1992-02-24

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, December 5, 1991, consideration of the motion of Ms. Black (p. 4331).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on the motion of Ms. Black.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Call in the members.
And the division bells having rung:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 45(5)(a), I have been requested by the chief opposition Whip to defer the division until a later time.
Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order 45(5)(a), the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until 3 p.m. later this day, at which time the bells to call in the members will be sounded for not more than 15 minutes.


[Stage Direction]
SUSPENSION OF SITTING

The sitting of the House was suspended at 11.20 a.m.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed at 12 p.m.


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)) moved: that Bill C-55, an act to amend certain acts in relation to pensions and to enact the Special Retirement Arrangements Act and the Pension Benefits Division Act, be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee G.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin the debate on Bill C-55, an act to amend certain acts in relation to pensions and to enact the Special Retirement Arrangements Act and the Pension Benefits Division Act.
This bill is an important step in the evolution of the various pension plans in the federal Public Service. It responds to a number of long-standing concerns of plan members and fulfils the government's announced intention to ensure its pension programs observe the same income tax actuals as those imposed on other employers' pension plans.

February 24, 1992
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I refer to this bill as a step in the evolution of our pension plans because there are still important issues relating to these programs that remain to be reviewed. Many hon. members will be aware of these.
There are concerns expressed by employees and pensioners about their role in the management of their plans and the investment of the pension funds, with the resulting effects on the return earned by the pension account.

The Auditor General has also suggested that these matters need further study and that the implications of the internal funding of Public Service pension arrangements be more fully assessed in terms of their impact on the management of public debt.
The members of the pension plans have also indicated that they would like to revisit many aspects of the design of these plans, and we agree that the adequacy and appropriateness of elements such as survivor benefits, disability benefits, co-ordination of these programs with the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans, vesting and portability should be reviewed in the context of the changes that have taken place in the work force, career patterns, and standards and practices of other employers since the current legislation was enacted by Parliament.

While these issues are obviously of great concern to the plan members, both employees and pensioners must recognize our responsibilities to the other stakeholders, the Canadian taxpayers. These important stakeholders expect us to ensure that the financial commitments we make to Public Service pension arrangements on their behalf are both reasonable and fair. It is important, therefore, as we look at the bill before us today, to bear in mind that the government considers these proposals as addressing only some of the most pressing problems with the pensions plans.
At the same time work is continuing on other issues that are also of concern but which may lead to more fundamental revisions to the nature of these programs.

I plan to meet with my advisory committee on the Public Service Superannuation Act veiy shortly to seek their views on critical issues related to pensions for the federal Public Service. The committee, which includes
members from unions, senior management and the Federal Superannuates National Association, will be asked to advise me and the government on what they view as fair and appropriate solutions to long-term issues. Similar committees will be established for the Canadian Forces and RCMP Superannuation Acts under the proposals contained in Bill C-55.
Hon. members will be aware that the pension plan for members of Parliament has come under particular scrutiny by the public. The government will be re-examining all elements of this plan, including those features which have been criticized by some as too generous. In this examination we will welcome and take account of the views of hon. members who can personally attest to the importance of this element as part of their overall compensation package. Some of you have told me that the pension plan was a critical part of their decision to seek elected office.
At the same time I know that hon. members share my concern that some members of the public have criticized the current pension plan as too far out of line with general practice.

To be credible, a review of parliamentary pension arrangements must also provide for specific input from the public. I have already indicated that the views of those independent of Parliament will be actively solicited in this study.
Returning to the matter currently before this House, I would like to review the major provisions of the bill to indicate their impact and the government's rationale for the proposals.
Bill C-55, as its title suggests, would amend a number of existing statutes, principally the Public Service Superannuation Act, the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act, the RCMP Superannuation Act and the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act.
It also proposes the enactment of two new statutes, the first being a special retirement arrangements act which would permit revision to the existing plans as they apply to non-career diplomats and lieutenant-governors. As well, this act would provide for the establishment of a new type of plan for those covered under all those statutes except that applicable to members of Parliament.
February 24, 1992



The second new act proposed is the Pension Benefits Division Act dealing with the division of pension benefits on marriage breakdown. As well, there are related and consequential amendments required to the older Defence Services and RCMP Pension Continuation Acts and the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act.
Essentially the proposed legislation would put in place measures of two general sorts: first, some proposed measures where the government has indicated for some time its wish to move forward and where further delay would cause continued difficulty for members of the plans and their families; and, second, a number of measures to ensure that federal public sector plans comply with requirements imposed on all pension plans by changes to the Income Tax Act in 1989 and given full effect by regulations promulgated in January of this year under that act.

These tax changes were designed to ensure that all Canadians would have equal opportunities to benefit from tax assistance for retirement savings, whether those savings are made individually or as a member of an employer sponsored pension plan.
Clearly it is the government's view that those plans which the federal government sponsors as employer ought to meet the same legislation which applies to others.
Accordingly, Bill C-55 proposes revisions to each of the pension statutes to ensure they provide for pension plans that can continue to be registered under the Income Tax Act for purposes of tax relief on employee contributions.
Achieving this tax compliance means that in all of the programs, some elements can no longer be provided as part of the registered pension plan.
A simple example of this would be the Income Tax Act provision limiting the maximum pension to be accrued under a pension plan to $1,722 for each year of plan membership. Under the federal programs, this limit is not specified. It is necessary to incorporate the limit in
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each of the statutes by limiting the level of salary on which benefits can be based.

Imposing these and other limits in accordance with tax law on the basic pension plan would result in reduced pension coverage for certain employees. However, given that it is not uncommon for other employers to provide for retirement income arrangements that go beyond the tax prescribed maximum, and given that fundamental review of these pension plans is still under way, the government has concluded that it is appropriate to continue the present pension arrangements. This would be accomplished in the same way as it is for employers in the private sector by providing for benefits outside those that can be provided under the registered pension plans through a separate arrangement permitted by the Income Tkx Act.
For all plans but that for members of Parliament, this would be done by regulations to be made under the proposed new Special Retirement Arrangements Act. These regulations would permit the current pension plan to continue to provide for employee and employer contributions to be made to a new fund to be known as the Retirement Compensation Arrangements Account. For members of Parliament, the retirement compensation arrangement would be provided in the statute itself.

The term retirement compensation arrangement or RCA is used by the Income Tax Act with reference to funds established by an employer that are in the hands of a third party to provide for future retirement income for their employees.
While an employer and employees may claim a tax deduction for contributions to such a fund, the custodian of the fund must pay tax on all revenues to the fund. The tax is refundable as benefits are paid out of the plan. The effect is that benefits provided this way are more costly than those provided under the registered plan.
While the federal government is obviously not a tax paying employer, we felt it was important to provide the RC approach for benefits outside those which can be provided under the tax registered pension plan.

February 24, 1992
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Why? First of all, it is felt essential that there be recognition in the national accounts of Canada of the future obligation to employees for their own pensions.
It is also considered important that the government not take advantage of its status as a non-taxable employer and as a government to provide employees with compensation at lower cost levels that would not be available to other employers.
The over-all effect of the bill's proposals would be to ensure that pension costs are fully known to Canadians and comparable to those of other employers who provide similar arrangements.
I realize that this discussion of the tax compliance initiative has been somewhat technical, but it is vital to understand that the government has every intention of complying with its own rules and that we are not taking advantage of our unique position as a non-taxing employer and the maker of the rules.
At the same time the members of these pension plans should be assured that the government is not using this requirement as an excuse to alter the retirement income arrangements they rely on.

There is another aspect of this bill which would apply to all the existing plans and to the new arrangements I have just described. The bill also proposes that all plans should henceforth be operated on a fully funded basis, that is the credits made to the various pension accounts in the form of ongoing employee and employer contributions should be at levels which, together with the anticipated future interest earnings, would be adequate to provide for the future benefits of the employees as they are being earned.
As part of this initiative, the contributions that are now being made to the supplementary retirement benefits account by employees and employer would henceforth be made to the relevant superannuation account. The balances in the supplementary retirement benefits account related to each of the pension plans would also be transferred to the main pension accounts. Basic pensions and indexing of pensions would be unchanged and would then be paid from this combined account.

Employee contribution rates would remain at the same level. The government would contribute at the
level necessary to maintain full advance funding of accruing benefits.
Provision is also made that any existing or future unfunded liabilities associated with these plans would be recognized and amortized by additional government contributions.
The effect of these changes and the financial arrangements would be that all pension obligations relating to each sector would be recognized in one plan, thus consolidating the assets and obligations in respect of each group. This would clarify the financial situation of the programs and make sure they operate on a basis that is consistent with private sector standards. The full funding of all benefits would also help to reassure employees and pensioners about the security of their benefits.

Some other aspects of this bill that are of significant impact on the members of some or all plans would be viewed very positively by those who are affected. These are the changes that I have characterized as fairness improvements. They will surely be welcomed by those affected, and the government does not wish to delay them any longer.
The first of these relates to the provision in the Public Service Superannuation Act of the opportunity for persons employed on a part-time basis to benefit from pension coverage, if they choose. To date, Mr. Speaker, as you know, only those working 30 or more hours per week contribute. All employees who are employed to work more than 12 hours per week on average would now qualify to contribute.
Those who are so employed when the provision takes effect would have the option to elect not to join the plan, but future part-time appointees would be required to contribute.

This is a significant step in allowing individuals to reconcile their personal and work commitments without jeopardizing their long-term retirement situation. It would give effect to a government commitment in the white paper on PS 2000. The bill also proposes that plan members be allowed to elect to make additional contributions in order to count prior part-time employment as pensionable service if such employment occurred after 1980, in recognition of the government's long-standing commitment on this subject.
February 24, 1992

Another longstanding commitment that would be honoured in this legislation is the provision of an early retirement program for operational employees in the Correctional Service of Canada. I am sure most hon. members have been made aware of the need for this program by the efforts of the CSC employees. I am sure members would agree tjiat work in this field is highly stressful and that it is important that individuals who choose such a career should know that there are alternatives available to them if they cannot continue their career for as long as might normally be possible in other lines of work.
It is also important both in terms of achieving the objectives of the correctional service system and ensuring public safety that this particular labour force have such flexibility. While the detailed terms of the program are to be specified by regulation, and this would be done only after consultation with representatives of the employees concerned, I would expect that it would be similar to the voluntary early retirement provisions that are currently found in the Public Service Superannuation Act for air traffic controllers.
In essence, that program permits individuals to choose to retire at age 50 or later with 25 or more years of service and receive an unreduced pension with indexing payable from age 60. Like air traffic controllers, CFC employees covered by the program would be required, of course, to make additional contributions toward these benefits.

Another aspect of the Public Service plan and the plans of the Canadian Forces and RCMP has been criticized by plan members as imposing hardship. That is the provisions of the plans dealing with pension coverage during leave without pay. While most plan members would agree that provisions which allow pension rights to be accumulated in respect of leave without pay are a positive benefit, some find unduly onerous the requirement that the contributions owing for such periods must be repaid beginning immediately on return to duty.
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This is especially true if the employee is required to contribute at double the rate for the period. The bill proposes that an employee be allowed to choose whether or not to count periods of leave without pay in excess of three months. At the same time it would allow an individual who initially chooses not to count the period an opportunity later to elect to reinstate the period as pensionable service. Again the bill seeks to recognize that additional flexibility for plan members is necessary to permit them to manage their personal affairs.
I might mention too that this provision, like that for coverage of part-time employees, would particularly benefit women who continue to be the employees with the greatest need for room to balance family and career commitments. Many women, for example, take advantage of extended periods of leave without pay for the purpose of caring for young children or for elders, and this provision would enhance their ability to return to work without undue financial hardship.

I would draw hon. members' attention to two other provisions affecting some members of our Canadian Forces and the RCMP.
One of these is the addition of the provision in the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act that would extend pension coverage to a full-time member of the reserve force who had previously left the regular forces without entitlement to a pension. Pension contribution would commence after one year of reserve service and the individual would be permitted to elect to count prior service in the forces of full-time reserve. Again the proposal is directed at meeting the needs of individuals to meet their own career and personal goals.
In the case of the RCMP, Bill C-55 includes provisions which would standardize the age and service requirements for voluntary retirement of officers with those for non-officers. To date, officers must have 30 years of service and be age 55 or have 35 years service to retire without a pension penalty. Non-officers may retire after 25 years of service. Clearly, this existing distinction could act as a disincentive for an RCMP member of long service to accept a commission as an officer.

