. Every municipality is prepared to put every taxpayer's dollar on the table.
The Liberal Party has suggested this program for a great many years and we even had an all-party committee look at the infrastructure programs. I am happy to say that the former minister of housing, the member for Don Valley East and the member for Oshawa from the NDP have supported calling on this government for municipal infrastructure programs.
For some members of the government to suggest it is probably not their business to get involved in infrastructure programs and municipal programs is a bunch of hog-wash. For the member opposite to suggest that the way to do these infrastructure programs is to increase the price to the consumer for water is absolutely shirking the responsibility government has to this whole country. That seems to be this government's tack all the time: Let us look to someone else to solve the unemployment problem. Let us look to someone else to solve the environment problem. Let us look to someone else to solve the infrastructure problem.
We have a unique opportunity here. It needs to be pursued. Even the American infrastructure is in a state of absolute disrepair and the new president-elect recognizes that they have to invest in the infrastructure. Investing in infrastructure will produce jobs.
For those who say it is easy to stand up here and talk about spending because the deficit will be increased, in study after study, the OECD study, the FCM study, economists have all indicated that for every dollar put into infrastructure not only will it cause employment, but it will also have a ripple effect. In fact the impact on the deficit, if any, will be negligible.
If governments at all levels decide to put up money the private sector will also put up money. So you are going to leverage private sector investment in the program and hence do even more.
I want to reiterate that the government has a responsibility and the responsibility is to put our people back to work. There is no reason for people in the construction industry and other people who have skills to be sitting at

Private Members' Business
home collecting unemployment and for those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits to now be receiving social assistance when in fact these programs are ready to be implemented tomorrow. FCM says there are municipalities prepared to start building those bridges, to start building those sewers, to start building those water plants, to start building those water lines tomorrow. That is how quickly it can happen.
It is not something we have to study over and over again. People are getting absolutely fed up with inaction. We need to put people back to work. TTiis is a unique opportunity and a unique program which will bring us all together, municipalities, provincial governments, the federal government, the private sector, labour, all working together to solve an infrastructure problem in this country, an environmental problem in this country, and a jobs problem in this country.
This is a unique opportunity and if this government had the guts and the vision to want to solve our problems in terms of joblessness and was serious about solving our problems with respect to the environment, this opportunity would not be missed.
Again I call on this government finally to show the people of Canada that it is prepared to move in a very positive way with the economy by bringing forward this program which I think has the approval and the consensus of most members of this House, the municipalities, the provinces, labour, and the private sector.
There is no reason to study it further. We can do it in a fiscally responsible way and get on with building and rebuilding this country from the infrastructure up and investing in people. That is what we have to do.


Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, it is an important time, as other members have commented on, to talk about this particular motion before us today.
I want to congratulate the member of our caucus from Regina-Lumsden who has been pursuing this question of municipal infrastructure, planning and development for some time now. He is to be congratulated for having the foresight to have this motion brought before Parliament. It might be a bit of lucky timing on his part for this
motion to be the first item of business to be dealt with by this House upon our return.
It is important because there is a clear sense in the minds of Canadians right now that this government is adrift, that its conservative trickle-down policies, which were followed and were rejected by the American people in the last presidential election, pursued by the Conservative government are not working and it is clearly time for a change to seek new choices and to go in a new direction.
It is also very clear that this week, starting today, Canadians are expecting this House, and in particular the Prime Minister and the government, to say to Canadians exactly what it is that it is going to do to address the needs of the economy. The message that has been repeated perhaps ad nauseam following the referendum on October 26 is that now the referendum is out of the way at least for a short time that this government will turn its attention to the needs of the economy.
That has left a clear anticipation by Canadians that this week, perhaps starting today, we will hear from the government an economic outline of the plan that it is going to present to this House and to Canadians so that we can turn the economy around and get us out of the ditch the government has driven us into.
This motion gives the government an opportunity to do just that. It is a motion that calls on the House to join with provincial, municipal and regional governments to develop an infrastructure program that can help rebuild Canada.
One does not have to go very far to find out just how important it is to help rebuild our infrastructure. Just go to the front door of this building and see all of the work being done on the infrastructure for the House of Commons. The bus driver today said that they are digging up the water lines and the sewer lines. Yes, we probably need a big sewer line coming out of this place. If they can work on the infrastructure on Parliament Hill, certainly they can work on the infrastructure across Canada from coast to coast to coast.
What does infrastructure mean? Well it is clear to all of us who drive, who fly, who take our passenger rail service everywhere, that if we continue to ignore the work that must be done, the investment in our infra-

structure, we will then pay the price in ever greater amounts in the future.
To date this government has rejected out of hand any of those proposals though as of late we have heard hints from the Minister of Finance that he may consider an infrastructure program to tiy to kick-start the economy. I say one of the best infrastructure programs would be to scrap the GST. That would kick-start the economy.
What we need this government to do is to pay attention to those very details, the nitty-gritty parts of people's everyday lives. When they leave their houses in the morning, when they drive or take the bus to work, they know that their car or that bus is not going to be rattled to pieces because of holes in the pavement, that the bridges they drive across in this country are safe.
One of the best ways to address this infrastructure problem-and it is one that I have been working on myself in my riding and it is an issue that I share with my colleagues from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba- is the whole matter of highway upgrading and the question of the Yellowhead highway. Most people in western Canada are familiar with that particular highway, the northern Trans-Canada, as it is known to us in western Canada.
Sometimes it is just not fair. I wrote to the Minister of Transport recently. He wrote back telling me what this government is doing to help with highway construction in Atlantic Canada. I have nothing against the need to improve the roads in Atlantic Canada. This government is spending about $1.1 billion to help some of the provincial governments in Atlantic Canada rebuild some of the roads. Of course, there is much more work that needs to be done, but what about the Yellowhead highway?
Let us take a look at that. We used to have a program. The government says it cannot do this, that it has never done it before. Well in fact it was done before. We had a joint federal-provincial program called the Yellowhead Highway Improvement Program. It was a program between the federal and provincial governments in B.C. of $36 million and expired at the end of March 1990.
Private Members' Business
The new government, the Harcourt government in British Columbia and the transport minister there, Mr. Charbonneau, the member from Kamloops, fully support renewing that infrastructure program, the Yellowhead Highway Improvement Program. We have yet to get a signal or a message from this government that it will in fact endorse that program.
As the previous speaker mentioned, this is not something we have to study. We do not have to wait six months for a report to come in to tell us what we have to do. Those reports have been done. They are right and ready. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that if we called the village clerks in my riding and said that there was an infrastructure program ready to go and could they consider some projects that we could do, they would have those projects ready. They would be on the fax machine within minutes. We can do it.
The investment put into that will return to the public treasury in two ways. It is an investment we will eventually have to make in any event. If we do it now, it will save money. It will be cheaper to do now than to wait for years when it will cost considerably more. As well, estimates range. It has been said by some for example that for every $100 million we might invest in infrastructure the return to the public treasury in terms of taxation, money that we do not have to spend on UI and welfare that there is actually a net gain to the public treasury. That has been shown in a number of reports.
Unless it is keeping this as a big secret to be announced in a couple of weeks or so before an election campaign, why this government cannot seem to see that, is beyond me. I think most Canadians cannot understand this government's inaction on this issue as well.
In the short time I have left I appeal to this government to support this motion. I appeal to the Prime Minister to tell us today what this government is going to do when it comes to some economic direction. I ask for a little fairness. I ask that this government take a look at the kind of programs that can help communities, like the Yellowhead highway program that I am encouraging this government to sign because it is that kind of day-to-day bread and butter help that this government can provide to put Canadians to work. The government has a choice and that choice is for this infrastructure program. I encourage the government to support it.

Private Members' Business


Mrs. Dorothy Dobbie (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I really wish it were that easy.
I am going to refer to my notes because I have a number of points I want to make, particularly with regard to the question of rail grade separations and its logical extension to rail safety.
As of January 1989 with the proclamation of the Railway Safety Act, the railways of this country have had their primary responsibility for safe rail practices clearly established and brought up to date. The federal Department of Transport monitors railway operations and it is empowered to take action to correct any threat to safety of the public or railway personnel.
Our two major railways, CN and CP Rail, had the best and the third-best safety records respectively, of all major North American railway companies in 1990.
However, this does not mean to say that there will be any reduction in the monitoring of their operations. The department has every intention of completely fulfilling its obligation to ensure that safe procedures are followed.
Despite the commendable goal put forth by the hon. member opposite, I feel that we can make the taxpayers' money go a lot further with a well thought out and balanced program of grade crossing improvements and public education than we can by assigning huge amounts of money to a comparatively few grade separation projects.
The reality is that Transport Canada's grade crossing improvement program provides an immediate safety dividend at a relatively low cost at many locations across Canada. For example, it takes approximately $80,000 to install an automated light and bell warning system at a level crossing. Installation costs for flashing lights, gates and bells are about $150,000. The total cost to eliminate grade crossings by contrast is positively immense.
To use an illustration, CN Rail's 534 kilometre, high density main line between Montreal and Toronto has 135 grade crossings with active warning systems as well as a large number of crossings with passive systems including public, private or farm grade crossings. The total cost of building grade separations on this line alone at an average cost of $8 million each would be in the order of
$1 billion. This figure does not include pedestrian crossings.
There are more than 24,000 public grade crossings in Canada, 8,000 of which are equipped with automatic protection devices such as flashing light signals, bells or gates. The balance is protected by standard cross-buck grade crossing warning signals. In addition, there are some 33,000 private or farm crossings which are for the most part unprotected.
Prevention of accidents at grade crossings requires action by motorists, railways, road authorities and the federal government. Therefore, an example of where responsibilities must be accepted is the establishment and maintenance of clear sight lines to enable drivers to see approaching trains. Although this measure is cost effective, it is sometimes difficult to get the responsible party to carry out line-of-sight clearance. While the railway responds relatively quickly to orders to clear brush along the rights of way, municipalities may resist a similar request to clear railway lines in their jurisdiction.
Under the Railway Safety Act, the Minister of Transport has extensive powers to improve grade crossing safety to help prevent accidents and to initiate remedial measures after an accident. Railway safety inspectors also have considerable discretionary powers to act in the interests of safety. It has used these powers to impose speed restrictions on both the railway and the road authority where it feels it is necessary to limit risk.
It has also required road and/or railway traffic to stop before proceeding through a crossing and, where a severe threat to safety exists, it has actually closed crossings. An exceedingly important component for safety at railway crossings rests with education.
Transport Canada contributes $150,000 a year to the Railway Association of Canada's Operation Lifesaver, a public education program that promotes safety at railway crossings. A recent survey done for Transport Canada has shown that the public is generally unaware of the inherent dangers at railway crossings. Much of Operation Lifesaver's public education campaign, therefore, will be directed at the areas targeted by the survey in coming years.
Transport Canada does not just talk about safety, it spends a fair amount of money. There is an $8.5 million program in place to improve grade crossing warning systems. The department pays up to 80 per cent of the total cost of railway crossing improvements and the
November 16, 1992

balance is provided by the railways, municipalities or provinces.
These improvements include the installation of automatic warning devices such as flashing lights and bells, the interconnection of devices to highway traffic signals, lighting, improvements to the road approaches, to track layout, clearing of line-of-sight and construction of a road or rail detour. There have to be choices made every year as to which projects proceed and which must wait.
The criteria used to assess these projects try to address this frankly tough process as fairly as possible. They consider the rail and road traffic densities and speed, school, public bus and truck traffic, dangerous commodities carried by road and rail, the angle and the view of the crossing. Tragically, they also have to consider the accident history as well as the number of train tracks and the type of train operation and all of the physical road factors such as lanes and grades.
Despite what might be implied by the motion before us, it is not as if there is not concrete action every year to improve crossing safety. The money spent annually through the Railway Crossing Improvement Program, namely $8.5 million, would pay for only two modest grade separations each year. Contrast that, if you will, with the more than 100 at-grade crossings that are actually improved each year with these resources.
The existing programs have contributed significantly to increased levels of safety at our railway crossings. During the last 10 years crossing accidents have been reduced significantly. In 1990 there were 386 railway crossing accidents. While one would want that figure to be even lower, it is down sharply from the 826 accidents which occurred in 1980.
Transport Canada's grade crossing improvement fund certainly appears to be the most effective means available to us at the moment to improve railway safety. Safety has been improved at thousands of crossings through this program. Funds are allocated on a priority basis to try as much as humanly possible to see that railway crossings are as safe as we can make them.
The sentiments expressed by my hon. friend opposite are laudable, but grade separation projects must be looked at in the context of delivering the best and safest
Private Members' Business
possible service to the widest population. For no other reason, I cannot support my hon. friend's motion as presented.


Mr. Benjamin:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might put a question to the hon. member and ask if she realizes that the grade crossing fund has been cancelled.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. According to the rules, it is not possible to raise a question on this matter.


Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Speaker,
I am rather concerned. I understand the government House leader has been on television this morning saying that spending for infrastructure will do no good whatsoever. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are certainly several studies to show, in the United States context anyway, that spending in the public sector increases enormously the benefits to the private sector. If you think about it, it is rather obvious.
Whether it is railroads, bridges, highways, sewage treatment plants, hydroelectric generating capabilities, or whatever carried on through the public domain, it is rather obvious that if those things were not in place certainly the private sector would suffer enormously.
Imagine if the trucking industry was not able to transport the goods which it carries so well on our road system and had to transport over roads which were still gravel, for example. Saskatchewan is actually a pretty good example. Under the Conservative government in Saskatchewan, the roads deteriorated to an enormous extent. I can certainly understand why the municipalities and the trucking industry are saying that there has to be an improvement to the highways.
The point is that regardless of what segment of our society you look at, the private sector benefits enormously from the public expenditures in the whole realm of the infrastructure, whether it be municipal or on a national basis, or whether you are talking about sewer and water. This means that industries taking water from our rivers and streams for use in their plants may have to go to enormous lengths to treat the water so that it is pure enough for their use. This extra expenditure is certainly something which they have to take into account when they balance the bottom line. It is rather obvious that there is a benefit to the general public as well. When water is taken from the inlets to our public water

November 16, 1992
Private Members' Business
systems, the cleaner it is, the less expenditure we have to put forth as taxpayers in order to make it drinkable.
The Canadian Federation of Municipalities has done a tremendous amount of work on this. It should be commended for its efforts to raise the consciousness of the nation and hopefully draw the attention of the provincial and federal governments to the enormity of the problem facing the country. What we could term the situation we find ourselves in is a need for home improvement. It is rather obvious: If we never make any improvements to our homes, there comes a point where they deteriorate beyond a point where they are even habitable.
I would suggest that in the context of Canada being our home and the need for improvements, we have in many instances digressed, regressed and fallen to a point where some of our home is almost uninhabitable. That certainly would apply in so far as our rivers and streams are concerned. The South Saskatchewan River flows through the city of Saskatoon. There certainly is a tremendous amount of pollution getting into that river before it ever gets to the city.
I would like to add that in spite of the fact that the city of Saskatoon does have treatment plants for its sewage, there is certainly room for further treatment of that sewage before it goes back into the river for those who will be using it down stream from us. There is just no way that it is not obvious that if such action were to be taken that all citizens along our rivers and streams would certainly benefit from that expenditure.
The House is now back. We have been through a referendum where Canadians told us that the problem we are facing in this country for the most part is not some kind of a resolution to the esoteric way in which we view ourselves as a nation, but rather it is the nuts and bolts problem which we face and of course that is the economy. I do not think there is a member in this House who did not experience during the referendum the plea from the constituents to get on with what is really ailing this country and this economy and to do something about it.
It is just inconceivable how the government could say that there is no benefit from these kinds of expenditures. If we spend our resources on something which actually goes to create and put a better foundation under the
wealth of this nation, like an assessment of a city or a town, the more houses and things you have that are taxable within the jurisdiction, the broader the tax base is.
I assume the government is really saying that it is far better for the nation to spend money on paying off the interest on the debt, which seems to be rather unproductive, than it is to build roads and bridges which are productive and add enormously to the wealth of the nation.
I cannot for the life of me understand how it can possibly conceive that expending tremendous amounts of money on paying interest on the debt is adding to the wealth of the nation. It seems to me to be the opposite case. Most likely what is happening is that it is adding to the wealth of individuals in other nations because veiy few people to whom we pay that interest are in this country, and even those who are here are certainly doing the best they can to avoid contributing to the wealth of the nation.
The Canadian Federation of Municipalities is saying that we need access to clean water, as I have already alluded to, for a number of reasons, certainly not the least of which is the health of our citizens. That includes to no small degree the absolute necessity of water and sewage treatment plants on many Indian reserves which have been shown to be so lacking in those amenities, things we take for granted. As well, I have already alluded to the fact that they are saying we need better sewage treatment systems.
I cannot help but make a plea for the government to get away from the idea that it seems to be better to pay interest on money borrowed than it is to spend money on the infrastructure of this nation, which will put people to work. The money which is expended will go into the hands of people. In turn it will be spent in local communities and, to no small extent, will come back to the government in the form of taxation rather than out of the federal Treasury in the form of interest paid to banks and lending institutions that certainly will not return any. History shows that they have not returned any.
I congratulate the member from Regina who brought
forward this wonderful motion.
November 16, 1992


Mr. Lee Richardson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I could not start without commenting on the remarks of the previous speaker. I hope his remarks were in humour when he urged the government not to pay interest on the national debt, not to pay interest on the money it borrows. I am sure those of us who invest in our country and buy Canada Savings Bonds would be somewhat discouraged if the NDP came into office and we found that it was not going to pay interest on Canada Savings Bonds as the member has just suggested.
Do not pay interest on the national debt, do not pay your bills; I guess that is NDP policy. We know from the last session of Parliament that the NDP's policy for the debt is simply to print more money. This is what its financial critic said in the last session: "Just print more money", as if it would not cost the taxpayer any money.
The NDP policy of not paying interest on the debt is somewhat amusing to those of us who buy Canada Savings Bonds or have pension plans, whether it be the teachers' pension plan, the nurses' pension plan or even the old railway workers' pension plan, those of us who buy government bonds or government monetary issues expecting to receive a return on that investment to reinvest in pension plans. The NDP now says we should not pay interest on the money the government borrows.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Lee Richardson: That is exactly what the member said, that we should not pay interest on the money borrowed, that we should spend it on something else.


An hon. member:: Just write it off.


Lee Richardson: "Just write it off; do not pay interest" is what the NDP says. The member said 10 times in his speech: "Do not pay interest". It is unbelievable but true. We will look at the "blues".


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Who said that? Where and when?


Lee Richardson: Old fog-horn is bellowing down there, but the fact is the NDP member said seven or eight times during his remarks that we should not pay interest on the national debt.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I would agree that building up the national infrastructure is a laudable goal and one we can all support. My objective today is to convince members of the House that the motion of the
Private Members' Business
hon. member, the proposal he has made, is not a practical way or even a proper way of tackling this most important subject.
Let us look at the list of items that he proposes for our attention. He proposes improvements to the sewer and water treatment systems, road and bridge repair, and construction of grade separations at level railway crossings. I realize this is just a representative list but, even given that, the first thing that strikes me about it is that one of the items is clearly outside federal jurisdiction, a second is under active development, and a third, grade separations at railway level crossings, is already covered in a federal program.
Let me say I am not opposed to federal aid to other levels of government. I am as aware as the next person that all governments today are cash strapped. I am certainly not opposed to the use of scarce federal resources to achieve national goals that would otherwise be beyond the means of the responsible jurisdiction.
However, given that our means are limited, it surely is our duty as federal members to ensure that any such expenditure meets some recognized national goal. Otherwise we are just wasting valuable taxpayers' money.
Let us take a closer look at two of the hon. member's items. Sewer and water infrastructure is entirely a local matter. It is the most distant from federal jurisdiction of the items on the hon. member's list. Our first problem is deciding whether it is a matter for the federal government at all.
I do not for a moment deny that sewers and water treatment facilities are important, nor do I deny that they represent significant cost items for many Canadian municipalities. My objections are strictly practical. In today's tight economic climate the federal government must target its assistance to areas where it can make a difference nationally, and the federal government is committed to doing just that.
The hon. member proposes to build grade separations in place of level rail crossings. To put it in a nutshell grade separations are very expensive. They cost in the range of $3 million to $10 million each.
There is another kind of crossing, namely a protected level crossing with automated gates or lights, bells, or both. These projects cost in the range of $80,000 to

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$150,000. Quite clearly money will stretch further for protected level crossings than for grade separations. This is not to say that grade separations are not worth it, but rather we have a responsibility to bring the best safety systems available to the greatest number of crossings.
Finally there is the hon. member's suggestion for a federal contribution to repairs to the nation's roads and bridges. As a matter of fact on this issue we are not entirely in disagreement. Indeed I am also of the opinion that highway upgrading and reconstruction is one area where the federal government could perhaps invest some money, but I am equally certain that if we are going to invest our resources at all it should be toward a national highway system.
I want to stress the importance of lasting economic value as a criterion for federal funding of infrastructure projects. Highways are an example of an area where carefully considered strategic application of federal money will pay lasting dividends for the country as a whole.
What are some of those dividends? How do better roads help the economy? There are gains in fuel efficiency, highway safety and travel times. Most important there would be greater efficiency in our distribution system in our domestic market. As is well known, highway policy is an area where federal government has been working in collaboration with the provinces toward a national policy.
As the House will recall, earlier this year first ministers directed their ministers of transport to consult with their ministers of finance and explore ways of proceeding with this work, remaining consistent with fiscal restraints. Considerable progress has been made in the discussions between transport ministers and finance ministers across the country with a notion of looking at a national infrastructure system, improvement of highways and reconstruction in Canada today.
To conclude, I support deliberate, carefully thought out, long-term national policies on specific infrastructure issues like highways.
Unfortunately this is not what the hon. member is asking us to support today and therefore I am unable to support the hon. member's resolution as it has been presented.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired.

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of presidence on the Order Paper.



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Hon. John McDermid (for the Minister of Finance):: moved that Bill C-76, an act to amend certain statutes to implement certain fiscal provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 25, 1992, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee.


Mr. Riis:: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I was looking forward this morning to see what the first order of business would be and I wonder if I could briefly raise two points.
One relates to the important economic statement that the Prime Minister or Minister of Finance will be making forthwith. I wonder if I could ask my friend who is with us in the House at the moment, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, if he could indicate as specifically as possible when that statement may be made and whether it would be made in Parlia-' ment.
Second, we are getting a lot of calls this morning in the lobbies and in our offices, I am told, from people who are anxious to get copies of the NAFTA, either on floppy disk or hard copy. Since I understand we are now likely to begin holding hearings this week on NAFTA, it is not unreasonable that people would want to get a copy of it before they appear at the hearings.
I wonder if my hon. friend could assist or, if he does not know the answer in terms of where the material is available immediately, perhaps later in the day we could have someone report back so the people of Canada would know where to get copies of the NAFTA.
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Mr. Edwards:: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure whether it is Thursday or Question Period.
I will strive to be obliging to my hon. friend because I know he has emerged from several weeks, if not months, in lotus-land and is having reality immersion.
The reality is that there will indeed be a statement on economic matters and it will be soon. My hon. friend can count on that sort of exchange taking place in the House of Commons. In addition, I do not know the specific answer to his NAFTA question but I will endeavour to get it for him.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I simply want to acknowledge the fact that perhaps my point of order was slightly out of order at this point. But I thought, since it was the first time we had a chance to rise in the House of Commons, that it would be a reasonable point to put to my hon. friend. As he has indicated, he will get back later in the day with information as to where the floppy disk or the hard copy is available.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome all members back to the House of Commons. I know they all worked extremely hard on the constitutional matter. We now have that behind us. The people of Canada have spoken; we have listened and we are getting on with the business of Canada.


Mr. Milliken:: Let's get on with an election. They want to throw you out.


John Horton McDermid: There are the Liberals calling for an election. That is all they talk about. The last thing the people I talk to want is an election. They want us to get on with the business of Parliament, and that is what we are doing.
I am pleased today to lead off second reading debate on Bill C-76 which implements certain provisions from the 1992 budget. The Minister of Finance, in the lead up to the budget of 1992, held consultations across Canada with people from all walks of life; labour, special interest groups such as the handicapped, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, many of the trade associations, the financial institutions and so on. I participated with the Minister of Finance. These were tremendous consultation programs.
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At the consultations where we had these groups together, a consensus was formed from these consultations. The concerns were responded to by the Minister of Finance in his budget of 1992.
Canadians told the minister that the government should take action to help get the recovery back on track and to help Canadian firms and workers become more competitive. They also told him they were concerned about the tax burden, about government spending and about the deficit.
The budget contained measures to boost the competitiveness of Canadian firms and workers. We announced tax support for the manufacturing and processing sector worth almost $2.3 billion over five years. The capital cost allowance rate was increased for manufacturing and processing machinery from 25 to 30 per cent.
The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands laughs at that. He thinks it is funny. I suggest that he talk to the manufacturers in Kingston to see if they appreciate this. It is exactly what they asked for in the pre-budget consultation. He sits there and makes fun of it. I cannot believe it.
This will help make Canada's manufacturing and processing sector, which directly accounts for about one-fifth of Canada's economy and jobs, more competitive. He does not understand that. Liberals do not understand competitiveness.
We also indicated that we are prepared to reduce the withholding tax on direct dividends paid to non-residents. This step, combined with the drop in the manufacturing and processing tax rate, will end the competitive disadvantage we face in attracting and keeping business in Canada.
The budget also announced further actions to reduce government expenditures in order to reduce federal taxes. We believe that cutting spending to cut taxes is economically productive. It reflects our confidence in the judgment of individual Canadians about how best to put their money to work in building a stronger, more competitive economy. Moreover, cutting spending will reinforce the government's deficit reduction effort, while at the same time allowing us to direct scarce resources to important national priorities.

