1992-11-20

Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people and that, therefore, an election should be called forthwith, in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of holding a general election at least every four years.
He said: Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity today to address this very important subject. I am sure all Canadians will listen carefully to today's debate and will reach the same conclusion I did: this government should call an election now. That would be a great idea.
I can hear the Tories opposite heckling, although the debate has barely started. Perhaps members opposite feel uncomfortable about this motion and don't like it. Are there any Conservatives opposed to this motion? Ah, the heckling has stopped, so we can assume they support it.
I move this motion today because I feel we need an election. The government has been in power four years, and according to Canadian tradition, four years is a full term. So it is now time to call an election.
Ibmorrow will be the anniversary, not a happy occasion, of the election held on November 21,1988. Bearing
that in mind, it would be appropriate to call an election now, and there are two reasons for this: first because, as I said earlier, this government's time has run out and, second, because the government no longer enjoys the confidence of Canadians.

I have here a newspaper article which I would like to read. It is dated yesterday. This is not something I said. This comes from a totally objective source, The Toronto Star. This source quotes the Gallup organization. It states:
The Gallup organization says that the Conservative Party today
enjoys the support of 22 per cent of Canadians.
The Liberal Party enjoys the support of 47 per cent. I say to my colleagues: "What do you think of that?"
As bad as 22 per cent might seem, they had an even worse level of support some time ago. Now the end-dippers, or the New Democrats as they are sometimes called, enjoy the support of a large number of Canadians, namely 14 per cent.
I say to the cousins of Bob Rae, 14 per cent is certainly all they deserve. The deform party-the Reform Party has the support of 11 per cent of Canadians. That is about 12 per cent too many. I say to the large contingent of the deform party-the Reform Party-present in the House right now that is more support than it deserves.
I notice some members across do not think that there should be an election called right now. I can detect that from their remarks.
I want to quote Hansard of December 9, 1983. Let me read the following quote and see if we can guess who said it: "The government should honour that fundamental British tradition in this country which calls for an election not in five years but within four years so that the people can judge the action of the government".


An hon. member:: That sounds like Brian Mulroney.

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Don Boudria: Was that not well said? As far as I am concerned, those are immortal words. They are immortal words.
December 9, 1983, let us listen to this quote now: "I tell you it does happen that a government sits too long. It does become exhausted and bankrupt of ideas". Were those not fine words?


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Don Boudria: My colleagues all think they were fine words.
Let us hear a motion that was introduced in the House on December 9, 1983, by the then member for Central Nova. The then member for Central Nova in December 1983 just happens to represent the riding of Charlevoix today, and of course he is the Prime Minister, at least temporarily.
Here is what the then member for Central Nova said in December 1983. Listen to this, Madam Speaker, and I say to my colleagues: Pay attention because we will ask questions later. "This House regrets to inform Your Excellency that the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the social and economic affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of all Canadian people, and therefore requires that an election be called"-listen to this now-"in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of having a general election at least every four years".
Was that not well said? It was a brilliant remark from the then member for Central Nova. I say that if the then member for Central Nova, today the member for Charlevoix, was right in 1983, he is still right today. I am sure he will vote for my motion.
In a television interview right about the same time, the then member for Central Nova, today the member for Manicouagan-I am sorry for Charlevoix. I apologize to the member for Manicouagan. I in no way wanted to put to him to the level of the Prime Minister right now. It probably constitutes a question of privilege for him to have been so insulted, but I apologize to the member.
In a television interview in 1983 the then member for Central Nova said: "This is a country where historically a parliamentary majority has governed for four years or
less, not more". Well said, eh? There is more. I can assure that there is more. Let me continue.
On October 1, 1988, there was an election launch statement at Rideau Hall. We all remember that day. The Prime Minister called the election and then turned it into a free trade type of referendum which he was losing in the beginning and then got all the big corporate sector to bail him out. He finally won on that, although all Canadians were disappointed and we are all suffering from the lost jobs since then.
In any case, here is what he said on October 1, 1988: "It has been a Canadian tradition to call an election after a government has completed four years of a mandate". These are not words that the Prime Minister attributed to another party. He attributed that to his own government. His own government's mandate had expired after four years. The Prime Minister said so at Rideau Hall.
I am sure the Prime Minister told us the truth, as he always does, particularly when he speaks from Rideau Hall. There you go. Times change, and the Prime Minister's opinion changes from time to time. I wanted to put this as nicely as possible. Professor Jean-Luc Pepin described this uncanny knack of the Prime Ministers in the following way some years ago. He said that the Prime Minister suffers from an acute psychological need to embellish the truth. That was put very kindly. Anyway, the Prime Minister later had a modification of his opinion. Here is what he said:

"We are one year away from an election, and we will have time to discuss it". That was October 24,1992, in an interview with the Journal de Montreal. Amazing how the Prime Minister's position has changed. On October 24, 1992 he decided that his government's term would be five years instead of four, although in 1988 he said that the government's term would end after four years.


An hon. member:: And he was right.


Don Boudria: Of course he was right. We supported that at the time. In 1983 the Prime Minister said the previous government's term was up after four years. If it were true in 1983 and 1988, considering that today most Canadians would like to get rid of the present government, it is still true in 1992. Why did the Prime Minister change his mind? I have no idea. I have some more quotes.
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These quotes are just excellent. I am sure they will be appreciated immensely.
A former member for Mississauga North, Alex Jupp, said this on October 19, 1979. We all remember Alex Jupp, of course. I see all my colleagues nodding in the affirmative. He said: "The dates for the calling of a general election should be prescribed every four years. We should not give prime ministers the right to play games with the electorate, with political parties and the lives of those who offer themselves for public office".
Brilliant, is it not?
Here is what the then member for Simcoe South, Ron Stewart, said in 1982. We all remember him, particularly francophones like myself. I remember him fondly for his support of APEC. I remember Mr. Stewart very fondly.


An hon. member:: Was he one of the dinosaurs?


Don Boudria: He was a prehistoric creature, but he was not a dinosaur. He said on May 4,1983: "As long as there is an alternative time to an election, the Prime Minister is able to pick and choose the time most favourable to him. His own interests become paramount, not those of the nation. There is always the temptation for the Prime Minister to use his power to retain power or to promote party ends, even though such ends may not be in the public good".


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Don Boudria: Ron Stewart said that.
Now let us hear what the member from the other place, Lowell Murray, said. We all know Lowell. Here is what he said on February 24, 1984: "After four years, Canadians are entitled to have their say about the government. After four years, Canada is entitled to a general election. For all practical purposes, after four years the government's term has come to an end".
I cannot wait till tomorrow because it will be four years. By the time we vote on this motion on Monday, the government's term would have expired two days prior, according to Lowell and according to the Prime Minister, according to his many pronouncements, save and except of course the one that he made recently. I know on that particular day he probably was not thinking straight.
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Now let us hear what Professor Peter Hogg, professor of law at Osgoode Hall, said about all this in 1985. Listen to this eminent professor of law at Osgoode Hall. He said: "It is not the practice of the Canadian federal prime ministers to allow the House of Commons to continue until the expiration of the five-year term". It is very important. A professor of law says that the usual practice is for the Prime Minister to select what he regards as a propitious time for an election and to advise the Governor General to dissolve the House in time for that election.
Clearly the professor of law says it is not supposed to be five years. The Prime Minister said it is supposed to be four years. I say let us do it. Let us do it now. Canadians cannot wait.

I would now like to comment briefly on this government's record during the past nine years. Not a happy task, but it has to be done. I would like to quote a number of Conservatives. I know it is cruel to do this first thing in the morning, Madam Speaker, and I realize that you are objectivity itself, but I am afraid that just the same you will have to listen to all this. This is what was said.
In 1988 the Minister of Finance at the time said: "In three and a half years our economic achievements have been spectacular. Our policies and initiatives have created the successful economic climate we enjoy today". I wonder whether he could say the same today.
This is what the Prime Minister said on October 27, 1988, believe it or not: "My government has worked hard to promote our national interests, and we have bolstered our national sovereignty in various ways by putting our financial house in order". Imagine, we can hardly take that seriously.
Here is what the Prime Minister said in December
1983.	Hon. members will recall that in December 1983 he called for an election because the previous government was already four years old or just about. In fact, the government had not been in power for four years at the time. The government was elected in February 1980, so its term would not have expired until two months later. However, according to the then hon. member for Cen-

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tral Nova an election had to be called. I will read the quote.

Here is what the member for Central Nova said at the time: "The problem with the Government of Canada, as presently constituted, is that it has lost the confidence of the people. Confidence is very fragile and difficult to define. Once you have lost it you can never recapture it. Once you have betrayed your word or you have let people down you have an enormous problem ahead of you".
Let us call an election. Let us do it now. That is what the people want. That is what I want. That is what my constituents want. Let us do it.


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's comment about four years ago. I was wondering if he would take his mind back to the majority government led by the hon. Pierre Trudeau who was elected on July 8, 1974 and did not bother going to the country until May 22, 1979; pretty close to 4 years and 10 months later.
Then maybe he could also take his mind back to the government of the right hon. Pierre Trudeau, elected on February 18, 1980, who did not bother going to the country until September 4, 1984; a little over 4 years and 6 months.
He will appreciate the four-year period expires on November 21, 1992, but that is in the middle of the winter. Surely we must also take a look at the time of year. It would be absolutely too ridiculous to try to run a general election through the winter.
We ran one through the winter in 1980. It was a heck of a hard election to run. I won that election, but wandering through snow banks trying to put signs up in frozen ground and trying to knock on doors at that time of year was impossible.
All I have to say to the member is: surely some common sense must prevail on the other side. Surely they have some more reason to demand an election. Maybe the reason is as declared by Mr. Hurtig in The Toronto Star this morning, wherein he said that while the Liberal Party has 47 per cent in the Gallup poll, its support across the country is only one-sixteenth inch deep. It is soft, soft, soft.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, those were excellent questions.
I want to say to the member that it was his leader who, on at least three occasions, said that he would call an election every four years. He even said, about his own government, that its time expired four years and about two weeks after it started; actually it was four years and 26 days the last time. That is when the election was called. The Prime Minister himself said that his mandate had expired.


Mr. Milliken:: So did Lowell, and he is an expert.


Don Boudria: So did Lowell, and he is an expert. Far be it for me to contradict Lowell.
The member across the way does not think we should have an election in winter because it is inconvenient. Let us ask Canadians which they prefer: having an election in winter or keeping the Tories until spring.
I know what they want. They would gladly put up with an election in winter if it means getting rid of those people across the way.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Madam Speaker, I first of all wanted to congratulate my colleague who made a presentation that is worth looking into very closely.

It was a well researched, comprehensive, insightful address. Whether we agree or do not agree with my colleague I think we have to acknowledge that he has proven beyond doubt that if the Prime Minister and his minister and advisers were to be true to themselves they would be calling an election.
But there may be another reason why an election should be called. This week has seen an unprecedented number of government fiascos: unemployment, which is at record highs and continues to climb; interest rates that continue to climb; the deficit and the debt which are out of control, if we look at the newspapers today; the airlines crisis which we have all experienced in the last several days; and the fisheries that are on virtual brink of collapse. Canadians have lost faith in this government. They have done so for some time now and they want an election.
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While I acknowledge that my colleague has proven without doubt that if the Prime Minister and his key advisers were in fact true to the statements they have made in the past they would call an election, there is another equally important reason, perhaps deeper reason. I have given some examples of a government being unable to manage any more. I wonder if the member would care to react to that.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, as usual my colleague is quite right and very insightful.
He indicated quite accurately that the people want an election. That is quite true. They do not just want it because it is something neat to have. They want it because this government is unable to govern any more, if it ever was.
My colleague has given examples of this government's lack of ability. There is one that is even deeper than the ones he mentioned. To me it was the report on child poverty that we saw earlier last week that over a million children were living below the poverty level and the fact in this country we have more food banks than we have McDonald's restaurants as we are speaking today. All that reflects in the support the government has.
I enumerated the level of popularity of the government at the beginning of my remarks. The reason why the people no longer want this government is not because they are simply tired of it or they do not want to look at it any more. It is because it is unable to govern. That is why the present government has less than half the support the opposition has.
There is a reason for that. The reason, as I say, is not just because people are fed up looking at them. It is because people do not think that the Conservatives can govern, and they cannot. Furthermore, according to the Prime Minister, his term has expired anyway. Therefore, as they say, let us not wait for spring; do it now.


Mrs. Barbara Sparrow (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, I think the debate today should be extremely serious. It is one that concerns each and every one of us in this House.
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The first 10 minutes of the hon. member's time were specifically related to remarking on various polls and the idea of polling and elections. Why do we not get down to the specifics?
There are problems. I am one who will acknowledge there are problems with regard to the economy and social conditions. I would hope that today maybe all of us would enter into a debate where we could share ideas, look at specific problems, and how we could reallocate funding in regard to helping those people who are really in need.
If the member is calling for funding cuts in certain departments so we can help those people in need or for a boost to the economy by helping people get educated or better trained, I am willing to listen to him; but I do not think we want to spend the day shooting arrows at one another. Why do we not work together to resolve the problems?


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, the member might not like the fact that we are quoting the Prime Minister. Perhaps it is unfair to quote the Prime Minister using his words, or maybe she thinks it is unfair, but it is too late to repent. The mandate is up, not just according to me or according to our tradition, but more so according to the Prime Minister himself.
The mandate has expired. No death-bed repentance will do any good for the member across the way or her colleague, the minister over there, or any one else. Time is up. Call an election. That is what we need to do right now. That is what the people want.
It is clear this government no longer has the moral authority to govern, the authority according to the Prime Minister to govern, or the level of support necessary to govern. It has to call an election according to the rules it has set down for itself.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Madam Speaker, I really looked forward to participating in this debate today. It is a very serious one and one to which I want to contribute.
The member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell asserts that the government cannot provide leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation

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and that there has been a loss of confidence in the House and with the Canadian people.
I find this extremely unfair and incorrect. It makes me realize more than ever that many of us in this House, indeed the hon. member and some of his colleagues on the opposite side, have lost touch with reality and what makes this country tick.
What makes this country tick has a great deal to do with revenues in and moneys out. Therefore, let me just start with regard to moneys in and moneys out. If we turn to the 1982 budget presented by the Minister of Finance we find on page 98 the budgetary expenditures. They are listed there. With regard to major transfers to persons including old age security, unemployment insurance benefits and family allowances, there is $42.3 billion.
Let us look at other major transfers to other levels of government. The EPF goes to health care and post-secondary education in the provinces, the CAP provides 50 cents on the dollar for social services in the provinces, and equalization in transfer payments help those provinces that perhaps do not have the revenues or the ability to raise funds to provide similar or basic services across the country. The federal government transfers in the area of $24.1 billion. Add those up. It comes to $66.5 billion, which is two-thirds of the amount of money we as a government will be expending in the year 1992-93. Along with that, payments are made to Crown corporations and defence, international assistance and government operations. The total spending is $119.4 billion. The public debt charges are $40.2 billion. Therefore the total spending will be $159.6 billion.
We cannot get away from servicing the debt like my friends in the NDP would like to do. At the same time we have to take a look at the money that comes in. Revenues come in from personal and corporate income tax, UI, sales and excise taxes, the goods and services tax. Those revenues go to help service the debt and pay down the deficit along with other revenues.
The budget estimate was $132.1 billion. We are in a recession, as is the rest of the world, and money is not coming in. Therefore we have a deficit, a major problem. Why do we not get to the basics of how we can reallocate funding to help those people really in need and get the economy moving in this country?
Let us start with the United Nations. The United Nations placed Canada first in the world based on factors
such as life expectancy, education levels and our purchasing power. It ranks us ahead of other nations known for economic strength, such as Japan and the United States. All of us have to recognize, especially in the year of our 125th birthday, that Canadians are really proud of our country.
I learned during the referendum debate that Canadians from coast to coast are proud to belong to this country and proud of our achievements. They all want a good future that includes ten provinces and two territories. They have confidence in this country and in this government to exercise and show the way to a brighter future. But there are no simple solutions and no magic formula. We have made very tough decisions to make sure the economy did stay strong and could provide the social services that are needed. They could be sustained but we have to improve them.
Look at what happened during the 1970s and the early 1980s. Money was borrowed to pay for programs. That was the the decision of Liberal government of the day, and rightly so. It felt it could borrow money to provide programs. It went from a surplus in 1969 which was in the area of about $300 million, to a deficit in of about $38 billion in 1984. The Liberal government was providing programs to the people of Canada on borrowed money.
When we came into power we had to turn things around. Today we do not borrow money to pay for programs. Our programs are all paid for by revenues that are taken in. In fact, we had a $29 billion turnaround. However, it is not enough mainly because servicing the debt is costing us more and more. However, we have made major decisions since 1984 to show leadership and to deal with the economy. It has not been easy.
The economic renewal agenda that was set out in 1984 has been followed consistently. We have never lost sight of the major goals of deficit reduction, helping those in need and making this country prosper.
The first thing we did was to get rid of the National Energy Program that really devastated us in the west, specifically Alberta but also Saskatchewan and British Columbia. The energy and transportation sectors were deregulated at the insistence of the people who lived in the west, who were paying unfairly. Spending restraints were put in, as was deficit reduction. TTie unemployment insurance program was reformed. Thx reform and free trade initiatives were brought forward. We also initiated
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NAFTA, which is a trade agreement with the United States and Mexico.
All of these have been on our agenda for eight years. This is the kind of leadership that Canadians want. Canada cannot have strong social policies without a strong economy.
We understand that these go together. They are two sides of the same coin. The best social policy that we can have in this country is to give people the skills and the tools to go out and work and help themselves.
We have to have a population that is healthy, that is confident, that is productive and able to respond to changes, to new opportunities that are happening globally, not just here. Good social policy is not always about new programs, more programs, more money. It is about giving Canadians the tools, the knowledge to get on with the economy and in our society.
We defined our goals and we defined our policies early on in 1984-85. On the economic side we have created new opportunities. We have made regulatory changes. We have made trade arrangements. As I said, we reformed taxes and we have had some good sound fiscal management.
Let me just talk about the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the FTA. Everybody on the other side debated against us and fought us.


An hon. member:: We were right.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: You were wrong. You are absolutely wrong and the figures are there to prove it. We are a trading nation. I would say that 30 per cent of our revenues depend on our exports. We either export or we do not sustain the standard of living that Canadians want. We have to change with the global community in order to move on so we can not only build the better widgets, we can trade them more effectively, more efficiently and we can beat our competitors in the market. That means markets all around the world.
Our exports to the U.S. have increased by $15 billion since we brought in the FTA. That is up 9 per cent. It also translates into 200,000 jobs. The North American free trade agreement which is under debate today,
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known as NAFTA, is to expand upon that and it is to secure our gains and give us even greater opportunities, not just into the United States but into Central America, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
We are going to do tax reform. I recognize that. We did bring in tax reform for greater fairness for the entrepreneurs and business. If we do not have business operating, we do not generate the wealth to support the social services and programs that we want to provide to Canadians.
We brought in the GST, which replaced the old manufacturers' sales tax. It levels the playing field so the manufacturing industries and all industries can meet the competition of our imports.
We privatized 22 Crown corporations. We downsized the government, cutting 46 boards and agencies and we have taken 92,000 people off the government payroll and put them into private enterprise.
Labour market policies have moved to increase the participation so that we all start working together. If labour, provincial governments, federal government, municipal governments, academic or educational institutions, municipalities, do not start working together as partners, instead of fighting one another, we are never going to win.
We have made many changes on the social side. We have made changes to help women and improve the employment equity programs. We have made changes for the disabled and especially those people who have physical problems as well as mental problems.
Canadians know not to throw away more money. Spend money more effectively, more efficiently so the programs can be delivered. The programs have to be examined. Many have been there for 20 or 25 years. Our world has changed. I am not saying throw them out. I am saying let us debate today and look at them.
Let us look at our health care system. We have the best health care system in the world. We have listened to the United States election debates over the past few months. The U.S. is looking at our health care system. It can be improved upon, and perhaps it can be delivered more effectively and more efficiently but that is an ongoing debate.

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Let us look at our infant mortality. It has declined from 27 deaths per 1,000 to 7.2 deaths today. We have the best record. Life expectancies have climbed not only for the men but for the women as well.
Canadian research is contributing to new cures. We are looking at AIDS. We are looking at cancer, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and the disabled. We live healthier lives. Canadians are now eating better, they are exercising and they are even taking precautions to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
On the poverty front we have made progress. Let us take a look. The number of Canadians living below the poverty line has declined by 1 million since 1984. The incidence of poverty among the elderly in the last 20 years has fallen dramatically. More has to be done, and I acknowledge that. We all have to work together to achieve it.
Important steps have been taken to combat violence against women, abuse against children and the elderly. With the four-year, $136 million family violence initiative that we undertook a few years ago, we have awarded about 15 research centres. There is one in Montreal and one through Laval University. There are others through B.C. and Moncton, New Brunswick and western Ontario to look at family violence, home violence and abuse against children.
With regard to my colleague, the minister who looks after the status of women, we have a task force looking at what is going on and why more families are having problems.
How about looking at children at risk? The minister of health and welfare some months ago brought down Brighter Futures, which dedicates $500 million with regard to the prevention, the promotion, the protection of children, working in partnership with all other levels of governments and the various agencies.
We are also looking at our aboriginal colleagues who have many problems, whether we are talking about drugs or alcohol abuse or family violence. There will be funding set aside within this program to help them come to the root of their problems.
We have shown compassion, maybe not enough according to my colleagues across the aisle, but there are children at risk and all of us have to deal with it.
Let us look at the child tax benefit package that will be implemented on January 1, 1993. It combines the family allowances child credit and the refundable child tax credit. It is going to put $2.1 billion more into programs that will assist families. This is an initiative taken by our government.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It did nothing for the poorest.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: I am very sorry, you are wrong. This provides extra funding for those at low income.
If you are talking about those on social services and welfare, the provinces set the levels for that. If the federal government is going to increase its tax benefits or its social aid, the provincial governments lower it.
That is not fair. What I am saying is that it is time the province of Ontario started working with the other provinces and with the federal government so we can combat these problems and work together.
I wish I had a lot longer because we have made many inroads with regard to this. We know we are suffering. We know we are suffering from a global recession that has caused problems all around the world.
Let us take a look at this. It is affecting all families, specifically here in Canada in all our communities. It is affecting the industries. This has brought home to us the real truth about globalization and the need to trade and how international competitiveness is really the root of how to resolve some of these problems. Our future prosperity can only be guaranteed by higher productivity. How are we going to get higher productivity in this country?
The Minister for International Trade, through his prosperity report which has been condemned by some of the colleagues sitting over there, went to the people all across Canada. He had over 186 meetings with various Canadians on how to improve our productivity. It has to be labour. It has to be governments and it has to be the people all working together.
Do not continue to fight. Why do we not work together? This is what we have to do to resolve the problem. People have to stress education. We have to stress job training and greater training in order that the labour force can move forward, accept the technology and the scientific advancements and move into the 21st century.
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Why is there a 30 per cent drop-out rate of students in high schools? That is unacceptable. We put into place programs to keep youngsters in school. One in four in the labour force is illiterate; they cannot read the manuals or operate the machinery they are supposed to run. More has to be done. Our private enterprise is taking on more responsibility but those people out in the business world have to realize, such as Japan has done, that time has to be set aside for continuing education in order to train labour forces working with the educational institutions so that they can upgrade and teach people to go out in the world and be more competitive.
We have education, training, job retraining, trade agreements to make us more prosperous and more competitive. On the social side we are already spending 66 per cent, two-thirds of our expenditures budget. We would like to spend more but the money is not there. What we should be discussing today is how we get the economy back so we can support the social programs that we have.


Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Madam Speaker, we know today is opposition day and the Liberal motion is to remind us that there is a tradition to have an election every four years.
I am not quite sure what an election would do right now in the sense of changing things. I know the Liberals are thirsting for power. I know the Liberals for a long time have seen themselves at 50 per cent across Canada in the polls. They want to get into the little patronage deals that they can because they have been out of power for some time. I am sure they are going to be very effective at it. I recall when Mr. Trudeau stepped down there was an orgy of patronage and I do not think that Canadian memories are that short. They remember that as well.
Rather than condemn this government for everything and say it has done everything wrong, I would like to put in perspective what it has done because it has not done everything wrong. It has done some things right. I would like to speak on that.
First I tvould like to mention that we have two problems. We have a constitutional problem that we tried to deal with recently and we have a problem in the economic sense. Both of these problems are fairly inter-related. Looking at the constitutional problem, the
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government has taken a good stab at it. The government has tried. It has made some mistakes, but when you take a look at what it has tried to do with administrative agreements with the provinces, that has been a good tradition, both with Quebec and other provinces.
Administrative agreements mean that a province can have special agreements under the Constitution with the federal government, providing a kind of flexible Constitution. The provinces are not all treated the same and some have different needs. For example, on the east coast you may have the need for the UIC to be cognizant of the fact that there is a seasonal work force which is far different in fishing than elsewhere.
In the west you will notice there is accommodation that should be made for allowing western provinces to have the RCMP as their policing force rather than the extra expense of their own policing force.
This is a good trend. The government and governments before should be complimented for having this kind of constitutional approach.
I would also like to make a point as official languages critic about the Official Languages Act. I have been very much concerned about the money we spend for the Official Languages Act in areas where the translation of documents or translation services may not be required and may not be even necessary.
I was very pleased to see the government in the committee that was formed by the Minister of National Defence, I believe, dealing with the armed forces and the translation services and the use of French there, saying essentially we should use common sense. In a case where we had the frigates that were built in eastern Canada for approximately several billion dollars, $100 million was spent just in translation of those details of what the ships contain and their engineering points.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I was wondering if the hon. member remembered that this is question and comments and he was not on debate, as the time is getting short.