February 24, 1992
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These are the major proposals of the bill which affect members of the pension plans as employees, but plan members also see these plans as a critical part of the over-all financial planning package for their unique family situation.
I would to review now some of the important proposals which affect this aspect of the plan.
Of the broadest impact would be changes to the supplementary death benefit provisions which are found in part II of the current Public Service Superannuation and Canadian Forces Superannuation Acts. This is essentially a form of life insurance for the members of these plans which provides a lump sum payment to their designated beneficiaiy or their estate upon death. The benefit is now set at a level essentially equal to annual salary although benefits decline by 10 per cent per annum from age 60. From age 65, a paid up benefit of $500 is provided and after age 70 that is the only benefit payable.
For some time now concern has been expressed by plan members and that concern is shared by the government about the growing reserves in the death benefit accounts established for those two plans. It has been concluded that action should be taken as quickly as possible to address this situation by making significant improvements in the level of benefits payable under the plans.
Accordingly, the bill provides that coverage for active employees be doubled and the paid up benefit be increased from $500 to $5,000.
I am pleased to advise that these improvements would be financed entirely from reserves in the plans and there will consequently be no increase in costs to participants or taxpayers. This change seems to be a fair way to deal with the need for action on this program while awaiting the results of further review of the over-all plan design and its inter-relationship with survivor benefits provided elsewhere under the pension plan.
[Translation\
In another area touching on the importance of pension plan coverage as a family financial planning matter, hon. members should note that this bill would also enact a new statute called the Pension Benefits Division Act.
For some years now provincial family law has been evolving on the subject of the inclusion of entitlements under employer sponsored pension plans as a part of the family assets accrued during marriage. In most jurisdictions the value of pension plan accruals is now taken into account in arriving at decisions about the division of assets on marriage breakdown. In most jurisdictions provincial pension standards legislation requires plan sponsors to recognize and act on court orders or legal separation agreements which specify a division of pension assets.
[English\
Indeed the Federal Pension Benefits Standards Act requires that employer sponsored plans subject to that act recognize such orders or agreement. The federal pension statutes, which would be amended by Bill C-55, are not currently subject to any of this legislation and at present no such request can be honoured. This has clearly led to considerable difficulty for some plan members and their spouses in settling their personal affairs since pension values can be a large part of the total family assets.
The government believes its pension plans should be able to accommodate such situations. A method to do so is set out in the proposed new pension benefits division act. This act would allow the legal or common law spouse access to up to 50 per cent of the value of the pension benefits accrued during the period specified in the court order or agreement. This would be done by having that value transferred to another retirement savings vehicle or in the case of a retirement compensation arrangement or RCA directly to the spouse.
The act, together with appropriate regulations, would provide that an offsetting reduction could then be made in the plan member's pension under the plan.

I would particularly like to draw to hon. members' attention one other proposal in Bill C-55 which would apply to all plans. Representations have been made to me and, I am sure, to other hon. members, that a change should be made to the current provisions of the pension statutes which preclude payment of a survivor's pension to a person who was not the spouse of the plan member when the member retired.
February 24, 1992

I sympathize with the desire of pensioners to ensure the financial security of those they marry after retirement. However, the government does not feel it appropriate to extend the current survivor arrangements so that an additional pension liability of this sort is automatically assumed by the plan. Nevertheless, this possibility will be considered further as part of the broader review exercise which will include study of the current survivor benefit arrangements in general.
In the meantime, and in conclusion, I am pleased to point out that Bill C-55 would allow pensioners under all of the plans who are in this situation an opportunity to provide for survivor benefits. In effect, individuals may elect to reduce their own pension in order to provide for benefits to a person whom they many after retirement. For example, for a 60-year old man who married a woman three years younger than himself, a reduction of 15 per cent in his pension would provide a widow's pension of 50 per cent in the event of his death.

In my remarks I have tried to touch on the major initiatives to be found in this bill and explain why the government feels it is necessary to move on these matters at this time.
There are, of course, other aspects of the bill of smaller impact in terms of the numbers affected. These will be discussed as we move to a more detailed consideration.
I would like to end my remarks today by reminding hon. members that Bill C-55 represents only a step in the Public Service pension reform process.
I expect to have the opportunity to bring forward broader and more fundamental legislation on this subject at a later date, if necessary. I will do so only after serious and detailed study of the issues and after consultation with all those who are affected or have an interest.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I notice the hon. minister's comments that he wants to bring the pensions in the public sector of Canada into line with the same standards applied to other pension plans. All I can say is that it has taken an awfully long time to make one tentative step forward.
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It is always a pleasure to get up and say when the government is doing something right. In this particular bill it is doing a few small things right.
However, the government is so unaccustomed to it, it is so tentative about it, that the best it can do is take one small step and get a little toe into the puddle of doing things the right way.
It is really quite unacceptable. Equality is an absolute term. It is not something we can give people in little bits and pieces as the mood moves us. Equality is a right.
It is appropriate in this year, 10 years after the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that the government for the first time, with one small exception is making a step toward equality and fairness in its pension plan.
Even before the charter was applied to pension considerations an all-party parliamentary committee in 1983 made a major report proposing changes similar to or at least including those which are before the House today.
In 1985 we had the report on Equality For All that proposed exactly the same changes. That same year the government amended the Pension Benefits Standards Act that applies to all federally regulated employers to implement many of those changes to bring pension plans across Canada into conformity with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Not too long after, it made similar amendments to the Canada Pension Plan paying attention to the parliamentary committee on pension reform and paying attention to people's rights under the charter.
But it has taken a full decade before it will even take a first tentative step toward applying the charter to its own pension plans.
We see this in a number of fields. We certainly see it in employment equity where the government passes legislation that says that companies that are regulated by the federal government or do business with the federal government have to be equal opportunity employers. Until now the government has refused to bring itself under the same rules and regulations. We now have major business organizations asking that it do exactly that, that it not apply rules to others that it is not prepared to live by itself.

February 24, 1992
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We see the government talking about pay equity but refusing to implement it, and in fact fighting it through the courts. We have a constant pattern of do as I say, not do as I do.
Again this morning the minister has talked about a process for fundamental review of the pension plan. Ele knows its inadequacies perhaps better than I do. He knows the ways in which it does not conform with the same standards required of other pension plans.
The words he said this morning about consultation and a thorough review with all the stakeholders might be encouraging, except we have heard them often before from the President of Treasury Board. Since 1987 the previous President of Treasuiy Board has promised exactly the same thing, saying that Public Service employees would not have to wait long for equality, would not have to wait long for a fair rate of return on their pensions, would not have to wait long for a say in how their pension plans would be managed, among other things. Yet here we are five years later and they are still waiting.
I hope the President of Treasury Board will not blame me or a quarter of a million Public Service employees if we do not hold our breath. His announcement was made in December that this review would happen, and just this past week before the public accounts committee the person who is to be responsible for that review admitted that no, they had not talked to any of the unions yet and nothing had been done to get the process started.
We will deal with what is before us in the bill but recognize that it is a very small, tentative and inadequate step toward even conformity with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A decade after the adoption of the charter I frankly think that is a little bit disgraceful.
I think it is also brought about by the fact that there happen to be a number of court cases under way. Even with this legislation in front of us, the government has chosen not to deal with all the issues that are in those cases in front of the Supreme Court but rather has chosen to fight equality in the courts on pension matters.
Let me deal with some of the specific issues in the bill that have been recommended, as I said over and over again, as changes to be made to this pension plan, changes which have been made and which are required of private sector companies that have pension plans but
which the government has chosen not to impose upon itself.
The minister has spoken very briefly about a change to the provisions with respect to divorce and separated spouses. One way of doing that is indeed, as this bill proposes, to allow for a division of the assets in the pension fund at the time of a separation or divorce. However, that is far from dealing with all the issues involved and it is far from meeting the standards required of other pension plans. In fact we are still left with the situation where Treasury Board has the discretion, believe it or not, to deem a spouse to be dead just because they happen to be separated and Treasury Board has decided they are not entitled to a share of pension.
The bill requires court orders. I hope the minister is seeking some expert outside advice on how that affects the equality of women and their entitlement to a fair share of family assets on divorce and marriage breakdown. Right now he has a case before the courts. He had it in his office and was able to deal with it a number of months ago and chose not to honour a court order for splitting of pension benefits. I hope he will forgive many women, who were married for 25, 30, 35 or more years while the pension was being accumulated and now have no share in that pension, a bit of skepticism about why this very narrow concession to their interest is being made and why the government is not going all the way as it has required other pension plans to do in allowing them simply a prorated share of the pension that they helped earn.
This is a complex issue and many more points need to be dealt with in conjunction with it. I certainly hope that we are going to have time at the legislative committee to do that and that there is not going to be, again, a requirement to report back in an unreasonably short period of time.
I also hope that perhaps the minister will look at splitting the equality provisions in this bill. I think it is really quite unconscionable to put equality into a bill along with a whole lot of other technical amendments that are required because of changes to the Income Tax Act and perhaps require that people who have been waiting a decade for equality will wait even longer while we go through all the implications of the Income Tax Act for other whole sections of the act that are unrelated to their needs and to their rights.
February 24, 1992

I would like to touch on a couple of other cases where the government has been much more generous with its legislated requirements for other pension plans than it is prepared to be for its own employees and their spouses, survivors and dependants.
The government knows full well that the vast majority of those elderly living in poverty are women and that one of the prime reasons for that is the lack of access to pension benefits.
Even a spouse of a pensioner who has contributed, usually through her work in the home for many years, to the accumulation of that pension now gets only 50 per cent of the pension under the Public Service plan. Yet the government, seven years ago, required private sector employers to provide 60 per cent survivor benefits.
Why does the government think that a company, whether it is running a retail store, a car dealership or a steel foundry can provide 60 per cent survivor benefits but the Government of Canada cannot?
As I said, there is a number of equality issues involved in this bill. There are a number of equality issues that should be in this bill that are not. I can only commend the minister on the provision with respect to part-time employees. As he knows full well, that applies not only largely to women but is also an important element of allowing persons with disabilities to remain involved in the work force as long as and to the extent possible and continue to receive all the benefits of being employed.
I have been speaking about the Public Service plan. Of course, as the minister has said, this bill applies also to Armed Forces and RCMP plans. Those have a number of specific provisions that are not being addressed in this bill, but again we have a promise that sometime in the future they will be addressed.
I think the minister is well aware of the concerns of Armed Forces pensioners about early retirement which is often not a matter of choice and about their pensions which for many years remain unindexed so that the pensioners drop into poverty well before their pensions start to have any degree of protection against inflation.
There are a number of other issues as well that the bill does not deal with which relate certainly to part-time
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employees and people who are in and out of the work force more often. We know that they are more often women than men, that this is a major contributor to the poverty of women, and that has to do with how soon one is entitled to the contributions one has made to that pension plan, known as vesting.
With an economy that is changing dramatically and rapidly, the question of portability and when one is able to transfer one's pension to another employer become very important issues. These are issues that are not dealt with in this bill.
In summary, there are equality issues that are barely touched in this bill. I do believe it is unconscionable after a decade of the charter that the government would impose on other employers the obligation to be a fair employer with respect to pension matters and not take that responsibility unto itself. It is part of the cynicism that is rampant in the country right now; again the attitude of do as I say but there are special rules for me and I do not have to live by everybody else's rules.
I want to return to the next phase because the minister has promised a review. As I have said, we have had those promises repeatedly over the years. I really am not expecting a great deal, especially knowing that it was announced in December and still has not started.
The minister is aware as well that government is promoting labour-management partnerships to the tune of $1.4 million in expenditure of public funds. Yet I do not believe there has been consultation on this bill before it came forward. I am not sure that there is going to be consultation in the review process. If there is, it certainly has not started yet. In fact the minister's own summary of what is happening next says that they will take into account views expressed by others. Taking into account is not the same as consulting, and one has to ask the question: "Whose money is this anyway?"
It is interesting when we look back on the history of the Public Service Pension Plan, because every year since its inception until this year it has paid more into government coffers than it has taken out. As recently as 1989,1 believe, that amount was $400 million in excess of contributions over pay-out. Every year since the plan

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was instituted in the mid-1950s it has contributed to reducing the tax requirements of the government and reducing the borrowing requirements of the government. The Public Service Pension Plan alone in that peak year was responsible for reducing the public deficit of Canada by $400 million.
I have spoken in this House often about the management record of the government, which I do not think is terribly good, and the pension plan again shows that. Whereas in 1989 there was that substantial surplus of contributions over payments out of the pension plan, there has been a dramatic plunge; the situation is reversed. For the first time ever the pension plan has paid out more than it has taken in. That means the government is not getting the benefit of a well managed fund which is helping to reduce the deficit but in fact is now having to pay out of public coffers toward the viability of the pension plan.
There are a number of reasons for this. The Auditor General, in last year's report, was very clear about the irresponsibility of the government in how it manages, how it reports, and how it accounts for the management of this fund. So serious are those charges that the public accounts committee has now undertaken a thorough review. The minister has not indicated in any way how his review is going to take account of those complaints of the Auditor General, but the Auditor General said: "If this were a well managed pension fund, invested as private sector pension funds are, it would be generating a far greater rate of return than it does". He criticized the lack of accountability in how the government borrows from this fund and reports to Parliament. He made it clear that Parliament has no way of holding the government accountable based on the current reporting procedures for its borrowing, all of which are debt and deficit related.
One only needs to read the Auditor General's report to realize why in a broader sense we now have double the deficit and double the debt we had when this government took office.
The minister has spoken about the interests of Canadian taxpayers. The interests of Canadian taxpayers is first and foremost in having whatever funds are in the hands of the government well managed and well reported so that people know how their money is being used, how it is being spent, how it is being lent, and so on. As well, the Auditor General had a number of things to say about management, pointing out again that the government has required all private sector employers to
have employees involved in the management of what is after all their fund, yet the government has refused repeatedly to do that. I want to point out one more thing. This bill will be in committee very shortly. Naturally we all want to see positive moves toward equality in the bill implemented as soon as possible.
I ask the minister to consider taking those provisions out of this bill, allowing them to be reported back into the House so that a somewhat shameful record of not implementing equality for public sector pensioners for a decade can at least start to be undone.
Dealing with a bill of this magnitude is also going to require understanding the economic implications for the pension fund of the measures we will be asked to approve.
I would like to point out again to the minister that I have written to him requesting copies of any studies that have been done which show the implications for the pension fund of a number of the measures contained in this bill. We have not been provided with those studies, if they have been done. I certainly hope we do not have measures before us without the ability to define what the implications are going to be. I would ask that he provide those as quickly as possible because essential and long overdue changes in this bill can be put into legislation quickly.
I urge him to be most generous when this bill is in committee, in terms of considering amendments that would move a little further along to the equality for women particularly, persons with disabilities who are affected by the provisions of this bill thought they had won 10 years ago but are still battling for in the courts.