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The budget also provides tax relief through a number of measures to help Canadian families, students and students with disabilities.
In summary, the budget was fiscally prudent, socially responsive and economically sound. It reflects a realistic, balanced approach that will help pave the way for a return to sustained economic growth.
Bill C-76 will implement four measures contained in the budget. In order to help the government promote economic recovery, strengthen Canada's international competitiveness and further control its expenditures, the Small Businesses Loans Act, the Canada Student Loans Act, the Lobbyists Registration Act and the Salaries Act are all being amended.
First, I want to discuss the amendments to the Small Businesses Loans Act. Small businesses are a key to the healthy growth of Canada's economy. Reflecting their importance, our federal tax system offers significant support for small business. These recommendations came from the consultations with the small business sector leading up to the budget.
Small businesses enjoy a special reduced income tax rate of 12.8 per cent and that includes the 3 per cent surtax on the first $200,000 of business income. Canada's lifetime capital gains exemption provides an added incentive for individuals to invest in small business. Small businesses qualify for the most generous incentives for research and development in the G-7 countries, including a 35 per cent refundable federal tax credit instead of the general rate of 20 per cent. Over-all, Canada's federal tax system for small business is one of the most beneficial in the industrialized world. These measures provide Canadian small businesses with over $3 billion in support annually.
However, the government is aware that weathering the recession has drained the financial resources of many small businesses. As the economy moves into recovery, small businesses will need affordable financing to take advantage of the emerging opportunities for growth and help generate productive economic activity.
In order to provide greater assistance to small businesses and to help stimulate the process of recovery in
the economy, the Minister of Finance announced two measures in the budget to help small businesses.
A small business financing program, effective budget day, will help small businesses in financial difficulty, including farmers, to obtain loans at lower interest rates. Tax preferred small business financing bonds may be issued up until the end of this year and may have a maturity of up to five years. Therefore it can provide assistance well beyond the current year.
A complementary measure is contained in Bill C-76. The ceiling for loans to individual small businesses under the Small Businesses Loans Act will be double from $100,000 to $200,000. This change is in response to the increased financing needs of small business.
The Small Businesses Loans Act, first passed in 1961 by another Conservative administration, assists the private sector to obtain loans to establish, expand or modernize small businesses. The most recent amendment to the loan limit in 1980 established the ceiling at $100,000. As we all know, there have been considerable changes since that time, both in the purchasing power of the dollar and in the financing needs of small businesses.
The over-all consumer price index has roughly doubled since 1980. Doubling the Small Businesses Loans Act ceiling to $200,000 responds again to representations from the small business community and recognizes changes which have occurred over the past decade.
The current legislation authorizing the small business loans program will expire on March 31, 1993. The government will be introducing new legislation to extend the program. As part of this legislation, consideration is being given to modifying other program terms and conditions to take account of the concerns and needs expressed by smaller firms and the banking community.
Let me move now to a second important component of Bill C-76, the amendments to the Canada Student Loans Act.
The Canada student loan program was introduced in 1964 and makes financial help available to needy students pursuing studies at the post-secondary level. The program helps eligible students to meet the many costs involved in gaining a higher education. This is vitally important if Canada is to maintain and enhance its competitive position in a global economy. It is increasing-
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ly clear that an educated and skilled workforce is a prerequisite for improved productivity and prosperity in today's competitive world. I think we all agree with that.
To help support an educated and competitive workforce, the program's current structure must be modernized. Left unattended, it may very well cease to be an effective tool for access to post-secondary education. Accordingly, to preserve this important national program and to ease its administration, the Canada Student Loans Act will be amended.
The Secretary of State, who administers the program, is negotiating new arrangements for student loans with financial institutions. The aim of the negotiation is to reduce the growing cost of the program and to improve its efficiency by asking the lenders to share in the risks and the cost of defaults. Saving are expected to provide scope for the needed improvements to the program, including the elimination of the 3 per cent fee, which is an administrative fee, and an increase in the weekly loan ceilings.
These important measures will be implemented following successful completion of the negotiations and passage of any necessary amendments to the Canada Student Loans Act. In the meantime there are some measures that we can take now.
As currently structured, the federal government guarantees loans made to full-time students by lending institutions. The government pays the interest costs while the students are at school and for six months after graduation. After completing their studies, the students must enter into a consolidated repayment agreement with their lending institutions. If a student fads to enter into a repayment agreement or fails to maintain payments, the federal guarantee is honoured. In other words, the federal government pays off the loan and the borrower's debt becomes due to the taxpayers of Canada.
The estimated interest cost the federal government will pay under the program in 1991-92 is almost $190 million. Payments in 1991-92 to lenders for loans that have gone into default are estimated at $175 million. Collection costs will total over $24 million.
Moreover, total defaults outstanding as of March 31, 1992 were $980 million-almost a billion dollars-owed to the taxpayers of this country.
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Over the five-year period from 1985-86 to 1990-91, total program expenditures increased at a rate of over 9 per cent a year. It is essential that action be taken to ensure the continued financial viability of the Canada Student Loans Program.
Bill C-76 proposes to eliminate the six-month interest free period currently granted to full-time students upon their graduation. The budget had proposed this for the 1992-93 loan year, but following consultations with the financial institutions, this measure will now be effective for the loan year beginning August 1, 1993. This will coincide with planned improvements to the program and will give financial institutions the time required to implement the necessary adjustments to their systems.
It is important to remember that students can continue to benefit from Canada student loans, interest free, for the entire time they are in school. They will also continue to have up to six months after leaving school to make repayment arrangements with their lenders. However, during this period, interest on their loans will accrue. Borrowers in repayment will continue to be eligible for up to 18 months of interest relief in the event that they are encountering financial hardship in repaying their loans.
Through Bill C-76, the government is also moving to ease the administration of the Canada Student Loans Program. In future the necessary forms used in the program will be determined by the Secretary of State rather than the Governor in Council, as is the present practice. Making the forms an administrative matter and not part of regulations will provide better scope for planning and implementing administrative changes and co-ordinating these changes with the lenders and the provinces.
Bill C-76 also proposes to update the alternative payment formula which is designed to compensate provinces choosing to establish their own student loan programs as an alternative to participating in the Canada Student Loans Program.
The changes in Bill C-76 will ensure that the alternative payments to provinces that might opt out of the program reflect more accurately spending in the province on outstanding Canada student loans. In addition, a

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province will be required to give written notice 12 claiming the education credit and 400,000 supporting months before opting out of the program.	taxpayers claiming the transfer.
These proposed changes to the formula would have no The federal government also transfers funds each year impact on a province as long as it participates in the to the provinces and territories under the Established program. At the present time Quebec and the Northwest Programs Financing arrangements. The EPF transfers Territories do not participate in the program. They provide almost $6 billion annually in cash and tax administer their own student aid programs and receive	transfers in respect of post-secondary education. Educacompensatory payments from Canada determined by a tion, as I indicated earlier, is a vital element in ensuring formula in the Canada Student Loans Act.	continued prosperity for Canadians.
The federal government wants the Canada Student Loans Program to remain as widely available across the country as humanly possible. It is a national program and we want to keep it that way. The changes we are debating today will help to ensure that the program continues to provide assistance to needy students in participating provinces and territories, and to compensate jurisdictions offering their own alternative program.
Some hon. members may not be aware of just how much support the federal government does provide, either directly or indirectly, to post-secondary students. Support through the personal income tax system includes a tax credit in respect of tuition fees and a tax credit for each month of full-time study.
Also, if the post-secondary student does not have sufficient income to take advantage of the tuition and education credits his or her spouse, parent or grandparent may claim them up to a specified limit.
This measure recognizes that some students are in a non-tax paying position and are supported by the family. In addition, post-secondary students may earn tax free up to $500 of scholarship, bursary or fellowship income.
Let me point out that the Minister of Finance also announced in the budget an increase in tax assistance to post-secondary students. The dollar limit on which the education credit is calculated will be increased by one-third, from $60 to $80 per month of full-time study.
In addition, the limit on the total amount of tuition fee and education credits that may be claimed by another taxpayer will be increased from $600 to $680. These changes will benefit 600,000 post-secondary students
Consistent with our policies of fiscal restraint and responsible management, the Minister of Finance indicated in the budget that the government would strengthen its cost recovery performance. To this end, Bill C-76 proposes to amend the Lobbyists Registration Act. It is our view that the lobbyists registration program should be operated on a cost recovery basis.
Specifically the government proposes to amend the fee-setting regulation to allow the Govemor-in-Council to charge lobbyists a registration fee when registering under the act. The fee will be determined in consultation with the private sector.
Fees owing will also be made a debt to the Crown so that the Crown may sue in the civil courts to recover unpaid fees. To further encourage compliance, the current penalty avoidance incentives which exist to encourage compliance with the act will be extended to the registration fees.
Finally, Bill C-76 amends the Salaries Act. Last year the government froze ministerial, parliamentary and Public Service pay. We believe that in a period of national economic hardship, ministers of the Crown, including the Prime Minister, should further contribute to the restraint effort by cutting back their ministerial salaries. To meet this commitment, and to further assist the government to reduce its expenditures, the ministerial salaries of the Prime Minister and all ministers will be reduced by 5 per cent effective this past April 1.
In closing, I want to reiterate that the February budget was designed in response to what the government heard from Canadians in all parts of the country. The measures contained in this bill are an integral part of that response. They will help the government to live within the taxpayers' means and to create the conditions for recovery, strong growth and a more competitive economy.

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With this in mind, I encourage my hon. colleagues to give massive changes. We want some investment in people, speedy passage to this legislation.	not some niggardly cutbacks.


Mrs. Diane Marleau (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, I stand today to speak to Bill C-76 which is a budget implementation measure of the budget which was tabled last February.
Canadians all know that this government's fiscal measures are not working. There is a-total lack of trust. We are into a major recession. We can even call it a depression. We are still implementing measures that were brought forward in the budget of February 1992. We know today that the finance minister is preparing to bring forward either an economic statement or a mini budget shortly. We also know that the Prime Minister has said that his government has made mistakes. We asked the government when it was going to bring forward some new measures that would do something for the Canadian economy. Yes, the government has made mistakes and we can all feel it. Just go out on the streets and everyone will tell you that there are no jobs. From small business to big business to students, every Canadian is worried as to where we are going next.
This government does not know where it wants to go and it does not know how to get there. I ask the government to please do whatever it can to start making some concrete investments in Canadians. That is what we need. Canadians need to be able to constructively contribute to this country. It is absolutely impossible to do this under what this government has done.
The government has tried to tell people that it was responsible when it has done nothing. It had a prosperity initiative that cost $24 million which told us things we already knew. The government has told us that it has done polling. It spends millions of dollars every week on polling. It should know by now that it is not the polling that is going to do things for Canadians. It is what it is going to do about the results that it is hearing. It is impossible for us to continue in the same light that we have been continuing for the last eight years.
When the Prime Minister was first elected and first became the Prime Minister he said: "Watch me. You will not recognize this country when I am through with it". Boy, was he right. The problem is that we do not want to see our country the way it is right now. We want some
Bill C-76 purports to do many things. I listened to the ministers and I know they mean well, but they do not know what they are doing.
Let us talk about Canada student loans. Yes, it is important that students be able to get loans. It is essential because right now, most students were not able to get a summer job to help pay their way. Most of them are not able to get a large enough loan to keep on going. The problems that the students have right now are horrendous. However we go on preaching that we have to invest in our young people. Yes, we have to invest in our young people, but we have to help them along and we have to do more to help them.
When a student gets a Canada student loan it is not because he is rich or because he has the money. It is because he needs the help. There is no interest on the loan while he is a full-time student in school, but this government now says that as soon as he finishes his course there is no more interest-free period. From that day on the interest starts accumulating. That is fine if the student is able to get a job, but how many students have been able to get a job the day after they graduate? Very, very few. Those who do have part-time work which does not pay very much and have a great deal of difficulty of coping with what is happening to them.
This government in the last budget said: "Well, we have to do something about the defaults on Canada's student loans". That sounds like a good reason to collect from those who are not paying, especially from those who were able to get good jobs because of their educa-* tion. They should pay for their loans. I agree with that. However, one of the things that has been happening is that we have been terrorizing young people who have not been able to get jobs.
I have been in my riding and I cannot begin to tell you the number of people who have come to see me, crying, because some collection agency has been terrorizing them in their homes. I had one woman come to my office a week ago. She is the mother of a 26-year old who is on welfare. The collection agency found out where she lived, telephoned her and verbally abused this lady, laughed at her and told her: "Get a mortgage on your

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house. Pay off your son's loan". This is a 26-year old who is on welfare and who cannot get a job.
The mother does not own her own home. She came to me crying and asking: "Why are they doing this to me?" The collection agency said: "We can call you three times a day if we want to". When she came to see me I called the collection agency and asked: "Why are you terrorizing the mother of a 26-year old? She does not have any money. The son does not have any money. What are you doing? You have no right to terrorize the parent of a 26-year old".
First of all, I had a hard time getting the person at the collection agency to identify what company they were working for. They were demanding that the parents pay off the loan in full for the student. The parents did not have the money. The way these collection people treated me when I simply asked what company they worked for is unbelievable. Finally, after I spoke to them for a while, they agreed that they should not be terrorizing the parent of the 26-year old, that they should speak to him directly. However, what do you do when a young man is living on welfare? How can he make payments on a loan? I do not know. I know how little they get on welfare.
A young woman came to see me, again the same thing. She wanted to make payments but the collection agency was not giving her any option. They said: "You have to pay the balance in full". But when I called they said: "Well, no". These are just collection tactics.
Do we do the same thing with the Reichmann brothers when they default on a loan? Do we terrorize them? Are we telling them that their credit is finished?
On Friday another young man came to see me. He was very frightened. He said: "I do not have a job. I do not mind making payments but they do not want payments. They want the full amount. They told me that if I did not pay off the full amount, and I do not have the money to do that, they would garnishee my wages and I would never get another job because what employer would hire me if I owed this amount of money". I am shocked at the kind of treatment our young people are getting. This is disastrous. There is no need to go after the poorest of the poor that way. If they have jobs, by all means make
sure they pay. However, if they do not have jobs, what can you do? How discouraging it must be for these young people.
A lot of the reasons they do not have jobs is because of this government's policies. It is frightening to think that this government has lost total control, absolute total control of the economy. It is absolutely shameful.
It talks about investing in our future and investing in our young people. It has cut back on transfer payments for education, therefore tuition fees are increasing. How do you expect the poorest of the poor to cope with increased tuition fees and GST on books? They have to pay it. They do not have any choice. How do you expect them to cope with these kinds of things?
This particular bill does not even tell us whether they will be able to apply for interest relief. In the past, if after the first six months after graduation they did not have a job, they could apply for interest relief. I would like to find out if they can continue to apply for interest relief. Already we have passed the 3 per cent surcharge. Do people out there realize that students have to pay the 3 per cent in cash before they actually get the loan? If you need a loan to go to school where are you going to get the 3 per cent to pay for it in advance? You will have to borrow somewhere else so that when you get your loan you can pay it back. What kind of nonsense is that?
We talk about tax relief. I am pleased that during the last budget the government did bring in some measures that would offer tax relief. That is great if you have parents who can afford to pay for you and they can get the tax relief. What about the thousands of young people who do not have parents that can afford to pay for them? What about them? What good is giving them tax relief if they do not have any income? Any kind of measure that saves you income tax money does not work if you do not pay income tax already.
Right now I am very worried about what this is going to do. I know it is a minor thing to say that we are going to start charging interest from the day they graduate. In the scheme of things the Conservatives can say: After all, the government has lent them the money. What can we tell those young people about a job?
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If a person has a job and gets laid off under unemployment insurance he or she has been able to get training funds. Yes, that has been good. It means that not only is their tuition fee covered but also they get unemployment insurance while they are in training, although I am told that those funds have run out also.
In a sense these people have a greater advantage than other young people who have chosen to get their education before going out into the workforce. They have no retraining advantage. They do not even have any kind of a hope, most of them, of getting a job. I cannot tell the House the numbers of students that have been to my office with masters degrees, with economics degrees, with all kinds of education degrees that have been unable to find jobs.
It is a signal of a country in crisis when our young people have so little hope. Then we do something to change our policy. I know that this government is thinking about doing that, but it needs to do it today, not three weeks from now, not four weeks from now. The government needed to do it two years ago, but better late than never.
The first thing the government should do is admit that it has failed. It has already admitted that. It has failed. As soon as it realizes that, it should not wait two or three weeks. It should not wait one week. It should come out right away with some measure to invest in people.
I know that my Conservative friends across the way are going to say: "That is just the Liberals and their policy of spend, spend, spend". I tell them that investing in people is not a waste of money. A person who sits at home on welfare and is discouraged consumes as much money as the one who goes out and works at something and leaves something behind, be it in municipal infrastructure, sewer, water projects, whatever.
Would it not be better to have brought forward something in this budget concerning students to say that those students who have graduated, who have been unable to get jobs in order to start paying back their student loans, could do some community work and perhaps get credits against the interest or against their loans?
I believe that the president-elect of the United States has actually proposed something like this. Perhaps this
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government that has in the past always followed what the Americans do might consider this. Do members opposite not think it would be a good idea?
Think of a young person who is without work and living on welfare. How much better would such people feel about themselves if they were actually contributing something and at the same time keeping the collector on their student loans off their backs while they are waiting to find a job. Then they would be investing their time and would actually be doing something more constructive than sitting at home, living on welfare and worrying about where they are going to go next.
These are positive things that we can do for our students. They are very positive. We have to consider doing things for our students. We have to offer them the opportunity to gain some kind of experience, be it community work and perhaps some relief from their student loans or again just working physically at some infrastructure programs where there will actually be something left after they finish, such as a sewer built. All these things are going to have to be done. If they are not done this year they will have to be done next year.
It is important we consider the kinds of things that can be done and the way we direct our money. Perhaps we can redirect the money this government has been spending on polling. Every department does its own polling constantly. Can you imagine the millions of dollars that have gone into all of these polls? If the government redirected some of the advertising money or other misspent money, it would go a very long way toward creating the kinds of jobs that will leave something behind next year and the year after. I think it is very important.
We must remember there are very few dollars but we must use them in concrete ways that will help the people in the long term, not just in the short term. Doing nothing means the unemployed go from unemployment insurance to welfare. On welfare they get money, and it costs the government money, but there is nothing left. They can eat and sit at home, but imagine how much better it will be when they are able to go out and actually do something. They will feel much better and it will be

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much better for the country. They get money to live at that point because they are paid for work they have done.
There are many things having to do with students that are shameful in a country that values education, that values the future as we are purported to do. The fact that so many of our people are unemployed is absolutely the most shameful thing that we face every day as parliamentarians. That is the first thing we should concentrate on, getting those young people to be productive members of our society. We should be giving them the best education possible, making it easier for them to go to school and get that education rather than making it harder. We should be making it better for them so they do not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
One of the most shameful things I have learned is that there are food banks at every major school in the country pretty well and there is a tremendous demand at the food banks at the universities. Does that not tell you that many of our students are the poorest of the poor? They have to have food banks because these young people do not know where they are going to get their next meal. Is that not shameful in a country that wants its young people to be the best educated? How can they learn if they have empty bellies? There are a few jobs but they are few and far between. We must do something far more productive and far more decisive than these kinds of measures. Obviously that is why the finance minister is planning to bring out an economic statement and a mini budget.
There are four major parts to this particular bill, and one of them is the increase in the small business development loan ceiling. There will be an amendment to the Small Businesses Loans Act which increases the individual loan amount from $100,000 to $200,000. That is a good measure.
However, many small businesses have asked that the ceiling be made higher because not all financial institutions will deal with an amount of $200,000. They would prefer to have more institutions involved, but obviously that is something we can ask the government to consider while we are studying this bill in committee. I do not know if it would be agreeable to this kind of an
amendment. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and they have been extremely hard hit.
We talked about the students. We might as well talk about the small business people in the same way. They have borne the brunt of a lot of the costs of the GST. The smaller they are, the more difficult it has been for them to survive, to do the work associated with many of the changes that have come about due to this government's economic and fiscal policies. It is extremely important that we allow this kind of a ceiling because obviously if you are in big trouble the odds of getting a larger loan are not very good.
We also have to talk to bankers. The Federal Business Development Bank has perhaps to reconsider its mandate. It has now become just an ordinary bank. It will lend money the same way an ordinary bank will lend money. If the business is slightly risky it does not look at it.
Where does a small business person go when he or she is in financial trouble or when he or she needs some kind of bridge financing? It is not easy because these are tough times. People have not been making profits. They do not have a lot of collateral to offer for loans.
When there is no collateral more often than not banks will not look at you. They will not offer you a loan if you say you are going to work hard and make this happen. They are going to offer you a loan if you have something with which you can back up your loan, your personal home, or whatever investments you may have.
If you are in trouble as a small business person, you have already given your house and any other investments you might have had are long gone and your house is up as collateral. How do you increase the amounts you have?
It is especially important that this government come up with some policy to help small businesses in trouble, that the tightening up not occur. I know the banks are tiying their best but as financial institutions they have to show a profit to their shareholders. It very important that some scheme be worked out between the government and the banking institutions in order to allow the kinds of loans, the kinds of incentives for small businesses because they are the ones that create the jobs. They are the only way at this point that we have of really pulling ourselves out of this recession.
November 16, 1992

If we encourage our small business sector then we will be better off. We know that. Hopefully the small business people in our country, in our cities and in our towns will continue to work on. They work extremely long hours. If you have ever been in any kind of a small business usually it is owner operated. In hard times the owner works longer and longer hours under more stressful conditions. He cannot afford to hire people. Often they suffer from burnout.
Would it not be so much better if the owners could afford to hire a few people to help them, if there were some way that they could feel secure enough in their business to hire these young people who are without work. Then we have a chance.
I am asking this government to make sure that these kinds of policies are put in place so that our small business sector can grow and create jobs the way they have done in the past and the way they must continue to help us.
One of the other parts of this bill is the amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act. The government is saying that if it wants anything having to do with these lobbyists, it is that the whole cost be recovered. At first glance that sounds like a very good idea. However, one of the things that worries me is whether this will deny access to those people who need to lobby the government but have no money.
Let us make sure that we do not cut out all of the poorer people from getting through to government. The rich people and the rich lobbyists can always find a way around it, but in these hard times we must always be very much in touch with the poorer people so that the policies that are brought forward by this government can be talked about by these lobbyists who represent groups that do not have the kinds of dollars that perhaps some of the other ones have. Under the terms of the Lobbyists Registration Act, passed by Parliament in 1988, the statute would have to be reviewed on the third anniversary of the enactment. The third anniversary of the enactment was September 30, and as the House was adjourned for the referendum campaign the government put off the resumption of Parliament and the requirement to strike a committee.
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This committee, which should be struck now, would have one year to report back to the House to present its findings and any recommendations for amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act. This would be an opportunity to begin dealing constructively with the central issues in Canadian democracy: the relationship of the government to its people and how public policy is formed.
Will the mandate of this parliamentary committee be broadened to include the examination of how public policy advocacy is conducted generally in Canada including the use of advocacy advertising, coalition building, grassroots campaigns, public opinion polling, paid lobbyists, and the relative inequities between those few elements of society that can afford to hire highly skilled advocates and those many who cannot?
These are things that must be studied. We know that this piece of legislation will be passed, as this government does have a majority, but we ask that it consider these requests when it strikes the committee. It is extremely important for all Canadians.
The last one is an amendment to the Salaries Act which, effective April 1, 1992, cut the salaries of the Prime Minister, ministers and ministers of state by 5 per cent. That is good. Obviously when you freeze everybody else's salaries you must somehow lead the way and show that you are also prepared to tighten your belt. The only question is whether 5 per cent was enough. That can be debated. I was pleased to see the government do this.
On the other hand, we hear that the Prime Minister is thinking of reducing his cabinet. Let us remind all Canadians that since the Conservatives took office they have had the biggest cabinet ever. When the Liberals were in office the cabinet was not as large as it is now. Perhaps if back in 1984 the Conservatives had done a little bit more thinking rather than just talking they might have saved us millions of dollars by keeping it on the slimmer side, even slimmer than that of the Liberals. I have no objections to that.
That is a question that must be asked.
I know that this government is planning to bring forward some new initiatives. I look forward to hearing them because I, as well as most Canadians, do not believe that this government knows where it is going or

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has any idea what to do. This government is in total disarray. Canadians no longer trust this government. For all Canadians the sooner it resigns the better.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt):: It is my pleasure today to speak on the matter of Bill C-76, the omnibus tax or budget bill that is before the House today.
This bill is one that tags a number of different loose ends. It introduces some things that are probably a step in the right direction, and some things that are perhaps questionable.
The bill itself is essentially divided into four parts. The first deals with the Canada Student Loans Act and makes some necessary changes and some changes that are perhaps questionable. The second deals with the Lobbyists Registration Act and is once again a dichotomy. Some parts are essential and some parts are perhaps questionable with respect to some of the fine tuning of the bill. The third part reduces salaries of ministers and the Prime Minister by 5 per cent. I will have some comment on that a little bit later. The fourth part increases the Small Businesses Loans Act limit from $100,000 to $200,000.
First, allow me to give an overview before I speak specifically about these parts of the bill. If we examined the budget overall-and I am not going to speak at great length about the budget because I have had my kick at the cat as many others in the House have had. However, since this is set up in the budget it is relevant to examine the direction that this government has taken over the last few years and where we are at the present time.
Part of the reason I am bringing this up is because I read a recent statement by the Prime Minister in which he spoke about the recession and the depth of the recession. He said, essentially, that he did not realize how deep the recession would go, that some of the economists of the finance department had not recognized the difficulties and that possibly he would have changed some of the government's direction.


John Horton McDermid: Nobody did.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: It is interesting that the junior minister of finance says that nobody did. I would refer him specifically to the GST hearings of 1989-90 at which questions were constantly being asked of the witnesses and the economists-the economists of the Department
of Finance-that were before the committee. The number one question was: "Is there a prediction that there will be a recession commencing?" Of course the answer was yes.
Next they were asked: "Will the GST if it is brought in when it is planned to be brought in lengthen and increase the depth of that depression?" The answer was yes. If the member looks through them he will find it in there.


John Horton McDermid: Nobody did.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: I am telling the member to do his homework. I am telling him that it is there. I was on those committees. I heard it. I asked the questions and I got the responses.


John Horton McDermid: Who said that?


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: I want to tell the hon. member that if he does his research he will see that those predictions were made and that the Prime Minister should have been aware of them, as should the Minister of Finance, the junior minister of finance and their economists. It was predicted that this recession would be a deep recession and that their monetary policies would increase that problem. The minister closes his eyes to those facts. He does not want to hear that it was their monetary and fiscal policies that caused the problem. I want to remind them of that because they are going to hear from now until the election, and through the election, that the direction they have taken has been wrong. It has been pointed out to them time and time again.
I digress, but I felt that it was important to put it on record that this government has been misleading the people of Canada by telling them that, first of all, there was not a recession and then by saying that the recession was just a little bump and that its monetary and fiscal policies would solve the problems. They have not. I would suggest that they have caused the problems.
Now to examine the legislation before us. I would like to turn to the section dealing with Canada student loans and point out to the government that as a member of the public accounts committee I along with the members of that committee pointed out the difficulties with the collection of Canada student loans and the massive defaults on Canada student loans. There were problems in the collection and the government had to tighten that up.
November 16, 1992

What we have witnessed over the last little period of time is that in the over exuberance in the collection procedure the collectors who have been hired have hounded those in arrears. In many cases there is no apology for those people. They are clearly in the wrong. They owe the money and should have paid it.
What we are now finding is that some of the people that the collection agencies are going after and some of the people from whom the government has withheld income tax returns, GST credits, et cetera are now without work.
There are some who have become disabled. I recall one case in my riding in which the person had become disabled as a result of a motor vehicle accident since the time of borrowing the money and now it was collection time. Yes, there are provisions within the act and policies within the student loan department to make exceptions, exemptions and reasonable collection procedures.
Unfortunately when those people come into our offices they have already either lost the money or they are being hounded to death by a collection agency. That must stop.
The main thrust of this bill is a serious one that we must examine on behalf of students. It will require students to begin paying interest on loans from the time of graduation.
If you look at the other side, the government is saying: "We will increase the amount of money per week that you can get". However over the course of the time it is saying: "We are going to give you more money over the period that you need it. The interest rates may be increased because of the new administrative problems for which we will be paying and ultimately for which you will be paying but you will now have to pay interest from the time you graduate as opposed to six months later".
The accumulated principal and interest now owing increases. The student comes out of university owing $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 under the Canada Student Loans Act as well as the other loans that the student has had to get in order to get the education, and he or she has no guarantee of a job.
At the time that I finished high school I was able to go directly from high school into a job and then later go
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back to university. I was able to pay my own way through but that is not the case with many people. There are no jobs out there.
The jobs that were available in industry have collapsed. They are simply not there. They are not available any more. Therefore, it is very unfair to these students at this stage to say, particularly in these hard economic times: "You are going to have to pay interest for that period of time".
It is one thing to try to get the deficit and the debt under control, but it is another to put the onus, not just for paying off the debt but for paying off their own personal debts, onto the next generation coming up. It is shirking our responsibilities as members of Parliament and of our present generation to hoist that onto the younger generation. It will make it that much more difficult for them to become viable within the business community as they get out of universities and colleges. I have some problem with that.
I would like to turn to the Small Businesses Loans Act. While it appears to be laudable to increase from $100,000 to $200,000 the amount of money available to be loaned we must examine the many other things within that with regard to where we are going with small business.
We all know that small business, and we have said it before, is the backbone of Canadian employment and that 85 per cent of the increased employment throughout the last 10 years has been created by the small business community. We also know that the majority of profits from small businesses are put back into the Canadian economy, but on the other hand it seems that we do not make it that easy for the small business community.
If we examine the bankruptcy results for the last couple of years we see enormous increases in small business bankruptcies. There was an increase in bankruptcies just last month from September to October of something like 35 per cent compared to the same period last year.
We also have to examine what these small business people face when they are starting up, the capitalization, the money that they need in order to get going. They go to the banks. First I would suggest that the banks do not often look at the Small Businesses Loans Act in deciding whether or not they should finance.

November 16, 1992
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Often we talk to small business people from within the communities about what funds are available. If you ask them if they have ever looked at the Small Businesses Loans Act they say they have been in to see the bankers and their bankers have never told them about that particular act. I think that this is reflected in some of the loans under the Small Businesses Loans Act. If we look at the period from 1985 through to 1991, we see a decrease under the Small Businesses Loans Act of 69 per cent in loans, from 34,741 small businesses using that act in 1985 down to 10,640.1 think that is a reflection of the difficulty of what the small business community calls triple dipping and the fact that the bankers are not telling the small business community that the Small Businesses Loans Act is available to them.
The triple dipping I referred to is the wish of the banks to ensure their loans are looked after. They are guaranteed under the Small Businesses Loans Act. They are then given business collateral as well as personal collateral so that there is essentially triple collateral available to the banks. On collections, they often do not bother to pay attention as to whether they get the best value for their money when they are collecting on defaulted loans.
Also, if we look at the amount of money lent under the Small Businesses Loans Act for that same period of time, there is a decrease of 59 per cent of loans, from $1 billion approximately in 1985 down to $413,000 in 1991, a substantial drop. While the increased limit seems to be a good idea, I suggest that there is not much use to it if in fact the banks are not making the small businesses aware that this is available.
I should say at this point that I was pleased to see considered one of the suggestions that I have made to this House and a number of other members have made over the last two or three years, that of a one-stop shop.
I understand that the government, under the Minister of State for Small Businesses and others, has set up a pilot project in Edmonton where there will be under one roof a one-stop shop for the small business community. I am hoping that that pilot project will work out well within Edmonton and will be able to be expanded throughout Canada to ensure that the small business community can go to one stop under one roof and find out from that
area all of what is available from the federal government and perhaps also the provincial governments. I think that would be of great help to the small business community.
I think it is also interesting to note that as we look at money that is provided or loan guarantees provided by the federal government through the Small Businesses Loans Act and the Federal Business Development Bank, we see the loans getting larger and larger. If we speak to the banking community they tell us that there is as much paperwork to make a $20,000 loan as there is to make a $2 million or $10 million loan and they would much rather make the larger loans. I think that is the way the situation has gone in the banking community. There is a tendency to flow toward larger loans to larger corporations as opposed to assisting smaller businesses with smaller loans, the small capital loans.
I do not think that moving the floor up from $100,000 to $200,000 is going to help those smaller businesses. While I support the floor for those who need that increase, and I think that increase is needed, I suggest that we have got to do other things to make sure that the small business community is in fact getting the money it needs.
It is interesting to note also that there is a report card done on banking by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business each year. It is also interesting to note that the five major chartered banks are the bottom of the satisfaction scale. There has been some shifting over the years. I will say that the Bank of Montreal has made an effort. It appears to increase the availability of loans to small businesses. That is reflected in this report card, where they have come from the bottom last year up to somewhere in the middle, approximately a 56 per cent satisfaction rate. It is interesting to note that caisses populates and credit unions have the top ranking as far as satisfaction percentage with the small business community goes in this report card. It goes out to other institutions, down to trust companies, national banks and other chartered banks. Then you get into the big five. I think that is a tell-tale figure and a tell-tale report card in looking at the availability of funding through our chartered banks and through our banking community.

