1992-03-25

[Stage Direction]
[English}
['Mr. Speaker, on March 21 we celebrated International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, so declared to commemorate the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre.\nMarch 25, 1992', 'Oral Questions\nWe are fortunate to live in this culturally and ethnically diverse country called Canada. However, we continue to be plagued by tensions among our peoples.\nSix in ten Canadians believe racism is on the increase and almost 70 per cent say it is a serious issue. White job applicants get three job offers for every one received by visible minorities with similar qualifications and experience.\nThere are promising statistics as well. Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians support activities to eliminate racial discrimination through public education; 90 per cent support activities to improve equality of employment opportunity.\nOnly when such measures take root can we truly celebrate. Let us continue to work toward true justice and integrity in Canada.']
Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton-Lawrence):: Mr. Speaker, Canada does half a billion dollars of trade annually with India. It also provides $93 million more in aid. India is a fellow democratic country.
Amnesty International reports embarrassing human rights abuses on the part of our trading partner. Indian police forces and security personnel routinely visit fear and violence on men, women and children of all ages with a methodical and brutal tyranny.
During the last six years alone, 415 detainees have died at the hands of law enforcement agents who act with apparent impunity and immunity. Rapes, torture and mutilation by these agents have become the modus operandi to maintain order. The victims have been and continue to be members of minority and social and religious groups. Many of those have sought refuge in Canada. One hundred and thirty thousand Canadians identify India as their country of birth.
Now Amnesty International has exposed India's condition for what it is. Canada must press India to either correct these abuses or be confronted with a loss in aid and/or sanctions on trade.



Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, when Bill C-13 was passed last Thursday in the House, we again saw the inconsistencies of the "independantistes"
in Ottawa. Bill C-13 makes it incumbent on the federal government to set up an assessment process.
On April 9, 1990, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, who was then Minister of the Environment, said in the House that the federal government's jurisdiction was quite clear in the matter of environmental impact assessments. Its jurisdiction stood without question, especially in the case of the James Bay project.
After the leader of the Bloc Quebecois crossed the floor of the House, on October 31, 1990, the Journal de Montreal reported him as saying it was clear Quebec was not doing its job with regard to the environment. It did not want an assessment, so the federal government had to go ahead with it. Ottawa's jurisdiction in this respect was clear and unquestionable, so there was nothing surprising about the fact that the federal government should move into that area.
Mr. Speaker, it is high time the leader of the Bloc Quebecois took a clear stand and told Canadians and Quebecers that his position has not changed and that the federal government needs legislation to conduct its environmental assessments.


SAVE OUR NORTH
Mr. Reginald Belair (Cochrane-Superior):: Mr. Speaker, the Save Our North Committee is in Ottawa today. The members of this committee which is made up of concerned individuals, municipal representatives and members of local organizations have a common interest in the future of the resource industries of northern Ontario. The committee is committed to working in partnership and co-operation with all levels of government.
The Save Our North Committee is endeavouring to emphasize the critical situation northern Ontario is facing. There are 30 per cent less jobs in the mining sector and this year there will be 33 million less trees planted in Ontario. The tireless hard work of the committee has I believe resulted in proposals which will

lead to a new, stronger partnership between the resource industries, northern communities and all levels of government.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Mr. Ross Belsher (Fraser Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, several days ago I rose in this House to chastise the CBC for its confused interpretation of its very own policy on advocacy advertising. I am glad to note that the CBC has shaken its head and in doing so, has shaken away some of its confusion.
On March 18 the CBC announced a change in policy; that is, to paraphrase CBC president, Gerard Veilleux, designed to serve the evolving needs of Canadians by promoting freedom of speech and the legitimate opportunity to be fairly heard.
What this means is that if a Canadian wants to run an ad promoting Canadian unity, then the CBC, Canada's TV station, will run the ad.
This is a welcome step away from creative interpretation. It is a welcome step away from confusion and superficial hypocrisy and a giant leap toward the world of common sense inhabited by most Canadians.
My commendations to the Minister of Communications on the management of the CBC. Yes, indeed, I would like to commend the CBC on its recent policy change and welcome it back to the world of real Canadians.


SOFTWOOD LUMBER INDUSTRY
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, Canada is facing the indignity of U.S. meddling in our forest policy with a delegation of U.S. officials going through the files of the government of British Columbia as they relate to the softwood lumber dispute.
Included in the U.S. delegation is a former lobbyist for the U.S. lumber industry. A spokesman from the Canadian embassy in Washington said the government is going to try again to have this softwood snoop removed from the country.
Now the draft North America free trade agreement is looking for more ways for the Americans to undermine
our sovereignty and stick their noses where they do not belong.
Members from this caucus will be going to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to tell Washington that Canada's sovereignty is not negotiable.


CROSS-BORDER SHOPPING
Mrs. Gabrielle Bertrand (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank several groups and individuals who are working together to promote buying at home and stop cross-border shopping. I would like to start with our local weeklies. Last week, 21 weeklies in the area distributed 500,000 copies of a special 20-page insert under the headline "U.S. bargains, an illusion?"
This initiative is only one of several in my riding, including those by the chambers of commerce and local business people in Bedford, Bromont, Sutton, Cowans-ville, Magog and Famham. These initiatives are starting to produce results, and I hope people will realize how serious the situation is and that the drawbacks of cross-border shopping have been underestimated. By crossing the border to do our shopping, Mr. Speaker, we are destroying our economy and helping to maintain high levels of unemployment in this country.


NATIONAIR
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, Quebec has a major labour dispute on its hands. Nationair locked out its employees on November 19, and since then there have been practically no negotiations and the parties are no longer talking. The stalemate continues and is largely due to a lack of anti-scab provisions in the Canada Labour Code. Quebec does have anti-scab legislation, which tends to make labour relations more civilized.
The Bloc Quebecois suggested adopting similar provisions last year, but the government side objected. A comparison of both sets of legislation illustrates the inconsistencies in the federal legislation. However, the dispute must be settled, and both parties must be asked to go back to the negotiating table with a mediator. The union must also be requested to stop its boycott of the

company as soon as negotiations resume. Finally, the employer must be asked to bargain in good faith, to ensure that the dispute is settled in the interests of the company, the unionized workers and Quebec's economy.


REPENTIGNY SEA CADETS
Mr. Jean-Marc Robitaille (Terrebonne):: Mr. Speaker, today I would like to salute an original and dynamic initiative from the Repentigny sea cadets, who with the help of the municipality of Repentigny organized a clean-up of the banks of the St. Lawrence in that community. With the participation of the public and many sponsors, Repentigny will become the first city in Quebec to clean up its waterfront on such a scale.
Lieutenant Commander Alain Boissonneault and his cadets have shown exemplary energy and dedication in implementing this project, which proves that cadets can play a positive and constructive role in improving our quality of life. Pollution is the new enemy to beat and the Repentigny sea cadets are the pioneers of a new generation of Canadians. I want to congratulate them and encourage them to continue in that direction and I call on all Canadians to follow the example of the Repentigny sea cadets so that future generations can enjoy a quality environment.


LEBANESE REFUGEES
Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, the Lebanese refugees ended their hunger strike today at Lebanon House in Montreal. In so doing, they responded to the urgent appeal from my colleagues, the Hon. Warren Allmand, our party's immigration critic; our caucus chairman, the hon. member for Saint-Denis; our esteemed colleague Mac Harb, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, and from me.
We now hope that the minister responsible for immigration and the government will understand that the situation in Lebanon is not what people here in Canada seem to think it is and therefore we ask the government
to consider these requests for humanitarian and political reasons.
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ETHANOL FUELS
Mr. Rex Crawford (Kent):: Mr. Speaker, I applaud the efforts of the farmers and other business people in Kent county for their launching of a feasibility study for an ethanol plant. More than 350 people turned out Monday night in my riding since Kent is an obvious site for an ethanol industry.
My riding is the number one com producer in Canada and Ontario com growers as a whole produce nearly 75 per cent of the Canadian total. Ethanol makes both economic and environmental sense. It is the fuel of the future, while creating other markets for our grains and helping the local economy.
I will be presenting a petition signed by hundreds of agribusiness people urging greater federal promotion and commitment to ethanol fuels, with a legislated 10 per cent blend for all automotive fuels.
This community-based enterprise makes sense any way you look at it. I support the Chatham ethanol consortium 100 per cent.


INFORMATION ON AIDS
Mr. Marcel R. TVemblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, recently I went to meet students in grades 5 and 6 in schools in my riding in order to personally give them the government's information brochure on AIDS.
For me, it was a wonderful opportunity to realize how receptive our young people are to positive information and how eager they are to have it.
I wish to point out this timely initiative of our minister of health and I thank him on behalf of these young people. I hope that this pamphlet will be followed by many more that are equally constructive.

March 25, 1992


O CANADA
Mr. Garth Turner (Halton -Peel):: Mr. Speaker, when disk jockey Ross Carlin could not find a professional copy of O Canada to play on air during the gulf war, he started an odyssey which came to involve hundreds and hundreds of Canadians. Now, in Canada's 125th year, we have new versions of our national anthem performed by the country's best musicians and artists. Every school in Canada now has a copy of the anthem, thanks to the non-profit O Canada foundation.
It is an honour to rise in my place today and pay tribute to those behind the O Canada foundation-Ross Carlin, Brian Lyon and Hayward Parrott. It is with a glowing heart that I direct the attention of this House to these great Canadians today in the gallery.


SAVE OUR NORTH
Mr. Cid Samson (Timmins-Chapleau):: Mr. Speaker, representatives of Save Our North are in Ottawa today to bring the concern of communities from northern Ontario to all members of the House and to all Canadians. Save Our North is a broad-based coalition of northern Ontario prospectors, workers, concerned individuals and communities whose livelihood is connected to resource industries.
I want to remind everyone that mining, forestry and other resource-based industries are still the backbone of our economy. Northern Ontario communities know that economic diversification is the key to their survival.
However, we cannot forget that if we want economic growth we must look toward resource industries to provide a much-needed economic base.


NATIONAL PHYSIOTHERAPY WEEK
Mr. John Reimer (Kitchener):: Mr. Speaker, this week is National Physiotherapy Week, an occasion acknowledging the vital role that physiotherapists play in the health care field.
Physiotherapists work in many settings, including acute and extended care hospitals, rehabilitation and mental health centres, private clinics, community and government agencies, educational institutions, sports and recreation centres and industry.
The theme chosen by the Canadian Physiotherapy Association to celebrate this week is "Physiotherapy, Your Key to Independence". Physiotherapists play an important role in helping people remain independent. They help people of all ages and health levels achieve their highest level of physical function.
I invite all Canadians to join me in saluting physiotherapists in recognition of the important contribution that the profession continues to make to the well-being of Canadians.


FARM DEBT
Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: The total farm debt in Canada stands at about $23 billion, almost the same as the reported debt of Olympia & York. Farmers have millions of acres of land for their security; Olympia & York has 80 some acres along Canary Wharf and a few other pieces here and there.
Twenty per cent of Canada's farmers have already had to restructure their debt load. Almost without exception there has been no write-down of the debt. For most, there was no special bank rate nor special interest rates. In fact, Farm Credit Corporation extracts an extra charge of $5 for every $1,000 worth of debt restructured, after which the long-term interest rate is more than 12 per cent.
The Department of Finance, major Canadian banks, the Canadian and Ontario governments and even the Bank of Canada are rallying to the Olympia & York cause. If Olympia & York gets better treatment than our farmers got, the government and the banks had better provide similar retroactive financing for farmers too. After all, fair is fair.


RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, on March 21 we celebrated International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, so declared to commemorate the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre.
March 25, 1992

Oral Questions
We are fortunate to live in this culturally and ethnically diverse country called Canada. However, we continue to be plagued by tensions among our peoples.
Six in ten Canadians believe racism is on the increase and almost 70 per cent say it is a serious issue. White job applicants get three job offers for every one received by visible minorities with similar qualifications and experience.
There are promising statistics as well. Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians support activities to eliminate racial discrimination through public education; 90 per cent support activities to improve equality of employment opportunity.
Only when such measures take root can we truly celebrate. Let us continue to work toward true justice and integrity in Canada.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for International Trade.
As we all know, the European Community has set minimum standards for its social, agricultural, economic and environmental policies.
Yesterday the minister said in the House that working conditions and environmental questions would not be negotiated at the same table as the free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. I would like to ask the minister whether he can give the House the assurance that if, as and when the free trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico is signed, it will not be signed unless minimum standards
for working conditions and environmental protection are the same for Canadians and Mexicans.


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. friend has raised an interesting point here because he is comparing the European Community and what they are seeking to achieve and the free trade area between Canada, the United States and possibly Mexico.
In Europe, they are seeking a common market which results in a considerably greater degree of political integration. They want to have the same monetary policy, the same currency as well as these other standards which my friend has referred to.
We are not seeking that with the United States nor with Mexico because we do not want to see the political integration that comes with the common market in the arrangements that we would have with the United States or Mexico.
If my hon. friend wants to pursue that sort of line, I ask him if he would want to have the same health care system in Canada as they have in the United States. Does he want to have the same environmental standards in Canada as they have in the United States, the same labour standards? I do not think he would want to do that. It is for that reason that we want to keep those separate and just limit our discussions to trade.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker should know if there is no such agreement. For example, today we read in the press that President Salinas of Mexico had to impose some very drastic measures in the city of Mexico because the level of pollution is four times the level acceptable for human beings.
So I want to know from this minister, can he guarantee to the Canadian people and Canadian workers that just because industry can pollute as much as it wants in Mexico, the jobs of Canadians and the industries of Canada will not go to Mexico and Mexico City?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend neglects to recognize what the position of Mexico is.
The Mexicans have invested a considerably greater amount of resources in the enforcement of their environmental standards. They have shut down a major refinery in Mexico City because of the pollution there.

March 25, 1992
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Their standards are comparable to the standards that we have in Canada and that they have in the United States.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: My hon. friends are laughing. I say to them: Check the facts. Check the facts, and hon. members opposite will find that the standards are the same but the enforcement is not.
It is for that reason that we are seeking better enforcement of the rules through the parallel discussions that we are having and the agreements that we are entering into.
I should just make one other point in that for new investment, if a new plant wants to go into Mexico, it is governed by the standards. It is the enforcement of the standards on existing plants which, if they did it too rigorously, would cause great job losses there.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, that is a terrible admission on the part of the minister, to tell us that the standards are accepted but not respected.
What we want to know from this government is what it will do if the standards are not respected by Mexicans at the expense of Canadian workers.


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, the question of the Leader of the Opposition, interestingly enough, is based on a few assumptions.
Among them is the assumption that Mexicans for some odd reason care less about their environment than Canadians do. That is false. They care as much about their environment as we do.
In fact, the other assumption on which the hon. member bases his question is some sort of paternalism from developing countries towards development.
I think if he were to look at the facts he would find that no later than February 25 last, the governments of the United States and Mexico announced a joint border plan to deal with environmental issues, a $450 million initiative.
under which we are going to assist the Mexican government in the enforcement of its environmental laws.
At the end of the day, I have the greatest conviction that this environment and trade deal will be good for Canada. It will also be good for Mexicans.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources announced in Calgary today the ending of the limits on foreign ownership or investment in the Canadian petroleum industry.
Why did the minister do this when Canada is in the midst of North American free trade negotiations? Why did he give away this major bargaining chip at a time when the energy provisions are part of the North American free trade negotiations?


Mr. John A. MacDougall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, the announcement that was made earlier today by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources has nothing at all to do with the trade issue.
It is entirely within the hands of the country, and it is something that the industry was looking for.


Roy MacLaren: Mr. Speaker, clearly the parliamentary secretary does not understand the nature of the announcement.
The fact is that it has come at the very time when energy is actively under negotiation in the North American free trade agreement. Mexico, for its part, limits foreign ownership in the petroleum industry.
I would ask the parliamentary secretary who is answering for the minister: Why has the government lifted the limitations on U.S. ownership only and discriminates against the other foreign investors?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: 
Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: My question is for the Minister for International Trade.
Yesterday the minister played down the significance of the Canada-United States-Mexico trade deal saying that trade between Canada and Mexico only amounted to one per cent.
Yet, if we look at the draft deal, there are massive changes proposed with both Mexico and the United States in telecommunications, auto parts, transportation, pipelines, courier services, financial services, the drug industry and agriculture to name just a few.
This is not an insignificant deal as the minister is trying to propose to the Canadian people. It is not an insignificant deal between Canada, the United States and Mexico.
My question to the minister is this. How can the minister insist that this deal only concerns one per cent of our trade when it touches every major area of trade in Canada?
It is time the minister came clean with the Canadian people.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend was speaking very quickly.
I got a couple of the industries she is talking about. What we are proposing with telecommunications is no different from what the arrangements are under the free trade agreement with the United States.
I cannot understand the position of the New Democratic Party nor the position of the Liberal Party where they are saying they want to protect and limit the size of the market for the high-tech telecommunications industry in Canada. This is an opportunity for them to get into what I believe is a $10 billion market in Mexico. Surely my friend would be pushing us to encourage that and to make it possible.
Now on automobiles, I do not know where my hon. friend has found the information she has because there has been no agreement. There has been nothing written concerning automobiles in the negotiations so far.
We are discussing it because it is a one-way free trade deal with Mexico right now. They have free access to our
Oral Questions
market. We have many, many barriers to getting into their market. That is one of the reasons there is a significant trade deficit on Canada's part on automotive products with Mexico.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the minister. One thing is clear to Canadians. It is a one-way trade deal. The jobs go out of Canada. That is what Canadians have seen happen.

The government has repeatedly said in the House that it supported marketing boards in the agricultural sector.
However, in the document released yesterday, the draft North American free trade agreement, that same government is proposing a tariffication system. Why does the government say one thing to farmers here in Canada and the exact opposite to the United States and Mexico?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let me be very, very precise on this because my hon. friend is misreading the text.
What is proposed is a tariffication of non-tariff barriers in those parts of agriculture not, let me repeat not, subject to supply management.
In those areas of agriculture which are subject to supply management, the position in the North American free trade negotiations is exactly the same as the position that we set out in the Uruguay round, as was also the case that we agreed on in the agreement between Canada and the United States. In other words, we are seeking a strengthening and clarification of article XI in support of our supply management system.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, if the minister feels that he is misunderstood, perhaps the best solution would be if he came clean with the Canadian people and explained this trade deal with Mexico so Canadians could understand every part of it and understand it clearly.
But it is clear from the draft agreement that the Canadian government proposed and supported the very same system of tariffication.

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However, it is clear the results of the last trade deal this government signed have lead to increased unemployment with 400,000 jobs lost. We have not seen the adjustment programs this government promised because of that trade deal. The last deal was a failure. This deal proves to be a disaster.
I want to ask the Minister for International Trade, why is this government insisting on quick passage of a trade deal on which Canadians have not been given full information and on which this government has not done a full study in terms of implications for Canada?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend, in the preamble to her question, has distorted what I just said in my previous answer. It is that sort of distortion which contributes to the misunderstanding that Canadians have of the objectives we have set out for Canada in these trade negotiations.
I would ask my hon. friend, before she distorts the things I am saying, to think very carefully about what she is doing. I explained very clearly, very precisely, what our objective is as it relates to the supply managed areas of the economy and the other areas of agriculture.
My hon. friend also said that I am in a rush to pass this free trade agreement with Mexico. That again is a distortion of what I said in the House yesterday. What I said in the House yesterday was that the agreement would drive the timing. In other words, we want to have a good agreement before we set any deadlines. We are not setting deadlines. What I also said in the House yesterday was that there was nothing magic about the January 1, 1993 date.


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Canadian government is pushing for that deadline, and that was obvious in the document yesterday.
My question is for the Minister for International Trade. The majority of steelworkers live and work in the Hamilton area. They were taken to the cleaners in the last free trade agreement, and they are frightened to death that it is going to happen again. They are worried because steel goes into cars and there is not one word in
this 408-page document to protect Canadian content rules for automobiles.

There is no protection for the automobile industry in Canada.

We know what the Mexicans want out of the deal. We know what the Americans want. Why did Canadians not seek protection for the Canadian auto industry in this deal?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend said that the steel industry was taken to the cleaners with the free trade agreement. There was a good deal of support for the free trade agreement with the United States. My hon. friend realizes that and I know she understands it. Again there is a good deal of recasting of history with her statements.
She is saying there is not one word in what she saw in that document yesterday. Correct, there is not one word because we have not put forward a position, nor have the Americans, nor have the Mexicans. We are still discussing on what basis we might be able to come together to help support a strong automotive sector in Canada, the United States and Mexico in competition with the rest of the world.
Those discussions are still continuing, fully involving the industry and fully involving the union in support of the position we will be putting forward.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, it is not just the opposition members who believe the government does not know what it is doing.
I have sent the minister a copy of an article published in Hamilton today by his colleague, the Conservative member of Parliament for Hamilton-Wentworth. He said, and I quote: "Close to half a million jobs have been lost as a result of the Canada-U.S. free trade deal".
"We've been getting conflicting signals from Barbara McDougall, from Michael Wilson and heaven knows who else".
"Something sneaky is going on behind the scenes concerning the North American free trade deal".
Why is the minister proceeding with these secret negotiations when his own Conservative members say something sneaky is going on?
March 25, 1992


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to attach any credibility to the statements that she has just made. What I will say is that the discussions we have been carrying on have been carried on with the full knowledge and full consultation of the industries affected, as well as the provinces.
Let me, if I may, quote from a letter from the Premier of Ontario: "We have appreciated the care with which we have been kept informed of the progress of negotiations and the opportunities to offer suggestions about the development of Canadian positions on the range of issues involved".
I think that clearly says the Premier of Ontario is appreciative of the way we have involved the provinces in the development of our position.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.
On the steps of Parliament Hill the Deputy Prime Minister told 40,000 Canadian farmers that he was supporting them at the GATT, that he was rejecting tariffication. Yet on the same day his trade officials put forward proposals in a draft NAFTA which clearly stated that Canada was willing to give in to the Americans on tariffication. Nowhere in this agreement does it distinguish between supply managed and non-supply managed commodities.
Why the contradiction? Why the deception? Why is the minister telling one thing to the Canadian farmers and another to American and Mexican negotiators?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I think the Minister for International Trade was quite clear just now.
Canada's position on marketing boards at the threeway talks with the United States and Mexico is exactly the same as its position in Geneva. We have tabled equivalents, Mr. Speaker, but we still have to look at the figures. The tariff equivalents tabled during the week of March 1 in Geneva cover all agricultural sectors except marketing boards.
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As far as tariff equivalents are concerned, we maintain the position we have had for the past two years: that article XI must be strengthened and clarified. That is the Canadian position, and it has not changed. I think hon. members on the other side should take a careful look at the documents they have in their possession, to see what Canada's position is.


Robert (Bob) Speller: I have a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.
The draft agreement clearly states that Canada has proposed wording on tariff equivalents, and nowhere does it say that there is a difference between supply managed and non-supply managed commodities.
Why has the minister asked his negotiators in Geneva to say one thing and his negotiators in Washington to say another? Why is he misleading Canadian farmers?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I want to be quite precise on this because I know my hon. friend is expressing an interest on behalf of his constituents.
The member is referring to article 502. He should read article 502 also in the context of article 508 which clearly refers to our rights under the GATT and under the free trade agreement.
Under the GATT and the free trade agreement we have retained our rights under article XI(2)(c) which provides us with the ability to support supply management operations. It is on that basis that our position in the NAFTA and our position in the Uruguay round of negotiations is exactly the same, which is to say we are seeking a strengthening and a clarification of article XI.


PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Acting Prime Minister.
This morning the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources announced the removal of the last vestiges of significant limitations on foreign investment in the Canadian petroleum industry. All a would-be investor has to do now is take a stroll past the Investment Canada welcome wagon.

March 25, 1992
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This move will create no new investment in our price depressed oil patch. Just today the foreign owned Mobile Oil announced it was laying off 300 employees in Alberta.
My question is: How many dollars worth of new foreign investment does the government estimate will result from this move to sell out even more of Canada's energy industry?