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak at second reading of this bill and to clarify that this bill deals with public sector pensions as well as those of members of Parliament that the minister spoke to earlier.
In general my party and I support the provisions of the bill. It will go to committee after second reading and we will be proposing amendments to the bill. We support those provisions related to the non-political public sector part of the bill. We will not vote against the bill at second reading because we want to get it into committee and have some of the changes that the previous speaker alluded to that are so important, as well as have a full discussion and hear witnesses from various representatives and interested parties.
February 24, 1992

New Democrats have certainly led the way in promoting strong and progressive pension plans for public sector workers. We have led the way in establishing and improving pensions for all Canadians. One among us, I believe, deserves special mention, our friend Stanley Knowles who devoted so much of his career to the cause of public pensions and a dignified retirement for all Canadians.
Public sector pensions are not what I want to speak to today. There will be ample opportunity in committee to hear witnesses and to make appropriate amendments.
I think it is long overdue that we raise the question of pensions of members of this House, pensions that at this time mean that after six years of service, members of this House receive a pension regardless of age or whether or not they move on to employment elsewhere in the federal government.
In short, I believe that the time has come to recognize that those pensions must be brought in line with the general workforce. The time has come to bring pensions for members of Parliament into line with the pensions of other Canadians. What is the rationale for the present situation?

It is partly because politicians are very aware of the precarious nature of a political career.
Most women and men who enter politics do so at great personal cost. They risk their career and at times give up a much higher salary. Very often they face an uncertain future.
One cannot know what will happen at the end of a parliamentary career, whether it is given up willingly or not. I understand that. New Democrats understand that.
In the past the transition for us NDP members was often much more difficult than it was for those from the other political parties.
We know that people who choose this life make great sacrifices. But I would like to tell you, and I say clearly,
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that it does not justify a pension plan like the one that exists now.
We need to have a pension plan like most workers have. Nothing in all that justifies receiving a generous pension at the same time as another public sector salary.

This is a subject of great intention and differing points of view in the public and I suspect in this House. There are transition difficulties facing parliamentarians when their parliamentary careers voluntarily or involuntarily are brought to an end. I do not believe the way to deal with that is through the pension plan nor through simply assuring that people will have a pension for life after six years of service regardless of their age. There are other ways to deal with this, as it is dealt with in the public domain, and that is through a severance package which is geared to helping those who need to make that transition. It is of sufficient scope to deal with some of those prices of public life.
I do not think we can build a rationale based on the sacrifices we make. We all chose this career. We all ran for political life because we wanted to serve our country. I do not believe this makes us special. It means we have chosen this career because we believe on all sides of this House that we have something to contribute to public life. There are many Canadians who contribute to public life; many do it voluntarily. Many put themselves on the line by expressing their views publicly. There is no doubt that parliamentarians, because we fight for our beliefs and we do so publicly, are subject to closer scrutiny by prospective employers.
It is the union workers who put their views on the line and can be fired from the company. There have been examples, of course, in the public sector, where members have expressed their views and have put their future on the line. We are not alone in this.
We may have some special problems but we are not alone. In itself this is not a good enough rationale in my view. I remind members of this House there is no other Canadian in this country who receives a pension after six years.

February 24, 1992
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The autoworkers, whose plant shut down just today, certainly will not have that kind of pension. The fish plant workers who saw their jobs disappear last week will not have that kind of pension. None of these Canadians, nor the millions of others in a similar position, can count on a plan such as our own.
It is time we came to grips with this in this House. Since the last legislation was passed, there have been a variety of changes made to assist members of Parliament. Some of them should go further in making that transition.
We are accountable for the public trust. We are accountable to those who elected us to make sure that what we support is fair, not less but fair, and that each and every one of us can stand before the electorate of Canada and say that we have put in place a fair system.
I suppose if we are prepared to fight for a pension scheme such as we have for all Canadians, this side of the House would be very happy to support that.
We would be happy to support a pension plan that would be publicly managed so that people could have true portability and could have pension plans that truly serve the interests of all Canadians. But that is not what is at issue in this bill and I do not believe that we can ignore, as parliamentarians, that this bill deals with parliamentary pensions and members of Parliament pensions.
There are many things that make it more difficult for members of Parliament, but any one of us who speaks to our political staff would find that there are the same arguments, because they have chosen a political party, they have stated their views as well and they too would have a difficult time. They do not have a pension similar to what we have.
I believe that the essence of democracy is that we work for things in this House to make it more representative; things like affirmative action so we have more women in this House, we have more visible minorities and we have more aboriginal people.
I believe we work for electoral reform so that people with disabilities and people on low income can be assisted to run for this House of Commons and Parliament and participate in the parliamentary system. In that
way we will have better decisions, a better Parliament and a fairer Parliament.
I do not believe that we can simply rationalize the kind of provisions that have been made for us when we look at what is happening to Canadians across this country.
Therefore, I want to give notice that while we will be pursuing amendments in all aspects of this bill, I will be pursuing amendments relating to the age of eligibility for members of Parliament pensions so that eligibility is brought in line with the general public and private sector and amendments that would restrict a former member of Parliament from collecting an MP pension cheque while having also a federal government job, commonly known as double dipping.
Let me also suggest that I believe the bill before us should be split so that the issues of public sector pensions and those of MPs can be dealt with separately. I think this would be a fairer thing to do.
In referring to members of Parliament pensions in this bill, the minister said that the government was intending to study this. There have been a number of studies back in 1969 and I am sure many others that have been done over the years. Let me say to the minister that we have now the opportunity to take some steps into making the benefits that we have in line with those of the general Canadian public.
I also believe that the time has come to establish a non-partisan, independent commission to deal with the issues of MP pensions; not ex-members of Parliament, as has been the case before, as many of the provinces have, to look at the whole issue of members of Parliament pensions.
Having said that, I do believe that we have an opportunity to do something now that is logical, that is consistent with the public domain and that just simply is common sense.
I believe we can make changes that are fair and certainly do not require extensive study.

In 1992 when people are being asked to make one sacrifice after another, when social programs are being cut, when times are tough, members of Parliament cannot in good conscience continue to advocate for themselves a pension plan that other people can only dream of.
February 24, 1992



The time has come for us to address this directly, to address it in committee after the passing of second reading and to be no more generous than what we advocate for other Canadians. We now have an opportunity to make a step forward. We can set a new direction here. We can demonstrate to Canadians a new kind of politics vyhere fairness is our guiding principle.
I hope that the minister will be open to these issues and that they will have a fair and open debate in committee. I want to assure the minister that we want to see this bill go forward because we believe that the minister has made some positive proposals for public sector workers. I also say to the minister that now is the time to address the other pressing issue and that is of our own benefits.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the discourse of the hon. member for Yukon about double dipping. I wonder if triple dipping is equally wrong.
If an individual was a federal appointee, had been a federal MP and had been a member of the Ontario legislature and in each case for exactly the amount of time required to receive a pension, is that wrong as well? If so, has she phoned Mr. Deans to tell him about it?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, there are many exmembers of Parliament, I am sure quite legally and under the rules that exist, as well as the Senate and the bench who are following what the procedure has been.
I am not going to phone anybody. Why should I phone anybody? I am asking that every member in this House tells their electors that from now on it is not okay for MPs to have a pension that no other Canadian has. That is what I am going to do.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, the remarks of the Leader of the New Democratic Party are shared by many people in this country at this particular moment. As she has stated so often, all members of Parliament and all legislatures are held in disrepute and there is a terrible lack of trust.
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I am trying to understand where the member is coming from. If someone served as a member of Parliament for eight or ten years and wanted to continue serving the Government of Canada in a capacity other than an elected member, and if they were to forgo that pension option but would work somewhere in the Public Service, would the hon. member consider that a fair exchange rather than taking up the pension? At least that experience and that commitment to public life could be exercised in some other part of the Public Service somewhere in the country or around the world? Would the hon. member consider that a worth-while option as a counter proposal?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I am not suggesting that the experience that members of Parliament or indeed senators have would not be valuable in various domains of public service and paid public service. I would not suggest that at all.
All I am saying is it is not very logical to most Canadians, and quite frankly not very logical to me, that if you have a public sector job paid for by the taxpayers that you are at the same time receiving a pension. Of course, you would receive the pension upon retirement. No one is suggesting that not be the case.
Of course I think members of Parliament have much to offer to public life when they are no longer sitting members of Parliament.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I have to be very clear. Is double dipping right or wrong? It was wrong a few minutes ago when it is was part of the prepared text. In answer to a question it seemed to be okay.
I want it clear. Is double dipping or triple dipping right or wrong? I think parliamentarians and Canadians have a right to know.
Perhaps the member could indicate to us as well, given her vast knowledge of this topic, whether she thinks that contributions made to the fund by MPs are in a deficit position at the present time and, if so, by how much?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, it is really interesting to me that the Liberal Party seems to want to justify that you can get both a pay cheque and a pension. I think this is great.
What I want to say is that we are making a moral judgment here. I am saying it is time to change the law and those who are currently doing that would be subject to the changed law. It is as simple as that. You get a federal government pay cheque or you get a pension.

February 24, 1992
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In terms of the pension fund, as the member well knows, the pension fund itself is not in deficit but there is a $144 million unfunded liability, but that is not the issue.
That is something we can discuss in committee and I am sure the government will have proposals. The issue is whether members of Parliament in this House are prepared to stand up and say: "It is time for a change in this plan. We want to make improvements". This is not criticizing our colleagues of any political party. My predecessor from the Yukon, I am sure, has a pension from the federal government and also has a federal government job. I do not criticize my predecessor, even though he is from the Tory Party, for doing that. What I am saying is that it is time for us to stand up and make some changes now, not simply to criticize.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I am trying very hard to understand where the hon. member is coming from here. There are tens of thousands of people in police forces and fire departments across this country who put in their time and their years and sometimes their pensions mature when they are in their early fifties or sometimes late forties. Many of these, what I would consider to be pretty healthy pensions, tend to come from organizations that tend to be very well organized, mostly trade union operations. Is the member suggesting that the double dipping she refers to, which should not be allowed, I understand, should also apply to those public sector operations as well or is she just saying parliamentarians?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, let me make it perfectly clear. This is referring to a bill which is before us, which includes MPs' pensions. The amendments which I suggest we should make refer to MPs' pensions and this in fact is an opportunity for us to deal with those. One of those issues is a federal government pay cheque or pension or both. I am referring simply to MPs' pensions at this time.


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: I have a short question for the leader. I found her speech to be most interesting and challenging.
I want to ask her this: There are a number of pension plans in Canada that are what we refer to as offside. There is the constabulary in Newfoundland, the teachers in Newfoundland and various other groups throughout Canada who have a special job, such as prison guards and so on and so forth, that have special features to their pensions. What the hon. member is referring to today are the pensions of members of Parliament to bring them in line with other pensions.
Is she suggesting at the same time that these other groups in our society who have special pension plans and abide by the law as amended should also be brought in line to conform with the status quo across Canada of the same pension for everyone?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I realize that hon. members would like to do anything to avoid addressing the issue of MPs' pensions. I will respond to the member because he asks a good question. I am making proposals on MPs' pensions and I am suggesting, as I suggested in my remarks, that we should look at a non-partisan committee to look at all of the details of the bill, that there are certain things we could take action on now. The hon. member makes certain points about other kinds of pension plans. That is why I feel what is essential to this is that we do have a non-partisan committee, not of ex-MPs as we have done before, to study this. I am also saying, dealing with members of Parliament pensions, there are certain measures we can take now.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Some hon. members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee G.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, February 19, consideration of the motion of Mr. McKnight that Bill C-54, an act to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act and other acts in consequence thereof be read the second time and referred to the Standing committee on Agriculture.
Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to make some comments following some of the comments made by my colleagues last week on this piece of legislation.
As you have heard, the amendments that provide for national check-offs on agrifood commodities are a long sought after and effective technique to enable the Canadian agrifood industry to become more responsible for its own well-being.
This is not a government devised system imposed on the agrifood industry. Many and various sectors within the industry have called upon the government to provide this system for some time.
I note that consultations within these sectors and with the provinces have shown broad support for the checkoff system and the legislative means by which that system would operate.
The producers, processors and importers of agricultural commodities do not supply management. That is, all commodities except poultry, eggs and dairy products have never had the legislative means to impose a mandatory national levy on themselves.
Such means have existed at the provincial levels, but any effort to fund such competition enhancing promotion and research at the national level has depended on voluntary participation by members of any agricultural sector. Since it is voluntary, it has not been sufficiently widespread nor has it offered the long-term stability necessary to sustain effective programs.
In addition, there has been no federal legislation that permitted the collection of national check-offs on imports as well as domestic agricultural products. In order to enact such a national check-off system that would include imports, the government had two choices.
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It was decided that the amendment option was the best route for a number of reasons. Amending the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act in essence means some straightforward changes to extend many provisions to cover imports.
Simply put, it already contained most of the legislative provisions needed for national check-offs. Therefore, it provided a basis for putting the check-off provisions into law that met the tests of simplicity, speed and efficiency.
Taking this route meant extending a faster and simpler helping hand to an agrifood industry that is determined to become more competitive and self-reliant.
This government is committed to those goals. Heightened competitiveness, especially in the new international trading environment, translates directly into more and better jobs for Canadians.
As you know the Marketing Agencies Act had a somewhat tumultuous birth back in the early 1970s. It was the first federal legislation that provided for the establishment of supply management systems for agricultural commodities.
As such, it provoked a great deal of debate and discussion within the House of Commons, the agrifood industry and the general population. As a result, this act became synonymous with supply management in the public mind, but as the Minister of Agriculture has pointed out it is important that we all understand right now that amending this act to provide for national check-offs in no way ties check-offs to supply management. These amendments will in no way weaken the existing supply management provisions contained in the act. Conversely the amendments do not in any way represent the first step towards supply management for those commodities not currently under it.
To keep this absolutely clear, we have taken great care with the wording of the amendments. The new sections dealing with national check-offs do not simply use the term, marketing plan, which has in many peoples' minds come to mean supply management. Instead, the checkoff amendments specifically refer to the market promotion and research plan that better describes the mandate of what check-offs would pay for. It allows for no confusion with the provisions covering supply managed commodities.