We as parliamentarians have to look at where we are going and what we have done in the past in ensuring that our small business community is in fact a viable community and that we make things somewhat easier on them in order to secure their loans while still protecting the profits, which can be somewhat less, of the lending institutions.
I would like to move on briefly to touch on the amendments to the lobby area and just flag one problem that I foresee in this. It is a good idea to ensure that the user pays to some extent in this particular case, but there are two parts of the lobbyist registrations. There are tier one lobbyists who lobby on behalf of several different firms or organizations and tier two lobbyists who are employees of a firm or organization and lobby exclusively for their employer.
I would suggest that while there is now a cost of some $500,000 for the registration per year of lobbyists, and there should be some way of getting that back from the larger firms, there is a potential problem here for those groups which lobby on behalf of women, minorities, native people, the disabled, the homeless, the poor. Many of these groups would fall under tier one. Many of these groups may perhaps be hard pressed to pay some of the lobbyist fees that may be required. It is not set out in this bill exactly what those lobbyist fees will be and how extensive, but I would suggest that in order to get back what it costs for the registration that they may have to be fairly substantial. I flag that as a potential problem in this particular area.
The final part of this bill of course is that of reducing the salaries of ministers and the Prime Minister by 5 per cent. While I do not think that anybody can criticize the government for cutting back and recognizing that, we should also recognize that these cutbacks mean approximately $100,000 in the over-all picture, if added up. I think that each minister gave up a matter of something like $2,400 and the Prime Minister slightly over $3,000. All this added together is $100,000. This is not a lot when we consider a budget of over $160 billion in expenditures, but I think this was a correct idea to show that there are problems out there and to lead the way. Capping the salaries of the members with a 0 per cent increase last year and taking a cut in the cabinet and prime ministerial salaries of 5 per cent shows that things are tight and things are tough and that our cabinet is willing to make
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that step. However, it is in fact tokenism and I think the government has to look deeper into some of the areas that it wants to go into.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on the remarks that the member from the New Democratic Party made in regard to the Small Businesses Loans Act.
I would corroborate the member's remarks in the sense that small businesses are the engine of growth and new job opportunity and the fact that most banking institutions in this country are not promoting and not working with small and medium sized businesses in providing this service of the $200,000 Government of Canada loan insurance. For many months now I have been asking the minister to try to promote this, and even to buy a bit of advertising space in some newspapers. This is a useful tax expenditure when promoting a service to the 1,700,000 small businesses and when most of the banking institutions are not aware of it.
I have just been handed the minister's press release wherein the banks are being urged to be more progressive in their attitude toward small business. I salute the minister for that.
If we could get something going in this House this week with that sector of the economy with the point person for the government then we can get some confidence going. We are not going to get a lot of confidence as we look to Royal Trust and the bigger guys. If we could somehow figure out a strategy this week where we could pump up the morale, pump up the entrepreneurial spirit with small and medium sized operators, I think Canadians would feel that maybe we are finally doing something constructive in this place.
I would like to ask the member a question related to student loans. I too have had the experience of young people who are being harassed by credit agencies coming to my office. Some of these stories are very harsh and very hard to believe. I think the government is making a mistake in the way it is handling the student loan situation. We know there is a major problem in terms of job opportunities for people coming out of university today. Maybe we should apply the same principles to student loans that we are applying to some of the restructuring going on with some of the loans to major corporations and the development industry.

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Would the member give me his comments on using the same formula for students that we use for major corporations?


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the member has hit on something that we often overlook, that the larger the loan the more willing the financial institutions are to work around and make exceptions and exemptions for them.
The investment we have in our young people through the student loans program is an investment in the future of Canada. By restructuring those loans to make it easier for those students to pay off their loans and get back in as an active member, and generating some funds and employment for Canada, we will be better off.


Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, I want to make just a couple of comments on the problems with post-secondary education created by the federal government. It has been acknowledged by the Canadian Federation of Students and others that there were a couple of positive proposals put forward. One was to increase the weekly rate and the other was to remove the 3 per cent tax. Then it reneged on it, as it has done with virtually everything else.
The cumulative negative effect on students will be that in addition to now being charged the 3 per cent tax, they will be charged additional interest payments. The second thing is they have changed the mission statement. The program used to be aimed at access to education. Now it is some mealy-mouthed statement about a need for a productive work force. There needs to be fair and decent access to the education system.


An hon. member:: Accessibility.


Raymond John Skelly: Accessibility is the comment and the need. What we do not need is discrimination with regard to accessibility. The Conservative government is turning access to universities and post-secondary education into an elitist opportunity for people who live in urban areas and a profound discrimination against the rural areas. Affordability diminishes while tuition costs are going up like a rocket.
The federal government has made major unilateral cuts to provincial partnership funding. The room and board and transportation loans are harder to get. Economic recession is in full tilt and yet the federal government makes it harder and harder for students to afford post-secondary education.
Defaults, in an economic recession, are a fact of life. That is why the guarantees are there. The primary principle of Canada student loans, which has been strangled by this federal government, is to provide Canadian young people-Canadians in general-accessibility to post-secondary education. This has been a complete miserable failure.
I wonder if the hon. member would agree with that.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: I think my friend makes some excellent points and I cannot argue with the points he made. I will throw it over to the Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism. I know that he has made an important announcement. I would have liked him perhaps to go further in his announcement when he stated that the economic recovery will also hinge on the banks committing additional dollars for new small business loans and generally being more receptive to the clear requirements of small and medium sized firms.
I would also have liked to have seen his negotiations try to ensure that there is no double and triple-dipping as far as collateral means go. I think he is well aware of the difficulties involved in that.


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, for just over 30 years the Small Businesses Loans Act or the SBLA has played a key role in the development of the small business community in Canada. One of the four items in this piece of legislation is the raising of the ceiling for the Small Businesses Loans Act to $200,000.
That is the part of this act I would like to make my references to today, although I would be glad to answer questions on other matters as well.

It is a fact that outside financing is essential for small businesses when initial financial resources, provided by a family member or a friend, are exhausted. These precious funds lent by relatives, the foundation of many small businesses, are usually soon spent especially when a business is expanding. That is when the SBLA program has proved to be useful and indeed veiy successful.
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Obtaining financing for small business is always a challenging task. I have expressed my concerns in the House this past year about the limit to credit that has been perceived for small business in this country.
This morning I met again with the Canadian Bankers' Association to press the point home to them about how important it is in this period when interest rates are low to do everything we can to extend credit to small businesses, and to as many of them as possible.
This particular piece of legislation helps us do that because it is a government guarantee bill that helps small businesses obtain much needed capital. The SBLA program makes debt financing more readily available for the purposes of establishment, expansion, modernization, or improvement.
In practical terms this program provides loans for the acquisition of fixed assets such as land or buildings, machinery and equipment, leasehold improvements, and even some computer software.
Thirty years ago at the inception of this program which was put into place by the previous Conservative government under John Diefenbaker, the maximum loan size was set at $25,000, a large amount at that time.
While this amount was appropriate at the time inflation over the years eroded the dollar's purchasing power and so amendments to the act raised the loan ceiling to its present maximum of $100,000.
Now, as part of the government's continuing commitment to the small business sector, the Minister of Finance, through Bill C-76, is recommending to this House that the SBLA be amended to further increase the loan ceiling to $200,000.
This is an important change and one that has been requested by the small business community and by financial institutions.
As a result of Bill C-76 financial institutions will have the flexibility they need to meet the credit requirements of the small business sector in general and in particular growth companies, that segment of the small business community that presents the most challenge to financiers.
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The present ceiling contained in the act, which is $100,000, is generally sufficient to respond to credit needs of new small businesses. With smaller operations, owner equity and family or friends investing in the business, start ups generally require loans in the $30,000 or $40,000 range. Indeed the average loan under the program is $38,000, with a significant number of them under $20,000.
Nonetheless, a significant number of start-up operations do require more capital and this bill will make it available to them. Even more important, the change we are proposing recognizes the risks inherent in expanding a business operation, risks well known to financial institutions which tend to reduce their willingness to lend. Purchasing technology, expanding plant operations or exploring export opportunities all cost money. This puts pressure on the balance sheet that the small, early stage business is not equipped to deal with.
Without an immediate growth in sales to offset the capital expenditure cash flow suffers and the growth phase can stall. Here is where this program steps in and helps meet that problem. With this program amended to guarantee loans up to $200,000 the short-term impact on the financial operations is reduced and the business can then concentrate on taking advantage of the expansion to service the additional debt. In this way the SBLA can act as a bridge between business phases ensuring a smooth growth period for small and medium-sized enterprises.
As is presently the case, the financial institutions will be required to impose a normal business regime with respect to the granting of credit under the program. This process, combined with a normal monitoring of the program by ISTC officials in Ottawa, will ensure there is no change to the normal government liabilities associated with the SBLA.
Members who have heard me speak on the issue of small business financing will have heard me focus not so much on debt, which the SBLA addresses itself to, but on equity as the key capital concern of small business. I have focused on the need for equity.
I would not want members to get the impression that by focusing today on this particular debt instrument I have changed my views. I have not. I continue to hold the view that access to equity is the most important issue for

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small business. We are working on a number of fronts in that regard.
Notwithstanding this, the small business community requires access to loans. We are committed to meeting that requirement because we recognize the important role that small and medium sized enterprises play in the Canadian economy. It is important to note that the SBLA program is a program for small business, not big business and not medium business but small business.
Only companies with revenues of $2 million or less are currently eligible to participate in the program. This means the assistance implicit in the program is being directed to the small end of the business spectrum in terms of size, but I might add that it is the big end of the spectrum in terms of contribution to Canada's economic well-being and growth.
In fact, I think most Canadians know that 81 per cent of all the new jobs in the last 10 years in the Canadian economy were created not by big business but by small businesses, those with less than 100 employees.
As members are also no doubt aware, small business is a major engine of growth in this country. For example, almost 99 per cent of the approximately 900,000 incorporated businesses are small-they have fewer than 100 employees-and 36 per cent of total business employment is represented by the small business community. Since 1984 small business has created, as I already said, over 81 per cent of net new jobs.
Small businesses also play a significant role in the creation and use of innovation, which is so vital in the increasingly competitive world in which we live. For example, more than one-half of the Canadian companies carrying out research and development have fewer than 50 employees. These facts and figures state simply and powerfully the key role that Canada's entrepreneurs play, in many cases with the help of the SBLA.
When I ran for public office the first time in 19811 was concerned about the increased dependence of Canadians on big government, big institutions, big business, as shown in the seventies. I saw other countries with a tremendous amount of entrepreneurial dynamism. I was worried that Canada did not have that.
Since the early eighties this country has become much
more entrepreneurial, and the SBLA program has played an important part in helping to make that happen. Since its inception some $7.6 billion in more than 280,000 loans have been disbursed under the program. In recent years almost 40 per cent of all loans have been to start ups, with 60 per cent to clients that were less than three years old. This program helps companies get going, especially in the early stages.
It also means jobs, and this is very instructive. Based on figures reported by the borrowers, in the range of
24,000	jobs were created by the program's clients last year alone. With the net cost of the program for that year of just $27 million this amounts to an average cost per job of just over a thousand dollars-a very cost effective performance.
This is why members of the House of Commons from all parties are fans of the SBLA and why they support it. There were some very constructive comments made by the Liberal member and the NDP member on this particular part of the bill with regard to the Small Businesses Loans Act.
In a nutshell the program provides banks and many other smaller financial institutions such as caisses populates, with an 85 per cent guarantee against loan losses for eligible loans. That is how it works. Private sector lenders are the sole delivery agents. There are no government bureaucrats delivering them. People just go to their financial institutions and apply there. We set the rules and the lenders make credit decisions within those rules. We do not have an array of officials administering the program. Only 22 government employees do all the work.
The loan guarantee enables lenders to make loans to businesses which they would not otherwise undertake without the guarantee, for example viable companies with a limited track record or with inadequate or inappropriate collateral. In particular risky types of businesses or perhaps those outside the major metropolitan areas are generally clients of the program.
This bill will allow us the opportunity to further improve what is already a successful and necessary program for Canada's small business sector. The change we are proposing is supported by the small business

community and its representatives, as well as by the lending community. It is an important tool in the government's over-all effort to create an economic environment conducive to small business growth, which includes low and simplified taxes, price stability, low inflation and low interest rates. This bill can be made more dynamic in the months and years ahead.
While my friends opposite may not agree with everything I have said I do believe that they agree that everything possible must be done to help our small business sector lead the recovery. Bill C-76 will help them do that. I urge all party support quickly for this very important bill.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the minister. I know that he has avoided the particular subject of ministers' salaries which I believe is dealt with in this bill. He mentioned the Salaries Act which pertained to his and his colleagues' salaries. I know they are being reduced and I sympathize with the minister because frankly I do not feel that the minister is over paid. For the moment we will let that pass.
Would he not agree that the government could have saved a lot more money than the rather modest decrease in ministers' salaries proposed in this bill if it had chopped the size of the cabinet from the overweenmg, over sized, and grossly inefficient group of 39 cabinet ministers that we have in office now? It is the largest cabinet in history, and Canadians have been saddled with it and have been paying for it through the nose since 1984.
Would it not have been better, in his view, if the Prime Minister had reduced the cabinet by cutting out the dead wood and reducing it to a smaller number with a little less dead wood?


An hon. member:: There would be nothing left.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: My friend is unduly harsh. He said there would be nothing left. That is unfair. There are a few members of the cabinet who are not dead wood.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Name them.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The member for Kamloops wants me to name them, but I would not want to embarrass the others. It is better and safer, as he knows, to refer to a lot of dead wood and let the public and the press decide who they think is dead wood.
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Would the hon. minister enlighten us on whether he thinks we could have saved a lot more money by chopping the cabinet instead of proposing this modest reduction in ministers' salaries? Would it not have been better for the Canadian public if we had done that?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear from my hon. friend on this subject. I am astonished to hear that he is against the cutting of ministerial pay.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I did not say that.


Thomas Hockin: He expressed that he did not think this was a particularly good reform. He was veiy complimentary but he said that we did not save very much money with it. However it is important symbolically. When we are asking Canadians to tighten their belts, it is important that ministers do so as well.
His next question about the size of cabinet was a more interesting one. Let me say that I think he is taking the position of Preston Manning who said last week that all ministers of state represent nothing but narrow specialized interests and all must go.
I do not believe that small business is a narrow specialized interest. I do not believe that small business which creates over 80 per cent of all the new jobs in Canada is a narrow specialized interest. I do not agree with Preston Manning.
Small business is the engine that will take us out of the restraints of the present economy. Small business needs support, and that is what this bill is for.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I want to add that indeed small business is driving the recovery. We should do everything we can to support that sector.
I listened to the hon. minister's speech carefully. The other day a group of students from Cariboo College approached me regarding the six-month grace period that is now being removed. Needless to say it is a real struggle for students coming out of colleges, universities and so on. Their ability to repay their loans is being further challenged by the economic downturn.
The question put to me was the following one: Why would the government be making life more difficult for students entering the work force at this critical point when it has agreed to spend over $4 billion on attack helicopters? A lot of these students did not see this as necessarily a priority. Important, yes, but is it more of a

November 16, 1992
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priority than providing assistance and encouragement to our young people entering the job market?
I wonder if I could put a question on their behalf to the hon. minister to help explain to them why $4 billion-actually it is more than that-on attack helicopters is a greater priority than helping young students after they graduate in those critical few years as they tiy to get back on their feet.


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for his question. The changes that are being made here to the Canada Student Loans Act are precisely to help the student by removing the administration fee while they are in university, while they are in college. That is when they need the help.
We have removed the 3 per cent fee in an attempt to capture them at student age so that they would not be burdened with the fee when attending an institution. The philosophy of the bill is to make sure that students are not burdened with that 3 per cent fee while they are in college.
I know the hon. member agrees with that change. We have done this in order to underline the importance of young people in our economy and the importance of education.
As for attack helicopters, I think the hon. member believes in search and rescue. He believes in policing our fishery zones to make sure that foreign fleets are not catching fish there, to make sure that international agreements with respect to fish are complied with, and to look after that now that over eight countries have nuclear submarines.
The hon. member is an intelligent member of Parliament. We have these frigates but they cannot do anything without helicopters. He knows that. If we do not have helicopters we might as well not build the frigates. Once we have these helicopters we will have the greatest range of any country in terms of policing the seas. We will have the safest vehicles to make sure that search and rescue can happen properly.
All of this builds a greater country. It builds jobs and helps the young people to whom he refers.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I am referring to the minister's media release
of either today or yesterday, wherein he urged the banks to loosen their purse strings toward small business.
My concern is that this may be put to the Canadian Bankers' Association but I am not convinced financial institutions will follow through. As the minister knows, a lot of the branch offices of these financial institutions are working on memos from head office. Right now credit for small business has been very tough. This media release is a total about-face in terms of the direction the minister is giving to the banks. They have not been supplying credit generously to small business and he is giving them an instrument to make it a lot easier.
What type of accountability will the minister put in place to make sure that what is in this press release actually happens?


Thomas Hockin: Mr. Speaker, that is a very responsible question. I met this morning with the Canadian Bankers' Association to put in place the mechanism to which the member refers.
It is fine to have a Small Businesses Loans Act. Hopefully we will pass this bill and will have a higher ceiling in place. After that we will want the banks to pick it up and use it by giving people loans.
They confirmed to me this morning that they are to do a major advertising campaign on this issue. They are also to get head office to instruct the account managers in every branch to take it seriously. They have also told me today-and the member can discuss it with them directly if he wants-that they are to have a major advertising campaign to try to heighten the awareness of small business in all major chartered banks.
They also told me that there has not been much take-up of these possibilities by the credit unions, the trust companies and the insurance companies. They can use them too and I would like to see it happen.
Every few months I meet with the banks and tell them to report to me on the performance of small business financing. This morning they told me there has been an increase in the past quarter of loans to small business. Frankly I am not too impressed with the amounts, but at least it is up 2 per cent in one bank, 4 per cent in another and 9 per cent in another. There has been a slight improvement in credit availability in the last quarter. The FBDB, the bank for which I am responsible to
November 16, 1992

Parliament, has increased its loans 13 per cent in the last year.
I am starting to see a sign of improved credit availability. It is still not good enough, and I agree with the hon. member we should monitor it closely.


Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I found it a bit intriguing to listen to the minister for small businesses and to notice that while he was talking about matters within his portfolio he had to read fairly slavishly the speech in front of him in both languages. However, when it came time to quote Preston Manning he had it down by heart, word for word.
I thought that was fairly instructive. Members over there are experts at quoting Preston Manning. If only they were as adept, as skilled and as familiar with the concerns including some of the graphic quotes about this government from ordinary Canadians, we would be a lot better off.
The following appeared in The Ottawa Citizen a couple of days ago:
The Prime Minister has admitted that he failed to realize the scope
of the recession and he may have mistimed some important economic
initiatives.
That is like my standing here and saying that Christmas this year is coming on December 25. If he failed to realize that, he must be about the only Canadian, let alone the only leader out there. If he only now realizes that he mistimed some of his initiatives, again he must be the only one out there.
Who knows? Maybe there are a few more things he did not know until now that he is prepared to own up to. Does he not know yet, for example, that because of the kind of legislation we have before us today we are losing some of our best minds in the area of research and development to other countries?
I heard an agonizing story this morning. I had in my office a lady professor from the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education. I asked her for examples and she gave me two specific examples, both of eminent researchers from a couple of universities in Montreal who have gone in one case to Harvard and in another case to UCLA in California. In the first case the person has a research budget four times what he could have at a Canadian university. This relates directly to the way the government has treated research and development.
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Is the Prime Minister now prepared to do a mea culpa on this one too? Is he now prepared to say: "I did not know that my policies were causing such havoc in the university community?" Does he want to do a mea culpa now by saying: "I did not realize that I was keeping so many students out of university because since 19841 have not adjusted the floor amount that a person can access under Canada Student Loans?"
That is a fact. In eight years this government, despite increasing costs, inflation and so on, has not adjusted the amount that students can apply for. Even when they qualify for a student loan, they do not have enough in their hands to get through university.
Does he want to do a mea culpa on that one and say: "I did not know about the recession; I did not know I was driving all the best minds out of the country; and I did not know I was standing in the way of thousands of would-be university students getting into university?"
On other matters, does he now know what his policy has done in terms of foreign overfishing on the south coast of Newfoundland and the fish plants that have closed? Does he now know about the thousands and tens of thousands of people who are put out of work? Does he want to do a mea culpa on that one right now?
Does he want to admit and apologize for the devastation, the unfairness of the fisheries programs being implemented by his minister of fisheries as they relate to people on the south coast and the southwest coast of Newfoundland? Does he want to admit and apologize for the blatant unfairness as it relates to the people of Ramea who handled northern cod before the minister knew what a northern cod or a southern cod looked like?
Those people are being hung out to dry. Does the Prime Minister want to do a mea culpa on that particular issue while he is in a fessing up mood?
Deathbed repentances, whether to do with recession, the depths of it, the devastation caused by his policy on foreigners fishing off the Grand Banks, Canada Student Loans or the brain drain from Canada to other countries, particularly the United States, ought to be seen for what they are.
Someone has said that nothing concentrates a man's thinking as much as the certain knowledge that he is to be hanged in the morning. Maybe the Prime Minister has had more than one touch of reality. Maybe he is beginning, a couple of weeks after the event, to absorb what the public said to him on October 26.1 say to him

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that what the public said to the Prime Minister on referendum day had very little to do with the Constitution.
None is so blind as he who will not see. If the Prime Minister does not see clearly or graphically and does not hear what the message was-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I think it may be useful to remind the hon. member that the debate is on Bill C-76, an act to amend certain statutes to implement certain fiscal provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 25, 1992.


Roger Simmons: I wondered what we were debating here.
I realize full well, but I ask this House, before it rushes to a judgment on this one, to keep in mind very clearly who are making the commitments here. All the talk from the Minister of Small Businesses and Tourism about how there will be a new millennium beginning tomorrow morning and that things will be all different if we up it from $100,000 to $200,000. We have no difficulty with that particular detail, none whatsoever. But this is the crowd that told us before how they were going to double research and development and how we ought to believe them on their measures with respect to the recession.
Admittedly I was taking a little licence to make an important point that if we are going to judge this piece of legislation we ought to keep in mind who leads the gang that brings this legislation before us. It is the same gang that has botched every measure they have tried with respect to getting us out of this recession. It is the same gang that has made life miserable for university students. It is the same gang that is driving some of our best minds out of this country. They want to be here doing research we can benefit from but instead, they are being driven across the border by the policies and negativeness of this particular government. Mr. Speaker, if you find that not to be relevant I will get even more relevant.
Let us look at the question of post-secondary education addressed in the bill. One will realize that the government wants to eliminate the six-month interest-free period for student loans for example. It wants to put a 3 per cent administrative fee on student loans. In short, the government wants to make it even more costly and difficult for people to go to university. Who wants to do
that? The same crowd that since 1986 has introduced a number of measures that together represent a cut in federal support of $1.6 billion in the last six years. All together it was a cut of $4.9 million in revenues flowing to the provinces for post-secondary education and health care.
Let us look at those Canada student loans for a moment. I heard in the last little while a couple of absolutely mind-boggling examples. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that not only is the government going to remove the six-month interest holiday, not only does it want to put on a 3 per cent administration fee, but it has also set loose some of the most unprincipled collection agencies. I say to my friend from St. John's East, that we missed him yesterday at the forum in Gander. They were asking about him.


Mr. Reid:: I was at Bonavista last time.


Roger Simmons: I hope my colleague was in Bonavista. It is his riding the member will realize, not mine. I was charitable. We missed the member yesterday.
I wanted to say to him that the crowd he supports over there have unleashed some of the most unprincipled collection agencies on little old ladies. I will give him a specific example that has come to my attention in the last hour or so. Does he realize there is a fellow who has a student loan of $3,000 or $4,000 and has been out of university for two or three years? The loan is due, no question about that. He is 26 years of age. The loan is in his name and in the last few days a collection agency at the behest of the government the hon. member supports was not calling that 26-year old man but the mother of that 26-year old man. The mother is of very limited means.


An hon. member:: Bravo.


Roger Simmons: There is a stranger in the House.


An hon. member:: Farce que je parle frangais?


Roger Simmons: In any language, there is a stranger in the House.
The collection agent made a suggestion to this mother who, by the way, has no responsibility for the loan. She signed no piece of paper. She happens to be the biological mother of this individual but he is a person quite well of age. One of the suggestions the collection agent made to this mother was: "Sell your house if you have to", when she asked where she would get the
November 16, 1992

money. Except he did not realize she did not have a house to sell.
I see by the nods of my compassionate friends on the other side they see nothing wrong with that particular example. The less compassionate of my compassionate friends on the other side see nothing wrong with that particular tactic.
Let me be even more specific so as not to indict the innocent. I think that was the point my friend from St. John's East was making and I absolutely agree with him. I was referring particularly to the compassionate soul from Abitibi. I got from his signals, his always very communicative body language, that he saw nothing wrong with a collection agent, on behalf of the federal government, going out and harassing little old ladies for repayment of student loans that their adult offspring happen to owe the government. Well, I say to him that I do have a lot of difficulty with that particular example.
There was another case where the government found somebody after 20 years. It found him through his social insurance number. When he called to find out why he did not receive his $5,000 GST refund he was informed it had been applied to his $6,000 loan which he did not realize he owed. His parents had passed on seven or eight years before and this was the first he had heard of it. Not only did the government collect the $5,000 that way, in the meantime he got a call from a collection agency and when the language was printable these people said some pretty nasty things to him.
Stop the pretence about what this government is doing for students and people who want to improve their education. I hear all the quotes from our Prime Minister about our brightest and best but he does not put his money where his mouth is. The regime he leads is socking it to students. This legislation is a good example of that with the 3 per cent administration fee which should not be there and which we oppose and the taking away of the six-month holiday on interest on loans that have been acquired by those students. This does not give those people a fair break.
I have talked in the last few minutes about what is happening in terms of collections. If those people owe these amounts, let us use legitimate means to collect
them. I say that having collection agents calling and threatening people and the mothers of those people is not a legitimate, fair way a government should be going about its business. I appeal to the minister responsible to call off the hounds now that he has been made aware of those instances by what I have said in the last few minutes. Call off those unprincipled collection agents and allow those students whose only sin was to go out and get some money to get an education a fair opportunity to repay. Let us stop treating them like a bunch of criminals and sending those unprincipled people after them.
I see that my time is up for now.


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


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Louis-Hebert):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the House to congratulate the Church of England for allowing women to become priests after an historic vote by the synod. In so doing the Anglican Church has consecrated the equality of men and women.
I hope that other religions especially the Catholic Church of which I am a member will follow this example because only then will the gap between men and women and its attendant inequities diminish.


THE LATE DR. PETER
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, early yesterday morning Dr. Peter died of AIDS at the age of 35. Dr. Peter was known to hundreds of thousands of Canadians, particularly those of us in British Columbia, as a courageous and eloquent spokesperson for people living with AIDS.

November 16, 1992
Through his weekly CBC television programs and specials he put a human face on AIDS and exemplified the remarkable caring, compassion and true family values of the gay community in fighting this epidemic.
For many viewers Dr. Peter was the only person they knew who lived with AIDS. His work, even as he lost his vision and his mobility, did much to dispel the stereotypes and misunderstandings both about AIDS and about gay men.
I last saw Dr. Peter at the annual walk for AIDS in Vancouver a few weeks ago when he spoke out, urging the government to extend and increase federal funding for AIDS which runs out on March 31 of next year.
The finest tribute all of us could make to the memory of this truly outstanding Canadian would be to act on this plea now.


STEVE MACLEAN
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of all Canadians it is indeed my pleasure to rise today to congratulate Steve Maclean for becoming Nepean's first astronaut in space.
It would be impossible to fathom the magnitude of Steve's excitement spending nine days in orbit as a member of a crack flight team. It is not so difficult, however, to imagine how fulfilling it is to realize a childhood dream and even easier for all of us to feel proud of his accomplishment.
Steve quickly emerged as a star on board the space shuttle Columbia testing materials designed by his father, Paul, reviving a failing experiment from Queen's University, and demonstrating his gymnastic ability with a few flips and rolls.
Steve's work on the Canex-2 project is not only contributing to the success of Canada's robotic arm but also enhancing a Canadian reputation for ingenuity and efficiency in the field of aerospace.
Just as the Space Vision System gives eyes to the Canadarm, Steve has shown all Canadians that with devotion, vision and plenty of hard work we too can endeavour to reach for the stars.


CONTAMINATED BLOOD
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, for some time people in Abitibi and across Canada have been following the news about possible cases of contaminated blood in this country.
According to an estimate by the Canadian Hemophilia Society, about 1,000 patients contracted the AIDS virus from blood or blood products imported from the United States. Tragically many of the victims could have been spared this fate if governments and the Red Cross had been more vigilant and more effective.
On November 6, 19921 asked the Minister of National Health and Welfare to order a public inquiry in order to find out how such a tragedy could have occurred and how it could be prevented in the future.


SERIAL KILLER CARDS
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, in recent months a new inducement to violence has entered our community. Serial killer cards glamourizing individuals who have wounded, raped and killed many people are being imported into Canada.
I have been approached by many of my constituents who are rightfully horrified, disgusted and appalled that these materials are being allowed into Canada.
They spread a dangerous message, particularly to our young people, that murder, torture, masochism, sadism and sexual assault are somehow glamorous or acceptable.
Canada cannot hope to progress in its fight against violence, particularly against women and children, if such materials are readily available to our children.
I ask the government to act immediately to stop the
import of serial killer cards into Canada.
November 16, 1992


THE LATE COLONEL FRED TILSTON
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, during our recess Colonel Fred Tilston, one of Canada's greatest war heroes, died.
People who never met Fred Tilston knew he had done something exceptional. The letters VC following his name needed no explanation. He was one of the bravest of the brave. He held the Victoria Cross.
Colonel Tilston won his VC in the Hochwald Forest of Germany in 1945, leading an attack on enemy positions. He was wounded three times while repeatedly running through heavy fire for fresh supplies. Canada now has only two living Victoria Cross winners: Cec Merritt and Ernest "Smokey" Smith.
The Canadian Armed Forces are still composed of men and women from the same mould as these, yet we no longer recognize the Victoria Cross in our honours and awards system.
Canada must retain the right to honour others who in the future may exhibit great courage. The finest tribute we could make to Fred Tilston would be to restore the Victoria Cross to its rightful place as Canada's premier decoration for valour.


RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, I ask the government to continue its patient handling of debt arrears with the Russian Federation. The worst case scenario would be for Canada to pull the plug on the $1.5 billion line of credit. The Russian shortage of hard currency does not preclude its desire to receive Canadian exports and ultimately to pay for them.
The $20 million payment made last week on Canadian grain shows good faith on the part of the Russians, even though they remain well in arrears on the payment schedule.
I urge the government to be clear about the status of the loan guarantees for the sake of Canadian workers. Thousands of Canadian jobs hang in the balance on whether or not these commitments are fulfilled.
Commodities such as grain and other agricultural products are a required staple, and steel tubular products will allow the development of the oil and gas fields so necessary for a vital economy.
I believe our support of the federation will not only behove Canadian exporters but also demonstrate our support for economic and political reform in the Russian Federation.
A meeting last week with Russian Ambassador Belonogov confirmed to me that continued dialogue and patience are necessary on our part.