John Alexander Frances MacDougall: Mr. Speaker, I would imagine the hon. member for Edmonton East, a western member, has certainly had representation over the last number of weeks and months from the industry on the difficult times that it is facing.
The marketplace will certainly judge who will be picking up on the investment. I say to the hon. member that all indications we have received so far from the industry have been very positive.


Ross Harvey: Mr. Speaker, so they do not know. Let me try again: Between 1980 and 1990 foreign controlled companies operating in Canada removed over $25 billion from this country, including nearly $8 billion in dividends alone.
Again my question is for the Acting Prime Minister, and you have come up in the world. Does the government have an estimate of how much more capital foreign controlled companies will bleed from Canada as a result of this retreat, this capitulation, this abandonment of the Canadian national interest in Canada's energy industry?


John Alexander Frances MacDougall: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for giving me a new position within government.
I want to say to him that it puts the industry on a level playing field. I also want to offer the hon. member the opportunity for a full briefing when the minister gets back tomorrow. I know once he receives that briefing he will certainly be applauding the move by the government.


NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for International Trade. In Mexico, the minimum wage as guaranteed by the government is $5.50 per day for skilled workers and $4.65 per day for unskilled workers. In Canada, the rate guaranteed by the government is about $4 per hour. In the light of these figures, could the minister inform the House whether a study has been made to determine the impact of such an agreement on Canada's textile and clothing industry? If so, is he prepared to release this study?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my friend is referring to one aspect of the nature of competition between Mexico and Canada. What he must draw into his understanding of this is the amount of turnover in labour, which is considerably greater in Mexico than in Canada; the ability of Mexican workers to receive training; the sophisticated nature of the training that is required with some of the products we are selling; the nature of quality in the operations; and the transportation distances between Canada and Mexico. The range of other issues that relate to the total level of competitiveness is much, much more than simply the difference in wage rates.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the same minister.
The Canadian textile institute says that the U.S. is using the NAFTA to renegotiate the rules of origin in the Canada-U.S. trade deal, which would reduce our industry access to the U.S. markets.
Given the U.S. trade harassment, what formal compensation will the Canadian government offer to the textile industry which has already lost over 20,000 jobs since 1988?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, let me agree with my hon. friend and the Canadian textile institute. The position of the United States and Mexico that is on the table now is one that we fundamentally disagree with. We have made that very
March 25, 1992

clear to them and told them it is unacceptable. Those negotiations are continuing.
As far as my hon. friend is concerned, he neglects to say that a number of apparel manufacturers have been successful in finding niche markets in the United States, selling their great capacity to develop fashions that are attractive to purchasers, and have considerably increased their business in the United States since the free trade agreement came in. That is one of the real success stories we have had.


Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister for International Trade.
Given that the U.S. has continued to use its trade remedy laws to challenge our regional development programs despite the existence of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, will the minister assure this House that nothing in the NAFTA will be allowed to erode further Canada's ability to deliver regional development assistance?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, this is a matter which we have been negotiating in the Uruguay round negotiations in Geneva. If my hon. friend looks at the results of the negotiations at this point, in the Dunkel text of December 20, he will see that regional development support is fully protected. It is fully allowed for in the subsidies code that has been developed. There are other elements of the subsidies code that are a great step forward as far as Canada is concerned compared to what we have today.
I think my hon. friend will be quite happy with what has been achieved there.


Francis G. LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
Atlantic Canada depends critically on government support for its transportation infrastructure in order to compete in central Canadian and in U.S. markets. Yet this government has undermined our port facilities, shut down VIA Rail service, eliminated At and East subsidy
Oral Questions
payments, denied support for highway improvement, and is now allowing CN to sell off its rail line from Sydney to TVuro, Nova Scotia to U.S. buyers. The NAFTA draft text puts all land transportation on the table. Why is the minister allowing the further erosion of our transportation network through these trade talks?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is again misreading the text that was leaked to The Toronto Star and I would be happy to take him through it.
Unfortunately his party did not accept our offer to be briefed on the text, but if my friend wants to reconsider, I would be happy to take him through it.
What we are trying to achieve with the NAFTA negotiations is the capacity of truckers to take products from Canada, go through the United States, pick up products in the United States so they have a full load, and carry those into Mexico. Surely that will improve the efficiency of the Canadian trucking system so that it can take advantage of the increase in trade that is going to occur as a result of the NAFTA negotiations.
This is a way we can help the industry, not as my friend suggests hurt it.


Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of the Environment.
Yesterday in The Toronto Star it was claimed that there is no protection in the draft North American free trade agreement for the environment.
Would the minister advise Canadians why it is inappropriate to have such standards in a trade agreement and what he is doing to ensure that Canadians can compete on an environmentally sustainable and level playing field with Mexicans and Americans?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, in the context of the NAFTA negotiations, the environment is dealt with in four areas.
First of all in the context of the trade negotiations themselves, the standards are dealt with in Part B of the negotiations, if I remember correctly, and that is one of the areas where we are dealing with environmental issues.

Oral Questions
The other area is negotiations between Canada, Mexico and the United States on an environmental agreement.
We have also named environmentalists to the different consultative groups that we have assisting the government in the conducting of the negotiations.
Finally, the Government of Canada will be doing an environmental assessment of the potential trade agreement as it comes forward. That is why you will not find, as indicated by the member, something precise on the environment in the draft agreement. It is being dealt with in parallel with the trade negotiations.


ESTABLISHED PROGRAMS FINANCING
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
In the last three years the federal government's share of funding for medicare and post-secondary education in this country has fallen from 37 per cent to 31 per cent of the cost of those programs. That represents a loss of some $9 billion to the provinces in this fiscal year, and nearly $41 billion over the last 10 years.
In light of that tremendous cutback in the share of funding from the federal government, I want this minister to explain to the House today how the provinces, when they bring in their budgets in the next few weeks, particularly the have-not provinces in Atlantic Canada, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, will be able to protect medical care, keep it universal and keep it accessible to people in this country without deterrent fees according to the guarantees in the Canada Health Act.
How can they do that in light of these callous cutbacks in the share of funding from the federal Government of Canada? Explain that one. Cut out all the nonsense you told us before and tell us the real facts.


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, as we have already said, when he says there are cuts in the transfers, we still give more money today to the provinces than we did before.
The member should know that the ministers of health in all provinces of Canada agree that the question of the health care system is not a money problem. He should know that even in Saskatchewan at the last meeting of ministers of health everybody agreed that we have enough money in the system.
It is a question of management. It is a question of system ability, flexibility. We are working on that with the ministers of health, including the minister of Saskatchewan, or any other province of the country.
Once again I repeat what I said last week. Medicare should remain what it is and we will do what should be done for that.
Having said that once again, we will work with the provinces to keep the system and again it is not a question of resources.


Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, this government has hammered Ontario especially hard. It has forced an increase in the provincial debt by $11 billion.
Does this government realize that it takes $16 billion more each year from Ontario than it spends in that province? Does it understand that it cannot milk Ontario in that way and then turn around and treat Ontario unfairly by taking money from it for the Canada Assistance Program? Will it give money to the poor people of Ontario so that they can get through this recession?


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Mr. Speaker, the facts belie the accusations that my hon. friend makes. I want to remind the House that between 1984-85 and 1992-93, the fiscal year we are just about to enter, the increase of federal transfers per year, on average, have been 6.2 per cent. That compares with 5 per cent across the country. Ontario has been getting an increase. That is the first point that should be made.
Second, the Ontario government, over the past number of years, has increased its spending over 10 per cent per year on average. The NDP government is carrying right on, like the Liberals did, in spending over 10 per cent more per year where other provinces and the

federal government have kept their spending down over this difficult period of time.
So this song that Bob Rae is singing, to my way of thinking, is just setting up the people for a very tough budget that he has to bring in. All of a sudden he has to face reality.


Garth Turner: Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the question the hon. member has just asked.
Last night Bob Rae called the federal government an absconding debtor and said that the Government of Ontario had been short-changed by $13 billion over the last few years. I want to know if Premier Bob Rae is right in what he is saying? How can we have two different black and white versions of the same story?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out before, the average growth of transfers to the provincial government of Ontario has been 6.2 per cent compared to an average of about 5 per cent.
First of all, the figures that Mr. Rae produced were inaccurate in that he did not take into account some $12 billion in tax point transfers when he was adding it up. He made a slight error of some $12 billion in tax points and $2 billion in cash transfers. There is quite a discrepancy in the amount of money that Mr. Rae has been talking about. I can tell the hon. member that Ontario has been treated fairly in this.
I am interested in the NDP which says that we should be running an account book confederation here. I believe over the years that Ontario has and continues to pay more than its share to help less populated, less industrialized parts of this country. I believe that is our role in Ontario and it should continue.


MCDONALD COMMISSION
Hon. Lucien Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General.
Yesterday after Question Period the minister said that he would consult his officials to determine whether or
Oral Questions
not he would make public the seven chapters missing from the McDonald report.
Can the minister tell us now, today, whether his decision has been made and if he will finally provide a full explanation for the illegal acts that were investigated by the McDonald commission?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, I have had an opportunity to review exactly how many chapters have not been released. I believe, after looking into the matter, that we are now talking about two chapters, chapters 7 and 10. At the present time we are going through the chapters and considering just when it would be appropriate to release them.
The reason I say that, Mr. Speaker, is that the commission when it brought down its report made this comment: "Our recommendation is that out of regard for the public interest in doing everything that is possible to ensure that members of the RCMP and others receive fair trials, our report as to these situations ought not to be made public either until the appropriate prosecutorial authority has decided not to prosecute, or has decided to prosecute and the judicial proceedings have finally been concluded".


Lucien Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, we know that the charges then pending have now been dealt with by the courts, as far back as last fall. So what is now keeping the department from making those chapters public? I do not understand and the public may wonder whether some people are being protected by this secrecy. I believe it would be very important for the government and I ask the minister: Is it not in the public interest now to remove all suspicion concerning the judicial process and the administration of justice and to release those documents?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I agree with my hon. friend that the public interest has to be served and we fully intend to do that.
At the present time we are considering the matter and we will be consulting with the Attorney General of Quebec.

Oral Questions AUTO INDUSTRY


Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, the Japanese, European and Korean auto makers now enjoy 37 per cent of Canada's market but account for only 3 per cent of Canadian auto jobs.
My question is for the Minister for International Trade. What precise measures will he insist on in order to ensure our auto workers their fair share of North American jobs?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I dealt with the Japanese and the Korean auto manufacturers which have the lion's share of that market share he refers to, and have discussed ways in which they can increase their manufacturing or their use of parts suppliers here in Canada.
That is one of our objectives in the North American free trade negotiations, to see whether there are ways that we can encourage a greater amount of investment or use of parts suppliers in Canada. Certainly we do not want to do anything in the NAFTA that would discourage that.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: That is hopeful, Mr. Speaker.
This government's free trade agreement wiped out the auto pact safeguards that protected Canadian auto jobs. Now, under the free trade agreement, the big three will no longer need one Canadian auto job but will still be able to sell into Canada duty free.
Why will the minister not insist on Canadian content rules that will restore the auto pact safeguards for Canadian jobs and undo the harm caused by his free trade agreement?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: do not want to get into a debate with my hon. friend. But he knows that we did not change the safeguards.
What we still do have in place, which is very very important-


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: You wiped them out.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, we did not wipe them out. What we do have and what is very important as far as the auto pact members are concerned is the duty free import opportunity, if they maintain their auto pact status. That, we have been told by the big three
companies and other members of the auto pact, is extremely important to them. We are certainly making sure that this is a part of our negotiating stance in the North American free trade negotiations.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. George S. Rideout (Moncton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister.
Two Canadians, David Spencer and Christine Lamont, are still in Brazilian prisons while the Secretary of State for External Affairs dithers. A Roman Catholic Archbishop of Brazil has written the Prime Minister petitioning him to intervene and ask the Brazilian government to expel David Spencer and Christine Lamont.
A legal opinion prepared by Brazilian lawyers hired by the Department of External Affairs says there is nothing to prevent Canada from asking for their expulsion.
Will the minister please explain why she will not make a formal request of the Government of Brazil for their expulsion?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, let me say that the department did not request a legal opinion, as has been reported.
I appreciate the hon. member is working off press reports. The review of the case is continuing, and it includes consideration of the Brazilian process regarding expulsion. The Secretary of State for External Affairs has not made a decision yet.


George Saunders Rideout: Mr. Speaker, on a supplementary, the Brazilian government two months ago said that it would be willing to comply with a Canadian request to expel. The minister promised an answer in February, and now we are near the end of March. Even the Prime Minister has promised to respond to the Cardinal's letter and investigate the situation.
Whoever initiated the legal opinion, and there is some question with respect to that, one thing is for sure. Brazilian lawyers are saying that there is nothing wrong with proceeding with the expulsion. In my view, the minister's failure to act borders on negligence. Will the minister make a formal request today?
March 25, 1992

Point of Order


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State for External Affairs has completed a preliminary review of the situation.
She has been looking at the legal aspects of the case, and is awaiting further clarification from her legal adviser. We are very much aware of the position of the Archbishop on this. No decision has been taken pending completion of a legal review by the minister.


WATER EXPORTS
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. We learned yesterday that the minister has been unable to get the support of cabinet to proceed with a water export bill to prohibit large scale export of water from Canada.
We also learned yesterday from the text of the Cana-da-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement that article 1401 would approve non-energy pipelines and article 1404 would restrict cross-border limitations on such pipelines.
Can the minister explain how he can continue to sit in a cabinet that simply views Canada's water as a commodity, or does he expect Canadians to believe that these non-energy pipelines are to take B.C. wine to California or Canadian milk to New York City?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, on the water export bill, I do not know, frankly, where the hon. member is coming from on that issue.
He alludes to events, speculations or discussions that to my knowledge have not occurred. On the trade deal with Mexico, I think the hon. member should know as I have indicated before in this House that there will be an environmental assessment of the trade deal, which is a precedent in itself. The government has committed itself to doing environmental assessments of its policies. We intend to pursue this matter. That is something that the hon. member should congratulate us for.
I am sorry that he is off-side. He reminds me of other members in this House who, from time to time, are not very consistent in their views.

I am thinking, for example, of the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean, whom I am pleased to welcome to the House. I hope that he will take the opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to speak on Bill C-13. The hon. member for Shefford may want to talk to him about that.


TABLING OF CORRESPONDENCE
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I did refer to correspondence in the House today and read from it. In response to a request from the member for Ottawa-Vanier, I would be pleased to table that correspondence.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Dave Worthy (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in response to a point of order made by the member for Skeena.
On March 13 I made a statement in the House in regard to the Share groups of British Columbia. In that statement, I expressed a lot of their anger, their outrage and what they felt was a betrayal. It was interpreted by the member for Skeena as a personal attack.
When I read in Beauchesne's about members' statements, it does say, and I quote: "The Speaker has said that these statements ought not to be used to make personal attacks".
Although I intended my statement more as a defence of the Share groups, I must admit on re-reading it that it can be interpreted as a personal attack. As such, I would say to both the member for Skeena and the member from Port Alberni, and in fact to all members of the House, that I should not have made a statement in the House that did appear as a personal attack on other members.

March 25, 1992
Routine Proceedings
I should have sought and I will seek other ways to deal with this very important matter.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present two petitions today from constituents in Wild Rose. They would like the government to provide more tax benefits to families with children. These petitions were sent to me in 1991 and the recommendations have already been addressed in the 1992 budget.


Barbara Greene: Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions from residents in the metropolitan Toronto area, Quebec, Manitoba, and right across Canada. All three of them urge the minister of immigration to issue minister's permits for spouses and dependent children of refugee claimants as soon as the refugee claimant has been accepted for landing in Canada.


Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I have here over 150 petitions with quite a few thousand signatures and these are to add to the now over 350,000 signatures which I have personally presented in the House and the thousands that have been presented by other members of Parliament. This is in support of the petition of the parents of Nina de Villiers.
These petitioners feel that there are serious deficiencies in the criminal justice system in Canada. They would like Parliament to recognize that crimes of violence against a person are serious and abhorrent to society. They ask this government to amend the Criminal Code of Canada, the Bail Reform Act of 1972 and to further reform the Parole Act.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions here today. One is on behalf of petitioners who endorse the independence of Ukraine,
something that happened some time ago. They add now that it has perhaps been achieved under the Commonwealth of Independent States to a certain degree, but it may also be a subtle disguise for another form of oppression and they want to point that out. They also remind Canadians that Ukraine is in dire need of Canadian assistance at this particular point in time.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, my second petition concerns education. The petitioners say that the economy is going global and that Canada's economy is changing all the time. They also express their dislike for the service charges on student loans and note that the GST applies to them. They mention as well that $450 million was cut last year and $250 million will be cut this year. The petitioners submit that education is a right and that an educated population can make a positive contribution to Canada's economic and social development.


Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition signed by numerous residents of Kingston, Sydenham, Elgin-burg and other parts in between the three communities. These petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to recognize that crimes of violence against the person are serious and abhorrent in our society and to make amendments to the Criminal Code, the Bail Reform Act and the Parole Act to indicate society's abhorrence and the degree of seriousness with which members of the public regard these crimes.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to raise a number of petitions signed by constituents of my riding of York West. They are essentially requesting that this government amend the Narcotics Control Act so as to ensure that local organizations and police forces will be able to share in the drug seizures that are made as opposed to having all assets going to general revenue funds in Ottawa to the Government of Canada.
March 25, 1992

It is a very important matter which I hope the Solicitor General will respond in kind in very short order.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and present seven petitions containing about 200 names recognizing that the James Bay II project, if carried out as presently planned, will cause serious damage to the environment and to the lifestyle of the Cree people of northern Quebec.
They call upon Parliament to ensure that a full federal environmental assessment of the proposed James Bay II project is carried out on all aspects under federal jurisdiction.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to rise today pursuant to Standing Order 36 to present a petition on behalf of many of the Ukrainian people in Thunder Bay, Nipigon and other parts of this country.
They ask simply that now that Ukraine has been recognized by our government, that this government continue to show its usual empathy, good judgment and kindness toward the people of Ukraine as they struggle on their road to independence.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand, pursuant to Standing Order 36, and present petitions from a number of constituents from Osoyoos, Okanagan Falls, Oliver, Penticton, Summerland and other places within the riding of Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt with respect to Unitel's bid to integrate with the development of an over-all Canadian telecommunications policy.
They are urging the Minister of Communications to oppose Unitel's bid to compete with Canada's telephone companies on long distance service. They urge the Minister of Communications to consult with all affected parties, specifically those citizens living outside Canada's urban areas who will be impacted severely by deregulation. They further urge the Minister of Communications
Routine Proceedings
to hold local hearings in our communities before deciding the fate of Canada's telecommunications system.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition today on behalf of a number of constituents who are concerned about the diversion of water from British Columbia into the United States and northern Mexico, particularly in light of the proposal in the free trade agreement with Mexico and the United States that considers pipelines to be part of the approved transportation system.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I have another petition where the petitioners point out that railway employees suspended for accidental violation of the Canadian rail operating rules are being unjustly penalized under sections 28 and 30 of the Unemployment Insurance Act. They are asking Parliament to take immediate steps to simply specify that accidental violation of the rules does not constitute employee misconduct under these sections of the UI Act.


Mr. Dan Heap (THnity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from a number of residents in several towns in Ontario who are concerned about the families of people who have been accepted in Canada as refugees but who are not yet landed. They urge the House to call upon the minister of immigration to issue minister's permits for spouses and dependent 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 to allow them to be reunited in Canada for inland processing.


Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to call Starred Question No. 96. Due to the length of the answer, I ask that it be printed in Hansard as if read.

March 25, 1992
Routine Proceedings

*


Mr. Riis: Since January 1,1989, has the government printed any material in connection with overseas trips by the Prime Minister and, if so, (a) for which trips (b) what material was printed (c) in what quantities (d) at what cost?


Hon. Leonard Gustafson (Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister):: Since January 1, 1989, media briefing
material has been produced in support of the Prime Minister's overseas travel. Bellow is a list identifying each trip for which briefing material was produced, the nature of the material, the quantities printed and costs.
This briefing material is widely distributed to journalists, academics and overseas diplomatic missions to reflect Canada's foreign policy positions in these countries and at summit meetings.


[Stage Direction]
Date	THp	Material Printed	Quantity	CostMay 24-26/89	The Dakar Summit, Dakar, Senegal	Media Kit (Background Paper, Booklets, Vinyl, Pouch, Maps)	1,900	18,743.29Ju.ly 14-16/89	the Summit of the Arch, Paris	Media Book	1,900	19,549.09Oct. 18-24/89	Commonwealth Heads of Gov't Meeting, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	Media Briefing Kit (Book, Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,800	35,560.23Nov. 20-25/89	Visit to the U.S.S.R.	Media Briefing Kit (Book, Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,000	17,392.75March 15-17/90	Visit to Mexico	Briefing Book	2,000	4,961.11March 18-20/90	Canada - Commonwealth Caribbean Head of Government Meeting, Bridgetown, Barbados	Media Kit (Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,000	4,529.90July 9-11/90	The Houston Economic Summit, Houston, Texas	Media Kit (Book, Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,000	30.468.84Nov. 18-23/90	Visit to France, the Holy See and Italy	Briefing Book	1,900	7,921.23Nov. 19-21/90	Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Paris Summit	Media Kit (Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,000	7,445.20May 22-31/91	Visit to Hong Kong and Japan	Briefing Book	1,825	6,703.06June 13-16/91	Visit to the Federal Republic of Germany	Briefing Book	1,520	3,939.49July 10-13/91	Visit to Ireland	Briefing Book	1,500	5,041.41July 15-17/91	The London Economic Summit	Media Kit (Book, Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	2,000	32,935.94Oct. 16-22/91	Commonwealth Heads of Gov't Meeting Harare, Zimbabwe	Media Kit (Book, Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	1,600	27,915.00
March 25, 1992
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
Date	Trip	Material Printed	Quantity	CostNov. 7-8/91	NATO Summit, Rome	Media Kit (Fact Sheets, Kit Folder)	1,900	7,468.00Nov. 18/91	Visit to France	Briefing Book	985	4,140.00Nov. 19-21/91	The Chaillot Summit, Paris, France	Media Kit (Book, Fact Sheets)	1,200	19,602.00
Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 216 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 216 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Ms. Phinney: What are the guidelines set by the government for the civil service and those companies doing business with the government regarding the employment of disabled persons?
Return tabled.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mrs. Venne:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to know, under notices of motions for the production of papers, if my notice P-13 will be answered by the government soon. It
is a request to produce the contracts awarded to Burson-Marsteller by the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies.
When can I have an answer from the government? [English]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I am sure the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader has an answer for you.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure, but I will check.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, March 23, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-61, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing on April 1,1992, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have an opportunity to speak on this bill, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing on April 1. Really, this is a bill that gives us an opportunity to talk about the economy of this country. We know that the bill before us today will

March 25, 1992
Government Orders
pass without much difficulty. We at least have an opportunity to put on the record some of our concerns. We have an opportunity to put on the record some of the things our constituents are saying to us when we go back to our ridings or as we travel in other parts of the country.
The number one preoccupation today in this country is how we are going to get the 1.5 million people off unemployment insurance and back to work and how we are going to create jobs for the two million people who are on welfare, additional to the 1.5 million unemployed, so that they too can come back into the work force.
The one thing that has disturbed me about this government's economic thrust-


An hon. member:: Just one thing?