February 24, 1992
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Perhaps the best approach to demonstrating the together but apart nature of these two streams of the amended act would be to cite a specific example of how a check-off program might work.
This example comes from a number of draft preliminary proposals that groups within the agrifood industry provided during the consultation preceding the drafting of these amendments.
Let me say that by citing this particular example, I am by no means committing the proponents or ourselves to following their preliminary plan to the letter.
For instance, the Canadian Horticultural Council and the Canadian Produce Marketing Association represent every element of the production and marketing of fresh fruit and vegetables in Canada.
These two organizations have undertaken, through the Fresh for Flavour Foundation, to promote the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables. Funding for the foundation has been on a voluntary basis and unfortunately it has not been sufficient to pay for an adequate promotional program.
The problem has been an inequitable sharing of the costs among industry and trade members. As a result, the Horticultural Council and the Produce Marketing Association joined the industry call for a national checkoff system.
Money raised through the check-offs would be used to promote the sale of fresh produce through programs for food, health and safety, educational activities, product and consumer research, and surveys of special group needs. There would be enough funds to pay for continuous promotional activities and other marketing enhancements.
The proposed check-off on fresh fruit and vegetables would be one-fifth of one per cent of the value of the product.
Based on 1988 sales of $2.2 billion, this rate would have raised $4.4 million. The check-off would be applied against produce being sold in the province in which it was grown, produce sold in other provinces and any produce imported from other countries. It would not be assessed on produce destined for processors or on processed imports.
Let us come back briefly to the $4.4 million that a national check-off would have raised in one year. That is a healthy sum to use in the promotion and marketing of fresh produce and to pay for product and consumer research to supplement that being done by government.
Many voices from coast to coast in the agrifood industry have told us they desire more autonomy. Like all entrepreneurs, they want to feel and be responsible for their own destiny. Having the dollars to pay for those important marketing and research activities is an essential part of that independence, and one we all welcome. Having the right under federal law to choose to collect that money from themselves is just as important.
The check-off amendments provide that right, that choice and that potential for more self-sufficiency.
Let me emphasize that this enabling legislation will have little or no impact on food prices for Canadians. We all know consumers are becoming even more price conscious when they do their grocery shopping. It might be easy for people to look quickly at the idea of national check-off for the agricultural products and leap to the wrong conclusion that these changes to the law will mean producers will charge more, and the consumer would end up footing the bill.
This is simply not the case. Using the example of fresh fruit and vegetables, the proposed check-off is only one-fifth of one per cent of the value of the product which would be an insignificant proportion of retail sales. We should not worry that the check-offs would mean hardship at the grocery store, or that there would be price hikes that would provoke more cross-border shopping. On the contrary, better efficiency gained through check-off funded research will ultimately benefit Canadian consumers, as will the generation of consumer information that will come and be one of the prime results of the check-off program.
Let me conclude by saying the amendments that would create the new Farm Products Agencies Act represent a win-win combination for the agrifood industry and our consumers. We believe this legislation will provide additional confidence to the agricultural sectors that we are all looking for. We urge the House to permit this legislation to move as rapidly as possible, and we ask the co-operation of all members of the House of Commons.
February 24, 1992


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the parliamentary secretary's intervention. We go back together in this House to 1979 and I have learned that he is a very successful farmer, as well as a successful parliamentarian.
I have some facts here that disturb me and I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could shed some light on them. I know that self-sufficiency in food production is the country's best security. That applies not only to Canada but to all countries that have high food production. Yet in 1989, Canada imported more farm products than it exported. Although Canada is a net exporter of agricultural products, agricultural imports have increased by 17.5 per cent throughout the eighties, while exports rose only by 2.2 per cent.
The parliamentary secretary is a successful farmer on the government side, and they are bringing in legislation. We have had the debates around the GATT and clarification of article XI. Could the parliamentary secretary share with this House why there is this discrepancy? Why are exports not keeping up with the imports?
Here we are, a country which is the bread basket of the world, and yet we are importing more food than we are exporting. I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could address that. Will this bill help us increase our exports and reduce our imports?


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to respond to my colleague and as he mentioned, we do go back some years in this House of Commons. We have served on various committees together which we think were very beneficial to the legislation we have today.
But the hon. member speaks of imports and exports. We have to recognise that in the last 10 or 12 years, very many changes have taken place in the world marketing of not only agricultural products but of all trade and trade goods. In particular, consumer demand has played a role in some of the products coming into this country. Consumers are anxious to have fresh vegetables and produce available on a year-round basis. Years ago when more women worked in the home, more homemakers
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had gardens and preserved vegetables, et cetera, in the fall months. Most people's habits have changed since then and as a result there are probably more imports at certain times of the year. But also as you have said there has been an increase in exports.
Let me go back to about 1985 when I don't think any of us envisioned the trade wars that were going to take place, in particular between the United States and the European community. That brings us up to the GATT talks. We all know we have a difficult time competing against those countries, but I think for a population the size of Canada's we have done extremely well in maintaining support for our farmers, even though those trade wars have been taking place. Our adamant and consolidated position at this Uruguay Round of GATT talks has been developed by the stakeholders and the federal and provincial governments. We hope it will enable us to maintain a better livelihood and the confidence that our farm sector needs.
The member asked if this legislation would help agriculture in the future. I believe it will, because up until now any imported product did not contribute in any way to the advertisement or promotion of anything that was imported. I use beef as an example. If beef is imported into this country, and we know there are times when it happens, there is no way it assists the Canadian cattlemen or those who promote the consumption and use of beef. Now with this voluntary legislation, they will have the right to collect a levy on the product coming in and that will certainly help in the promotion of the product. There again I hope it would enhance the position of our Canadian producers in promoting Canadian products.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member participated with members from all three parties of this House in the demonstration on Friday. An estimated 25,000 farmers came to the Hill to remind this government not to abandon the supply management marketing system we have established that has been so successful over the years.

February 24, 1992
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I keep reminding this House that we had a family farm in Saskatchewan and after 22 years of farming it could not keep the whole family at home. We had to sell the farm and move to another industry.
Thanks to the supply management system, farmers are now a getting reliable income. Now it is being threatened by the GATT negotiations. We have heard all the arguments pro and con. Naturally these 25,000 fanners were demonstrating to preserve the supply management system.
The hon. member also knows that the western grain producers are getting the Crow Rate subsidy which may also be under threat of being removed by the GATT negotiations.
Can this government not use the argument that the dairy and egg producers are producing food mainly for the domestic market and therefore this should not even be raised in the GATT negotiations? The grain producers are exporting most of their product and would come under close scrutiny under the GATT negotiations.
What is this government doing now to make sure western producers do not lose the western transportation and handling subsidy? It is not really a subsidy because it is paid to the railways and this is how we developed western Canada. It is really a regional assistance plan if anything.
It looks like this government is not speaking out very strongly. It is not negotiating with other countries over the GATT negotiations and we may lose both. We may lose the supply management system and the so-called Crow benefit.
I would like the Parliamentary Secretary's opinions on that.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, this certainly gives me an opportunity to expand on some of the discussions we have had on what was said earlier.
The member refers to the farmers and supporters of the farm organizations who were on Parliament Hill on Friday. I was not here on Friday because I travelled to Brussels, Belgium and then on to Bonn and Geneva on the weekend. We left last Wednesday night and met with farm leaders over there on Thursday and Friday. It was a wonderful opportunity for all of us to spend some time
with farm leaders in the high level of meetings we had while we visited in those countries.
In Brussels I had the opportunity of meeting with European parliamentarians. I put forth our position and tried to get them to understand why there is no reason to change article XI, other than to clarify and strengthen it. We do not export that product and we are not interfering with their market. I believe they understand that much better now. I believe the farm leaders played a very major role in putting our position across and we thank them very much for that.
Some of them met with Mr. McSharry, the EC Commissioner. I think everyone in this House knows who he is. We met with the German Minister of Agriculture and I believe he understands our position much better. We met with the Vice Chancellor that same day. The other part of the group met with Arthur Dunkel the Director General in Geneva, and with Ambassadors and farm leaders of those countries as well.
I believe our position has been enhanced by those meetings as well as by the strong support from the great number of people who were on the Hill last Friday. They reminded not only this country but countries of the world how important it is for us to maintain a strong agricultural sector, and article XI is very much a part of that.
The hon. member mentioned the Crow rate. I think he would agree with me that the Crow rate has been a topic of discussion in this House many times, probably since we were first elected to this House of Commons. I do not know how much longer those discussions will continue. As well, the method of payment has always been a topic for discussion. We realize that it is an issue we need to talk about. I see nothing wrong with discussing how the Crow benefits should be paid. That is not complete yet. Discussions have to take place with respect to the Crow benefit and the benefits to the western grain farmer.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow on the heels of remarks make by the hon. parliamentary secretary. He commented on his recent trip last week to Europe concerning the GATT. More specifically, his trip was to pursue the concerns of the supply management people here in Canada. I wish he had been able to come back with some good news, but he was not able to come back with good news.
February 24, 1992

In a way it is the same story that has now been going on for five or six years. The government says that it defends supply management and our marketing boards and is doing everything possible to protect our system. However its efforts have so far failed. That is why, even at this eleventh hour, we are pressing the government and have been pressing the government for weeks to not give up one inch. We are pressing the Prime Minister to take advantage of his special relationship with the President of the United States and implore, beseech and beg him to come onside so that we will not lose the most productive and most stable sector of our agricultural community, which is our supply management sector.
The hon. parliamentary secretary also, in answer to a question from my colleague from Toronto, made a reference to the method of payment of the Crow benefit. As we all know, right now payment is made directly to the railways. The government has been sponsoring a number of meetings across the prairies concerning the method of payment. The government says it is consulting, that it is asking the farmers for their view on whether the method of payment, which is direct payment to the railways, should stay the same or be changed.
The government says it has an open mind and that is why it is consulting the farm producers. Some of us feel that the government has already made up its mind and will abandon direct payments to the railways and begin making payments to the producers. With that change would come all kinds of ramifications and implications.
Let us get to Bill C-54 which is before us now. It is a bill which would provide amendments to the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act. In many ways on the surface it is a fairly straightforward bill. It would put in place a check-off and out of that check-off would come money for research and promotion.
I noted what the minister said in his remarks last week about Bill C-54. He said: "The money will be used for consumer education, domestic and foreign markets as well as research and processing of a product, distribution as well as marketing". On the surface that sounds as innocuous as motherhood. However, notwithstanding what the minister has said and notwithstanding what is
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said directly in this particular bill we on this side of the House have a lot of questions. We are not going to let it slide through unnoticed. We want it to go to committee because we have all kinds of questions.
We also note that there are a number of organizations in this country which support the bill. Some of the organizations which have expressed their support include: the Canadian Cattleman's Association, the Canadian Pork Council, the Canadian Horticultural Council, the Canadian Fruit Wholesalers Association, The Fresh for Flavour Foundation, the Western Grains Research Foundation, the Canadian Honey Council and the Canadian Nursery Trade Association.
Notwithstanding what the minister has said and what these organizations have said in support of this particular bill we want the bill to go to committee. I understand the bill will go to the Standing Committee on Agriculture because that is where it should be vetted and that is where it should be examined in detail.
We want to be assured about safeguards. We want to know exactly how the bill is going to be used. There are concerns in certain quarters. There have been concerns that this is an unfair tax. There is naturally concern about the government's motivation, which might possibly be to off-load its research responsibilities onto the shoulders of producers, and perhaps further down the line onto the shoulders of consumers. The hon. parliamentary secretary who spoke a few minutes earlier said that should not be a concern. He said that it was not the intent of the government to off-load any of its research responsibilities, nor was that its motivation. I take the hon. parliamentary secretary at his word. In fact, his minister said the very same thing in his remarks last week, and I do not question the minister's remarks either.
However we do have these concerns. The place to raise the questions and to examine these concerns is the Standing Committee on Agriculture. If the bill had the effect of off-loading the government's responsibilities, it simply could not be allowed.