CLASS OF 72
Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Mr. Speaker, October 30 marked the 20th anniversary of the election of the Class of 72. On October 30, 1972, 59 Conservatives, 23 Liberals, 11 New Democrats and 3 members of the Social Credit Party were elected to the House of Commons for the first time. Of those members, only 11 Conservative members and 2 Liberal members remain in the House today with unbroken electoral records.
In the Conservative caucus there is the right hon. Joe Clark, the hon. Harvie Andre, the hon. Perrin Beatty, the hon. Paul Dick, the hon. Jake Epp, the hon. Otto Jelinek, the hon. Frank Oberle, Bill Kempling, Gus Mitges, myself and, by no means the least, yourself, Mr. Speaker.
In the Liberal caucus there is the hon. Bill Rompkey and the hon. Jean-Robert Gauthier.
Given the fact that the political life expectancy of an individual in public life these days is quite short, those who count themselves among the Class of 72 are to be commended for their tenacity in bucking the electoral trends over the past 20 years.


OFFICIAL LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES IN NEW BRUNSWICK
Mr. Douglas Young (Acadie-Bathurst):: Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada should proceed bilaterally with the Government of New Brunswick to enshrine the principles of Bill 88 in the Constitution.

November 16, 1992
The Government of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party of Canada, the first ministers of the 10 Canadian provinces and the leaders of the Northwest Territories and Yukon, aboriginal people, the Government of New Brunswick, the Conservative Party of New Brunswick, the New Democratic Party of New Brunswick and the majority of the citizens of my province agree with guaranteeing the equality of my province's two official language communities.
Will the Government of Canada in co-operation with the Government of New Brunswick confirm today that it will enshrine Bill 88, the best Christmas present we could give the Acadians of New Brunswick since 1755?


VIOLENCE
Mrs. Barbara Sparrow (Calgary Southwest):: Mr. Speaker, five research centres on family violence and violence against women were announced on November 12 and November 13 by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, the Minister responsible for the Status of Women and several of my colleagues, along with the president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
This innovative network of centres, funded equally by Health and Welfare Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, will see the creation of new partnerships among front-line workers, community groups and researchers.
The successful centres chosen by an arm's length committee will be based at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Western Ontario, the University of British Columbia, the University of Manitoba and l'Universite de Montreal in conjunction with Laval University in Quebec City.
The practical research into the grass-root causes of family violence and violence against women will help all Canadians find the solution to these pervasive and troubling problems in our society.


THE ECONOMY
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, each day the economic forecasts of this government are proven wrong. Each day the pace of plant closures quickens, the line of unemployed grows and the despair of ordinary Canadians deepens.
Yet, in the face of a fierce recession, government policies are driven by accountants intent on spending cuts and by politicians relying on the marketplace and the goodwill of corporations. This government forgets that unemployment statistics are about human beings increasingly left out in the cold.
Nowhere is the crisis more desperate than with Canada's youth. For young people who look forward to a productive life, the unemployment line is their prospect; the vicious circle of no experience blocking experience, their reality; welfare, their alternative.
Young people must be offered hope, a fair shot at a decent job. Urgent priority must be given to job creation, to improved education and apprenticeship, to substantial job opportunities for youth.
While 1.5 million Canadians are waiting, we simply do not have one person to waste.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Mr. Ken Hughes (Macleod):: Mr. Speaker, the airline industry world-wide is facing difficult times. This is also true in Canada.
The employees of Canadian Airlines International have committed between 5 per cent to 9 per cent of their salaries for the next three years in an effort to save then-jobs and their company in a competitive industry.
This innovative commitment is remarkable. I encourage cabinet to back the employees of Canadian Airlines International with loan guarantees. Canada needs a competitive airline industry.
I also encourage both Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International to get on with business, build those international partnerships, and continue to serve the travelling Canadian public as well as we know they can.
November 16, 1992


DEREGULATION
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TVanscona):: Mr. Speaker, a few days ago the Tory Minister of Transport in Manitoba declared that deregulation had made a mess of Canada's airline industry. After years of supporting deregulation he finally made the connection. Not that this new-found awareness stopped one of his colleagues from announcing deregulation in the phone industry on the same day. We would not want to make too many connections in one day.
The most important connection Canadians need to make when it comes to deregulation is the historical connection between deregulation and the Liberal Party of Canada.
Deregulation started under the Liberals, under the then Minister of Transport, now the member for Winnipeg South Centre. Indeed I refer Canadians to Hansard for April 6, 1984 where they can find an argument between the then Minister of Transport and the current Minister of Finance about who got on whose deregulation band wagon first, both claiming the honour of being the champion of deregulation.
Before the transport committee on April 10, 1984, the member for Winnipeg South Centre defended himself by saying that he had 400 letters calling for U.S. style deregulation. I bet he had as many calling on him not to deregulate, but he chose deregulation and now we have the chaos and the airline bankruptcies that he said would never happen.
Like free trade, privatization and a host of other destructive policies, deregulation can be traced to a time when the corporate agenda was being implemented by the Liberals. The only escape from that agenda is through the NDP.


YOUNG OFFENDERS ACT
Mr.   Brian@: Mr. Speaker, in the riding of Elk Island as in many other parts of our country, Canadians have expressed concern about criminal activity by young people. The constituents are angry and frustrated that the Young Offenders Act is not working.
Constituents in my riding want Parliament to toughen up the Young Offenders Act and more preferably replace it with a law that makes young criminals accountable for their actions.
Robert Romanchuk, an insurance man in Bruderheim writes:
The Young Offenders Act is a joke. In one case a young offender
stole a vehicle and scratched in the hood: Young Offenders Act, ha,
ha.
Rick and Laura Rumohr of Fort Saskatchewan write:
We live in fear and this is wrong. People who commit crimes must
be punished and there must be stricter penalties.
Doug and Marie Bodeux of Beaumont suggest work camps. James Brandick of Sherwood wants the names of young offenders made public. Many people suggest that parents should be made accountable for the crimes of their children.
Let us work together to strengthen or replace the Young Offenders Act. Let us all work together for safer communities and a better Canada.


CORNWALL, ONTARIO
Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, on November 6 the Courtaulds fibres plant in Cornwall announced that it will be closing at the end of this month. The closure will eliminate 360 jobs.
Since June 1989, 20 manufacturing plants have ceased operation in Cornwall. Over 2,500 jobs have been lost and the city's unemployment rate is over 20 per cent. More than half of the eligible UI recipients in Cornwall have exhausted their benefits. The city ranks third in Ontario in terms of percentage of population on general welfare. Thirty-seven per cent of the population, 17,638 men, women and children rely on social assistance.
For two years I have called upon the government to bring forward an economic development program for eastern Ontario. Yet, while the recession continues to take its toll and unemployment climbs, the government has done nothing to stimulate the local economy.
The time has come for this government to act and assist the people of Cornwall and eastern Ontario by immediately implementing an economic development program.

Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

[Stage Direction]
November 16, 1992

Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Prime Minister.
This House adjourned almost five months ago. During the time we were not here all members of Parliament went to their ridings. I visited probably 150 different ridings, and I have never seen the situation so bad in the country. I met with fishermen, farmers, blue collar workers and office workers who are completely desperate, small business people who are 45 to 55 years of age who have lost their businesses, not finding jobs and completely desperate because they see their daughters and sons coming out with higher education who have no hope of finding a job either.
I would like to know from the Prime Minister when this government will take the situation seriously, bring down a budget and tell Canadians that they can have hope in Canada because it is absolutely desperate out there today?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, obviously all of us are preoccupied by the economic situation, both here and elsewhere, because as a trading nation our prosperity depends a great deal on economic strength with our trading partners and that has not been the case for some extended period of time. I share some of the concerns mentioned by my hon. friend.
Some of the encouraging points to register for all of us are that both the OECD and the IMF have recently indicated that Canada will have the strongest rate of economic growth in 1993.


Mrs. Campbell (South West Nova):: Canadians.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says Canadians. With inflation at 1.3 per cent, this is now the lowest in the industrialized world and that is a very important contributor for economic growth. Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.1 per cent in the first quarter and .7 per cent in the second quarter. Employment rose by 64,000 in the
last six months. I think that there are beginning to be some important and promising signs of economic renewal.
Where I have to disagree with my hon. friend is where he said that he had never seen the situation so bad in the country. He was a minister in the government in 1981 when interest rates were 22.75, inflation was 12.9 and unemployment was 11.7. That was the worst economic record in the history of Canada.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: It is
unbelievable that the Prime Minister sees no problems.
There are 1.6 million Canadians who want some action from this government. He tells us today that we are doing well. We were the first to go into a recession and we will be the last to get out of the recession. He gave us some good news. The Minister of Finance was completely wrong in his analysis of the future economy of Canada. All his predictions have been wrong.
When will we have a budget so that Canadians can have hope again and have the real facts, not dreaming in Technicolor like the Prime Minister?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend says that the Prime Minister said that he sees no problems. Quite the contrary.
I just said moments ago that indeed there are troubling signs that we are all working to correct. There are also encouraging signs that my hon. friend will want to factor very much into his statements.
For example, trade with the United States is increasing. Our productivity gains are substantial, up to 3.5 per cent. Productivity gains are the only way that we can establish real and new genuine wealth. Our unit costs are down, making Canada more competitive. We are having greater access to international trading markets.
These are encouraging signs. They are not a panacea, but they are encouraging signs. We are following an economic program which the IMF and the OECD indicate will structurally reform Canada's economy to make it more competitive, thereby creating more jobs. That is the program we are pursuing, and we would be

happy to hear from my hon. friend if he has any specific ideas that we can entertain without-


Mr. Speaker:: We are going to have to move on.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, we have an idea. Call an election and we will fix it.

The Prime Minister rises in the House and refuses to propose any solutions. He has no solutions to offer at all.
Today there are 1.6 million unemployed in Canada, each costing this government $14,000. We made some suggestions to the government in January, but the government refused to act on them.
Today there are rumours the government may embark on a joint program with the municipalities and the provincial governments. Why did the government not act in January, as we suggested? If it had, we would not have
1.6	million unemployed in Canada, each costing the Canadian Treasury $14,000. We are in this mess because the government does not know what to do and refuses to do anything at all.


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, what the hon. Leader of the Opposition should recognize is that there are
12,240,000	Canadians who are working.
In 1984 there was something like 11 million Canadians working. Yes, indeed unemployment levels are too high, but yes, indeed we have had five consecutive quarters of growth. They are not robust, but they are certainly consistent with the growth in the global economy.
For those who suggest that we do not live in a globally interdependent economy, you better look again. The Canadian economy is weak in many respects because the global economy is weak. Notwithstanding that, we are making progress. We have made progress on inflation, we are making progress on unemployment, we are making progress on retail sales and our exports are achieving an all-time record.
Therefore, there is a turnaround. It is slow but sure. However we are making progress.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, the words of the Minister of Finance will be cold comfort to
Oral Questions
the 1.5 million Canadians who are out of work and to their families who he claims do not even exist.


Some hon. members:: Shame.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister.
In his recent press interview he in effect admitted that he had made mistakes in his government's economic policies and their timing. For the millions of Canadians damaged by these policies, those who are hit by the trade deal, hit by the GST, hit by higher taxes, hit by loss of jobs, this admission of guilt even as part of a plea for mercy simply is not good enough.
I ask the Prime Minister: Why will he not also move away from these policies he now admits are mistakes and bring in a new economic plan, a new budget, today to create more jobs and real growth right now? If not, what is the point of that admission of guilt?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I know it will probably offend a Liberal for a politician to admit that he is not always right, but from time to time that is the reality in Canada.
What I acknowledged readily in an interview with the Canadian Press was that I, along with all other leaders of the industrialized world, including all of the leading economists whose work we had the opportunity to examine, had not anticipated with as much accuracy as we would have liked the duration of the economic recession and/or economic downturn, depending on the country. I do not think there is anything wrong with that. No one, not even my hon. friend who offered to resign in 1980 if interest rates went up and they went up 17 points or thereabouts-


An hon. member:: And he is still there.


Martin Brian Mulroney: He hung right in there for the government pension. It never crossed his mind to resign.


An hon. member:: That's principle.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I would point out to the member a statement by the Leader of the Official Opposition who in 1978 when he was finance minister said-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Martin Brian Mulroney: They do not want to hear it, Mr. Speaker, and I can understand that.

Oral Questions


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, millions of Canadians and their families who are out of work would like this government to realize that it is in 1992 not 1978.
My supplementary question is for the Prime Minister. This House has barely sat for the past five months even though the economy continues in crisis. When this House last sat briefly I asked the Minister of Finance why, when it came to the economy and the Constitution, his government could not both walk and chew gum at the same time.
We are now back, the House is in session and listening to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, it is clear that when it comes to walking and chewing gum at the same time with regard to the economy, this government cannot even do those things separately.
My question to the Prime Minister is this: Why else are we here now if not to deal with this crisis in the economy? The Liberals are ready to deal with these problems, but they involve measures that only a government can take.
I ask the Prime Minister: Why does he not answer the Leader of the Opposition's question and say when he is going to bring in a new budget to deal with jobs and the economy? What is he stalling for?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I am not stalling. I certainly take very seriously any reference to unemployment which in Canada is too high and has been too high now for some 10 or 12 years. I think my hon. friend would agree with that, even though we managed to get it down to 7.3 per cent in 1988-89.
My hon. friend objected to a comment that the Leader of the Opposition made in 1978 when he was Minister of Finance. I mentioned it simply because I think it is relevant. The Leader of the Opposition said then: "I don't believe I can be a Santa Claus. I am not a maker of illusions. There is not some magic solution to get rid of unemployment". The Leader of the Opposition was accurate. There is no magic solution to get rid of unemployment. If you get the fundamentals right you have a much better chance of doing that and this is exactly what we are in the process of doing.
My hon. friend concludes his remarks by asking about walking and chewing gum. I urge him: Herb, just take them one at a time and you will learn.


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, there is no question that this country is seeing one of the greatest job crises that we have seen in the history of Canada. In the first nine months of this year, 750,000 Canadians went from unemployment insurance to welfare, joining almost three million Canadians who are on either unemployment or welfare.
I want to say to the Prime Minister that the responses from his government seem to be like retired generals fighting the last war: more of the same, stay the course.
Clearly the economic policies of this government have failed and the victims of these failed economic policies continue to grow and suffer every day. What new policies will the Prime Minister bring in now to turn the economy around and get Canadians back working?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I share the hon. member's concern. We recognize that there are some serious difficulties and there are people who are hurting out there. However, I ask her to consider the fact that employment has risen in five of the last six months. Employment is up by 64,000 in the last six months. Full-time employment increased by 83,000 in the months of September and October.
The unemployment rate has come down from 11.6 to 11.3 per cent, so unemployment is going down, not going up.
We have other positive indicators. Housing starts have had a second consecutive quarter increase. Housing resales are up by 38 per cent. Retail trade has had a third consecutive monthly increase. Motor vehicle sales are up by 4.5 per cent. Export trade-


An hon. member:: Go for a walk in the real world.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The member's party continues to denigrate the free trade agreement with the United States. Tirade with the United States has increased by 16 per cent since the free trade agreement was signed. Merchandise export trade has increased by 9.5 per cent in the first six months of this year. That is where the jobs are created. That is from where the long-term prosperity
November 16, 1992

will emerge and that is the policy course that we are going to continue to follow.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister.
The Minister of Finance fails to recognize the pain in this country, the loss of hope by young people who have an unemployment rate of almost 20 per cent. The government owes it to the Canadian people to say what it is prepared to do to turn around this situation rather than simply ignore the plight of so many Canadians.

For instance, one third of the people on unemployment live in Quebec, and 700,000 Quebecers are on welfare. All these people are the victims of Tory economic policies, victims of the failure of those policies. That is why I wish to direct the following question to the Prime Minister. Does he agree with his Minister of Finance when he says that the government has no reason to change its economic policies?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance just stressed a number of important positive elements in the development of Canada's economy. He admitted that unemployment was a major problem. All members of all political parties deplore, and rightly so, the employment rate in this country which is very high, too high, although this is a situation that has endured since the early eighties. However, I think the Leader of the New Democratic Party should be encouraged by the opinions expressed by the IMF and the OECD, two major international agencies which think that the changes introduced by the Canadian government are likely to promote productivity and improve our competitive position, thus creating a substantial number of jobs in this country.
This will not happen overnight, but I think we have every reason to be confident about the future, considering the policies that were and will be announced by the Minister of Finance.
Oral Questions


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question.
This party is not asking the government to produce miracles. We are just asking it to produce some ideas and to put forward a plan to address the severe job shortages in the country.
We promised Canadians that we would come back to Parliament and it would not be business as usual. We would all turn our attention to the economy. What we have heard from the government today is that it is going to do more of the same. If that is turning its attention to the economy, please do not.
I want to ask the Prime Minister this specifically. We will put aside the rhetoric and get down to the bottom line. The government has an opportunity to save tens of thousands of jobs in the airline industry but it must act within the next few days. Does the government have a plan? Is it going to act and what exactly is it prepared to do?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of TVansport):: Mr. Speaker, of course the members of this government, and all members on the opposition side, are concerned with the potential loss of 16,000 jobs at Canadian Airlines.
Over the past couple of days we have had extensive and very productive meetings with the three groups that are involved, namely the Council of Employees, PWA and AMR, to determine how we can arrive at a plan that would ensure the survival of Canadian Airlines without hurting the whole Canadian airline industry.
In other words we need to find a solution that would be profitable to all the people of Canada and at the same time ensuring that we have a profitable and safe airline industry in Canada.
We were extremely impressed by the commitment of all employees. All unionized employees have come together, accepted some wage concessions and have also agreed to invest their own money in their employer. This is a demonstration of their dedication. We are meeting with them to try to arrive at a viable solution.

November 16, 1992
Oral Questions


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, it is a shame that this minister was not so impressed months ago because for months this grossly negligent Minister of Transport has stood idly by and ignored all the warning signs.
Canada's airline industry is now on the verge of collapse and he is finally quoted as saying the clock is ticking on the survival of Canadian Airlines.
Will the minister inform the House now, today, that his government is prepared to join the other partners he so eloquently spoke of in preparing and providing the necessary loan guarantees to Canadian Airlines so that we will not see thousands, and tens of thousands possibly, of people going on to the unemployment rolls in this country.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member for the opposition could explain how far his party is prepared to go with investing taxpayers' money in a plan without making sure about guarantees that the interests of Canadian taxpayers will be protected.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, it is much more than that. The minister is still on autopilot on this entire issue. He has refused to act on the federal aid package. He has refused to end the destructive competition that is tearing two airlines apart. He has refused to deal with the restructuring of the airline industry in this country.
What then is the minister prepared to do?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, we have indicated that we are prepared to work with all the players now that all employees have indicated their intention to help their employer survive.
I put the question again to the hon. member: To what extent, to what amount, is his party prepared to commit the taxpayers' money without any guarantee that this will assure the survival of that carrier in the airline industry?


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, even the friends of the government are bailing out over this problem because the government does not have a plan. We realize there has to be major reorganizing and restructuring in order to make the airline industry viable, protect the jobs, and to ensure that the Canadian based reservation system is intact.
We want to ask the minister, not what other people are doing, but what is the government going to put forward as a plan for the reorganizing, restructuring, and saving of this vital industry for Canada?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, we have said all along that we are prepared to ensure there is a viable Canadian airline industry and that we have competition in this country. It is through these measures that we will ensure the survival of the carrier.
I put my question again to that party: To what extent, to what amount, are they prepared to put the money of the Canadian taxpayer at risk without guarantees on the future survival of that particular airline and the whole Canadian airline industry?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the hon. minister is very anxious to ask questions. He will have the opportunity of being on this side of the House soon enough but for now, unfortunately, he has to govern.
In this proposal for the airlines one of the casualties is the Canadian based reservation system that is the underpinning for the entire tourist industry of Canada. We want to know what guarantee will the government provide that in any restructuring, the Gemini system which underlines and underpins the entire reservation computer technology system in this country will be preserved and maintained.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, this is precisely why I have been asking the question. Either the hon. member and his party are suggesting there is government intervention in the judicial system concerning the Gemini question or they are saying we should invest some money, no matter what amount it is, in order to save the airline on a band-aid basis without guarantees for the taxpayers of Canada. We are trying to find a viable, fiscally responsible answer to this question.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, this morning in Montreal the Minister of Transport told the Air Transport Association of Canada: "The marketplace is not a polite place". He went on to say



November 16, 1992

that competition is not enough by itself and regulatory bodies may need to protect the marketplace.
Is the minister and this government now prepared to admit that on the transport side the economic policies of this government have failed miserably and that the only long-term solution to the crisis in the airline industry is strong government intervention, including financial assistance? Or, is this government still prepared to leave those 36,000 employees and their families hanging out to dry in this impolite, yet vicious marketplace?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I dare say that if the hon. member only learned this morning that the marketplace is not a polite place he should have been alive for a longer period. Everybody knows that the marketplace is a very tough place where everybody is trying to outdo the other.
We have indicated that we are working with the employees because of their very enlightened dedication and preparedness to invest their own money. We are working with all the players to arrive at a viable solution that will be fiscally responsible to the taxpayers of Canada and will make sure that it is in the best over-all interest of the nation.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the Minister of Transport that it was his government that turned the airline industry over to that marketplace and set it up for the crisis it is in today.
It is not a question of whether or not the government will have to provide some financial assistance. It is a question of how and when. The government has a choice. It can say yes to the requests that are being made by Canadian and perhaps those that will follow by Air Canada or it can put up with the cost to unemployment insurance which will reach approximately $150 million. The choice is the government's.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the fact that we held these very constructive and effective meetings over the weekend with the three interveners is a clear indication that we are interested in looking at what the possibilities are for a viable solution that will be fiscally responsible and also in the interests of the nation.
Oral Questions
There are different obstacles in the present proposal. We have discussed them with all concerned and it is only when we have eliminated these very serious problems that we will be in a position to evaluate the risks to the Canadian taxpayers and also whether we can ensure the viability of the industry on a long-term basis. We are not looking for a band-aid that will cost taxpayers money and not be a viable solution.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, President-elect Clinton has stated that he will not seek ratification of the North American free trade agreement until environmental and labour standards are improved.
Is this now also the position of the Canadian government or is it standing by its initial assertion that the agreement is more than adequate as it currently stands?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, I think what President-elect Clinton has said is that he supports the NAFTA as an agreement. He is also looking for elements outside of the NAFTA to support some positions he is taking in support of the environment, labour, labour adjustment, health and safety standards, things that can be accomplished outside of the NAFTA.
I would expect that the process for legislation will continue. The legislation does not have to be completed until the implementation date of January 1,1994. We will be proceeding with hearings in the committee tomorrow and the process will continue then. I would not expect that the Canadian legislation will be dealt with until the early part of next year.


Roy MacLaren: Let me understand the government's position, Mr. Speaker. Does the minister recognize that President-elect Clinton has said that he will not proceed with ratification of the NAFTA until there are parallel agreements on labour standards and the environment? Is that the position also of the Canadian government, or does it intend now to proceed with ratification of the agreement whatever the position of the United States is?

November 16, 1992
Oral Questions
Will the minister also recognize that the government has progressed through three different stages in this? It said that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was flawless. Then it said that the NAFTA negotiations gave the opportunity to improve the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Now it takes a third position, which is presumably that it will not proceed with ratification until such time as the U.S. demand for parallel agreements on labour standards and on the environment are met.
What is its position today?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, our position is completely unchanged. We have a North American free trade agreement and we will seek ratification of that appropriately in the House of Commons just as soon as we possibly can. The minister has just indicated our time frames in regard to that.
President-elect Clinton indicated to me his very strong support of the free trade agreement that we concluded with the United States in 1988 and he confirmed to President Salinas his strong support of the North American free trade agreement as it exists.
He may indeed want to bring about some parallel agreements that do not impact on the principal one, but that has not been conveyed to us. Our information from President-elect Clinton and his officials is that he is very much a free trader along those lines and will be very supportive of initiatives such as the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States and the North American free trade agreement with Canada, the United States and Mexico. We are delighted to have that kind of leadership in the United States to pursue these common objectives.


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister.
Let me say that given the Prime Minister's earlier statements in the House today about acknowledged economic mistakes of the past, we on this side of the House are, to say the least, surprised to hear the Prime Minister say that this government, in its final months in office will seek-and I think I am quoting the Prime Minister properly-ratification of the NAFTA at the earliest possible opportunity. The Prime Minister said this, notwithstanding the fact that a new U.S. president has said he wants to study this agreement closely, and
the U.S. Congress, and that a new U.S. presidential administration has said it will seek agreements on environmental and labour standards.
I want to ask the Prime Minister, given his admission of economic mistakes of the past, will he now not do the prudent thing, will he set aside the ratification process in Canada until such time as we know what the final draft of the NAFTA will look like after consideration by a new U.S. administration and president and by Congress?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Given my hon. friend's reputation for accuracy in this House, I reluctantly point out that he has just inadvertently made a substantially inaccurate statement in regard to any acknowledgement that I made about economic mistakes. He should read the transcript that is there and I am sure he will want to correct what he has just said on the floor of the House of Commons.
I was interested in his second point where he was conveying to the House President-elect Clinton's point of view. This was interesting to hear, because in my conversations with President-elect Clinton he conveyed no such views to me.


An hon. member:: Maybe you didn't ask the right questions.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has had most of his conversations with the current U.S. President who is about to become the ex-president. Indeed he will be able to join him fishing in Maine full time very soon.
I want to again put the question to the Prime Minister. The incoming U.S. administration has made clear that it will seek parallel agreements both with respect to environmental standards and labour standards. The current U.S. Congress has made clear it will closely examine NAFTA and may propose amendments to it.
Given that the government's projections on employment were wrong, on GST were wrong, on free trade were wrong, on deficit were wrong, would it not be prudent to wait until the new U.S. administration has examined it and proposed changes and until Congress has examined it before we blindly proceed in this country once again?
November 16, 1992

Oral Questions


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition would do well to allow the critic for international trade to ask questions on international trade. Our friend is really out of touch both with reality and with all of the facts in contrast to the official critic, the hon. member from Toronto, who on matters of international trade is always well informed. His questions are direct.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the right hon. Prime Minister would like to move to the answer to the question.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the member for Etobicoke-North for any damage I have done to his career. It was indeed inadvertent and I withdraw those comments. I should say in fairness that he is as inaccurate and ineffective-


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps we should move on. The hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to interrupt a lover's quarrel when they both support NAFTA and the free trade agreement.
I would like to ask this very simple question. Over the past two years, I have asked the minister to provide to this Chamber and the Canadian public detailed information about the negotiations of the North American free trade agreement. Specifically, I asked for the sector-bysector studies that should be made and, I assume, were made by this government going into the negotiations. I was told that they would not be made available because it would expose our negotiating hand.
The deal is now initialled. Will the minister now table in this House the sector-by-sector studies that surely must have been done before this trade deal was initialled by this government?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I know it is very hard for the hon. member to talk accurately about the NAFTA because he has never come to briefings that have been offered to him on half a dozen occasions. We quite understand the difficulty he has in understanding the issue.
My hon. friend I am sure is well aware there are NAFTA hearings starting tomorrow. I will be very happy
to respond to any specific questions he has on elements of the agreement.
He is also aware that the Department of Finance released a document last week which sets out in very clear terms drawing on work done within the department as well as on work done by respected organizations outside of the government which support the government's position that the NAFTA is a very positive policy initiative supportive of the economy of Canada. I expect that the hon. member will read that agreement and come to the same conclusion.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, it is true that I did not go to the secret briefings because as a member of Parliament I would never sign the Official Secrets Act to find out information that should be made public to every Canadian.
My question is very clear and very precise. If there are any studies at all sector by sector, will the government release them? Not tomorrow, not next week, but will the minister admit in this House now that no sector-by-sector studies were ever done at all by this government? That is why they are not being released.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member has just inadvertently left a very misleading statement on the record which I want to correct for him now.
He referred to all of the meetings being secret when he knows full well that there was a request for the first meeting for such an undertaking on behalf of members who participated. After that there were no requests. That was made known to the hon. member many times, yet he continues to leave this misleading statement on the-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Abitibi.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Is the Government of Canada prepared to sign a mineral development agreement with the Govern-

Oral Questions
ment of Quebec? If so, will it be signed before December 25, 1992?


Hon. Jake Epp (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question.
My colleague, the Minister of National Health and Welfare, and his counterparts in the province of Quebec worked very hard on this agreement. I am pleased that the agreement is at the point where I believe final plans can be made for its ratification and for its announcement.


MANUFACTURING SECTOR
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. Since the recession began Canadian manufacturing has lost three times as many jobs proportionately as American manufacturing. My question is: Why this crushing gap between us and the United States?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let me just point out to my hon. friend that in the first eight months of this year Canadian exports to the United States, which were about 55 per cent manufactured exports, were up 9.8 per cent. That was 9.8 per cent in a period when the U.S. economy was not in a very robust position, but 9.8 per cent because of the advantages that my hon. friend well knows are there from the free trade agreement. That is one of the things that has helped the performance of the manufacturing sector in Canada.
My hon. friend would do well if he looked at other reasons the manufacturing sector is in some difficulty today. It is partly because of the fact that we are going through a period of enormous change which my friend, the Minister of Finance, has been talking about.
The hon. member talks about adjustment. If he would compare adjustment in the United States with adjustment in Canada, he will see that the adjustment programs in Canada for both individuals and industry, including the manufacturing sector are many, many times greater than those in the United States on a per capita basis.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, we are talking about job loss. The fact is the United States is going through adjustment as are we yet we have lost three times as many manufacturing jobs as it has.
The reason is very clear. Despite the two years of tremendous human suffering, this government has pursued a course of action which has done nothing to relieve the pain Canadians feel, nothing to prepare the country for what lies ahead. While we on this side called for economic stimulus, they on that side countered with uncompetitive interest rates. While we called for increased training, increased research and development, they said wait for the prosperity agenda. The prosperity agenda is in. What is the government's excuse for doing nothing? When is the government going to give us a budget? Does it really think that the financial deficit can be solved if the human deficit is ignored?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let me be quite clear that the human element of this has not been ignored. It has not been ignored at all because the amount of training that has been brought in by this government to address the problems of the people who have lost their jobs because of the difficulties in the manufacturing sector has increased substantially. It numbers now some $3.5 billion which I believe is greater than the total amount that the United States has for the whole of an economy that is 10 times greater than the Canadian economy.
The simple facts are that the reasons for the difficulties in the manufacturing sector go directly to the fact that manufacturing, unit labour costs, increased something like 50 per cent in comparison to the United States. It is for that reason and not reasons caused by-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.
November 16, 1992


THE LATE RIGHT HON. PAUL MARTIN
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, this is the first sitting of this House since all here paid tribute to my father. I would like to express my gratitude.