Dennis Joseph Mills: There are many things, but the one thing in particular in relation to job creation is that it did not come up with one single package in this last budget that is a direct employment program.
I refer specifically to the budget of 1981-1982, a time when we had a similar recession, though it certainly was not as deep as the current recession. During that time we believed it would be a much better approach to put money into capital works projects, infrastructure projects. Therefore we did so right across the country.
Even though it did not solve all of the problems of unemployment, it at least was an effort by the government to deal in hope. We fast tracked proposals for new airports. In Atlantic Canada we funded all kinds of new wharfs and other essential services. We took advantage of a downturn in the economy to put together a package to resolve those infrastructure problems.
This government has refused to put any money into capital works projects. It is always saying that the Liberals just want to increase the deficit and ignore the debt of this nation.
This is an argument which I really have a difficult time in understanding. It is costing the Treasury of Canada today close to $35 billion a year to cover the cost of unemployment insurance and all the welfare payments. Of course, welfare payments are handled by municipalities but most of that money comes to the provinces and ultimately to municipalities from fiscal transfers.
This is a situation in which we are not using our creativity. For another $2 or $3 billion, in addition to the amount we are already spending, we could create ideas to put people back to work. I have mentioned before in this House the program in place in 1980-81 under the then Minister of Employment and Immigration, the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy. It was called the NEED program. Under the NEED program we went to the private sector and said: "If you will take someone off unemployment insurance or welfare and put them on your payroll, put them to work, and train them, even though this is a tough time for the economy, we will subsidize a portion of that person's wage". We gave close to 80 per cent for the first six months, then for the next three months it dropped to about 50 per cent and for the last part of the year it dropped to about 20 per cent.
That was a much more productive use of taxpayer's dollars. Rather than have people sit at home and feel totally discouraged we gave the entrepreneurs of this country an incentive to take someone and put them on their payroll. It could have been in a factory, in training, in an office position, or in marketing. It absolutely amazes me-this government is always talking about free enterprise. It says: "Let the market forces go their way".
There are 1,700,000 entrepreneurs in this country. Many of them are going through a period of doubt, not only because the economy is in rough shape in our country but because it is in rough shape in many parts of the world. The responsibility of those of us in this Chamber who are focused on the economy is to try to provide some leadership, ideas, and stimulus to activate those 1,700,000 entrepreneurs. If half of those entrepreneurs in Canada hired one person within a period of 30 to 60 days we could take nearly one million people off the unemployment insurance rolls.
It seems to me that it would be a much more productive use of taxpayers' dollars to give that money to entrepreneurs and assist them in training someone or putting someone back to work. I have said in this House repeatedly in the last two months, especially since the budget, that I cannot understand why this Conservative government will not take a chance on the entrepreneurs of this country. The entrepreneurs are the greatest hope for new job creation in this country. However, they are hearing and feeling signals of doubt not only about our economy but the economy of the United States and
March 25, 1992

other parts of the world. We need to give them a little spark in order to get them going.
That would be much more productive than just saying: "No, we are not going to do anything. We are holding the course. We are not going to create any new special programs".
The irony of ironies is that at the end of the year, by the time we add in the interest, we are talking about a $35 billion cost.
As we discuss this borrowing bill today it frustrates me to think that we are borrowing $35 billion. That is what this bill is all about, the government wants borrowing authority for close to $35 billion. It drives me a little nuts that we are passing a bill to approve $35 billion for unemployment insurance and welfare payments, from which there is very little return for the taxpayers of Canada.
I would much rather give the authority to the government today for an extra $2 or $3 billion to ignite the entrepreneurship of this country and help to figure out a way to get people back to work. Let us take a chance on the entrepreneurship of this country.
There was a delegation from the north here this morning. Everybody is wearing "Save the North" buttons around today. One gentleman who had lunch with us told us that this year they will not be able to plant approximately 42 million trees for commercial purposes because they cannot, they do not have the funds or they do not have a program to plant these 42 million trees.
My small mind cannot understand that. There are a million and a half people unemployed and another two million people on welfare, and the north is crying out for help. If all of a sudden, seven or eight years from now, we have a shortage of lumber in this country it will send the cost of our housing and other related services sky-rocketing. I just cannot understand it.
If ever there was a time to support a community like the north, especially in an area like forestry, this is it. When there are such large numbers of unemployed we should be planting trees in this country until we are blue in the face. That is not to mention all the environmental aspects. This is a nation that prides itself on leading the way in the environmental movement, a nation whose government came out three years ago with its green plan. I cannot believe that the officials in the Department of the Environment cannot figure out a way to combine with their green plan the fact that there is a shortage of manpower to plant 42 million trees and yet
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we are paying $35 billion for people who cannot find work.
We have to get back to basics in this country. We have to start using our creativity again.
If our industrial capacity is going through a rough period because of global markets we will have to shift our focus and emphasis to some other area.
I just cannot understand what is wrong with shifting our energy, our focus, into something like forestry, or toward supporting the north.
It is interesting that the delegation that came here today from Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and other places in the north told us that they cannot get any attention from the national media for the problems they are having in northern Ontario. They send briefing documents. They send notes. They come to Ottawa and have a good reception, but they cannot get any attention from the national media.
That is a crime. The resources of the north are important not just to our province of Ontario but to every province in this country. For years and years the economies of the north were integral to the standard of life that we enjoy in this country. Our resources in this country have been the cornerstone of our economic plan and have led us into all kinds of new fields in manufacturing and new technologies and everything else.
It is very strange that we cannot give our northern friends, who are in such deep pain right now, the time, the energy, the profile, and the focus to address some of their specific problems.
I was talking to one of my colleagues at lunch today, our Ontario caucus chairman from London, about the difficulty of bringing attention to the north. I said that we should take a page out of the book of the members from Atlantic Canada. Whenever there is a problem in Atlantic Canada there are emergency debates in this House and the best speakers in this House get up and they make sure everybody participates. I applaud the members from Atlantic Canada. Those of us in central Canada must take a page out of their book and start to speak a little more forcefully around here to bring attention to some of the problems in northern Ontario.
I want to repeat that the government is asking for the authority to spend a lot of money here today. If I understand this bill correctly the borrowing authority confirmed by subsection 1 is increased by an amount equal to the lesser of $3.9 billion. I think it is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $25 billion. That is a lot of money.

March 25, 1992
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As I said earlier, the government will obviously push this bill through the House in short order. However I wish it would look for other ways to spend this money. Naturally we have a social net in this country, which we all support, for people without jobs or those on welfare. However the government should be reviewing the NEED program. I have said it a half dozen times in this House since mid-January that the NEED program of 1981-82, which Lloyd Axworthy introduced in this House, worked. No one has ever said anything different in this House. We must use the 1.7 million entrepreneurs. They are our greatest hope for creating new jobs in this country.
There is another question I want to challenge the government on. We are heading into the tax season. This government must go back to the drawing board on its tax system. That is another reason small and medium-sized business are not taking the chance any more. They feel so frustrated and burdened by the tax designs in this country. We all know that we have to pay taxes. We are not saying we should not pay taxes, but the tax designs of this country are close to 15,000 pages of unfairness and inefficiency and are just not working.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Who understands them?


Dennis Joseph Mills: Who understands them is right, as my colleague from Thunder Bay has just said. Even the best lawyers and the best tax accountants are now admitting, some of them even publicly, that the tax designs of this country need radical reform.
It is no secret to anyone in this House. I am so excited to see Governor Jerry Brown still campaigning in the Democratic convention with his 13 per cent single tax. Somebody asked me the other day: "How come Jerry Brown's tax rate is 13 per cent and your idea of the single tax is 20 per cent?" I said: "Naturally, they do not have medicare in the United States, but if Jerry Brown added medicare to his plan, his single tax idea would be up around 18 or 19 per cent".
The idea is starting to catch on in the United States. I dare say that is one of the main reasons he is still in the campaign. People are crying out for radical tax reform not only in Canada, but also in the United States. My goodness, God forbid should he ever win the Democratic nomination and people get to understand what the 13 per cent single tax is all about.
If that system ever became a part of the United States, we would have to harmonize. It would be the first time in our lives we would ever want to harmonize with the United States because if we did not follow their radical reform or their clean up of the tax system, I can tell you there would be a flight of capital out of this place overnight.
That is another area where this government instead of following should be leading. It should be pre-empting. This is what Canadians want.
When the government comes to the House today asking for borrowing authority for close to $25 billion, you would like to ask: "What are you going to do with that $25 billion?" You probably would not mind approving that $25 billion or even $30 billion if you thought that it was going to make a difference somehow with the direction the economy was going.
You would not mind approving maybe even more than that if you thought it was going to ignite the economy, if it was going to activate the 1.7 million entrepreneurs in this country to take a chance on a fellow Canadian and put them back to work. You would not mind, but I just do not get a sense from what I have listened to since the budget that there are any new initiatives coming forward.
So regretfully, we will be signing off here on close to $30 billion and the status quo will continue.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Andre:: I would like to designate tomorrow the final allotted day of this supply period.


BORROWING AUTHORITY ACT, 1992-93 MEASURE TO ENACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-61, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing on April 1, 1992, be read the third time and passed.
Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood on the eloquence and the substance of the comments he has just made with respect to the bill that is before the House this afternoon.
March 25, 1992

I also want to thank him very much on behalf of those of us who represent rural ridings and northern ridings. I want to thank him for the kindness and the empathy and the total understanding that he has and realizes about the particular problems we face, not only in northern Ontario but also in the smaller areas throughout this country.
Those smaller areas seem to be suffering more from the dilemma that this economy finds itself in as a result of the moves and the type of government that is being shown by those on the other side of the House. So I want to thank my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood.
I would also like to make a comment. It was I who mentioned to the member for Broadview-Greenwood in the last week that his single tax proposal was remarkably similar to the tax proposal that is being put forward by one of the aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination in the United States, former Governor Jerry Brown. Our colleagues seemed to have met or you would anticipate that they have met on several occasions because of the remarkable similarity between the tax that he thinks is necessary for the United States and the single tax that my colleague has been such a strong proponent of not only on this side of the House but also in the fine work that he does both in and outside of this country.
I have just one more comment before I get to my question to my colleague. It is interesting when meeting through different parliamentary groups, as we will be meeting next week with the Canada-United States interparliamentary group, and talking with senators and congressmen from the United States, they seem to say in unison that there is a need for a complete overhaul in the tax system to get any degree of fairness.
That is the case when a tax system gets so complicated that no one understands the context and the books as we have here in Canada today. The tax system gets so complicated that the average person can no longer comprehend what he is doing with respect to taxation. He has to run to a tax expert in order to even complete his tax forms. That is remarkably similar to the situation that exists in the United States. I just wanted to pass
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those comments to my colleague from Broadview- Greenwood.
The hon. member was at the same meeting that I attended this morning as were my colleagues here to my left, who are supposed to be proponents of strict environmental laws. I just found out this morning that the Ontario provincial government has reduced reforestation in Ontario by 42 per cent. Yesterday it closed a tree nursery in Thunder Bay.
Forestry is the largest single industry in our country and this government has decided not to contribute to all the provinces in any degree for reforestation. I would like my colleague to comment on that matter.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind remarks.
I will deal specifically with the province of Ontario's attitude towards forestry. During the period leading up to the last provincial election, the premier of Ontario, who was then a member of the opposition, and I am talking about Bob Rae, you would have thought that this man had nothing else on his mind but the environment. He practically spent every second weekend in Temagami. He was going to be the man on the environment in the province of Ontario. They nicknamed him Temagami Bob. It was an incredible thing. In fact, one time he even got arrested by the police because of his passion for the environment.
What really bugs me is that in the province of Ontario we have so many people out of work, so many people on unemployment, so many people on welfare. There is also the desperate need to do things in the north, like plant trees, reforestation, et cetera. He would much rather pay people to sit at home. I do not buy it. I do not go along with it.
When people are crying out for help, when people want their dignity back, when they would rather go out and plant trees all day than sit at home and watch videos, I cannot understand why Bob Rae does not get back to where he was before he became premier. I challenge him to live up to some of the remarks he made before he was elected premier, when he said he was going to be creative in his process of governing. So far it has just been more of the status quo.

March 25, 1992
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I have always liked Bob Rae. He used to be the federal member of Parliament for my riding. It is nothing personal against him, but I think he needs a little shake right now to get back to basics.


Mr. Ray Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, on the borrowing authority, I would like to point out one program as an illustration of what I think is a serious error the government has made.
The error is in the lighthouse destaffing program on the west coast in which it felt that by destaffing lighthouses a substantial amount of money would be saved. Either yesterday or today, the government announced it will not be doing that for political reasons rather than the correct reasons.
I would like to say to the previous speaker that lighthouses are a critical part of the safety network of the coast of British Columbia. Now that the government has cancelled the destaffing program it should go ahead and upgrade those as in the commitment that was made.
We need part of this borrowing authority for upgrading the search and rescue facilities, providing radios, putting EEft back in those lighthouse stations, and guaranteeing weather reports from each of the lighthouse stations on a regular basis. Basically, a program is needed now that would begin an upgrade of those facilities so that they can, in fact, do the kinds of safety activities that are so important.
It has been almost a year now since this issue was raised and the Minister of Transport has absolutely refused to meet with the seven members of Parliament from the coast of British Columbia from Skeena to Victoria. He will not in any way discuss a matter of absolute critical safety to the people who live there. I think that issue still has to be dealt with in this House.
The cancellation of the destaffing program in the lighthouses is a worthy move by this government and I would congratulate the involvement of a senator from the other place. It is also time to stop fooling around with this issue. It is time to get rolling and upgrade those lighthouses so they can provide the safety network the people along the coast of British Columbia can count on with some degree of certainty.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on that. The member pretty well covered it. But the one little thing he did say that I do not understand is that
there were seven members of Parliament on this side of the House who were all in agreement that something should happen and the minister somehow communicated that he would not see them. I find that unbelievable.
There is no steel wall here. When I am having difficulty with the office of someone on this side of the House or in any part of this House, I just get up, walk over, sit down and talk to the person. I say: "Listen, we have two ways to fix this. We can fix it properly and get on with it, otherwise we are going to start sending rockets across the floor of the House".
I believe we have to start using this House a little differently than we have in the past. It is great to put the government in a position where it should be accountable. We should use this House a little more effectively by doing deals just by walking across the floor.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.
My point of order is the absolute refusal of the minister to meet with a formal request by seven members of Parliament and the support staff.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I certainly welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate, especially today. Today the government is asking us for its usual massive amount of money so that it can borrow from the Canadian people and borrow overseas in order to carry activities forward.
Some of these activities are important and one does not want to stop such activities from taking place. But this debate is about the direction of government economic policy in this country. In the past 10 years we have seen the creation of a widening gap between a small and privileged elite at the top and the great majority of Canadians, those in the middle, those working Canadians, those poor Canadians.
We in this party have to stand and oppose any support for this government's economic strategy because it is leading in the direction of yet further widening those gaps between richer people and the rest of Canadians.
Let us look at simple things like the number of food banks. It is absolutely tragic that this country, which has a sense of equality, a sense of people working together, a sense of being one community, has seen over the last 10 years a massive increase in food banks.
March 25, 1992

If we take the period since 1984 under this government, food banks have increased by five times. In fact, if we take the period of this recession which this government has brought to us, food banks have increased from 161 in 1990 to 377 today. It means that over two million Canadians depend on food banks to be able to keep themselves and their families alive. That is just not right. That is not what Canada was supposed to be about when it was created, developed, expanded, it is not part of the value system of Canadians for us to see this massive increase in charity that people are having to count on.
It is wonderful that the charity is taking place, and I compliment the people who work so hard as volunteers at these food banks to at least see to it that these two million Canadians are given nourishment, are given food. But, my God, we should not in Canada in 1992 have an economy that is set up in such a totally mixed up, unfair way, that over two million Canadians have to depend on food banks.
We know that a great proportion of those people are children, and that the fact they are having to depend on food banks for their nourishment is often going to mean that they do not get as good nourishment as they should, and that their future opportunities are therefore going to be hurt.
That is what is happening at the bottom of our income scale. At the top of our income scale we are seeing rich, privileged people becoming richer and richer, more and more privileged. The sales of Mercedes are up just as the number of food banks are up.
We have one category in this world in which this country is the best.
It is not hockey, I am afraid, after the last Olympic Games. The area in which we have the highest per capita across this entire world is the number of billionaires. We have more billionaires per capita than they have in the United States, more than they have in some of the rich Arab sheikhdoms of the Middle East. We have people in this country who are incredibly wealthy. When those people get into trouble, like the Reichmanns with Olympia & York, they do not have to go to food banks. The federal Minister of Finance moves out and directly says we will support the Reichmanns.
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We have a country where we have things upside down. This is a process which has been taking place in Canada for at least 12 years. It is something that did not start with this government but goes back to the previous Liberal government. That was the time at which the first big reduction in taxes for the rich and wealthy took place in the country. From a tax rate of 42 per cent the Liberals cut taxes at the top category to 34 per cent, a massive 8 per cent reduction which left the wealthy in this country with far more money in their pockets and left the deficit in this country in much worse shape.
That same Liberal government put into effect huge new limits for Registered Retirement Savings Plans, massive increases that meant that people who receive RRSP benefits could put much more into those RRSP accounts without having to pay tax on them. It was a tremendous tax loophole given by the Liberals.
The Liberals lost in 1984 and when the Conservatives came to power, they set out to prove as quickly as they could that they too were going to help the rich and powerful in this country. They set out to do so by saying the Liberals reduced the top tax rate from 42 to 34 per cent. That is not enough. They reduced it further. They took it from 34 per cent to 29 per cent.
Then they brought in perhaps one of the grossest loopholes which has ever been established and consistently defended by a government in the history of this country. That was the capital gains tax exemption put into effect for people who wanted to invest outside this country, who wanted to speculate on the stock market, who wanted to buy yachts in Florida, who wanted to buy islands in the Mediterranean. They could do so and in doing so did not have to pay a penny of tax on the first $100,000 of capital gains which they received. Not a single penny.
In my constituency there are people who work hard for the money which they receive. They pay tax, and they pay tax, and they pay more tax. But these people at the top receiving capital gains up to $100,000 a year who have not added up to $100,000 lifetime earnings do not pay a single penny on those capital gains. Who does that benefit go to?

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We have some figures which have just come out which show for 1989 who those benefits go to. Over 60 per cent of the benefits go to those whose individual incomes are over $100,000 a year. That is .4 per cent of people who are taxpayers in this country. Sixty per cent of the benefits go to .4 per cent of the taxpayers. Something in the order of a quarter of these benefits, believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, go to people who earn as individual incomes over $250,000 per year. This is insanity.
At the same time as these benefits are being handed out, do we see increases in the proportion of Gross Domestic Product going to investment? Not at all. Investment levels in this country as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product have declined in recent years.
These handouts cannot even be defended on the basis that they encourage investment. Maybe they encourage investment in Germany. Maybe they encourage investment in the Caribbean. They do not encourage investment in this country. This past budget followed exactly the same path.
Mr. Speaker, you may have heard, you may have read the headlines which said that this past budget brought in tax reductions. We have had a fairly close look at these tax reductions. In fact what this Conservative government has done is give a little bit of a tax break with one hand and taken more in taxes from most Canadians with the other hand. It has done so by seeing to it that the deductions that people can make for their personal deduction, or their personal exemption, or for their spouses exemption, no longer increase at the rate of inflation.
As a result of that now partial deindexation, the average family this year will pay $300 to $400 extra in income tax. The consequence is that for every single income category, except one, and I will come to that in a minute, people will actually pay more income tax this year under this present Conservative budget than they paid under this past Conservative budget.
Do you know, Mr. Speaker, what the one exception is? The one exception is those whose individual incomes are over $100,000 per year. Those with an individual income over $100,000 per year will actually save on their taxes this year. They will save $125. That is not a lot but they will save money while all the rest of the income categories, the middle income categories, working Canadians, lower income Canadians, will pay more in income tax.
What is the result of these tremendous changes in the tax system?
This whole system by which the rich have been made richer and the poor and middle-income people in this country squeezed in the past 10 years has resulted in there not being enough income to cover the expenditures which the government has undertaken. A deficit has been the consequence, and it has increased dramatically.
To deal with the deficit the government has attacked not the rich people to whom it has given the benefits but the provinces. It has the provinces. It has frozen equalization payments by putting a ceiling on those equalization payments. It has frozen transfers to the provinces under the Established Programs Financing provisions. It has singled out several provinces-Ontario, British Columbia and potentially Alberta, though it has not affected Alberta yet. Ontario and B.C. have been singled out and told that even if the costs of the Canada Assistance Plan go up because of the recession and the changes in unemployment insurance which this government has introduced, the government will not provide what it has promised to provide, which is a 50 per cent share of those expenses.
What is the result? The result is catastrophic, certainly for my province. In the province of Ontario we have seen an increase in provincial debt of $11 billion due to this government's direct actions. Twenty-eight per cent of the debt of the province of Ontario is a direct result of this government's actions.
In this single year alone the provinces will lose $9.3 billion in total as a result of the various attacks on transfer programs which this government has put into effect, and $4.5 billion of that will hit the province of Ontario. It is not fair. It is not right. It does not conform to the values which Canadians have always held dear. It must change or the future unity of this country will become more and more threatened, more and more under strain and the poor and middle income people will become more and more squeezed as the years go on. We must turn this country right side up and to do that we must have real tax reform ensuring that the people who can afford to pay make a fair contribution.


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. friend, but I do want to correct the record a little bit about some of the things he said.
It is interesting the way we talk about what constitutes a cut. I have always had the notion that when the amount of money spent goes up it is an increase and when the amount of money spent goes down it is a decrease or cut. My hon. friend does not see it that way, nor does his premier who I sometimes have some difficulty understanding.
For example, on Monday of this week Premier Rae sent a letter to the Minister for International Trade thanking him for his tremendous co-operation and full participation in dialogue, and then on Tuesday he blasted the minister for not having any dialogue. I never know when to believe Premier Rae and when not to. I would like to bring to my hon. friend's attention that this federal government has not cut transfers to provinces.
In fact, they have grown by nearly $12 billion since 1984-85, over 5 per cent a year. The transfers to provinces have grown by 5 per cent a year at a time when this government has limited its own expenditure growth to 4 per cent a year. The provinces have had more money coming their way than we have spent on our own programs.
The budget of 1992 contained no measures affecting major transfers to provinces and yet it restrained spending by this government on its own programs. Indeed, the federal government has legislation before the House right now which would provide an additional $600 million in transfers to provinces like my own through equalization, which is of tremendous benefit.
It is important to recognize that federal support for major programs has been growing. It has been increasing not falling. Under the three major transfers-equalization, EPF and CAP-Ontario's payments have increased from $6.1 billion in 1984-85 to $9.9 billion in the fiscal year we are about to begin. That is an increase of 62 per cent.
When programs whose spending is in no way controlled by the Government of Canada but by the princi-
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pies of provinces such as Ontario and when the provinces impose absolutely no restrictions on their own spending and the sky is the limit in terms of how deep in the taxpayers' pockets they are prepared to go then maybe that is the point at which a responsible federal government should say: "You are going to have to bring your spending into line and you are going to have to control your own spending".
I would like my hon. friend to address this issue and show us how an increase of $12 billion and an increase of 62 per cent to his own province in the three major areas constitutes a cut.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, the member for South Shore has raised some interesting points. He says that it is hard to tell when a dialogue is taking place. First, let me deal with that. After the Monday letter that he mentioned there was a leak of the huge documentation of the North American free trade agreement. When the Government of Ontario examined that it certainly became clear that it had not been told the whole story. There had been a lot of things left out of the briefing.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: That is wrong.


Steven W. Langdon: Ontario was given the text? Are you telling me that it was given the text?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Yes.


Steven W. Langdon: The text was in the hands of the province of Ontario?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: It had two texts.


Steven W. Langdon: If the minister says that is the case I accept it. I would not question the minister's word. I will check with my colleagues in the provincial government to determine to what degree that is accurate.
However, let me return to the question of transfer payments because that is the heart of the argument here. This question is perhaps best illustrated by thinking in these terms. I have a lease for my office in my constituency under which I promise to pay an increased rent year by year. That agreement is between myself and the person who provides that constituency office. It exists over a period of years. Precisely the same kind of agreement existed between the Government of Canada and the provinces with respect to EPF, equalization, and the Canada Assistance Plan. Yet unilaterally the federal government said that it would change that agreement.