Philip Edmonston: I hope to conclude this comment in the next two minutes if I may. I believe it is 10 minutes for questions or comments.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member has been in the House for quite a few years and the period of question and comments is to be shared between different

November 20, 1992
members and should be about the intervention which has just been heard in the House.
Maybe we should allow the hon. member to make a comment and the hon. member can by all means rise on debate or on questions and comments later on in the day. Four minutes have gone already.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Madam Speaker, I am not too sure of the question but if I could I would like to thank my colleague with regard to the tone of his intervention. What he has done is set the stage with regard to some things we have done right, some things we can do better and maybe some things we have done wrong. We all have to acknowledge that.
What I really like about his comments is that if we do not all start working in the same direction perhaps we will not resolve the issues.
There have been constitutional problems which have faced this country for a number of years but they have been highlighted maybe since 1982. There are great difficulties that we have tried to overcome with regard to the Meech Lake accord, which failed, and with regard to the Charlottetown accord.
Canadians did have the opportunity to vote on that last October 26. To resolve some of those issues, my colleague was talking about administration agreements with the provinces. I think one area that we really have to look at has to deal with the free trade in our country and this would have great progressive advantages to making us more prosperous.
Why should we have 500 trade barriers here costing us $6.5 billion every year, hurting us, when if we all started working together we could all succeed?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: After Question Period and Routine Proceedings there will be three minutes of questions and comments, following the hon. member's intervention.
It being eleven o'clock a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 35 the House will now proceed to Statements by Members pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, all week we have been discussing the government's inability to manage the country, to govern not only the economy but programs for people.
Unfortunately in this debate students have often been forgotten. I need to remind people here assembled today that tuition fees have increased at unprecedented highs. GST on books is still a problem, and next week I will be reintroducing my bill to removed this tax. There is still a 3 per cent administrative fee on student loans, a tax on those who need money most. There will be six months extra interest for students to pay on their loans. There are taxes being paid on scholarships and bursaries.
There is a lamentable job situation. It was particularly bad last summer and it continues to be so. Students cannot earn money to continue their education.
All of this and much more increase student debt and student despair and prevent our young people from becoming employable in the future and contributing as fully as they could to Canada.

4-H CLUBS OF CANADA


Mr. Walter Van  De Walle@St. Albert: Madam Speaker, recently the Government of Canada released Inventing Our Future-An Action Plan for Canada's Prosperity, a plan which emphasizes Canada's need for a strong learning culture.
Operating in our country for many years is an organization which has consistently promoted this same goal. I speak of the 4-H Clubs of Canada.
The 4-H Clubs work with rural young people who learn through club projects to focus on results to make learning continuous, to innovate with new technology and to be dedicated to personal development, community leadership and responsible citizenship.
November 20, 1992

Helping 4-H members acquire a positive attitude toward learning increases their knowledge and develops useful skills to equip our young people for the future.
There are 4-H Clubs across Canada, nine of which are located in my riding of St. Albert. The national 4-H organization is committed to assisting our young people to become confident and capable citizens of tomorrow.
I salute all 4-H Club members, volunteer club leaders and sponsors across this great country of Canada.


RAIL TRANSPORTATION IN ABITIBI
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, Quebec's economic development depends on developing its regions, in particular its outlying regions where its main natural resources such as wood and various industrial minerals are found.
The railway lines must be saved and integrated with the basic rail system in Quebec and Canada in the long term.
The Canadian government must maintain passenger transport to Abitibi-Temiscamingue. Crown corporations like Via Rail and CN should look more closely at regional development, by transferring the decision-making centre for our region from Montreal to Senneterre.


TRAINING AND ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMS
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Madam Speaker, last night the Prime Minister tried to make a grand announcement about government money for the training of unemployed workers. His announcement at a Tory fund raising dinner in Toronto only reminded us of how terrible the government's record for training has been in Algoma this past year.
Training dollars were cut by 75 per cent, from $2.5 million to only $600,000 this year, even though a thousand workers were laid off at Denison Mines last spring.
Recently 75 training positions were approved to start next year. Then the government cancelled these until
the local community agreed to provide 25 per cent of the training costs.
The government shut down the Denison Labour Adjustment Centre in August and is closing the Community Adjustment Centre next month, even though some 3,400 people have been laid off during the last couple of years.
Shutting down these community adjustment centres is simply shameful. I call on the government to reinstate in 1993 the funding that was provided last year for training and adjustment programs.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I am sorry but the hon. member's time has expired.


HEALTHY EATING
Mr. Brian White (Dauphin-Swan River):: Madam Speaker, I wish to commend the Minister of National Health and Welfare for releasing Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. This food guide has a new name, a new look and a new approach to healthy eating.
The food guide is targeted at Canadians four years of age and older and is based on the nutrition recommendations in Canada's Guidelines for Healthy Eating released by Health and Welfare Canada in 1990.
The food guide was developed by conducting consumer research and by consulting with a broad range of stakeholders, including health professionals and their associations, universities, voluntary organizations, the private sector and governments.
For 50 years the food guide has been a popular and widely recognized resource on health eating for Canadians. We should all join Health and Welfare Canada and its partners in bringing the new healthy eating message to Canadians.


RAIL SYSTEM
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TVanscona):: Madam Speaker, at what point will the government wake up and intervene to save the Canadian rail system from extinction?

November 20,1992
This week the CPR applied to abandon everything east of Sherbrooke, Quebec. CN is trying to sell five freight lines in Ontario and has struck a deal with Burlington Northern to have 50,000 rail cars go directly from Edmonton to Chicago, eliminating jobs in Winnipeg and other points along Canadian lines. Not so long ago we were protesting CP Rail by-passing Winnipeg with potash shipments. What is next? What is so efficient about the growing marginalization of parts of the Canadian system at the expense of cities like Winnipeg and the people who live and work in such cities?
If we add to this the ongoing Tory conspiracy against Churchill, and the way that Liberal and Toty deregulation has put so many airline jobs at risk in Winnipeg, one wonders just what has to happen before the government wakes up to the fact that there is nothing efficient about destroying the economic base of places like Winnipeg.
Efficiency is for the sake of people. People do not exist for the sake of efficiency.


BREAST CANCER
Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Madam Speaker, every year in Canada there are more than 5,000 deaths from breast cancer and approximately 15,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed. Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer among women. It is a killer.
This week the Royal Bank of Canada contributed $500,000 to the corporate fund for breast cancer research. I want to applaud its generous donation and to congratulate the Royal Bank on taking the initiative in this matter. I would encourage other corporations to join with the Royal Bank and with all other individual Canadians who want to meet the challenge and conquer this disease.


THE ECONOMY
Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Madam Speaker, last night the Prime Minister began his election campaign by making new promises on the economy. Just as in 1988, the Conservatives will promise the world but will do nothing to improve the everyday situation.

Canadians have heard this same old song before and they just do not believe the Prime Minister any more.
Four years ago he said that his government would be fiscally responsible, yet our deficit is projected to be $34 billion. He promised adjustment programs for workers displaced by free trade, yet nothing has been put in place and 1.5 million people are out of work.

Canadians have had quite enough of the Prime Minister's promises, and they will let him know that during the next election by electing a party that can keep its promises, the Liberal Party.


ILLEGAL DRUGS
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank and congratulate the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Armed Forces for keeping 3,000 kilograms of cocaine off Canadian streets.
The day before yesterday, in a high altitude drama, two Canadian CF-18s intercepted a drug laden aircraft in Canadian air space. RCMP detachments in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, joined by Canadian Forces officials, tracked the plane as it flew over New Brunswick.
The suspects fled the aircraft after it landed but were soon rounded up by a thorough search by police and soldiers. The suspects are currently guests of Her Majesty in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.
On behalf of a grateful nation I want to thank the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for sending a very loud and clear message to foreign drug dealers: "Stay out of Canada".


REFUGEES
Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):: Madam Speaker, Sam Ifijeka, a Canadian of African origin, this week resigned as a commissioner of the refugee division of the Immigration and Refugee Board, publicly accusing the management of being racist and of pressuring commissioners to reject more and more refugees. He is not the first former commissioner to make such accusations.
*

November 20, 1992

In fact during the past three years while the Canadian government has reduced the number of refugees selected overseas, the refugee division has also been steadily reducing the rate at which it accepts claimants in Canada as refugees.
Five months ago Mr. Ifijeka wrote a 20-page letter to the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council detailing his accusations and documenting them. Obviously this government has ignored these concerns. This morning I have delivered a copy of that material to the minister's office.
I now call on the minister in co-operation with the Prime Minister to order immediately an independent and impartial investigation of Mr. Ifijeka's accusations.


INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Madam Speaker, a large number of Canadian companies find it easier to conduct business with American companies as opposed to those in our own country.
While we have reduced barriers between ourselves and our major trading partners, interprovincial trade barriers still haunt us. This means consumers pay more in higher taxes and higher prices. Business has suffered as well for the same reasons.
The Minister for International Trade will be meeting with his provincial counterparts in a few weeks with the hope of successfully lowering these barriers. If the minister succeeds Canadians will benefit greatly as we will be able to increase business and pass on the savings to the consumer.
Let us hope that success will result from their efforts.


GUATEMALA
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Madam Speaker, last week the Prime Minister disgraced Canada again by refusing to meet with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigob-erta Menchu.
Several international leaders, including the Secretary General of the U.N. and the Pope, have shown her the
respect she deserves by speaking with her personally about human rights in her native Guatemala.
Now we learn the government has denied a visa to Mr. Jorge Soto and two academics who are coming to Canada on behalf of an umbrella group currently negotiating a peace accord with the Guatemalan government.
They were to meet with the House of Commons subcommittee on human rights to brief us on the negotiations and to seek advice on the principal point at which the negotiations are stuck, human rights.
Ironically Mr. Soto visited Canada only two years ago at the request of the Canadian government. Why the duplicity? The minister of immigration's office says the decision to deny the men a visa was made at the embassy in Mexico. Officials of the embassy say the decision was made by the minister's office here.
Which is it? Why is this government obstructing efforts to bring peace to Guatemala?


PRICING POLICY
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, when goods are offered for sale in most provinces in Canada they are offered at one price and the consumer winds up paying a very much higher price. In Ontario if goods are offered for $10 they pay $11.50 at the cash register.
Merchants know exactly what taxes are, yet they continue to try to deceive buyers by false advertising of prices that do not include taxes or charges associated with the product.
I call upon the government to introduce legislation to force prices to include all applicable taxes at the point of sale. This misrepresentation and deceit should not be allowed to continue any longer.


LEONARD PELTIER
Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Mr. Speaker, 55 members of Parliament intervened in the case of Leonard Peltier last week before the U.S. Court of Appeal in St. Paul, Minnesota. Once again the U.S. courts and the U.S. justice system have been asked to remedy the damage done to Canada and to Leonard Peltier.

November 20,1992
It is clear now and has been clear for some time that the Poorbear affidavits used to extradite Leonard Peltier were known to be false at the time they were placed before Canadian courts by the Government of the United States.
United States Senior Circuit Judge Gerald W. Heaney wrote to me on May 19 of this year and confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice was being disingenuous, to use his words, in its position with Canada's Minister of Justice on the Peltier case.
Surely the time has come for the Government of Canada to pick up the phone and call Washington. Our extradition treaty and our courts were abused in the case of Leonard Peltier and this must be remedied.
Any minister who allows this matter to go unchallenged is no better than those who created the fraud in the first place.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Alex Kindy (Calgary Northeast):: Madam Speaker, on November 17, 180 Bosnian refugees who were being sponsored by British NGOs were refused visas to enter Britain by Mr. John Major and his government. These men, women and children were homeless, living in buses, and had relatives in Britain.
The British parliamentary opposition had asked the government to show compassion, but Mr. John Major continued to refuse them entry. By this action the British government showed its true face as a hypocritical power in this war.
Austria, on the other hand, that has already accepted
60,000	Bosnians allowed them entry.
I urge the Government of Canada to indicate to Mr. Major and his government that this action is not conducive to a peaceful and humanitarian resolution of the war waged by Serbia against Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia.


EMPLOYMENT
Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, Canadians are anxiously awaiting their federal government's new job strategy. They must be very nervous.
In Ontario, we have Premier Bob Rae who earlier this year announced a $1 billion job creation scheme. As of last month, 675 jobs had been created at a cost to taxpayers of $21 million, an average salary of $31,000 per employee. In addition, 20,000 subsidized child care spaces were offered as part of the program. All of 38 people among the 675 employed are using the subsidies.
This dazzling example of blundering mismanagement serves as an example of what not to do. Given the Tory government's past record, Canadians must be anticipating with dread any new program.
What they want is an election now, so they can elect a Liberal government that can manage this country, unlike the Tories and the NDP.


FISHERIES
Mr. Peter L. McCreath (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, it is with concern that I rise to bring to the attention of the House the grave situation in the Scotia-Fundy and Gulf of St. Lawrence groundfishery. The direct cutbacks with which the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is faced will impact not only on my province but indeed on my own constituency.
I want to assure the people of the south shore that I will vigilantly defend the interests of our plant workers and our fishermen. All week I have been consulting with industry representatives, with fishermen and with community leaders. I have written to and met with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to put forward what I feel are constructive suggestions and the principles that should guide government action in meeting this challenging situation.
The minister must accept and act on valid scientific advice. Second, the bulk of the cuts must be shared equally by all sectors. Third, support measures must be put in place with the cuts to lessen the impact of those cuts and to provide necessary support for our people and our communities until such time as the resource can be restored.
Finally, I have urged the minister to initiate a formal review of fish harvesting technology to ensure that when the resource is restored it will be exploited in accordance with the principles of sustainable development and I have urged him to ensure that the task force on income security in the fishing industry reviews the long-term
November 20,1992

needs of Nova Scotians dependent on the fishing industry as well.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Acting Prime Minister.
Yesterday I visited Hamilton and spoke to students at McMaster University. I met some workers. The number of jobs that have been lost in that area is terrible. With regard to the morale of the people, there is a sense of despair about what they will do after they graduate.
I met the mayor after that. The mayor said to me: "When will the government start to proceed with the idea that your party offered to the nation earlier in the year?" In January we said let us have a good program where the federal government will pay one-third of the cost, the provincial government one-third of the cost and the municipalities one-third of the cost. The mayor said to me that if this program were put in place, they have a lot of projects that could start putting people to work right away. For every $1 that the government will be investing in this program, there will $3 of work done.
Why is the government being so stubborn, not wanting to take this idea that has been approved and asked for by the mayors of municipalities in Canada? Of course, some of the jobs will be done just by municipal governments. Perhaps the federal government will not have all the credit it wants, but people will have work. That will create jobs and hope in the country.


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the TVeasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, I think that the situation is indeed difficult and we are very much aware of it.
Many Canadians are hurting. That is why we must be sure that we do not lead them into dead-end streets and that we come forward with solutions that are very real.
Oral Questions
One of the major problems which has led to a limit on the capacity of the government to intervene is the fact that we are all-the federal government, provincial governments and municipal governments-over indebted. Our debts are so high that they threaten our own sovereignty. We are paying the interest on the debt. We have not increased the debt by spending one additional penny.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Gilles Loiselle: Indeed we have. I can show that at any time.
Basically what we have to do is find real solutions. When the hon. member says one-third, one-third and one-third, there is only one Canadian taxpayer and that taxpayer is already overloaded with taxes. I do not think this is a proper avenue.
We are prepared to consider with provincial governments. We are studying with them. The Prime Minister and my colleague, the Minister of Finance, have indicated certain areas of intervention where we can through reallocation, by being very careful and fiscally responsible, intervene but not beyond that.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, when the government took power in 1984, the debt was $175 billion, whereas today it is $450 billion. But they say that they did not add a penny to the debt! I don't know what kind of mathematics the President of the Treasury Board is using, but I would tell him that the government's inaction and bad policies have created that situation.
In the past eight years, there have been 31 tax increases, there have been cuts and deficits over $30 billion every year this government has been in power.
I would like to ask the government to change its attitude a little and to adopt this idea in order to create jobs. For every dollar invested by the federal government, three dollars will be spent. This is a concrete idea. For every billion dollars spent by the federal government, it will recover $750 million in taxes and savings on unemployment insurance that it would otherwise have to pay. Why does the government not take the initiative of spending a dollar to get back three?

November 20,1992
Oral Questions


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, I believe that shows how little the Liberals really understand the economy.
The Leader of the Opposition does not understand why we had a $200 billion debt with an operating deficit. We could not pay it because we had to borrow to pay salaries. This country was literally bankrupt. We went from minus 16 to minus 12 to minus 8 to zero and now we have an operating surplus. Slowly confidence is returning and interest rates have fallen.
In the last recession, we had interest rates of 22 and 23 per cent, high mortgage rates and inflation of 10 per cent. Inflation is now 1.6 per cent, one of the lowest rates in the western world, and we have interest rates at which business can afford to borrow.
That is what a government can do to create conditions in which industiy can recover. But the whole world is in a recession. Next year, there will be 42 million unemployed in the OECD countries and Canada now has one of the strongest growth rates, although the rate is very small.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, I would like the minister to explain that to the 1.6 million unemployed. Most of them are unemployed because this government has a policy of just fighting inflation. The minister today is misleading the people and talking about lower interest rates in Canada. In Canada treasury bills for 90 days today are more than twice the price the American administration has to pay to get this money. The interest rates are twice as high in Canada today as in the United States and our government is doing nothing. Does it not want to create any hope for the Canadian people? The way we are going, it is going to be worse next year. We have to create some jobs, otherwise people will suffer even more and we may reach two million unemployed if this government does not wake up.
Look what is happening in the United States. They have a government-it is not in place yet-which gave hope to the Americans and hope to the nation that things will turn around. Here, with this government, it is despair, despair, despair.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, let us talk about hope and let us look at the real numbers.
Even though they are not very brilliant, and I do not deny that, we had the fastest growth of industrial production over the last year among the 13 major countries, which indicates that this is not a Canadian problem, it is a world problem. It was only .9 per cent growth. The next best were Australia and the United States at .2 per cent. They were .7 per cent below Canada while nine countries, including Japan, were at minus 8 per cent. Germany was at minus 3 per cent. We were at plus .9. This is not despondency. These are good numbers and the basics are right.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Acting Prime Minister. In his speech last night to a $500 a plate elitist Tbry fund raising dinner, the Prime Minister seemed to say that his government would be putting $300 million more into training from the unemployment insurance fund.
I ask the acting Prime Minister: How will this help the close to 750,000 people who are out of work but who are no longer able to get unemployment insurance payments? Why does the government not do something for these people who cannot afford $5 for dinner, much less $500 to attend a Toiy fund raiser?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member refers to the plight of certain Canadians who are going through tough times.
He seems to find it funny that the Prime Minister of Canada last night indicated to Canadians that this government, on the advice of the private sector, labour, business and special interest groups which made a recommendation, would increase the active use of the UI fund in order to train Canadians so that they get a better job.
I know that it is tough for a Liberal to understand that in today's economy you need to have high skills. You need to have better training. This is the key to prosperity. It is the key to competitiveness. That is why the Prime Minister made that announcement last night.
I think the unemployed people who know that they have to train and improve their skills will welcome that news.
November 20, 1992


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, the minister of employment has not answered my question as to how this announcement will help the 750,000 who are not eligible for unemployment insurance. I wish the government would talk more about the deficit in jobs than about the other kinds of deficits that seem to be on its mind more than anything else.
Twice this week the Prime Minister gave what purported to be economic speeches at $500 a plate Tory fund-raising dinners. I ask the Acting Prime Minister: If the government finally has a plan for economic recovery, why it does not disclose that plan fully right now through this Parliament to all Canadians, most of whom cannot afford $500 for an elitist Tory fund raising dinner and likely could not stomach it anyway?


Bernard Valcourt: Madam Speaker, it will be interesting for the hon. member to label the fund raisers of the Liberal Party. Maybe they do not have any. I know he hates us running in the black and him in the red, but that is not the question. The issue is the economy and jobs.
The Prime Minister last night and again on Monday here in Ottawa outlined the five principles that were guiding the economic policy of this government. I know that the Liberals like to see doom and gloom, and that is all they see. However, there are positive signs in the economy and those measures that are being outlined by the Prime Minister are in order to spur the creation of jobs, real jobs, and not make-work projects like the Liberals are advocating for Canadians.
I think that is what they want, and they will get their verdict on that issue.


TRANSPORTATION
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
For two years now I and my colleagues have been calling on this government to take action to prevent the collapse of Canada's two national airlines. Today as Canadian Airlines gets closer and closer to the edge, we find that the only action that the government seems prepared to be willing to take is, first, to demand more concessions from the workers and, second, to demand
Oral Questions
that Canadian Airlines put another 2,500 people out on the street.
Perhaps that is why the Prime Minister announced last night an extra $300 million for training. He knows there are going to be a lot more people out there looking for help as a result of the government's policies.
Will the minister confirm that in fact that is its strategy, more concessions from the workers and more job lay-offs from the airlines? If that is true, will he explain to the people of Canada why this government wants the crisis solved on the backs of the workers as opposed to taking its responsibility?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, my answer to his question is no, the government has not done such a thing.


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, since 1990 over 5,000 jobs have been lost in the airline industry.
That is 5,000 people who are no longer working for an industry that they believed in.
Is it not fair to suggest that the workers have already paid the price for the crisis in the airline industry? This is the crisis which was created by this government and the previous government.
Is the government prepared to demand yet a higher price from the workers? Is it prepared to invest in the future of the Canadian airline industry and provide enough funds to Canadian Airlines in particular to ensure that there is no need for an American airline to buy 40 per cent of Canadian Airlines? Will the government take that serious step?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, last Tuesday we received a proposal from the employees of Canadian Airlines together with PWA and AMR in which the employees offered to participate in an amount up to around $130 to $150 million. We indicated that because of this commitment by the employees we were prepared to listen and to examine the proposal. We have been doing so since last Tbesday on a very tight schedule. There have been many meetings and a lot of discussions.
The proposal they have presented to us has a lot of hurdles in it. There are very difficult aspects to reconcile with the best interests of Canadians considering again

November 20,1992
Oral Questions
the necessity to be very watchful on our financial situation. The discussions are ongoing and we expect to arrive at a constructive resolution no later than the beginning of next week.


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, the minister knows full well that financial assistance by itself will not lead to a permanent solution to the crisis in the airline industry. What the industry also needs, in addition to funds to keep both carriers in the air, is an assurance that there will be some kind of regulatory control to eliminate the excesses in the marketplace, whether it is pricing or whether it is the crazy kind of competition we have seen in a number of city pairs.
Is the government prepared to take that other step to ensure that not only the taxpayers' money is secured in any kind of assistance to the airlines, but also that the industry itself will survive not just for a year, not just for two years, but well past the year 2000?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, that is precisely the position we have taken all along on this issue. We do not want the solution we provide to be only temporary. We have to take into consideration the jobs involved, whether direct or not, the financial situation of the two companies, the situation of civil aviation world-wide and how the market is positioning itself.
We are presently looking at all those factors. That is why it is now time to establish an ongoing dialogue with the people who have put their proposals forward to us last Tbesday to find a solution that is fiscally responsible, in the best interest of all Canadians and long-lasting rather that temporary.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Madam Speaker, my question as well is for the Minister of Transport.
The royal commission on transport recommendations can be summed up pretty easily. If you live in an area that has the population, you get the transportation. But if you live in a place like Atlantic Canada with a smaller population, you do not get the transportation or the industry or the jobs that go with it.
I ask the minister to be clear. Does he repudiate the recommendations of this royal commission or does he support these policies which would result in nothing short of economic apartheid for Canada's regions?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, I mentioned yesterday that this commission was put together three years ago. It was made up of very qualified people with expertise: Mr. Louis Hyndman, Madam Marie-Josee Drouin, Madam Susan Fish, Mr. Marc Gaudry, Mr. John Hamilton, Mr. John Helliwell, Mr. Bill Kelly, Mr. Maurice LeClair, Mr. James McNi-ven and Dr. Janet Smith who have been in the field of transport for many years.
This commission put a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a lot of thought into what it did over the three-year period. Its four-volume report contains not only enunciation of principles but also a lot of statistics and figures on what is going to happen in the transportation field for passengers in the next 30 years.
I suggest to the hon. member that if through his reading of the four volumes he has some specific questions, comments or suggestions to make, we would all benefit from that because what we have to do is examine these questions very carefully and come to a viable solution in the best interests of the nation.


Ronald MacDonald: On a supplementary, Madam Speaker, it is clear the government has no policy except to read volumes of documents because it does not know where it is going in the transportation sector.
What this government has never fully understood is that a country as vast and as diverse as Canada cannot only be run as a business, it must also be run as a nation. To do so means that certain costs are incurred, costs like providing equal and affordable access to viable modes of transportation no matter where one lives in this great nation.
I ask the minister for some clarification on the government's policy. Last night the Prime Minister said that he was looking at investment in the transportation sector while the minister said that he was studying cuts in the transportation sector. He cannot have it both ways. I ask him which is it?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, to say such things, one has to be either totally irresponsible or ignorant of the facts. This commission did not only make recommendations on principles, it put together four volumes analyzing all these questions. As part of its analysis, the commission looked at the situation of the people who live in isolated areas and at how
November 20, 1992

their transportation needs could be met. It is absolutely not true that this commission suggested that the transportation needs in isolated areas be disregarded. The commission has enunciated principles they suggest we use as a basis for a very thorough examination-and I think it is simply a question of respect for the work of a commission paid for with public money-of these recommendations before making a final decision.