My father loved this House so much. He had so much respect for all those who serve and served in this great institution. On behalf of my mother and our family, I want to thank each and every one of you in this big parliamentary family for the moving message of sympathy you extended to us in this trying period.

There is a small room off the kitchen in my parents' house with a TV set that is permanently frozen on the House of Commons channel. It was there over the last five years that my father used to sit and pass judgment on the debates in this House.
On September 14 my dad was not in that room, but my mother was. On her behalf, indeed on behalf of our whole family, I would like to thank all of the members of this House for their words, for their understanding, and for their compassion.
I said my father was not in that room, but that does not mean he did not hear what was said. I am sure he did. I am also sure that looking down from his new vantage point that had you asked him, Mr. Speaker, he would have given you his full consent to extending the debate.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, very briefly, the right hon. Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs had the occasion on behalf of the government and members of Parliament to extend our deepest sympathies to the Martin family on the occasion of the loss of one of Canada's most distinguished sons.
Paul Martin was indeed a great Liberal. He was a great member of Parliament, an outstanding minister of the Crown, and a most impressive representative of Canada abroad. I came to know him through his son-something the son may or may not acknowledge today-years ago
Routine Proceedings
and found in the Martin family one of Canada's finest in every way.
I had the privilege as Prime Minister of Canada to recommend to the Governor General and Her Majesty the Queen the elevation of Paul Martin to the position and to the title of Right Honourable on July 1 past. I had many conversations with Paul Martin Sr. in advance of this important event. I can just say, on behalf of all parliamentarians that no one, certainly in recent Canadian history, deserves this honour more. No one loved this House more and no one contributed more to Canada and her unity than the Right Hon. Paul Martin from, as he would say, Windsor, Ontario.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I also would like to thank the member for his remarks. I have a special memory of Mr. Martin Sr. When I was 15 years old, Mr. Martin was the member of Parliament for the area where I lived and I came to the House of Commons for the first time at that time. I came to the House of Commons for only the second time when I was elected as a member of Parliament. I have many warm memories of his warmth, of his friendship and of his interest in young people.
I want to say that all of the greetings from this party to the Right Hon. Paul Martin were indeed sincerely felt. He was a great man and a great Canadian.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Thomas Siddon (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, copies of the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement.
The appropriate legislation to enforce this agreement will be introduced in the very near future.

Routine Proceedings
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8) I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 88 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


BILL C-86 REPORT OF LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE
Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Lethbridge):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-86, an act to amend the Immigration Act and other acts in consequence thereof, with amendments.

Might I just say that members will know that this is an important bill. The committee received 186 letters and 116 briefs. We listened to 110 witnesses, 48 groups, 35 officials from the department, the RCMP, CSIS, the Department of Justice.
The committee adopted 102 amendments. I say that this reflects the very best of Parliament where all three parties worked hard all summer and that this in fact is good public law.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


CRIMINAL CODE
Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-365, an act to amend the Canadian Criminal Code.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 68(2), the motion is deemed adopted.


Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to prohibit crossbows as we know them. It does not take away from archery or the other types of crossbows which are used for sporting.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Mr. Harb moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.



Mac Harb: for leave to introduce Bill C-366, an act to amend the Criminal Code (replica firearms).


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 68(2), the motion is deemed adopted.


Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, this again has to do with an amendment to the Criminal Code, replica firearms. The purpose of this bill is to prohibit the sales of replicas of guns that might reasonably be mistaken for real guns in the commission of a crime.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Mr. Harb moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.


INCOME TAX ACT
Mac Harb: for leave to introduce Bill C-367, an act to amend the Income Thx Act (donors to food banks).


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 68(2), the motion is deemed adopted.


Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to amend the Income Tax Act immediately after section 259. The purpose of it is to permit donations of food to a food bank to be treated as a charitable gift, notwithstanding that the value of the food has already been deducted as a business expense of the donor. The objective of it is to encourage people to give more to food banks.
November 16, 1992

Just for the record I want to thank Mr. Norm Rebin who helped in the evolution of this proposal as well as our legal staff.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Mr. Harb moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.


REGISTRATION OF LOBBYISTS
James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, I rise to seek unanimous consent for the following motion:
That pursuant to section 14 of an act respecting the registration of lobbyists, chapter 44, 4th supplement, Revised Statutes of Canada 1985, the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations be the committee to undertake a comprehensive review of the administration and operation of this act and submit a report to the House no later than one year after the review is undertaken.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent for the House to consider the hon. member's motion?


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is no unanimous consent.


PETITIONS
Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and duty to present to the House petitions certified correct by the clerk of petitions that contain the signatures of yet another 10,000 Canadians who support Bill C-330.
The petitioners want Canadians to have a greater say in the disposition of offenders in the judicial process and
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call upon Parliament to support victims' rights and the protection of the public from violent offenders.
There will be tens of thousands of signatures to present to this House before Bill C-330 is presented this Thursday.


Diane Marleau: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting before this House petitions that were circulated as a result of the death of young Rosalynn Dupuis in the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. A young offender has been charged with her death.
The people who have signed these petitions-there are many indeed-ask that the government bring forth changes to the Young Offenders Act in order that those who commit violent crimes be sentenced in a way that would represent the severity of their crimes. The petitioners ask that violent young offenders be psychologically assessed and that psychiatric treatment of these young offenders who have committed murder be mandatory and immediate upon sentencing.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I am tabling a petition from Charles-Rene-Lalande School in Riviere-Heva, Abitibi. The petitioners say that violent movies on television are dangerous and therefore unacceptable because they incite more violence and that all toys that incite violent games are unacceptable and should not be made.
Information on violent acts that is repeated too often on all television stations and on radio can lead to other acts of violence.
Therefore the petitioners humbly ask Parliament to legislate on the above-mentioned points to eliminate violence in our society and thus better protect our children and give all our fellow citizens a better quality of life.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and pleasure to present a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 on behalf of a number of constituents

November 16, 1992
Routine Proceedings
from Chase, British Columbia, Kamloops, British Columbia and from a number of other western Canadian cities.
Their concern is having read the NAFTA, the North American free trade agreement, it would appear that fresh water was not made an exemption to the deal. They are asking the government to explicitly say that fresh water is exempt from NAFTA because they are concerned that this government is agreeing to sell water in terms of inter-basin transfers to the United States and Mexico.
As a comfort they are asking the government, for goodness sake, to exempt fresh water from this particular trade deal.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition from hundreds of Canadians across the country who ask this government to end Bill C-91 which seeks to licence further no name generic drugs in Canada and will allow brand name drug companies to market their drugs without competition from generics for periods up to 20 years.
They say that the price of new and existing drugs already increased substantially to individuals, to provincial and private drug plans since 1987 when the Liberals brought in Bill C-22 which allowed up to a 10-year period of no generic competition.
Therefore, these petitioners call on Parliament not to proceed with Bill C-91 and to also repeal Bill C-22 so that Canadians will have the full benefit from lower priced generic drugs and so that provincial and private drug plans can serve Canadians without being forced to charge higher fees or provide less coverage.


Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36,1 am pleased on behalf of a number of Canadians from Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, the rest of Atlantic Canada and Quebec to draw the attention of the House to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadian senior citizens live below the poverty line and that over 80 per cent of single women over the age of 65 live in poverty.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to ensure that Canadian old age security pensions are sufficient to meet the basic needs of Canadian senior citizens.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity- Conception):: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and duty to rise in accordance with Standing Order 36 to present a petition signed by 66 of my constituents in the Salmon Cove area, Perry's Cove, Adams Cove, Broad Cove or what is called the north shore of my riding in the Carbonear area.
They have asked that consideration be given to those who are employed outside the fisheries seeking employment. They are bringing to the House notice of the tough economic times in their area and the difficulty they have in finding employment.
The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to provide them with guidance and in particular with assistance in finding employment.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition that has been signed by a number of Canadians. I think the message is very clear.
They call upon Parliament to reject legislation implementing the North American free trade agreement, NAFTA.
I believe that is a very simple message and I hope all parliamentarians will listen to it.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, I too have a significant number of signatures on a petition from my constituents endorsing precisely the same message that my colleague has presented to the House.
That is a very straightforward message which says to this Parliament that it urges us very strongly to reject legislation implementing the North American free trade agreement. The strong view of my constituents is that this agreement will make a bad situation worse. It will hurt jobs in this country. For that reason we are asked to reject any such legislation.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I rise to present another petition signed by
November 16, 1992	COMMONS
numerous residents of Ottawa who object to the high gas prices in this area as opposed to the prices in other parts of Ontario, particularly the southern region.
I may say that these citizens are very long suffering because I have been filing petitions like this with the House for months. The same problem with respect to gasoline prices pertains to my own constituency of Kingston and the Islands. Some of my own constituents have been moved to sign similar petitions that I have presented in the past and all we get from the government in response to these petitions are pie in the sky answers that the government does not control prices and it does not intend to do anything to alleviate the suffering of Canadians who are being unfairly treated in the gasoline pricing.
I note the petitioners claim that this kind of pricing is unfair and they call upon Parliament to urge the government to correct this injustice to Ottawa area motorists. I agree with their petition and suggest to the government that it do something instead of filing these pie in the sky announcements in response.


Mr. Dan Heap (THnity- Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and duty under Standing Order 36 to present a petition from residents of Toronto who petition the House of Commons that, whereas we are concerned with recent amendments to the Immigration Act and Bill C-86, particularly we strongly oppose the restriction and delay that parents will face when seeking to join their sons and daughters in Canada, therefore, the undersigned your petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to withdraw these amendments.
I have a second petition also from a number of residents of Toronto concerned with the same bill but with different aspects of it.
They point out that the American government allows inland processing of families of convention refugees and that the current policy of the minister of immigration in Canada in refusing minister's permits to the families of accepted refugee claimants can deprive these immigrants of security of person, physical and mental health because their families are separated for years at a time.
Therefore, the undersigned petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the minister of immigration to issue

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minister's permits for spouses and dependant children of refugee claimants who have been permitted to apply for landing from within Canada, including persons in the backlog and persons accepted under the new legislation, and allow them to be reunited in Canada for inland processing.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, finally, I have a petition from a number of residents of metro Toronto who are concerned with the continuing policy of Canada in using the land of the Innu people in Labrador and eastern Quebec for NATO low-level flight training.
They ask that Parliament join with the Assembly of First Nations, the Innu of Labrador and other aboriginal peoples of northern Canada in opposing use of their land for NATO and NORAD attack training and that the Canadian government end all NATO and NORAD low-level flight training in Canada and redirect Canada's NATO and NORAD funding toward enabling Canada's aboriginal peoples to regain control of their lands and their livelihood and promoting sustainable development for all Canadians.


Ron Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to present a duly certified petition on behalf of my constituents in Saskatoon-Dundurn. They ask the government through Parliament not to proceed with the passage of Bill C-91 and to repeal Bill C-22. They would like that to occur so that Canadians will have the full benefit of lower priced generic drugs.


An hon. member:: Who passed Bill C-22?


Ron Fisher: The Conservatives did. Then the provincial and private drug plans would not be unduly hit with the higher prices of drugs.
In asking for this they point out that Bill C-22 raised the period of protection from seven years to ten years. While the government promised that the prices would not increase, that was not the case. Experience has shown that the cost of drugs has escalated tremendously to the great detriment of all concerned.
Going from 10 to 20 years is not going to do the Canadian economy, and certainly not the people of this country, any good whatsoever.

November 16, 1992
Routine Proceedings IMMIGRATION


Mr. Jim KarpofT (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by a large number of people from Surrey which points out that family class and assisted relatives have always been an historically important part of immigration into Canada because they have relatives that can assist them with employment, housing and learning Canadian language and customs.
The petitioners point out that the present proposals of this government would severely restrict family class and assisted relatives from obtaining immigration visas. They ask the government to change their priorities so that family class and assisted relatives are assured first priority in immigration into Canada.


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to bring before this House a petition signed by a number of Canadian citizens who are extremely angry that Bill C-22 should have been introduced in the first place. This bill erodes the Canadian institution of compulsory licensing which provided inexpensive drugs. We are now confronted with Bill C-91.
In short, the petitioners ask that Bill C-91 be withdrawn and Bill C-22 be revoked.
It is a pleasure to submit this petition because my party and I support that view.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from my riding at Raymore which points out that post offices are the backbone of many rural communities.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to support Canada's rural way of life by supporting the maintenance of rural post offices and postal services and to reject the Conservative agenda of cutbacks and closures of those services.


Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of petitions here, one which is from many people in my riding of Simcoe Centre. These petitioners request that Parliament revise the laws of Canada to replace the Young Offenders Act with an updated
juvenile delinquents act with a lowered maximum age of 13 years.


Edna Anderson: Mr. Speaker, the second petition indicates that it is appropriate to encourage all Canadians to take pride in a united, strong and independent Canada. Canadians are normally a reserved people, often concealing their patriotic feelings. Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs of Canada have created an opportunity for all Canadians to participate in the Proud to be Canadian project during the celebration of the 125th anniversary of Confederation in 1992.
Therefore the undersigned hereby support the Proud to be Canadian project as an opportunity to nurture a positive life-long relationship with our heritage and our flag, to encourage stronger ties among all Canadians for the further advancement of Canada as a leader in world circles, and to promote our tremendous pride in being Canadians.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: According to the rule, the time provided for presenting petitions has now expired.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 348, 363, 370, 392, 394, 397 and 399.


Mr. Young (Acadie-Bathurst): Since 1985 to the present, with respect to the Department of Supply and Services (a) how many contracts through the department in excess of $100,000 have been awarded as sole source (b) how many contracts in total were awarded from the department and what was the total dollar value per year?


Hon. Paul Wyatt Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: (a) With respect to contracts in excess of $100,000 which have been sole sourced, 18,238 contracts were awarded through Supply and Services Canada (SSC) since 1985.
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The award of a contract on a sole source basis is permitted only where the following conditions are met: (1) in the absence of bids in response to a competitive bid sollicitation; (2)* when, for works of art or for reasons connected with protection of exclusive rights, such as patents or copyrights; (3) insofar as is strictly necessary when, for reasons of extreme urgency brought about by unforeseeable events; (4)* for additional deliveries by the original supplier; and (5) the procurement of prototypes or a first product which are developed in the course of, and for, a particular contract for research, experiment, study or original development.
* For each GATT and free trade procurement meeting single tendering conditions (2) or (4), an advance contract award notice (ACAN) must be prepared by the appropriate directorate.
Any determination that these conditions have been met must be fully substantiated at the procurement planning stage. The substantiation is required for contract approval purposes and must be explained in or attached to the approval document.
(b) The following lists the total number and dollar value of contracts awarded:
Fiscal Year	Number of Contracts	Dollar Value ($M)1985/86	311,847	6,7061986/87	294,669	8,7511987/88	287,647	10,3511988/89	283,754	7,4291989/90	287,099	8,4951990/91	243,261	8,6991991/92	188,136	9,7871992/93 (in progress)	27,569	1,296
The SSC statistical data base is designed only to reflect levels of contracting activity, the signing and recording of contract documents. Extreme caution should be used in attempting to ascribe precision or authority to this data for any other purpose.
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Mr. Pickard: With respect to the undertaking of certain functions by Canada Post Corporation from Revenue Canada Customs on July 1, 1992 in relation to postal imports (a) what is the amount of compensation to be received by Canada Post (b) how much revenue does Canada Post estimate to generate on an annual basis?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: (a) The
government has asked Canada Post Corporation to take over some of the data entry, material handling and revenue collection functions associated with the clearance and collection of duties and taxes on postal imports. Canada Post Corporation's agreement with Revenue Canada Customs and Excise for the provision of these services is similar to agreements that Canada Post Corporation has with other customers. A handling fee of $5 for each parcel subject to duty or taxes or both was introduced on the importer to cover some of the costs incurred by Canada Post in providing these services. This cost recovery fee is similar to that charged by other countries.
(b) Revenue projections are commercially sensitive information and cannot be disclosed.


Mrs. Gaffney: What are the amounts received through procurement contracts by the Department of Supply and Services (a) for the fiscal years 1984-85 to 1988-89 for each of the following ridings: Lanark- Carleton, Nepean, Ottawa West, Ottawa Centre, Ottawa South, Carle ton-Gloucester, Ottawa-Vanier (b) for the fiscal years 1989-90 to 1991-92 for the riding of Lanark-Carleton?


Paul Wyatt Dick: The statistics in this report do not cover all goods and services purchased by the Government of Canada. Supply and Services Canada (SSC) procures only 55 per cent of the total goods and services bought by the federal government.
SSC neither awards contracts nor maintains contracting statistics on the basis of electoral or other boundaries. To produce the following listing by constituency SSC sorted its procurement data base by postal code.

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The statistics do not necessarily reflect the origin of the goods and services purchased. More often, a contract is listed in the area where the contractor is located and does not reflect any subcontract work or other services carried out elsewhere. For example, fuel purchases from Esso are part of a total of $249,678,000 in government purchase from Esso Petroleum Canada through its office
in Nepean, Ontario, but the fuel is not refined in Nepean and the oil does not come from Ontario. Nepean is a point of billing only.
Finally, many contracts are multi-year in nature and are accounted for only in the year of award (i.e. major crown projects such as large shipbuilding contracts).
SUPPLY AND SERVICES CANADA PROCUREMENT OF GOODS AND SERVICES IN THE RIDINGS OF:
FISCAL YEAR	LANARK CARLETON *	NEPEAN *	OTTAWA WEST	OTTAWA CENTRE	OTTAWA SOUTH *	CARLETON GLOUCESTER *	OTTAWA VANIER1984-1985	-	-	226,219	479,696	111,7521985-1986	-	-	237,576	423,071	-	-	98,5101986-1987	-	-	225,893	486,794	-	-	134,9931987-1988	-	-	282,444	729,670	-	-	123,2481988-1989	84,148	346,996	240,578	771,737	297,085	83,639	105,2641989-1990	103,679	430,522	274,168	731,299	300,337	83,888	108,5131990-1991	100,197	550,131	260,290	1,025,121	437,141	75,715	169,8961991-1992	163,906	443,904	236,546	694,067	1,530,237	63,313	117,055
Contract statistics for the above-noted ridings are not available prior to 1988 because of the redistribution of electoral boundaries.
The Supply and Services Canada statistical data base is designed only to reflect levels of contracting activity, the signing and recording of contract documents. Extreme caution should be used in attempting to ascribe precision or authority to this data for any other purpose.


Mr. Bosley: What was the cost of the CBC-NFB production "The Valour and the Horror"?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of Communications):: "The Valour and the Horror" is an independent production produced by Galafilm Inc. in co-production with CBC English Television and the National Film Board of Canada through the Co-Production Program, in association with la Societe Radio-Canada and with the participation of Telefilm Canada.
The National Film Board provided $200,000 directly to Galafilm Inc., spent $55,000 on editing and provided post-production and other services in the amount of $474,641.
With regard to the CBC's portion of the cost of the three-part series, it has not been customary to require the CBC to provide such details of its internal management and administration. The background to this custom is explained in detail in the reply to question No. 2530 asked by Mr. Cossitt May 22, 1975 and printed on November 6, 1975:


Mr. Cossitt: With reference to the answer to Question No. 2,295 which stated in part: "it has not been customary to require the CBC to supply such details of its internal management and administration" (a) on what date and by whom was such a policy arrived at (b) what are all the reasons justifying such a decision (c) will the government agree to a change in this policy by making available to Parliament answers to all requests for legitimate information concerning CBC and its operations and (i) if so, on what date (ii) if not, for what reason?

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Hon. J. Hugh Faulkner (Secretary of State of Canada):: In reply to parts (a) and (b) I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows: (a) and (b) Parliament has not as a matter of custom since the corporation's creation in 1936 required CBC to supply in answering Parliamentary questions certain details of its internal management and administration. Parliament has had two reasons for following this custom: first, the independence of the CBC as a Crown corporation established for the purpose of producing and broadcasting independently of political or commercial interference programs for a national program service; and, second, the competitive nature of many of CBC's activities. The appropriateness of the CBC providing certain categories of information has been considered on many occasions by various parliamentary committees and when the CBC has suggested that such information should not be made a matter of public record its views have been accepted by them. Names of staff members and their functions in relation to specific programs and the costs related to such assignments as requested in Question No. 2295 are examples of details which it has not been customary to require the CBC to supply. It is open to Parliament to discuss the policies it and the CBC have followed in this regard and it would be appropriate to review them when the CBC's estimates are before the House of Commons Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts.
(c) No. The government makes available all information requested by members except where publication would be inconsistent with the mandate given to the corporation by Parliament. This principle is well established and accepted with respect to information about government agencies and Crown corporations which are in competition with the private sector.


Mr. Angus: Did the Government of Canada institute restrictions on the hours of work of interprovincial truck operators and, if so, for each of the five years prior their implementation and for each year since their implementation (a) how many truck accidents occurred (b) how many trucks, for how many hours, operated with a crew of one driver (c) how many trucks, for how many hours, operated with a crew of two drivers (d) what is the accident ratio for single driver operated trucks versus trucks operated by a double crew (e) what is the average annual income of truck drivers?


Jean Corbeil: Transport Canada instituted new federal hours of service regulations effective July 1,1989. Enforcement of these regulations which is the responsibility of each province commenced with the implementation of complementary provincial hours of service regulations governing intraprovincial carriers. The majority of provinces commenced enforcement in 1990.
(a)	The number of trucks involved in fatality producing, injury producing or property damage only collisions is as follows: 1986-26,645; 1987-27,130; 1988-30,225; 1989-33,064; 1990-31,364. This data excludes figures for Quebec and Alberta which are incomplete at the moment. The 1991 statistics have not yet been compiled.
(b)	, (c) and (d) There is no data available on these issues.
(e) From Statistics Canada publication on the for hire trucking survey, the following is the reported national average annual income for drivers including supervisors and helpers: 1986-$28,390; 1987 -$28,348; 1988-$30,489; 1989-$32,099. Data has not been published for 1990.


Mr. Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing): Did any member of the Canadian Armed Forces participate in the raid on Dieppe on August 19, 1942 and, if so, what are the names, ranks and regiments of those who received the France-German Star for participating in the Raid on Dieppe and what reason was given for awarding them the medal?


Hon. Gerald Merrithew (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Yes, however the France-German Star is granted for entry into operational service on land from June 6, 1944 in France, Belgium, Holland or Germany until May 8, 1945, the date of the end of active hostilities in Europe.
Also, airborne troops of the army who have taken part in airborne operations in a qualifying army area for land operations between June 6, 1944 and May 8, 1945 will qualify.


Mr. Skelly (Comox-Alberni): With respect to the government, its bodies and agencies and the company First Satellite Communications (a) what is the total value of contracts since January 1, 1990 (b) what were the dates of these contracts (c) which departments or agencies were involved (d) what was the value of each (e) what was the subject matter of the contract?

November 16, 1992
Government Orders


Paul Wyatt Dick: With respect to the government and the company First Satellite Communications (a) $20,181.75; (b) April 1, 1991; (c) Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; (d) $20,181.75; (e) communications support services.


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I am in receipt of a notice of motion under Standing Order 52(1) from the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, earlier today I wrote to you and asked that you accept the letter I gave you as notice of my intention to rise under the provisions of Standing Order 52 and seek the adjournment of the House to debate an urgent issue of national importance.
Very briefly, for some period Canada's airline industry has had serious financial problems. These problems have now reached critical proportions. In fairness, all airlines service communities from coast to coast to coast. It is a very important national situation. In fact, one of the carriers may be forced to apply for bankruptcy within days, so timing is extremely important.
The Government of Canada is currently examining options for assisting one of the carriers and must make its decision within hours, if not a day or so.
I conclude by saying Parliament has a responsibility and should have the opportunity to assist the government in its decision-making process by having a full and open debate on this issue before the decision is made.
While there will be supply days before our Christmas adjournment, it is extremely unlikely that one will be scheduled before the government responds. Nor will Question Period provide the House with sufficient
opportunity to properly explore the options available to Canadians.
It is for this reason that I submit that a debate is urgently required.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: The hon. member has raised a very important matter, but unfortunately in view of the conditions and constraints of Standing Order 521 cannot entertain the request of the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan at this time.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: It is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 81(8)(b) the total number of allotted days in the supply period ending December 10, 1992 will be reduced by three days. Consequently the total number of allotted days in the supply period, which was fixed at six on Wednesday, September 18, 1992 pursuant to Standing Order 81(8)(c), is now fixed at three.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, September 17, consideration of the motion of Mr. Blais that Bill C-91, an act to amend the Patent Act, to amend another act in consequence thereof and to provide for related matters, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to participate in this debate on Bill C-91, an act to amend the Patent Act.
Members of the House will recall that in January of this past year the government announced its decision to remove compulsory licensing of patented pharmaceuti-
November 16, 1992

cal products. Today, in continuing second reading of Bill C-91, we are carrying through on that announcement.
We are doing that for three fundamental reasons. First, the policy is good for Canada and for Canadians; second, it will end the uncertainty that has risen in the industry over the issue of compulsory licensing; and third, it will end the international isolation in which Canada has found itself on this issue and bring Canadian practice more in line with other industrialized countries.
Let me address each of these three motivating factors. First, there is no question that the changes embodied in Bill C-91 are good for Canada.
Above all else, improvements to patent protection will attract hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment to Canada.
Since January, when we first announced the government's intention to end compulsory licensing, pharmaceutical companies have announced that they will invest over $500 million over the next five years. These large scale new investments were motivated by the expectation of improved patent protection. However, they are conditional on this form of protection being provided. Without it Canada will not be able to compete in the pharmaceutical industry and these investments will move to other more inviting parts of the world.
This is no trivial matter. Over $500 million in new investments means quality jobs for Canadian researchers and medical personnel. We are talking about the full range of industrial activities: provision of plant and equipment, research and development carried out inhouse as well as in hospitals, research institutes, universities and private sector laboratories. These investments include international R and D and manufacturing mandates.
These investments are not just in central Canada. In fact, $90 million of these investments that are being announced are for projects outside of central Canada.

This is just the kind of sector that Canada should invest in, a sector driven by innovation, a sector devoted to the creation of high value added products, a sector that supports high quality employment. Altogether, the pharmaceutical industry employs more than 22,000 people in brand name, generic drug and fine chemical companies. Bill C-91 will create an environment in which all sectors of the industry can grow.
Government Orders

All of this is good news for Canadian research and manufacturing. But there is also good news for Canadians in general.
Bill C-91 will position Canada to participate and become an important player in the search for new medicines and new cures.
At the same time, the bill embodies provisions that will keep drug prices reasonable. The Patented Medicines Prices Review Board is to be strengthened with new powers that will ensure that it is even more effective in the future than it has been in the past.
The board was created in 1987 as part of this government's commitment to keep drug costs reasonable. Since then, the board has acquitted itself admirably. From January 1987 to December 1991 the prices of existing patented drug products increased at an average rate of less than 3 per cent a year, 2.9 per cent. This was well below the rise in the Consumer Price Index.

A recent U.S. study found that medicines in Canada are much lower priced than in the U.S., 32 per cent lower in fact. This study has identified our Patented Medicine Prices Review Board as a key factor in achieving this.

I said at the outset that the policy means increased research and development and manufacturing, coupled with strict controls of price increases. This is good for Canada and good for Canadians. Let me turn to the second fundamental reason that we have initiated this bill.
It is time to end the uncertainty with Canada's patent protection for pharmaceutical products. The government announced its intention to end compulsory licensing in January 1992 in the expectation that the GATT process would be concluded shortly. Although I remain hopeful a deal will be reached in the very near future, negotiations have not yet been concluded.
Canada, however, cannot afford to wait any longer. Since the government announced its intention to end compulsory licensing a flood of new investment commitments have been announced. We have a responsibility to create the environment in which these investment commitments can be realized. With each passing day uncertainty in the sector grows and investment commitments may not materialize for Canadians.

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Since the Dunkel text became public last year, the generic industry has flooded the system with over 250 new applications for compulsory licenses, compared to just 57 in all of last year.
All compulsory licences issued since December 20 when the Dunkel report was tabled have been accompanied by a written stipulation that the license may be revoked if the government went ahead with the change in policy. These licences will be declared null and void once this bill is through, but in the meantime all parts of the industry are waiting in an uncertain business climate.