March 25, 1992
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I suppose I could go to my landlord and say: "Well, I promised to pay you so much money but I'm just not going to". If I did that I would be guilty of breaking a legal contract and my landlord could take me to court and force me to pay that money.
Federal governments can get away with that kind of thing. However, it is exactly the same. The breaking of an agreement which has taken place in each of these areas has cost the governments of provinces across this country $41 billion since 1982-83.
It is not just the Conservatives who did this, the Liberals did it too. We are talking about big sums of money. In this particular year it is costing provinces across this country $9.3 billion because the federal government is not keeping the promises it made.
It is possible for the government to writhe and wriggle, but there is no way for it to say that it is meeting commitments which it made in the past because it is not. There is no way for it to challenge the numbers because they were very carefully compiled, and not by partisan people but by the non-partisan civil service of the province of Ontario.
The consequence, the direct detailed answer, can be seen in the study by the province of Ontario. It is not something from NDP research. It has come from nonpartisan civil servants who have worked the numbers out and given the people of this country a very clear sense of what is taking place.
The member also suggested that the Government of Ontario has not attempted to limit spending. Let me tell that member that after the past provincial election for the first time there was a government in place in Ontario which tried to do something about expenditure and the way in which expenditure is getting out of control. For the first time it put into place a management board which, through the kind of Treasury Board activities that take place at the federal level, would ensure that there would be controls on spending. It put into place controls on expenditures for health care outside of the province of Ontario, something which the previous Liberal government had just let run loose.
We have a government which is attempting, under extremely difficult circumstances, to deal with a very tough recession, which was brought on by this government here in Ottawa.


Pierre Blais: That is not true.


Steven W. Langdon: That is absolutely true. The Conference Board of Canada, which is also a non-partisan body, has said that this is a made-in-Canada recession brought about by the policies of this government. The people on the other side may not like hearing it but that is the reality. This recession has hurt people across the country. It has increased the deficit. It has seriously damaged middle-income and lower-income people.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, it is my duty to the constituents of Hamilton West to rise on third reading of Bill C-61, an act which would provide borrowing authority of close to $25 billion for this tired government's misguided operations for the coming fiscal year.
What irritates me the most, and those constituents that I represent, is that it is a request for a huge sum of money to continue to allow the government to do a lousy job.
The first budget of the new Minister of Finance sadly but truly carries on the traditions of his predecessor. This budget sustains that tradition because it is full of all the same hollow predictions, the same cooking of the books that the previous minister became a professional at. It is the same hopelessness which is now the hallmark of, and I will say it again, this very tired administration.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I would certainly request your observation. When my hon. friend suggests that the former Minister of Finance was cooking the books, it seems to me he is imputing a motive that is highly improper.


An hon. member:: Debate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is debate but I would like to hear the point of order before anybody hollers "debate".
March 25, 1992

The hon. member for Hamilton West has the floor.


An hon. member:: On debate?


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Yes, on debate, Mr. Speaker. I yelled out "debate". On the first two words that the hon. member uttered I could tell the direction in which he was headed. It was clearly obvious to me. Mr. Speaker, I respect the Chair and its duties in this hallowed hall.
The government now has high unemployment as part of its over-all economic plan. Unemployment has become a feature of fiscal planning. Without trying to create new jobs or trying to retrain Canadian workers for more modem skills, this government has actually cut funding for job training by $100 million. Funding for the Canadian Jobs Strategy was cut back severely. It is telling Canadian workers and those who are unemployed in this country: "You are now on your own". The government, it seems, has given up on trying to create jobs for Canadians in this budget. It has seen the unemployment figures and secretly is so shocked that it is incapable of action.
It knows that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives stated in a report that 461,000 jobs have been lost because of the free trade deal. It knows these jobs will not come back on their own. Clearly, cutting job retraining by $100 million is a non-starter.
In the area of education the Conservative government is equally short-sighted. This year alone the government will eliminate $240 million from education and transfers to the provinces. Between 1986 and 1995 cuts to transfer payments will be almost $30 billion; $10 billion in education and $20 billion in health care.
How can the government believe our country will become competitive without investing in our future? Education, it seems to me, is the first place to start. Cutting $240 million is going to set us back years.
Let me turn to another aspect of competitiveness for a moment. The debate in this House yesterday focused on trade and unemployment. I call it unemployment, not employment. In light of the disaster visited upon this country as a result of the free trade deal, members were debating the prospects of the NAFTA, or the North American free trade agreement between Canada, tht U.S. and Mexico.
During the last election the Conservative government promised that the Canada-U.S. free trade deal would create thousands of new jobs, thousands of new opportunities in this country. It has not. The government also
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promised that any workers laid off because of the free trade deal would be placed in the most generous retraining programs anywhere. They have not.
Now, in light of a North American free trade deal we again hear these promises in the wind, promises of Canadian jobs. Is this its only job creation strategy? If it is, again this country is in deep trouble.
Listen to these figures. The Institute for International Economics claims that under a North American trade deal Mexico would gain 600,000 jobs. The U.S. would gain 130,000 jobs. Behind door number three, the consolation prize for Canada. Canada would lose another
5,000	jobs; 5,000 jobs added to the 461,000 jobs lost already by this government's trade policies.
Last year, in the previous minister's budget, unemployment was forecast at over 10 per cent. That is probably the only forecast this government ever got right. Nationally, there are 1.5 million Canadians unemployed and the jobless rate stands at 10.6 per cent. In my hometown of Hamilton the rate is just slightly behind, but not too far, at 9.8 per cent.
The unemployment lines are swelling, but this government has thrown its hands in the air. For most Canadians times are tough. However, that is not so if you are a friend of the government.
I ask the House to consider the position of Ron Lawless, chief executive officer of VIA Rail and chief executive officer of CN Rail. That in itself is a blatant conflict of interest. He has just had his term extended by this government. Perhaps it is one of those last-ditch pay-offs to a fellow Tory by a government that continues to sink in the polls.
The policies of CN Rail must be condoned by this government since it is a Crown corporation with a CEO who is a true friend of this government. CN's tribute to Canada? CN has, after a long tendering process, awarded a contract to build diesel locomotives to an American company in Pittsburgh. It is a contract worth millions and millions of dollars. The competitor for the contract is a company located in Windsor, Ontario, General Motors of Canada. This is a most pitiful display of fence-sitting when you have a government which controls a Crown agency such as CN and is in a position to do something for hundreds of laid-off Canadian workers, but which instead throws up its hands, or perhaps more accurately, turns a blind eye to the needs of a Canadian industry.

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Then there is another friend of the government. While the government waged a war on inflation, the casualties of which numbered in the thousands and thousands, the general leading the battle was the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He along with his colonels and sergeants were given an average wage increase of 6.6 per cent. At the same time, the Governor of the bank, John Crow, had the absolute audacity to preach to Canadians that they must tighten their belts, that they must ease up on increases in wages when contracts come up for renewal. These are the friends of the Tbries.
Canadians have paid a price for these sorts of tactics. Canadians are tired of paying taxes to a government that continues to demand more and in return gives less and squanders away their tax money.
Here is an example of that kind of frustration, a letter from a constituent.
"Canadians are just plain sick of being taxed to death. There appears to be no other way to make the politicians pay attention and as usual, the Tories are just too blind to see the writing on the wall. The Tories put you in mind of Marie Antoinette's statement: Let them eat cake. Hell, who can afford the bread?", says the letter writer. "The French had a revolution, the Americans had a tea party, the Canadians, I guess most of us will probably end up in jail, convicted cross-border smugglers. Like Otto Jeli-nek's brother, who has moved his factory to the U.S., I have really had enough. I am moving to the U.S.A." This is from one of the letter writers.
We have another one here, Mr. Speaker. She writes: "I believe that the Canadian public has been mischievously misled and defrauded by the finance minister and the Tory party about the benefits of the GST and the management of the national debt that has led this country through divisive measures to an unnecessary recession. This Canadian voter demands an immediate re-evaluation of the GST, cuts in government spending and government restraint. Please forward the following message to the other side from me. Je me souviens. Je me souviens. I remember. I'm sure he'll understand". It is signed.
That is just a small sampling of the letters we are getting in our offices, I am sure on all sides of this House. People are concerned about high levels of taxation. They might be put at greater ease if they felt
the government was spending money wisely, but nobody believes it. The costs are continually passed down to the provinces.
Hospitals and health care are areas which Canadians feel must be adequately financed, but health care is receiving less. In fact, I have another letter from a hospital in my constituency. The chairman of the board of trustees writes: "As you know, funding constraints are hitting Ontario hospitals very hard this year and Che-doke McMaster Hospital is no exception. We will face a $10.25 million deficit in 1992-93. There will be a small reduction of 10 beds at Chedoke and as a result of more efficient use of services we are projecting however an increase in the number of patients who will be seen at the Chedoke campus. Three wards at the McMaster site will be consolidated into two units. A total of 55 beds will close at McMaster".
The government has run up costs in this country and at the same time has run up the deficit. It has also run down transfer payments to the provinces that have put them, the provinces, in an economic straitjacket. When the provinces do not have the money they need for the programs, the onus is put on the municipalities also to come up with the shortfall.
I want to give an example. It is an example of another broken promise, another broken Tory promise. This one involves the minister for the region, the Minister of State for Transport and the member of Parliament for Lincoln. Hamiltonians when applying for unemployment insurance must often wait up to 12 weeks before receiving their first cheque. To carry them over the sometimes three month wait, they apply for welfare. The problem is that when their UI cheque finally arrives, it covers the entire period from when the claimant began to receive welfare from the regional municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth in this case.
The region asks for the overlapped UI amounts back so as to cover the welfare they had to pay out. But alas, fewer than 10 per cent of those claimants pay that overlap payment back. In taking stock of the issue, the region has asked the minister from the Hamilton area, our voice in cabinet for the region of Hamilton, the Minister of State for Transport, the member for Lincoln, and her sidekick the member for Burlington, to help them arrange a system with the federal government whereby the region would automatically, through assignment, be reassigned the overlapping UI amount. At



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present this overlap costs the region about $10 million a year.
If you can believe it, Mr. Speaker, when we were in the meeting with the regional committee and the social service representatives, the member for Burlington incredibly said: "As I understand it, those UI cheques are getting out to the claimants in two or three weeks." You can imagine the groan that brought from the social service workers from the region sitting at the table.
They have both promised the health and social service committee of the regional municipality of Hamilton- Wentworth that they would look into the problem and report back. In fact the Minister of State for Transport at that time said she would get back before their next meeting. The matter was shuffled off to another department.
Yes, the minister did get back on the very day of the next meeting, if you can imagine, having that committee wait for the fax to sing out her message at the nth hour, to say essentially what she had said at the committee, "This is a wonderful idea. Why don't I take it back with me and do something about it for you". Well she did. She forwarded it on to another department. We have not heard from them since.
In so doing, both these individuals have failed their constituents and Hamiltonians who rely on them as their voice from our area. They have also failed the government since the region asked to be used as a test case for this type of procedure which would have saved the federal government millions of extra dollars.
My time is short so I want to wrap up by saying that Canadians are, without any doubt, outraged with the economic and fiscal policies of this government. This government does not have the confidence of the constituents of Hamilton West or those everyday Canadians living sea to sea to sea.
The recession that Canadians are still suffering through today got started a long time before the U.S. recession. Canadians know ours is a made-in-Canada recession, induced by the economic and fiscal policies of this government.
Canadians are tired of this government and if we could, tomorrow, on a vote on this matter stand up and defeat the government, we will welcome an election to
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take them on today, at the polls, just to see what the true feeling is of the Canadian public.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member a question concerning the borrowing authority and the proper expenditure of funds.
On the coast of British Columbia on the west coast of Canada the government proposes to de-staff a number of light stations, to remove their eyes and ears as it were. That de-staffing was reportedly proposed to save the government money. In fact, it exposed those areas to vandalism, to very expensive repairs and in fact in the long haul would have likely have cost as much as it had saved.
At the same time it would have blown a very large hole in the safety net of British Columbia. Those light keepers keep in radio communication with ships and aircraft, with tourists in the area who run into all kinds of difficulties, with charter boats and fishers, sports fishing folks. It is a tremendous part of the Canadian west coast safety transportation net.
There is another proposal that the government is going to attempt to carry out to save money and it is going to be catastrophic. It is the closure of the Cape St. James weather station about mid-point on the coast of British Columbia in the Pacific Ocean. The closing of that light station is going to mean a tremendous loss of weather reporting and information. It is going to be an absolute disaster.
The government has decided it would cancel the program to de-staff those light stations. But there must be a continuing expenditure on upgrading those services so that the lives and safety of British Columbians on the west coast of Canada can be protected by proper transportation safety infrastructure.
At some of the light stations, there needs to be a vessel to render aid to mariners in the area and there needs to be a method of launching those vessels. The government needs to put in VHF radio equipment so that the keepers can talk to aircraft and people at sea in the area. There also needs to be proper updated weather equipment so that regular weather reporting can be given from these areas so people who are flying in the area or

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at sea can get decent weather reports which are absolutely critical to safety.
The government needs to be congratulated on reversing the de-staffing program but this cannot stop now. It must go ahead with an upgrading service to assure British Columbians that this government is serious about their lives and well-being.
Again I can stress that the Cape St. James weather reporting office must be retained. The proposal to close it in 1992 is absolutely wrong. It is dangerous and it must be stopped.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Scott (Victoria-Halibur-ton)):: Is there a question there somewhere or is that a statement? I am not quite certain.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, on several different occasions the Minister of Transport was requested to meet with members of Parliament from the coast of British Columbia to discuss this and he absolutely refused.
It was a formal written request by those members of Parliament to meet with the minister and the staff. A rejection by the minister's staff almost displayed contempt about the meeting that this was a fait accompli and British Columbians would have to live with the consequences.
I am been here for 13 years and I have never, ever seen a display of what I would call contempt in rejecting a formal written request by a group of members of Parliament to meet. We are not talking about a casual conversation across the floor, we are talking about a group of members of Parliament who are seriously concerned about the lives and safety of their constituents and the failure and outright rejection of a minister to meet on a matter of that importance.
In 13 years, I have never seen the like of it. That is the first point, a minister rejecting a request to meet and the second, a subject area so critical to the constituents. The bunker mentality that must be at work there is phenomenal.
A letter has been submitted to the minister by the same members of Parliament asking to meet on a further upgrading of those light stations and the transportation
safety net. If the minister and his staff are concerned at all about lives and safety of people on the west coast, that meeting must go ahead. It must go ahead as soon as possible. The question is has the member ever experienced a like situation.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of being a part of the standing committee on transport since my election in 1988. The transport committee first got together in 1989.1 say to my hon. friend in the NDP "you ain't seen nothin'" until you sit in on transport meetings on the very rare occasions the government does see the error of its ways. Unfortunately, of course, that does not happen often enough.
At every meeting with the minister or every briefing from the department or anything which has anything to do with transport, it is stated time and time again, either by Tansport Canada or the minister himself or the deputy minister or those in the department who may brief us on any particular issue, that the number one priority is safety; not saving money, not flying quickly from one city to another, not taking the train in a comfortable fashion or providing a route here or there. Safety is the number one priority of Transport Canada as it should be.
Unfortunately in certain circumstances I wonder if safety is not sacrificed in the name of the almighty buck. It is a very dangerous policy. We have a decision to make very shortly. In light of the royal commission on transportation, which we are about to receive some time this year, we will hope to see an inter-modal, integrated system of transportation in this country. A part of that integrated system is the importance of airports, the importance of Tbronto international airport as one of two hubs in this country, Vancouver being the other.
Mr. Speaker, somewhere along the line somebody decided that we are going to have an expansion of Pearson International Airport. That is the way it has got to be and we are going to do that by building three additional runways at Pearson. Oh yes, there is an environmental assessment going on right now and they are travelling and getting information, but I will say it here and I will say it now, three additional runways at Pearson International Airport are a fait accompli. The environmental assessment will do nothing more than
March 25, 1992

advise the government: "Okay, you can have your runways, but if you are going to have them, you are going to have to put these time restrictions on them or you are going to have to put this kind of noise restriction on them or you are going to have to do this or that", but they will get the runways.
That decision is going to be made even before the royal commission on transportation has its chance to report, even though we have airports in and around the Toronto area like Hamilton airport that has the capability to handle the excess traffic at Pearson.
The government does what the government wants to do. All the sensible, constructive dialogue coming from this side, all the debating points that the government backbenchers make goes unheard. Some of them are saying: "Do you know what? You are right. You are absolutely right. That is what we ought to do.". It goes unheard by those in the front benches, the executive of the government, which runs this country. The executive-the 42-what is it? How many cabinet ministers do you have? Forty-two? Forty-four?


An hon. member:: Too many.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Yes, that is right. Too many. They are the ones who run the country. They make all the decisions and that is just a crying shame.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated. I would like to bring to the attention of the House that 20-minute speeches and 10 minutes of questions and comments have now been terminated. We are now into the 10-minute speeches with no questions or comments. The next speaker will be the hon. member for York West, then the hon. member for St. Boniface and then the hon. member for New Westminster-Bumaby.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I will have to reduce my 40-page speech to something in the neighbourhood of some 20 pages. I will try to abbreviate it, but one could write volumes on this government's action or lack thereof in terms of our economic future.
My colleague from Hamilton just finished his speech. Basically he delineated the woes and the fact that this government comes to Canadians via this Parliament for
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authority to borrow in the order of some $25 to $26 billion.
I suppose Canadians at home and those in the factories who are working still are asking themselves what this huge amount of money, which seems difficult to define for a great many Canadians, means in terms of government action vis-a-vis the economy.
Obviously for Canadians this borrowing bill is part and parcel or the centrepiece of the recent budget handed down in this Chamber. Canadians measured that budget according to some yardsticks. One of those yardsticks was jobs, that is to say, if they were unemployed or fearful of losing their jobs and they tuned in on this budget, they hoped to be inspired or given some hope for the future of this country and for themselves.
The problem is that a job creation program in the budget was non-existent. There was not a comprehensive strategy contained in those documents or in the speech of the Minister of Finance to put Canadians back to work. It was void of an answer for the 1.5 million Canadians who found themselves unemployed, another million Canadians who found themselves on the welfare rolls, and students who completed university training and could not find their niche in the world to start the careers for which they were trained. It did not really have answers for those older workers who all of a sudden found themselves unemployed and having a very difficult time trying to find employers who were willing to invest in them again.
It is very in vogue in some quarters of this House to make Canadians who unfortunately find themselves in one of those categories the scapegoats, particularly during tough economic times. It becomes very easy, very simplistic and very fashionable to put the blame on them, that somehow those Canadians are a drag or a drain on Canada and its economy, when those very Canadians were looking for some answers.
We spend in the neighbourhood of some $30 billion to maintain people on unemployment insurance. After they have exhausted unemployment insurance we maintain them on the welfare rolls rather than take a portion of those moneys and apply it to job creation, however this government wished to define it. We as a Liberal caucus and Liberal Party tabled a number of suggestions in this House and offered them to the government. One or two

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of those points have been adopted, and I give the government credit for that.
However, in terms of the job creation stimulus, to invest some of the $30 billion that otherwise gets spent automatically without any questions asked to keep people at home would not have been an aggravation to our debt. In fact it would have been an investment in people. It would have given dignity back to Canadians. It would have put them back to work. They would have become more productive. It would have increased revenues and increased their salaries which in turn, hopefully, would find those dollars being spent back in the economy. Then they could be utilized to reduce our debt load.
Otherwise, if Canadians are not working, they are not going to be productive consumers. If they are scared about their future, they are not going to buy new automobiles or a second colour television set. It is quite logical. Therefore, without any inducement or stimulus in terms of job creation, the economy in the long run will suffer.
It seems that this government hides behind the question of the debt load. We are all concerned about and should be responsible for that debt load, but that argument should not prevent assisting Canadians to get off the unemployment lines, off the welfare rolls, and become productive again, thus increasing revenues. It would have been money well spent, money that unfortunately is still tied up keeping people at home.
What about the question of tax relief? We have a government that over the last number of years since 1984 has brought in 40 new or increased taxes. The average Canadian today is paying some $1,500 more than in 1984. Yet this government wants to be applauded for reducing taxes for a $15,000 to $20,000 wage earner by $2 a year, or a $30,000 wage earner by some $12. That is on top of a GST which, it is well known, has aggravated the situation both for individual Canadians and individual businesses.
Municipal and property taxes are increasing, and we have taxpayers who at the end of the month-and we all know them because we meet them in our constituency offices-are having a heck of a time making ends meet. After some seven or eight years of tax increases, GST
and excise taxes, the government wants to be applauded because a $30,000 wage earner will now be saving $12.
Can you imagine the irony of that argument? Can you imagine the senior citizen who will receive a notice this month that he or she will get an increase of 37 cents a month? Can you imagine, 37 cents a month for a pensioner in this country? That means senior citizens will have to get together to buy a cup of coffee. If I were a senior citizen I would probably send back the 37 cents. Canadians are not that desperate and undignified to receive a 37-cent increase in their monthly pensions. What an insult and what an embarrassment to our senior citizens.
What about small business persons in this country? What have the ministers of this Conservative government said about small business in every budget since 1984? They have said that small business is the cornerstone and the engine of our economy. It is the job creator. Yet a businessman who happens to be in the small business category opens up the budget to see what there is for the small business sector and finds nothing. The only thing for them in this budget was the increased threshold of small business development loans from $100,000 to $200,000.
The riddle is-and you know it, Mr. Speaker, because you speak to small business people in western Canada- that those people cannot even get the $100,000 financing from their banks, never mind $200,000. It is gimmickry; it is public relations. But, when that is stripped away, we see that small business is having a tougher time under this Conservative government which purports to be more pro-business than under any other previous government. That is one of the reasons there is movement of goods, capital and business entities south of the border.
I see you indicating that my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I would have liked to have touched on the free trade agreement, the NAFTA, and the question that the whole working middle-class sector is shrinking. It is one of the features that has distinguished our country from others. All countries of the world have their rich and their poor. We have been able to distinguish ourselves in the latitude we have in our working middle class. Regrettably that sector in society is shrinking. It is under attack. There are no answers in this budget.
March 25, 1992


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today on this bill. The purpose is really quite simple. It will in effect allow this particular Tbry government, which has since its election eight years ago prided itself in its fiscal management, to operate with a deficit yet again. This bill provides the government with the authority to operate at a deficit in the neighbourhood of $28 billion to $30 billion.
Just a few years ago in the 1988-89 budget the Prime Minister forecasted a deficit of $19.5 billion, which shows us just how much we can believe this particular government and how inaccurate its projections really are.
Let me say, however, that this is a well packaged budget. It has all of the right colours and the right ribbons in the right places and what have you. It tries to give Canadians an impression that it is positive, that it is doing something helpful for them. But when we start looking at it, when we get into the very essence of this budget, we find out that there are serious problems.
What are people saying about it? I talked to a number of people, and here are some of their comments: "What is wrong with this budget? There is a concern that the government has now made unemployment part of its economic plan". We are talking about unemployment being over 10 per cent. It is right there in the budget. Those are the kinds of goals that it has.
There is a concern as well with this 1 per cent cut in surtax. Whenever we talk about a tax cut it suggests all kinds of windfall benefits. This 1 per cent cut in surtax will mean a savings of $2 a year for a family of four whose combined income totals $15,000.
What about the changes related to the child benefits. That translates into an additional $4 per month for families earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year. It is not enough to buy even a hamburger and a glass of milk.
This budget is also silent on the national child care program. We remember the announcements that were made, the promises: les engagements. There is nothing there and we know what has happened since then. They have said: "No way".
Important institutions like the Economic Council of Canada, the Law Reform Commission and the Science
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Council of Canada have been eliminated, along with the Co-operative Housing Program. That is what is in this budget.
What is in it for farmers? Nothing. What is in it for fishermen and women from the Atlantic provinces? Nothing. What is in it for workers? If a worker sees this budget, what hope does he or she have? None.
What about our seniors, which my colleague has already mentioned? There is nothing in this budget, but subsequent to it there was 37 cents a month. Can we possibly imagine that?
What is in it for youth? The government had this 3 per cent administrative tax on student loans. It said it intended to take it out. I wanted to see that. On the other hand, it removed six months' interest that the students were not paying. They will be paying six months' interest more. My calculation shows that if it removes that 3 per cent tax or $20 million, it will go and collect $30 million from the students. That is how it is treating young people.
Research and development is the very pillar of a dynamic, progressive society such as ours. What is the government doing? It is investing $240 million over five years. It is very easy to do that when the transfers are cut by $250 million-plus this year alone.
What about the revenues? This is what people are saying. They said: "Look, weren't the revenues roughly $70 billion seven-plus years ago?" That is correct, but now they are in excess of $130 billion. The government has almost doubled its revenues, and yet what has happened to the deficit and what has happened to the debt? It has more than doubled.
Where is the goods and services tax money? What kinds of surprises does the government have for us? Is it so bad that it does not want to tell Canadians for fear that the recession it brought about will be seen as worse than what it really is telling Canadians? Or, is it so good that it is salting it away for the election so that it can start dishing it out and trying to buy its way back in? I talked about the deficit and the debt. These are figures from the fiscal monitor, the budget papers. In 1983-84, it was $167,985 billion. What was the percentage of that debt to GDP? It was 41.4 per cent. It is going to be in 1991-92; $419.8 billion and the ratio of that debt to GDP; 61.5 per cent.