MANPOWER TRAINING
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Last night in Toronto, the Prime Minister announced there would be changes in the unemployment insurance system. He also announced that he would free $300 million for manpower training. Could the minister tell the House today what these changes involve and how much of the $300 million would go to Quebec?


Bernard Valcourt: Madam Speaker, it should come as no surprise to the hon. member that the Prime Minister referred to a program that was made possible by Bill C-21, the amendment to the Unemployment Insurance Act. The hon. member will recall that his party and his colleagues in the other place held up the bill and prevented its passage for more than a year. Thanks to this program, in the past three years we have been able to increase the amount of money used to help people get the training they need by 67 per cent. That is a very substantial increase. Stressing how important it is to provide training for Canadian workers, the Prime Minister indicated last night that the $1.95 billion the government has currently invested in our labour force will be increased by $1.2 billion. This increase will provide training for more unemployed workers who, as a result of industrial restructuring, must upgrade their skills. As for the details of the program, I have a statutory obligation to table this information in the House, and that will be done.
Oral Questions


Alfonso Gagliano: Madam Speaker, I may remind the minister that for the past three years, unemployment has been increasing daily, and millions of unemployed Canadians are no longer listed as such because they are no longer listed as being entitled to benefits. They are completely discouraged.
Will the minister make this announcement in the House as soon as possible? What he has done in this area so far has not changed the fact that unemployment is increasing daily. Will these new measures put people back to work, preferably as soon as possible?


Bernard Valcourt: Madam Speaker, the hon. member will understand that the unemployment insurance budget run from January 1 to December 31, which is the current financial year. The amounts for the current financial year have not been changed by this announcement. However, as far as next year is concerned, the additional $1.2 billion will be announced in the House as soon as possible. The recommendation for this increase, made by the labour force development commission, has been approved, and the details will be available to the House and to Canadians very shortly.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Madam Speaker, yesterday Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein of the Federal Court of Canada, in the case of the referendum on national unity, ruled that the government "did not have reasonable grounds to withhold disclosure".
I ask the acting Prime Minister regarding the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, will the government finally release the documents, polls and studies it has done so that the people of Canada can know what the effects of this agreement will be?


Right Hon. Joe Clark (President of the Privy Council and Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Madam Speaker, we will be looking at the judgment by Mr. Justice Rothstein and taking the appropriate actions after we have had the opportunity to examine it closely. It came down yesterday.

November 20, 1992
Oral Questions


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, the judgment was against the government. It has tried to hold back that information.
Will the government again try to hold back information on the free trade agreement with Canada, the United States and Mexico? We have asked six times in this House for sector by sector studies and we have not got that information. Why will the government not release it to Canadians?


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, the fact that the matter has been before the courts indicates there is some question as to the obligation of the government with respect to several of these matters.
There has been a judgment by Mr. Justice Rothstein which we will consider and which we will take into account with regard to other actions before the government.


COMMUNICATIONS
Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, my question is to the President of the Treasury Board in the absence of the Minister of Communications.
Today the media informs us that taxpayers have been paying since May and will be paying until March of 1993 for a swanky apartment in Ottawa at the Minto Place Hotel and a free airline ticket to Vancouver every 14 days for the assistant deputy minister of communications.
I want to ask the minister in charge of the pursestrings: Is this what he considers to be wise expenditure of taxpayers' hard earned dollars?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Madam Speaker, I will take notice of the question, not having been previously advised of the issue, and will make sure that the minister, on his return, addresses himself to the question at that point.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I am surprised the government doesn't know what was in the headlines this morning. Even the Minister of Transport must know about it.
My question to the minister is this: The spokesperson for the Department of Communications said, in response to questions from the media and I quote: "Within six months he is expected to decide whether he is going to leave the foothills of the Rockies. He has been attached to this area".
I would like to ask the government, which seems to be in a fog this morning, what it intends to do to stop this profligate spending?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, hiring contracts often include special provisions. These are usually reasonable and take the family situation into account. I am not familiar with the particular case mentioned by the hon. member, but we will look into the matter and get back to him at the appropriate time.


Mrs. Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Western Arctic):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour. The people of Yellowknife have been living in fear for almost six months. Essentially the community has been ripped apart.
The level of violence and tension is escalating each day and is affecting the entire community. Intimidation is reaching uncivilized proportions. Local government is worried that acts of violence will accelerate during winter months. For example, the power outages we have experienced successively could have a devastating impact on the community of 17,000.
As I have asked many times through correspondence and in person, what is the minister prepared to do before tragedy strikes this community again? When, for example, will the result of the mediation be made public?
November 20, 1992


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Labour is away on government business today. I will pass on the member's question to him.
The information I have is that mediation is going on. Without having any details on the matter, it is worth remembering that mediation does involve the parties and mediation can do so much to bring parties together. However, fundamentally it is for the parties to reach an agreement among themselves at the end of the day.
As far as the other incidents she alludes to, there is a great deal of concern in this House about incidents around this strike. We all feel deeply that these are sad events when they occur. I understand there is also an investigation going on and hopefully it will lead to some conclusion.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, my supplemental question is for the same minister. Despite the horrific level of violence and the tragedy that has taken place, the minister responsible, who has sole jurisdiction and responsibility federally because we have no territorial labour legislation, has done next to nothing to resolve the situation.
I have asked this government time and time again to take a course of action. I have asked the minister responsible to travel to Yellowknife, NWT to see firsthand what is going on. Is the minister prepared to station someone from the labour department in Yellowknife to personally experience what the people there are experiencing, the terror and the tension? Perhaps then he would take responsible action. He would do the responsible thing and take a course of action to find a resolution to this very sad situation.


Jean J. Charest: Madam Speaker, from the member's question, she is alluding to two areas of responsibility. One is the labour dispute itself and I will certainly convey the question to my colleague. I guess I can only reiterate that at the end of the day it is the parties that have to come to an agreement. It is not the minister who can do that or a mediator for them.
On the allegation of violence, the Solicitor General's office will be interested in those comments. I assume
Oral Questions
that if the member has any specific information about any possible violence that she would bring that to the attention of the appropriate officials.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Just ask the RCMP. They put out a report every day.


Jean J. Charest: I assume the member will bring that to the attention of those officials and the authorities who have the responsibility for enforcing the law.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.
For several months, the people of Abitibi and northern Quebec have been worried about the ozone layer.
We all know that you are a man of action and I wonder what Canada's position will be at the meeting on world environment in Copenhagen next week. Is the purpose to follow up on the Montreal Protocol and protect the ozone layer?


Jean J. Charest: Madam Speaker, indeed, this whole issue of ozone depletion is a great worry for the public. Here in Canada we have a protocol named after a very important Canadian city, Montreal. Canada has always been a leader in this field.
The meeting in Copenhagen will enable the participants to review the provisions of the protocol as such. Canada has already taken a position, with the provinces' support, to speed up the elimination of CFC's by 1995.1 will not go into details here, but other substances will also be dealt with.
Madam Speaker, Canada will also insist on recycling and recovering CFC's. Here again, the provinces have put forward regulations dealing with those issues. This is within their jurisdiction.
I am pleased to tell you today that there is a consensus across the country on these issues and we will urge the international community to do the same.

November 20,1992
Oral Questions


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister continues his dance of the seven veils, gradually revealing his economic plans outside the House. However, some of these plans have already been rejected; for instance, the highways initiative which Ontario attacked this week as being far too narrow and unfair in its limited help for Ontario where most jobs have been lost in this recession.
Will the government agree to include a wider variety of infrastructure projects in its proposed program, and will it provide a larger share of federal resources to Ontario than the 15 per cent which is presently planned?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, my colleague the Minister of Finance will make a statement early next month, on December 2, when the policies of the government to address the present situation will be made public.
On the highway initiative, we have said that we are prepared to develop with the provinces a fiscally responsible solution. We cannot do otherwise. If deficit spending and more borrowing were the answer to unemployment, Ontario would be booming, because the Ontario government has done that and the situation has gotten worse.
It is important to tell Canadians who are hurting that the solutions are not easy and that we can easily make them worse unless we manage our affairs properly. If we really want to help them, we have to get our house in order and be sure we are headed in the right direction and not down dead-end streets. More borrowing would lead to higher interest rates. A one per cent growth in interest rates would cost the government $1.8 billion more, which would not be available for highways or anything else. This is the harsh reality we are dealing with.


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, the reality is that this government has made the deficit at the federal level much worse, so much so that 35 cents out of every tax dollar is paid for debt servicing, whereas in the province of Ontario it is 14 cents out of every tax dollar, a major difference.
Environmental groups have also attacked the highways initiative as the wrong way to get people back to work.
Will the government also fund a new green jobs initiative to support improving energy efficiency, new recycling activities and upgrading municipal sewage and water treatment? This could give us thousands of new jobs and a much cleaner environment.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, the difference between our deficit and the deficit of the Government of Ontario is very important. Our deficit does not come from additional expenditures by this government. We have kept our expenditures under control. Our deficit comes from higher unemployment and lesser revenue and not higher spending, which is the case in Ontario. This is quite a difference.
Does the hon. member suggest we borrow more money? Canadians are extremely worried about our debt situation and the cost and the threat to our programs. If the hon. member is concerned about maintaining good social programs and a capacity to assist people who need it, he has to be very careful that we do not spend all the money on these kinds of projects.


TRANSPORTATION
Mr. George S. Rideout (Moncton):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
There are no rail lines in Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island and the government has abandoned the line from Sydney to Truro. Now CP wants to abandon all the lines east of Sherbrooke. At this rate there will be no rail lines in Atlantic Canada.
The Trans-Canada Highway is a two-lane mess and the Royal Commission on Passenger Transportation has said: Pay as you go.
Will the minister explain to Atlantic Canadians how they can pay as you go when there is nothing to go on, even if they had the money to pay?


Jean Corbeil: Surely, Madam Speaker, the hon. member, whom I have known for many years to be a responsible person, would like to correct the record. The Government of Canada entered into an agreement with the Government of Newfoundland to remove the railways from Newfoundland and replace them by participating in road building in New-
November 20, 1992

foundland. This was not a unilateral decision by the Government of Canada.
The Truro-Sydney line has not been abandoned. CN has tried to sell that line. It has received some proposals that it is examining at the present time. These will have to be examined by the government as well.
CP's action this week is not the removal of the line. CP is asking the NTA to give it permission to do so. During that process everyone who is not in agreement will have the occasion to make their comments known. This is a very good democratic process.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The minister will surely be able to elaborate in his answer to the supplementary question. The hon. member for Moncton has the floor.


George Saunders Rideout: Madam Speaker, Atlantic Canadians are going to feel a lot better after that announcement.
With the abandonment of rail service in Atlantic Canada, transport traffic on our killer Trans-Canada Highway will dramatically increase. The Prime Minister continues to dither on whether there should be a national highways upgrading program. Each weekend in New Brunswick we read in our newspapers about more deaths on the Trans-Canada Highway.
Will the minister commit, whether other provinces join in or not, to upgrade the Trans-Canada Highway in New Brunswick?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, the hon. member opposite will know that at a meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada last March, the first ministers agreed that a program to repair our national highways would be set up with federal participation. Later, the Minister of Finance included this item in his budget. Since then, discussions have been held with the premiers and the ministers of transport to try to come up with a solution acceptable to all provinces.
Oral Questions


INTEREST RATES
Louise Feltham: Madam Speaker, although interest rates today are significantly below those of previous years, yesterday's interest rate increase will no doubt present problems for small businesses that need to borrow money to start up or to expand.
My question is for the minister for small business. What initiatives is he undertaking to help this vital sector of the Canadian economy?


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question.
At present in the House we are amending the Small Businesses Loans Act to raise the ceiling. I have also indicated that we can improve that Small Businesses Loans Act even further to give access to federal loan guarantees to small business. The Federal Business Development Bank has increased its loans 13 per cent this year.
We will continue through all our regional agencies to help small business. There will be new initiatives coming as well, as the Prime Minister said last night.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: A single question from the hon. member for Prince Edward-Hastings and a single question from the hon. member for Skeena.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister or whomever is answering on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture today.
We know that a cold and wet summer and fall in Ontario, and as well in much of Canada but particularly in Ontario, have left 1.5 million acres of com in the field. Farmers have been unable to harvest 90 per cent of the crop because of high moisture content in the com and in the fields. Farmers are strapped for cash. The present advance payment program does not allow the use of that program for standing crops.

November 20, 1992
Tributes
Is the government prepared to make adjustments to that program so that this money, which would not be new money, would be available to those com producers to pay their bills this fall?


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, I am very happy to respond to the hon. member's question about the current situation.
I know the government is aware of the terrible situation in Ontario, particularly with the wet weather and the lack of maturity of some of the com crop.
The department is currently reviewing existing programs to see if there is not some method of getting some assistance out to the cash strapped farmers. We are aware of the disastrous situation and the lack of cash. We know that at this time of year many farmers have to depend on the sale of crops to meet expenditures.
We are working with the provinces through crop insurance, et cetera to see if there is something we can do.


THE ENVIRONMENT
James Ross Fulton: Madam Speaker, on April 21, 1988 the President of the Privy Council, in response to my questions, told the House: "If plutonium is to be moved following current practices by sea, that plutonium is subject to hijacking, subject to uses that can be extremely dangerous not only to Canadians but to all of mankind".
Japan required Canada's consent before beginning to ship 35 tonnes of plutonium oxide from Europe to Japan. The first shipment of 1.5 tonnes left France November 8 and is now in the south Atlantic. Canada gave its consent.
I would like to ask the Acting Prime Minister if he would explain to Canadians why the government reversed its position on safety and has now approved the risks of hijacking, nuclear accidents and possible contamination of the high seas.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, the hon. member correctly quoted me in my former capacity as giving the statement that he quoted into the record.
I have not been following the file personally lately. The Secretary of State for External Affair is away from the House today on public business. I will draw the member's question to her attention and I am sure she will respond to it.


THE LATE HON. SENATOR THOMAS LEFEBVRE
Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to rise in the House today to announce the death of our friend, Senator Tom Le-febvre.
As you know, he was a member of this House for the riding of Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle for a long time, from 1965 to 1984. He was also our party's whip when we formed the government for many years. I am sure that opposition members and members of all parties realized what a gentleman and hard worker he was. He probably represented the best that Parliament can produce. He was a very simple man who came from a rural background. He spent his life serving his fellow citizens at all levels. He had only friends.
Personally, I considered him as one of my good friends, one of my good advisers, because he did not seek publicity or promotions and served his constituents extremely well. When we have difficulties in politics, and each one of us has had some, there are always people like him whom one wants to have around. In all circumstances, when giving advice, he showed sound judgment and really reflected the political grass roots.
He also believed deeply in this country.

Whenever he went travelling in Canada and abroad, he solidly defended the virtues of Canadians. I have heard him making some very moving, simple speeches about what it is like to be Canadian, to be of a different language and sharing his experiences with others.
He represented a riding where the francophones and the anglophones live together. He always maintained peace among them and he was admired by the two
November 20, 1992

communities. I am very sad today, and I know that my colleagues will share this sense of a great loss.

Tom was a very fine man. He was a fine example of what this country can produce.
On behalf of my party and my colleagues, I would like to offer his very charming wife and his family our sincerest condolences. His wife and children can take comfort in remembering that he was a real gentleman. He was a very good Canadian.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, my party and I wish to join in what the Leader of the Opposition said. Tom Lefebvre was well liked here in the House and respected as an effective member and as a Canadian who never questioned the value of our great country.

He was a friend of mine and was one of those few people who served in this House whom every member could honestly call a friend and regarded as a friend.
As the Leader of the Opposition has said, he was first elected here for Pontiac-Temiscamingue and then served for the riding of Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle. He was the Whip of his party in government. That in many ways is the most partisan of jobs and yet he did not conduct it in a way that caused others in this House and other parties to regard him as a partisan; quite the contrary.
He saw his responsibilities as the chief government Whip to make this Canadian institution work and he did what he could to make this institution work. I think all of us were surprised and certainly deeply saddened by the news this morning of his death.
He served, as the Leader of the Opposition has indicated, on in effect three levels of government in Canada. He was a local councillor in Temiscamingue, he then served in this House and he was also the chairman of the NATO parliamentary delegation, indicating a very active and constructive interest in international affairs.
In the other place he served on the committee on energy, environment and natural resources and naturally, given his long experience in the workings of Parlia-
Tributes
ment, on the committee dealing with internal economy and budget administration.
He was a friend of all of us. I want to express to his family the condolences of the Prime Minister, myself, and all of us who feel today that we have lost a friend in the passing of Tom Lefebvre.


Hon. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Madam Speaker, I knew Tom Lefebvre very well, as did the members for Regina-Lumsden and Brant, who were also his friends.
He was only 65 years old. He was the member for Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle where he was elected in 1965 and re-elected five times to this House. I remember Mr. Lefebvre very well, because I was the Whip for the New Democratic Party between 1975 and 1981 and during that time, he was chief Whip for the Liberal Party in the Government of Canada. After the 1979 election, he became chief whip for the Liberal Party in opposition.
Later, I remember very well that he was appointed to the Senate in July 1984 by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra. He was also a parliamentary secretary when he was a government member.

Mr. Lefebvre was very well liked by all members of the House. I remember when I was elected back in 1968 he was one of those people whom, regardless of which party he was in, you could approach. He was very approachable, helpful, likeable and he was highly respected. He loved this institution, he loved Parliament, and he made a contribution to the institution of Parliament.
After he left this place he was named to the Senate and he continued his love for the parliamentary institution in the other place. He was very active in many of the parliamentary associations and really enjoyed being part of public life.
On behalf of my party I want to extend my deepest sympathy and condolences to his wife, children and the rest of his family.


Mr. Barry Moore (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, I was also very saddened this morning when I learned that Senator Tbm Lefebvre had died.

November 20,1992
Tributes
As one of his constituents, I knew Tom for nearly 20 years. He worked very hard for his riding and was always attentive to his constituents' needs. He lived his whole life in politics because politics was his life. For me, this is a very sad day.
I was very saddened to hear of Tom's passing today, and I call him Tom with all respect because everybody always called him Tom in the riding.
He treated each and every one equally, he listened carefully to all constituents.
I would like to pass on deepest sympathy and condolences on behalf of all constituents of Pontiac-Gati-neau-Labelle, whom he served so well, and myself to his dear wife Lea, and to his children Lise, Guy and Jean.


PRIVILEGE
Don Boudria: Point of privilege, Madam Speaker. I am sorry to rise suddenly on this issue but it is of utmost importance and it is a point of privilege.
At the same time as my colleagues and I were standing in this House moments ago to pay our respects to a colleague who has just passed on, the staff of the President of the Treasury Board was handing out details of budgetary cuts in the hallway outside this Parliament instead of tabling them in this Parliament.
If the Chair would review the definition of contempt on page 143, chapter 10, of Erskine May's 20th edition, I would submit that the actions taken by the government, more particularly the President of the Treasury Board, are in contempt of this House.
Clearly these actions show the most disrespect for this Parliament when a document of this nature announcing major budgetary cuts to a whole variety of government departments is not tabled in the House but distributed to the press in the scrum area by the staff of the President of the Treasury Board at the same time as we are sitting, in particular on the issue we were discussing at the time the incident happened.
This reeks of disrespect for this Parliament.
I call upon the government House leader to avail himself of that information, to speak to his colleague, and I would ask the Speaker to rule on this issue at the appropriate moment. I submit that this is clearly in contempt of Parliament. This goes against our practices. Never would we do anything like this in the past on any occasion, let alone the occasion we are living through right now.


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, I have never heard a more irrelevant or inaccurate suggestion of what is a point of privilege or contempt of the House.
Apparently what the President of the Treasury Board is guilty of is informing the public through the media, which is the messenger we use, of some actions taken by the Teasuiy Board.
I am really dumbfounded as to what is behind the indignation of the hon. member. Is he suggesting that any government action, anything taken by any minister, must never be communicated to the media or to the public, to those affected, except by way of tabling a document in the House of Commons?
Frankly I am quite astounded by the hon. member's raising this point. I listened to his speech this morning on the motion he has on the floor and I would really wonder how respectful of Parliament that was.
I am not raising a point of privilege on it. That is part of the partisan debate that goes on around here all the time; perhaps the kind of debate that does not give the public a great deal of respect for this institution but it happens nonetheless.
I have to say dismiss out of hand any notion that somehow it is an offence for a minister and/or his staff to make comments about or inform the affected public and the media of actions taken within that minister's department.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, I do not believe that this is a question of privilege or a point of order.
The problem here is that there were questions during Question Period on the economy on what the government is going to do. In none of the answers from the ministers, including the minister whose department released the letter, did they indicate that this action was

November 20, 1992

not only being contemplated but that it was being done at that time.
In other words, press secretaries were running around this building passing out letters in French or English, depending on the reporter, and the minister who was standing up answering questions on the economy did not have the courtesy to tell the people in this House and Canadians directly what the government was doing.
The government should be more forthcoming and more honest with Canadians.


Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Madam Speaker, on the same point of order. The NDP and the government House leader in saying that it is not a point of privilege and not a point of order are forgetting the fundamental reason why we are here.
There is such a thing as accountability to the people of Canada through this House. This is not an ordinary announcement that the hon. minister has just released here today. This is not an ordinary piddling little announcement on something. No, this is a major change in the budget and the estimates of the government departments going through this Chamber. This is a major change. The outline given outside the doors to this Chamber talks about exactly $500 million in the next two months, one-half billion dollars while the estimates, while the legislation arising out of the budget of the estimates of the department, are going through this Chamber.
Madam Speaker, I want you to keep in mind and I would like you to think about this: There is only one reason why this Chamber sits. There is only one reason primary why this Chamber, called the Parliament of Canada, sits here. That is to make the government accountable to the people of Canada through this Chamber because there is no other mechanism.
We debate in this House all the time our rules concerning Question Period and the accountability of the government to the people. We have seen the erosion of certain principles of accountability like committee of the whole because it has all become very complex.
This smacks at that very principle. The government cannot, while we are sitting on a Friday afternoon, keep it in mind, circulate outside this Chamber a document
Routine Proceedings
which changes the very business that we are considering in estimates which were approved by this Chamber and on which we have spent months.
Here the government is changing the entire business of the country on a Friday afternoon at 20 minutes after twelve o'clock outside this Chamber without allowing it to be heard and to permit us to do our job as members of Parliament.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, on a question of privilege. I would like to table in the House the letter that was sent by the secretary-general of the Treasury Board to other deputy ministers to inform them of the decisions they have to make pertaining to the management of their departments.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I suggest there is no need at this time to make decisions, rulings or assumptions, to look at what this or that person may have done and to decide one way or the other. I think that, over the years, in the Canadian practice and laws, several Speakers' rulings have reaffirmed that documents circulated outside this House can not normally form the basis of a question of privilege. The President of the Treasury Board has indicated that, in any case, he will be tabling this document at the call of the "Thbling of documents". I promise to take this up anyway with the Speaker and we will get back to the House on this if need be. But for the time being, I believe the matter is closed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]


[Stage Direction]
51ST REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 51st report of the Standing Committee on House Management dealing with the selection of Private Members' Business items as votable items.

November 20, 1992
Routine Proceedings HOUSE MANAGEMENT	.
5 2ND REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE


Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 52nd report of the Standing Committee on House Management.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


OFFICE OF THE VICTIMS' ADVOCATE
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-373, an act respecting the Office of the Victims' Advocate.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to Standing Order 68(2), the motion is deemed adopted.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Madam Speaker, the office of advocate would be an officer of the House of Commons. The advocate would provide support and information to victims on every criminal procedure affecting them and their offender, not only what the general law states, but information on individual cases as is allowed by law.
Third, the office of advocate would establish contact between victims and counsellors and support groups in the community. He or she would provide compensation for any costs incurred by the victim that are not borne by existing government programs or insurance policies.
Finally, and above all, the advocate would recognize the pain and would address the needs of victims of crimes.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Mr. Blackburn (Brant) moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.


PETITIONS
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Madam Speaker, it gives me great personal privilege, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present four separate petitions from across the country: Regina, Saskatchewan; Stratford, Ontario; Brampton; Yellowknife; Nepean; Ottawa; Port Albemi, B.C.; Orleans and Gloucester. All of these petitioners are speaking out in support of C-327, an act to assist employees to purchase a controlling shareholding in the corporation that employs them.
This bill will be debated this afternoon from four o'clock to five o'clock in Private Members' Business and I would solicit support from both other parties.


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Albemi):: Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present as well. One relates to the problem that teachers experience in purchasing equipment and services to use for the education of our children. They note that the teachers bear a burden of extra curricular expenses in order to improve their professional skills and to acquire certain academic services and materials which are intended to further the level of education for our children.
The petitioners also note that self-employed professionals and business people have deductions for operating expenses and improving their office or business, even deductions for two-martini lunches and the services of prostitutes through escort agencies. They therefore call upon Parliament to request that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Revenue take action to amend the present Income Thx Act to allow teachers who teach in the educational institutions of Canada deductions for professional expenses made during the course of their employment.