It is our responsibility to ensure an orderly marketplace. We cannot maintain an environment of uncertainty that makes it impossible for companies to plan for the future. It is imperative for the sake of all parties that this issue be resolved immediately.
Finally let me speak on the third reason. Bill C-91 will end Canada's international isolation on this issue. Canada is the only industrialized member of the GATT that still maintains a system of compulsory licensing for pharmaceutical products.
During the negotiations leading up to the tabling of the Dunkel report on December 20, 1991 Canada was isolated among industrialized countries on this issue. Frankly Canada can no longer hope to attract international investment in the pharmaceutical industry while maintaining compulsory licensing.
The pharmaceutical industry is in the process of restructuring on a global scale. Patent protections for innovations is a critical factor in choosing a location for investments. If we are not competitive with our patent protection Canada will lose these new investments and manufacturing mandates to other countries.
Since the January announcement the innovative sector of the industry has announced new investments totalling over $500 million. Nordic Merrill Dow has pledged $40 million in new R and D over the next five years. Glaxo announced a new manufacturing facility worth $70 million and Ayerst pledged $60 million for a new plant in Brandon, Manitoba. These are just three examples, and there are many more.
These are the reasons the government is moving forward with this policy. It is good for Canada. We can no longer afford to be out of line with international development.
To better appreciate why we have come to these conclusions we must look back over the past few years. Bill C-91 is the completion of a process that this government initiated in 1987 when it moved from a period of no market exclusivity at all for pharmaceutical products to a guaranteed period of market exclusivity of 7 to 10 years.
This House will well remember that piece of legislation, Bill C-22, which reinstated patent protection for pharmaceuticals in 1987. That step represented a compromise that we believed would be enough to secure R and D investment and export mandates in Canada while protecting the public against abusive price increases. The government was subjected to a fire-storm of criticism about the effects of Bill C-22. Critics predicted doom on a number of fronts.
The critics were wrong, very wrong. I will take the House through three key predictions of doom from that time and show how Bill C-22 was sound legislation that was good for Canada.
In 1987 the innovative sector of the industry committed itself to doubling its spending on research and development as a percentage of sales from 5 per cent to 10 per cent by 1996. It has more than lived up to that promise. In fact, the innovative industry virtually achieved that target five years ahead of schedule by spending 9.6 per cent of sales on R and D in 1991. The innovative industry spent an estimated $1.1 billion from 1987 to 1991.
During this time annual spending on research and development rose from approximately $100 million in 1987 to $376 million in 1991.
Further, the innovative pharmaceutical industry has become the leading medical research and development funder in Canada. Since 1987, the industry has invested a total of $320 million in Canadian hospitals and universities for medical research and development.
The industry now ranks in the top five in total R and D spending in Canada. This certainly was not the case before Bill C-22. It was this government, through that bill in 1987, that created the environment that produced this tremendous activity in increased research and devel-
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opment. Make no mistake about it, that was a critical factor in those decisions.
There are also many other positive aspects of the record of Bill C-22 in economic terms. The industry said in 1987 that it would create jobs if we passed Bill C-22, and it has done exactly that. Employment in the innovative industry has grown substantially to about 18,000 currently, an increase of roughly 2,400 new relatively high paying jobs.
We have proven the critics of 1987 wrong on the question of research and development, and we have proven them equally wrong on all other counts.
Critics predicted the total collapse of the generic pharmaceutical industry in 1987 if Bill C-22 was passed. We passed Bill C-22 and sales of the generic industry have not dropped. They have grown by roughly 190 per cent since 1987. In fact, sales of the generic industry have grown at more than twice the annual rate of growth of the over-all pharmaceutical industry since that time.
The point is that the generic industry did not disappear with Bill C-22. It has done very well and it will continue to do so under Bill C-91.
That brings me to the third major doomsday prediction of 1987 concerning Bill C-22, which shows just how far we have proven the critics wrong.
That concerns the prices of patented drugs. Critics predicted that Bill C-22 would cause dramatic increases in the prices of patented drugs. That did not happen. Price increases have been kept well below changes in the Consumer Price Index.
Over the past five years patented drug prices in Canada have risen by 2.9 per cent a year, less than the 4.4 per cent increase in the Consumer Price Index.
The Patented Medicines Prices Review Board that we created with Bill C-22 has worked, and it will continue to work with the increased powers that this bill will give to that board.
The critics of 1986-87 were wrong. Bill C-22 was good for Canada and it is legislation of which we are proud.
The 1987 legislation, however, is no longer sufficient to cope with dramatic changes in this fast-paced industry. There is a new dynamic in pharmaceutical development that requires a new policy framework. Other
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countries have responded by strengthening their patent protection for medicines. If Canada is to remain competitive it must also provide a climate in which high quality and high paying jobs can be created.
The Liberals and the New Democrats say they want high quality and high paying jobs and more research and development, but they then oppose the key legislation that will help bring that about. They cannot have it both ways.

The policy of this government is to improve the climate for the intellectual achievements of those who have invested in the expensive and high risk research essential for innovation in the pharmaceutical sector. At the same time this govemement is firmly committed to preventing any abuses in drug pricing. The enhanced powers of the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board will ensure that prices of both new and existing drugs are kept within reasonable limits.
By pursuing a policy based on balancing these two objectives the government will encourage investment, research and development, job creation, and the search for new cures while at the same time protecting consumers.
Bill C-91 is designed to achieve the best of both. That is why I think it is very important for industry in Canada to see this bill approved by this House.
As you are very well aware, Mr. Speaker, we have seen the release of the action plan of the prosperity initiative which calls for precisely what this bill is designed to do: the creation of more research and development, the creation of new investment, and the creation of foreign trade opportunities. By bringing these all together through an improvement in the protection for patent legislation it provides the environment whereby these companies are able to achieve the objectives that were set out in the action plan so that when we hear what people are looking for in the country today, an increase in research and development, in investment, and international trade opportunities, it is precisely this type of bill that will create the environment to achieve these objectives.

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I call on all members of the House to support this bill in order to support the objectives that Canadians have set out for us through the prosperity initiative.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I have three questions for the minister arising out of his speech. I am not surprised he defended this policy. I think it was he who announced it back in January.
My first question is: Why he would announce this policy during the course of the GATT negotiations? If Canada is the only major industrial partner in GATT that has not agreed to this policy, it might have been used as a bargaining chip to help bring those talks to a successful conclusion, a conclusion that might have been helpful for Canadians in other walks of life instead of throwing it away as the government did previously with Bill C-22 in the course of the free trade talks with the United States. When it might have been used as a bargaining chip it threw it away then and it is throwing it away a second time. I ask him as minister responsible for international trade to answer for that which is in my view a serious error, the throwing away of this bargaining chip earlier this year. I ask him to explain why that was done.
Second, why as a term or condition of this bill would he not require that drug companies reinvest part of their profits, a specified portion of their profits, in R and D in Canada? Why would he not require as a term of the legislation that that research and development be in the development of new drugs in Canada instead of spending the money on marketing?
Third, how can he say that prices have increased only by less than 3 per cent in accordance with the figures provided by this board that the government set up under Bill C-22 when the province of Ontario drug plan reports a 13.2 per cent increase in drug prices, when Green Shield health insurance company reports an 11.4 per cent increase in drug prices, and when the Manitoba health insurance plan reports a 12.3 per cent increase in drug prices, and when Health and Welfare Canada in its own report on health expenditures reports that "expenditures on drugs exhibited the highest level of growth among categories of health care expenditures increasing by 14.3 per cent from 1989 to 1990"? In the face of those figures, how can he put any trust whatever in the report of the drug prices review board?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend has put three questions and I appreciate that he has done so because it gives me an opportunity to answer what clearly he is hearing from some of his colleagues in his own caucus.
Was this a reasonable bargaining chip? I think that is the basic question one has to ask rather than putting the question the way my hon. friend has done. The answer is that it was not going to be a reasonable bargaining chip since we were the odd man out. We were the only country that maintained this compulsory licensing regime.
If we had continued that we would have been the losers, not the other countries. We would have been the losers because we would not have had the new research and development mandates or the new investment and manufacturing mandates. And it is because we were in a period, and still are in a period of significant change in the global pharmaceutical industry that there is going to be rationalization which puts Canada in a position where we must compete for this investment. We could have said no, that we keep the compulsory licensing in place but we would have lost that new investment. We would have lost the $500 million of new investment that has already been announced, as well as new investment that is still to come once this legislation is passed.
That is the reason it could not be used as a bargaining chip, because we would have been the losers if people had called us and said that is not a realistic bargaining chip.
I can see my hon. friend does not understand some of the basic principles of investment and the global economy Canada is living in today. It is one of the tragedies of debate in this House that members opposite do not understand that things have changed in the 1990s; they have changed from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s because of the nature of the economic interrelationships we have today. We are not an island unto ourselves. We have to compete and if we do not compete we are the losers, not the other countries.
My hon. friend asks why we should not require reinvestment of the moneys into research and development. We have seen over the past five years how the revenues generated have been reinvested by the increase from 5 per cent to close to 10 per cent of the sales in research and development. This is happening. It is the
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normal response of a company if it is working in a competitive environment, a favourable environment for its investments in research and development, that it will continue to invest. But if, like the Liberal Party policies of the past, things are required which say that you must do this or you must do that, then the people who are investing the money will say that well, if we are going to be forced to do this this year, what are they going to force us to do next year and what are they going to force us to do the year after?
If we had taken that step we would have been sending out negative messages and we would not have generated the $500 million of investment opportunities. We would have not generated the high paying jobs and the good research and development in the companies as well as in the universities and the hospitals across Canada.
Finally, my hon. friend compares the 2.9 per cent with some of these other figures from the Ontario government's green plan and others. As my hon. colleague, who is very familiar with this business because of his professional background, says, these are apples and oranges. That is absolutely right. Because the 2.9 per cent measures the increase in the cost of the patented medicines that are brought on to the market. What these other measurements refer to are other things, including the amount of usage of drugs. The types of drugs that people are using today are different from what they were in 1987 or 1989. You cannot compare the 2.9 per cent with these other figures. That has been made abundantly clear by people who have reviewed both the conclusions.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I must say that the minister talks about how marvellously the government understands the current economic situation in this world. That is why in eight years it has taken this country almost to the point of bankruptcy and the most difficult economic situation we have ever faced.
I want to ask the minister three basic questions. First, the government keeps denying that this is part of the free trade agreement, and yet when it passed Bill C-21, William Merkin, who was the deputy chief trade negotiator for the United States, made it very clear-
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Time is running out and I ask the hon. member to ask one question, please.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I will ask him one question. I will get a chance to ask him many more. The government's own prices review board said that 40 per cent of all new drugs coming on the market were above its own guidelines. British Columbia made a study which showed in detail that existing drugs rose 6.4 per cent between 1988 and 1991, not the 3.2 per cent that he talks about, and that the average ingredient cost in pharmacare went up 133 per cent. The cost of actual dispensing went down 47 per cent. The actual moneys going to the pharmaceutical companies went up 133 per cent during that period of time.
How can the minister keep saying this when the government's own prices review board says it could not even control the costs of new drugs coming on and it has been documented that existing drugs went up much faster than he is claiming and that details show a 133 per cent increase?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I will not rise to the bait in the preamble of my friend's question. We will have another opportunity to debate that.
Let me just respond specifically to the point he has made on initial pricing. Yes, my hon. friend is correct. The PMPRB did point out that the initial prices were initially offside. That was because when the initial price in Canada was compared with the international benchmarks we did not know what that international benchmark was until some time past the establishment of the initial price. However, once the companies found out what that bench-mark was, they did reduce their prices to bring them into line with the existing international bench-mark that they had to meet.
What Bill C-91 does do in strengthening the role of the prices review board is it provides for a roll back to the initial date of the initial price or the introduction on the market so that there cannot be the windfall profits my hon. friend has referred to.

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Rather than asking the question in a critical way, what he should be saying as I referred to in my speech is that this bill improves and strengthens the prices review board in a way that meets the concerns he has just expressed.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-91 is a very dangerous piece of legislation with respect to Canada's health care system.
The basic premise for the last 20 minutes or so from the minister of trade and industry and the former Minister of Finance was basically that this is a good policy for Canada: "Trust us, Canadians. This is good". This is the same minister who said that the FTA was good for Canada, that NAFTA was good for Canada, that the GST is good for Canada, that the 33 new taxes since 1984 are good for Canada and Canadians and that this eight-year record of this trickle-down economic theory which has placed literally millions of Canadians in the unemployment lines was also good.
Quite frankly Canadians did not believe him then and they will not believe him now that this piece of legislation by any stretch of the imagination is going to be good for Canadians or for Canada.
Let us put this bill into some historical context. Compulsory licensing was bom in this country in the late sixties when the then Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, introduced compulsory licensing for two reasons. The first was to diversify the industry, competition, something that I thought was part of the Conservative credo: diversification, competition in the marketplace. The second reason was to try to moderate and lower the price of prescription drugs, so it allowed the generic firms to replicate the brand name drugs in return for royalties paid to the brand name companies.
In 1987, along comes this government and through Bill C-22, and it basically eliminates the royalties and replaces them with seven-year effective protection for brand name companies. That means that the generics would not be able to duplicate those drugs until that seven-year period ended.
The government comes along in 1992 and through Bill C-91, rather than seven years, effectively adds another three years. When the process by which a company must obtain the permission of the government to introduce that drug in the marketplace is added there is a 20-year patent protection for brand name drugs.
That 20-year protection will kill the generic companies and it is also retroactive to last December. Can we imagine the gall of these government members opposite, not just having introduced and passed legislation but saying that it takes effect last December? This will kill that generic industry because after a 20-year monopoly the duplication of drugs will always be surpassed by new technologies and new drugs to administer to Canadians' needs.
That must be put into perspective. I am going to present four reasons why this bill must be stopped. The first one is that we cannot afford increased health care costs through increased prescription drug prices for Canadians in this day and age. Overwhelmingly, Canadians want accessible and affordable health care.
The elimination of compulsory drug licensing means increased prices for prescription drugs. They will be higher, and in fact they will be unchecked. As the hon. member from Kingston mentioned a few minutes ago, since Bill C-22 we have seen the increases in those costs. In my province of Ontario there has been a 13.2 per cent increase in the drug plan. In Manitoba the increase has been 12.2 per cent and for the Green Shield health insurance company the increase has been 11.4 per cent.
This is a recipe for increased prices. The Green Shield health insurance company, a large third party health insurer, had this to say in its report:
The average cost of a prescription claim has risen at a rate in excess of 11 per cent compounded annually, for the period of 1987 through 1991 -
It goes on to say that:
-it will result in continued high levels of increases in drug costs, bearing in mind the high costs being experienced with new drugs as they are introduced to the marketplace.
Then there is the regulatory board that was set up after Bill C-22 to monitor and control the price of drugs. It has proved to be completely ineffective. In fact brand name companies are ignoring the guidelines of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. There is a 30 to 40 per cent non-compliance rate.
The chairman of that board, Dr. Eastman, said in his
report:

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The high number of prices out of compliance suggests either that some patentees following a strategy of setting high introductory prices so as to benefit from a temporary gain or that they resist the board's guidelines, especially those limiting the prices of new drugs that bring moderate, little or no therapeutic improvements to the range of drug products already existing in Canada.
That is from the chair of that board that was established after Bill C-22.
It is no different in the United States. I was watching CNN the other day and there was a report on an organization called Families U.S.A., which had a press conference to outline, among other things, that the top 20 prescription brand name drugs in the United States have gone up in price over 70 per cent in the last she years. This government wishes essentially to emulate the same system that exists in the United States.
Even the government's own study provided to the consumer and corporate affairs minister recently said that longer patent periods:
-will increase the length of time before generic competition can occur. Therefore consumers will have to pay more for drugs over time.
That was a study provided by the government's own department.
The evidence is clear. Vote for Bill C-91 and that is a recipe and a prognosis for higher prescription drug costs. Canadians do not want any part of that.
Second, the minister always says that we must provide Canadian entrepreneurs with a stimulus to develop and compete not only domestically but internationally. What does Bill C-91 do for the Canadian generic industry?
The generic industry is wholly Canadian owned and grown. Brand name manufacturers are largely offshore multinational corporations. The generic industry employs almost 3,000 Canadians across this country. It has been able, through the drug licensing system, to capture almost 10 per cent of the marketplace in Canada. It had sales last year of over $430 million. All those jobs, all those profits, all those taxes, and all the research and development that takes place in the generic industry happens in this country. Profits are not flowing south. There are no tax write-offs. There is not the stimulus to send jobs south. It all happens in Canada.
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Therefore Bill C-91, which would kill that generic industry, would remove the window that this system has provided for Canadian companies like Apotex Incorporated in Toronto and Novopharm of Scarborough, two leading generic companies that are doing extremely well. We should be proud of the fact that they are doing well in this high-tech pharmaceutical industry because they are Canadian. They also moderate our drug pricing systems for Canadians.
Why not encourage, through this system, Canadian companies to take pride and stimulate additional companies like Novopharm and Apotex in the future. Through this legislation not only would we be killing an Apotex or a Novopharm but we would be ensuring that in the future no other such companies, Canadian companies with Canadian risks and Canadian creativity for Canadian jobs, will be given a chance to establish themselves.
The minister talks about the flood of investments that will flow from the multinational corporations. He was the same minister that talked about the flood of investments if we were to approve Bill C-22 some years ago.
The government promised that there would be some
5,000	new jobs created. It is not even one-third of the way, as we speak today, in delivering on that promise. Over half those jobs are in the marketing and sales components and divisions of those multinational corporations. They are not in the research and development area, as this government promised us.
Second, let us get behind our Canadian industry and Canadian companies in this pharmaceutical industry. The worry of the international community is that this system will be emulated in other parts of the world. In fact President-elect Bill Clinton made an issue in his campaign, a successful campaign which we all witnessed, the bringing to a stop of the spiralling costs to America of their prescription drugs as well as their health care system.
Third, does this government not have any pride left in any Canadian institutions?
Does it have to put its hands on every Canadian institution that has served this country well? Does it not realize that the generic compulsory drug licensing system is an institution made in Canada for Canadians and by Canadians and that it is working well? It is fair. The brand name companies are making their profits as they

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should, and the generic industries are in there to moderate those prices and to give incentives to Canadian companies and jobs.
This is yet another institution touched by this government. This is the removing of yet another piece of fabric in that Canadian blanket that we have been proud of, which in the end serves to define who we are and who we are not. The government took all those individual strands: VIA, the airline industry, our infrastructure in transportation, Canada Post, doing away with FIRA in terms of protecting Canadian industry, not anti-foreign investment but standing up for number one, and the trucking industry.
The CBC is not able to promote Canadian unity. Can you imagine anything more insane for a Canadian broadcasting channel? Now the government touches the compulsory drug licensing system. I am not advocating, our critic who has spoken on this matter eloquently is not advocating and our party is not advocating, that we run the multinational companies out of town. Not at all.
We are suggesting that the compulsory drug licensing system allows both the brand names and the generic names to live and coexist, and allows each to do well. Does the House know who benefits in the current system, leaving the brand name and generic companies alone for a moment? Canadians do because Canadians get a health care system that is more affordable. Canadian companies do well. There are jobs and profits, and taxes are paid in this country.
Why fix something that is uniquely Canadian and that is not broken whatsoever?
Fourth-I do not like raising it but I will-is that in the debate on Bill C-22 elements on that side suggested: "If you are against Bill C-22 you are against Quebec". We hear those voices again now on Bill C-91. A lot of brand name multinational corporations are in Quebec, though not exclusively. In my own province of Ontario there are quite a number as well, but there is a large component of companies in Quebec.
Now voices opposite suggest: "Hold on, if you are against Bill C-91 you are against the province of Quebec and its interests". This is precisely the type of allegation that poisoned the referendum debate that all of us were engaged in. These are the voices that are the true enemies of Canada.
We know where we stand with the province of Quebec. We know what we did during the referendum when
Canadians spoke, and whose voices must be respected. Bill C-91 is not a test of loyalty or patriotism to one province in our federation. Bill C-91 is an issue of health care. Bill C-91, whether there are brand name companies in Quebec or not, and there are, is of interest also to Quebecers, to Canadians in Quebec, because they too are concerned about how much they spend for their prescription drugs on which unfortunately they must rely.
Those are the four issues at stake. It is not: "Believe me, Canadians, this is a good policy for Canada". If that is good for Canada I would hate to see what the minister's definition of a bad policy is, and I think Canadians are wise to it.
I urge Canadians to rally to the defence of this compulsory drug licensing system which is a Canadian, home-grown, home-bred institution. This issue can be a sleeper. Do you remember when the party opposite tried to deindex senior citizens' pensions, thinking that the seniors were somehow not powerful and would not be able to mobilize public opinion? Do you remember when that beautiful, elderly lady called the Prime Minister a Charlie Brown? She captured the imagination not only of senior citizens but of young Canadians, nephews and nieces, and mobilized them until this government was forced to back down.
This issue is something like that debate, particularly when we talk about senior citizens. They are the ones who are most reliant on our health care system and the provincial drug plans that provide prescription drugs for them.
I urge senior citizens and not so senior Canadians to involve themselves in this debate. We certainly will stand our ground. This system has worked well. It has provided for moderate increases in prices, and it has allowed both the brand name and generic companies to co-exist, to continue.
Why must we let go without a fight an institution that has worked well for Canada and for Canadians? We must be concerned about the safety of our health care system. At the very time when provincial health care ministers are coming to Ottawa on a daily basis talking about the increased costs, this government is moving in the oppo-
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site direction. The first piece of business, once we came back from the post-referendum episode, when we are supposed to be getting back to business and creating economic prosperity, is about the dismantling of a Canadian industry in Toronto, in Winnipeg and elsewhere.
If the government has learned anything from the referendum message, if it has listened to the deep disaffection that Canadians have, it will do the honourable thing in this legislation. It should not satisfy the needs of multinational corporations, those that the Prime Minister wishes to sing to. It should look after the needs of the people. From there, we will be able to build successfully. Start at home and let us do away with Bill C-91.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to what my friend opposite had to say about this bill. I was a little surprised because it would seem to be in direct contradiction to what I heard during Question Period when there was a lot of rhetoric about jobs, jobs, jobs.
If we are looking at jobs for Canadians then we should look at the record and see what the innovative drug companies have done in creating jobs since 1987.
Right now the innovative industry, the industry that will be looking forward to investing more money in Canada, employs about 18,000 people in this country. Since 1987, with the advent of Bill C-22, they added about 2,400 new jobs. This is 2,400 new jobs just because of Bill C-22.
At that time I was not a member of the House, but I remember as a citizen being frightened because of the dire predictions of the opposition about what would happen if we passed Bill C-22. What happened is that we got 2,400 new jobs in Canada. We got a doubling of the R and D investment to the 10 per cent promised by 1996. It has already happened and it is not even the end of 1992.
Therefore, I have to ask the hon. member why he is making these comments against Bill C-91 and why he is trying to scare seniors by making all kinds of threats and predictions about rising costs. That worries me because there are a lot of seniors in my riding, as I am sure there are a lot of seniors in the hon. member's riding as well. It
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is highly unfair and highly inappropriate to make predictions about rising costs of prescription drugs that make seniors and others who have little ability to defend themselves to quake in their shoes in fear.
The hon. member can tell me if I am correct. I would like to get his opinion. The facts are that only 20 per cent of all of the drugs that are bought over the counter by people or through their doctor's prescriptions are patented. Those are the drugs we are talking about here. That is the portion of the bill that seniors and others would have to bear and only 20 per cent will be affected by this bill.
The hon. member has been saying that the prices review board was not effective.


An hon. member:: Ask your question.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: This is a period for questions and comments. I can make my comment and then pose my question. He says that the prices review board has not been effective. The facts speak for themselves. The prices of these drugs under patent, not the patents that are being unfairly encroached upon because of special licensing created by the Liberals, have only increased by 2.9 per cent while the CPI has raised by 4.4 per cent.
I would like to hear the hon. member defend his dire predictions about price increases that frighten the elderly and people on fixed incomes. They are totally unfounded according to the facts and figures that I have.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I was not trying to scare seniors. I was trying to appeal to seniors to look into this issue. There is nothing more scary to seniors than this government. If the member wants facts and figures she should start with her home province.
She talks about the CPI rate. Since 1987 the health plan in her province of Manitoba has gone up, since Bill C-22 arrived, some 12.3 per cent.
Second, she talks about the need to create jobs and investment and how dare I criticize Bill C-91. In Bill C-22 her colleagues promised an avalanche of jobs in research from the brand name companies.


An hon. member:: Overnight.


Sergio Marchi: Let us keep it in perspective. The brand name multinational corporations enjoy 90 per cent plus of the pharmaceutical market in this country. We are

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talking about the generic companies trying to survive in that 10 per cent market share.
I ask the hon. member and the government she is part of if that is unfair. Are we saying that we have run the multinational corporations out of town when they enjoy 90 per cent of a billion dollar market rather than 10 per cent?
The research and development and the profits, the taxes and the stimulus from the brand name companies do not all stay in Canada. At least we can say in trying to have those two co-exist that with generic firms the direct employment, direct spin-offs, direct taxation, direct research and development all happen on Canadian soil and nowhere else. The hon. member forgets that. The hon. member forgets that Apotex Inc., the leading generic drug company in Canada has put on hold a multimillion dollar development in the city of Winnipeg because of the legislation we are debating today.
Is the member from Manitoba speaking up for Manitobans and the people of Winnipeg or is she paying lip service to the policies of her government which clearly have not passed the test? I advise the member to go back to her province, check her facts, check with the interests of Manitobans and then come back to this Chamber and talk intelligently.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for what I thought was a well turned intervention, not challenged seriously from the other side. I do not know where the other side gets its numbers but the actual facts show that only half as many jobs were created as they claim in their own statistics and other statistics were left out.
I was interested in something the hon. member had to say. The hon. member who speaks on behalf of the Official Opposition will know that just before it was defeated in the early eighties the Liberal government was planning changes to compulsory licensing of an undetermined sort. Nevertheless it was perfectly clear that compulsory licensing under the previous Liberal government was under threat.
It is also true that the former Prime Minister was a member of the board of directors of Sandoz. It is true
that the present spokesperson on behalf of the multinational drug corporations is a former Liberal cabinet minister who is one of those interested in changing compulsory licensing. We know as well that one member has been communicating with other members of the Liberal caucus, along with others, opposing the Liberal position on Bill C-91.
I was very glad to hear the hon. member point out that the Liberal Party as usual is unified on this. I would be interested in knowing just what machinations went on to achieve such unity within an otherwise divided house.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I said that the party position was that advocated by our consumer and corporate affairs critic who spoke before this House recessed.
I do not think it would do much good for the hon. member to speak of divided houses because the rumblings coming from the NDP caucus and the challenges to his leader's ability to control the divisions within the constitutional issue indicate that the member is on very thin ice when he talks about divided houses. Obviously he should take a look at the sensitivities in his own party before he casts the first stone.
The fact of the matter is that it does not do anything for the national debate if I were to point out that the NDP Government of Ontario is cutting back on health care and that the NDP Government of British Columbia is prepared to take certain drugs off its list. However it does not do anything to further the debate.
The core of this debate is whether Canadians should have access to a system of prescription drugs that allows the pricing of those drugs to be controlled, that they remain affordable, and that they not escalate beyond the means of average Canadian families who must unfortunately rely on prescription drugs and medicines when a member of their family is ailing. That is the central premise of the issue.
The second one for me is allowing generic companies that only have 10 per cent of the market share to continue as Canadian corporate companies and citizens so that they can invest in this countiy and give rise to further jobs and stimulus.
If the NDP wishes to look at divided houses we would be happy to have an emergency debate and respond to every one of those challenges.
November 16, 1992


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 38, it is my duty to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception-Atlantic Fishermen; the hon. member for Davenport-The Environment; the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast-The Economy; the hon. member for Cape Breton Highlands-Canso-Westray Coal Mine; and the hon. member for Ottawa West-The Environment.


Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton -Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, as a member of the consumer and corporate affairs committee and as a member representing a riding in which there is a university, the University of Alberta, I am pleased to add my comments to those of the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs who spoke in September and today of the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology on Bill C-91, an act to amend the Patent Act.
The legislation before us today is designed to foster science and technology, build expertise in niche markets and to enable our research facilities to respond to global trends.
Bringing Canada's patent protection more in line with intellectual property laws in the rest of the world will help do all these things.
We have what it takes to become a world leader in pharmaceutical research. We have a well respected medical establishment, a health care system that is the envy of the world, an educated work force, and R and D tax credits that are among the most generous in the world.
However, we have been missing an essential ingredient: intellectual property protection in line with the standard practices of the rest of the industrialized world and patent laws that compare with those of the nations with which we compete for R and D investment.
Since 1984 the government has given high priority to the reform of Canada's intellectual property laws as a component for its agenda of economic renewal. It has
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recognized the need for patent laws that protect ideas and innovation and that attract investment.
But the government has had to fight every step of the way in its effort to modernize and streamline these laws. It comes as no surprise for me to hear the complaints of hon. members opposite. Over the years they have tried in vain to halt the government's progress.
I have heard some members across the floor complain that the government is moving too quickly with second reading of this bill. They seem to ignore the fact that some $500 million in new investment is at stake here, that innovative pharmaceutical companies stated their intentions to invest that amount once they heard last January that the government intended to strengthen patent protection for pharmaceuticals.
This is a substantial investment at a time when the world-wide industry is scrambling to restructure. Make no mistake about it: other countries around the world would love to get hold of that investment.
I often wonder about my colleagues opposite. They talk about the economy and they talk about how we need to do something. Here is $500 million waiting to be invested in Canada and yet they say we should not go ahead with it.
If Canada does not move quickly to take advantage of this offer, a window of opportunity will slam shut. I would remind those in the House that hon. members opposite and their colleagues in the other place have a track record of delaying patent legislation well beyond any reasonable time frame required to study the bill adequately.
In the last Parliament they used every obstruction tactic at their disposal in an effort to defeat or delay the first phase of patent reform. During the last Parliament Bill C-22, an act to amend the Patent Act, was given first reading on November 7,1986. The Liberals and the NDP in this House obstructed the bill to such an extent that it was not forwarded to the other place until May 6, 1987.
I remind this House of the turbulent history as a warning that we cannot afford to see a similar delay in the passage of this bill. What I find disturbing is that many of the arguments I have heard today from the opposition benches echo the arguments made in the other place when it tried to thwart the government's legislation.