March 25, 1992
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There is a $167 billion to a $419 billion increase, a ratio of 41.4 per cent to 61.5 per cent. That is what has happened in spite of the fact that the revenues have almost doubled for eight years. What is the media saying about it? I selected-just a few items at random. Here is one from Le Droit, dated today:

"One hundred tonnes of food a day"; why one hundred tonnes of food? "The number of food banks in Canada is now five times what it was in 1984, and these banks now distribute one hundred tonnes of food daily. The number of food banks across the country has increased from 161 in 1990 to 292 in 1991 and 377 today. It seems that 40 per cent of the two million Canadians who receive food from these banks are young people under 18. Two million Canadians received food aid at least once in 1991, and 65 per cent of these were on welfare". Two million people on welfare as well. "Ten per cent of the people who go to food banks have a college or university degree, and 22 per cent have finished high school".
I didn't make this up. Here is the article. I have another quote from the same article: "Seven hundred young people under 18 needed some form of food aid in 1992". That is the kind of budget we have.
I also have a list of all the agencies that were subject to cutbacks. Why?

They wanted to suggest that this was one way of cutting the deficit and the debt. We know that in relationship to the total expenditures of government, this is a very, very small saving. What have they cut? The Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, the Law Reform Commission, the Economic Council of Canada, the Science Council of Canada. I could go on. These are organizations that led the way, that told us what it is that we need to be concerned about.
Here is another article in The Ottawa Citizen, March 25,1992.1 want to quote this article entitled "Merging of councils may be unproductive marriage":
The federal budget announced the reunification of the Canada Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This announcement might be interpreted as ending a trial separation.
It goes on to say:
To understand our changing society, Canada needs the research capability provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
I want to quote another part of this article:
The prospect facing the great challenges of our times -without a growing and visible agency for the humanities and social sciences is chilling. Canada desperately needs a strong and concerted policy for research and development.
What about the Winnipeg Free Press, just shortly after the budget? It says that the government decided to do away with the Social Sciences Council of Canada and the Economic Council of Canada. Why? Because they were getting in the way.
The Court Challenges Program, why? Because it was getting in the way. Why was it getting in the way? Because there were many people on the right wing of the political agenda who felt that this was an appropriate way to go. There are a number of other Canadians who will remember that.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot more I could say about this, but my point is that in this budget the government tried to give the impression that it was doing something constructive. It cut programs that are vital to this countiy and to all Canadians. The government claims it is doing something, but at the same time it takes away far more than it contributes. This government is tired and has no longer any sense of where it is going, which is reflected in the budget and in this legislation.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, I have several words to say today. I want to start with three words: equality, fairness, and hope. That is not what this budget is about. This budget is about inequality, cuts, and hardship.
We have before us today a bill which would allow the government to carry out the veiy few things it undertook to carry out this year, but there is no child care program, no pay equity for Public Service employees, no hope for Canadian women. There are continuing cuts to social assistance, battered women's shelters, care homes for seniors, people with disabilities, detox centres, to existing child care centres. All of these are funded through the
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Canada Assistance Plan. The chokehold on education and health continues.
In this budget, the so-called new and improved child benefit really is a hoax. Canadians lose a universal social program, family allowance, and the government creates what it calls the new and improved system of child benefit.
This child benefit in fact creates two classes of children in our society, two classes of the poor. It creates what this government deems to be the deserving poor and they appear to look on other disadvantaged children in our society as the undeserving poor.
We see a society where food banks are the only growth industry in this country, where food banks have been on the rise but not programs to help people who are disadvantaged and poor.
It is disgusting that in our country 700,000 children should be the recipients of food from food banks. It is painful and it is disgusting that this is the situation in a country as wealthy as Canada.
I have three more words for the government: Court Challenges Program. This program allowed women, aboriginal people, racial minorities and people with disabilities to bring equality cases through the court, to help define the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Now the only people who will have these rights are the people who can afford them.
The program was axed without warning. The only warning in reality is this government's contempt for the groups that are mentioned. The government has suggested that perhaps some federal departments could fund equality cases. But the government is often the target of many equality charges and this would put the government in a position of deciding which cases against itself it would deem to fund, if any.
Even short-sighted people like ministers of this government should be able to see that that is a clear and unfair conflict of interest. The Court Challenges Program operated independently of the government and did not make decisions based on what would or would not be politically embarrassing for the government.
The elimination of the Court Challenges Program actually renders the Charter of Rights and Freedoms meaningless. The disadvantaged people in our society
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who need the protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms will no longer have access through the courts to gain those rights and freedoms they are told are theirs under the charter.	[DOT]
I have also heard Conservative members in this House having the gall to suggest that perhaps the provinces should pick up the cost for court cases under federal legislation. It seems that this government wants the provinces to pick up the tab for everything while giving them less and less money, less and less resources to pay for these things.
This government runs the Canadian economy with a single-minded Conservative ideology and expects the provinces and others to clean up the mess. As usual the people who are burdened with this cleaning up are women. Women are bearing a disproportionate brunt of the government's fiscal mismanagement. A hundred million dollars was cut from training programs. I have been hearing many disturbing things about this cut.
Several women's organizations which provide job counselling have apparently had to close because government funding has been withdrawn, the remainder apparently being told to cater mostly, or only, to people on unemployment insurance in order to get the funding. These are organizations whose client lists are made up mainly of older women attempting to return to the paid work force or of young people who have not yet broken into the paid work force or single mothers or other women who are living in poverty, who are trying desperately to get jobs and to get into the paid economy.
They serve battered women who have had the courage to leave and to try to break free from an abusive relationship. These are not people who are already on unemployment insurance. They are in fact even worse off than those people who are on UI. Now these women may be doomed to stay on welfare as a direct result of this government's policies. Yes, we understand that the money does have to come from somewhere. It should come from the people who can afford it, not from the disadvantaged.
In this budget, the Tories have cancelled the federal co-op housing program. Homeless people, poor people, these are not the people who should be paying for this government's fiscal mismanagement. Many members of this House do not appear to understand what co-op housing is meant to be.

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A minority of the units in co-op housing is given to people with higher incomes who pay market rents for their units. These units are not subsidized. The majority of units are given to people who cannot afford to pay market rent. They usually pay approximately 25 per cent of their income and participate in the running of the co-op on a democratic basis.
People with low, moderate and higher incomes live and make decisions together. It is an empowering experience and it gets away from the ghettoizing of peoples in our society. The government clearly does not want to empower people, nor does it appear to be able to imagine living with people who are disadvantaged. Perhaps if the Prime Minister or the finance minister lived in the same buildings as people who were struggling to make ends meet, people who were poor and disadvantaged, they would not be able to deny that these people exist. They would not be able to rationalize that: "Only
750,000	children are using food banks.". They would see those children every day, going to school hungry and they might care enough to do something about it.
No one expects miracles. No one expects poverty to be wiped out overnight. The very last act of the former leader of my party in Parliament, Mr. Broadbent, was to successfully present a motion to this House to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. We understand that children are poor because their parents are poor. Children are poor because they are living in a poor family.
Eliminating access to training, perpetuating economic inequality between men and women through an abandonment of pay equity, choking child care so that women cannot seek employment because they have nowhere to put their children where they will receive good care, are actions which create and reinforce child poverty. No one expects the government to end poverty tomorrow, but it is not even moving in a direction which would relieve and reduce poverty and eliminate it in the longer term.
The excuse for cutting back social programs that we hear over and over again here in this House is the deficit, the deficit and more of the deficit and even in this, the Tories are failing. They are billions of dollars off their target for deficit reduction. A recent study has shown that social spending has not caused the deficit, a study by Statistics Canada. The deficit is not being reduced by
cutting social spending. The only thing that is being reduced is the quality of life of most Canadians.
Women's groups have warned this government about the effects of this budget on child care. Every year another nail is being driven in the coffin of child care. Universality is being eliminated for some social programs. Can others be far behind? This government is fundamentally opposed to the principle of universality and is moving to destroy it.
Family Allowance: The only program specifically directed to women has been abolished. The Prime Minister attempted to deindex the old age pension at the same time as it first deindexed family allowance. Pensioners are getting the enormous increase this year of 37 cents. I would think that the members on the other side of the House would hang their heads in shame. Thirty-seven cents to the members of our society who built this nation. Thirty-seven cents, what can they do with that amount? It is the lowest increase in 18 years. Maybe the old age pension is next on the chopping block. Then health care. The government has already been keeping funds from the provinces for health care services.
I have now been in this House for three and a half years. During that time I have learned that nothing is sacred to this government except its own interests. It is time to bring caring and responsibility to politics. It is time to really bring change. It is time for a leader who has experienced what it means to try to make ends meet, to start a small business and to survive.
Both leaders of the other two parties in this House are wealthy male lawyers with no experience in the struggle to raise a family with a limited income. They have not experienced first hand the disastrous economic policies of the previous administration and this administration, and it shows in their lack of judgment and understanding.
It is time for a change. It is time for a real change in the direction of this Parliament and this House.


Mr. Benno Friesen (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the member for New Westminster gave us a list of items, almost all of which are exclusively within provincial jurisdiction, such as social programs.

Twenty-four hours from now the provincial legislature in British Columbia will be hearing the budget of the Minister of Finance for the province of British Columbia. It will be interesting to note, as a result of rumours coming to us now, whether the speech she has just given would not be better given to her colleagues in British Columbia than to this House.


Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on Bill C-61, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing on April 1, 1992.
In the ten minutes allotted to me I would like to speak not of what was in the budget but of what the budget did not contain.
This borrowing bill asks for $24.7 billion and an additional $3.9 billion to cover a shortfall in this current fiscal year. Well, that is money. How the world has come to revolve around the yen, the Deutschmark, the pound and the dollar. It is as if all the hungry mouths, empty lives, broken hearts and souls have no place in the machinations of the Minister of Finance.
Throughout my time in the House of Commons since 1988 I have tried by whatever means possible to convince the members opposite to open their minds to the larger picture. A country cannot be healthy if one million children live in poverty, and jobs and businesses are being lost as never before. This will only continue with the budget just brought forward by this government.
Society is like a web, everything is attached to something else. In order for it to function as a whole each strand of the web must be strong. A child is one strand in the web. For a child to have the best chance of growing up healthy the child must be bom healthy. Yet in Canada
21,000	babies are bom underweight each year. This often leads to a lifetime of illness and lost productivity potential.
Why are children bom underweight? The main cause is that the mothers are under-fed. Feed the mother and feed the child. A healthy child will probably grow into a healthy adult, a sound citizen, a taxpayer and a parent to more healthy children.
For $500,000, which is the amount of money this government is spending on promoting its child benefit
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package, 1,234 needy pregnant women could have been given prenatal nutritional counselling at $45 per month for the duration of their pregnancy. The result would be many more Canadian babies bom with normal weights. Our gift to their mothers would be food and our gift to the children would be health. It is a gift justly deserved.
It is said that in times of old when a ship was sinking the captain would yell: "Into the lifeboats, women and children first." Due to the seriousness of this issue I took the time to write a special article that has been published in The Medical Post on March 3, 1992.1 will refer to it in my comments.
It is time for this government to begin launching such lifeboats. One of the firsts should be a "healthy babies strategy" for Canada.
This strategy would help ensure our babies are healthy at birth by guaranteeing adequate food and pre-natal counselling for all pregnant women, especially those who are poor.
According to the World Health Organization, a baby should weigh at least 2.5 kilograms when bom. Babies below this weight risk ill-health and even a decrease in intelligence. They often suffer disabilities-mental and physical-which shackle them throughout their lives. Respiratory illnesses and brain haemorrhaging are frequent afflictions for these newborns.
The subcommittee on poverty was mandated by Parliament to direct the government in aiding the poor. This subcommittee of Parliament recommended that such a special nutritional supplement program be given during pregnancy, particularly the needy.
Every town, village and city in this country has its own child victims of poverty. Every hospital knows them. They walk through any urban centre. Winnipeg's shopping malls and housing projects will leave a memory of certain sickly, spindly teenagers and children fixed in your mind. I ask: "How many of these children were bom underweight and undernourished?"
The cost of these children to the heart of our country cannot be calculated. The cost in dollars is estimated to be millions. Yet the federal health department has not acted on the committee's report although it was obligated to respond by the middle of this month. It has missed the deadline.

March 25, 1992
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The federal government has made the deficit, not children, its crusade issue.
If the deficit is so important, why unnecessarily spend $26 million on the Spicer commission? Why spend $9 million to study the constitutional proposals? Why all these public relations campaigns? If we put them all together the healthy babies strategy begins to look like a real bargain.
Today in Canada there are over one million children living in poverty. Many of these children were bom poor and unhealthy and will remain so unless changes are made in the way our society treats its most fragile citizens, our babies. The time has come to provide a lifeboat for these babies.
Let us now speak of the child benefits package that this government has proposed, the so-called white paper. It was unveiled as a sparkling gem of the Tory budget. However, it has been revealed to be a lump of coal. This program was heralded by the health minister and the Minister of Finance as a program to put more money into the hands of the poor. It was supposed to simplify the child benefits system. Yet the very first thing it did was to make two classes of poor, the deserving poor and the non-deserving poor, as though you can distinguish among the poor. The poor need help and they are all deserving.
Research done by Mr. Ken Battle of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy shows how misleading this child benefit package really is. It is a carrot meant to come into effect months before the next projected election, but it will decrease rapidly as it is indexed below the rate of inflation.
Let me read from the very same white paper: "The monthly payments will be adjusted annually for increases in the Consumer Price Index", it continues, "in excess of 3 per cent". That is the killer. It is not indexed to inflation.
For every gain made by the working poor, the changes to the family allowance system will set them back in other ways. One national newspaper calculated the effects of the budget on the pocket-books of three families.
A family earning $65,000 a year will be $124 ahead at tax time. Meanwhile, a working couple with three
children earning $22,000 will only be $73 ahead. What can a family of five do with $73? It might possibly buy a child a snowsuit. What the government gives with one hand, it takes with the other through the loss of the dependent child credit and increases in the CPP premium.
The biggest kick in the teeth to families came when the government pitted people in need of child care against people in need of increased family benefits. A slippery government survey with twisted questions provided the government with the rationale for its decision to kill child care. The argument used by the Conservatives was, and I quote: "We fed hungry children. They were our first priority".
That is ridiculous. Children are the least of Conservative priorities. A trip to any food bank will demonstrate that. This government has accomplished nothing with the child benefits package and crushed the hopes of families who helped put them into office in the 1984 and 1988 elections because of its pledge of universal child care. This government has betrayed the Canadian people.
Mr. Speaker, allow me to have one more minute to conclude. It all came back to money. The country cannot afford child care. I submit that the country cannot afford not to have child care. It is part of caring for the family and making our workers more productive. How can a mother work, and over 60 per cent of mothers do work outside their homes, when they must worry about who is caring for their children? How many families can afford not to have dual incomes in these tough economic times? Parents have to work and children need care.
The government has to reconcile the two and realize that good non-profit child care is a necessity, not an accessory.
Money does not make a country, people make a country. If people are jobless, sick, living in poverty and abused, a country cannot be strong. Canada is weakening by the day, dragged down by this government's confused economic policies and loss of social direction.
This borrowing bill, which asks for $24.7 billion and an additional $3.9 billion to cover a shortfall in this government's fiscal year, can be passed by this government with its majority vote. However, the constituents of Winnipeg North are not very happy.
March 25, 1992


Mr. Dorin:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to seek unanimous consent of the House to revert to presenting reports from committees.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe there is unanimous consent. Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Murray Dorin: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Finance, a report concerning Bill C

21, as amended, in both official languages.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mazankowski that Bill C-61, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing on April 1, 1992, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in this debate on the borrowing bill because it gives me an opportunity to speak on last month's budget presentation.
The budget of 1992 presented an opportunity for the government to change the course of its policies, to in effect change the course of Canada. I submit that this government failed to meet that opportunity, to exploit that opportunity. I think it can be safely and accurately said that the 1992 budget was a hope that never materialized, a hope that was never acted upon.
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We could say that this government follows the policies of the administration in Washington. It was George Bush, the President of the U.S.A., who said the other day, and I will not quote him verbatim, but I think he said in effect that he really did not want to fiddle with the American economy. He wanted to allow the economy to right itself on its own, in other words to just wait until the economy pulled itself out of the doldrums.
The government here in Ottawa is following the same course. It really does not want to do anything about the economy; it just wants to let the economy find its way all by itself.
This budget could have been a blueprint; it could have been a road map. It could have been a new vision for Canada, but that is not what happened. In my opinion, it is a hodge-podge of a budget, a budget that is really all over the map, a budget that is anything but coherent.
Now there were a couple of good ideas in it, ideas that I think-not I think, I know-were stolen from this side. For example, the 5 per cent minimum down payment for home buyers came from this side of the House as did the use of RRSPs to finance home purchases. I congratulate the government for following up on those ideas.
Let us look at some other areas of the budget. The finance minister had a lot to say about the tax reductions in the budget. Well, those reductions are a laugh. They have been alluded to before, but let me refer to them again.
Take the reduction in the surtax. For a family earning $40,000, the reduction is $27. For a family earning $20,000, the cut in the surtax is $6 and if you make $15,000 a year, the cut is a paltry $2. Who is the largest winner when it comes to the surtax cut? It is the family earning $100,000. The cut for them is $111. Remember, these cuts in the surtax come after the government increased income taxes well over $1,000 since the government came to power in 1984.
Let us talk for a moment about the much-heralded child benefits package. That is the package that will, come next year, eliminate family allowance altogether, but the government pointed out that what it was going to do is it will take the family allowance money and give it to the poor.

March 25, 1992
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When examining the budget, what does it reveal? It reveals that if you are the poorest of the poor, you will get nothing extra. Not one nickel and that has been admitted to by the government.
Admittedly yes, there is some help to the extent of $500 a year for the so-called working poor. But once a family gets up around $40,000 a year, there is very little help, very little extra help under the child benefits package. In fact, according to calculations that I have seen at $40,000 a year income, it comes to about $44 a year.
I was reading a column the other day written by Frances Russell of the Winnipeg Free Press. She put this so-called child benefits package in the proper context. Let me read just a part of her column. It goes like this:
The drive to take baby bonuses away from bank presidents finally reached its destination last Tbesday.
That was the Tbesday the budget was presented.
Again I continue from the column:
The bank president won't get his $34.88 a month, that is $418.56 a year, per child any more. But if that child is in day care, the bank president will save an additional $450 in taxes just as a result of the $1,000 increase in the child care expense deduction.
That deduction now stands at $5,000 for each child under age seven and $3,000 for other eligible children.
At the maximum 29 per cent tax bracket, the $5,000 deduction translates into a tax saving of $2,250 per year for that bank president if he has one child in care, $3,600 if he has two.
The family allowance pales.
Meanwhile, maximum tax savings at the lowest 17 per cent bracket are only $1,350 for the first child. And most low and lower middle income parents can't afford sufficiently expensive child care to qualify even for that.
The government's decision to cut the income surtax is equally perverse.
In my opinion, that puts the so-called child benefit package in context.
Now, in other areas of the budget, is there help for agriculture? You have to have a very sharp eye. There is almost nothing for agriculture. Is there help for small business? Again you better have a very sharp eye because you will find very little help. There is something when it comes to increasing the ceiling for development loans
but again, examination will reveal it really is no help at all.
When it comes to the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians, is there help in this budget? Well, we just have to ask the 1.5 million unemployed whether there is hope. Again, the answer is no and in fact, the budget admits that. The Minister of Finance admits that because he says in the budget that he would expect the unemployment rate of about 10 to 10.5 per cent to continue for the next two years. There is very little hope for the unemployed.
The government failed to pick up on the suggestion of developing a so-called infrastructure program, working on developing our public works in the country, bridges, roads, those kinds of things. That would have been a great stimulus to the economy.
The abolition of the so-called advisory bodies for the federal government made no sense at all. The abolition of the Economic Council of Canada makes no sense at all. The abolition of the Science Council again is a real crazy idea. Will it save the taxpayer any money? I doubt it. I would think that what this government will do is that it will take the money that was saved from the elimination of the advisory councils. It will take the money and give it to its friends in the private consulting field. That would be my guess.
The matter of the GST. I wanted to touch on that because again a lot of people were hoping that maybe in the budget there would be some revelation about changing the GST in some respects. Again nothing at all, no hope in the budget with respect to the GST.
I want to read into the record a short letter from a constituent who has been fighting with the government over certain aspects of the GST. I will read the section of the letter which is self-explanatory.
I personally feel that the GST system has been set up in such a way as to benefit most middle-to-large corporations. The ruling that I am asking the government to change in order to allow self-employed and employees of insurance businesses to be allowed to claim "Input Ihx Credits" on their expenses for all business purposes is not unrealistic. What is fair for the goose should be equally fair for the gander. Why is it always the ordinaiy taxpayer that has to feel the brunt of any tax changes. If you and I both buy the same item at a store at the same time, we should both pay the same price and tax.
March 25, 1992


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret, the hon. member's time is now terminated. He has had an extra two minutes. I am sorry.


Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to say just a few words and put some comments on the record about this legislation we are debating today. It gives me an opportunity to comment on the government's budget and economic program and in particular, the concerns I have had about the need for fairer taxes in Canada.
What we are debating today is a very interesting piece of legislation. It is a short bill, two pages long. Bill C-61 is an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year commencing April 1, 1992. I say it is an interesting bill largely because in these two pages the government is requesting the authority from this House to approve its ability to borrow funds.
Given the responsibility of governing, obviously any party would seek the agreement of this House to authorize its expenditures and raising of funds. The biggest question and concern that we have today is the way this government is raising its funds and in some areas, the misguided spending of funds it raises from Canadian individuals and corporations.
This bill is a pretty expensive piece of paper. We are talking about a piece of paper that is worth $24.7 billion. That is a pretty big number. I wrote it out with all the zeros so that we could keep track of it, nine zeros after the 24. It is a big chunk of money.
It is reason enough to have a debate today to ensure that we put on the record the concerns that members on this side of the House have about this government's economic policy and the problems and concerns I have as it relates to the question of fair taxes.
I mentioned those two particular concepts because it is very clear thgt this government has developed an economic program whereby it is fixated by the so-called marketplace and the invisible hand of the marketplace. It is more like the very visible hand of George Bush in Washington, D.C.
I am convinced more every day by the evidence that has come from various independent bodies, from the government itself and information I have compiled into what I call my fair tax information kit which anyone who is watching is welcome to inquire about. I know you might be interested in reading this, Mr. Speaker.
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I am more convinced than ever after reading the information from government and independent bodies that the most critical decision we have to make, and so far the only party prepared to make that decision is the New Democrats, is that we must scrap the GST and bring in a fair tax system. I am convinced of that. I think the information is there.
In taking a looking at the GFT as Connie Colter, the chanteuse from Saskatchewan, called it, when we see the effect that tax is having on communities across Canada, and in particular of the major community in my riding of Prince George, we are talking about $42 million being sucked out of the economy through the GST bunkers that the government has built throughout the country.
That has a phenomenal impact on the Canadian economy. That is the reason provincial governments are very reluctant now to harmonize this tax with the federal government because they know the damage the "GFT" has done to the Canadian economy. They know the double whammy that Canadian consumers would be hit with if any provincial government moved to try and harmonize with the GST. They know the serious damage that would be done to the consumer. Some people are predicting conservatively that the GST is taking between $400 and $700 per person out of Canadian pockets on top of what was there before. I think it is clear when you talk to, maybe not officials in Ottawa here, maybe not even with Revenue Canada, but the average Canadian. We know the average Canadian is still very concerned over this government's decision to bring in the goods and services tax. I know they are looking forward to having that as an issue in the next election.
We have looked at some of the concerns about the debt and taxation and my view is that we can have a fair tax system in the country. When we suggest this to government members, they say: "Well, what is your alternative?" That is fair enough, I expect them to ask that.
The reason I welcome their comments is because prior to the GST debate, our party presented alternatives to the goods and services tax. We went through the proposals, came up with our proposals and I think responded to what the then minister of finance was saying when he asked us to come up with alternatives. Our thinking cannot be any fuzzier than these guys. I think the evidence shows that our information will go much further than the government's to date.