Robert Evans Skelly: Madam Speaker, my second petition comes from the west coast of Vancouver Island, in particular Port Albemi in my constituency. In this petition the petitioners note that U.S. has unfairly imposed a duty on Canadian softwood
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Routine Proceedings
lumber exports to the United States and has engaged in [Translation] numerous other trade practices which amount to harassment of Canadian producers.	request for elimination of violence in our


[Stage Direction]
They also note that the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States has resulted in lost jobs and devastation of the Canadian economy without providing the promised benefits.
The petitioners, therefore, call upon Parliament to request that the Prime Minister and the Minister Responsible for International Trade take any action necessary to defend the interests of the Canadian softwood lumber industry against the unfair duty and request that Parliament act immediately to effect the cancellation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
Robert Evans Skelly: Madam Speaker, my final petition is from a number of people in the community of Port Albemi who note that on November 24, 1989, the House of Commons expressed its concern for more than one million Canadian children currently living in poverty and noted that Parliament sought to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.
They note that poverty among children inhibits learning and preparation for employment, thereby constituting a future cost to Canadian national productivity.
They note that on May 7, 1992, the Minister of National Health and Welfare said: "There is no plan to cope with the problem of poverty exclusively for children". They also note that Canada has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and has a moral obligation to seek the elimination of child poverty in Canada.
They therefore call upon Parliament to take the actions necessary to reaffirm its commitment to seek the elimination of child poverty in Canada by the year 2000 and to develop a plan for the implementation of this commitment.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to table four petitions signed by residents of Malarctic, Dubuisson, Val-d'Or, Radisson, James Bay, Sullivan and Vassan, in Abitibi, who claim that violent movies on television are dangerous and therefore unacceptable because they incite to more violence.
They say that all toys that incite to violent games are unacceptable and should no longer be produced. They also suggest that the freedom of the press to report violent acts should be limited, and information on acts of violence which is repeated too often on all television stations as well as on the radio can incite others to commit the same violent acts.
Therefore, the petitioners humbly call on Parliament to legislate on the above-mentioned points to eradicate violence in our society in order to better protect our children and ensure a better quality of life for all of our fellow citizens.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I present on behalf of the First Nations a petition regarding aboriginal languages which are 53 distinct living and vital languages, representing 11 linguistic families.
The undersigned petitioners call upon Parliament to fulfil its responsibilities to the citizens of the First Nations and aboriginal peoples in Canada by taking immediate steps to recognize the right to use, preserve and enhance aboriginal languages.
This is something that was attempted in the Constitution. Unfortunately, it failed. However, this petition expresses the will of the people regarding the importance of their language.


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches-Woodbine):: Madam Speaker, I too have the privilege of presenting a petition with

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Routine Proceedings
many hundreds of names on it organized by the National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation.
The petitioners wish to draw to the attention of the House that many Canadians experience serious housing problems and that the Government of Canada terminated the federal Co-operative Housing Program on February 25, 1992. This action has eliminated 2,000 new co-op housing units for 1992 alone, along with 4,000 construction and manufacturing jobs for the same period and that there are approximately 164,000 rental households who want to move into co-op housing due to the success of the program in creating affordable, stable and mixed income communities.
Therefore, the petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to urge the government to reinstate the federal co-op housing program immediately and to commit the $6.1 million to the program which had been planned for 1992 to permit approximately 2,000 co-op housing units to be sponsored this year.


Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Madam Speaker, I have two different petitions to present today. I am pleased to present more petitions signed by residents of the rural municipality of Beaver River and the communities of Pierceland and Goodsoil in northwest Saskatchewan.
The petitions concern the northern tax allowance and outline these residents' frustrations with the errors made by Revenue Canada in interpreting how the benefit affects them.
The petitioners ask that the government and the Minister of National Revenue review the recent ruling of the Tax Court of Canada which returned the benefits to only some residents of the area eligible for the northern tax allowance. The petitioners ask the minister to change this policy so that all residents who are otherwise eligible will be treated fairly.


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Madam Speaker, I am also pleased to present today petitions signed by another 668 residents of northwest Saskatchewan who want the government to withdraw Bill C-91, the legislation that will allow brand name
prescription drug companies to market their drugs without competition from generic drugs for periods of up to 20 years.
With these signatures from residents of the communities such as The Battlefords, Speers, Meadow Lake, Shell Lake, Wilkie and Canwood, the total number of signatures I have now presented from residents of the constituency I represent total 1,700.
I am in agreement with the concerns raised by these petitioners and I join them in asking the government to withdraw Bill C-91.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Mr. Jim Edwards (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: I suggest, Madam Speaker, that all questions be allowed to stand.


Robert Evans Skelly: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have had two questions on the Order Paper, Nos. 283 and 284, since April 1, 1992, close to eight months. Although I requested an answer to those questions in 45 days, the minister has refused to answer.
I would therefore give notice under Standing Order 39(5)(b), that I intend to transfer Question No. 283 and to raise the subject matter thereof under the adjournment motion of the House. I do hope the minister will then see fit to answer Question No. 284.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: As far as Question No. 283 is concerned, our rules do provide for such a procedure. It is agreed and so ordered.


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Madam Speaker, I did have a conversation with the hon. member earlier this week. I told him that best efforts were being made to get him answers to both questions.
It is his right to have the first matter transferred for debate and I understand that now will happen.
I regret that I was not able to deliver on my best efforts by the end of this week, but I can assure him that there is no refusal on the part of the minister. It is a matter of processing the appropriate paper, and every effort is
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being made to supply him with the answer to the other question.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Boudria (p. 13691).
Madam Deputy Speaker:: There were three minutes left in the question and comment period following the intervention by the member for Calgary Southwest.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to ask a question of my hon. colleague on the other side of the House.
This motion states specifically that it is a debate on confidence in the government and the government's inability to provide leadership and direction on the economic and social affairs of the nation.
As I have stated publicly before, I am really at a loss and severely frustrated with the whole issue of the giant mine strike in Yellowknife.
Clearly there has not been the kind of direction and the kind of leadership required to resolve the issue. It has had a devastating impact on all citizens. It has been a no-win situation for the Northwest Territories. For the citizens of Yellowknife it has essentially ripped the community apart. We are in a situation that is on the verge of another perhaps devastating event that could occur. Every day the tensions escalate in that community. What is occurring is that the RCMP is putting out press releases with every incident that occurs in relation to this strike.
It is unresolved at this point. It is quite clear, as my hon. colleague will know, that the government has sole
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jurisdiction in this particular area, sole responsibility, because there is no NWT labour legislation.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague why the impact of this strike has had such a devastating impact on the economy. Talk to anyone on the streets of Yellowknife; the cab drivers, the people in the cafes, the people in government offices will tell you that it has had not only a morally devastating impact socially but a devastating economic impact.
I would like to ask the hon. member why the Minister of Labour has taken a holiday on this issue. Why is it that the mediation has not been aggressive enough to have come to some resolution on this particular issue? Where is the leadership? Where is the confidence that we need at this time in the community of Yellowknife?


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Madam Speaker, to my colleague, the member for Western Arctic, I would like to extend not only my sympathies but the sympathies of all members with us today to those people in the city of Yellowknife and specifically to those families that lost their loved ones. This strike was devastating as were the events that followed afterwards.
It has ripped the community apart, and I will acknowledge that.
The Minister of Labour did travel to Edmonton some months ago and drew both parties together with regard to a mediator to try and resolve the very difficult situation up in Yellowknife. I can assure my colleague that he has not taken a holiday. There are procedures that we go through and obviously sometimes it is very difficult to get striking parties to come to an agreement.
I certainly once again extend my sincere sympathies, but must also say to her that this is in the forefront of the Minister of Labour's concerns and hopefully there will be some resolution in a short period of time.


Robert Evans Skelly: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity given to me to take part in the debate on my colleague's motion. I note that it is very similar to a motion that was presented to the House by the Tories way back prior to the dissolution of Parliament in 1984 when they were attempting to get the Liberals to call an election and to move out of the way. At that time the Liberals were a very unpopular government.

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I am a bit concerned that this motion is made to be a little cute and is motivated by revenge more than anything else. It does not really express concern for the unfortunate economic situation that most Canadians find themselves in today. It is unfortunate that in the lead-off speech made by the Liberal Party the member did not cite any of those concerns, that he only quoted the polls and referred back to the debate that took place in 1984 when the Tories presented a similar motion to the Liberal government of the day.
I was hoping that if the Liberals were going to be bringing forth a motion of non-confidence in the government, it be one that contained some substance and that the debate would contain some substance and not just a bit of a gimmick to try to bring about a little revenge for a motion that the Tories brought against the Liberals several years ago that was equally devoid of substance.
It seems to me that one of the reasons why Canadians have lost confidence in Parliament and in parliamentarians is that they see these kinds of gimmicks going on in the House of Commons where one party is attempting to get revenge on another party for a slight that it experienced eight to ten years ago.
Canadians do not want to see that kind of thing. They want to see the substance of their concerns discussed on the floor of Parliament and they want to see something done about their concerns. It is unfortunate that in his opening speech the proposer of this motion did not get down to the substance of the things that people in Canada are concerned about.
There is no question that in terms of managing the economy for the benefit of all Canadians, the current government in office has been a massive failure. There were promises made when it came to office in 1984: the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs made by the current Prime Minister; the promise to reduce the national debt and to eliminate the national deficit; the promise through privatization and deregulation to improve transportation, communications and even that old Conservative whipping boy, the post office.
There was the promise of tax fairness and the promise of the government and the Prime Minister to create a government of national reconciliation. When you look at these promises and at the promise made by the Conservatives to protect social programs as a sacred trust of this nation, you have to, as every Canadian has done, measure the Tories against the promises and against their own standard which they established in 1984. Every Canadian has to judge that this government has been a
massive failure even when judged against its own standards of performance.
It is not necessarily a failure of unprecedented proportions. I would like to draw attention to some of the comparisons that should be made between the Tories and the Liberals. When you measure the performance of the Tories in office against the performance of the Liberals in office, you find that in terms of failure they come to an absolute dead heat.
We like to talk about the Liberals as a party that talks like New Democrats in opposition and acts like Tories in office. It is reminiscent of Tommy Douglas' old stories about the white cats and the black cats in mouseland. It does not matter which colour of cat is in office at any particular time, it is still bad for the mice and basically that is the situation we are facing.
If the point of this resolution is to call an election so that we can switch the black cats with the white cats, what is the point in any case? It is going to be just as bad for Canadians in the short term and just as bad for Canadians in the long run. What we need is a new way of approaching government in this country and a new kind of leadership. We need a new style of leadership in this country and that style of leadership does not seem to be coming from either the Tory government on that side or from the Liberal government on that side.
That leaves a pretty good option, the leadership potential of the member for Yukon, the leader of the New Democratic Party. If an election were going to bring about that eventuality, Canadians would be very hopeful about the outcome of an election. You would see some changes in this country that would really serve the interests of the people of Canada, rather than dealing with the motivation of revenge between the two parties that have currently switched back and forth between office over the last several decades, the last century of the history of this country.
If that were the outcome of the election, Canadians would have some hope for the future.
When I hear the Minister of Finance speaking in this House and answering every single question from this side with the statement that everything is going along okay and using the term "the fundamentals are in order", it is pretty clear to me that either the minister is out of touch with the fundamentals or his definition of what the fundamentals are varies to a great degree as to what the fundamentals are for those many Canadians out there. He is also fond of quoting, as the member for Calgary Southwest did in her presentation to the House,
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the United Nations study which shows that in terms of quality of life for the last couple of years.
Canada has led all the other nations of the world, including some of the other industrialized nations. It is obvious the member has not read the study too closely. Maybe she read the prepared package that the Conservative speechwriters gave to her. When the studies that the United Nations have done are broken down, when the figures are pulled apart, and you look at the quality of life in Canada from the point of view of women, then Canada falls to rank 17th in terms of the quality of life for women in Canada.
I certainly would be interested if the aggregates were broken down so that unemployed people, people in the poorer socio-economic levels of society, were also given an opportunity to see where they stand with respect to other countries in the world. They would fall far below 17th in the world and fall well below what is experienced in what we call Third World countries in dealing with poverty.
I wish the Conservative government would be a little more honest when it is dealing with the United Nations study because it is not all of one piece. The stuff they leave out is probably more important to Canadians because it shows, at least from the point of view of women, that Canada is not number one, that we fall to 15th or 17th in the world, and that we are led by most of the other industrialized countries who value women a lot more than we appear to value women in Canada.
The statement that the fundamentals are in order also ignores the fact of what Canadians are experiencing. Take the example of unemployment. In my riding, thousands of loggers and forest industry workers have lost their jobs over the years since 1982. For those people the fundamentals are not in order.
As a result of mismanagement of the forest industry, as a result of the harsh programs being brought in by this government, as a result of the harsh programs in downsizing being brought about by corporations operating in the forest industry, and as a result of the very conservative management approach that is being taken by those forest companies, thousands of people in my own community have seen their jobs disappear, and any hope or potential for employment has disappeared as well.
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The same thing is being duplicated all across this country. I look at the experience of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, where according to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which understates the case in terms of the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country,
350.000	jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector;
63.000	of those in Quebec.
What kind of devastation is present in the economy of those two provinces, largely as a result of the economic and trade policies of the Conservative government? Many of these people have no jobs to turn to because of the damage done by the Conservatives to the economy.
Many of them made good wages in the past, have spent a lifetime building up assets, building up homes, creating the possibility of education for their families, vacations for their families, and yet for many of them those assets have been wiped out in a stroke by the bad economic management of this Conservative government, bad economic policies, and bad trade policies.
The cold, hard statistics of inflation, of trade balances and that kind of thing, do not take into account the desperation that these people feel when they are faced with the prospect of no new employment and in fact do not even know which way to turn.
Families are breaking up, assets are being lost, lives are being disrupted and destroyed, and all as a result of the Conservative economic and trade policies. When the minister says that the fundamentals are in order and that Canada enjoys the highest quality of life according to the United Nations studies, she is ignoring the many people who are included in the aggregate figures. Their life experiences are very much different from the experience of the people who are benefiting from Conservative economic policies.
Conservative members talk about the government having dealt with the debt problem. I am astounded they could suggest that that might be happening. The net debt when the Conservative government took over in 1984 was about $160 billion. That was a heavy debt, something that needed to be dealt with. The Conservatives have run up that debt to well over $450 billion. It has far more than doubled. It has almost tripled and they cannot blame the Liberals any more for the problems of the debt.
This problem is being caused by Tory mismanagement of the economy. Every time hundreds of people are laid

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off, every time a corporation is privatized that ends up going belly-up, every time the size of the civil service is cut back, those people do not end up in jobs in the private sector because the private sector has been killed off as well. As a result those people end up on the unemployment list and on the welfare list. They become a negative draw on the economy. They take welfare. They take unemployment insurance and they contribute to the rising deficit of the government and the rising debt of the government.
That is the member's responsibility. That is the government's fault. It has mismanaged the economy and that is the reason why the debt is increasing. The Tories cannot look back 10 years any more and blame the Liberals for that problem. It is their problem and it is because of their ill-timed, ill-conceived policies that we are in the position we are now where we are facing a debt of almost $450 billion.
That does not mean that the Liberals were any better than the present government. As far as I am concerned and as far as the people of Canada are concerned they are both in a dead heat, a plague on both their houses.
When the Liberals were in office from 1979 or 1980 through to 1984 they doubled the debt even in that short stretch of four years by adopting Tory policies. That is why I say the Liberals sound like New Democrats in opposition but they act like Tories in office. People in Canada are saying a plague on both their houses. They have both given a bad name to politics and a bad name to democratic government in this country.
Some people have said that the conflict between the Liberals and Tories that we see in this motion, this gimmicky motion that the Liberals have reached back almost 10 years to dig out of Hansard in order to get their revenge against the Tory policy, is a bit of a cola war like the war between Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
I will tell the member and the gentleman who is here from the Liberal Party, that many people across Canada are saying, "What's the diff?" What is the difference if a Liberal government is in office or a Tory government is in office? They bring down the same policies which are of no benefit whatsoever for ordinary Canadian citizens.
I look at the debate going on now about transportation and the crisis that the two national airlines find themselves in largely as a result of deregulation and the hands-off transportation policies being taken by both the Liberal government and the Tory government.
It was actually the Liberal transportation minister back in the 1980s who brought in the deregulation policy in spite of warnings from the other parties that this kind of deregulation policy would not work in Canada, that it would kill the two competing airline systems. They were told it would create thousands of job losses, but for ideological reasons the Liberals went ahead with the program and the Tbries completed it because there is no difference between a Tory and a Liberal in office.
The Tories followed up the program to the maximum ideological extent and, as a result, the airlines today are facing the kind of crisis that we are in. We see the threat of tens of thousands of jobs being lost in the Canadian airline industry. In fact we are looking at two airlines that at one time, before the the Liberals and the Tories got their monkey wrench into the system, were considered to be among the best performing airlines on the face of the earth. Now look what we have got as a result of Liberal and Tory mismanagement. The same thing applies to the railway system.
In particular, I look at social programs because of the news that came out yesterday about the fact that one million children are still living in poverty in this country. How can we see a gimmicky kind of motion without any substance being presented to the House of Commons by the Liberal Party? Why do we not hear about their proposals to deal with those one million children currently living in poverty?
As far as I am concerned we have two parties here who are fighting over which snouts end up in the trough. As was pointed out when the election expenses information came down, they are both corporate-financed political parties. They belong to and are intertwined with the system of one dollar, one vote while the rest of the people in Canada are in the system of one person, one vote, the democratic system.
People across Canada are now saying: A plague on both your houses. None of you have done anything worth while for Canada. They want to get rid of both of you. The sooner that happens the better it is going to be for Canadians.
There is a political party that represents that one person one vote system, that democratic system that Canadians are so proud of and want to see implemented in the House of Commons, not the old boy network, not the corporate sponsored political party system that we
November 20, 1992

have with the Liberals and Tories. They want to see people who represent all Canadians.
If an election results from this motion, if the government decides, as it should, to step out of government and call an election, the Canadian people are going to give it some thought. They are going to compare the Liberals to the Conservatives. We are going to provide a bit of that comparison so that they will have accurate information. People will see there is absolutely no difference between the black cats and the white cats, between one corporate sponsored party and another corporate financed party, that their policies are all the same and that they have been deleterious to the people of Canada. They are going to kick them all out and put in a government that represents the democratic system in Canada, that represents a bottom-up approach to politics where the people count rather than those at the $500 a plate dinner.
We intend to support this motion. We would like to see the government kicked out. We do not think that they have any ideas that are beneficial to Canadians. In fact we see in the headlines that the Prime Minister is making speeches at $500 a plate dinners announcing programs that are designed not for the people of Canada but, as the headlines in The Globe and Mail state: "Move to be announced December 2 will be designed to rebuild Tory fortunes". The last thing the people of Canada want is any kind of system to rebuild the Tory fortunes.
Canadians want to see the Tories out of there as soon as possible because the damage they can do in the last year of their term is so great, given the damage that they have done in the first seven or eight years, that they want to see them out altogether. Their main concern is that they may substitute the other Tory political party, the Liberals.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, I listened with great attention to the diatribe of the hon. member. He is asking the Canadian people to vote for the NDP which enjoys the support of 14 per cent of Canadians.


An hon. member:: Six per cent in Quebec.


Don Boudria: Six per cent in Quebec. That does not form a strong government.
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That does not have much hope. With only 6 per cent of declared voters, it is rather difficult to get any candidate elected.

The member was saying that the New Democratic Party is very democratic. I wonder if that means he dissociates himself from the NDP Government of Ontario's labour laws. For instance, in this great spirit of democracy the member is talking about, under its new labour legislation there will be votes to unionize shops and those votes will not have to be taken by secret ballot. Is that his concept of democracy? It is not mine. I do not even think it is the concept of democracy of some of the members across the way, although they can speak for themselves.
He was speaking of the good quality of government. Is he saying that the NDP at the federal level could do for Canada what Bob Rae has done for Ontario? If that is the case, as we say in my riding, non merci. I do not think that is the kind of situation we would want where under the provincial New Democrats in Ontario these so-called socialists are cutting social programs and closing down hospital beds. Can you imagine socialists closing down hospital beds? That is what we are seeing in the province of Ontario.
My question to the member is: Does his party at the federal level want to shut down hospital beds as well, just as the Ontario government does?


Robert Evans Skelly: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his question. He mentioned the labour laws in Ontario and whether those labour laws are democratic. I can tell the member many people in Ontario feel that those labour laws are a heck of a lot better than the labour laws which persisted in Ontario up to the time the New Democratic Party was elected.

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In fact, the labour laws in British Columbia have been brought in, in a similar vein. For example, there is a provision in the British Columbia labour law to eliminate the very kind of scab labour that the member for Western Arctic was complaining about in terms of the Giant mine dispute which resulted in a tremendous amount of violence taking place on the picket line at the Giant mine.
Anti-scab legislation will soon be in effect in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. As a result, in those provinces we are going to see a reduction in picket line violence. Hopefully, before the federal Minister of Labour leaves office he will adopt similar anti-scab legislation because I cannot see the possibility of the Liberals doing that when they take office, if that is the member's concern about the labour legislation in Ontario.
I think what the member is concerned about is that great strides have been taken in labour legislation in Ontario for the first time after many, many years of Liberal and Tory government. It is now catching up to some of the western provinces like Saskatchewan and British Columbia and in some areas catching up to more rational labour legislation in Quebec.
I am very proud of what has been done in terms of the progress made in labour legislation in those provinces. I hope the member will take a closer look at them before he asks his questions.
With respect to closing hospital beds, I think the member will understand that there is a new direction taking place in health care. In part it is being forced upon provinces by cutbacks in transfer programs and EPF funding and in some of the wealthier provinces like Ontario, Alberta and Quebec, through cutbacks in Canada Assistance Plan funding.
I have talked to ministers of finance and ministers of health from those provinces who are forced into extremely difficult positions in terms of dealing with health care because the federal government is constantly cutting back on those transfer payments. In fact, that process started when the Liberals were in office and that pressure was put on provinces prior to the Conservative government coming into office in 1984. Therefore, the Liberals have nothing to be proud about in terms of the cutbacks in transfer payments to fund hospital and health care in the provinces. That is the real reason for the cutback in hospital beds.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my colleague from Comox-Albemi that he did add substance to the debate. I thank him for that. He discussed issues dealing with the economy and social affairs of this nation and I think that is what this House should be all about. I have to say that while he outlined certain philosophies he believes in, I do not agree with him but that is fair ball.
I do want to ask him questions regarding jobs and employment. He is right. This is a major area, because we have to give those people the tools to go and get the work so they can get off welfare or UI and create revenue. We have already allocated some $3.2 billion to retrain people on UI. It seems to me that the hon. member voted against changes regarding the UI bill we brought in about a year or a year and a half ago.
The hon. member also said that he was very much against the free trade agreement. I understand his philosophies. But we are an exporting nation and if the rest of the world is moving into trading blocs, such as Europe and the Pacific Rim, we cannot stick our heads in the sand. We either get out there and compete and beat, or we are not going to maintain our standard of living. The same is true for NAFTA.
The hon. member mentions that he does not agree with privatization. I happen to agree. But the question comes down to this: How are we going to raise revenues? We cannot tax the people any more. What we have to do is cut expenditures and maybe reallocate.
I would like to hear the hon. member's ideas and the substance of his concerns on how we could reallocate funds to help those people really in need.


Robert Evans Skelly: I would like to thank the member for the question. Over the years in this House, in this Parliament, our party has put forward a number of proposals that would first of all generate revenues. Those proposals would also distribute revenues more fairly so that they would not all be taken off the backs of the lower and middle income workers and all the credits would not go to people at the high end of the income
November 20, 1992

scale in the way that the Conservative tax policy has been structured.
If the member reads taxation statistics, she will know that the last eight years under Tory rule have been a tremendous boon to those at the high end of the income scale. They have actually had a tax reduction. As a result, the people at the lower and middle class end of the income scale have had to pay for that largesse. So, as we have proposed in this House, we would like to see a mechanism for redistributing the burden.
In her initial presentation the member talked about getting all Canadians to work together. I think the Prime Minister started off on the right track when he talked about a government of national reconciliation. When he was first elected it will be recalled that he brought Bob Hawke, the Prime Minister of Australia, up here. He brought workers and corporate and public representatives to Ottawa for a meeting to find out how the people of Canada in the various sectors could pull together. It collapsed, because the Prime Minister himself did not seem to have a commitment to it.
I recall when we were talking about the problems we had in shipping wheat through west coast ports that were on strike, the Prime Minister stood up and said: "Well, you talk to your friends in labour to see if they can stop the strike". I will tell the hon. member what the problem is. If the government by that kind of statement is admitting it has no friends in labour, then it has no opportunity to set up a government of national consensus. It has no opportunity to get a government of reconciliation that-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member's time has expired. Questions and comments have been terminated. On debate the hon. member for Saint-Leonard. I believe you are splitting your time with the hon. member for Nepean.