February 24, 1992
Government Orders
There is also the concern about the bureaucracy resulting from such legislation. We should examine that as well in committee.
Another matter is what is going on at the GATT right now. We all know that if Canada fails to get article XI strengthened and clarified and if we end up with a system of tariffication supply management is more or less doomed. Our marketing boards will lose their raison d'etre.
If marketing boards no longer have control over prices or quotas what is left of them? What impact would there be with this legislation in place? Again we must ask at committee about the implications of this legislation before us today if we lose our marketing boards.
Mr. Speaker, you will appreciate why we want this to go to committee. I also want to raise the matter of the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act, an act that is now more than 20 years old. Out of that legislation came our supply management system from which came a number of agencies: the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, the Canadian TUrkey Marketing Agency; the Canadian Chicken Marketing Agency and the Canadian Broiler Hatching Egg Marketing Agency.
These agencies, our supply management system, have brought order and stability to that sector of agriculture; order and stability where before there was disarray and chaos. The supply management system in our country is a Canadian success story. It is an outstanding success story, one that we can be proud of. It is a system that has provided plenty of food, good food, healthy food.
I know that the producers are proud of the system. They are proud of their achievements under it and do not want to lose it. I do not want to lose it. We on this side do not want to lose supply management. That would be harmful to our country, very damaging to our country.
Let us not forget that consumers have not done badly in this system either. Do not listen to the hogwash coming from sources such as the The Globe and Mail. Those people would love to destroy supply management. They would like us to believe that if somehow supply management ended tomorrow consumer prices would cease. The Globe and Mail believes in fantasy. The Globe and Mail is dreaming, because that is not the case.
Under supply management not only do we have lots of good healthy food but our prices are not that bad either,
the second lowest in the world. That is certainly nothing to sneeze at. They are certainly consistent with the rise in the consumer price index. What do we find if we compare price increases under supply management with price increases in those commodities not under supply management? There is no difference. Supply management does as well as those other commodities.
I have said in the House before, and I will say it again, that they have done away with supply management in Australia. Have the prices gone down? Not that I am aware of.
Despite this great Canadian success story we may lose supply management, and with it order and stability and real productivity in that sector of the agricultural community. We will lose it if the Dunkel report is adopted in the final GATT agreement, if there is a GATT agreement. We will lose it because Dunkel is not moving to strengthen and clarify article XI. We will lose it.
Let there not be any doubt in our minds. I know there are people out there who believe that our supply management system can survive under so-called tariffication. They have put out the word: "Can you imagine? We will have tariffs of 200 and 300 per cent. How could any American company scale that kind of tariff wall of 200 and 300 per cent?"
Let us not be deceived. In Canada we are not in the same situation as they are in the southern United States where the climate is a lot different. It is much warmer. They do not have the same energy costs. They do not pay the same wages. They do not even have the same expensive quality control. They have enormous economy of scale and they have enormous production capacity. They can climb; they can scale that tariff wall.
The wall will come down slowly but surely over a number of years anyway. We can be sure that they would flood this country with their surplus stocks, with then-surplus supply. We can be sure that in the phase-in years of tariffication, the large multinationals from the United States would be happy enough to accept marginal profits for the sake of scaling the tariff wall and penetrating our market. When they have killed our supply management system and knocked off our farmers-some of the best in the world-do you think they would be satisfied then with marginal profits? Not on your life, not on your life.
February 24, 1992

Let us not be fooled by tariffication. Let us not be fooled by this talk of tariffs of 200 per cent or 300 per cent and that somehow supply management can continue under tariffication. It cannot. If you do not have control over quotas and prices, there is not a chance that supply management will continue.
The threat posed against supply management at GATT is part and parcel of what you might call a new world economic order. If the multinationals have their way, the nation state will be dead. There will not be national identities or national borders any more. They want a world that is theirs and theirs alone. They want the entire planet to be their marketplace. They come back and tell us not to worry about their using the entire planet as their marketplace because as long as we are competitive and understand globalization, everything will be fine. In other words, just be smart and work hard and everything will be fine and dandy.
Let us not be fooled by that because they have certain advantages they will exploit and use, advantages that we Canadians do not have. We are just as smart and can be just as competitive as anybody else, but at the end of the day you have to have some kind of level playing field. If they start 100 yards up the track, there is a pretty good bet who the winner will be at the finish line.
The multinationals know that and we have to pursue both national and international policies that are in our interest and I am not preaching protectionism. I am prepared to work as hard as anyone else. I am prepared to be as competitive as anyone else, but just give me an equal opportunity. Give me standards and mechanisms where everyone has to play fairly and by the same rule book. Give me the opportunity to feed myself. A country must feed itself. A country that cannot feed itself is extremely vulnerable and has no future.
We have to realize what is going on around this world. I think there are some people across the way who do not realize this new world economic order is emerging. It is a new order driven by the multinationals who want to establish their own hegemony and their own control. This is not anti-American or anti-any country. All I want is a system where we can protect ourselves, be competitive, very productive and very efficient.
Government Orders
I hope we can give this bill to committee as quickly as possible so we can get the answers to some very important questions.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague for his passionate support of the marketing boards we have in this country.
I want to refer him specifically to a document our colleague from Lambton-Middlesex put out some months ago, called "Compare the Share". This document basically illustrated the spread between what the farmer received and what we paid at the retail level. It was a clear illustration of the fact that the farmer, in relation to the retail price, receives sparing little.
As an urban member, I have a difficult time communicating to my constituents that the farmers themselves get such a small amount of the money people pay at the retail level.
It is ironic that the member mentioned The Globe and Mail because I share his view that not all journalists at The Globe and Mail, seem to have the same attitude toward our market boards that we do. Does he not think that part of our exercise here, and part of the government's exercise should be to take a more aggressive campaign to communicate the idea of comparing the share so all the people of Canada would understand and thus become more sympathetic to marketing boards?


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood for that question. It is a discerning one and I believe he is absolutely right.
The farmers and urban dwellers are not foes. As far as I am concerned we are partners in a joint operation. We have to eat and farmers produce the food we eat. It is of no benefit to urban dwellers or consumers anywhere in this country to keep farmers impoverished. We want farmers who are prosperous. We want farmers who have their own stable economy. We want farmers who are very productive, and that is what we have.
We just take the service and production from the farm for granted, whether we are eating at home or in a restaurant. We just take it for granted that the food will be there and will always be high quality. It does not just happen. It is not just some miracle or accident. There are people out there working very, veiy hard in the hope they will derive a fairly good living.

I have heard some people say there are a few rich farmers who may be worth a few hundred thousand dollars and maybe even a few who are millionaires. Well what is wrong with that? Is there something wrong? People in the businesses of coal, newspaper, broadcasting and freight can make a million dollars, or at least they did in the past. People thought that was achievement; that was accomplishment. But for some reason if you spot two farmers in the country who have a million dollars and might be able to fly off to Florida for a couple of weeks in the winter, some people stand up and say that is not right. They are making too much money and that is terrible.
The hon. member from Broadview-Greenwood pointed out "Compare the Share", that excellent work done by my colleague from Lambton-Middlesex. It proves that the farmer is not gouging the consumer. He is not getting his fair share of the profits coming from his production.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I could not help but take note of the words of the member for Winnipeg-St. James when he talked about our realizing what went on in this world.
I could not agree with him more that a country's best security is being able to feed itself. I would like to share with the House, a brief informal meeting that the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade had this morning with Dr. Zimmer, editor-in-chief of a well-known newspaper in Munich.
He shared with us the problems in Germany and we shared with him the problems facing us here. Their farmers are facing a similar problem to ours. Unless they get some assistance from the government, they are going to go under.
I could not help but take note. Dr. Zimmer talked about the farms in Bavaria, where their government is giving subsidies to the farmers because the beautiful Bavarian farms are tourist attractions.
Our time is running out, but I was going to ask the hon. member who comes from the west how our farmers can compete if a rich and powerful country like Germany has to support its farmers or they will not exist.


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


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, as the crew of the HMCS Restigouche sails from home waters today to the foreign reaches of the Red Sea, we should all be fully aware that by enforcing the sanctions of the United Nations against the Government of the Republic of Iraq, they are playing an historic role in the establishment of the rule of international law. The vigil in the Red Sea will make a valuable contribution to the maintenance of world peace.
The Restigouche has been called upon to perform this task with the full knowledge of how much has already been contributed by Canadian defence activity within the previous 12 months. We are also aware of the sacrifice involved for the families and the loved ones.
With the experience gained during the deployment with the standing naval force Atlantic and the professionalism shown during the preparations for departure, we have complete confidence in the ability of the crew of the Restigouche to represent the highest ideals of Canadian naval tradition.
May God bless HMCS Restigouche and all who sail in her.


LIBERAL PARTY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, as the country moves toward a constitutional resolution, the Liberal Party this weekend overwhelmingly endorsed the primacy of the charter of rights, adding these values to its interpretation: the preservation and promotion of Quebec as a distinct society within Canada, and the linguistic and cultural protection and development of the official languages communities living in a minority situation.
February 24, 1992

In short, Liberals remain committed to a Canada where English speaking Quebecers and francophones outside Quebec are enhanced integral parts of our cultural plurality.
This was a more positive contribution than the constitutional affairs minister's damaging speculation last week about English speaking Quebecers being set adrift in a divided Canada. The minister has raised many fears and concerns in the hearts of many Canadians all over Quebec, especially in my riding, just when we need reassurances about Canada's future.
Instead, we all need to have a renewed Canadian federation that does not compromise any Canadian's individual rights through the application of creative thinking, so that a uniquely Canadian solution can be found which will meet the needs of Quebecers, the east and west and the aboriginal people across this country.


TRIBUTE TO OUR OLYMPIC ATHLETES
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I call the attention of all members of the House to the performance, in Albertville, during the weekend, of Canadian medal-winning athletes. Of course, the clouds over Albertville during the weekend had silver linings for our Canadian athletes.
With the official recognition of short-distance speed skating in the Olympic Games this year, the men's 5,000 metre relay team finally won the silver medal after a close struggle. I wish to congratulate Mickel Daignault, Frederic Blackburn, Marck Lackie and Sylvain Gagnon for their brilliant perfomances.
For the first time in 32 years, the Canadian hockey team reached the finals for the gold medal, but had to settle for the silver medal. The team deserves our warmest thanks for making all Canadians so proud of their feat.
The XVI Winter Olympic Games were the best for Canada since those held in Lake Placid in 1932. Not only did our athletes win seven medals-two gold, three silver and two bronze-but they finished in the top eight in seven other sports, and new records were set in nine new events or disciplines.
I would like to conclude by expressing my sincerest gratitude to all our Olympic athletes who helped bring Canadians together for the past two weeks in a sporting spirit that is not about to disappear.
He *	*


FARM CREDIT CORPORATION
Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, as interest rates have come down, many farmers are attempting to reschedule their farm loans with the Farm Credit Corporation. You would think that with the many farm bankniptcies and losses the FCC would be delighted. Not so.
The FCC is charging a penalty of three months' interest to farmers wishing to reschedule their debt. It is legal, but is it ethical? The administrators of GRIP are also using strong arm tactics to collect their premiums from cash short farmers. One farmer informed me that if he did not pay off GRIP by March 1 he would lose benefits and be charged extra interest. Yet the NISA program owes him money. He was told by NISA that it would take 12 to 14 weeks before that money would be sent to him.
Is it any wonder that 250 farmers in the town of Balgonie in my riding have threatened to stop the trains from running because of the anger and desperation they feel. They are tired of dealing with a government that tells them one thing and does something else. They are tired of not being heard. They want a government that is aware of their plight, that does not use threats to collect premiums, that promptly issues payments when owed and that does not penalize farmers for rescheduling their loans.
Is anyone in the government listening?


OLYMPIC GAMES
Mr. Willie Littlechild (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to salute all of our outstanding athletes who represented Canada at the XVI Olympic Winter Games.
The coaches, managers, trainers and officials also did our country proud, ensuring that we remain one of the best in the world.

Canada, as a nation, has been fortunate to be blessed with some of the world's finest athletes, a force that also serves to unify us all as Canadians. Our collective pursuit of excellence was exemplified by gold medalist Kerrin Lee-Gartner, Sylvie Daigle, Angela Cutrone, Nathalie Lambert and Annie Perreault. One-third of our team of 117 athletes will return with a medal.
The tremendous success of the hockey program with Dave King was rewarded with a well-deserved silver medal. The men's 5,000 metre relay team also won silver with Fred Blackburn adding an individual medal. Bronze medalist, Myriam Bedard in women's biathlon, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler in figure skating were joined by the ladies curling team skipped by Julie Sutton.
I ask this House to join me in congratulating my constituents; Glenn Rupertus, Jane Isakson, Keven Martin and Lisa Sargeant. All these athletes gave their very personal best. Canada and Wetaskiwin are very proud of these outstanding Olympians.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, Indonesia's foreign minister, Mr. Ali Alatas, is visiting Ottawa today to tell the government that the human rights situation in East Timor is improving. It is obvious that this is not true.
Forty students who were at the November 12, 1991 massacre at Dili are up on charges: some for subversion which carries the death penalty and others face prison terms of up to seven years.
Members of the Indonesian military, the perpetrators of the atrocities at Dili, have never been charged.
The Indonesian government has released its own report of the massacre from the findings of its own appointed national commission of inquiry. Amnesty International concludes that the mandate and method of work of the inquiry were fatally flawed and that its findings are unacceptable.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs, when meeting with Mr. Alatas, must call for an end to the repression in East Timor and tell him that Canada will be supporting all resolutions presently before the United
Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and that Canada will finally support UN Security Council resolutions 384 and 389.