March 25, 1992
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We have had some interesting support come forward. I am referring in particular to the one proposal that has been presented by our caucus and that is concerning the business entertainment deduction. I have a very interesting quote I would like to read to you from Canadian Business. It is the editor in chief, Mr. Alexander Ross. I quote:
It pains me to be on the same side of an issue as the NDP's Audrey
McLaughlin, the member for Yukon who recently suggested that
enough is enough. But I think it's time that you and I and my friend
Patrick and all those portly chaps in their plush banquettes at
Winston's-
And we know who used to hang out at Winston's.
-started paying for their own drinks and big lunches for a change.
That says that the work our caucus has done in presenting alternatives to the taxation measures presented by this government is correct. So when we are faced with voting on a bill that is trying to borrow some $24 billion, we would hope that Canadians can be assured that it is going to be spent on the proper items and proper things.
I would like to comment briefly on what was not dealt with dramatically in the budget, and that is some very important matters to my area in northern B.C. I think about the infrastructure program that has been mentioned, the importance of upgrading the Yellowhead highway, which may have been part of an announcement today or at least there were rumours of that from the first ministers' meeting. There is also a very important program in our area, the northern tax allowance. Basically it has been scrapped by this government with the endorsement of the Reform Party which is opposed to it completely.
I think it is an indication that the government's economic policy is fixated on a marketplace that is hurting the average Canadian and imposes an unfair tax system. That is why we have so many people across the country concerned about what this government is doing and the need for new direction for the Canadian economy.


Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to say a few words on Bill C-61, which is the borrowing authority for this government. I want to make my comments, taking into account the recent budget by the Minister of Finance, because clearly that
budget sets out the government's fiscal and monetary policy for the next year.
We have to recognize the Minister of Finance is able to put together what some political junkies would call a very skilful political document, in that he gives a token reduction in taxes later this year or next year, and a few social policy things that seem to do something. In some ways some people would describe it as a used car salesman's budget in that he is trying to give the old tin Lizzie a new paint job, bumped out the fenders and tarted up the old tin Lizzie and made it look somewhat better but if you look under the hood of the Canadian economy, it really does not look any better than it did before the budget.
Clearly that budget spells out that we are going to face extremely high unemployment, over 10 per cent, 1.5 million Canadians this year and most of next year unemployed, that the deficit which the government is preoccupied with really is not going down. Every year it misses those deadlines. We really do not have much improvement.
I think that the document is designed to respond to the fear and dread that the government has and the Tory members from Alberta have about Preston Manning and the Reform Party. We see the wholesale slaughter of all kinds of government agencies, agencies which often give independent advice, like the Science Council of Canada, the Economic Council of Canada, which have been very critical of the government. It is a campaign to get rid of all the critics.
Governments by their very nature tend to operate on a three or four year horizon, whereas groups like the Science Council and the Economic Council are there to look ahead at long-term needs and most governments draw great advice from them.
As we look under the hood of this masterpiece by the Minister of Finance, we do not see much encouragement for the future. However, the government did adopt a couple of recommendations by the Leader of the Official Opposition, the idea of using RRSP funds to stimulate the housing market. We applaud that decision by the government. The decision to cut some $75 million out of the government's propaganda campaign, that of course is acknowledged and appreciated. The government did reduce the excise tax on ethanol.
March 25, 1992

Most of these things were at the urging of the Official Opposition. The hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex is in the House tonight. He has had a bill on the Order Paper encouraging the use of ethanol for at least three or four years. The government has finally responded but now we have to wait and see whether it will put in place a program to promote an effective renewable fuels program and not just reduce the excise tax. That is an important action, but there needs to be whole promotion, a research program, a development program to actually get to those renewable fuels.
If we look at that document we see that the poor and the unemployed are still poor and unemployed. For instance, the tax reductions that are talked about really amount to practically nothing. A family of four earning $15,000 a year will get a $2 tax saving. The child benefit, which has been alluded to as a great step forward, a family of four with a $30,000 income will get $4 per month more.
The budget makes little feinting moves toward some improvement but the basic problem of a country, the falling apart of our whole economy, the unemployment, nothing has really changed by this budget. I take one example.
The agriculture productivity council which is advising the government on how we might maintain the further processing of agriculture products made a recommendation just about a week before the budget of the Minister of Finance came down. It said that the capital cost allowance for new capital investments to stimulate the food processing industry, which after all is the second largest processing and manufacturing industry in this country, should have the capital cost write-off doubled from 25 per cent to 50 per cent.
They said even at that they might not do very well but there would be put in place a really strong stimulus to try to regain an industry where we have lost some 70 plants across this country, and over 18,000 jobs since the free trade deal came in. If we lose the food processing industry, we lose the market for those thousands of producers in this country who are under great attack because of the negotiations at the GATT and the free trade deal. The government and the Minister of Finance increased the capital cost write-off by 5 per cent to 30
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per cent. That is just a token gesture. It does not go anywhere near what was recommended by that productivity advisory council.
We see that across the whole landscape of our processing and manufacturing industries, which are totally in the doldrums these days. That is just an example of the lack of a massive program to try to get this country back on the rails.
The Leader of the Opposition recommended that there be some public capital works projects to try to get the economy going again, to try to reduce unemployment, to give confidence to the private sector. None of that was in this budget.
I recall in the recession of 1981-1982 we had a massive capital works program and by 1983 we were seeing the economy pull out of that recession. I recall that we had programs for unemployment that helped those economies.
This recession is much worse than in 1981-1982 because we have seen plants shut down which we do not expect to ever see open again. At that time it was a case of industries laying off and taking people back. What we need is a reconstruction program for the Canadian economy.
Just as we saw the productivity council on food processing recommend a doubling of the capital cost write-off, we need strong incentives for research and development and application of new techniques because after all we were in competition with not just the United States but European countries in that sector. None of those things were done in a manner large enough or strong enough in this budget to really turn the situation around and recoup.
We are disappointed that this budget has not gone nearly far enough. On top of that we see groups like the Science Council, like the Economic Council, who are after all a sort of long distance radar, looking ahead to the direction, standing back from the politics of the day, or the economics of the day or short blips in the economy, and looking at the long sweep of history.
Yet those agencies which are independent and operate on a global basis and are in a position to advise the government what direction it should be taking and giving independent advice, sometimes critical advice, have been killed off by the government.

March 25, 1992
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We will not have that advice for the long term.
Mr. Speaker, I think this budget really gives us great concern as to where the government is going, how we are going to get out of this recession and how we are going to put the 1.5 million Canadians who are out of work back to work.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity- Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this borrowing bill. In so doing, there are three areas I would like to cover. I want to talk about the situation as I see it in the economy right now, some of which was referred to by my friend from Algoma. I want to have a look at the situation in the taxation business in the period of the seven-plus years of this government. I also want to have a look at what has happened to the deficit. Those three areas I hope to be able to cover in the time I have.
To begin with, after years of wax and wain, but essentially what was an improvement in the economy and relatively good times as far as the expansion of the economy was concerned, what are we left with today? The budget that I am referring to is the eighth budget in eight years, pretty well, and what has all this amounted to?
We heard the promises of jobs, jobs, jobs. We have now a situation in which the national rate of unemployment is currently 10.3 per cent. It is expected to remain, in the budget's own words, at 10 per cent throughout this year, 1992. We have a net loss of 91,000 jobs experienced in the manufacturing sector alone in 1991 and the total unemployment insurance bill for last year is now expected to come to close to $18 billion. That is phenomenal, that is phenomenal.
We have a growing percentage of the unemployed who are exhausting their benefits without finding work, and today we have more than 1.4 million Canadians unemployed; 2.2 million are on welfare; and 1 million children live in poverty.
In my province alone we have 31,000 people employed in the fishing industry-fishermen, trawlermen, inshore, offshore and plant workers-and as I stand and speak to you tonight 8,000 of them are without employment. In my riding alone, on February 14, literally with the stroke of a pen, 850 employees in the plant in Port Union-Catalina were to be laid off within a week; 155 trawlermen with the same stroke of the pen, and on the same day, ironically, the announcement was made of a cutback in Hibernia where 850 people were to lose their jobs.
If that is not a double whammy, I don't know what is.
During the first 11 months of last year over 57,000 consumers and 12,500 businesses declared bankruptcy in Canada. That was an increase of 42 per cent over the same period in 1990. The Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which is a reputable organization, predicted that 1,000 manufacturers will go bankrupt in the coming year, resulting in an estimated loss of 100,000 jobs.
In November of 1984-1 was not a member at the time-but the government of the day, the Conservative government, outlined the vision of how the Canadian economy could be put on a solid future-oriented footing. I took heart, as a lot of Canadians did, with this. Their approach was to build a strong economy relying completely on market forces, believing that the government's role in the economy should be minimal.
As part of this strategy the government cut expenditures for education, research and development, and training. It did not introduce adjustment programs until after the implementation of the free trade agreement. As part of this strategy, until quite recently, a higher interest high dollar policy that has been spoken about so often in this House was encouraged.
The government indeed has not fostered growth. It has relinquished the responsibility to monitor the market forces and has inhibited the economic recovery. The real story is not only what the government has done to the economy over the last seven years, but essentially what it has failed to do. This is one of the problems I have.
One of the things that it has done is to have drastically increased taxes. Since coming to power in 1984, the Conservatives have implemented 40 changes to the tax system that directly affect Canadian individuals. This count, of course, does not include the implementation of the goods and services tax, the most hated tax in the world, which single-handedly caused the greatest damage to consumer confidence and is partly responsible for the recession that we have today.
March 25, 1992

I am going to quote the global economic study released in June of last year that revealed that the tax burden faced by an average Canadian family was $1,530 greater in 1991 than it was in 1984. In 1991, Canadian households paid a total of $17.2 billion more in taxes, net of transfers, than they would have paid if the 1984 tax system were still in place-$17.2 billion. Even families earning less than $10,000 on average, and that is not very much money, experienced a small increase of $85 in federal taxes.
The impression that one would like to have and certainly one that the government would like to create is that the latest budget offers Canadians a significant tax break when in fact it does not. The reduction in the personal income surtax, and I would remind you, this is a tax that was introduced by the Conservative government in 1986 and subsequently increased on two occasions, offers very little relief to Canadians. You have heard the figures many times. I am not going to repeat them.
Essentially it benefits high income earners more than low income earners. The only figure I want to quote is that for a family of four with a combined income of $15,000, this tax cut will result in savings of only $2 for 1992 whereas if the same family had an income of $75,000, they would have saved $74 in 1992.
I remember the first budget of this government. I was not a member of Parliament at the time, but the first budget was in May 1985. The comment was made in that budget that this budget represented a major step toward controlling the growth of the federal debt.
The prediction was made that the deficit would be $33.8 billion in that year, but in fact it turned out to be $34.6 billion. The federal debt that needed controlling at that time was $224 billion. After seven more budgets, seven more years, the budget now stands from $34.6 billion all the way down to $31.5 billion, a decrease of practically nothing compared to each promise that was made in each budget at a time when the economy was relatively healthy, at a time when the goods and services tax was put on to Canadians, at a time when taxes were raised on the average Canadian $17.2 billion, at a time when social services were cut, unemployment insurance. The government got out of unemployment insurance. VIA Rail was cut. Health insurance is beginning to look
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a little bit marginal, social programs that were supposed to be a social trust.
I do not understand why the deficit is still the way it is. One of the things I wanted to quote here in the time that I have remaining is a C.D. Howe Institute analysis of the February 1987 budget. I happened to come across it and if you would just permit me to finish off here. The title of it was "An Opportunity Missed" and it said in 1987:
In the face of the increasing difficulty in maintaining the appearance of downward deficit track, the government has resorted to asset sales and fiscal tricks to fulfil its principles. This is not the way to reduce the underlying imbalance between spending and revenues. It is merely a way to finance it. The ongoing budget deficit appears to be stuck at just over $30 billion.
That is what they said. This seems to be the situation today. Five years later, this Minister of Finance rose to tell us that the budget was going to be around $31 billion which was higher than last year, which was higher than the year before and the year before that.
Mr. Speaker, we are looking for some improvement. I regret to say that this budget has not produced it.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to address my remarks to a program that the federal government attempted to impose on the transportation system on the coast of British Columbia. That was the program to destaff the lighthouses, essentially to remove staff and automate them.
The coast of British Columbia is about 500 miles of the worst place to conduct transportation anywhere in this country. It is mountains, oceans, continuous fog, rain and storms off the Pacific. There are only two ways to get back and forth and that is by aircraft or by vessel.
The destaffing of the lighthouses, and this is the second time the government has tried it, is really putting a major hole in the transportation safety net on the coast of B.C. British Columbians are firmly convinced that this will impact their lives and safety in the work they do and in their transportation.
The cancellation of that ill-founded and ill-conceived destaffing program resulted from what was an uprising on the coast of B.C. There were meetings held in Prince Rupert, well attended meetings of people who were irate, concerned and committed to doing something about it. They attended meetings in Prince Rupert, Port Hardy, and Campbell River. There were meetings scheduled in Victoria, Nanaimo, Parksville in the Albemi area,

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and they too would have formed committees to go after the government and attempt to reverse this.
Thousands of letters, thousands of phone calls, thousands of petitions have eventually turned the government again. Certainly this was not partisan in terms of one political group attempting to achieve it, or members of Parliament, or folks from one political group. It represented people from all walks of life, members of Parliament, MLAs, again from all political parties. By joining together over a matter they felt very strongly about, this matter has now been changed.
It is not good enough. This is only half the job. The government tried this twice and again just recently has announced that it is again abandoning the idea. Again, it is only half the job.
What needs to happen now is the government must get involved in a light station upgrading program. Some time ago when the Coast Guard abandoned this destaffing project previously on the west coast, it began a study called "The Future Upgrading of Light Stations". There were to be seven volumes or seven areas of study. The first volume of this study was completed and adopted at the regional level and referred to the national office of the Coast Guard for consideration. And there it sits.
Really, if the transportation safety net in British Columbia is to be workable and secure for the people who live and work there, this future of light stations report has got to be brought back, dusted off, and implemented.
One of the key elements of it is a redefinition of the job description of a lightkeeper. A lightkeeper does not simply turn on a fog horn and a light. They are involved in aid to mariners. They have rescued people, saved their lives, prevented property damage and have done basically a tremendous job as the ears and eyes of the safety system along the coast of British Columbia.
They are available where they have provided their own radio equipment to talk to people in aircraft and in vessels in the area, giving them advice about weather, about marine or air hazards in the area, and those are very well appreciated.
Unfortunately in the FURL report the government made a commitment that it would provide up to date VHF radio equipment so that that communication can become a regular published feature for those light
station keepers. It must happen. Safety for safety reasons, it is imperative.
It is ironic that the government does not supply binoculars to the light station keeper. If the light station keepers are to be able to monitor what is going on in the area around the light station they have to provide their own. It would be a reasonable thing and recommended again by the report that a simple pair of binoculars, that simple expenditure, can save peoples' lives.
A vitally important area in upgrading is putting weather reporting equipment in those light stations. The ability to give timely and accurate weather reports for marine and aviation purposes is absolutely critical. It was recommended in the upgrading report. It sits on the shelf.
Some stations have outmoded equipment. They do not report on a regular basis, and the reports are almost useless. They are doing half a job. They do not provide the kind of safety back-up that is required in the weather reporting system out there. They need proper equipment in those light stations. The lightkeepers need to be trained and they need to report regularly and at special times when important changes occur in the weather so that the transportation system can use that information. It will save lives and it will make the whole system safer.
It is ironic that in providing aid to mariners some stations do not have reliable vessels. They have no reliable way of launching those vessels. Of course in some cases where the light is separated from the office of the light station keeper, they do not provide a survival suit for the individual who may wind up stranded in an area surrounded by water or in the water. It is important that each one of these light station keepers have access to a survival suit so if they are going to render aid to mariners, at least they are not endangering their own lives. It is absolutely critical that that be provided.
There were meetings in Prince Rupert and Port Hardy. The central coast of British Columbia is a very difficult and dangerous area to work in. Generally the flights that originate in Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Prince Rupert, proceeding along the coast via the central coast depend very heavily on the Cape St. James weather station. Without that you are literally flying or sailing blind into the area. It is probably the loss of one of the most important weather information systems to people who use that system of any resource that exists.
March 25, 1992

The government is talking about closing it in 1992. It is going to save some money. But if it saves some money by closing that weather station, it will kill people. It will become very, very unsafe to operate in the area.
I do not say that; the Coast Guard helicopter pilots say it. They say that when they leave Prince Rupert they have no information to work with. If they go out in bad weather to effect a rescue or possibly to assist someone who is having difficulty, then they are in turn placing themselves in danger because they have no information to work with.
One of the most important assets or resources they have is that Cape St. James weather station. It is absolutely critical that the government reverse its decision to close that station. There will be a continuing fight in this House. The meetings on the coast will continue. This must be turned around. Those light stations must be upgraded.
In the FURL report, there is a volume ready to go for implementation, but there were to be seven of these. It is time now to do the second half of this upgrading. Let us get the public consultation meetings going again. Let us pick up the ideas on how to upgrade those things so the safety net is solid. Let us cancel the plans to close the Cape St. James weather station.
Above all, the minister must meet with the seven members of Parliament who represent the coast of British Columbia. There is a letter on its way to the minister's desk to say that the job is half done. Well done for that part of it. No more destaffing. But let us get the other half of the job done, the one that will really provide some protection to the lives and safety of people on the west coast. Please, let us have a meeting with those members and get some understanding of where we go from here.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased this afternoon to have the opportunity to touch this problem from a different perspective, having spoken to many of the people I represent from Nipigon, Red Rock, Dorion, Hurkett, Pass Lake, Kaka-
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beka Falls, Murillo, Gull Bay, Armstrong and eventually Thunder Bay. That is primarily the vantage point from which I speak. I am going to try to express to this House what I have been hearing from the areas that I have just mentioned.
What truly disturbs me about this budget and particularly about this borrowing bill is that we seem to have failed in our purpose in Canada. What I am hearing is that Canada no longer has a common direction on which to focus. Canada no longer has a common goal. We no longer have a national purpose around which all Canadians can rally and engender the feeling of pride that we once had in our country and around which all Canadians can feel secure and comfortable about the many fine institutions that it has taken this federal government of ours so many years to build.
These are institutions like our educational system that we value in every province and every territory in our country that is free and open for all to participate. It is an educational system that qualifies as one of the best in the world when we get into our secondary level and our post-secondary level. We have a skills training program at our college level that we should be supporting in so many ways.
Another institution is a system of government that shows empathy, care and concern for many of our fellow Canadians at different times in our lives when we need a little assistance from the governments.
Another institution with its pimples and its warts, our national health care system with those pitfalls is the envy of every country in the world. Every country, especially the United States, is trying to emulate it.
What we lack is a national purpose around which all Canadians can once again sense that feeling of national pride, that feeling of loyalty to a unified country we are all trying to achieve. I think unfortunately it is because of the borrowing bill we are talking about and the budget and the several budgets that have gone before that today this is missing in Canada. This bill fails in every way to re-establish those values and virtues most Canadians grew up with.

March 25, 1992
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When I say most Canadians, I look around and I see my colleague from Essex, my colleague from Spadina, you, Mr. Speaker, and my colleague from Chatham. I am sure we all grew up with a feeling of loyalty and love for our country. I sense that is no longer prevalent today. I am not so sure that our colleague, the Minister of Justice, would be of our age group so I will not include her.
We still believe in our future. I am not sure that if this present trend continues that those for whom we toil and work today, our children and our grandchildren, particularly my grandchildren, Bradley, Joseph and Victoria, will ever again sense that feeling we experienced in our childhood and enjoyed the institutions that this country Canada afforded to each and every one of us.
In the few moments I have left, let me try to explain what I have just said. One of the worst mistakes we have seen in the Government of Canada in the last several years, perhaps the gravest error, is what this government has attempted to do with respect to the economy. It has tried to change the basic direction of our economy that has been in existence historically for well over 115 years.
The heritage, the wealth of our economy, the employment our economy created in Canada up until the term of office of this government have always been based on a resource-based industry. There is nothing to be ashamed of when we are referred to as the drawers of water and the hewers of wood. As a matter of fact, it is a compliment to all of those who work outside the larger centres in, the forestry industry, the mining industry and the agricultural industry, who on the odd occasion have to get down and get their hands dirty. There is nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that the strength and the wealth of our country is based on our resources.
When we talk about resources, let us just take a moment and see what we have. With respect to my friend from Chatham, in agriculture I think of that wonderful area that produces so many fruits and vegetables in the spring, summer and fall in southwestern Ontario, where I have had the opportunity to participate for so many years.
When we talk of agriculture we are not excluding Ontario and other parts of the country, but our minds go to the west and wheat. Every time we talk about wheat it is synonymous with food. It seems we cannot talk about wheat without thinking of food.
I know that my colleague is thinking of using wheat for other purposes, in the energy business. I compliment him for the work and the tremendous energy that he has put toward that venture.
But wheat is still primarily synonymous with food in our country. When we think of so many people who are hungry not just in Canada but in the world, we have a tremendous challenge in Canada to become the breadbasket of the world, to be able to feed all of those people. Not just to feed the people in Canada, but all of those hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people throughout the world who need wheat and need food. How great it would be for our country to be the leader in providing food for the millions of people who need it.
Our agricultural products can do that. The resources of our farming communities, the wealth that we have in our western provinces, given the opportunity we can produce more than enough food than is necessary throughout the world.
We have resources in energy. We have resources in forestry. It is the largest single industry in Canada. It produces $40 billion a year, $20 billion in export payments. It produces 800,000 jobs a year in this country. We have mining.
Those are all the fundamental industries that make up the resource-based industry that Canada has. We should start to reassess our future economically and put it back to the resource-based industry that has made Canada strong for 115 of the last 124 years. By going back to our roots, to the resource-based industry, we can build a base whereby we can then take a challenge in other areas of the economic spectrum.
I am not sure that we took that direction under this government, under this borrowing bill, and under this budget and the several budgets that have been placed before this House. We have failed to recognize the value of the resource-based industries in this country and, as a result, we find ourselves in the dilemma that we are today.