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I just want to confirm that I will share my speaking time with the hon. member for Nepean.
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The subject of debate on this opposition day is the motion of the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott- Russell, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people and that, therefore, an election should be called forthwith, in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of holding a general election at least every four years.
What does this motion say? First of all, it states that in accordance with tradition, an election should be called every four years. In fact the hon. member for Glengarry- Prescott-Russell was inspired by the very motion moved by the present Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, in the House on December 9, 1983. Today, after eight years of government we have every kind of problem you can think of, and the country is in a crisis. Eight or nine years ago, the present Prime Minister believed it was important to have an election every four years and made it quite clear it was a Canadian tradition, and repeated this during the 1988 election campaign.
On October 24, 1992, and I am quoting from an interview with the Journal de Montreal, the Prime Minister said: "We are one year away from an election, and we will have time to discuss it". This is one more promise he does not intend to keep. He now believes the government should be able to stay for up to five years. What did the Prime Minister say on December 9, 1983 about governments staying longer than five years? He said: "Sure, some governments might decide to stay for more than four years, but it just means they are tired. It means they are bankrupt". This is what is happening to a government that has lost the confidence of the Canadian people. Not just in one region of this country but in all regions. Just look at the latest polls.
Since I am sharing my speaking time with the hon. member from Nepean, I would like to use the few minutes I have left to talk mostly about my own region, the Montreal region, which is in veiy bad shape. I remember we used to have a slogan in Montreal: Montreal equals pride, Montreal equals city. Today it is the unemployment capital and the bankruptcy capital. Montreal is no longer Canada's metropolis. Montreal is truly at risk. Since January 1992 we have been suggesting that. The government keeps telling us that the opposi-

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tion only criticizes. It is easy to criticize, but if you have ideas, let us know and tell us about them. We suggested a short-term action plan in January 1992, ten months ago, with a very vital component. I am referring to an infrastructure program that would have made it possible to kick-start the economy and put Canadians and especially the people of Montreal back to work, because in Montreal construction has always been the bell wether industry. It always took the lead and the rest followed. The construction industry was always there to kick-start the economy and had, in the process, created thousands of jobs, and we had projects that enhanced the environment and the quality of life in our region and our city.
Let us look at the situation in Montreal. In October 1991 Montreal had an unemployment rate of 11.5 per cent or 186,000 people out of work. Today, a year later, the rate is 12.8 per cent or 204,000 people without work.
In the construction industry alone, the engine, a key economic sector, the unemployment rate is nearly 50 per cent. I am not the one saying that. It is the Quebec construction industry commission, the organization that manages all the regulations of the Quebec construction industry for both employees and management. Poverty in Montreal: a little over 615,000 people or 21.5 per cent of the total population of the metropolitan area live in poor households. More than 70 per cent of these poor people live on the island of Montreal and 50 per cent in the city of Montreal itself. In the city of Montreal, which has a million inhabitants, one family in four and one out of two single people are on low income. That is the sad situation of Montreal.
In Montreal alone the food banks distribute 12 tonnes of food a day, enough to fill the Olympic Stadium field to a height of eight feet ten times a year. I am not the one saying that. It was in Le Soleil on March 25, 1992.
Half the adults in Montreal do not work, according to an unpublished document of the Quebec Department of Labour and Income Security. I am not the one saying that; it was in La Presse on February 29, 1992.
The employment level in the cities of Montreal and Laval is 54.6 per cent. A dynamic city usually has an
employment level of around 70 per cent outside recession periods.
That is the picture of Montreal. That in broad strokes is how the newspapers describe Montreal.
The occupancy rate for office buildings is lower in Montreal than in the rest of Canada. That was in Le Devoir on November 10,1992. La Presse of November 10, 1992 reports that home building dropped 11 per cent in October. An 11 per cent drop in just one month. How does one revive the economy when the government tries to tell us that things are moving now and starting to go well?
Poverty among families and children is getting worse in Canada, according to the Campaign 2000 report.
People pay $1,900 more in taxes under the Conservatives. Middle income families have borne the brunt of tax increases since 1984, according to one study. This is not just what opposition critics say; the figures and studies are there.
Despite all that, in addition to raising taxes, the government has also increased all service costs. The other day I had a sickening experience. In my riding office I received an old man who wanted to bring his nephew to Canada because he was old and needed some family member near him. He was told by the immigration bureau that he first had to pay $450 for a sponsorship application, although this service was free before.
We could talk about taxes and charges for immigration, citizenship and passports. If you want a small booklet or folder from the Federal Business Development Bank you have to pay for it.
Despite all that, again this morning, the $34.6 billion federal deficit exceeds the government's objectives, since the minister in his last budget told us that it would be about $27 billion. The deficit is now $35 billion, in spite of all the tax increases.
I see that my time is nearly up.
It is clear. My colleague had to move a motion because it will be four years tomorrow. Since this government was elected and it is now time to have an election so that
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Canadians can change this government and hope to have a better life, as the Americans just did south of our border.


Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, last night in this House I had the opportunity to provide answers to some of the concerns of the hon. member for Saint-Leonard regarding the economy of Montreal. I find it particularly hard to take that in all his statements, he never said anything positive about the economy of Montreal and the dynamism of its people.
Through my involvement with the Quebec Chamber of Commerce, I have had the opportunity in the last several years to meet the business community of Montreal and to work closely with many of those involved in that region, and I can tell you that the people of Montreal and the participants in the economic, social and political life of that region are extremely dynamic. Through their efforts, they were able to make up for the losses incurred in certain traditional sectors, which were doomed in any case. Some industries were going to disappear but the business people and successive municipal governments in Montreal have worked hard, to strengthen the aeronautics, high technology, pharmaceutical and research and development sectors. For instance, we can think of Bombardier, which is an extremely dynamic company, run and controlled by Montrealers.
One must recognize that Montreal remains a strategic location on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Montreal is still at the crossroads of the major airlines of the world. Since 1984, our government has supported all the efforts to stimulate the economy of Montreal and to maintain a strong economic activity in that city. Our government has also supported the efforts made by these involved in Montreal's economy.
I tend to believe that the negative aspects in the Montreal region are much more the result of shortsighted policies implemented by the previous federal government and the government of the Parti Quebecois. Could the hon. member for Saint-Leonard tell us at some point if he sees anything positive about the situation in Montreal?
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Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, last night my colleague and I had a little discussion on that issue. I deplored the situation, as I just did again, because for a year now, I have been asking questions in the House about the bad situation that prevails in Montreal.
Yet, last night and again today, my colleague talked about the aeronautic industry. Indeed, there have been some small investments here and there. We know that the aeronautic industry is very important for Montreal. But when Montrealers look at what is going on today in that field with our two air lines, they get very worried. What does the govemmente do? It was aware of the problems, which have existed for two years. The government drags its feet.
As for pharmaceuticals, I agree that this sector has attracted investments and created hundreds of jobs. But the problem still remains. The unemployment rate in Montreal is now over 17 per cent. Therefore I cannot talk about anything else. This unemployment rate of 17 per cent is for the east end of Montreal. In my area, it is as high as 25 per cent. This situation is unbearable.
The hon. member says that the government has always supported those who have wanted to launch projects. In Montreal we had the PAREL program which was very important for the city of Montreal. It provided for the renovation of houses and gave work to the construction industry. This government eliminated the program.
The mayors of Montreal and of several suburbs support our request for the implementation of an infrastructure program because it would provide work for just about everybody, not only skilled workers. That is what we need. This is why I say that the government should heed the requests made by every group and sector of our society for the immediate implementation of an infrastructure program to stimulate the economy and put Canadians back to work.


Beryl Gaffney: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in this House and speak to the motion which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people and that, therefore, an election should be called forthwith, in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of holding a general election at least every four years.

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This motion was put forward by my esteemed colleague for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. It is most important and very serious.
In 1983 the current Prime Minister stood in this House and declared: "The government should honour the fundamental British tradition in this country which calls for an election, not in five years, but within four years, so that people can judge the action of the government".
I whole-heartedly agree with the Prime Minister in his comments. I also must congratulate him for sticking to his principles the first four years of his mandate as Prime Minister of this country. He launched the 1988 election by declaring: "It has been a Canadian tradition to call an election after a government has completed four years of a mandate".
One would expect any principled individual to do the same thing four years later, but unfortunately this same Prime Minister has decided that there are things greater than principle. Even more unfortunately we have seen this Prime Minister and his Conservative colleagues cast aside principle on too many occasions over the past eight years.
The latest polls show the popularity of this government at only 22 per cent. I would like to take the time today to outline some of the things which have caused Canadians to lose confidence in this government.
First and foremost is the economy. It has been totally mismanaged by this Conservative government. The inaugural issue of Canadian Business Economics reports that tax increases since 1984 have been historically unprecedented in magnitude. The increase in the tax burden in Canada was by far the largest among the G-7 countries of the world.
Thxes on the household sector in this country saw an increase of 6.7 per cent of gross domestic product between 1984 and 1991. Comparatively in the United States, the increase was only 1.3 per cent. Furthermore the additional tax burden borne by the average Canadian family will be an increase of $1,894 in 1992.
It is well recognized that the major challenge facing Canada today is that we must become more competitive in today's interdependent and highly competitive global economy. However, some serious disturbing signs of
Canadian competitiveness and our weaknesses have emerged over the last 10 years. Specifically, in relation to our major international competitors, growth in our manufacturing productivity and technology performance-two key indicators of competitiveness-has been quite poor. Our ability to compete in today's changing world economy is being eroded, not the least by the amount of the national debt that Canadians are financing.
Canada's merchandise trade surplus has fallen from $19.8 billion in 1984 to $11 billion in 1991. Canada's current account balance has gone from a $2 billion surplus in 1984 to a deficit of $27 billion in 1991.
Canada's share of world trade slipped from 5 per cent in 1979 to 4 per cent in 1989. Canada only has 2.6 per cent of the world share of trade in high technology products, compared with 3.5 per cent in 1971. Canada's labour productivity has grown only 1.8 per cent between 1979 and 1989, compared with 5.5 per cent in Japan and 3.2 per cent in the United States. Canada has lost over
200,000	manufacturing jobs over the past 30 months, and most of those jobs were here in the province of Ontario.
In order to meet the demands of globalization, some important restructuring in industrial economies is necessary. Unfortunately the government has not taken any steps to meet these demands.
Canada needs a policy which both acknowledges economic change and which helps Canadians adapt to these changes. Recognizing the link between free markets and government is one step toward accomplishing this goal.
Liberals advocate a global trade policy driven by Canada's strategic trade priorities which reduces our dependence on the United States and which would endeavour to make Canada the first global outward oriented economy on the continent.
Liberals recognize that trade policy must be closely associated with domestic policy. Monetary fiscal investment, training, education and research policies must be linked together with our trade policy. The Conservative government has failed to recognize this need. It has also failed to recognize the need to rethink attitudes toward issues such as education and training, research and
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development, interprovincial trade barriers and labour management relations.
The Conservative government has failed to realize that education, research and environmental policies are the building blocks of economic growth. These failures have caused serious problems for Canadians from coast to coast.
The current Prime Minister of Canada told this House in 1983: "It does happen that a government sits too long. It does become exhausted and it does become bankrupt of ideas''.
I think Canadians everywhere recognize the truth of those words. This Conservative government has lost the confidence of the Canadian people. An election should be called. Canadians have suffered enough.


Mrs. Gabrielle Bertrand (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, I was glad that my colleague started her speech by reading the motion before us today, and I will do the same because I want the Canadian people to know exactly what we are dealing with today.
The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of
providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs
of the nation -
The opposition has been clamouring for elections. When you call for elections to be held, you do so because you intend to campaign and win and eventually come to power. God forbid this political formation was to come to power with the same leader today.
Twice in the past this leader had the opportunity to put goverment finance in order. Each time-and I think that many share this view-he failed. Let me give you a couple of examples. The Leader of the Opposition was the President of Treasury Board from 1974 to 1976. Normally, the role of Treasury Board is to veto the expenditures the various departments are planning. However, government expenditures increased by 16.3 per cent in 1975-76 and 14.6 per cent in 1976-77. Within two years this Leader of the Opposition who aspires to become Prime Minister of Canada authorized the following increases in expenditures: a 34 per cent increase in salary and wages; 18 per cent in communication and
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transportation expenses; 43 per cent in government rent expenses; 53 per cent in expenses associated with machinery and equipment, and, finally, 38 per cent for professional and special services.
That is not all. Later on, the Leader of the Opposition became Minister of Finance from 1977 to 1979. During 1978-79 expenditures went up 10.3 per cent and for 1978-79 the defict grew because of an increase of the national debt in excess of 50 per cent within two years.
As you can see, Mr. Speaker, this parliamentarian, this Leader of the Opposition, likes to spend and to borrow. In this House he has opposed just about every expenditure restraint measure put forward by this government, while requesting additional financing for a slew of programs and other expenditures.
The prospect of this political formation coming to power worries me. I would like to ask the hon. member if the Canadian people can afford such a leader in terms of the management of government finance?


Beryl Gaffney: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member on the opposite side of the House for her comments.
It never ceases to amaze me that we have had a government in power for eight years that cannot resist speaking on records of previous governments and will not address its own record as the government of this country.
Since the previous speaker raised the issue of what the Liberals have done in the past, I would like to talk also about that. Under previous Liberal governments, the people of this country had prosperity. The finest social programs in this country were implemented under previous Liberal governments.
Our medicare system was initiated by a Liberal government. We have our old age security pensions, thanks to Liberal governments. We have our social safety net program, thanks to previous Liberal governments. We had the highest standard of living that we have ever had in this country under previous Liberal governments.
I do not believe that any Liberal government of the past has anything to be ashamed of. We can hold our head high. We can be proud.

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Under this present government we have had the biggest tax increases in history. From the period 1984 to 1988, this country had the largest increase in revenue in history. What did the government do with it? It blew it.
I circulated just recently a questionnaire on the economy in the constituency of Nepean. Questionnaire after questionnaire was returned to me. People are anxious, people are cynical about this government. They have had tax increases that they cannot carry. They have their young people that they can no longer educate. Our young people cannot get jobs. This government does not have one thing to hold its head up high about.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret the hon. member's time has expired. Questions and comments are now terminated.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting debate today.
I want to talk specifically on the motion put forward today that calls for an election and holding the Prime Minister to statements that he made from time to time when he was in opposition. Not a whole lot has changed. I guess that is the role that we play when we are in opposition, reminding government of some of the things that it said when it was in opposition.
We know and you know it is constitutionally set out that we have elections every five years in this country and we are going to have another one. There is no question about it. I guess if I were a member of the Liberal Party I would be calling for an election.


Some hon. members:: Now, now.


Gregory Francis Thompson: They are saying "now, now". It is coming, as the Prime Minister has noted. If I were leading in the polls, I would certainly want an election now as well.
The reason the election is not going to happen now is simply because the support that they are receiving now is rather shallowly rooted.
There are reasons for that. Obviously one of the reasons the support is going to other parties than ours is simply because of the tough times we are going through.
No one questions that. We are going through some pretty tough times.
I want to point to an election south of the border in the last couple of weeks in the United States of America. What did they do? We know what they did. They turfed out the incumbent president, did they not? They turfed him out for a number of reasons. They were not satisfied with what was happening. We can understand that because that is how it works.
The point to be made is that if we had an election today, the very same thing could happen. In the U.S. there were signs that the American economy was starting to pick up. In fact the U.S. had six consecutive months of growth in their economy. We can argue that it was not strong enough and we will all accept that. Obviously the American people did not think that it was strong enough.
I wish to point something out in the November 16 edition of Business Week. There is a weekly article called "Business Outlook". I just want to read from that because I think it puts it in perspective. "The sign in President-elect Bill Clinton's campaign's headquarters in Little Rock says it all. It is the economy, stupid". That note kept Clinton's election bid focused on the key issue, which he rode all the way to the White House.
No mistake there. He did the right thing. I do not blame him. I would do the same thing if I were running for office there. After the election they say: "Now comes the hard part. What makes the President-elect's task unusually difficult is the long-term nature of many of the economy's problems and Washington's diminished power to do anything about them. The limitations placed on both fiscal and monetary policy by record federal deficits and other structural impediments only complicate the job at finding solutions that everyone can live with, especially the financial markets".
That is not unlike some of our problems. The previous speaker from Nepean focused on the debt and I will have to step through that as well. The world is locked into some pretty tough economic times. The U.S. obviously is and Canada obviously is. We are a product of many, many years of mismanagement. It would be unfair for me to blame just the previous Liberal government. It is easy for me to say that because most of them over there will admit that they made mistakes. All governments in the western world in the last 25 to 30 years have all
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developed this mentality that we can live off our credit and that we really do not have to pay the bills.
The day of reckoning is here. That day of reckoning actually started in 1984 for us when we took office. What happened in 1984 when we took office was simply this. As members on the front bench admitted in 1984, they had left the cupboard bare. There was no money anywhere. They thought that we would have such a tough time governing and have to face such tough music that we would never get re-elected. They took great delight in that. That happened to be the way it was.
The problem was on that $200 billion debt that we inherited, we did not have the cash to pay interest on it. We had a structural deficit, a yearly deficit that added to the problem. What we were doing was to borrow money to buy the groceries. What has happened between 1984 and 1992, a period of eight years, is that that debt has compounded. The interest on that debt is compounded. Anyone knows that if you put money in the bank at 12 per cent interest for six years your principal will double with compounded interest. That is the way it works.
Unfortunately it operates the reverse when you owe money. Now we have an accumulated debt of over $400 billion and we do not like it. Nobody likes it. Folks over there do not like it either. The point that I am making in reference to the U.S. is simply this. No matter who takes office tomorrow morning if we did have an election, we are facing the reality of some pretty tough music, as Bill Clinton is facing in the United States.
I wish Mr. Clinton the best of luck for a lot of reasons. He deserves the job, he worked hard for it, he had a flawless campaign and there is no question about it. It is argued in the States that the president squandered his popularity, that he should have dealt with the tough issues when his popularity was very high. The American people probably would have accepted that. He did not do it.
I hope the American economy does grow because it is a great trading partner of ours and it just happens to be one of the reasons why our position internationally is not worse than it is. The statistics prove that our trade relations with the United States and the free trade agreement are working in our favour.
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This year our trade surplus with the United States will be at an all-time historical high. It should come in in our favour, that is, with a surplus of $19 billion to $20 billion. It is working. Therefore, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into that flawed logic that the opposition sometimes throws at us. It is working well.
If the American economy can pick up some speed and continue to grow, it should pay dividends to us as Canadians. After all, the U.S. is our biggest trading partner. We wish it the best of luck and Mr. Clinton too. We hope the U.S. can proceed down the road to economic recovery.
I want to compare as well today before I sit down our record with the record across the floor. Ten years ago today, Mr. Speaker, you were sitting here and I was not. At that time unemployment in this country was 13 per cent. Interest rates were at 22 per cent. I remember those because I was working in the car business and I had to scratch and work pretty hard to make a living.
Inflation peaked at that period at 13 per cent. I want to compare those three statistics with what is happening today in Canada. We do not take much pride in this, but unemployment today is 11.3 per cent, which is less than it was 10 years ago. We are coming out of it. We can talk a little bit about the increase in employment rolls today as well.
Interest rates today even after yesterday's big increase are at 9 per cent. The prime rate is 9 per cent. Ten years ago it was at 22 per cent. Inflation 10 years ago was 13 per cent and today it is 1.3 per cent.
What is happening is that we do have the fundamentals there. They are there and if the world economy can move out of the recession, the western world particularly, we are positioned to do very well.
I have last week's The Economist. It has charts in here and it is important that we look at these from time to time because when they rail against what we are doing as a government, they fail to recognize what we are doing in relation to the rest of the world, whether it is interest rates or something else.
I know we are taking a lot of heat on the interest rate increase from yesterday. It is remarkable. When you look at the economic and financial indicators that apply to the rest of the world, you will find that we are positioned very well. In terms of prime lending rates, there are only two industrialized nations on the face of the earth that have lower rates than Canada, and that has not always been the case. Those two countries for the sake of interest are Japan and the United States. The United

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States is just marginally behind us and that is important to consider.
Let us go back to some of those indicators that I mentioned earlier. When, foreign corporations, banking institutions and entrepreneurs take a look at a country and decide where they are going to invest, those are some of the things that they look at. They look particularly at inflation.
Inflation under the previous administration, as I pointed out, is exactly 10 times less today than it was 10 years ago. Canada is open for investment. We are going to continue to get foreign investment in this country because the indicators are there that some of the things that we are doing are starting to work.
Let me go through more of them. Labour productivity in this country rose 3.3 per cent in the first half of this year. It never did that under the previous administration. Labour unit growth decelerated. It went down. It is one of the things that we like to see go down. Labour costs went down. They fell sharply to 1.5 per cent in the first half of 1992 from a high of 8.2 per cent in the first quarter of 1991.
Those are the types of numbers that investors are looking at. Those are the types of things that investors in this country take some satisfaction from. They know that it is not perfect out there, but they know the fundamentals are there. That is important.
One thing that has not happened in 25 or 30 years is that relative to the United States, our big trading partner to the south, unit labour costs in Canada were down almost 5 per cent in the first half of this year, a remarkable statistic. That should be telling all Canadians that we are becoming competitive and the rest of the world is recognizing that. We just need a few breaks along the way to move to where we want to be with those unemployment numbers increasingly declining, going down, moving in the right direction.
In relation to the free trade agreement, I have mentioned some of the numbers and I mentioned the fact that our trade surplus with the United States this year will be the highest in the history of Canada, not lower. Our exports of goods and services have increased by over $15 billion since the FTA was implemented. Canada's share of the total U.S. imports has risen 3 per cent to 20
per cent since 1989. In other words, the total number of goods imported into that country in relation to Canada has increased by 3 per cent, but do not tell anybody that. Do not tell the United States that. If it knew that it would not be too pleased with the statistic.
What does the NDP say about all this? My Liberal friends will get a kick out of this one. What did the leader of the NDP say the other day? She said if they get elected they are going to do a couple of things. The first thing they are going to do is tear up that agreement. They are going to change it. We will not have to worry about her tearing it up or the NDP because it is not going to take office. The fight will be between us and the folks immediately across the Chamber.
I should not blame it on the leader of the NDP because this is party policy, they were all part of this one, but the leader of the NDP is also telling us that if they take office they will abolish the GST. This is most interesting. What they are forgetting is that the GST accounts for about $18 billion worth of revenue.
Again, our friends across the Chamber recognize that. They have basically said there may be some restructuring-they will not tell us what kind of restructuring- but no way can they eliminate it because they are smart enough to know that you cannot forgo $18 billion in revenue.
The folks at the other end of the Chamber, the NDP, have indicated that they will eliminate the GST or that source of revenue, totalling $18 billion. They forgot to tell us what they are going to replace it with. Correction, they did not tell us what they would replace it with, they will not replace it. What they will do is add another $18 billion on to the debt load.
Perhaps they will not. Perhaps what they will do is follow the member for Timmins-Chapleau. He says if we take office do not worry about borrowing money, do not worry about raising money, we will just turn on the printing presses and print more money. That is the other side of their philosophy.
What it brings to mind is an article in Maclean's magazine of November 23. The article, Business Watch, written by Peter C. Newman, says beware of Marxist philosophy. David Blake called it Marxist philosophy but he alludes to the Marx brothers, Harpo, Groucho, and Chico. They all reside on that end of the Chamber. That is the Marxist philosophy that they follow because you do
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not have to be accountable to anyone, make any kind of outrageous promise that you wish, because you will never have to take office, you never will take office, you never have to honour those pledges to the Canadian people.
The people of Canada are not satisfied, I agree with you totally and that is borne out in the statistics in terms of our popularity. I go back to a term heard from time to time in regard to elections. A famous Canadian tells us this one from time to time: "There is nothing like a lynching to focus the mind."
It goes back to what I am referring to, their lead in the polls. What is going to happen when the Canadian people go to the polls is they will sort through all of this. They say things are not good and things are not good in Europe or the U.S. and President-elect Clinton is struggling to make things better in the U.S. What they will figure out is there are no magic answers because if there were magic answers we would wave the wand and everything would be perfect.
We are caught in an economic trap in a sense because government debt load is the highest in recorded history. The private sector debt load, the corporate side, is the highest in the history of the country and consumer debt is the highest in the history of the country. That is pretty well the same in all parts of the world. That is what makes it so difficult for us to get out from underneath this terrible burden.
We can be assured of one thing, one thing that we will not do, and that is we are not going to borrow money to solve the problem because history simply proves that does not work. It simply does not work and we are not going to do it.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I was quite interested when the hon. member was talking about the NDP policies. We agree on that. Not all of the blame is to fall on the government's shoulders. The Government of Ontario takes a big part of that blame. There is no question about it. The member is quite right when he talked about the failure of the NDP governments in Ontario and in most of the provinces that have leaders who are NDP. Their policies have failed. We have seen more and more plants closing on a daily basis in those provinces.
I was quite interested when he indicated that the NDP's way out of the recession is by printing more
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money. That is veiy interesting and I would like to find out more about that printing machine or that way of reducing the deficit.
I am also quite interested to hear that in Ontario we have the largest ever deficit in the history of the province. I do not know about this next budget but perhaps we will have per capita in Ontario, with an NDP government, the largest deficit anywhere in the western hemisphere.
The reason I am upset about it is that lately the Government of Ontario is embarking on a mission to go after senior citizens who live in government subsidized housing. In addition to the rent that they pay, now the Government of Ontario wants to charge them extra for painting the apartment or for cleaning their windows from the outside.
When a government that always claims to be the friend of the people proceeds with such initiatives and when it starts taking such actions, you and I know the true picture of the NDP government and the true philosophy and policy of the NDP government, which is this: When they are in opposition they say one thing, but when they form the government they say something else. Well, that was the NDP.
In terms of the comment of the hon. member from the government side that we do not have the money so we cannot spend it, I want to share one thing with him. It takes money to make money. If you do not invest in the economy, you are not going to be able to generate revenues. That is why the Liberal policy, as it was communicated by our leader, of investing in an infrastructure is the best way in the short term to activate or kick-start the economy, in order to create jobs, in order to invest in the future, in order to help out Canadians who are struggling to make it.
I do not want to go over the past. I was not around eight or ten years ago in order to defend the track record of this ministry or that ministry. But we have a minister here, the Minister of Transport, who was a co-chair of the national task force on the infrastructure. I recall I was a municipal politician at the time. I read his report. I was pleased that he had supported at that time a call on the government to enact a tri-party agreement whereby the federal government would put in a third, the provin-