November 16, 1992
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Back in 1987 the Liberals maintained that the amendments to the Patent Act would result in higher drug prices. They use the same line today. I would like to quote Senator Theriault who told that other place:
By removing the competitive element provided by generic drugs in the industry, Bill C-22 will undoubtedly result in a huge price increase.
Senator Bonnell from Prince Edward Island, and a doctor himself, felt that we were encouraging research by multinational drug companies at the expense of disadvantaged Canadians who would have to pay higher drug prices. He said:
For goodness sake, don't take off the backs of the sick, the hospitalized, the infirm, and the aged by increasing drug prices.
He said that on August 13, 1987.
In a similar manner Senator Buckwold raised the spectre of fear, inferring that the legislation would hurt the people of Canada because of higher drug costs. He said:
In my opinion, if we pass this bill we will be doing a great disservice to the people of Canada. We will be adding to the problem of health costs. We will be denying drugs to people who otherwise would have bought them, and who desperately need them.
He raised the spectre of fear. Shameful. This is what the Liberals in the other place said about the legislation increasing drug prices. Today we know that their predictions were inaccurate and terribly unfounded. It was a shameful procedure.
In fact from January 1987 to December 1991 the prices of patented drug products increased at an average rate of only 2.9 per cent. This is well below the rise in the Consumer Price Index. The Minister of Industry, Science and Technology spoke about that a bit earlier.
Bill C-91 gives the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board tough new powers. These powers will, first, allow the board to better influence introductory prices for new patented drugs. This was a concern of Bill C-22 and the government has met this concern.
Second, these powers will authorize the board to order price reductions or penalties which could compensate for past excessive prices and deter excessive pricing practices.
Third, they will provide for fines and imprisonments for failure to comply with the board's order.
Finally these powers will give the board's orders the same force and effect as an order of the Federal Court.
These are tremendous powers and the board will be very effective.
Again many Liberals both in this House and in the other place had dire predictions that drug manufacturers would not double the research and development as a portion of sales, as they had promised to do.
Senator Theriault said:
As far as research and development are concerned, it is clear-that it is not Bill C-22 which will increase the level in Canada. We have nothing but promises and commitments from the pharmaceutical industry which has never proved quite reliable. There is nothing in Bill C-22 itself which would compel it to meet its commitments.
Senator Bonnell added:
In the original bill, there is not five cents guaranteed to go into research. There is just a promise.
We now know that the effect of the changes to the Patent Act was indeed to open the gates to a flood of new investment by the pharmaceutical companies. The industry has lived up to its commitments.
In fact the fourth report of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board points out that the ratio of R and D to sales by the companies that filed patents with the board in 1991 now stands at 9.7 per cent, well on its way to the 10 per cent commitment it promised.
Total expenditures on R and D for these companies grew to $376.4 million last year, an increase of over 23 per cent from 1990.
This money is valuable money. It helps create high value added jobs, research and development jobs, the type of jobs we want to build a new economy, to provide for new growth in our economy. We need these jobs very badly as we face globalization and restructuring. Five hundred million dollars in new investment is at stake here and we must push forward with this patent legislation.
During the debates on the old bill, Bill C-22, Senator Buckwold expressed doubts about whether Canada had the capacity to play a major role in the international pharmaceutical industry. He had doubts about Canada's role to compete internationally, to compete in the world environment. I have confidence in Canadians. I have
November 16, 1992

confidence in Canadian researchers, in Canadian universities and in companies in Canada.
Senator Buckwold said:
I do not know how the government can be so naive as to really
believe that suddenly Canada will become a major player in the
research world.
It was Senator Buckwold who was naive in this case. He lacked confidence in Canada. He lacked confidence in our researchers, in our universities and in others.
We on this side of the House have no doubt that Canada will become a major player in the research world. What we require, however, is public policy that enables the science and technology community to get on with the job, and that is what this legislation is all about.
In my riding of Edmonton-Strathcona, Glaxo announced on October 6 a $15 million investment to undertake basic research at the University of Alberta. This pledge is an addition to the quarter of a million dollars announced by Bristol-Meyers Squibb last July. I was a participant in that announcement. The Bristol-Meyers Squibb announcement of $250,000 will be spent over five years and it is renewable for another five years. That is half a million dollars and it will be matched by other sources. These investments will add to the university's high reputation for medical science.
We have a lot to be proud of in Alberta about the University of Alberta because it is a leader in many areas, in medical and pharmaceutical research, and it will lead again with the types of investments the Patent Act will bring.
At both those announcements the presidents of each of those companies lauded the government for Bill C-22. They indicated how much more money they had spent than they had committed to. They talked about the successes of their new drugs, how these new drugs would help Canadians and people in the world fight disease and improve their health.
That is what we want. We want high value added jobs through which we can export high value added products like pharmaceuticals.
Albertans recognize the importance of these kinds of investments and they are well aware of the connection between intellectual property protection and R and D.
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Dr. Michael Lee of Edmonton has written to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to say:
I believe that the brand name pharmaceutical industry has stepped into the forefront as one of the primary sources of funding for Canadian medical research.
Dr. Lee adds:
It would seem logical that the maintenance of the patent protection will encourage continuation, and in fact, further investment by the pharmaceutical industry enhancing Canadian competitiveness in medical research.
Mr. Bachinsky of the University of Alberta, a former dean of pharmacy, has written to the minister and has said:
You have my support in the forthcoming GATT negotiations to extend patent protection and to bring Canada into the post-industrial world.
I hope all members of this House will see the wisdom behind the words of these Albertans. We cannot afford to lose time, as we did in the last Parliament, by squabbling over this legislation in order to score political points.
We will fine tune Bill C-91 in committee. I am a member of that committee and I will be open to suggestions of opposition members and people who come forward to us. I am looking forward to a healthy, good process. Many members of the consumer and corporate affairs committee will be on that legislative committee.
We have worked well in the past. We have produced some good reports. We worked well on the bankruptcy legislation and on the consumer and corporate affairs study into credit cards. We will continue our work in a non-partisan sense on Bill C-91.
I will welcome constructive suggestions, but let us move quickly to the committee stage and avoid repeating the costly delays of the Patent Act amendments in the last Parliament.


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton-Strathcona, which is a very good seat, has left out a few things.

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One of them is the fact that the industry tells me that they have 18,000 employees across Canada. I asked one of their spokesmen how many lived and worked in western Canada which has about 8 million people. The answer that I got was about 1,600 out of 18,000. Not a very nationalized industry in my view.
Maybe the member will have something to say about whether or not his friends in the industry are planning to increase employment. In my part of the country, the member knows that the chemistry department at the University of Alberta is one of the best known departments of the entire university. Why does it not hire people in Alberta and in other parts of western Canada or Atlantic Canada?
I hope he will also comment when he gets up on the fact that J. W. Gilman in a paper entitled "The Impact of Pharmaceutical Companies Sponsored Research and Basic Research of Canadian Universities" wrote in part: "Canadian medical schools have found that Bill C-22 has had a minimal impact on basic research and development in Canada".
The basic research is 26.5 per cent. Universities and hospitals research is about 23 per cent. I gather that this amounts to about $14 million yearly now going into basic research. I also have a figure that the member will want to clarify, employment in the industry. We were told by people like the Minister for International Trade that the brand name drug producers would create 3,000 jobs by 1996. My understanding is that there has only been about 1,300 jobs created since Bill C-22.
Will the member please respond to the specific questions with respect without giving us the bafflegab he was giving us until he sat down?


Scott Jon Thorkelson: Mr. Speaker, those are good questions and I appreciate the member's concern about R and D investment in western Canada. Like him, I would like to see more R and D investment in western Canada.
As I mentioned there were two announcements at the University of Alberta, one by Bristol-Myers Squibb for basic research. That was to fund a chair in the department of pharmacy to increase the amount of basic research done which was one of the points of the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.
The $15 million by Glaxo is in co-operation with the University of Alberta hospitals and the medical school. The professor that is heading that up is from the medical school. It is also funded by the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund Medical Foundation. There are four or five partners bringing in people from the department of medicine, bringing in people from the department of pharmacy, from the hospitals and from the industries. That is indeed beneficial.
There was also an announcement of a firm spending I believe $30 million at UBC. Ayerst has announced it will spend $123 million which will produce 1,000 jobs in Manitoba. Yes, we could do more in Western Canada. We are building on our base there which is very important. As time goes on we hope to increase the research done in Western Canada.
I am not going to get into the game of pounding on one part of the country at the expense of another which is what the hon. Liberal member spoke of earlier. He was accusing some of trying to divide the country by saying that this was a bill for Quebec. It is not. It is a bill for all of Canada. It is a good bill. It is a bill that builds on our base. It is a bill that tries to provide high quality research jobs across the country. I am pleased that in Alberta my riding is a part of it and it is a part for all Albertans. I am pleased that there are investments at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and at the University of British Columbia.
I would like to see greater investments in Atlantic Canada. I am hoping that the industry will take heed of the hon. member's remarks, my concerns and the concerns of the members on this side of the House and try to spread their investment more equally across the country.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member if he is aware that British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have all taken action to counteract high drug costs set in motion by the Conservative Patent Act amendments. They have deinsured drugs and, in one case, 350 drugs have been deinsured. The drug eligibility continues to be reduced in those provinces because of increasing costs for the reason of this legislation. Deductibles are being increased on pharmaceuticals for seniors and others. User fees are being added directly to the pharmaceuti-
November 16, 1992

cals. Clearly the cost of drugs is going up and is going to accelerate.
Would the member support a resolution where National Health and Welfare got involved with doctors to support an initiative to clearly and carefully prescribe drugs that were in the generic area or were alternatives to the brand names? Would he also support National Health and Welfare working with hospitals to reduce the number of approved drugs so long as they covered the needs in order to do an end-run around the pharmaceutical companies in Canada and support pharmacists in the same way?
I contend, as does almost every other Canadian in this country, that this project has more to do with putting money in the pockets of friends than with research in this country or jobs.


Scott Jon Thorkelson: Mr. Speaker, I am well aware that several provinces have moved to control health care costs. I think the hon. member is trying to infer something when he says they are trying to control drug costs. Some of those deinsured drugs are drugs that are not affected at all but are already generics and so on.
This bill talks about new drugs and new investment, extending patent protection for those. The hon. member's question, with the greatest of respect, really is not relevant.
I have sympathy with what he is saying. Yes, health care costs are rising and yes, we must do something. Some of the provinces have moved in areas to control the health costs and it is up to them to decide how they want to control those health care costs. If some want to deinsure drugs or if some want to put user fees, that is up to them. I am not saying that I agree with that. I believe in universal health care and I believe that we have one of the finest health care systems in the world and we must maintain it at that. However, that question is not relevant to this bill because some of those drugs and some of those items that are deinsured are completely outside the scope of this bill which affects drugs that will be the subject of research and will come on the market. It does not affect drugs that are already on the market.
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NOTICE OF ALLOCATION OF TIME TO CONSIDER SECOND READING OF BILL C-91
Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to move the following:
That since an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or (2) with respect to second reading of Bill C-91, an act to amend the Patent Act, to amend another act in consequence thereof and to provide for other related matters, under the provision of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice of my intention to move a time allocation motion at the next sitting of the House for the purpose of allotting a specified number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.
Let us get on with the business of the country.


Some hon. members:: Shame, shame.


MEASURE TO AMEND
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I am shocked.


An hon. member:: You should not be; they have used it about 50 times.


Don Boudria: Perhaps I should not be shocked, as my colleague has so eloquently just put it. This government has used closure on dozens and dozens of occasions. This is just terrible. This time we are talking about a major piece of legislation. Less than three hours of debate has gone on and this government wants to shut this place down. Parliament has been back since eleven o'clock this morning and this government has lasted until 4.55 p.m. without invoking closure.


An hon. member:: They are tired. They are worn out.


Don Boudria: They just could not resist any longer. They lasted an unbelievable six hours without invoking closure.


An hon. member:: Shame.


Don Boudria: Shame on those Tories across the way. I was not going to engage in partisan debate today. I really was not. However I feel provoked by the actions of the government.
I have just spent a number of weeks in my constituency campaigning on the referendum. Before I get into all the details of this bill, I want to take this occasion to thank my constituents for their efforts in that regard, whether they agreed or disagreed with me. I want to take a moment and offer my respects to all who participated in

November 16, 1992
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the process. People from all walks of life, people who were known Liberals, Tories, New Democrats all joined together in that effort.
The past president of the Conservative Association of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, a fine gentleman by the name of Mr. Bob Binmore, helped me a lot in the campaign. Symbolically, in order to show that there was no partisanship at the time, I attended every public meeting in the riding wearing his tie. We thought this was a symbolic thing. As a matter of fact, I am wearing it today. This is Bob Binmore's tie. I do not think this constitutes a display for the cameras and it does not offend the Standing Orders, although when some of my colleagues see how aggressive this tie is, they might want to comment on that. It is very aggressive. It makes a statement about our Canadian provinces and Canadian unity. This tie was given to Mr. Binmore by his daughters, Julie and Jennifer, and I made him a solemn promise to wear it in the House today, the first day back.
We all behaved in an unpartisan way and I am proud of that. However, we are only back a few hours today and the government goes at it, jack-boots and all. I thought the minister responsible for fisheries was a little less partisan than some of the others across the way because at one time he had the good sense to be a Liberal and that would make him immensely better than some of his colleagues. However, I see it did not make much difference.
I have before me a stack of little cards sent to me by constituents and people right across Canada who are just concerned about this Bill C-91. There must must be a pile four or five inches thick of these postcards sent to me. I am sure the member for Dartmouth received postcards from people paying the high price of prescription drugs who are concerned about the future of the pharmaceutical industry.
Here is what the postcards say. I will read a few sentences from one of them: "On June 23, 1992, the federal government introduced Bill C-91, legislation intended to extend retroactively to December 20, 1991, patent protection for brand name pharmaceuticals and eliminate Canada's system of compulsory licensing. This
legislation will result in significantly higher drug prices in Canada and its retroactive provisions will cripple the Canadian owned generic pharmaceutical industry". This is not what I said. This is what hundreds and hundreds of Canadians have said.


An hon. member:: And the government ignores them and wants to cut them off.


Don Boudria: However, no one across the way wants to listen to what all these Canadians have to say. They say there are going to be millions, possibly even billions, of dollars invested in Canada and thousands and thousands of jobs will be created with this new bill. There is a certain deja vu as we say in French, because in 1987 I heard the same refrain from the Conservatives opposite.
In 1987 they said that Bill C-22 was necessary and would create thousands and thousands of jobs. That is what the Conservatives opposite said. I have in front of me an article in The Gazette of Montreal last September which says there are few benefits from 1987 drug patent changes. This speaks of a study by the federal government, by Consumer and Corporate Affairs. I think that is the same guy who introduced this bill on June 23, the same Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, the same department at least, that was telling us then that Bill C-22 would create all these new jobs. Now, years later, the minister wants to introduce another bill which is supposed to create all these new jobs. If he keeps repeating this over and over again I suppose some day, somewhere, some jobs might be created.
Here is what the study said. The government predicted first of all in 1987 that 3,000 jobs would be created by 1996. These are 3,000 jobs which might be called high-tech jobs, scientific jobs, stuff like that.
Lo and behold, according to the study by the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, only 1,386 jobs had been created between 1987 and 1990, and half of them were in marketing and sales.
As my colleague from Dartmouth said a little while ago, a number of them were also in areas that were not related to marketing and sales. Some of them had to do with-shall we say, not all of course; I do not want to diminish this-being a janitor.

The government can talk until it is blue in the face, which of course is kind of natural for it, about jobs created in this industry, but so far it has not lived up to its promise, let alone those of someone else. In 1987 the government made a promise and it did not deliver. Today Conservatives stand in the House making another promise.
Should we be surprised that Canadians are a little sceptical. Would you not be, Mr. Speaker? I know you are a non-partisan person sitting in the House of Commons and you are able to look at this in a truly objective and completely detached fashion which I am sure you always do in your capacity as a Speaker.
But say, Mr. Speaker, that you were a Tory and that this was the situation. How could you possibly believe in that hypothetical situation what some of these ministers are saying. Obviously you would have great difficulty, as I do and as all my constituents do, in believing what those Conservatives say.
Mr. Speaker, if you think my colleagues and I are alone here in believing this, if you by any chance think that we might be slightly partisan in our approach here today, well far from it. I know that would be the last thing on your mind in any case.
Let me read what The New York Times of November 16 says in an article under the general heading "Business Day". This particular story is entitled "Canadians See Rise in Drug Costs". This article was written by Milt Freudenheim. I want to read a few little extracts from it which should make some of these Tories across the way cringe just a little bit.
Canada's success at delivering drugs at costs lower than those in the United States is an important feature of its medical system, which has been a model for many health policy experts seeking to contain soaring costs in the United States. Medical costs are about 28 per cent lower per capita in Canada than in the United States, although spending on health care has been rising there, too.
We have lower health care costs in Canada on a per capita basis than they do in the United States, largely because of our prescription drug program, which this government wants to do away with. What are we to conclude from that, other than that the government
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wants to increase the cost of health care in Canada? It is going to do that, of course, at the expense of the taxpaying public, and at the expense of the provincial governments.
I want to read from a little further on in the same text. It mentions the burden of changing our patent legislation, and it says:
Extending the patent life of drugs is likely to cost consumers immediately and also add to the burden on the government health plans which are already under economic pressure. Compared with hospital and doctors' bills, prescription drugs are a relatively small, though rapidly growing expense.
Even in the United States people are lauding Canada's generic drug system. However here in Canada the government wants to do away with it.

I do not say that there is no room for both industries in Canada, because there surely is. Besides, the conventional pharmaceutical industry has nearly 90 per cent of the Canadian market and certainly has its place. I am not one of those who want to make life harder for them than it is. I think that we must have an approach that is sensitive to the needs of Canadians who often use generic products which save them money.
As I just said, the United States or at least some American journalists praise our present system which the government opposite is ready to dismantle. About 15 or 20 minutes ago it introduced in this House a closure motion to cut short the debate which should take place.
If we review this whole issue, we see that compulsory licences are not new in Canada. They have been around since 1923 but perhaps they were not used so much then. In 1960 a royal commission of inquiry recommended that patents and compulsory licences be granted for pharmaceutical products.
In 1960 a Conservative government was in power. Three years later, the Restrictive Trade Practices Commission recommended abolishing pharmaceutical patents. After that, in 1969, we had amendments to the Patent Act authorizing compulsory licences in Canada. From then on we had the tools to give us pharmaceuticals at prices that if not reasonable were at least more reasonable than they might otherwise have been.

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Just now a New Democratic member addressed the issue of what the government intended to do in 1983 when it mandated the commission to review the whole matter. I think it was time to review it in 1983. Then the Eastman commission reported to the government and recommended some changes that could benefit drug manufacturers in Canada.
The Conservative government opposite did not even listen to the Eastman commission. It gave away more.
Bill C-22 went much further than the Eastman report. Subsequently, as I said before, we had BillC-22 and the promises of the government opposite, promises which were never kept.
On June 23, 1992 the government once again was ready to give the pharmaceutical companies an advantage and put an end to the present system which allows the manufacture of generic pharmaceutical products. In any case the government's bill will certainly weaken the potential of the generic drugs industry and raise the prices of pharmaceutical products for the Canadian consumer.
Earlier I heard the hon. member for Winnipeg South say that we should not scare Canadians and tell them that the price of pharmaceutical products will increase. Mr. Speaker, as you know I am not afraid of telling Canadian consumers the truth. I am not afraid to tell them they are being had by the government opposite. I hope Canadians will keep sending the kind of cards I have here in my hand, signed by hundreds of people who are going to tell this story to all members in this House and to the Prime Minister. I hope they will call him up today or tomorrow and ask to speak to him personally and say: "We want to maintain an affordable drugs system, and we don't want Bill C-91". That is the position we and the Liberal Party have taken. I am not saying Bill C-22 should go on existing in its present form. Some day we will probably have to amend the bill but let us study it and determine what is best for consumers. Then and only then can we consider moving away from what we have now.
Meanwhile Bill C-91 goes much too far. In any case it goes further than what we as members of the Liberal Party are prepared to support. More important, I think it will make pharmaceutical products far too expensive for most Canadians.
Interestingly the government is about to make life easier for the big pharmaceutical companies at a time when the U.S. government, the new government that will be installed quite soon, is about to tighten the reins. What does this mean? We will probably see a Canadian government giving more latitude to the big pharmaceutical companies, while in the United States they will be concentrating on better protection for consumers. In that case the government would not only be going against the wishes of Canadians and members of the opposition but also against the wishes of those they claim are their friends, the government and authorities of United States of America.
I say to the Tory members opposite that they still have time to change their minds.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member said the government had promised back in 1987 when it passed Bill C-22 that we would have 3,000 new jobs by 1996. He pointed out that just a couple of years later we had about half that. It is only 1992. Since Bill C-22 was passed in 1987, 2,400 jobs have been created, well ahead of the predicted number of jobs that were supposed to be created when Bill C-22 was passed and in spite of the predictions of dire consequences that were made by the Liberal Party of the day.
We see from the lessons learned from Bill C-22 that Bill C-91 will indeed produce new jobs, new investments and new growth in our economy, which is what everybody wants. We all want jobs.
I have a question for the hon. member. I want to know if he believes in patent protection, if he believes that when people get a patent they should have that patent right protected. Is that not a valid and reasonable right? If he does believe in patent protection then I want to know how he can defend the Liberal government's invention of something called compulsory licensing, which was in fact a mechanism designed to break its own patent law. Either you believe in patent protection or you do not believe in patent protection. It seems to me that the Liberals were confused. I cannot think of anything else. If they believed in patent protection I do
November 16, 1992

not understand why they would have created something called compulsory licensing.
When I first came to this particular portfolio and was being briefed one of the things that the deputy minister talked to me about was compulsory licensing. I asked: "What is that?" She explained it to me and I still could not understand it. I could not understand how a government that says it gives so much time for protection under a patent would then also be saying that it would give other people special licences to infringe on that protection.
Perhaps the hon. member who may have been here, or at least may have some sense of the history of this compulsory licensing, would like to defend that particular practice and tell me if he thinks that it is correct or if he does not believe in patent protection. Perhaps he should clear that up for us.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I am sure the hon. member knows that patent protection exists now. No right is absolute in any society.
I could engage in a long discourse with the member and explain to her, as she knows perfectly well, that the right of free speech, for instance, does not give anyone the right to scream fire in the middle of a crowded theatre. Similarly the right of patent protection is not eternal and is not all encompassing. Everything we do, every right we have and every privilege we have, is relative.
The point is that there are opposing views, there are opposing needs and conflicting needs in any society. What we do must be done in such a way as to ensure the best for society as a whole. Of course there must be patent protection. It exists now.
No right or privilege is absolute. The only question is how long it should be. Should it be absolute? Does it mean that the society that has contributed toward the whole process has no right of its own? Does it mean that the society that has trained all the people and that has paid for the education of all of them has no right of its own? Does it mean that nothing can be done in that regard?
It does not mean any such thing. That is why we have laws in this country that balance these things out.
In my opinion a system that permits the large drug manufacturers to have roughly 90 per cent of the
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business has not exactly driven those manufacturers into the ground. There must have been some justice in that.
If the member opposite thinks that is totally unjust then is she repudiating her own leader and her own colleagues who enacted Bill C-22 only five years ago. If Bill C-22 is so wrong, as she has just herself suggested, then how could she have possibly been a candidate for a party that lacks any kind of judgement, as she has just described?


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, this is one of those watershed bills that we get periodically in the House of Commons which fundamentally demonstrates the difference between the insane right wing agenda of the Conservative Party and the voice of reason of the Liberal Party.
Clearly the introduction of compulsory licensing in 1968 was done by the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra who was a former Prime Minister and former leader of my party. From 1968 until today it has served us well.
The question that I want to ask my colleague is quite important. I do not understand why, with perhaps 3.5 million people either unemployed and on unemployment insurance or collecting social assistance and with over 1.5 million kids unemployed, this government on the first day back in this place does not come in to talk about a massive job creation project. It does not talk about trying to create jobs in this country for the poorest of the poor and it does not present economic policies or a budget so that the people out there who have lost hope because of this Tory agenda can have some light at the end of the tunnel.
It comes in with a piece of legislation this afternoon that has been debated for only three hours. It is a bill that is a billion dollar bonus bill for the big multinational drug companies. It is not going to do squat for Canadian consumers. It is going to take probably in excess of $1 billion from their pockets.
The question I have for my colleague concerns this. It is pretty interesting. I am reading from The New York Times, Monday, November 16:
Gerald J. Mossinghoff, president of the Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers Association in Washington, said his members would
like to eliminate Canada's government price controls.
I would like to ask my colleague whether he is comfortable as a member of this House knowing that we have a government opposite, with millions unemployed, that is not responding to the agenda of Canadians but is

November 16, 1992
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responding to the agenda of Mr. Mossinghoff and the largest lobby group in the United States, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association in Washington.
It has done its job well. It has shut debate down for its American friends down south in Washington.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my colleague is quite right. I want to congratulate him for this interesting observation.
What he has indicated is quite correct. The agenda of the drug manufacturers is certainly quite well known. In fact this government is following in lock-step with what they are asking. What is strange now is that while this government is listening only to the drug manufacturers rather than everyone else who also has a word to say-I do not mean that the drug manufacturers do not have a word to say-it is going to find out in just a few weeks from now that the reaction from the government in the United States is going to be more toward the protection of consumers.
To pose another interesting proposition, why is it that the government instead of bringing forward measures today to bring people back to work is going with this right wing agenda? I do not know. It is hard for me to understand Tory behaviour at the best of times. Here is what the government's agenda is going to do.
The minister of health for the province of Ontario, Francis Lankin, said that this will create another $1 billion in health care costs in Ontario over 10 years.
The Saskatchewan health minister, Louise Simard, said:
Bill C-91 is a severe blow to health care in Saskatchewan. It will
cost our consumers and the health department a substantial amount
of money.
The member from western Canada who has just posed that question must surely be familiar with those comments made by provincial cabinet ministers, particularly the one made by the minister from the neighbouring province to hers, Saskatchewan.
Those concerns have been aired right across the country by provincial governments and I am quite surprised that the Conservatives have not listened to them.
I want to pay special tribute to my colleague, the member for Dartmouth, who has listened to the concerns of the provincial health minister.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. The time for questions and comments is now over.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this very important bill today. I support Bill C-91 because it is good for Canada and it is good for Canadians despite all the rhetoric on the other side. Innovation and competitiveness are very much on the minds of everybody these days, as is the protection of the consumer. I believe that Bill C-91 serves all of these interests.
If we want to continue to be an affluent country, a nation of opportunity, we have to rely on more than just the natural resources that are out there. We must be strong in knowledge based industries and advanced technologies and that includes technologies of modem healing of which pharmaceuticals play a part.
The government has been committed to that objective since its first mandate and that was the central purpose of Bill C-22, the historic amendment to the Patent Act that was passed by this House in 1987. The government was convinced then, as it is convinced today, that pharmaceutical R and D is a sector of critical importance. It is an area in which Canada must be strong.
We said in 1987 that weakness in this field was inconsistent with the profile of a modem industrialized society. We said that the key to a stronger Canadian pharmaceutical sector was better protection for the rights of innovators, protection comparable to that of our other trading partners. As earlier speakers have reminded us, members of the opposition party took a much more dismal view at that time.
They predicted then, as they have again today, that greater protection for innovators would devastate the generic industry. They said that prices would go through the roof. They did not see any connection between weak protection for patent rights and the lag in Canadian R and D in this particular sector.
November 16, 1992

It is five years later and it is instructive to examine just what has happened to the pharmaceutical industry in Canada. In 1987 the ratio of research and development to sales in the innovative drug industry was about 5 per cent. When we introduced Bill C-22 the brand name sector of that industry was committed to doubling that. It thought it could happen by 1996.
That 10 per cent ratio was reached last year. It doubled from what it was in 1987. There have been spin-off benefits as a result. Let me mention one that gives me particular pleasure.
In 1987 a young Canadian science graduate who wanted to make a career in the pharmaceuticals field would likely have had to look in the United States or in Europe for an opportunity. Now, in 1992 there are opportunities to have careers in that field, in Canada.
Since 1987 the industry has created 2,400 new jobs for Canadian scientists and researchers, and many of those have been in the west as we heard from my colleague a little bit earlier. This is the kind of result that makes us realize what a difference the environment of public policy and law can make. It is the kind of result that makes us glad to be legislators because this is what it is all about.
What about prices? Did they go through the roof as was predicted by my hon. friends across the way? Let us check the record. Since 1987 the price of existing patented drugs in Canada has risen by an average of 2.9 per cent. That increase was actually lower than the average rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index in that period which was about 4.4 per cent.
I will now discuss the two main features of the bill. First, it does away with patent encroachment and returns to the innovator the exclusive right to market his patented product from an average of 7 years to about 10 years. Let us look again at that change in both the domestic and global contexts.
Canada currently provides less effective patent protection for pharmaceutical products than do any of its major trading partners. Internationally the implications are significant. When a country gives less patent protection than its trading partners it sends a certain message. It says we do not put a high premium on innovation. That is the last kind of signal that a competitive country wants to
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send. What message have we been sending up to now? Our patent period lags behind that of the United States, behind all the European countries, behind Japan, and behind Mexico. It is half that of Italy.
By passing this bill Parliament sends a positive signal. It says that Canada respects the right of the innovator to full patent protection. It says that if you want to pioneer and invest and grow, come here and do it in Canada.
This legislation ends the practice known as compulsory licensing. There have always been two sectors to the pharmaceutical industry. The innovative sector does the research and development, exploration that develops new products, new cures, new technologies and new treatments. It is the sector which takes the economic risk in these development exercises. And there are the manufacturers of the so-called generic drugs. These are the people who copy the drugs that have been developed by the brand name sector which takes the risks.
Both sectors serve the public interest. The innovative industry advances the technology of healing. The generic industry gives us something just as important, and that is protection for the consumer, healthy competition once the patent period has expired.
The task of the legislator is to strike a healthy balance. Compulsory licensing is not compatible with that balance. Up to now in this country a generic company can, well before the patent period has expired, obtain a compulsory licence to manufacture the drug that the innovative drug company has developed at great cost and great blood, sweat and tears.
This can take place as soon as seven years after the patented drug comes on the market, an average of 17 years after the original patent-which would normally be 20 years-has been applied for. Henceforth generic companies must wait an average of three more years until the patent has expired.
Those who say that they are afraid the generic industry needs compulsory licensing to survive need only look at the experience in other countries where there is a strong generic industry without a system of compulsory licensing. That said, we realize that the removal of compulsory licensing changes the equation. This bill makes the necessary corrections to maintain the balance needed to protect the consumer.