Giuseppe (Joseph) Volpe: Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow on the heels of my learned colleague who has underscored the real problem with this bill. It indicates that the government, as my colleague from Thunder Bay-Nipigon says, does not have a vision for this country, nor has it indicated a purpose.
March 25, 1992

I would like to concentrate for a moment on the government's record. It is asking for $24.7 billion and Canadians have to ask why. For what reason is this government yet again asking for more money?
Since the 1989 budget there has been a 16.5 per cent increase in government revenues. To all intents and purposes that means that there has been a 16.5 per cent increase in taxation, because that money has had to come from some place, keeping in mind that we are in the middle of a recession.
During that same period, my colleague from Thunder Bay-Nipigon and others on this side of the House will recall for everyone present and all of those who are following this debate that the national debt has increased by a further 27.3 per cent.
So when the government asks for money, there must be a reason for that money, for its utilization. For what purposes do we collect taxes unless we are going to put them to use for our citizens? But as my colleague has indicated, that purpose is not altogether clear.
Before I go on to some of those analyses, it is important or at least instructive for those present to recall that from the time this government came into power in 1984 until this last budget, income taxes have increased by 64 per cent. Sales taxes have increased by 236 per cent. Gasoline taxes, one of the big inducements to cross-border shopping, have increased by 479 per cent. And yet we still have a debt. We have a burgeoning debt. It has gone up by 27.3 per cent over that same period.
Most Canadians might be able to stomach that increase in taxation, all that money. We would say yes, we are willing to contribute to the greater need of our country. But for what purposes has that money been used? Has it been used to redress the regional inequities in this country?
Let us just think for a moment about the population distribution. Atlantic Canada, as one example, houses 8.6 per cent of Canada's population. Yet that population is only able to pay 5.8 per cent in income taxes to our general revenues. When we consider both provincial and federal revenues, they pay 5.7 per cent.
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One might stop and say that is unfair, that they should be paying more. They are incapable of paying more because over the course of the last two Parliaments the government has been unwilling to address a crying need, that is regional disparity.
I will continue again with Atlantic Canada, just to give an indication of how remiss the government has been in addressing the needs of Canadians. When that population, that 8.6 per cent of Canada's population, files its income tax returns, 57.6 per cent of all its net revenues include UI, old age security and family allowances. The people of Atlantic Canada depend on the largess-and that is not a very nice term-of Canadians elsewhere.
By comparison, my own province of Ontario has a much lower distribution or contribution to those types of programs. Despite the fact that the people of Ontario comprise 36.7 per cent of Canada's population, they are contributing 45.7 per cent to national revenues.
We have not addressed the inequities we see through both revenue accumulation and revenue distribution by this government. Even worse, have we addressed the areas where Canadians can grow? Have we addressed the imbalances we see in the economy of the country?
You know as well as others, Mr. Speaker, that about 30 cents out of every dollar earned in Canada comes from international trade. We have a negative balance of trade with Japan, with the European Economic Community, with other OECD countries, and with all other countries. The only country with which we have a positive trade balance is the United States. This in itself is a cause for shame for all of Canada, because we do 75 per cent of our business with the United States. No other country in the world is so dependent on one client, on one market as Canada.
Is this government using the resources it is asking Canadians to contribute for the purposes of redressing these kinds of imbalances?
Even in our trade with the United States we have a negative balance in all areas except that which my hon. colleague from Thunder Bay-Nipigon indicated, and that is in the primary resource area. Imagine, the only positive component of our international trade which contributes 30 cents out of every dollar earned in Canada comes from our primary resources.

March 25, 1992
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In effect we are a Third World economy with a First World standard of living. But for how much longer can we continue in that vein? For how much longer can the economy of Canada sustain the kind of lifestyle to which Canadians have become accustomed or to which they would like to become accustomed? We need only go to some of the less advantaged areas of Canada.
I cited some examples from Atlantic Canada. I think they underscore the disparities we have nation-wide.
The government comes to us today and says: "We want another $24.7 billion". We would be happy to give it that money if we had along with that request an indication of an agenda or an objective the government and this country could follow for the purposes of growth.
My colleagues as well have alluded to the problems that we have in terms of unity. How can we speak of national unity when we appear to be bereft of national purpose? How can we speak about harmony and productivity when the government has essentially abandoned its obligation to address economic disparity on a regional basis, economic disparity on a personal basis, and when its only solution to all ills of this nation is to increase taxation and decrease expenditures.
A study was recently put out about the problems of Canada with respect to its demography, its population, and why it cannot be competitive. It does not mean that Canadians are incapable of producing an intellectual level of inhabitant capable of competing with others world-wide. That is not the problem. In fact once Canadians get to the university stage, the post-graduate degree level and beyond, they can compete with others of similar education world-wide.
The technology of today and the technology of tomorrow require a semi-skilled or skilled worker able to make adjustments from day to day, year to year, and for that they require a high level of education.
Even this government through its ministers has indicated that by the end of this century we will need a minimum of five years of post-secondary school education and/or training for the typical job, for 55 per cent of all jobs that will be created by year 2000.
Through this bill we do not even have an indication of whether the government will in fact put in some adjustment policies, some transitional policies that will help those who are already in the marketplace or in the work field to move over. Nor does it have an indication that it is willing to contribute to the education of tomorrow's citizens, today's young people.
For those reasons we cannot support this bill.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have a chance to speak on Bill C-61. This is the borrowing bill; not boring but borrowing. The government has asked permission to borrow $24.7 billion. Of course it has already told us in the budget how it is going to spend it.
The government has told us it is going to be trying to hold down the national debt by cutting back on payments to provinces, by cutting back on all kinds of services to people, and by cutting back on basic things like health, education and the legal services that people need to defend themselves in the courts against questionable legislation.
The government's argument is that it has to cut back because there is a big national debt and a deficit every year and we are paying all this money on the debt. What it does not tell us is that year by year it has been allowing the richest individuals in the country and the richest, biggest corporations in the country to get away with little or no tax. If these corporations and individuals paid tax even at the rate they did say 20 years ago, we would have more money in the government's coffers to spend than we are spending now and no debt.
It is a con game that the government is playing, to say it has to borrow more money and at the same time it has to cut back on the services that the big majority of the Canadian people need to use like education and health.
I have just a few examples of corporations that make plenty of money but pay no tax. Leading off, there is privatized Air Canada. In 1989 it made $231 million and paid no tax. There is Bramalea, one of the real estate development companies in the metro Toronto area.
March 25, 1992

The cost of shelter has gone up outrageously in Toronto and the Toronto area for the last two or three decades. It is really shameful how people are being forced out of town by the price of housing, and it is largely because of the near-monopolization of land and what can be built on the land by companies like Brama-lea and not only their monopolization of land but their pipeline into the taxpayers' pocket through their tax exemptions. In 1989 Bramalea made $123.1 million before tax and paid no tax.
Canadian Pacific Hotels is a rich, rich corporation. It was given land to build the railroad and run a railroad for the company. Now it is crying poor. It has cut out passenger service on many lines. It has even even cut out whole lines. It is too poor because it hived off the land as separate projects such as CP Hotels. It made $46.9 million in 1989 and it paid what? It paid $2.1 million tax or about 4 per cent, just a pittance compared to the percentage that eveiy working person and many retired people and unemployed people have to pay.
In 1989 Confederation Life Insurance made $103.1 million before tax and paid no tax.
Hemlo Gold Mines, we read about it in the financial pages of The Globe and Mail. It is doing pretty well with $54 million profit before tax and no tax paid. In fact it got a tax rebate. It got $1.9 million given to it from the taxes paid by people who earn much, much less than it does.
Power Financial Corporation, the big shot from Quebec, married to the premier of Quebec, $209.2 million before tax. It did pay a little tax. It paid 3.3 per cent. That is ridiculous.
Tridel Enterprises, another of the outfits that is inflating land price and forcing people out of their homes or forcing people to go to food banks because they have paid it all in their rent, made $79.4 million before tax and paid no tax.
I could go on with dozens and dozens more, but that is not what I want to do. I want to point out some of the taxes that used to be paid and are no longer paid. The big one is the capital gains tax. Anybody can get $100,000 tax-free on capital gains once in his lifetime and even after the $100,000 only three-quarters of the gains would be taxed. Almost all of that goes to the rich. At least half
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of the capital gains goes to the top 1 per cent of the people in this country.
The Prime Minister said years ago: "We need more rich people". He is certainly making them rich by taking the taxes from the poor and giving them to the rich.
There is the business entertainment tax, which is also another $1 billion taken from the taxes of the poor for the rich. There used to be a tax on inheritance, a tax on wealth. There is not any more, and yet there again the bottom 40 per cent of Canada's families own virtually no wealth. In other words, almost half the people in Canada have no wealth that they own. The top 5 per cent of people in Canada own half, 50 per cent, of the wealth of this country. They control the lives of most of the other people in this country. Yet the revenue they get from their wealth is often untaxed and the wealth itself pays no tax. Australia is about the only other industrialized country that does not charge any wealth tax.
When this government cries poor, and says: "We can't give so much to the universities. We can't give so much to health. We have to reduce what we are paying to the public assistance in the provinces", the provinces have to take up the slack because the government has cut people off unemployment insurance through its legislation.
This government says it cannot afford to pay the share that years ago it promised to pay. It is absolutely false. The only thing it needs to do is restore the tax system that we used to have 20 years ago and it would be able to pay all these things and have money left over.
My party will not be voting for this borrowing bill. We have to make a protest against the way this government is deceiving the Canadian people and robbing them.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I recognize the hon. member for South Shore on a point of order.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations and an agreement has been reached not to see the clock until the hon. member for Ottawa West has completed her remarks, at which time the question will be put with the vote deferred until tomorrow afternoon at six o'clock.

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Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, I do not imagine that that motion gives me unlimited time tonight to speak as long as I want. I will respect the normal time limit on speeches.
However, as I was sitting here preparing to speak on a bill that authorizes the borrowing of $24 billion, I was thinking, what are we going to do with that money? What are we creating? I tend to think often in terms of what are we creating for our children.
I think this country, our history, everything we have achieved has been based on having an eye on the future, constantly having a vision of where we are heading, what we hope to accomplish, where our place is in the world. It started long ago at the time of Confederation when we had this crazy and wonderful dream that somehow this handful of people living in the eastern part of the north half of the North American continent could create a country that would eventually spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and to the Arctic Ocean.
It seemed like an unachievable dream but people believed in it and they started investing in it because they knew what it could mean for the future. They saw the expanse of a continent with vast resources, tremendous natural beauty and all kinds of potential.
We invested in a transportation system. Later we invested in a communications network. Still later we started investing in a social network so that the people who lived in the various climates of this country, the various parts of Canada, could share opportunities together and could have a sense of belonging because somehow different though we were, far from each other as we were, we all shared a common purpose as a nation. We all shared a common commitment to our future together.
When I was leaving high school, it was a wonderful time to be leaving high school. No young person coming out of school, whether they were going on to university or starting to work, really had to wonder whether they were going to be able to get a job and earn an income. The opportunities were there in Canada at that time, lots of opportunities.
Yet we are at a time now where when I talk to my constituents, when I listen to them on the telephone, when I go to meetings and I talk casually to people in a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon, what do I hear? I hear fear, I hear despair, I hear cynicism, I hear anger. Mostly I hear fear, fear about whether we are
going to have a future, fear about whether there will be opportunities for our children, fear about whether we are going to be able to breathe the air that protects our earth, fear about whether we can trust our elected representatives and our political leaders to manage our resources wisely so that for the next 125 years, as for the past 125, Canadians can believe in the future, can believe in equality, can believe in sharing and can believe in opportunities for all our children.
This budget, perhaps more than any other, feeds that sense of fear because it really turns a blind eye to the main concerns of Canadians and to the main challenges that confront us in the next year. It turns a blind eye to the more than 1.5 million Canadians who are unemployed, to another 2.5 million who are living on social assistance and to all the spouses and children of those individuals who are also caught in that trap of no hope and no fulfilment through employment in our society.
I talked to seniors which I met in my constituency office last Friday afternoon who are worried that now that the co-op program has been cancelled, the co-operative they built together for themselves half a dozen years ago will somehow be deprived of subsidies and that they will not be able to afford to live in the housing that they built under the co-operative housing program.
I see that the spending on social housing is going to be limited to an increase which may be lower than the rate of inflation and indeed their fears about whether they can continue to live in the housing that they built themselves may indeed be valid.
I see words being used that do not really describe the situation. I see what I can best call duplicity in this budget. People are concerned about the environment. The government knows this is one of the main concerns of Canadians. It also knows it is one of our main economic opportunities to create a special area of Canadian expertise in the global marketplace. Yet we have the green plan that was going to be the government's great contribution to saving the environment and suddenly the expenditures for that program are being re-profiled. Now you can re-profile upward or you can re-profile downward. Why does the government not simply say honestly: "We are not putting the money into the green plan because we do not believe in it. It was a nice little public relation gesture but if it is going to cost us money we are not going to invest in the environment".
March 25, 1992

That is another area where our children wonder what is their future. Are they going to have clean water they can drink? Are they going to have woods they can walk in? Are they going to have air they can breathe? Are they going to have land we can grow our food on?
We have the cancellation of a whole group of agencies that have provided an important public role by monitoring, not the short-term objectives of government but what the long-term objectives for the nation should be.
The cancellation of the Science Council of Canada, the Economic Council, the Law Reform Commission, the Pay Research Bureau are the destruction of institutions that make an invaluable contribution. Government members can get up as often as they want and say: "Knowledge is the key to our future. Our human resources and investing in our people are the key to our future". They then cancel and obliterate those bodies that keep us on track investing in research and development, in ensuring we are establishing a healthy economy, in ensuring that we are investing in the training that we need, in ensuring that our laws continue to protect the rights of Canadians.
If those kinds of institutions which allow us to work for the future and plan for the future are not longer there, then we really are back to decision making based on tomorrow's poll or next week's election. That is not what Canadians are counting on us for in this House.
That is not what the next generation is counting on us for. They want us investing in training. They want us investing in knowledge so that in the near future we will not have 35 per cent of our young children not even finishing high school and we will not have 15 per cent of our population illiterate and not even able to function in a modem society in normal day to day living.
Yet we have had continual cutbacks in training budgets by the government. We have had continual cutbacks in funding to education-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to order made earlier today I will now put the question to the House.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Private Members' Business


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: In my opinion the nays have it.
Pursuant to order made earlier today a recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred until 6 p.m. tomorrow.
It being seven o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 30(6), the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier) moved:: Thai, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of developing, in co-operation with the provinces, regional municipalities and other municipalities, a national water treatment, waste water treatment and storm sewer program to ensure a more secure and healthy environment for Canadians.
He said: Mr. Speaker, the motion I present today, which was seconded by the hon. member for Northumberland-for which my profound thanks-was tabled on May 15, 1991. Its purpose is to develop, in co-operation with the provinces, regional municipalities and other municipalities, a national water treatment, waste water treatment and storm sewer program to ensure a more secure and healthy environment for Canadians.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
Mr. Speaker, I have tabled the same motion in every session since 1987, because I believe the problem is a serious one and deserves our undivided attention. I read yesterday in Le Droit that the provincial premiers meeting in Toronto were asking for a similar program which they felt would bring the country out of this recession.
I am very pleased this item was also on the agenda today at the First Ministers' Conference on the Economy, and I hope the federal government will stop shirking its responsibility in this respect.
The Liberal Party has for many years recognized the urgency of dealing with the problems of municipal infrastructure. On September 22, 1988, Mr. John Thmer, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada at the time and Leader of the Official Opposition, promised that the Liberal government would implement a national program to rebuild municipal infrastructure.
On January 31, 1992, our present leader, Mr. Chretien, reconfirmed this commitment. He promised federal subsidies totalling $1 billion. Nearly two-thirds of the jobs created as a result of this decision would be in the construction and industrial sectors, while 90 per cent of the materials used in construction would be Canadian made.
Mr. Speaker, studies have shown that a federal investment of $1 billion in infrastructure, considering the additional tax revenues and the savings in unemployment insurance and welfare, would represent a net cost to Canada of only $300 million. Mr. Chretien said at the time that the initial investment of $1 billion would take advantage of lower debt charges as a result of falling interest rates.

Everybody agrees that such an infrastructure program would be of benefit to Canada. Pat MacMahon, the director of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Mayor of Yellowknife is reported as saying in the Toronto Star of December 18, 1991 and I quote:
The key to kick-starting the economy is to get unemployed blue and white collar workers on a job, paying taxes and spending again. The reality is that this country's municipal infrastructure is crumbling. The money would not only finance job creation but make the municipalities more attractive to business and residents.
Doug Peters, executive vice-president and chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank said, and I quote from the Toronto Star of December 18, 1991:
It's a hell of a good idea. These kinds of programs have had a high job content and very little waste in the past.
George Saba, chief economist for Montreal Trust said in the Toronto Star of December 18, 1991 that public spending at the local level is an attractive proposal because, and I quote Mr. Saba:
We're not spending to consume, we're spending to invest.
The Canadian Labour Congress also supported the program. It said:
Anything that stimulates job growth and gives our domestic market
some security after the ravages of free trade will help.

Mr. Michel Rivard, president of the executive committee of the Quebec City urban community, said and I quote:
Every day, 500,000 litres of waste water are dumped into the St.
Lawrence, 51 metric tonnes of suspended waste. The total amount
dumped daily is three times the volume of the Quebec City coliseum
or the volume of 15,000 garbage trucks.
Mr. Speaker, this testimony was heard by the Liberal committee on infrastructure in Canada.
Does this make any sense at all, at a time when in Canada we are spending million of dollars to clean up our waterways? We are spending million of dollars to clean up rivers like the St. Lawrence, while obsolete or simply non-existent infrastructure is polluting our waterways.
In my own riding of Ottawa-Vanier, Mr. Claude Laviolette, director of public works with the city of Vanier, said that it would take $600,000 a year for five years to repair the widespread deterioration of our highway system that has taken place during the past five years. This while Vanier already invested $300,000 in 1991 and the same amount again in 1992. Like most local municipalities, the city of Vanier has already spent its total budget for snow removal this year and will have to reduce amounts that would normally have been earmarked for rehabilitation of aging infrastructure.
According to Mr. Leo Goyer, who acts as commissioner for the Department of Environmental Services in Ottawa-Carleton, the region will have to spend $285 million over the next 10 years to maintain its infrastructure and protect the environment for our water supply. It will spend almost as much-$200 million during the same period-on waste water treatment. A municipal infrastructure program would allow the region to ease the substantial tax increases taxpayers have faced in recent years. This increase has doubled the cost of water in the last 10 years. The sewer surcharge has gone from 5 per cent to 106 per cent in the past four or five years.
March 25, 1992

According to Mr. Goyer, the RMOC has lost ground on the prevention front and a tripartite federal-provincial-municipal program would help slow the deterioration.
My city, Ottawa, for its part must spend $830 million to rebuild its outdated infrastructure. For lack of federal aid, the city of Ottawa will need 20 to 35 years to rebuild its roads, sidewalks and sewers. It will take 20 years to redo an essential project for separating the storm and sanitary sewers in downtown Ottawa. These costs do not even include normal system maintenance.
In a letter he sent to me on October 25, 1988, then-Mayor Durrell of Ottawa wrote:
The never-ending discussions to find who is responsible, like those to date with the federal government, only make matters worse. The federal government has already helped municipalities, so it knew about the state of urban infrastructure. However, the situation has never been as urgent as it is today.
Mr. Speaker, the municipal infrastructure program is of the utmost importance. If we want to leave a healthy environment for our children and the generations that will come after us, we must act quickly. Canada's highway system, an investment of over $100 billion, is now threatened by inadequate funding.
In Ontario, 138 of 371 sewage treatment plants do not meet provincial standards. In Newfoundland, more than
48,000	homes do not have adequate water and sewage services and 80 per cent of the population drinks improperly treated water.
In 1986, Canadians spent more than $80 million for bottled drinking water. It is unbelievable that in Canada, the richest country in drinking water, we spent $80 million to buy bottled water!
As the Liberal report on Canadian infrastructure indicates, this is hardly a surprise when we know that the residents of many Canadian regions cannot eat fish from the lakes and rivers that supply their drinking water, because that fish poses a threat to their health.
Private Members' Business
What about the beaches, right here in the capital, which are closed to bathers during the summer because of too much pollution caused by sewage? We can think of Mooney's Bay, Westboro Beach, Constance Bay, Britannia Beach and many others which are completely closed because of water pollution.
In Ottawa, there have been many cases of ground water contamination, not from septic tanks, but from municipal dumps where household and industrial rubbish are buried. During the degradation process of the rubbish, some liquids leak and eventually, through gravity, contaminate ground water. Worse still, in some cases drinking water is contaminated by highly polluting industrial rubbish such as polychlorinated biphenyls, shellac, solvents, as well as heavy metals.
The federal government is certainly aware of the problem since, as I said last week, it contributed to polluting our water by pouring toxic products in it. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, pollution is not only an issue of municipal jurisdiction. It is a national issue and we have to do something about it.
In a report entitled "A Green Plan for a Green Canada", a committee composed of representatives from aboriginal organizations and groups for the protection of the environment wrote: "The federal government has had a great influence on the evolution of Canadian cities. It must continue to play a role and make those cities more pleasant by participating in the solution of problems such as air and water pollution, as well as the elimination of waste. The federal responsibility as regards the protection of Canadians' health is in itself sufficient justification for the government to be a leader and to take energic action."
The contribution of the federal government in the development of infrastructure is not something new. The main contribution of the federal government in the development of water and water treatment systems was made through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1961 and ended in 1980 with the program for community equipment such as main sewers, water supply systems, aqueducts, and all those things.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
At that time I was parliamentary secretary for the urban affairs minister and I can tell you that the program was very well received. It also created jobs here in Canada and made an important contribution to municipalities by helping them meet their needs for drinking water.
In my opinion, the allegations made by the President of the Treasury Board, and even by the Deputy Prime Minister, to the effect that the federal government does not have to get involved in municipal infrastructure is false. The federal government has been involved in the past and it must again face its responsibilities.
The municipal governments alone are not responsible for water resources and roads; these are a social responsibility of all levels of government. If a municipality does not have the funds needed to set up sewage treatment plants, it will dump its waste water into our lakes and rivers, as many municipalities now do. In fact, only two thirds of Canadians are connected to sewage treatment facilities. Who suffers? Everyone, the surrounding cities, towns and villages, the provinces, the federal government that tries to clean up our rivers. Ironically, Mr. Speaker, our cities, towns and villages still allow sewage to go untreated into our rivers. We suffer and future generations will suffer as a result.
Can we continue to neglect such a precious resource as pure drinking water? The provinces, municipalities, environmentalists, economists-everyone agrees that a municipal infrastructure program is essential. Not only would it help improve the quality of life for Canadians and clean up the environment for future generations but we trust that it would give hope to the 1.4 million unemployed Canadians, according to the statistics for February 1992, and perhaps provide work as well for the
2.3	million on welfare. According to figures I obtained, in March 1991, 2.3 million people collected welfare benefits.
So, Mr. Speaker, we absolutely must have a national program to help municipalities set up water purification systems to preserve water quality. The sewage infrastructure may be invisible in many cases, but the results are not. However, in many municipalities, the infrastructure is a hundred years old and needs to be restored.
In a debate not long ago here in this House, I said that even in Ottawa, there were still wooden sewer pipes. Imagine! They won't last long, Mr. Speaker. We must act.
At a time when the environment dominates Canadians' thinking and influences their everyday action, how can we afford not to have more efficient infrastructure for a healthier environment?
As with any other environmental problem, the solution lies at the bottom of the problem. Let us therefore start at the grass roots and give cities, towns and villages adequate municipal infrastructure for a healthier, cleaner environment. Many municipalities have outdated infrastructure that does not even meet government standards. For lack of financial resources and government programs, they cannot make the required improvements.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, a recognized leader in the movement to solve the very serious crisis that we are going through, said in 1988 that over $15 billion would have to be invested in Canada's sewers and roads. Three years later, the total is now $20 billion and will keep on growing if the problem is not solved as soon as possible.
Mr. Speaker, that is why it is important to act now. The motion that I present to you gives the government an opportunity to act. I therefore call on the government to follow through on this proposal and give Canada an appropriate municipal infrastructure for water and sewage treatment so that we can leave our children a healthy, beautiful, clean country.