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cial government would put a third and the municipal government a third toward infrastructure.
I call on the minister to go back to that report and to encourage his colleagues in caucus in order to make sure that an infrastructure program is put in place so we can attack this problem in the short term.
I would like to hear a comment from the hon. member, telling me whether he supports such an initiative that deals with infrastructure proposals.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I do not totally disagree with the suggestion of putting massive amounts of money into infrastructure. I do not think anyone, even on this side of the House, would totally disagree with it. The difficulty obviously is how much is enough, and where do you find the money? That is the problem that I guess we as a government face. It is a tough one.
We use the old term ourselves, even though sometimes we hate to hear it, kick-start the economy. Going back to what I had previously mentioned, that would be fine if our debt load were not as high as it presently is. There is no problem with that. The problem is when you step through all the engines of the economy, if you wish, the private sector-that is the engine-the corporate sector, and you might say the individual sector, all of those things have to be working to make the economy work.
You know there is a very, very high debt level, and that is the problem. How much do you use? In a sense, when you say how much do you use, you are asking how much do you borrow to make it happen.
Here is an interesting statistic. We talk about the time that we took office and what we have for an accumulated debt today. Let us forget about whose fault it is. We will continually blame each other, no matter how long this House sits. Anyway, we all agree that today it is somewhere in the vicinity of $400 billion, give or take a few billion. But let us say it is $400 billion, which it is. Today it consumes about 31 per cent of all revenue, just paying interest on that debt load of $400 billion.
If we had followed on the old course with the spending habits of the previous government, and with due respect not too many of us in this House were in that old government, none of us on this side at least, statistically we would have a debt load now of $900 billion, close to
one trillion. There are so many zeros on the end of that one you need a half-ton truck to carry them around with you. We would have a debt load of about $900 billion. This is the important part to remember because it would not be consuming 31 per cent of revenues to service the interest on the debt, it would be taking over 60 per cent of those revenues. Then you have lost control. The International Monetary Fund moves in and governs Canada, if you wish. That is the difficulty.
That goes back to the premise of the member's question. How much do we borrow to throw into the economy to kick-start it? The honest to goodness truth is that I am not sure we can afford to borrow any more. I think we have got to find the money somehow. Personally, I see the solution to the problem as simply this: The international world and the corporate sector do have a fairly high degree of confidence in Canada. The difficulty now is that we do not have confidence in ourselves at the consumer level.
What I see happening in Canada today, and you can blame it on a number of things including, if you wish, our tax structure, is that consumers in Canada are not spending and retail tax revenues are going to be down. My guess is, based on what I see happening, they are going to be down by about 13 per cent. Therefore, the best thing that could happen in Canada would be if consumers started spending. It would generate enough revenue that the government then would have enough movement to do something without borrowing more money.
I think part of the solution to the problem rests with ourselves. When that confidence reaches a certain point and Canadians start spending, I think we will be on the road to recovery because the other fundamentals are there. That is happening south of the border, it is starting to happen here and we hope that it continues to proceed along that way.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the previous speaker from the government side. I want to say respectfully to the member from New Brunswick who spoke to the issue of infrastructure that I am sure the people in his region and his province are waiting anxiously for some announcement in the area of infrastructure to address the highways of New Brunswick and equally so across all other provinces of the country. I think that there is some
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interest. We welcome that initiative from the government side and look forward to it coming forward as soon as possible.
To the issue of today, I am pleased to rise on the motion brought forward by my colleague from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. The motion before us today states:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people and that, therefore, an election should be called forthwith, in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of holding a general election at least every four years.
Canadians know that the fourth anniversary of the Conservative government's election occurs this weekend. I do not know that a great number of Canadians will be celebrating and saying "happy Anniversary" and the likes of that. They are aware because over the last four years the people of Canada have suffered considerably under the social and economic mismanagement of the country by the Conservatives.
It is understandably hard for Canadians to forget four years of being taxed to death, of losing their jobs and of the damage they have received from a never-ending recession. The Canadian economy today is in ruins. Over
1.6	million Canadians are out of work while many more have simply given up trying to find a job. The number of welfare recipients across Canada has steadily increased and will continue to do so as more and more businesses and factories close and as those who receive UI have their claims run out without finding any alternative employment. What is even worse, the evidence indicates that child poverty in Canada has reached critical proportions. According to a recent report issued by Campaign 2000, which represents a coalition of national and community social organizations, between 1989 and 1990 the number of children living in poverty increased by more than 170,000 to a total of 1.1 million. This means that one out of six Canadian children lives in poverty.
In addition, the report states that there are 342 food banks in Canada and that two thirds of food baskets go to families with children. In my opinion, these statistics amount to a national disgrace for our country and the government must assume a large part of the responsibility for what has occurred.
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The city of Cornwall in my riding of Stormont-Dun-das is a clear example of how the federal government has failed to provide the economic leadership and direction required for Canada. Cornwall has suffered considerably as a result of the recession. Like many other cities and towns across Canada that have been hard hit, Cornwall has received nothing from Ottawa that could stimulate an economic recovery.
For over two years my colleagues from Glengarry- Prescott-Russell, Leeds-Grenville, Renfrew-Nipis-sing-Pembroke and I have asked the government to implement an eastern Ontario economic development program for the region. The government, however, has chosen to ignore the severe economic downturn that has occurred in communities such as Hawkesbuiy, Pembroke and Cornwall.
Massive lay-offs, plant closures and job losses have failed to convince the government that a need exists for assistance similar to what the government provides through the FEDNOR program for northern Ontario or the Canada-Quebec subsidiary agreement.
The recession, combined with the GST, the fall-out from the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the dramatic increase in cross-border shopping, which is itself directly related to the excessive taxes the government has introduced, have all taken their toll on the local economy of Cornwall and other border communities.
Over the past 36 months plant closures have caused over 2,500 jobs to be lost. The unemployment rate in Cornwall is over 20 per cent and the city ranks third in Ontario in the percentage of population on general welfare. Yet, instead of doing something to generate business and investment, the federal government has done virtually nothing.
Given the situation in Cornwall and in other communities across Canada which have suffered similar economic fates, one is truly left wondering how many Canadians have to lose their jobs, how many Canadians have to go on welfare and how many Canadian factories and businesses have to cease operations and close their doors before the government will act.
In its rampant pursuit to control the deficit, the government has plunged the nation into economic chaos. The odd thing about it is that the deficit, let alone the national debt, is hardly being addressed at all. In fact, every time the Minister of Finance has made a forecast

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about the amount of the deficit and the government's ability to address it, he has never come close.
Yesterday the government released its budget deficit figure for 1991-92. The final figure of $34.6 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1992 is $4 billion more than the previous fiscal year and is more than $3 billion higher than what was forecast in the federal budget last February.
When the Conservatives first took office in 1984, they inherited a period of reasonable economic growth in Canada. Yet, even with this period to build upon and after introducing well'over 30 new or increased taxes which taxed Canadians into oblivion, they have nothing to show for it at the conclusion of their eight-year reign of economic terror. Any other respectable government would be ashamed of itself. Not this one. Its economic philosophy of stay the course has been the same since day one in 1984. It has stayed the course. While the government has remained ideologically sound, it has all but bankrupted the Canadian economy.
It is unconscionable for this government to run ads on national television about how Canada can be competitive in the world and how job retraining programs are providing the impetus for the Canada of tomorrow. Every Canadian knows that we can compete with the best in the world if given the opportunity. Unfortunately it is very hard to be competitive if the federal government itself is incompetent.
It is no secret, as much as the present government would like it to be, that there are not enough funds to meet the demand for job retraining programs.
I recently participated in a rather unpleasant experience in my riding. The local Canada employment office in Cornwall had to inform unemployed workers participating in educational upgrading programs that there were not enough funds left to see them through to graduation. Some of these individuals were finished their first year of courses and were well on their way to learning new skills, to being better qualified and thereby obtaining improved opportunities at re-entering the work force. I can assure you that the "yes we can" slogans from the government's TV ad campaign were not going over very big then.
I would like to make one other point, and it is with reference to the impact that the economic policy of the government has had on small businesses in Canada. I believe that small business is the backbone of the Canadian economy, however the goods and services tax and the myriad of taxes that have descended upon small business owners have forced many of them into bankruptcy.
The combination of the ongoing recession, the implementation of the GST, the recent high interest rate policy of the government and the reluctance of the Canadian consumers to purchase goods and services while in fear of losing their jobs have all had a disastrous impact on the ability of small business to survive.
It is my belief that not only has the small business community had to endure the fall-out from the government's economic mismanagement, it has perhaps suffered a significant blow to the desire of individuals to take the risk and start up a business.
I believe the federal government has done a considerable amount to erase the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada. With today's tough economic climate, there are not too many people eager to rush in and start a small business. Such a situation does not hold much promise for a better economic future for Canada. Given the number of Canadians that small businesses employ and their importance to the Canadian economy, it is imperative that measures be taken to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit in our country before it is lost forever.
One of the first steps in that process and also to bring about an over-all economic recovery would be for the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament and provide Canadians with an opportunity to elect a new government that has both the ideas and the ability to bring about the real and economic change.
The Prime Minister has stated that come election time his government will have nothing to fear in going before the people of Canada on its record. If this is indeed the case, the Prime Minister should refrain from looking at polls and go to the people instead and to do this at the earliest opportunity for the sake of Canada and all Canadians.
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In conclusion, in order to hasten the Prime Minister along, I ask that all members of this House support the motion which is before us today.


Louise Feltham: Mr. Speaker, I heard one of my colleagues across the Chamber today saying: "It takes money to make money. Spend, spend, spend". Over the years, I have heard this many times from the opposition. Certainly, if we look at the record, the growth in program spending for the years 1969-70 to 1984-85 was on average 13.8 per cent. The growth in the last three years of the Liberal government, when we look at 1980-81, was 16.5 per cent. In 1981-82 it was 14.75 per cent and in 1982-83 it was 19.75 per cent.
In the last eight years this government has looked at an increase of on average 3.6 per cent. My question to my colleague across the way is: Is this the policy of the Liberals? Is it the policy to spend, spend, spend, to spend our way out of the recession? Do they have anything else to offer Canadians other than to spend, spend, spend?


Robert (Bob) Kilger: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Wild Rose for her question. With regard to spending, the intervention we heard prior to my speaking from her colleague from New Brunswick in relation to infrastructure would give her some insight into the ideals and policies of the Liberal government.
In fact, yes, at this time in our economy and facing the high unemployment we have, we would intervene. We hope that her government will do likewise. If I read correctly and if I am hearing properly, in fact those members are considering and will bring forward an infrastructure program in partnership with the provinces to address the issue of transportation through improvements to highways.
I believe that is very similar to the thoughts and beliefs of the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party has been on the record for some time in wanting to have government, in this case this government, get into partnership with the provinces and with municipalities in an infrastructure program. I welcome the initiative that the government is bringing in an infrastructure program in partnership with the provinces to address the national transportation network through highway improvements and so on.
Certainly the Liberal Party is in support of those types of initiatives. My party does not believe in spending and spending. We have to be fiscally responsible regardless of
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who forms the next government. But certainly this is a critical time for government to get involved in the marketplace and initiate an infrastructure program. I hope the government will act on its initiative that I understand is coming forward very shortly.
What else would the Liberal Party have to offer? We would have a great deal of hope to offer to Canadians. They want the chance, as our good neighbours to the south had recently, of going to the polls, electing a new government and giving them new hope.


Larry Schneider: Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member make reference to the goods and services tax as being one of the evils this government has created, or at least in any event it is being harnessed with the blame. I sat here intrigued. I too do not like being the bearer of a public, a visible tax to replace a hidden tax.
As we all know in this Chamber the public does not react to the reality that this visible tax has replaced a hidden tax. It just requires a leap of faith. We thought that with the initiation of this tax Canadian taxpayers had the right to know what the government was taking out of their pockets and as a result we decided to go public with it. Perhaps politically it was not a very astute move but from the standpoint of honesty it was really the only way we could go.
I sat intrigued and asked myself if perhaps there was a better way to raise the revenues which everyone in the House will recognize were raised in a negative way in manufacturing through the federal sales tax and replaced by the goods and services tax.
Let us assume a full moon should rise at the same time that a low comes in from the maritimes and clouds everyone's vision and a Liberal government should be elected, what would the Liberal Party do? What would it suggest we do? What would it do to replace the revenue from the GST? Should it eliminate it or in fact would its plan be to eliminate it?


Robert (Bob) Kilger: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the hon. member's question. Let me start off by speaking on the GST from a regional perspective, from my own situation in Stormont-Dundas and Cornwall, which is on the north shores of the St. Lawrence river just adjacent to northern New York State. Taxes are never popular for any government, be it municipal, provincial or federal. It will be no different for the next government. If ever there was a tax revolt in Canada particularly in border commu-

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nities, this tax initiated that more than any other I recollect.
Another negative impact of that tax has been that a great deal of money has gone underground. You see people trading services and so on. I recognize as the hon. member said that the former tax it replaced-and I am of that same school of thought, that tax had to be replaced. In this case, the government chose this tax. For the Liberal Party we recognize first and foremost that there is that $18 billion revenue which has to be replaced. You cannot say that you are going to get rid of the tax and not replace it. I recognize that the NDP possibly has a different approach to that. Certainly Liberals recognize that there is a very real revenue there that is critical to the operation of government. Certainly we are in the process of preparing to bring to the Canadian electorate an alternative to that tax recognizing that that revenue has to be substituted. We look forward to bringing that option to the electorate.
As soon as we fulfil this motion today all Canadians will know what the Liberal Party is going to do very precisely to replace that $18 billion revenue that is presently being generated by the goods and services tax.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I am also going to consider the motion from the Liberal Opposition which says: "That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people," and it goes on about a general election.
I could say to the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell that I do not listen to criticisms from people with a short memory, but since he is calling for an election I will speak as if I were on the campaign trail. Speaking of election, I must say that I am ready to go as soon as one is called.
Here is part of my first speech, a speech I will deliver tomorrow morning, Saturday, November 21. I can tell the hon. member from the New Democratic Party who is trying to interrupt that unlike him I do not heed polls. Maybe he should try his luck and run for mayor of Montreal this time.
I am pleased to repeat what was said on May 31, 1991 about the Liberal member for Papineau-Saint-Michel, who was a member of the Belanger-Campeau commission: "Over the last few days, the Liberal member severely criticized the federal intrusion into regional development, and his recent statements to the Belanger-Campeau Commission showed that Mr. Ouellet was not talking in good faith". The member was saying: "You are not happy when the federal government does not invest, but when it does, you consider that it is dangerous and you say beware of Greeks bearing gifts".
On November 27, 1990, as one can see on page 809 of the official transcripts of the Belanger-Campeau commission, the same member for Papineau-Saint-Michel said: "When you look at the performance of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion-that is the Conservative government-you realize that year in year out almost a third of its budget goes to Quebec, either through master agreements signed with the provincial government or through direct subsidies to industry. How can you underestimate the concrete results of these direct interventions by the Canadian Conservative government, which might not have given you all you expected but has nevertheless brought about concrete results".
That same November 27, on page 770, the same member is reported to have said: "The PQ is prejudiced against the Canadian government and it distorts the Canadian contribution to regional development". This was written by the member in a press release issued in response to a submission by PQ ridings.
In the newspaper of November 28, 1990 one could read: "Finally yesterday, after defending Quebec's jurisdiction in the area of regional development, he said that it was poor timing to try to intervene in new areas of provincial jurisdiction at a time when we try to come up with a new division of responsibilities within Confederation".
Following the results of the referendum in Quebec there was an editorial in La Presse dated November 14, 1992, signed by Alain Dubuc. It is important that all Canadians know about the comments of one of the best journalists in Canada. He said: "Now that nobody wants to talk about the constitution, we will have to look at problems that we tried to ignore for a decade. It is going to be painful. We have been in a slump for quite a while
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now. The slide in the standard of living started as early as 1977, but the financial crisis of the state started to build momentum in 1982. As for the economy, Canada has been gradually losing its competitive edge for the last decade; during those ten years, except for a few bursts of energy such as the Ontario Boom, not only has Canada become less prosperous but it has been finding it hard to keep up with the most performing countries". In my opinion, it is this continuous downturn which triggered the political crisis, I mean the crisis which started in 1977. Canada, the triumphant one, was created in the sixties and seventies, rather artificially through massive federal interventions such as regional assistance financed by Ottawa, social programs financed by Ottawa and national institutions also financed by Ottawa.
When the economic slow down and the ensuing loss of prosperity started to impede the workings of the nation, the Canadian Government became unable to deliver the goods, which marked the beginning of the end. For example, it was when the federal government, under the Liberals, tried to replenish its coffers by taxing western resources that the west rebelled. And the more pronounced the crisis became, the more resentment grew as the Liberal government in Ottawa took measures to avert a financial catastrophe.
The reason why Canadians hate the Prime Minister so much is because of a whole array of politics such as the GST, free trade, symbolic cuts to VIA Rail for example, the redesign of unemployment insurance and tax increases. They want to shoot the messenger.
They are disillusioned with politicians mainly because there are no more handouts from the State and their dissatisfaction with federalism in its present form can also be explained that way. That is how, in my opinion, this creeping economic crisis contained all the right ingredients for a political crisis. But the whole situation was compounded by a unique Canadian attitude. Instead of facing up to reality, Canadians chose to flee. They took refuge in their national sport, the Constitution game, and tried to solve very real problems through constitutional amendments. Each region translated its deep resentment into constitutional parlance.
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But the bottom line is that if the economy had been in good shape and the central government in good health, this crisis would never have occurred, at least not to such a degree. It is not sure that we can ever go back. These constitutional debates are addictive; right now we are going through withdrawal pains. We have witnessed that for the last few weeks. Canadians are just now discovering their economic woes. And the first thing they want to do is find a political solution to them, throw Brian Mulroney out. But who will take his place? A minority government made up of regional parties who do not even have an economic platform. Once again we resort to magic. People want to replace Mulroney with someone who will promise them things. And lo and behold, the Liberal Party has been making promises these last few days-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would like to bring to the attention of the hon. member that he should not be using the Prime Minister's name. It is the right hon. Prime Minister. Instead of Mr. Mulroney use right hon. Prime Minister, please.


Guy St-Julien: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, you are right. As I was saying at the beginning of my speech, I thought I was in the middle of an election campaign.
People want to replace him with somebody who makes promises, when what we need is somebody who will dare tell the truth. The fact is only a government not afraid of being unpopular will be able to get us out of this mess. Our economy is a shambles. I believe the only person who is not afraid to tell the truth is the Prime Minister of Canada.
In February 1983, under the Liberal government, Abitibi had the highest unemployment rate in the last decade to this day. On June 23, 1992, a local newspaper, La Frontiere, mentioned the 1983 unemployment rate: "In the last 12 years, unemployment rates have often exceeded 20 per cent in the regions. Just look at those numbers: November 1981,22.7 per cent; December 1981,
21.3	per cent. Every month of 1982, except October when the rate was 19.2, and the first six months of 1983,

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including February when the unemployment rate reached a record high of 28 per cent in Abitibi-Temis-camingue under a Liberal government. In 1984 unemployment remained very high: 21.7 in February, 20.3 in March, 25.7 in September. Such was the situation when we took over in 1984. Today I can tell my political opponents that unemployment is at 12.5 per cent.
Another thing must also be mentioned. Since 1984 when it was first elected, we have solved regional problems in my part of the country. Keep in mind that my riding is the largest one in all of the ten provinces. The day after I won the 1984 election, we discovered that some issues had been neglected for 26 years, some for 10 years. When people speak today of faulty management, I can tell you it is shocking. I could call my critics on the other side many collective names, but I will refrain from doing so.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you, speaking about issues left unsolved for 26 years, about the housing facilities in Barraute, 26 years without giving the people a place to live. We had the Pavilion d'hebergement the very year I was elected. The new terminal at the Transport Canada regional airport was another problem that had been neglected for many years and so were the Cadillac stadium, airports for northern Quebec, developed in cooperation with the federal government, and the Amos municipal airport. Listen, that was a financial matter and the liberal member was a native from Amos and he never could find one penny to invest during the four years he was there. After only three years we solved the financial problem of that airport. I could mention numerous other cases like that.
However, there is one issue I would like to refer to. We were speaking about manpower training. The Parti quebecois member for Rouyn-Noranda, Mr. Remi Tru-del, said last year that the best consultation program in Quebec was the communities program created by the federal Tories. It included a Business Development Centre and a Community Futures Committee. With the help of the government in place, we succeeded in doing some patching and we tried to find solutions after a 20 year liberal reign. It is fun to give one's first speech during an electoral period. They want an election. Well we are ready.
It is my first speech. When we go on the election trail, I will be able to say this is my second speech. But I want to warn them before they come to Abitibi. In any case, when they do come, they get there in the afternoon and go back the same night. They make a speech, but they are out of there the very next day. We never see them again. There is one thing I want to tell you though, Mr. Speaker. When I was elected in 1984, I was elected to serve the population be it Liberal or NDP; that is my mandate. If we speak about what we did, we certainly did our bit to maintain jobs. I have here the newspaper from Sunday, October 18, 1992. That is not so long ago. This, the oldest newspaper in Val-d'Or, said the Business Development Centre helped maintain 89 jobs. What is that? That type of thing did not exist in the liberal days. People were starving. They had trouble finding two meals a day.
In the Courier de Malartic of June 5, 1990 they said that the Business Development Centre of the valley of gold was now ready to fulfil its mission. Those are concrete measures that were implemented in all of the Abitibi-Temiscamingue region. I say to our Liberal opponents that if they want us to call an election, they had better examine our political and our financial accomplishments before they come to our part of the country.
There is one issue I hate to raise in front of the Canadian taxpayers, but I will do so.
Of course there are some good members in the Liberal caucus and the NDP caucus as well. However, according to an article in Montreal's La Presse which appeared on Wednesday, September 30, 1987 the Liberals made Canadians lose billions of dollars. That is what it says. By being excessively concerned with political consideration-s-this is about 1987, during a press conference held by the Auditor General of Canada, Mr. Ken Dye-the former Liberal government wasted billions of dollars of taxpayers' money.
Early in 1984 the Department of Finance knew the scientific research tax credit program was in trouble. This was early in 1984. It is now 1992, and they want us to call an election. They have forgotten they were in power for 20 years. They have forgotten they left us a debt of $209 billion. They have forgotten that from 1984 to 1992, the compound interest totalled $238 billion. We all have loans. I do, and I pay compound interest on those loans. But the Liberal government left us a present of $238
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billion. Imagine what we could do today, if we did not have that debt.
"We repeated our warning half way through the year-these were public servants talking to the Liberal government-but the department did nothing because the government had to". Well that is interesting because these are news clippings from 1987, and they say: "the department did nothing because the government was about to start its election campaign, Mr. Dye explained, appearing before the House of Commons public accounts committee".
Today a member moved a motion calling for an election! Let us go back to 1987. The quote continues "if it had intervened sooner the Liberal government could have saved substantial amounts. Very substantial amounts, since billions of dollars were involved. This controversial tax credit became the costliest tax fiasco in Canadian history. When it was announced in 1983, former Finance Minister Marc Lalonde expected the program would not cost the government, i.e. the taxpayers, more than $200 million".
Scientific research is important. I supported this $200 million program. We welcomed this program. It was welcomed by business people, students and our universities. Everyone was delighted, because $200 million was reasonable. But look at what happened.
The program was abolished by the Conservative government-and we are still in power-and it was criticized for doing so. It was in all the newspapers, and the media really attacked us. However, what the media did not know was that shortly after this government came to power, the program had mushroomed to the tune of $3.5 billion, and up to $1.9 billion of that amount had disappeared as a result of fraud.
How could anyone expect a $200 million program, paid for by taxpayers, to end up costing $3.5 billion, while $1.9 billion of this disappeared as a result of fraud? Just think if we had been able to save that money, those $1.9 billion, how many hospitals we could have built for the sick, how many schools we could have built for our
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children and how much money we could have invested in regional development.
Fraud was committed when businesses and private citizens applied for tax credits without doing research. The purpose of the program was to offer generous tax credits as an incentive to companies and private citizens to invest in research and development.
According to Mr. Dye, the Department of Finance should have had some suspicions from the very beginning, considering the flood of requests for application forms as soon as the program came into effect in January
1984.	However, Mr. Lalonde was confident he had a program that would produce results.
Today many people look at the polls and some look at the figures for their ridings. Polls may be important, but before calling an election, I think we should look at all the Liberal dossiers, the previous government and all its programs.
They did some good things. They helped the people, but when we look at a $200 million program that mushroomed into a $3.5 billion-program, of which $1.9 billion disappeared as a result of fraud, one wonders what happened. As far as elections are concerned we are ready for an election. We are ready to defend our ridings. But I want to make one thing clear to the opposition: We are working for the people of this country. It is not easy today. We are trying to find solutions, but we should all remember that together we can do the job. Together with the opposition. It does not matter who the parties are. Let's find solutions and do what has to be done, in the best interests of all Canadian taxpayers.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Madam Speaker, thank you for letting me make some remarks to my colleague, the hon. member for Abitibi, whom I find very enthusiastic and even humorous on occasion and with whom I sit on the Public Accounts Committee. I commend him for agreeing that an election should be held. The hon. member for Abitibi tells us that he is quite ready for an election as of November 21. As you might expect, we will wait a while, perhaps until the snow has melted in Abitibi, so that people can go and vote in large numbers for our colleague from Abitibi. I say that tongue in cheek because our friend, the hon. member for Abitibi, has made gratuitous assertions throughout his speech in this debate.