FARM RALLY
Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, although a perfect record was marred by a few bad eggs at the large farm rally on Parliament Hill last Friday, we should commend the leadership and members of the supply managed commodity groups for the very well planned and executed rally they staged in support of the government's strong position on the need to clarify and strengthen article XI of the GATT.
Canada's marketing boards are the envy of producers in many other countries. It is to be hoped that this well-staged demonstration will signal to other countries the strong support there is to maintain an orderly marketing system which is fair to both producers and consumers alike and, at the same time, does not distort international trading patterns through subsidized overproduction.
I am proud that eight busloads came from my constituency of Oxford, the dairy capital of Canada.

[DOT] (-1410)


ARTICLE XI OF GATT
Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister for International Trade, together with Canadian farm leaders, have just returned from a trip to Europe to explain to their European counterparts the importance of supply management, both for the Canadian economy and as a way to avoid distortion on international markets.
We ask the government to tell Canadian farmers now what was achieved during this visit, especially during the conversations Canada's Prime Minister had with world leaders, as well as the government's strategy for protecting, strengthening and clarifying article XI, in the best interests of the Canadian economy, our farm communities and food security.
February 24, 1992


THE BUDGET
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, as mentioned in The Globe and Mail editorial last week, we can expect the opposition to continue requesting, as we approach budget day, a kick-start to the economy.
The editorial suggested: "The national economy is not a car motor and Ottawa's budget is not a jumper cable tied to an electric generator". The next time the opposition uses the phrase kick-start, call a taxi.
Canada's fortunes will only improve if we stay the course toward responsible fiscal management. This means holding the line on taxes and expenditures. It does not mean going on a spending spree to kick-start the economy. Past governments have proven that the quick fix just does not work.


LIBERAL PARTY
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso):: Mr. Speaker, the national media is acknowledging what was obvious to more than 1,500 Liberals gathered in Hull and to Canadians watching us from across the country this weekend. The Liberal Party is strong, united under our capable leader and focused on the task at hand.
That task is to defeat this tired, discredited Tory government and replace it with a progressive, responsible and compassionate Liberal government under Jean Chretien. Both our party reform and our national biannual policy conventions were resounding successes. We did not shrink from the tough issues of the day: tax reform, free trade and the Constitution. In all cases, Liberal delegates approached the issues in a spirit of openness and compromise, and with a genuine willingness to suppress local or particular interests to the greater interests of a stronger Canada.

We have confirmed once again that the Liberal Party is the party of all Canadians. We are ready to meet the challenges of the future and get Canada moving again.

If the Prime Minister would only do what so many Canadians want him to do: call an election and give the people of Canada the opportunity to elect a Liberal government, we could get Canada working again.



Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, during the last federal election the former leader of the Liberal Party, the Right Hon. John Dimer, took the position that he was opposed to the free trade agreement and should he be returned to the office of Prime Minister he would rip up that agreement. Last weekend we saw the new Liberal Party go back on the fence again.
I want to warn every Canadian who is opposed to the free trade agreement to understand that the Liberal Party stands exactly four square on every side of every issue. On the free trade issue, they have gone back to negotiating. Negotiating got us in trouble in the first place.
If you are against the free trade agreement, vote for the New Democratic Party, Mr. Speaker.


MR. DOUG PETERS
Mr. David Bjornson (Selkirk-Red River):: Mr. Speaker, I stand today out of concern for the many Canadians who follow the economic reviews of the government. A face and name quite familiar as an economic critic on television, on radio and in print is that of Mr. Doug Peters of the Toronto-Dominion Bank.
It was published yesterday that one of the star candidates for the Liberal Party in the next federal election will be Mr. Doug Peters.
I believe it is a fair question to ask all of the media: How non-partisan can Mr. Peters be if he is to be a candidate for the Liberal Party in the next election?


EAST TIMOR
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, since December 1975 when the Government of Indonesia invaded East Timor, 250,000 of its 700,000 native inhabitants have been brutally butchered. The slaughter of East Timorese by the Indonesian government continues even today. Yet our government continues to do business with Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia is one of Canada's largest trading partners in southeast Asia with two-way trade totalling about $500 million last year. Our legitimization of Indonesia's policies through continuing trade and the abandonment of those oppressed East Timorese is unconscionable. Canada must take a much stronger stand against human rights abuses in East Timor and against its illegal takeover.

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions
I call on this government to curtail any bilateral aid not directly benefiting the poorest, call for the international cessation of all military equipment sales to Indonesia and condemn the Indonesian transmigration and assimilation programs aimed at destroying the culture of East Timorese aboriginal peoples. Canada must provide humanitarian aid to East Timorese refugees and work for free access of the International Red Cross and other human rights and non-government organizations to East Timor.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Garth Turner (Halton-Peel):: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is budget day. Anyone entering the House of Commons today is certainly aware of that. The television networks are busy setting up their elaborate anchor desks in the foyer just a few feet away from this spot. Tomorrow night most Canadians will have an opportunity to see what really goes on around this place. After the budget speech, the hallway outside will be filled with spokespeople for various special interest groups, trolling for microphones.
It seems these days that the country is little more than a collection of special interest groups representing a narrow band of society but getting a big chunk of media attention. Among the spokespeople who always seem to pop up is Doug Peters of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. He will likely condemn the budget. Canadians would be wise to remember that he was the adviser to big deficit Liberal Finance Minister Marc Lalonde and apparently plans to run in the next election as a Liberal.


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, 300 farmers from Abitibi-Temiscamingue attended the demonstration organized on Parliament Hill last Friday in Ottawa. I arranged a meeting with the President of the Treasuiy Board who agreed to see Denis Jutras, president of the Abitibi-Temiscamingue UPA, and four UPA members. So far there has been no final decision. The European agricultural question has yet to be resolved, and despite certain statements the European Community has not yet finalized its official position on article XI.


Sheila Finestone: Time.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member for Mount Royal keeps telling me to stop talking. I suggest she rise in the House and tell taxpayers about her travel expenses in Canada and abroad.
The Canadian delegation's visit to Brussels was useful. According to a spokesperson for the European Commission, European negotiators will remember their meeting with the Canadian delegation when they examine agricultural issues at GATT. Three cheers for the hon. member for Bellechasse, for the hon. member for Champlain, and for Quebec Minister Yvon Picotte who were there to defend the interests of Quebec farmers.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance has promised to deliver a realistic budget tomorrow. The reality today is that 2,000 workers at GM in St. Catharines have lost their jobs. The reality today is that thousands and thousands of fishermen and fish plant workers will lose their jobs veiy soon.
February 24, 1992

Will the Minister of Finance introduce a plan that will deal with these realities tomorrow? Will the Minister of Finance introduce a plan that will get Canada working again?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. Leader of the Opposition knows that the unfortunate announcement from General Motors not only covered a plant in St. Catharines but covered a number of plants in the United States and is a part of the restructuring that General Motors is undergoing. It does not make the job losses any less painless. We, of course, will do all within our power to help those people when the plant is planned to be closed by 1995.
Might I urge my friend from the Liberal Party to be patient. Tomorrow afternoon at 4.30 p.m. the Minister of Finance will deliver a budget that I am sure the Leader of the Opposition will praise and go across this country supporting the Minister of Finance in his endeavours.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, there is nothing that I would like more than to be able to get up and praise the government if it were to take care of the 1.5 million people who want the dignity of having a pay cheque. I can tell the minister if the government does that, we will praise it, but if it keeps ignoring the reality and the misery of these people, we will fight it. What is important at this moment is to make sure we get Canadians working again. Will the minister inform the Minister of Finance that yes, we will support him if he has some programs to help the unemployed. Will he please tell him as well that we will fight him if he keeps doing what the previous Minister of Finance did to this country in the last seven years?


John Horton McDermid: The previous Minister of Finance and the present Minister of Finance have been working very, very hard to get interest rates down, to get inflation down. They have accomplished both. There are 1.5 million more people working today than there were in 1984 with full time permanent jobs. A lot of very good things have happened in this country.
I am sure the hon. member will be very, very pleased when the budget comes down tomorrow to support it. I
Oral Questions
have every confidence that he will applaud the Minister of Finance tomorrow. It is obvious that he still has his adrenalin going from his convention on the weekend. I hope he will cany it over to tomorrow.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister. Did the minister or some of his colleagues happen to watch Radio-Canada last night when Celine Galipeau interviewed workers in the automobile industry who were 47 to 52 years old, with 25 to 27 years of experience, and who at their age were faced with losing their jobs and were not at all hopeful for the future?
Will the government finally realize that pleasing the financial community is not as important as restoring the dignity of these people who want to work and enjoy the satisfaction of earning a decent living?


John Horton McDermid: That is exactly what this government is working toward. My colleague, the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology, together with his colleague, the Minister of Employment and Immigration, are working very, very hard on a prosperity program which in fact stresses training and retraining and the encouragement of industries to train and retrain. Our record in Canada is not one that we can be proud of in that area. That is what they are working on at this time, to assure that people have full-time, meaningful jobs, not just make-work programs, throwing money at problems like the Liberals would have us do.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
The government is about to approve the demise of the cod fisheries. The government says it is powerless, but it is time it realized that it does have the tools to do something. The environment is one.

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions
My question is this: Will the minister promise to immediately ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea? Second, will she reverse the defeatist attitude she took on the weekend and take a proactive stance at the earth summit in Brazil? Third, will she protect the entire environment of the Grand Banks, including fisheries resources? Will she act unilaterally and do so immediately?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: The hon. member is asking two separate questions. One comes out of my statements on Friday, that of the great significance of the UNCED meeting in June in Rio for a variety of purposes, in which Canada is taking a leading role. I think it is important to understand that we see this as one step and not the step in protecting our environment. Therefore we do not want to see expectations raised too high. We want to deal in realities.
On the second point I should say we are working very hard through the preparatory committee that will take place in New York very shortly on ensuring that fisheries and marine conservation are very much a part of that UNCED agenda.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Mr. Speaker, it may be that I asked two separate questions. It would have been very helpful if the minister had answered at least one of them.
For three years, this government has stood on the sidelines and watched this country absorb blow after blow. Now it is the turn of the fishing industry and it is not true that Canada is helpless. The fact is that it is this government that is hopeless.
Two years ago the Oceans Institute of Canada at Dalhousie University stated that the environmental need to conserve fish stocks inside the 200-mile limit gave the government the right in international law to go beyond the 200-mile limit to prevent overfishing. Why has the government not exercised that right?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I have a list of seven or eight things that the government is doing with regard to overfishing. No one takes this more seriously than we do.
First of all, I should point out that we will be informing through our embassies in the EC and the NAFO countries this serious scientific evidence that has come to us in the last week. The Minister of Fisheries and I will be meeting with the EC ambassadors later this week. It is important to make the Europeans understand that this is not just a domestic fisheries issue. The information that we have puts the whole North Atlantic fishery at some sort of risk. Therefore it is in their own self-interest.
We are also pursuing the inclusion of this in the UNCED conference in June. Indeed, if at the end of all our diplomatic efforts we are not able to have an impact, we will have to consider further steps, and we are prepared to do that.


UNEMPLOYMENT
Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister. It concerns the announcement today about the thousands of workers in Atlantic Canada who will be affected once again and will quite possibly lose their jobs.
The government has known for years that this was going to happen. There have been studies. Yet the government's response to these people in Atlantic Canada is that a task force will be established to look at the impact. The impact is clear. The impact is that these people will have no jobs. I want to ask the government why this total disregard for the Atlantic fisheries? Why so late to do anything? Not only does it show mismanagement, it shows callousness to the people of the Atlantic region. When is this government going to make unemployment a priority and start planning to make sure that Canadians can get back working?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is asking what actions can and will be taken for Atlantic Canadians who live off our fisheries.
What the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced this morning was a very sensitive conservation and management program of the resource to ensure that this resource is there in the future to allow the people who live off that resource to be able to earn a living. In the meantime, we have a series of programs trying to help these people adjust to those changes in the fishery. If the hon. member says that nothing is being done, she should
February 24, 1992

look at the details of the $584 million program we announced two years ago.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the government has failed to plan for the plight of the people in the Atlantic region that is happening now. It knew this was coming. There is no real plan in place.
While the government says that the war on inflation is over, it is time to take care of the casualties of that war, the 1.5 million unemployed, those people on social assistance, those people who are losing hope. Today, the Conference Board of Canada said that if the government continues with its policies, the recovery will be further hindered. I want to ask the Acting Prime Minister if he agrees that what this country needs is a budget based on a policy of zero unemployment. Is this government going to bring forward such a policy in the budget tomorrow?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, of course unemployment is of great concern to the government and that will be addressed in the budget tomorrow.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, I certainly hope that it is addressed more specifically than it was in the Atlantic when this government knew that there was a situation of crisis there.

It is high time this government started being as energetic about creating jobs as it was about fighting inflation. On behalf of all unemployed Canadians, will the Deputy Prime Minister start concentrating all his energy and resources on getting rid of policies that have put 1.5 million people out of work and hundreds of thousands of Canadians on welfare while also causing many bankruptcies?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the hon. member, first of all for her edification, that Canada is not the only country that has gone through a recessionary period. It has happened around the world, but I can tell the hon. member that because of the policies of this government
Oral Questions
Canada is much better poised to come out of the recession than any other country in the G-7.
As a matter of fact, all the prognosticators, those outside our government, are being far more small l liberal in their projections of what will happen in the next couple of years than the government. I think that the policies of the government of the past seven or eight years have allowed us to come out of this recession leading in the modem world, in the OECD and in the G-7. I think the hon. member will be pleased with the budget tomorrow of the Minister of Finance.


Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, General Motors has just announced a further 2,300 job lay-offs in Canada's industrial heartland. Since the government has had at least two months notice of GM job cuts, would the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology inform the House today of his specific plans for ensuring that these workers have jobs?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. friend is well aware that we have had a general indication from the people at General Motors that in North America they would be making some significant reductions in employment. Where those were going to occur we could not tell until the actual announcements had been made.
Some announcements were made this morning. They are very troublesome. The loss of jobs, some 2,300 jobs in St. Catharines, is very bad news as far as the Niagara peninsula is concerned. We, with my colleague the Minister of Employment and Immigration, will be working with these people. I am sure my friend is aware that the lay-offs will occur over a period of time from this fall until the spring of 1995.
A large amount of the reduction will be through attrition so it is still not clear at this point how much the programs of the government will be called upon.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, Canadians do not need more studies. They do not need more delays. Canadians need jobs.
I put it to the minister that it is within his power to act to save Canadian auto jobs. It was his free trade deal that gutted the safeguards of the auto pact, and as a conse-

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions
quence Canadians are losing automotive jobs at two and a half times the rate of Americans.
Will the minister finally insist on safeguards for Canadian automotive jobs? Will he tell his trade negotiators to act today to preserve Canada's automotive industry?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I do not have to do that today. I have already done that.
My hon. friend should be honest with Canadian people and understand and indicate to Canadians that the free trade agreement has had nothing to do with the decision that was taken by General Motors today.
The decision has everything to do with the weakness of the automotive industry in North America. The General Motors company is way above the auto pact safeguards, and he knows that those safeguard levels were not affected at all in the free trade agreement.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade.
In his first answer to my colleague, the member for Willowdale, he said that the workers at GM and around the country in effect should not worry because the jobs would go, as he put it, by attrition.
Why does the minister not realize that you do not build an economy by attrition? Why does he not realize that Canadians do not want attrition? They want jobs.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the only point I am making which my hon. friend is trying to distort here is that the General Motors people have said that to the extent people retire in the ordinary course or change jobs through the ordinary course that will reduce the number of lay-offs and reduce the 2,300 down to a number which is a good deal lower. That was the point I was making.
As far as the importance of jobs is concerned, my colleague the Minister of State for Finance has commented very powerfully on that in his answers earlier today. This government is very concerned about the level of employment in the country. He has indicated that the Minister of Finance is very well aware of the concerns that have been expressed, both by members of this
House as well as by Canadians in all parts of the country, and will be dealing with that in his budget tomorrow.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the 2,300 workers at the plants at St. Catharines operated by GM that will close and Canadian workers generally will be very disappointed that the minister of industry does not have any contingency plan to announce today or any plan that could be announced in the near future for replacing the jobs that will be lost at those plants in St. Catharines.
On February 11 the minister admitted in this House that the auto pact is on the table as part of the current negotiations with the United States and Mexico. If and when these plants in St. Catharines close, what will the government be able to do to ensure that General Motors continues to meet the requirements of the auto pact for Canadian content and Canadian assembly?
Can he give us a clear answer on that key point today?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think if my hon. friend read what I said in the House, as he said on February 11, he would know that what I said was that if there was going to be a replacement for the auto pact it would only be by something that is better.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, my question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs follows up on her meeting today with Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.
In view of the recent report by Amnesty International which condemned the government's inquiiy into the brutal murders at Dili as being a whitewash or fatally flawed, and in view of ongoing repression including charges of students with subversion, will the minister assure this House that she supports the call for an independent, international inquiry into the Santa Cruz massacre and will Canada strongly support the European community resolution on East Timor which is currently before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, first of all we do not necessarily agree with the Amnesty assessment of what the Indonesian government is prepared to do as a result of the commitments made by its inquiry.
February 24, 1992

I should say that in my meeting today I expressed Canada's views again very strongly regarding the situation in East Timor. I should say as well that we are the only country in the world that is still continuing to hold back on funding new aid projects. No one else is doing that. Therefore the actions we have taken have gone well beyond the UN charter and our commitments under other international treaties.
I am really quite hopeful that the Government of Indonesia takes its responsibilities in this connection very seriously. We recognize that there is still progress that must be made and I pointed that out in the 90-minute meeting on this topic with Mr. Alatas. We will continue to monitor the situation, and if the Government of Indonesia lives up to its commitments then we will review our stand.


Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, the minister, of course, did not answer the question with respect to the resolution in Geneva.
I want to ask a supplementary question on another very important international human rights issue concerning the continuing imprisonment of two young Canadians in Brazil, Christine Lamont and David Spencer, sentenced to 28 years in jail.
Given the recent commitment by the Brazilian minister of justice to Christine's parents to release Christine and David if Canada formally requests their expulsion, when will the minister finally act on behalf of these two young Canadians who have been victims of a very grave miscarriage of justice and make a formal request to the Government of Brazil for their expulsion so they can return home to Canada?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, these two young people who are in their late twenties and early thirties were found guilty in Brazil of three veiy serious charges: kidnapping, resisting arrest and conspiracy. We have examined this situation very closely, and indeed the transcripts of the trial following the appeal process are being gone over right now by our legal people. When that review is over then I will make a decision as to what action I should take.
Oral Questions
As I have indicated in this House I do think the 28-year sentence is excessive, but we do regard the kidnapping conviction as a serious one as well, as we would in our own country.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
The minister of fisheries said in St. John's this morning that the government might have to contemplate unilateral measures to stop foreign overfishing. Her colleague, the employment minister, said here in the House on Friday that the government would never do that.
I want to ask her: Which it is? Is it what the employment minister says here when the Prime Minister is listening, or is it the line being peddled today in St. John's by her colleague, the minister of fisheries, when he hopes that nobody else is listening? Which is it?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I have already outlined in the House today some of the steps that we are taking and are continuing to take with regard to the situation.
It has been an extraordinarily frustrating exercise to try to convince the Europeans how serious this is. We are going to take the most recent evidence to them, as I said earlier in response to a very similar question, and try to explain to them that this is in their interests as well as our own.
I also said earlier in the House today, if the hon. member was listening, that I am quite prepared to contemplate further steps should that be required as long as it is within the bounds of our capacity to act meaningfully.
Negotiations are still the best way to accomplish this, and we will contemplate future steps at the appropriate time should need arise.


Roger Simmons: It is all right, Mr. Speaker, Mighty Casey is here now. I have a supplementary question for my friend, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, fresh from his triumphs in Newfoundland.

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions
He will know that in 1970 this Parliament, through legislation sponsored by a Liberal administration, unilaterally established functional jurisdiction over a 100-mile zone in the Canadian Arctic waters.
There is a clear precedent for what we have been advocating. Why then, I ask the minister, is the government so painfully reluctant to take unilateral action in the present case? Is it fearful of the outcome, or is it that it just does not have the heart for the fight?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder where the hon. gentleman was in 1972 when the treaty was entered into with France or a few years later when a treaty was entered into with members of the European community which gave them the right to fish in the same waters that the hon. gentleman says we should take unilateral action on. The hon. gentleman's government gave them the right to fish for six or seven years in these same waters.
With respect to unilateral action, we have taken dozens of unilateral actions and we are having some success. As my hon. colleague may have mentioned, the South Korean ambassador has already conveyed the message that his government has given orders for their vessels to be withdrawn from this area.
Our ambassador had a very successful series of meetings at Panama, and the Panamanian government which has a number of vessels fishing in this area owned by Spain and Portugal will also be taking steps to see to the same.
We are taking effective action unilaterally already.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
Today's announcement on the reduced northern cod quotas means in effect a reduction in jobs, lay-offs, reduced plant operations, and for many people it means no income at all. The announcement on the compensation was very general. It talked about past programs and present programs but nothing specific.
I want to ask the government and the minister of fisheries in particular, because he must know what is happening over there, to put a human face on this and
tell this House what specific compensation measures will be taken for those Atlantic Canadians involved.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, as I have already made clear today, when we have established exactly what the consequences of this decision are, if there is need for any additional assistance programs it will be forthcoming.
We already have in place a whole series of programs, including the first line of defence, which is the unemployment insurance program, that will apply particularly to workers in offshore plants.
We also have in place a Fisheries Alternatives Program, a Plant Workers Adjustment Program and diversification within the fisheries program. All of these programs will still apply.
When we know later in the year exactly what the effects are, other programs, if necessary, will be put into place.


Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I feel sorry for the people who are watching the answer to this question. It simply is not good enough.
The government has known that this has been coming for some time. It talks about task force reports and a new task force being set up.
The people watching the answers to these questions cannot eat task force reports. They have enough in front of them now. These people, because of last year's dismal fishery, are living in an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and to a certain extent, hope. All this is compounded and aggravated by the situation today.
I am going to ask the minister one more time. He must have some idea. Let us know how much, what kind, and when.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman may want to alarm people. I do not know.
I think the hon. gentleman should be concerned about being accurate in his assessment of the situation in Newfoundland. The Newfoundland economy is not finished. This is a serious matter affecting the northern cod species.
February 24, 1992

If we just take Newfoundland alone, 61 per cent of our fishery is groundfish and 40.5 per cent is the northern cod. We still have many other species of fisheries.
The northern cod is not finished. We only caught
127,000	tonnes of the northern cod last year. The TAC just established is 120,000 tonnes. If we are lucky we may catch that this year.
If we look at Atlantic Canada, Atlantic Canada is not finished. The northern cod is 11.8 per cent of the landed value of all fisheries products in Atlantic Canada.
The region is not finished. There is no need to exaggerate. This process started several years ago. We are responding. There are programs and the economy of Newfoundland is still going to have growth this year.
If the investors listen to the doom and gloom from the opposition, Newfoundland is finished. I say there is still a lot of life in Newfoundland.


HERITAGE DAY
Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Communications. This was a question that I wanted to ask last week. Last Monday was Heritage Day but the minister was ill. I am glad to see him back in the House in good shape today.
National Heritage Day was a time to be reminded of the commitments which were forthcoming from his predecessors both in communications and environment at the Edmonton conference on heritage in 1990 where a commitment was made to a formal review toward the creation of a national heritage strategy.
My questions are obvious. Are new initiatives going to be forthcoming for a Canadian national heritage strategy? Will the public be consulted in the process? When will the discussion paper be available?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, first of all let me thank my colleague for his good wishes and I am delighted to be able to respond to his question.
Yes, we have given a very high priority to the whole field of heritage. We are working closely with my colleague, the Minister of the Environment, to prepare material with regard to this.
Oral Questions
We will be seeking public input with regard to it and we hope to take initiatives which will help to encourage and to preserve Canadian heritage.


AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology who said that the lay-off of 2,500 workers at GM in St. Catharines was troublesome. Probably he will find the next round of lay-offs at GM downright irritating but the workers find it catastrophic.
My question to the minister is: When is he going to act to ensure that we have free trade with Japan and the offshore automobile companies, rather than seeing the North American industry savaged as a result of this government's policies?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I know that the hon. member would like to cut off all trade from Japan and all trade from other parts of the world. What we have to realize is that we have an open economy here. If we are going to start erecting barriers against trade with other countries then we are going to suffer as well from the trade that we want to do with those other countries. That is something that my hon. friend does not take into account when he asks that sort of question.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, the Japanese ship 2.5 million cars to North America a year, 25,000 North American cars are sold in Japan a year, and 2,500 Canadian workers lost their jobs. This was predictable. The government was warned of it. There is overcapacity.
Why is it too much to ask of the offshore producers that they produce jobs as well as cars in this country when they are making money?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, the difficulties that we are having with the automobile industry are not just difficulties in Canada. There are difficulties in the whole North American market.

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions
The cause of the lay-offs in St. Catharines is related to difficulties more in the United States than in the market in Canada.
My hon. friend, who has put in a lot of good rhetoric out there, is not hitting the mark with what he is trying to say.


NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
Garth Turner: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and it involves the newspaper business.
There are concerns within the industry that TorStar may be poised to gain effective control of Southam. If that happens, 47 per cent of all the English language newspapers would be concentrated in the hands of one corporation.
Does this prospect concern the minister and would his officials like to try to get the real story here?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, we know that The Toronto Star has shares in Southam and Southam has shares in the other. The director of competition is fully aware of that.
If there is any possibility of a merger between the two, the director of competition has the ability to intervene. We have a competition policy, we have competition legislation and we have the competition tribunal.
The director of competition will follow that issue very closely.