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Once again the instrument here is the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. Bill C-91 gives that board significant new powers to better deal with any kind of excessive pricing that might be contemplated. Both introductory and existing drug prices will come under its control. The board's guidelines have the same force and effect as a federal court. The board will have the power to order price restrictions or penalties. Failure to comply will subject offenders to stiff penalties including fines and even imprisonment.
We see by the record of the past five years what improved patent protection can do in this field. We have a pretty good idea of the benefits that an extension of this protection will create. Over half a billion dollars in new investment has been announced since January when the government announced that it would end compulsory licensing. Companies in this field have already announced that their Canadian operations will be the base for international product mandates. We expect to see the total research and development investment by the innovative industry reach $2 billion over the next five years.
Five years ago, with the passage of Bill C-22, we set out on a new course confident that it was the right one but content to be judged by the record. We see now that it was the right course. It is time to continue.
This bill is good for Canada. This bill is good for competition, good for the consumer, good for our economic well-being. I urge all honourable members to give this bill speedy passage.
I would like to also add that in the period since Bill C-22 was passed the total research and development expenditures by the innovative industry are estimated at $1.1 billion for the four years from 1987 to 1991. That is $1.1 billion in research and investment and jobs that we would not have had if Bill C-22 had not been passed. I also would like to note that the funding for basic research increased from $30.3 million to $94.2 billion between 1988 and 1991.
Those are just two of the statistics out of many I could give to show that this kind of opening up of competition to the innovative drug sector is very good for Canada. It is good for our science and technology sector. It is good for jobs. It is good for the economy. Ultimately, it will be good for consumers as more and more new drugs are brought on to the marketplace. Hopefully drugs that
were developed and researched right here in Canada will be among the leaders in the field tomorrow.
Again I want to reiterate my urging of all hon. members to give this bill speedy passage so that all of the research and development dollars and other investments that are waiting to flow to this country can start flowing.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I have a short question for my colleague who just delivered her thesis for why this biil should pass quickly. First I would like to voice my displeasure at the fact that the government has brought in another closure limiting debate on an issue that is important to all Canadians, Bill C-91.
My question is simply this: We have been accused in this House of complicating matters more so than they should be. I think that message came through loud and clear in the recent referendum vote in Canada.
Let us get back to the fundamentals that are being discussed in this House today which are, as I understand it, the purpose of the legislation. Really the purpose of the production of drugs and the research in drugs is that drugs are used to cure illness. Drugs are used to control disease and drugs are used to alleviate or lessen pain. Those are three functions of drugs.
Drugs are an intricate process in the health care of the people of our country. I think all sides of the House are dedicated to a comprehensive plan of medical care for all Canadians. We have to come down to the basic issues of the purpose of drugs and how they interact with the curing of illnesses of citizens through our comprehensive medical plan.
Then we have to ask ourselves three fundamental questions. One is whether Bill C-91 is going to increase the cost and availability of drugs through the provincial plans that already distribute drugs in this country. The empirical data is unquestionable that it will increase the cost of drugs through our health care system. Will Bill C-91 increase the cost to young families who are not covered under a comprehensive drug plan in this country? The empirical data indicates unquestionably that it will increase the cost of drugs to young families in this country. Will Bill C-91 contribute to the cost of drugs to senior citizens in this country? The empirical data we have available indicates that it will increase the cost of drugs to senior citizens in this country.
November 16, 1992

If you get an answer of yes to those three fundamental questions this is bad legislation at this particular time for Canada where we cannot afford to add one more cent to the cost of living of all Canadians. Why would this government propose this legislation at this time?


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, I can understand it if the hon. member has concerns about increased costs. We all do. This is a time in our lives when money is tight and we are all concerned about the future. The government is no less concerned about this.
One of the initiatives we have undertaken is to give new powers, broader powers, to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. Let me just give an outline of some of the things it will be able to do to ensure that prices are kept very reasonable according to all the criteria we can find to make sure that prices do not rise inordinately.
The legislation gives the board the power to better influence introductory prices when drugs are patented. It can authorize the board to order price reduction or penalties which could compensate for past excessive prices and deter excessive pricing increases. That means it can roll back the prices if necessary if it sees a particular innovator taking advantage of the new opportunities that will be out there because he has the full protection of his original patent. It can also provide for fines and imprisonment for failure to comply with the board's order and that is extraordinary. We do not just lightly set prices that are going to be against the regulations that are set down by the new board and under its new regulations because to do so could land you in prison.
These are all measures the government believes will help to keep prices down as much as possible. Of course that gives the board orders the same force and effect as orders of the Federal Court.
I respect my hon. friend across the way. I know he would not make comments he had not thought through carefully. He is quite right that there will be some increase in prices and that is something we have looked at and contemplated. I will share with him the information that we have been able to research after a great deal of careful consideration.
What is being projected right now is that the increase in cost of purchases by pharmacies and hospitals-I think
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they are the groups we are concerned about right now-of all prescription and behind the counter drugs due to the removal of compulsory licensing is predicted to be 0 per cent in the first year, gradually increasing to less than 2 per cent annually by the year 2000. It is a very small increase.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, in the previous speaker's comments about the business of extended patent protection for the pharmaceutical companies, one of the things she said was that the opposition was frightening Canadians, that she was extremely upset about that and that our task here was to frighten Canadians.
It is important for the member to know, especially after the referendum debates and all the meetings each one of us attended, that Canadians are mad as hell. They know exactly what is going on and all they want is a chance to get at that government for betraying them. Closure is no problem today because this is the way that government operates. Canadians also clearly know they are going to have to wait one year to get these guys and then they are going to get them.
British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have all taken action because of rising drug costs. They claim those rising drug costs are due to this government's patent protection and the virtual monopoly in those drug areas that this government has given. They will give an even more extended monopoly when it goes to 20 years through patent protection. We are going to get situations like deinsuring more and more drugs so that people have to pay out of their own pockets and user fees so people pay out of their pockets. We are going to find that large deductibles on pharmacare programs will nail people over 65 and young families. But they know that and they are ready for it. They know they have only one more year of it. Believe me, they are upset and concerned. They want a clear chance to deal with this government through an election.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, first the Liberals did it and now the NDP is doing it. They are trying to use facts and figures that really are not factual to scare people on fixed incomes and seniors and people who are concerned about anything that has to do with health care and any increased costs.

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The fact is that the retail sector which deals with patented drugs, the patented drugs being the part under the control of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, represents only 20 per cent of all of the prescription drugs sold in this country. Therefore, even if the drug prices went up considerably, it could not do the things that my hon. friend is suggesting.
However, I will repeat because I want to reassure all of the people out there who are listening that in fact they will not be saddled with huge and inordinate drug increases because of this new bill. The predictions are that there will be no increase in the coming year and that there will be a small increase up to about 2 per cent by the year 2000. That is all.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to enter into this debate on Bill C-91. It proposes to extend patent rights for 20 years on pharmaceutical products developed by national or foreign multinational corporations in Canada.
It is interesting why we are being saddled with this legislation. Canada has about 2 per cent of the world's drug market. It is not a major place in which to sell items. However it certainly can be an example for other countries, especially if the Americans want to ensure there is no extensive development of national generic drug companies.
If foreign multinationals, especially American multinationals, are to have a patent protection arrangement that will last for a long period of time, George Bush has certainly had an easy task to bring this Conservative government under control, get it to pass an extension to the Patent Act and eliminate generic opportunities. Now we see an even further example of that extension.
When the previous speaker says that this is not a matter of health care concern, it surprises me. We have eight governments in Canada saying it is a major health care concern and one that frightens them, one that makes them concerned that their pharmacare programs are going to become financially unsound if they continue in their present direction because of a substantial increase in those drugs. Specific kinds of actions are going to be taken.
It is not just the concern about rising pharmaceutical costs because of irresponsible legislation by the Conservative government. It is the fact that the unilateral movement away from partnership in health care generally is a serious problem.
The activities of the Conservative government over the last few years have resulted in British Columbia losing about $1.6 billion of federal funding to health care. That started out as a partnership agreement. Then by unilateral change the federal government simply said: "We do not like the situation. We are going to change that situation". British Columbia is out $1.6 billion.
I do not have the figures offhand for Manitoba but certainly the previous speaker, the province in which she will be laying her record before the electorate, will be more than somewhat concerned by the major loss of funds that were originally in a partnership arrangement with the federal and provincial governments that has damaged the health care system, and indeed the entire economy of most provinces.
We are talking about a combined effect. On one hand we see a $1.6 billion loss to the health care system by removal of federal funds and on the other hand a response to federal legislation by removal of generic drugs and placing patent protection over brand name pharmaceuticals produced by multinational corporations.
This is not about job creation. In the final analysis we may wind up in Canada with some jobs. They may be simply jobs that were required at any rate for testing new drugs introduced. They may simply be pure science arrangements to develop new drugs that would have been spent anyway at universities of good quality with good quality results.
Certainly they are not going to offset the cost to Canadians of high priced pharmaceuticals. The minimal amount of research in this country, the minimal amount of employment, is not going to be offset by the work done by generic drug companyies. That research, that job creation, is coupled with a major saving to our pharmacare operations, to prescriptions to individuals and to prescription medication put out by hospitals which was something in the order of $100 million last year in
November 16, 1992

British Columbia, in excess of $100 million. It has an enormous impact for Canadians.
I guess what will happen in the situation is that people will be very concerned. In the short term the Conservative government has one more year to go to November 22, 1993. In that period of time people will be very concerned about what further damage can be done. There is clearly an indication with the present deficit that the Conservative government will take even further action.
In a speech in Alberta the Minister of Finance indicated that the way they were going to deal with the current deficit of the federal government and its failure to reach any of the targets it has set for Canada was by more attacks on the health care programs of Canada and more attacks on the social programs of Canada. In that speech the Minister of Finance indicated that he was laying proposals before cabinet that would lead to an even further erosion of the health care system. We are looking at, probably by the year 2000, a multi-billion dollar impact on each one of the provinces in terms of lost resources for the health care system.
There is no guarantee of what will happen during the period. The Liberal Party of Canada in 1969 certainly put the licensing procedure in place that allowed generic drugs to come on the market, but by 1983 it was certainly talking about changing that process. It is very worrisome for Canadians that the Liberals will not deliver on what they are talking about in the House today and during the debate of this bill. In fact some members are very careful to couch their presentation which allows them an opportunity, if they come to power, to maintain support for the foreign multinational drug companies to maintain those patents.
It has to be a clear, unequivocal statement in the House because waffling will not work. Too many people remember what happened with the Liberal Party in the election debate when it said: "Of course we will not have wage and price controls". A short period of time into its term after winning that election we had wage and price controls.
There is no clear statement on the trade agreement from the Liberal Party. It appears quite clearly that it supports it, but there is certainly the waffle factor. On
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the issue of reversing the legislation that the Conservative government has placed in the House to allow a free run of generic drugs in Canada, it is absolutely critical that the Liberal Party stands up, stops waffling and lays unequivocally before the House and the people of Canada its position on abolishing this legislation and permitting generic drugs.
There is a lot of discussion about a former Liberal cabinet minister running the Canadian Pharmaceutical Association public relations campaign to sell this pile of nonsense to the people of Canada. Judy Erola, cabinet minister and member of Parliament who sat in this House, is now the shill for those drug companies.


Some hon. members:: Consumer Affairs too.


Raymond John Skelly: Exactly, Consumer and Corporate Affairs, an incredible conflict of interest.
The right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra sitting on the Canadian board of directors of a Swiss drug company is certainly a very questionable position when we are trying to establish a consensus in the opposition in this House and the legislation of the Conservative government to promote brand name pharmaceuticals to Canadians at a high price and to exclude generic drugs is in question.
There needs to be some assistance to provinces, to hospitals across Canada, to begin to buy pharmaceuticals in ways that permit them to make major savings and to avoid the high price regimes of patented pharmaceuticals and brand name pharmaceuticals. The same should apply to prescriptions by physicians. There needs to be an opportunity for physicians to gain information about lower priced alternatives to the brand name pharmaceuticals. This has to occur and has to occur quickly.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
[Stage Direction]
November 16, 1992
Adjournment Debate ATLANTIC FISHERMEN
['Pursuant to Standing Order 38(5), the motion to adjourn the House is deemed adopted.\nAccordingly, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).']
Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, at the outset before I launch into my adjournment debate, I want to say that I for one am very pleased to be back in this House to take control of the situation in the country and to bring some order to the very poor economic state that exists.
I was somewhat disappointed in the two bills that were debated here today. One, if passed, would result in university students being denied the right to the interest on their loans being forgiven for the first six months of their work.
The other one involves the Patent Act, the one we were just discussing. It will increase the cost of prescription drugs somewhere beyond 11 per cent a year. I am not sure that is what Canadians had in mind when they knew the House was coming back.
The point I want to make concerns a question I asked in September of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. It pertained to the discrepancies in the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Program, known in Newfoundland now as NCARP. I see the hon. parliamentary secretary is here so I will refer to it as NCARP.
In my question to the minister of fisheries I used the example that three months after the announcement of the program the six lines in my office received numerous calls. In a period of six days Newfoundland Telephone recorded over 10,000 calls.
The point I was making, in using that statistic, was that a lot of people were not sure where they stood, for example truckers, fish handlers, small plant operators and even people involved in small industries that used welding systems and small engineering for their fishing boats which now of course are not operating. They were all concerned about where they stood.
As a follow-up today I want to use an example of 22 crab plant workers in the town of Bonavista. I should explain that the crab plant and the fish processing plant are one and the same. They are essentially situated in the same plant in Bonavista owned by Fishery Products International. These people lost their jobs earlier in the summer and they have been trying to get compensation. They have been trying through other means and I became involved within the last three weeks.
I am using them as an example. They applied through NCARP for compensation and were told they could not get compensation because they worked in a crab plant. The point here is that they were displaced by the fish processing plant workers who had the seniority to take their jobs, which normally would not have happened.
The point I made in a letter to the minister of fisheries and the point I am making this evening is that they did not have enough weeks to qualify. They did not have enough work because their crab plant processing operation was taken over by the fish plant operators who in turn were displaced because there was no northern cod.
This is a good case for those ladies who are sitting in the town hall this evening in Bonavista and will continue to sit until some dispensation is given to them. They feel they have been displaced by the northern cod moratorium. They believe that they, among the other examples I quoted this evening, should qualify for NCARP, and if they do not emergency jobs should be created for them.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, in reply to the hon. member opposite I know he has brought this matter before the House on many occasions. He referred to his question of September 6.
I might add that the NCARP is an exceptional response to a very difficult problem and many people are being helped under this program. I can say from the government side of the House that we are doing our best to ensure that others in need of help but not qualified under the program will be helped by other government programs and that is being actively pursued right now.
As of the last benefit period ending on November 7, there were approximately 24,400 individuals eligible under NCARP. This included 9,900 fishermen, 13,600 plant workers and 900 trawlermen. A total of 142 plants have been designated under the program and to date the benefits paid have reached $84.9 million.
Under the terms and conditions of the program approved by Treasury Board, individuals other than fishermen and plant workers affected by the northern cod moratorium are ineligible for assistance under NCARP. However provisions have been made within
November 16, 1992

existing terms and conditions to include individuals called fish handlers and assemblers. These individuals are employed by firms contracted by designated fish plants to unload, weigh, grade, ice and load fish at the docks. This type of work is normally associated with a fish processing operation and therefore these individuals have been deemed to be plant workers under the existing terms and conditions.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has established two independent review committees, one each for fishermen and plant workers, to enable individuals regarded as ineligible by DFO to appeal their eligibility under NCARP. These committees consider individuals who have an acceptable historical attachment to the northern cod fishery but do not meet the program's criteria for automatic eligibility due to exceptional circumstances. A total of 468 appeals has been heard by the two committees up to November 10, and more than 300 additional appeals has been requested.



Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, as you may recall, the issue that was discussed following an intervention last May has to do with the question of climate change and global warming.
As you know, scientists are telling us that in every part of the world, the north and the south, the rich and the poor nations, something is likely to happen by way of climate change and by way of global warming caused by carbon dioxide which is the product of energy consumption in human society.
This is an issue that has been raised by scientists on a number of occasions in recent years. There are signs of warning because climate change as a result of global warming will lead to an elevation in sea levels in many parts of the world, and therefore to dislocation of millions of people who will have to move from areas which will be submerged as a result of sea level rise.
The Government of Canada has made the right speeches and made the right declaration over time. May I recall to you that in The Hague in 1989 the Prime Minister of Canada said that Canada would play a leading role in the question of reducing carbon dioxide
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emissions in an attempt to modify this trend in climate change.
Since then countries like Germany, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia and The Netherlands have committed themselves to reduce by 20 per cent their carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2005. Canada has decided not to follow this example. It simply announced some time ago that it would stabilize its carbon dioxide emissions, using 1990 as the base year, by the year 2000.
Until now we have not heard any statement from the government any indicating Canada's plan with respect to how it intends to achieve this stabilization by the year 2000. We do not know which sector has been approached and which sector has agreed on stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions, be it transportation, agriculture or energy. There is total silence from the government benches.
We do not know whether the government has approached the provincial governments or whether Ottawa has arrived at agreements with the provincial governments so that nationally we can develop a program for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.
In other words, four years after The Hague declaration by the Prime Minister of Canada in which a promise was made to the nation and to the world that we would be the leaders in the field of carbon dioxide emission reduction, there is silence from the government. There is no indication of a precise timetable and approaches as to how this target will be reached by the year 2000.
Not only that, we have also not adopted the more intelligent, I submit, approach, namely that of pursuing energy efficiency as adopted by other nations.
I am really anxious to hear the parliamentary secretary as to where we are at this stage.


Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member that one of the great achievements of the earth summit held in Rio last June was the commitment made by the international community to take action against global warming through an international framework convention on climate change. The

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Prime Minister signed this document on behalf of Canada, together with representatives of more than 150 countries throughout the world.
The cornerstone of this convention was restrictions on emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Under the framework convention, a general agreement was reached at the negotiating table-the only way to solve the problem of global warming-by adopting resolutions and reaching compromises at the international level. Developed countries, including Canada and the United States, made a political commitment to limit emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases agreed to bring emissions back to their 1990 levels by the year 2000.
I may also remind the hon. member that even before the framework convention became a reality, Canada was already committed to limiting its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. This measure puts us in the forefront of the fight against climate change. Our objective is not regional or sectorial but truly national in scope.
The federal, provincial and territorial governments are working together to implement this objective as part of the national strategy on global warming.
The federal government believes that more substantial reductions will be necessary, but these will be undertaken only when the international community has agreed on reduction objectives and calendars, to be worked out as part of the negotiations on the UN Convention on Climate Change.
The framework convention will provide a mechanism for countries to take a co-ordinated and co-operative approach towards achieving the ultimate objective of preventing any harmful interference with the world's climate. It remains to be seen, whether the next step will be a 20 per cent reduction in emissions or something else. Canada insisted-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but the rules of this debate are very strict. I will now recognize the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.
[English)


THE ECONOMY
David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, I rise to seek guidance from the Minister of Finance, or whoever is representing him, on his economic policies.
On April 8 I asked him to retreat on his government's commitment to cap the amount of transfer payments it pays to the three so-called have provinces. One of those provinces is not only his home province but my own as well, Alberta.
Capping the cash transfers reduces severely the ability of the government of Alberta to pay for programs to retrain men and women to assist those who are unable to work. The cap now reduces the ability of the government of Alberta by about $200 million in Alberta alone.
This corresponds with one of the greatest violations of the social contract our country has seen. At a time when the money is most needed, when Alberta residents are most anxious to retrain themselves, this unloved government has pulled the rug out from beneath many of them. On April 1 in a question I pointed out that 46,000 people were then unemployed in Edmonton. Furthermore, the number of Edmonton residents on assistance or living below the poverty line had increased by 28 per cent since the same month in 1991.
On May 1 I informed the House in Question Period that the minister's policies were wreaking havoc in his own constituency of Vegreville. Stores were closing and farm auctions were proceeding at far too great a rate. The minister replied that he did not have to be lectured on problems facing his constituents. I would suggest that he does need to be told about the problems of his constituents because it has been six months since those facts have been presented to the government and nothing has been done to try to repair the economy.
Fully 46,000 Edmontonians were out of work in April; today there are more than 50,000 unemployed persons according to Statistics Canada. What the government persists in doing is invoking myths and spreading myths about the economy. The myths are fooling nobody or very few people out there, certainly not the 1.6 million Canadians looking for work, most certainly not the 4,500
November 16, 1992

citizens and businesses forced into bankruptcy in the month of October alone.
Government myth number one is that the economy is growing. Virtually all current figures on employment, output in corporate earnings, confirm that the 1990 recession is continuing. The economy is not expanding enough to bring unemployment down virtually anywhere in the country. Moreover, small business, in which so many new jobs were created prior to 1990, is finding it more and more difficult to access capital and credit.
The second government myth is that we are in a world-wide recession. It is preposterous to argue, as the Minister of Finance and others do, that our difficulties are being shared world-wide, that Canada is suffering no worse than other nations. The U.S. recession, for example, on a peak to trough basis is only about half as bad as our own. Germany, France, and Japan have all managed to keep economic growth above 4 per cent annually over the past two years. Canada has barely managed to sustain a 1.5 per cent growth rate.
The third government myth is that "the government has got the economic fundamentals right," a direct quote from the finance minister.
A study by WEFA Canada Limited concluded that the federal cabinet and the officials simply do not understand how to deal effectively with booms and busts. Following the 1987 stock market crash the study concluded the Bank of Canada increased the money supply wildly irresponsibly. Only 12 months later did the Bank of Canada governor belatedly clamp down on the money supply growth, sending the exchange rate of our dollar skyward. Our export strength was seriously harmed in consequence, leading to the first trade deficit in a decade.
High real interest rates over the past several years have encouraged excessive foreign borrowing by both governments and the private sector in this country and have driven up the cost of servicing our debt. The government has also helped keep our dollar at a level which made many of our exports uncompetitive.
The WEFA study concluded in short that incompetent macroeconomic policy in Ottawa has been a major cause of bankruptcy and rising unemployment across the nation.
Adjournment Debate
The fourth myth of the government is that the North American free trade agreement will spark new economic growth in Canada.


Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, I would like to refer to just one of the myths that the hon. member opposite talked about in the House on May 1 when he was asking his question. He said:
When will the minister get the point? What will he tell his constituents
about what his fight inflation only, his high interest and his high dollar
policies are doing to them?
If ever there was a situation where a person is misrepresenting the facts to the public of Canada, that member opposite was doing it that day in the House of Commons. This government does not have a high interest rate policy aimed at protecting the external value of the Canadian dollar, quite the opposite. Policy is geared to achieving stability and durably lower interest rates through controlling inflation. Nor is there a target for the Canadian dollar to be set at.
The exchange rate is determined by market forces. Over the past year, for example, the Canadian dollar has fallen approximately 10 cents U.S., yet short-term interest rates are lower now than they were a year ago.
While we do not have a target we cannot ignore the costs to Canadians of short-term volatility in the foreign exchange markets. Accordingly the policy is used to smooth fluctuations to ensure orderly conditions in the exchange market during periods of instability such as had occurred in recent weeks. Over the past few weeks there have been increases in interest rates but these are temporary.
Policy is clearly and publicly committed to achieving price stability along the path set out in the inflation reduction targets. Achieving and maintaining price stability is the only way to permanently lower interest rates. This is essential for strengthening the recovery and for sustained, strong economic growth through the medium term.
The proposals that we have made in reducing inflation means there is room for interest rates to fall when financial markets stabilize. This means that Canada will be able to take full advantage of the strengthening of the

November 16, 1992
Adjournment Debate
world economic recovery and can look forward to a sustained period of strong, non-inflationary growth.


WESTRAY COAL MINE
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBIanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, I reluctantly return to a question I asked on May 20 regarding the May 9 disaster at the Westray mine, a disaster which killed 26 men.
Six of these men: Myles Daniel Gillis, Peter Francis Vickers, Roy Edward Feltmate, John P. Halloran, Benny J. Benoit and Angus Joseph MacNeil were from my riding. They and their families deserve answers. Indeed the families of these men have been pressing for months for an adequate investigation into the circumstances leading to this tragedy.
Last May I asked the government why it ignored reports about the risk of spontaneous combustion in the Westray mine and went ahead to guarantee an $85 million loan to that project. Since then the Westray loan has been called in by the Bank of Nova Scotia. Because of its guarantee, the federal government is now liable for anywhere between $75 million and $80 million.
The Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism replied to my question by saying that the federal government had ensured, through constant monitoring by independent mining consultants, that safety regulations were being followed, yet Bank of Nova Scotia officials have denied this.
The minister of state claimed as well that investments like this would continue to be made despite the tragedies. "These things happen", he said. How the Westray accident occurred will be the subject of the provincial inquiry he assured us. Yet both the federal and Nova Scotia governments have been stalling for months saying that everything would come out in the inquiry.
The province dragged its heels while Westray officials have done everything possible to put roadblocks in the path of this investigation. As we all learned last week, the inquiry is effectively dead. Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Constance Glube struck down the inquiry because its terms of reference stepped into the area of criminal jurisdiction, prejudicing, she found, the criminal proceedings being undertaken against Westray officials.
What now? How do these questions get answered? On June 9, the Liberal Party called for a federal parliamentary committee of inquiry to examine all aspects of the federal role in the Westray coal project.
That call was repeated on Friday of last week by my colleague, the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond. As my colleague so rightly pointed out, nothing in Justice Glube's decision prevents the federal government from holding its own inquiry. Indeed that inquiry is now more important than ever.
A federal inquiry would examine why the economic and safety advice of civil servants was overruled. It would clarify the federal politics involved in getting the loan guarantee approved.
It would examine just what cabinet knew about the safety concerns prior to authorizing this $85 million guarantee. It would determine why, in the face of well-known considerations of safety concerning this project, this government would put $85 million of taxpayers' money at risk.
These are important questions. They are questions that any government, serious about safety in the work place and about the responsible use of public funds, ought to be deeply committed to having answered.
The time has come for this tired government to finally gather the courage to look within itself and permit a thorough examination of its role in the May 9 Westray tragedy. I hope the parliamentary secretary opposite is now rising to announce just that.
Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member from Cape Breton Highlands- Canso for his continued interest in this subject.
The hon. member knows that the federal government does not have jurisdiction in the area of occupational health and safety. This is the responsibility of the provincial government. However, the initial environment assessment, the Acres report, did point out the key health and safety concerns associated with coal mines and the methods that the company was putting in place to overcome these concerns. All concerns, including those associated with health and safety, were deemed to be correctable with known technology. Furthermore, the CANMET review spoke briefly of mine ventilation and spontaneous combustion risk and concluded that in spite of these technical uncertainties, the proposal had no
November 16, 1992

major technical failings. The government knew that Westray would have to comply with all appropriate coal mining regulations in Nova Scotia, including those dealing with mine ventilation and spontaneous combustion matters and that regular provincial mine inspections would be carried out.
According to the mine industry, the causes and mechanisms of coal dust explosions are well understood through past research and it is the responsibility of operators and regulators to apply that knowledge base in developing control strategies.
We put in place steps to ensure that the company was in full compliance with the provincial regulatory standards on health and safety. This was monitored on a monthly basis by independent mining consultants. All of these facts were taken into consideration before making the decision to fund the project.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to return again to a question I asked the Minister of National Health and Welfare in April of this year. It concerned the measures being taken to address the very alarming findings and recommendations of the International Joint Commission on its Sixth Biennial Report on Great Lakes Water Quality. The report asks: "Are humans and our environment in danger from persistent toxic substances now? Are future generations in danger?" We believe the answer to both questions is yes.
The minister's answer at that time failed totally to respond to the concerns. He gave generalized comments about how the ministry was doing everything it could to protect the health and safety of Canadians, but nothing concrete in terms of responding to the overwhelming condemnation of the discharge of toxic substances into the largest freshwater body on the face of this earth.
We have a commitment, through international agreements, to achieve virtual elimination of the discharge of toxic substances into the Great Lakes. The IJC nonetheless concluded that persistent toxic substances are too dangerous to the biosphere and to humans to permit their release in any quantity.
Adjournment Debate
Notwithstanding that and notwithstanding a report from the Minister of the Environment's own officials that the entire content of organo-chlorines going into our waterways is a toxic substance, the government has failed to act to eliminate the discharge of these substances into our waterways.
The IJC concludes zero discharge means just that, halting all inputs from all human sources and pathways to prevent any opportunity for persistent toxic substances to enter the environment. To prevent such releases completely, their manufacture, use, transport and disposal must stop. They simply must not be available.
I asked the Minister of National Health and Welfare, given the damage both to parents and to children from these toxic substances, what action was being taken. The answer was totally unsatisfactory. Zero discharge means zero discharge. That is the only safe level according to these very important conclusions.
I hope that in the response this evening I will receive not a vacuous general statement of good intentions, but some reassurance that in the seven months since I asked that question some concrete actions have been taken to approach zero discharge of toxic substances which damage the health, not only of this generation, but of future generations.


Michel Champagne: Mr. Speaker, I listened very attentively to what my colleague said. I would remind her that many programs have been put forward by our environment minister and our government to deal with water quality. We need only think of the very ambitious program to clean up the St. Lawrence. We need only think as well of the amendments to Canadian environmental legislation. We need only think of the new, very strict regulations on dioxins and furans from paper companies in particular. These measures are internationally recognized as courageous action taken by the Canadian government.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, and as the hon. member knows too, environmental awareness necessarily involves better management of toxic wastes. Various countries, as well as Canada, are asking for much more natural products. Of course not only the government but businesses and even the provincial governments are working hand in hand to implement new regulations and adjust to them.

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Adjournment Debate
It would be easy and even preferable or desirable if we could snap our fingers and all toxic waste would disappear tomorrow morning. But we have been asked as a government to talk more about the economy. We talk about the economy, but not the economy at any price. We look at everything that can be done in terms of the environment.
Look at the position taken by the Government of Canada at the Rio summit; look at the laws put forward by our government. I just spoke about the law on dioxins and furans, but I am also thinking of the Fisheries Act.
The government has done a lot and it has not just been talk. It also spent very considerable amounts of money.
Once again I would simply remind my colleague of the very ambitious plan to clean up the St. Lawrence River which has produced some very concrete results so far.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 38(5), the motion to adjourn the House is deemed adopted.
Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.31 p.m.