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I found one of the great weaknesses of the Conservative Party today, and we saw it in the hon. member for Abitibi, is that they go back to 1984 or 1983 or 1972 or 1965. As you would expect, they never want to touch the 1930s. One thing we must remember is that we are talking about the government that is now in power. I will tell you about the period from 1988 to 1992 and this government should end in 1993. The debate is on 1988 to 1992, or 1993 if you prefer. The economic policies and guidelines and programs of this government are at issue. That is the question. The question is not whether former Prime Minister Clark or former Prime Minister Diefen-baker or former Prime Minister R. B. Bennett or former Prime Minister Trudeau or former Prime Minister Pearson did this or that.
That is like a boxer who talks about his previous fights of past years. The fight that concerns us is the one today. Today's fight is on the period from 1988 to 1992.1 would like the hon. member to tell me about the reports we see every week in the Public Accounts Committee: the Auditor General's reports and disastrous comments about this government's mismanagement. It is all very well to tell us that 89 jobs were created in Abitibi. I would like to know how many food banks were created in Abitibi, in Quebec and throughout Canada between 1988 and 1992. How many manufacturing plants shut down? How many people were laid off? How many unemployed do we have? How many people are looking for work? How many are on welfare? And of those who have jobs, how many feel insecure because of the lack of confidence? What is the interest rate today? And to conclude, if he wants to end with just this question, how much money did the government waste from 1988 to 1992 on advertising campaigns on television and in newspapers and magazines? I would like the hon. member for Abitibi to tell me about that waste of money.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, in answering the Liberal member for Carleton-Gloucester, and I was expecting that one, let us go back to the last few months. I will have to make a second political speech. It will be
short and easy. If you look at the development in Abitibi, especially in my riding, which is the largest in all ten provinces, we succeeded in implementing Canada-Que-bec agreements on economic development that provide $75 million for 4 ridings. Today there are $14 million left out of the original contribution of $35 million of the federal government. But I made some projects. I made a lot of projects and it is thanks to the two governments that we were able to have agreements. We had a $100 million Canada-Quebec agreement on mining development; the Abitibi-Temiscamingue got $24,8 million. It is not because of the Conservative members but, rather, because of the taxpayers, the contractors and those who have mining projects. We are here to serve these people. We are not here just to cut ribbons and make good speeches. We are here to take calls in our office.
This summer Employment and Immigration was short of $1.3 million to help our students, namely those unemployed people who wanted some training, and who wanted to study and complete their high school. Our government was able to find that money thanks to the Quebec Minister of State for Employment and Immigration. We solved the problem.
Since the hon. member referred to food, let me say that the day after the referendum I turned the first sod for a food co-op, a $4.1 million project. I can tell you that we are building with the Crees in Val-d'Or a food and distribution centre. This is a $5.4 million project that will create 20 jobs.
Talking about bad management, my friend is a member of the public accounts committee. But what is taking place right now with the public accounts? They are just finding out that money was wasted on CIDA programs, on programs and projects that go back 10 years. We always find out about the bad news five or six years later.
If we talk about development it is because it is important to us. We work and we try to find solutions. He talked about the Business Development Centre that helps preserve 89 jobs. Our government has spent $2.2 million in the Val-d'Or region to help businesses and to protect jobs.
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The hon. member talks about wasting money. I am pleased to hear him talk about wasting money and I am also pleased to tell him that I am the only Canadian and Conservative member of Parliament, that releases his expenses throughout Canada. I release them to all the media, every three months. I just tabled a bill here in this House. I hope that the hon. member will support it so that after the next election all federal members of Parliament will make their expenses public. But when my colleague talks about wasting money for publication and publicity purposes in Canada, I would like to get figures. In any case, the federal government has always been the one that spent the most money to inform the taxpayers and the public of its programs. This has always been the case.
I agree with the hon. member when he says that it is not easy these days. We are here to serve the public, regardless of our political stripes.
In my offices, I have one in Senneterre where, for the first time they have an MP office, one in Amos and Val-d'Or. We take calls and it is not easy these days to talk to students and unemployed people, but together we can find solutions and go forward to build a better Canada.


Eugène Bellemare: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know that it is Friday afternoon and that everybody is tired. But is it appropriate in the House of Commons for a member to rise when he is wearing an old pair of blue jeans?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I can assure the hon. member that, from where I am, I can see the hon. member is wearing a shirt, a tie and a jacket, as we can see on the television screen. This Friday afternoon, everything seems in order to me.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order because I would like to show to all Canadians that indeed I am wearing jeans. But wearing jeans is as important in Abitibi as wearing a suit. Where I come from, people wear suits or jeans, and I will not let others insult me because I wear jeans. I have the right to wear them in the House.
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Neil Young: Madam Speaker, I just hope the said jeans were made in Canada and were union made.
It gives me the greatest pleasure to stand in support of the motion before the House today which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government is incapable of providing leadership and direction in the economic and social affairs of the nation and has lost the confidence of this House and of the Canadian people and that, therefore, an election should be called forthwith, in accordance with the Canadian custom, practice and tradition of holding a general election at least every four years.
I am not sure about the part that talks about Canadian custom. It has been for the last couple of years, but it has not always been like that.
One of the reasons why I fully support the motion itself is that there is an increasing or growing number of Canadians who will become thoroughly convinced that this government is on a scorched earth policy in so far as the Canadian infrastructure is concerned.
A growing number of Canadians sincerely believe that we are going down a path that will see the eventual destruction of Canada as we know it as an independent, sovereign nation.
Madam Speaker, as you have consistently watched how this government has operated since it came into power in 1984,1 am sure that as an independent member of the House you would share some of those concerns.
I particularly want to spend a few minutes talking about what this government has done on the fiscal front since it was elected in 1984. From the then Minister of Finance's first budget when he attacked old age pensions by attempting to deindex them and was unsuccessful in doing that-but he was successful in deindexing family allowances at the time-and in nearly every successive budget since that government came to power there has been a continued attack on Canada's social safety net.
One of the major arguments that the government has used for attacking these social programs is that the government has to control Canada's deficit and social programs are the cause of Canada's deficit.

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A number of articles have been written in recent months which clearly show that is not the case. Of course we have argued over the years that is not the case. However, it is nice to see an independent group such as the Canadian Economic Observer write an article in June 1991 called the "Growth of the Federal Debt" which clearly substantiates the arguments we have been making over the years.
I will quote from the article. It analyses the contributions to the growth of the debt after 1975 made by both total revenue and expenditures and their components and says that while the consequences of the debt are controversial, the statistics presented will make it easier to understand how the current level of indebtedness occurred.
It continues that broadly speaking government program spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product did not rise significantly over the whole period from 1975. In fact, it moderated compared to the preceding 10 years when social programs proliferated. Expenditures and social programs did not contribute significantly to the growth of government spending relative to the Gross Domestic Product.
Excluding the cost of unemployment insurance, which is intended to be self-financed and over the business cycle, social program spending has not increased relative to the GDP over the last 16 years. This moderation would have been more evident but for sharp increases in interest payments on the public debt.
Deficits also became steadily larger after 1975-76, initially more from shortfall of revenues than higher spending, and much of the shortfall originated in numerous changes designed to reduce taxes and in the transfer of tax points to the provinces.
Even more recently, on November 5, 1992, another economist, Patrick Grady of Global Economics Limited corporation, also issued a report which clearly showed that much of the reason why Canada's deficit was so large was the regressive tax reforms brought in by this federal government. There has been a steady erosion of disposable income by middle and low income Canadians through this government in successive budgets nickel and diming people to death.
The average Canadian family, according to this study, is paying about $2,945 more in taxes today than it was in
1984. That is nearly $3,000 per family in disposable income that is not being regenerated within the Canadian economy.
When I hear this government say that there is nothing it can do in order to alleviate the poverty of over one million kids in this country who are relying on food banks to have a healthy life style, I just do not understand that.
What has happened is the government has shifted the tax burden away from the corporate sector. I heard my friend over there talking about how his government was helping businesses by the use of tax dollars in his particular constituency. I would like to see, just for a small change in emphasis, perhaps this government getting its priorities right and spending some of those tax dollars on thousands and thousands of Canadian families facing desperate conditions today because of the policies followed by this government.
If we take a look at yesterday's Quorum, a press clipping service received by all members of Parliament, we see that the justice panel, the justice committee of the House of Commons, has decided to take a look into the recession as a factor in the increase in the crime rate in this country.
I do not know why a Commons committee today has to undertake that kind of study. It has been well documented. There was a study done by then Senator Hubert Humphrey in the United States labour department in the middle 1970s that clearly showed a link between government economic policy, and in this case a recessionary one, and the increase in crime, in family violence, in suicide rates and in child poverty. I could go on and on and on. It has all been well documented.
This government is choosing to ignore that and to say its whole emphasis as a government has to be on deficit reduction, as opposed to doing things to help alleviate the desperate poverty that many people are living in today.
Even if the recession were to end tomorrow, the various studies I have seen clearly indicate that the effects of that recession do not end when the recession ends. The social programs are going to be with us for at least 10 to 15 years after we get out of this recessionary period.
I am concerned about that. Most people I talk to, ordinary Canadians for the want of a better term, are very much concerned about that. When they talk about the recession, everybody agrees it was made in Canada.
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It was a deliberate policy by this government particularly aimed at Ontario and Toronto.
When we get through that people then become quite concerned about jobs, and properly so, the jobs that presently exist and how secure they are. They take a look at the effects of the Canada free trade agreement on jobs, particularly in my own province but also elsewhere. Then they listen to this government saying that not only is it happy with the existing free trade agreement with the United States, but it wants to expand it to include Mexico and broaden it even further after that to include the whole North American continent.


An hon. member:: What is wrong with that?


Neil Young: I will tell the member what is wrong with that. He should come to my constituency and talk to people who were productively employed for years, are no longer productively employed and do not have a hope in hell, quite frankly, of getting a job ever again because of their age.
I have people living in my constituency-and we could say the same about nearly every constituency in this country-who began working in a plant, a factory or an office at age 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 or whatever. They had every right to expect, based on past performance, they would probably work with that company until their retirement at age 65.
What has happened is that much of the secondary manufacturing in this country has gone down the tubes. We said it would go down the tubes with free trade, mainly because of the branch plant economy that has existed in Canada since the late 1930s.
I want this hon. member from the government side to come down and talk to the people who come into my office. They have worked for the same employer for 30 or 40 years and suddenly wake up one morning and the employer has closed the plant gates. He could try telling those 50-year old or 55-year old individuals that free trade has been' good for them.
It is okay for those guys over there who probably came out of some lucrative small business community. They probably owned it themselves and had money oozing out of their bloody pockets on a personal basis. If they tell average Canadians that at age 50 or age 55 there will be
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all kinds of employers out there begging those individuals who have the skills and the education to come and work for them, they are dreaming. That just ain't happening.
They should get out there on the streets and talk to people. They should find out for themselves the kind of misery the policies of this government have inflicted on decent working people. It is a crying shame.
The quicker we dump that lot and hopefully not replace them by the other lot that was in there before, the happier I will be and I think the happier the Canadian population will be.


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker, the member for Beaches-Woodbine has probably said what I would like to say. Perhaps I would say it in a slightly different way but the message is the same.
We are approaching the fourth anniversary of this particular session. I go to a lot of anniversary celebrations in my constituency and normally they are quite happy events. However, may I suggest the anniversary of this government will not be greeted with celebration among most Canadians. I suspect that over most of the country there is a pall; it will be a day of mourning rather than a day of celebration.
The Prime Minister has said they have to get the fundamentals right. If they do not get the fundamentals right in an eight-year period, it is likely they will never get them right. Coming from an educational background, if students do not succeed after eight years of something, then there is something dramatically wrong, either the system is totally wrong, but I suspect the policies of this government are totally wrong.
When are the policies going to be changed? If the policies are not working, it is obvious we have to bring down something different. They say, "we are going to stay the course". God forbid we stay the course. It is like a ship going through the shoals; it runs into a GST over here, but they say well, let's forge ahead. They come to their so-called tax reform and hit large rocks and are pounded on those. But still they say, let's stay the course. They come to a waterfall, it is free trade and NAFTA. What the heck, we are staying the course, even if we have to go over the waterfall and the ship and the

November 20,1992
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captain and the crew have to go down. It doesn't really matter, we are going to stay the course.
It is imperative that an election come forward as soon as possible, because people say they do not want them to stay the course; they do not want them to get the fundamentals right, they want to change direction. They do not agree with their fundamentals.
I have to give the government credit for sticking with what it believes. I happen to believe it is totally incorrect, but it is certainly consistent.
My friends to the right are terribly inconsistent. The member says they stand for everything. Exactly. That is the Liberal stance. When they are in government perhaps they will agree with the friends across the aisle, but right now I think they agree with us. I have to give the government credit for consistency.
My colleague from Comox-Albemi talked about Tommy Douglas's famous analogy of the black cats and the white cats. The black cats come in and they bring in policy that is of no benefit at all to the average Canadian. The Liberals, they are a different colour cat, but they come in with the same kind of policy. On occasion, the cats get together and say: "They don't like the black cats and they don't like the white cats, maybe we should accept some spotted cats-black cats with white spots or white cats with black spots." However, the policy is not good for the people because they remain mice. If the people are mice, cats pass legislation that is good for cats and not good for mice. This Tommy Douglas analogy never ever loses its impact upon people.
I was looking at the legislation the government has passed and wondering what we had here. We have the GST and we know the fiasco that was; free trade, we know what happened as a result of that. Probably some of the jobs-and many of them were-lost in the manufacturing sector were lost because of the recession, but nevertheless the bottom line is there are hundreds of thousands of jobs gone, jobs that will never come back. So we will expand that to Mexico and beyond that.
The member across asks what is wrong with that. What is wrong with it is going to South America and not improving the standards of any of the workers, that is what is wrong with it. Everybody is for free trade as long as the standards of the people who are involved in the trade agreement are increased.
This government has capped transfer payments to the provinces. We have an airline tragedy, a crisis. We had a crisis in train transportation a couple of years ago. We have an attack on our social assistance programs. Medicare is under attack. Family allowances are under attack. We are under attack with the clawback provision. All these programs were under attack and the government won that battle, it killed them completely. Now we have unlimited deregulation of drug prices, Bill C-91.
We have to change the direction of government. A change of direction would be brought about by an election. The people want an opportunity to clear the air. In the United States people are feeling good. They feel better now that the Bush style is gone, the Reagan style is gone, the Thatcher style is gone. People are rebuking that kind of economic policy for their countries and Canada will also rebuke this government.
Once in awhile the government says: "We have created a lot of jobs. We have created thousands of jobs". I want to point out that 91 per cent of the jobs created in 1990 were service-oriented. I have nothing against service oriented jobs, they are wonderful, but at the same time a country requires a manufacturing base. The Tories are killing the manufacturing base of this country, in particular in the province of Ontario which once was a very proud and wealthy province. This government has had a great deal to do with the demise of Ontario's success.
There is no fish in this country, there is no work in this country, there is no direction in this country, there is no leadership in this country, there are no new ideas, there is no confidence, there is no credibility, and most of all there is no hope. The only thing that will restore hope to the country would be an election and you people are going to have to be removed from government.


Peter L. McCreath: Madam Speaker, it is no wonder that people in this country are losing respect for politicians, if they turn on the tube and listen to the kind of nonsense we just heard from the hon. member opposite.
When we talk about what is happening to the economy, when we talk about the half-truths that they speak all the time, this is where the problems really come. The
November 20,1992

member talked about no fish as if it was the government's fault.


Steve Butland: That is right.


Peter L. McCreath: It is the government's fault that there is no fish in the ocean. Governments control the number of fish in the ocean. People in Atlantic Canada know better than that. That is why there are no NDP members in Atlantic Canada.
The member talks about business and what is good for business and creating jobs in this country. Why is it that the NDP is dropping like a stone in the polls in Ontario? It is because some of these things that sounded great at the London School of Economics in the days of Laski and socialism were still thought to be a credible economic policy, people in Ontario are finding out just what a good idea socialist NDP politics are.
What do we hear? We hear that the free trade agreement has taken it all apart. Now we will have the North American free trade agreement and by golly every 47 cent an hour Mexican is going to take jobs away from Canadians. What balderdash.
The facts of the situation are that since the FTA came into being, 19 out of 22 Canadian industrial sectors have gained a greater share of the market. Is that not strange? Do not confuse rhetoric with fact.
We noticed the increase in investment. Compared to 1988 before the FTA, our export of goods to the United States is $15 billion higher. How many jobs are involved in $15 billion? Boy oh boy, that is an awful lot of people. We do not hear about this very often. Every little sparrow that falls, somebody said, when the FTA was brought in is going to be blamed on the FTA. Ignore the recession.
My friends opposite would have us believe that job losses in Canada have nothing to do with the recession. It all has to do with the FTA and the GST. What does the GST do? It makes the cost of the manufacturing process more competitive. That is why our exports have gone up. That is why we have attracted investment. That is why every industrialized country in the world, except the Americans, have that kind of added value consumption tax. It is more efficient. It enables business to work. The same applies with markets.
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I have one simple question for my hon. friend. If his policies are such a profound and brilliant idea, if this is the way of the future, can he explain to me why the popularity of the NDP in Ontario and indeed in British Columbia is dropping like a stone?


Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, I would not anticipate anything other than a simple question. We heard a lot of bluster and I acknowledge the member's enthusiasm for what he may or may not believe in.
The facts are that exports to the United States have increased, and we accept that, but we have become almost totally reliant on the United States. Exports to Asia and Europe have gone down. Should the government not. be concerned about that? Oh, no, it is not concerned about that. Tie yourself to one power. Forget Asia, forget Europe. They are not important any more. Exports to the United States are not on value added goods, they are on natural resources. It is raw export. Do not be fooling the public into thinking that the government has created jobs. The net loss of jobs is in the hundred of thousands, no matter how the government cuts it.
We are prepared to go into an election-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Questions and comments are now terminated.


Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate today on behalf of the Minister of Employment and Immigration and to have an opportunity to assure Canadians that the government recognizes fully the importance of training as the key to our social and economic well-being.
I want to talk about labour force training programs and the importance of Canada's labour force for our government in order to demonstrate how we have always been concerned with that aspect in our good management policies.
Training programs allow people to acquire new skills, and it takes skills and knowledge to ensure that the largest number of Canadians participate in the labour market and in the prosperity of our country.

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That is why, this year, our government will spend $3.55 billion to provide training to some 770,000 people. This represents a net increase of $450 million compared to last year's training budget of $3.1 billion and an increase of close to 60 per cent compared to the $2.1 billion spent on training just seven years ago, in 1985-86.
The spending for 1993 will be $2.2 billion and will be aimed at the Developmental Uses of Unemployment Insurance. The announcement made last night by the Prime Minister shows once again that our government is committed to helping unemployed Canadians.
For those who do not know what is meant by developmental uses of unemployment insurance, it is a plan whereby UI recipients are given income support while they acquire the skills that will allow them to find a job.
By implementing this measure, the government follows the recommendations of the Canadian Labour Force Development Board, which I will talk to you about in more detail in a few moments. The board recommended an increase from $1.4 billion to $1.8 billion of the unemployment insurance developmental uses budget for the 1992 calendar year.
Training requests and participation in the Work Sharing Program increased so much that we had to inject $150 million more in those activities.
To also help people who do not get unemployment insurance, the government will spend $1.6 billion for job training and job creation through the Canadian Jobs Strategy.
Now that emphasis is being put on the developmental uses of unemployment insurance, we can provide more profitable and efficient training to Canadians who need it.
Credit for this new initiative must be given to the Canadian Labour Force Development Board. The creation of this board, which incidentally is not a government agency, is an important step in our involvement in the labour market. It marks the beginning of a new form of cooperation between governments and their main partners, the business community, labour unions and social action groups. These partners can now directly take part in the decision-making process, hence becoming architects of prosperity in our country.
Our government is proud to be involved in the promotion of job related training. The Minister of Employment and Immigration showed leadership in that area and turned labour force development into a responsibility we share with our partners, the private sector and other levels of government.
Preparing Canadians for the future means an important commitment to training. Canada will do everything possible to give itself a highly skilled labour force.
However, from what we see in other countries, we must do more.
Only 25 per cent of Canadian businesses provide formal training to their employees. Companies in Japan spend five times more than Canadian businesses on training. Despite a high rate of unemployment, many jobs are not filled. Each month, employers are unable to find workers with the required skills to fill tens of thousands of jobs.
Many of those unqualified workers dropped out of school only to find themselves part of the first ever group of unemployed in Canada who have never held a job in their life. The unemployment rate of this group stood at
15.9	per cent in 1991, compared to 3.9 per cent for graduate students.
Our economy creates highly specialized jobs requiring more that 17 years of formal education. By the year 2000, half of the new jobs will require as much. We need more workers with the qualifications needed on the labour market.
Since the birth rate is falling, Canada will have to make a better use of the under utilized groups in our labour force, that is women, handicapped persons, natives and visible minorities.
That is why this government launched the Canadian Jobs Strategy in order to emphasize job related skills development, specially in the four groups I just mentioned. This year the budget of the Canadian Jobs Strategy will be $1.6 billion.
Manpower development is a shared responsibility. That is why the labour force development strategy was launched in 1989. It emphasizes partnership and program flexibility. Immigration and Employment Canada's programs and services have been made more flexible and
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more accessible thanks to the advice of our new partners in the labour market.
The Unemployment Insurance Act was amended in order to channel a greater share of unemployment funds towards the training of the jobless. In this we followed the advice of our partners in the labour market. Unemployment funds used for training rose from $500 million in 1990 to $1.95 billion in 1992.
This is obviously a more productive use of unemployment funds, and that approach is fully supported by our partners in the labour market, that is all employers and workers who are the sole contributors in the unemployment insurance program.
In order to give our labour market partners a permanent role to play in the training policy and see to it that they always have a say in the matter, the Minister of Employment and Immigration has set up the Canadian Labour Force Development Board. Co-chaired by business and labour representatives, it is comprised of 22 members representing the labour unions, the business world and the academic circles. The most used groups in the labour force are also represented. There are members representing women, handicapped people, natives and visible minorities.
The mandate of this board is to help enhance training in Canada. That is something no government or agency can do alone, lb enhance training, qualification standards have to be established through consensus between provinces. A network of provincial and territorial labour force development boards has also to be set up, as well as local boards, so that decisions concerning training be taken at the grass root level, as they should be.
These new partnerships between the private sector, Canadian individuals and governments are in my view critical for the prosperity and the economic well-being of Canada.
To ensure the social and economic well-being of Canada, governments must be ready to give up some of the control they have in these coveted areas of policy and program establishing. In light of the experience of other countries and the opinions expressed by the leaders of the labour unions, the business world and the academic circles, it appears that we have to act upon our partners' advice instead of considering them as mere advisors.
Pathways to Success, the aboriginal employment and training strategy implemented by Employment and Immigration Canada, is a perfect example of the application of that principle. Thanks to this strategy, aboriginal training boards, which had a consultant role previously, have become full partners. Now aboriginal people are able to control their own destiny, with the required skills and the means to take action.
They are told: "Develop your own training programs and your own job creation projects, according to your particular needs and exclusively for your people". It is the first time that such a partnership is created. This partnership will ensure that training programs for aboriginal people are provided, managed and controlled by aboriginal people themselves, in collaboration with Employment and Immigration Canada.
This strategy is extremely beneficial to some 78 aboriginal groups across Canada. These groups are now able to allocate millions of dollars to training centres in their community so that their aboriginal clients can acquire the new skills that will allow them to find a job.
Last April the Minister of Employment and Immigration approved funding for four experimental sites: two in British Columbia and two in Ontario. Together, these four aboriginal management boards will provide training and job creation programs worth approximately $21 million to some 5,000 clients over the next 18 months. This represents another important breakthrough in our efforts to develop partnerships for the future.
The creation of new partnerships with the private sector is of the utmost importance. In the past, the private sector including the business community, labour unions, social action groups and other non-governmental organizations did not have a specific role to play in the resolution of problems related to the labour market. In Canada we do not have a tradition like other countries do of putting aside differences to collaborate on matters of common interest, such as training.
But a consensus on training matters came out of the consultations which led to the labour force development strategy. That consensus offered the perspective of new approaches. Employment and Immigration Canada now follows up on this consensus by establishing new cooperation structures, like national native management com-

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missions, labour development commissions and productive uses of UI funds.
Let me give a couple of examples of persons who can benefit from a development program offered by Employment and Immigration Canada: a woman who is 36 years old, spent 20 years in the catering business and was laid off twice in the last two years, which is, it goes without saying, a very discouraging situation, or a 30-year old person who wants to work in the hospitality industry, but a job is more and more difficult to find.
These cases are a sign of the times. Even if the tourist industry is a big employer, there is a lack of qualified people for the jobs. Therefore, with the financial assistance of Employment and Immigration, the principal intervenors in this industry will work together to help these women upgrade their skills to better meet market requirements.
Those intervenors can train front-line employees and supervisors who get UI benefits. There is such a high labour turnover in the hospitality industry that it is hard to maintain a quality service. Employers are pleased to see the government and everyone in the industry cooperate to improve the situation. This is only one example among many.
This vision is one of an active society where the government is suppossed to help people prepare for the job market, where working people are rewarded, where counselling, training, relocating and business starting services are offered to those who are looking for a job. Labour market reintegration requires income maintenance, but the focus is not income maintenance nor reintegration. It is work itself.
In the same way, the prosperity initiative forced us back in the real world and replaced the economy on the forefront of our concerns. Indeed the UI reform should enable a more active use of UI funds and promote self-sufficiency among unemployed workers.
We must also promote more private sector investments in training to make our labour more competitive and we must help people adjust themselves to competition. According to a comparison with other countries, all
members of the Organization for Economic Development, Canada trails behind in terms of its active assistance initiatives compared to its passive ones. We are on the right track, but we must do more.
We are actively trying to find solutions and our programs are constantly improved. Training did not respond to private sector needs, so we handed the controls over to the private sector, that is to the labour development commissions. Right now 68 000 employers and associations offer training, and 200 private sector groups instead of public servants are taking up courses.
We are getting excellent results with our industry adjustment program, so we doubled the funds. We were not getting good results with respect to the natives, so we gave them responsibility through the Pathways to Success strategy. Our labour market had obsolete professional standards in the area of automotive repair, so we called on the Canadian Automotive Repair and Service Council. Our high schools were getting poor results with respect to high risk youths, so we funded co-operative education, which encourages young people to go on with their studies while gaining work experience and a sense of reality.
The Minister of Employment and Immigration certainly has shown some leadership, with the support of his department which has a unique approach to dealing with the problems of our modern era, which require creative solutions instead of well-worn criticism.
Those problems can be solved, but not though traditional means. With traditional solutions, governments are always right. This must be the kind of solution the mover of this motion has in mind. But none of the problems we have fit the traditional mould. Times have changed, as the hon. member will realize if he takes the time to tiy and understand the problems we have to deal with daily with our partners.
I have shown that our government strives to manage Canadian affairs properly and looks after labour development and new skills development. In recent years it implemented programs that will allow the young, the natives and women to get better jobs for longer periods
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of time, and that will help many people to launch new businesses.
I will conclude by saying that our government did look after fundamental problems in manpower training and implemented programs suited to present needs. It will still try and make these programs better, more effective and more accessible for those who need them.