Barbara Greene: Mr. Speaker, this motion urges the establishment of a national waste water treatment and storm water program, purportedly to ensure a more secure and healthy environment for Canadians. It reflects the concern of many Canadians about the quality of their drinking water, the health of our rivers and lakes, and the state of disrepair of the infrastructure in some of our cities and towns. Indeed, some Canadian municipalities are now facing an $8 billion to $10 billion bill to shore up crumbling water and sewer treatment and delivery systems.
However, is a national program the answer to this dilemma? Absolutely not. I think such a program would be fiscally irresponsible. It would not encourage municipal accountability to their taxpayers. It would not reward municipalities that have practised prudent management of their infrastructure and it would not encourage conservation and careful treatment of one of our most valuable natural resources.
March 25, 1992

The jurisdiction for municipal infrastructure is quite clear. It is provincial. This is one of the most basic provincial responsibilities and one that should not be interfered with at a time when all levels of government are trying to rationalize and streamline governmental programs.
As well, any such new initiative would be totally inconsistent with the federal government's own imperative of deficit reduction. However, this does not mean that the federal government has no interest in a fiscally sound solution to the infrastructure problem. The federal government, in fact, has come up with a realistic and permanent solution in its federal water policy-realistic water pricing.
Realistic water pricing would make users conscious of the real value of the resource and delivery systems and would reduce the demand on those systems. It would encourage efficiency through improved technology and lead to water conservation. Indeed, provinces should prepare timetables and require municipalities to submit plans to bring their water and pollution control systems up to standard.
The Canadian municipal water industry is large and diversified. One indicator of its size is that the industry pumps over five billion cubic metres of water through its systems every year. What is too often forgotten is that there is a return trip for this water and a substantial and costly job of cleaning up the water through sewage treatment. This is a major industry in its own right, generating $3 billion in annual revenues. It serves municipalities of all sizes and types in every area of the country.
Since water is produced to potable standards, this industry has heavy responsibilities in the public health area. It delivers service around the clock at bargain basement prices, an average of about 60 cents per cubic metre as of 1991. Because the industry is so well run it rarely reaches the public spotlight. But believe me, there is no more important industry in the country or one that touches more Canadians' everyday lives and yet the municipal water industry is currently beset with problems. Perhaps the most serious of these involves insufficient money to repair, upgrade and expand its physical plant to assure its long-term viability.
Private Members' Business
Why should these problems have arisen? It is because the industry has catered to our every wish for water servicing, giving us all the water we want and at the prices we want. This is the key to answering why the industry has such financial difficulties.
These issues lie at the centre of the private member's motion. They deserve our careful consideration in assessing the options available to reach a solution.
First of all, let us begin with the stated policy of this government. The green plan and the federal water policy both support the user-pay principle for water servicing. The water policy states this in terms of using realistic pricing to meet the full cost of supplying water and treating the resulting waste.
The federal government has consistently declined to co-sponsor a general financing program for repairing, upgrading and expanding water systems. Instead, the federal water policy maintains that there should be much more emphasis placed on demand-side measures to improve municipal water management.
These measures include more effective pricing arrangements for water servicing, better public education, the adoption of universal metering and much more research and development of new equipment and new management methods.
I know that in my municipality in the city of North York, when we changed our water pricing from a bulk discount to a flat rate for everybody, we had enormous changes with major manufacturers where they suddenly put in recycling equipment and practised conservation. Throughout this country there are many municipalities that do not even have water meters on every home and business in their particular municipality. These are simply measures that are no longer acceptable in this day and age. So the issue of water pricing is a crucial one. It both explains why the Canadian industry is financially non-viable at the present time and offers the solution to the problem.
Municipal water services are extremely cheap in Canada today. The average residence pays under $20 per month to have water delivered through the public system and the waste removed. This is less than the monthly cost of cable television.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
I ask you, which is more important? Put another way, as mentioned already, a cubic metre of water, which is the amount an average residence uses daily, costs about 60 cents. This, incidentally, includes charges for sewage treatment. For the sake of comparison, a soft drink of similar quantity costs about $800.
In earlier years the senior levels of government contributed heavily to the cost of water infrastructure. The federal government alone contributed about $2 billion between 1961 and 1978. Because of its deficit reduction program and also because of efforts at fiscal disentanglement, it stopped this program in 1980. The provinces are now faced with major commitments of their own and are coming to the same conclusion; that is, if user-pay makes sense anywhere it is in the area of municipal infrastructure.
This leads to the conclusion that such funding will have to come from local sources in the future, primarily through user-pay pricing policies.
It is the role of the federal government to encourage resource managers to manage their resources wisely, not to fund infrastructure. Let us look in more detail at the economic issues involved and how local government can handle this problem.
It is estimated that the backlog of work required for water system renovation is in the neighbourhood of $10 billion. This money is required to put Canada's water infrastructure into adequate shape to meet the requirements of the future. Major areas requiring work are the Great Lakes basin and St. Lawrence River basin, the lower Fraser basin and much of the Atlantic provinces.
We know that municipalities have annual water rate revenues totalling about $3 billion nation-wide. For Ontario alone this total is $1.3 billion. We also know that water bills, on average, are below $20 per month, less than the cost of a case of beer.
If municipalities were to double their water prices, imposing no onerous burden on users, the additional revenue raised would fall somewhere between $2 billion and $2.5 billion annually. Even if one subtracts a small loss of revenue due to the resulting conservation efforts
and rationalization of water demand, the revenue raising capability of such a move would still be enormous.
A connection to the infrastructure financing problem is clear: A doubling of water rates would, in the aggregate, raise sufficient funds to self-finance within five years the requirements of water infrastructure renovation.
These are average figures. There would be variations from community to community. Since the job is so big, it would take a decade or more to carry out.
Some municipalities could start quickly, others would take years to get going, others have already done this. In any event, governments would want to phase in this renovation over the long term rather than generate a cost-exploding boom.
Many benefits would accrue from user-pay pricing for water services. Decreased demands would occur automatically and would lower over the long run the capital needs for expanding systems. Increased local expenditures on properly financed infrastructure renewal would put the country back to work. A user-pay approach would also target specific local needs and increase efficiency significantly.
The problem with general funding programs is that they may cross-subsidize richer communities at the expense of poorer ones, and large users at the expense of small and often lower income ones.
On a more general level, there is little doubt that where resource prices reflect the true costs of developing or obtaining resource supplies, societies become more efficient. For example, nations which passed along the full cost of energy price hikes in the 1970s are now the most well-off in terms of the GNP and other aggregate measures. Countries which protect the consumers from the full impact have deteriorated with respect to their international economic position. Thus, resource evaluation policies have a direct effect on economic advancement.
Exactly the same factors work with respect to water supplies. The full-cost, user-pay pricing forms one element of enhancing Canada's competitiveness.
It is undeniable that user-pay pricing holds the key to a renewed municipal water industry. General funding programs in effect perpetuate the economic inadequa-
March 25, 1992

cies of the current system. We need to promote more efficient resource use and improve management methods in the industry. User-pay pricing presents a major opportunity to achieve this.
This is the federal role, and within it the federal government is encouraging water resource management agencies at the local level to institute appropriate water conservation and sustainable programs through the development and demonstration of these options.


Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to congratulate the member for Ottawa-Vanier for his motion, it is a noteworthy one. We must be persistent in this area of municipal infrastructure. He has tackled it in a creative way by isolating water from the whole area of municipal infrastructure, which I certainly endorse.
However, I am also quite realistic. If this is ever to happen I suggest that when the federal government does come onside-and it would certainly appear from the previous member's statement that this government is not prepared to get involved in a big way, although I understand there may have been a positive announcement earlier today. I have no details of that. I believe it pertains to the highway system in this country. I would salute such an initiative.
Nevertheless, isolating the water and isolating the roadways are both positive initiatives. However, I hope that anything that will be done will be under a tripartite agreement among the three levels of government. I do not believe that any one level can afford to decide what must be done for the communities and for the infrastructure of this country.
It is absolutely imperative that we all participate because the price tag has risen from $12 billion to $15 billion and now to $20 billion and everyone is still saying: "We can't afford to do it." When will we be able to afford to do it? We could not afford to do it in good times. We cannot afford to do it in bad times. There are no other times available to us.
In the meantime the infrastructure of the country is crumbling beneath us. I will give some examples later on.
I would like to quote an individual by the name of Don Gamble. He says: "Water is to Canadians as the Alps are to the Swiss, something that transcends the resource. It is so much a part of how Canadians see themselves. We
Private Members' Business
are a land of rivers and lakes. Our history is built on it". The previous speaker said: "Well, it is your water, but we sure as heck want to charge you for it".
Marjorie Lamb asks: "Will our great-grandchildren be able to drink the water we use to hose down the dog?" That is an interesting statement because I read that 100 municipalities in this country pour raw sewage into the waterways. What a damnable statistic to even quote. I am poetic today. I have been reminded of the line: "water water everywhere". However, there may not be anything to drink and that must be a concern.
This jurisdictional argument has to stop because, as the government says, there is only one taxpayer. Surely this issue demands that all three levels participate on an issue that is important to all Canadians.
The government talks about a prosperity agenda and competitiveness. If we are to become competitive and there is indeed prosperity around the comer, for which we all wish so very much, will our infrastructure be able to accommodate this new prosperity if our bridges, our roadways, our sewer systems and our water resources are not capable of handling the new economy which we hope will burgeon? Of course, we are still waiting.
How serious is it? Japan, and I do not want to follow everything that Japan does, has embarked on a municipal infrastructure renewal to the tune of a trillion dollars. It recognizes that it is going to have to address this problem now. Japan is not waiting and saying: "Well it is not our responsibility, it must be somebody else's".
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been lobbying and has spoken loud and clear for years and years and years on this issue.
Parties from time to time have come onside and said: "Yes, we endorse it". The Liberal Party did support municipal infrastructure until the early eighties. It did so in an ad hoc way. It would participate in individual programs but never participated in a national agenda, which is now absolutely essential. It too dropped out of that scene even on an ad hoc basis. This federal government has basically dropped out of it completely.
One of the ministers, I have forgotten who it was, said: "We don't get much of a bang for our buck. If we participate in municipal infrastructure we don't get the credit that perhaps we are deserving of for the money we put in". FCM has been extremely persistent, it tabled a report just a month ago.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
I would like to add that just about everybody is for this. They are in favour of it. For heaven's sake even Matthew Barrett, the president of the Bank of Montreal, said: "Let's reduce the interest rates, let's take those hundreds of millions of dollars from that and invest it in the infrastructure". He is an unlikely individual to come forward and make a statement like that. We salute him, we salute the premiers, we salute the provincial governments and we salute the 1,200 plus municipalities across the country that are saying that we have to address this problem. It would appear that the only people that are not onside is this government.
The previous speaker talked about the deficit. We are for deficit reduction. All studies exaggerate sometimes, but we can cut it off somewhere in the middle. It says: "Tax revenues generated by this public works project would limit the effect on the accumulated national debt to a little more than $400 million over five years. At the same time, 63,000 jobs would be created for each year of the program". Money well spent.
FCM made a commitment to seven basic principles. I am sure the member for Ottawa-Vanier knows that the first principle was the need for access to clean water for all Canadians. It lists water as number one.
I have a whole series of clippings and I would like to cite a few. Paradise, Newfoundland is a town of 4,000 people, 10 minutes from St. John's. Only 20 per cent of Paradise is serviced with water and sewer: "We require about $8 million from government to provide full servicing and we received $50,000". It is the same for towns throughout Newfoundland: Pouch Cove, Portugal Cove, Bell Island, Paradise, Conception Bay South, Conception Harbour, Collier's and Marysvale. They do not have potable drinking water.
That is another point that we should point out. Much of our infrastructure was built in the 1940s. The life of most infrastructure is 20 to 25 years. It is 50 years later and it is not being replaced. The cost of maintenance is much more costly than replacement. Studies have shown that it will cost us 10 times as much if we ignore the maintenance of our infrastructure system.
In Halifax and Dartmouth raw waste streams through clay and brick sewers straight into the harbour, as it has for 100 years. Winnipeg needs $145 million to improve preventive maintenance at its sewage facility.
My own community says: "We need $15 million a year to take care of our infrastructure. Our community invests $5 million". It cannot afford to do anything else. I think most communities are in the same position. Our major employer cannot pay its taxes.
How could a member get up and say: "It's up to the cities, increase their user-pays. Let us have user-pay for everything including water, our greatest resource". Perhaps this government wants to sell it. I wonder if it will charge them the user-pay fee it might want to charge Canadians and it is our own water. Again I salute the member for Ottawa-Vanier. I think it is a veiy noteworthy motion and I hope the government is listening.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, first I want congratulate my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier for his motion. It is extremely timely, especially in light of the fact that health and health issues have been identified by Canadians as priority issues.
We will go from Newfoundland to the north. We will go from coast to coast. In Yellowknife: "Massive decay is not unique to old cities or to large ones. In the late 1940s in Yellowknife, the federal government installed a corrugated metal sewer system lined with moss for insulation. In the early 1980s work crews dug down to the pipes and found nothing left but a gelatinous tube of moss through which sewage still flowed".
The motion deals with the question of water and water quality but I just want to shift a little bit from that to talk about a task force which I co-chaired with my colleague from Nepean. Last year with the help of my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier and other colleagues in our Liberal caucus, we travelled across Canada to meet with people who are at the municipal level and dealing with the issue up close.

March 25, 1992

I want to tell you this. When we came back, we prepared a report that clearly makes the case for federal assistance. We were in certain parts of Nova Scotia where raw sewage is being dumped directly into the ocean. As well, in some parts of Canada they have no infrastructure whatsoever. For instance in certain parts of Newfoundland, in fact in the vast majority of Newfoundland, sewage treatment plants simply do not exist at all.
From town to town, from city to city, day after day, we heard the same story from officials, that unless they get some sort of federal assistance, there is no way they will be able to rely on the local tax base to update their infrastructure. Why I say infrastructure is because we have run-off coming as a result of deficiencies in the existing systems that takes rain and whatever residues that might fall into sewage systems and takes it directly into the sewage treatment plants before it is sent back to the rivers. The messier the sewer system is, the more difficult it is for us to treat it and as the result of that there is cost involved. Unless we do quality work at that end, when it comes to water purification and water treatment, we are going to pay the cost.
I do not have to reiterate and make the case all over again for the need for federal government funds in the area of infrastructure. I think the Leader of the Opposition has made the case very well when he committed our party to put funds toward infrastructure. He has committed the Liberal Party to enter into a partnership with the provinces and the municipalities in the area of infrastructure simply because our party recognized the fact that with that kind of partnership you not only help the municipalities, you deal with the problem. At the same time you encourage economic growth, you encourage economic development and you create jobs, you generate revenues, you activate the economies and you collect more taxes. Every dollar you put in, I could assure you that probably you get another dollar at the other end in terms of revenues from different sources.
We have to look at the whole issue as an investment rather than looking at it as expenditures. There are things we have to consider as expenditures, but there are others things we have to look at as investment. Certainly putting money into infrastructure is an investment.
Private Members' Business
When my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier addresses the question of water, he is certainly recognizing full well the fact that a series of other things have to take place as well.
I want to commend him because as I indicated earlier, it is a timely motion. Being a member of this House from this region, the member recognizes the fact that there are deficiencies in our Ottawa-Carleton region. I want to list the different water facilities in our region and bring to the attention of the House the cost to maintain those facilities and bring them up to date.
For example, the Ottawa-Carleton region with a population of approximately 600,000 has a few facilities, one of which is called the Britannia Water Filtration Plant. This facility is currently under construction at a cost of $33.5 million. This facility is required in order to increase production capability from 225 million litres per day to 360 million litres per day so that the tremendous needs of the community can be met.
We have another plant, the Lemieux Island Filtration Plant, which is 50 years old. We have to retrofit this plant immediately at a cost of $37 million.
Also, at the present time the Ottawa-Carleton region is studying the water filtration plant process modifications in order to maintain state-of-the-art treated water quality. These modifications will cost the region approximately $23 million and will provide for potential deterioration of raw water quality and anticipated enhanced provincial standards.
As a result of provincial government direction to this region, water filtration plant waste water disposal will be required. That particular project will cost this region $38 million.
In order to sustain development in our region in the major growth areas of Orleans, Hazeldean, and Barrha-ven, additional reservoir and pumping facilities costing approximately $40 million must be undertaken within the next few years. In a region with a population of approximately 600,000 people the need is now in excess of $172 million. That is not the total cost.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention that completion of sewage treatment facilities for this region is going to cost in excess of $400 million.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
Every time work is to be done on a sewage treatment plant or on water facilities, it is necessary to go to the source of the problem and that is the sewage system itself. When you have water run-off and raw sewage, you have to separate the systems so they will be easier to deal with at the end of the day. That particular project will cost in excess of $1 billion at both the regional and municipal levels.
The reason I bring those issues to your attention, Mr. Speaker, is that day after day our municipalities are faced with tremendous pressure to provide services that otherwise should be provided by the provincial or federal government. To that extent, when we consider water purification, the need for water purification plants and the need for federal funding for water purification plants across our country, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vani-er knows full well that water if not properly treated is going to affect the health of the nation.
Knowing full well that health is everybody's business, federally, provincially, as well as municipally, it is only fair for the federal government to recognize its role and responsibility to provide services in the area.
Having heard the eloquent presentation of my colleagues in the House of Commons, it seems there is a tremendous consensus on this issue.
In conclusion I would like to ask this House for its unanimous approval of the motion as presented by my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier and I would like to commend him on his excellent work in the area.


Mr. Denis Pronovost (Saint-Maurice):: Mr. Speaker, I would say that the motion the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier has put before this House today is very well-intentioned. He wants Canadians to have access to good quality drinking water supplies. I think that no one can object to such a wish, as formulated by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier.
However, what I am somewhat more reluctant about, especially after the speech he made, is his approach. He wants the federal government, as heavily in debt as it is-everybody knows that Canada's national debt of Canada, the federal debt has now reached $400 billionto take a whip and flog itself some more by increasing spending on something that is outside its jurisdiction.
I think that the Canadian people, including the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, know full well that water purification-because the motion he has put to us is indeed about water purification or water treatment-is primarily a municipal responsibility. Whether you live in Quebec, in Ontario or in any other Canadian province, with the exception of Indian reservations, this responsibility is entirely, primarily and directly incumbent upon the municipal authorities. Water purification, be it in Shawinigan, in the municipality of Saint-Georges-de-Champlain, in my riding, or in the city of Ottawa or the city of Vanier, for that matter, is a municipal responsibility.
Over and above that level of government, the provinces have responsibilities too, because municipalities are an arm of the provincial government. Thke for instance a case I am familiar with, Mr. Speaker, that of Quebec. In that province, we have an organization called the Societe quebecoise d'assainissement des eaux which has been operating in Quebec since the 1970s. It is responsible for cariying out, in conjunction with the municipalities, cities, towns and parishes of the province, an extensive water purification program.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, come to think of it, that organization has nearly completed what it had set out to do. It was responsible for building new water treatment systems in most of Quebec's regions, and in most cases it did. For instance, in Montreal, vast water treatment systems were built by the city, in co-operation with the Quebec government.
In my region, in the electoral district of Saint-Maurice, the same procedure was followed in many cases. About 10 years ago, the town of Grand'Mere and the Societe quebecoise d'assainissement des eaux were involved in building one of these systems, which is now being paid for by taxpayers. Next door, Shawinigan will be doing this shortly. They have been waiting for about 10 years, but now money is available from the Government of Quebec and the municipalities of Shawinigan and Shawinigan South. It means that taxpayers in Shawinigan and Shawinigan South, thanks to up to 90 per cent funding by the Societe quebecoise d'assainissement des eaux, will be able to deal with local water treatment problems.
March 25, 1992

However, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier would like to have a pan-Canadian water treatment company in addition to the municipal authorities and the Societe quebecoise d'assainissement des eaux. Mr. Speaker, I think we already have more than enough overlap and that Canadian municipalities also have the authority to tax their residents. When they want to do construction, build an arena or repair sewer or water mains, every Canadian municipality has that authority. The Quebec government can provide assistance, and I imagine the same is true in other provinces.
So why are the Liberals again tabling a motion to get the federal government to spend even more money, a government that already has far more debt than the provinces or the municipalities? Why should we get the federal government deeper into debt and make it harder for this government to do what it already does, instead of letting the municipalities and provincial governments take care of this?
A while ago, the member for Ottawa-Vanier shocked us by saying we should be crying because in Ottawa, imagine, in Ottawa, our nation's capital there are still wooden sewer pipes. I think we could find the same in many Canadian towns. However, discovering a problem is very different from wanting to solve it.
If there are still sewer pipes made of wood in Ottawa, it does not concern the federal government in any way. Although, for this city, it is somewhat of a habit to call upon the federal government. As you know, Mr. Speaker, Ottawa is privileged compared to the average Canadian city. I know the member for Ottawa-Vanier will not be pleased when hearing this but Ottawa's infrastructure is paid in part by Canadian taxpayers, through the National Capital Commission which invests millions and millions of dollars in embellishing and improving the city. In Shawinigan, there is no national capital commission for Shawinigan to bolster the city's budget by picking the pockets of Canadian taxpayers.
That's why I think the member for Ottawa-Vanier should find another reason for us to cry about Ottawa's fate because it is the only city in Canada which can enjoy a face-lift paid for by all Canadians. In fact, I have nothing against that. Ottawa is our national capital and it is probably an essential part of the federal government's
Private Members' Business
role to take on some of the capital's responsibilities. We should however stay within reasonable limits. There are citizens here in Ottawa, Mr. Speaker, there are Ottawa taxpayers and they must bear their share of the burden.
If some sewer pipes burst this evening in Ottawa, the city must look into it and pay for the necessary repairs out of its own municipal budget. To use the Canadian taxpayers' money for such a purpose is next to indecent.
The member for Ottawa-Vanier brought up another very important subject; the drinking of bottled waters of all sorts in Canada. He mentioned a total of $80 million, and he is right. But you should compare that with the situation in Scandinavian countries-Sweden, Finland and Norway-where the same phenomenon exists, Mr. Speaker.
The truth is that, according to very precise studies, the quality of bottled water in Canada in no better than the quality of municipal tap water. People don't believe that, but this is what studies show. Without exception, studies done by provincial governments show that tap water in most Canadian cities is of the same quality as bottled water, and in some instances even better.
So when he says that because Canadians spend $80 million on bottled water we should commit billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money to solve that problem, I say it ispsychological more than anything else.
I would go even further, Mr. Speaker. Canadian lakes have waters of excellent quality. We have people who specialize in bottling water of good quality, but despite that Canadians prefer water imported from France like Perrier or Evian. They are the two best sellers in Canada, not Monclair or any other Canadian water. Canadians, when they want to drink water, go for imported water when we have huge reserves of high quality drinking water.
In my opinion, that is a false problem that the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier wants to raise with us. It is probably the big habit of the Liberal Party of Canada to seek to abolish all municipal and provincial governments and to bring all powers to the federal government, as Mr. Clyde Wells would have liked at a certain point, that is a unitary state where Ottawa would take care of everything.

March 25, 1992
Private Members' Business
We must still have municipal powers, and powers mean responsibilities. Municipal governments should take their responsibilities and provincial governments should take theirs. I think that, despite the good intentions of my friend, the hon. member for Ottawa-Vani-er, his proposal cannot be accepted in view of the circumstances since the Liberal Party of Canada would like again Ottawa to take over a problem which is not its responsibility. God knows, and on that I would agree with Him, that here in Ottawa, we have enough problems, responsibilities and jurisdictions, particularly on the national unity issue. We should deal most of all with federal problems and let provinces and municipalities solve theirs.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There is one minute left.


Mr. Ken  Janies@Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour: Mr. Speaker, I laud the member opposite for bringing his concern forward. I also had the opportunity in committee to hear his proposal. I am not going to have the opportunity to speak to it at great length, but of course municipal infrastructure is very important to our country.
I also laud the House of Commons and the government. In many ways they are looking at conservation and the environment.


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

It being 8 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 8 p. m.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, March 26,1992