Gabrielle Bertrand: Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague on an extremely instructive and well documented speech. It is going to take a while to digest all that.
I listened carefully and with interest because, in my riding many high-tech industries greatly benefited from all these manpower training initiatives. Thke for instance IBM, General Electric, Mitel, Insdana, Econo-Bell, all those companies seeking manpower, that need skilled manpower and were able to take advantage of our programs.
I would also like to mention another organization, the TCIT. This acronym stands for Townships Corporation for Industrial Training. This group of business people, mainly entrepreneurs, got together with the teaching community to communicate their needs, saying for instance: "We would need so many welders in our company. Could you please train them". School is there to train welders, and it is the same in several other fields.
I am thinking of another group called Passage Yamas-ka; my colleague spoke about training for women. Passage Yamaska is for women between the ages of 30 and 45 who have left work for all sorts of reasons or to raise their young children or for other women who never worked and are now free and wonder about their future and go to Passage Yamaska to find a way into the working world. These are all examples. You talked about the co-op program, which is still wonderful. Students spend three days a week in school and two on traineeships in business and actually see what the world of work is like.
What I wanted to tell my colleague is that further to all these programs and this whole labour force training policy the Minister of Finance announced a prosperity agenda very recently. This plan was developed by an
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independent group of men and women, business people, union leaders, educators who wanted to promote a learning culture. Six of their ten recommendations directly concern labour force training. I do not know whether my colleague would like to elaborate on that at a time when the competitiveness of our companies is so vital because of the globalization of markets. I would like my colleague to show me that this prosperity agenda really meets a need.


Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, obviously the comments made by the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi are very much to the point. The consultations on the prosperity agenda showed us that there are huge labour force training needs throughout the country, in preparing young people for the labour market and integrating target groups, namely native people, the disabled and visible minorities who have to be integrated into the labour market. Business people and owners and labour unions also told us that more effort must be made on manpower training programs to properly target available jobs and give people access to them by giving them the skills they need.
That is why the report of the prosperity task force contains a series of recommendations on that problem. I must tell you that the department responsible for implementing all components of the prosperity agenda, the Department of Industry, Science and Technology, with which I have the great privilege of working very closely, will focus on meeting the requirements of the prosperity agenda and especially on labour force training needs. With Employment and Immigration we will really try to put in place labour force training programs that will give those in need of training and those who receive training real access to the jobs available in a modem economy.
I just heard NDP members lash out at our free trade agreements with our partners. Look,_we are on the eve of the 21st century. We can no longer put up a fence around our country. We must trade with neighboring countries and the greatest market potential is with North America, with the United States and with South America. We have put in place the means that will give us access to those markets. That is why we must orient our labour force training programs to these new needs.

November 20,1992
Private Members' Business


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I believe I have 30 seconds left. I must call it 3:45 p.m. unless the hon. member wants to ask a very fast question.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Mr. Speaker, I was intending to be very gracious and very eloquent on the subject of this debate. In thirty seconds, I have no confidence in this government. I think it should call an election.
It being 3.45 o'clock p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the Business of Supply, pursuant to Standing Order 81(14).
Accordingly the question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


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.


An hon. member:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to Standing Order 45(6), a recorded division stands deferred until six o'clock p.m. Monday, November 23,1992.
Pursuant to Standing Order 37, the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper. With consent, may we carry on with Private Members' Business?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tuesday, September 15, consideration of the motion of Mr. Butland that Bill C-327, an act to assist employees to purchase a controlling shareholding in the corporation that employs them and to amend the Income Tkx Act in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Economics envelope.
Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be invited to speak on this private member's bill. I would like to support this bill in relationship to the current ongoing issue of the Canadian Airlines employees' proposal that has been put forward in the last week or so to the government for consideration.
I must say that this has been a very contentious debate. I think that it pertains generally to the specifics of this private member's bill. It proposes that the employees would play a fairly major role in the contribution that it makes and in the direction that this one airline would go in terms of the whole airline industry.
What it proposes is that the employees would contribute approximately $150 million toward becoming major shareholders and stakeholders in this particular deal that they have proposed to the federal government.
I feel that a sense of ownership gives a sense of dignity, a sense of possession, a sense of pride and respect. It is generally proven to be one of the main pushes for incentives that employees would have in the company that they work for or the corporation they work for in order to do a good job, to provide quality of service.
We know that Canadian Airlines in and of itself is ranked I believe ninth for the quality of service that it offers. We take a particular interest. As the member of Parliament for Western Arctic, I have been notified by a number of northerners and westerners. I am sure all of
November 20, 1992

us from the west understand that this is a priority for not only northerners but westerners as well.
I am particularly concerned about the way in which this whole merger and this proposal has been handled in that it is generally not a new problem.
It is one that has been evolving over a period of time. As a member of Parliament and as a citizen of the western Arctic, I believe and share the concern with other westerners and with other Canadians as well. We have prominent politicians from the west who have every reason to support this kind of an initiative. Those politicians stem all the way from the Deputy Prime Minister to the House Leader from Calgary, from the deputy House leader to various members of Parliament in B.C., Saskatchewan, Alberta, including of course yourself, Mr. Speaker.
Canadian Airlines employees and the people related to that particular industry, all the employees, understand that we support their initiative. They know full well that their members of Parliament, particularly from the west and those cities from where the deputy House leader, the Minister of Agriculture and the Deputy Prime Minister come will have the full confidence and support of that power in cabinet to achieve their goals. They know that and I know that because that is the way it works and that is the way power works.
We will not get what is our due in the west if we do not use the power and the instruments that we have been given by those people to represent them. This is a good deal. In particular I have to state that the reason I support this initiative is because it gives the greatest incentive to keep the industry competitive, to keep monolithic approaches from becoming predatory on the consumers in terms of the kind of rates they would have to pay when they travel. Northerners for instance do not have the luxury as do other Canadians in choosing between accessible forms of transportation.
The northern economy, the tourism industry and the quality of life would be severely affected by a monopoly air merger. The north needs to have guaranteed airline competition. I am not in support of some of the components of the National Passenger Transport Commission's recommendation in terms of not being able to provide any kind of funding or assistance to Canadian Airlines or
Private Members' Business
to Air Canada. I think that that has occurred in the past. In this one instance the industry, particularly this airline, is performing well. Both have debts. That is a fact. But we do not have the option in the north. We do not have other viable forms of transportation.
Most of the travel in the Northwest Territories is done by air. We do not have the luxury to choose. From the time that I was four or five years old, I lived in a bush camp. I used to look across to Norman Wells, which is a community that is a centre for travel. It has a large terminal for the Sarto region. In that particular area, looking across to that community, I would see in the olden days, fifties and sixties, Canadian Pacific come and go from that particular airport.
On this day I can go back to that same bush camp and what do I see? I see Canadian Airlines come and go. That is the history of our territory. We have a relationship with the people who work in that industry. We do not have the luxury of dissociating ourselves in any industry in the north from the people who we work with. On the planes, in the restaurants, in the cabs, in the homes and on the streets, we live in close proximity to one another. We are forced into a situation where we cannot dissociate our living working relationships as you would in large urban centres.
I really have to say that I am proud we have had this airline industry in our area for as long as I can remember. It has served us well. I really believe having asked the minister a question in the House on September 10 that I was sincere in trying to seek some kind of consensus.
I think that this private member's bill, Bill C-327, an act to assist employees to purchase a controlling shareholding in the corporation that employs them, is a very noble effort to address a very serious need. I have risen in the House on a number of occasions. I have lobbied other people to also support the employees' initiative. I cannot understand any one elected politician who comes from the west, Manitoba, B.C., Saskatchewan and Alberta, who would not support this initiative. This is absolutely necessary for the survival of the industry in the west.
We have to put forward the priorities of the people we represent. I do not only represent the people who live in the Northwest Territories. I represent the people who

November 20,1992
Private Members' Business
come in and out and provide a service, like Canadian Airlines.
I think it is a great proposal. I think it is noble in this day and age. I think it is respectful and it is dignified that a group of employees would band together to come up with a proposal. It is not criticism without constructive input. It is something they have proposed. They are willing to put in money. They are willing to put in time. They are willing to put in energy and effort to save the airline. I really believe that we need this.
In the Northwest Territories we know that if we have one carrier we will be subject to a monopolistic situation that would force, because we have no other modes of transportation, our situation to a point where most people would not be able to afford to travel. Travel is not a luxury for these people. Travel is a necessity, for medical purposes, for work purposes.
It is extremely expensive to live in the Northwest Territories. We need this idea. The government has to support this deal. I urge the Minister of Transport to be innovative, to be fair minded and to accept the deal that has been put forward by the Canadian Airlines employees.
As a member from the Northwest Territories, Western Arctic, as a member from western Canada, and as a fair minded representative of all Canadians, I plead with the government to accept this proposal and to actualize what is in essence Bill C-327 for the employees of Canadian Airlines.


Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer some brief comments on the comments just made by the hon. member for Western Arctic.
I would like to point out to her that I share her concerns about the airline situation in this country and specifically the Canadian Airlines situation.
I would like to tell her that it is not the participation of the employees, or the project for the employees to participate in the survival of the company that creates some problems. On the contrary. It should and it would help the situation. It is the other part of the financial package that is being put together that causes some concern to the government and that the government is really looking at.
Also, I would like to offer to her that even without Bill C-327, it would not prevent the employees of Canadian Airlines from participating in their company. I would like to share some comments I have and some concerns I have with the House and with my hon. colleagues on Bill C-327.

As the hon. members know, Bill C-327 recommends that government encourage employees to take an economic interest in the corporation that employs them.
This motion-and let us not forget it-would amend the Income Thx Act to allow for a deduction from taxable income for 50 percent of the employee's and employer's net investment in an employee share purchase program, as well as the interest earned by a financial institution on loans to such plans.
To qualify for these tax preferences, the employees have to take over the employing corporation. But first, I would like to thank the hon. member for raising the issue of improved employer-employee relations. It is a well-known fact that work relations improve when employee participation in the corporation increases.
Government recognizes that co-operation between the two groups improves Canadian businesses competitiveness and thus the growth of our economy in the long term.
As hon. members probably know, in 1984 the previous government proposed in a publication entitled "Gain Sharing for A Stronger Economy" a plan which would have provided, for the payment of employees, a tax credit shared between employers and employees according to a percentage of the profits.
As with most employee ownership plans, the objectives of that one were to improve labour-management relations and to increase labour productivity.
You will also recall, Mr. Speaker, that labour and management groups were against that proposal. After a careful examination, the government of the day rejected it.
This is not at all surprising, considering the objectives that the government pursued subsequently with its tax reform. One of those main objectives was to promote decisions what could stimulate the economy instead of giving particular tax incentives. That objective was at-
November 20, 1992

tained by the elimination of many incentives which, often, were open to only a small group of taxpayers.
Also many deductions were eliminated or replaced with credits. Then the broadening of the tax base had the effect of reducing tax rates. Thus many Canadians, mostly older people or low income people, had their tax liability reduced.
Bill C-327 will defeat that objective because it would effectively promote the use of public funds to the benefit of a small group of individuals who want to take control of the business that employs them.
Considering the importance of controlling the deficit, it would become necessary to increase taxes of all other Canadians in order to support the employee share ownership plans. In that respect it is important that hon. members realize that what Bill C-327 proposes is, to some extent, a redistribution of income.
But more important, the tax reform greatly helped to reduce tax incentives which had the effect of distorting the economic decision-making process. The broadening of the tax base and the reduction of tax rates, by helping to eliminate the incentives which distorted investment decisions, promoted long-term economic growth.
Moreover not only are these initial deductions distorting economic decisions, but the national and international experience shows that a large part of these tax incentives is given to people for something they would have done anyway. Therefore we are using considerable revenues to encourage a minimal additional activity.
At a time when government is trying to use wisely its scarce resources, it does not seem to me appropriate to implement such a plan. As hon. members know, interest on the federal debt will amount to $43.2 billion this year, that is 27 cents per dollar of budgetary expenditures.
Every dollar added today to the deficit increases the debt burden of future generations. It is therefore very important that we reduce the debt. We will succeed only by controlling expenses and protecting fiscal revenues.
The impact of Bill C-327 on the deficit would be significant as the generous fiscal treatment could encourage a large number of companies to restructure the
Private Members' Business
remuneration of employees in such a way as to take maximum advantage of the incentive.
In some cases, financial participation of employees in their company can increase productivity and therefore stimulate the general economy. This is why our fiscal system already encourages such measures. In particular, the government is strongly backing the financial participation of employees through labour sponsored venture capital corporations. The preferential treatment given these corporations has been further improved in the last budget. Employees are also benefiting from special privileges when they are given options to buy shares by their employer.
Combined with the generous lifetime capital gains exemption, these programs are a powerful incentive to employees to buy shares in Canadian companies without distorting on investment decisions.
As we said during the last budget, the government would rather rely on the strong principles underlying the labour sponsored venture capital corporations which are prohibited from investing in a single company. This provision is based on the old adage which advises not to put all the eggs in one basket. In the case of the proposal of Bill C-327 the eggs are not only the worker's investments. They are also his job.
I believe hon. members will agree with me that it would be inappropriate for the government to encourage individuals to take such risks.
I think I speak for a large number of Canadians when I say that increased productivity and better labour relations are key elements to the success of our great country. However, I fear that Bill C-327 will not help in that matter. Not only will it be costly and unfair but also it might not achieve what it was meant for.
I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to deal with this issue in this House. I hope my hon. colleagues will find the information I gave them useful in judging the merits of Bill C-327.


Philip Edmonston: It is with a great deal of pleasure that I rise today to speak on Bill C-327, presented by my NDP colleague from Sault Ste. Marie.

November 20, 1992
Private Members' Business
This bill has come at the right time. It is a private member's bill which speaks to the problem that employees have in buying into a company which many times may be in difficulty and the employees want to actually save the company.
I should bring to the House's attention that this is not a rare occurrence. There is legislation which in effect permits employees to buy into a company and actually become the owners of a company. I can give you the example of Weirton Steel in Ohio which was to be closed in 1982 because, of course, of low profits-remember the 1982 recession. The employees decided to buy into the company and actually purchased the plant entirely. Finally what they succeeded in doing was turning that company around, and that meant that the owners of the company reaped the benefits of having turned it around after it was about ready to go into bankruptcy.
But something closer to us, in Kapuskasing, Ontario there was a recent success in an employee buy out, where Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company reported a $2 million profit between December 1, 1991 and June 30, 1992. Before that time, before the employees had bought it out, it was in a deficit position.
It makes me think that perhaps we should have the employees buy out this government. Maybe we would have the country finally running in a profit-making position. I do not know, but maybe that is called an election. Maybe the federal example for an employee buy out is an election. In any case, in other jurisdictions employee buy outs have been very successful,making it easy for employees to buy a company is nothing new. We have had that in Quebec for a long time now thanks to a piece of legislation called the Co-operatives Act which allows employees to buy a company, whether it is in financial trouble or not.

I feel that the idea behind this private member's bill presented by my colleague from the NDP makes a lot of sense. I think that my friend opposite does understand what I mean by that. It makes a lot of sense to let employees buy a company if they so desire and to make it easier for them to do so. That is exactly what Bill C-327 is all about.
I would like to draw the Chair's attention to the fact that this common sense approach could be applied to the airline industry. However, this bill is no panacea. We must not kid ourselves and believe that employees working for airlines such as Canadian Air or Air Canada will be able to buy those companies. It is too much money, it is impossible. For my part, I think that as a government we must be extremely cautious before even considering giving one penny to either Canadian Air or Air Canada. We have to be cautious because I am convinced that giving money away, $300 million here, $300 million there, will end up being a disservice to Canadians. Therefore, in that respect I am extremely conservative, and I must apologize for using this term. I am not sure I would be prepared to invest taxpayers' money to take an active interest in an airline.


Don Boudria: Watch your language.


Philip Edmonston: A word like conservative in the mouth of my friend from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell.
Good old common sense is indeed veiy important because we may be a tad too partisan in thinking that, if it is coming from the other side of the House, an idea is no longer valid. As a matter of fact, I wanted to say, in the two minutes I have left, that good ideas were put forward. Even from the other side. Perhaps my friend from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell could acknowledge that regarding the official languages, for example, as he is no doubt aware, government commissioned a study on the subject.

I will say it in English because I think it is of particular importance to our English speaking listeners and viewers. The government, with the armed forces, has commissioned a study looking at the translation of documents and the use of French in the armed forces. That study has come out saying that we had better use common sense.
There have been occasions on which we have had $100 million spent for translation of technical manuals for the frigates that were being built on the east coast of Canada. That was a waste of money because even the francophones, the French speaking engineers, and other people on this project were not happy with the transla-
November 20, 1992

tions because it came too late in French and they were not familiar with the French terms.
I do like what the government has done this time. The government report said we will use common sense and if we need to have the English translated into French we will have a French person in that district decide whether it is really practical. That is the common sense approach I appreciate in which we do not waste taxpayers' money. I wish to congratulate the government, particularly the minister of defence, for having commissioned this study and I hope the government follows through on this study.
However, I would like to also compliment my colleague for his private member's bill, Bill C-327.1 think it is using the same kind of common sense approach to studying a very serious problem; that is, employee participation in companies, allowing employees to participate in an active way by buying out companies. Who actually knows more about a company's operation but the employees who work on the ground floor?
Once again I wish to compliment my colleague and thank the Liberal and the Conservative members of Parliament who spoke to this bill. It is a very important bill and I hope we pass it.


M. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, I think the NDP member should be congratulated because this is a common sense measure, legislation encouraging employees to buy shares in their employer's company. The reason I want to say a few words on this is that I had the honour to represent the Papineau riding at the provincial level and I developed an interest for this kind of program allowing employees to buy the company they were working for, for whatever reason. I remember, at that time, asking the American Embassy for information because the U.S. had implemented similar legislation. Their plan was called ESOP, the Employee Share Ownership Plan. According to the bill adopted by the American Congress, employees could invest in their company enough to acquire a majority of the shares and the government helped the employees buy the company. Therefore, it is a very logical, down to earth measure. In the U.S., they called the results of the ESOP program:
Private Members' Business
"People's Capitalism". It is people's capitalism if you wish; it is very simple. Employees have the opportunity, with the help of the government, to buy a company either because it is having a hard time or because it is about to close down; whatever the reason, employees can buy the shares.
The advantage of all this is that after two years, the American Senate requested a report on that program; after all, the government did invest millions of dollars.
Much to their surprise, they realized the productivity in employee owned companies increased, not only by 10, 15 or 20 per cent, but even by 150 per cent in some cases. That goes to show that when employees can influence company policies and implement measures to increase productivity it works. Why? It is all very simple. When you own the company, when your input or your contribution will show up on you pay cheque then you will certainly do everything you can to increase productivity.
I wonder why such a bill was not introduced before. I think we made a step in the right direction by doing so today. We know miracles never happen in this House. We come up with projects and ideas, and it all takes time. Our friends on the other side, they are few and there will be fewer in the future, do not realize that is the way to go. If people are ready to invest in their own future, I think we will get extraordinary results. The timing is excellent and I think this bill will be studied in committee. The government may not be ready for such measures, but I know one thing: whatever the future holds for us, people want to contribute to the prosperity of our country. The best way to prosper is to have a vested interest in success, and to profit from it. This bill makes a lot of sense. It is very sensible and its time has come.
I just want to add that it has been tried in the United States. I have some results here. Yes, I have, I asked the American embassy for documentation a few years back. We can see how successful it was in the States, and I know we can achieve the same results, if not better, here.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for the few minutes you gave me. I hope this bill is a good start, that one day it will become reality and play a major part in rebuilding our economy.

November 20,1992
Private Members' Business


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I am going to be recognizing the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie and in doing so, under Standing Order 44(3), in all cases the Speaker shall inform the House that the reply of the mover of the original motion closes the debate, there will be no further speakers.


Steve Butland: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of the member for Papineau and my colleague from Chambly. I must extend my thanks to the government side as well for allowing this bill to go forward at second reading to a legislative committee. It is very personally gratifying to have that co-operation among the three parties. As we all know we do not see it too often. Therefore, I do appreciate the co-operation from the two other parties and of course from my own colleagues.
As the member indicated, this is a concept that is not new. It is very much alive in the United States and in Europe. Its time has come. Of course our perspective on this is that Bill C-327 employee ownership is social democracy in action. Some people say that social democracy is dead and we say it is not. This is one way that we can show in a very positive way that employees, employers and governments can participate and effect change in the workplace.
Bill C-327 was brought about because of the Algoma Steel Corporation. We went through a great deal of distress in the community and there was some urgency. There was a crisis, that the entire company would close and many thousands of people would be put out of work. However, again co-operation from the Ontario government and federal government spearheaded by the union and sacrifice on the part of the workers brought about an employee majority ownership of the corporation.
I want to say that the Algoma Steel situation prompted the bringing forward of this bill. Since that time the model of this bill could be used in a whole host of other cases.
I think legislation is necessary to treat the potential closings of industries and large and small businesses across this country. Rather than governments having to deal with them on a piecemeal basis, on a one-by-one basis in a crisis situation in a day-to-day situation, it is imperative that we deal with it in a logical, comprehensive way and I think this legislation is a start.
I am very much accepting of the fact that when it does go to committee, amendments may in fact be in order. This bill deals with majority ownership, but I think it is imperative that partial ownership be recognized. Maybe that is the route to go.
I look forward to what will happen at committee that I understand has to be struck within five days. I look forward to some expediency in this matter because each and every day there are new considerations by new people, new businesses or businesses that are in difficulty-
I cite the Balmer mine in British Columbia that presently is undergoing this consideration. There is a company called Rexdale in Haileybury in northern Ontario where the process failed because there was no legislation in place.
I think the time has come to thank people from across the country, both individuals who have signed petitions and people who have given quite good support from across the country, so there is widespread support for the concept if not the specific bill.
We have had petitions in from Newfoundland, St. John's and Mount Pearl; in Ontario, Sault Ste. Marie, St. Thomas, Brampton, Keewatin, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Kemptville, Wawa, Kenora, London, Longbow Lake, Nepean, Stratford, Clarence Creek; in Quebec, Val-des-Monts, Gatineau, Aylmer; Regina, Saskatchewan; in B.C., Chilliwack, Sardis, Port Albemi, Nanaimo, Vedder Crossing, Cultus Lake; in the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife.
There is, indeed, widespread support. As far as business goes, the Chamber of Commerce in my city supports it. The Algoma Steel Credit Union, in labour CUPE local 5; Hamilton, Transportation and Communi-. cations Union of CLC; Port Albemi and District Labour Council; St. Thomas and District Labour Council; the city of Sault Ste. Marie; Saskatchewan Economic Diversification and Trade; Saskatchewan Minister of Labour and the British Columbia Labour and Consumer Services under the signature of Moe Sihota, support it.
There is indication that the country and the residents of the country are prepared to address this. Once again I want to thank the government for allowing this bill to go forward to committee in the very near future.
November 20, 1992


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
Private Members' Business


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Economics envelope.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being 4.23 o'clock p.m., this House stands adjourned until Monday next at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 4.23 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, November 23, 1992