SOVIET REPUBLICS
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
I believe all members of the House in fact all Canadians watch daily with dismay the rising tide of fascism and authoritarianism in Russia and the other republics
and the threat it poses for democracy there. Yet western countries seem paralysed to do anything.
In fact, The New York Times yesterday revealed that the United States government has refused to honour its commitment of increased obligations to the International Monetary Fund for an aid package.
In light of this deteriorating situation, I want to ask the minister: Can she indicate what plans the Government of Canada has to respond to this dangerous situation?
In particular, will the Government of Canada request a special emergency meeting of the G-7 of the IMF so we can come to grips before these forces threaten the entire economic and world security that we now face and that these represent?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, the events on the weekend were indeed alarming for those of us who watched them. We have asked for a full report on exactly what the situation was in Russia on the weekend.
Let me say that in terms of aid Canada has been very active in our own right as well as multilaterally. Our aid, which is actually mostly delivered, amounts to about 40 per cent of what the Americans have pledged.
We are urging the Americans to continue to provide aid. In addition, we have called for Russia and the other republics to become members of the IMF.
We have asked for a doubling of the capital of EBRD. We are continuing to work very actively through the G-7 and our other organizations and with the European Community to try and ensure that there is sufficient aid, not just in Russia but in the other republics as well, to prevent any real tragedy.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, as a supplementary to the minister, let me ask this question.
One of the most immediate threats facing these republics is the tens of thousands of Soviet military officers and personnel who must be reintegrated and retrained and be given proper housing before they become so disgruntled that they join these authoritarian forces.
February 24, 1992

I ask the minister: Can she tell us if the Canadian government has any specific plan to help in this retraining and this re-integration of these tens of thousands of military personnel?
Will the Government of Canada commit to putting a plan together and take it to the G-7 so we can finally get some action from these countries before it turns into a total disaster?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, Derek Burney, who was our Sherpa at the G-7 has been actively working with other Sherpas in order to ensure that there is a co-ordinated effort and a positive effort with regard to the former Soviet republics.
One of the things we have done with regard to the armed forces in particular is to provide a training seminar in Canada on how an army functions in a democratic society.
Senior officers from the republics were here several weeks ago meeting with our own military people in terms of the function of the army in this different environment.
The other thing is that out of the co-ordinating conference in Washington, where we were trying to ensure that countries co-ordinated and did not overlap their efforts, considerable effort is being made towards housing these people by the Germans, for example.
We believe our efforts are best directed in other areas to make sure that we are not all tripping over each other doing the same thing.


HOUSING
Mr. Joe Fontana (London East):: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Acting Minister of Finance a question.
In 1990 this government cut social housing spending by 15 per cent. In 1991 it extended those cuts until 1996. This has cost needy Canadians some 6,000 housing units so far.
Affordable housing is a fundamental part of Canada's social safety net. Yet this government has failed over one million Canadians who are still living in core need housing and thousands more who are homeless.
Oral Questions
I want to ask the minister: Will the government restore the desperately needed funds for affordable housing?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, the budget will be delivered tomorrow afternoon at 4.30. I would suggest that my hon. friend have patience for another 25.5 hours until the Minister of Finance delivers that budget.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, in Quebec, 360,000 units and households are eligible for these funds, and there is a demand right now for 5,000 units. During the past five years there has been a 20 per cent cut in the federal budget for this kind of housing. The amount of money available for new projects has been going down steadily, while the demand keeps increasing.
Is the government prepared to act responsibly as a partner and provide Quebec with enough funding for social housing?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I think the record will show that the federal government has been most generous with its social housing benefits, as much as our fiscal framework will allow. I think we have been very generous.
If the hon. member waits until tomorrow, she will see what news is in the budget for the housing sector.


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture.
With respect to article XI and despite certain statements that were made during your trip to Europe with the hon. member for Champlain and Quebec Minister Yvon Picotte; did the European Community officially finalize its position on the review of agricultural issues in connection with GATT?

February 24, 1992
Oral Questions


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, our trip last week was an opportunity to meet the Europeans, especially for Canada's farm leaders who travelled with the Canadian delegation.
We had a chance to meet Mr. McSharry, the agricultural commissioner, and Mr. Andriessen, the community's vice-president. Of course we did not expect to come back with article XI, safe and sound. Our main purpose was to make the Europeans aware of certain common interests.
We were given a fairly favourable reception, and talks will continue in the weeks to come. I hope that as in the past we will be able to continue to defend Canada's position and represent the interests of Canadian producers. Our trip was productive but we must keep working very hard with the delegations.


PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Communications.
The book publisher, Grolier Limited, has consistently and deliberately snubbed its nose in disregard to the government's Baie Comeau policy on book publishing. Last year it moved its direct mail division to the United States with a loss of over 100 jobs. Now it plans to close the school and library division, leaving nothing but a shell company in Canada. What specific measures is the minister taking to stop Groliers and other book publishers from leaving the country?


Henry Perrin Beatty: The hon. member will be aware of the fact that I announced a program just a few weeks ago which was designed to do precisely that, to ensure the health of the Canadian-owned sector in Canada. We are pumping a further $102 million into the Canadian book publishing industry. We are taking measures which will make it more profitable for firms to be owned by Canadians, to operate here and to publish Canadian titles. In this way, we hope to increase the consumption of Canadian books
and to ensure that more Canadian authors are read in this country.


GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE
Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, it is almost a supplement to the earlier question, but it is to the Minister for International Trade regarding his trip. Just to show how serious the discussions were and to try to alleviate the concern that it was just an unfortunate public relations exercise coming late in the day, did the minister discuss with officials in his meetings in New York the letter that 62 senators of the United States have written to President Bush to say that there shall be no change to the American agricultural adjustment agreement, section 22, which in effect protects cotton, dairy, peanuts and sugar under a form of supply management? Also, did he discuss that with the officials in New York, saying "hey, we have the same situation", to show how firm he is going to be in this government to help justify the concern and the good little message that the Minister of Finance made to those 30,000 farmers on Friday, that if the Americans are able to protect section 22 in their situation and we do not get clarification of article XI we are not going to go ahead and sign this deal?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. friend is well aware that the Americans are prepared to put section 22 on the negotiating table. That matter has not yet been resolved. It has not yet been resolved whether or not the Europeans and others will accept our position on article XI.
As my colleague said, we had good meetings last week with representatives of the farm community from coast to coast and with Mr. Yvon Picotte, Minister of Agriculture for Quebec. We met with representatives of the commission, of GATT, with the German government, and I think we made some progress. We certainly do not have a complete resolution of this issue by any means, but this was a good trip in that we advanced, I believe, our interests in a respectable way. I believe with the continuing work we can continue to make progress. We need to have the full support of this Parliament and the farmers throughout the country in order to continue to put the strongest possible position forward.
February 24, 1992


PRESENCE IN THE GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw to the members' attention the presence in the gallery of the Hon. Roy Brassard, Minister responsible for Seniors, Government of Alberta.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Ms. Black (p. 4331).
Mr. Speaker:: It being three o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 45(5)(a) the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred division on Motion M-44.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.

Before the taking of the vote:
Mr. Gagliano:: Mr. Speaker, since this is a private member's motion and such motions are subject to a free vote, I think you will find there is unanimous consent for proceeding row by row.


Marcel R. Tremblay: Mr. Speaker, there is no unanimous consent.
The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division.
(.Division No. 106)
++YEAS
Members
Assad Black Carter all de Jong Finestone Funk Harvard Hovdebo
Langdon (Essex-Windsor)
McLaughlin Milliken Nowlan Phinney Rompkey Taylor
Tremblay (Rosemont)
Private Members' Business
Vanclief	Venne
Young (Beaches -Woodbine)-35
++NAYS
Members
Anderson	Andre
Atkinson	Beatty
Bellemare	Bird
Bjornson	Blais
Blenkam	Bouchard (Roberval)
Boudria	Bourgault
Brightwell	Cardiff
Champagne (Champlain)	Chartrand
Cooper	Darling
Desjardins	Dick
Domm	Dorin
Edwards	Epp
Fee	Feltham
Ferland	Flis
Fontaine	Friesen
Gray (Bonaventure-Iles-de-la-Madeleine)	Greene
Halliday	Hockin
Homer	Hudon
Johnson	Joncas
Jourdenais	Kempling
Koury	Landry
Larrivee	Layton
Lee	Lewis
Littlechild	Loiselle
Lopez	MacDougall (Timiskaming)
Malone	Martin (Lincoln)
McDermid	McGuire
Merrithew	Mills
Moore	Nault
Nicholson	O'Kurley
Plourde	Proud
Redway	Reimer
Ricard	Richardson
Robitaille	Rocheleau
Saint-Julien	Scott (Victoria-Haliburton)
Siddon	Sobeski
Soetens	Sparrow
Tardif	Tetreault
Thacker	Thompson
Thorkelson	Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Tremblay (Lotbiniere)	TUrner (Halton-Peel)
Valcourt	Van De Walle
Vankoughnet	Vezina
Vien	Vincent
Weiner	Wilbee
Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) Worthy-93	Winegard


PAIRED MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Blondin	C hares t
Gibeau	Hopkins
Kaplan	Stevenson
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek - Assiniboia)
Wood
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I declare the motion lost.


Mr. Thorkelson:: Mr. Speaker, this vote was done by a roll call vote. It is my belief on a private member's item of business we should do a row by row vote. Having a roll call vote forces members to vote along with their party and that is unfair to private members.
Angus
Belair
Brewin
Clancy
Dingwall
Fulton
Gagliano
Harvey (Edmonton East)
Hunter
Maheu
Mifflin
Mitchell
Parker
Rodriguez
Skelly (Comox-Albemi) Tobin

February 24, 1992
Routine Proceedings


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I had to seek the unanimous consent of the House, which was denied. The Chair had no other alternative.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]


Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 32 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. A1 Johnson (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources.
In June our government and many other governments will attempt to respond to concerns about global climate change at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil. They may do so by negotiating a convention to limit greenhouse gas emissions. This unanimous report of your committee on energy, mines and resources recommends that our government adopt a flexible policy that includes its stated goal of stabilizing emissions not controlled by the Montreal protocol at 1990 levels by the year 2000, and that it seek a global commitment to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2005.
Global warming is a global problem requiring global solutions and global accounting. We are, therefore, also recommending that our government support proposals that would facilitate Canada taking global action to meet its commitments.
The committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report within 150 days of this date.



FINANCE


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Finance which completed its study in relation to the mandate and governance of the Bank of Canada.
I might say in presenting this report that, having served as chairman of the subcommittee which prepared the report, all members of the subcommittee from all of the parties worked in a very diligent and non-partisan fashion in preparing what I think is an excellent report.


PETITIONS
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour today, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present a petition signed by many of the Croatian people in my community who ask, now that Canada has recognized that the Republic of Croatia is a full-fledged member of the world community of free nations, that Canada in its participation in the peacekeeping efforts that are presently under way continue to ensure that Croatia remains an independent free country.


Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I want to present today another petition calling on the government to implement a reduction in the excise tax on the ethanol portion of ethanol blended gasolines here in Canada. A10 per cent ethanol blended gasoline would cut carbon monoxide emissions by 25 per cent and carbon dioxide by 5.9 per cent. It will cut the trend toward global warming, and of course it will eliminate the need for MMT, methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl, which is an octane enhancer, which has been banned in the United States since 1978 but is still used in Canada.
February 24, 1992

Of course, we find that the government has done no testing to examine whether or not there are harmful effects on the health of the population of this country, particularly on children who are most susceptible.


Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by thousands of Canadians from every region of this country, from the west coast, the north, the east coast, Quebec, Ontario and every region of the country.
They say that the direction of the current federal government is to decrease and then cease transfer payments for medicare and that this will promote undue hardship on the provinces to keep our universal health care system. Inequities in sexual and reproductive health care will result due to this withdrawal of funding. Universal health care is what makes Canada and Canadians special.
Therefore the petitioners request that Parliament recognizes the value of our universal medicare system and the five principles of the Canada Health Act to provide publicly funded, comprehensive, universal, portable and accessible health care for all Canadians.
It is particularly appropriate to present these petitions today in view of the vote that was just taken. I hope Parliament will listen to these thousands of petitioners.


Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert-Churchill River):: Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and privilege to present a petition signed by several hundred Canadians from Courtenay, Ladysmith, Comox, Victoria, B.C. and Toronto, Ontario.
I think it is especially appropriate that this petition appear on the day when Ali Alatas, the foreign minister of Indonesia, is in the country trying to put the best face on the illegal occupation and genocide that is happening in East Timor.
These people are calling on Parliament to condemn the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor, the genocide of the East Timorese people, to support publicly the right of the East Timorese people to determine their own destiny by referendum and free elections, and to support these causes in the United Nations and all other international arenas.
Routine Proceedings EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, the first petition I have to present today is unfortunately out of date. I sent it in last November but I have only now had it certified. However I did provide the minister with a copy of it immediately.
The petition calls upon the government to do a number of things which have all been done: to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. Everything here has in fact been done quite fortunately.


Barbara Greene: Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions concerning the issue of family reunification. They contain the signatures of people from the Toronto region and across the country.
They call on the minister of immigration to issue minister's permits for spouses and dependent children of persons who have been determined to be convention refugees and to allow them to be reunited in Canada for inland processing.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of submitting two sets of petitions to the House, pursuant to the proper standing order.
One set of petitions comes from constituents who continue to oppose the GST and who want the government to look for a more simplified, efficient and fair tax system in this country.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, the second set of petitions comes from constituents who want the government to honour the commitment it made in 1988 to begin reclaiming the Great Lakes and specifically begin by taking on the most polluted river in Canada, namely the Don Valley River.
They are hoping that in the not too distant future the government will honour its commitment.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, if Question No. 102 could be made an Order for Return, the return would be tabled immediately.

February 24, 1992
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is it the pleasure of the House that Question No. 102 be deemed to have been made an Order for Return?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Duhamel: Since November 21, 1984 (a) what is the total of all grants for programs which have been awarded to the constituency of Saint-Boniface (list of grants and amounts of each) (b) what constituencies have received (i) the most (ii) the least total funds in terms of grants for the same time frame?
Return tabled.


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


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



THE BUDGET


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I ask you to designate an Order of the Day for a budget presentation on Tbesday, February 25, 1992 at 4.30 p.m.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. McKnight that Bill C-54, an act to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act and other acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Agriculture.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: At the suspension of the debate the hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James had the floor to answer some questions.


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, this will not take long. I was answering a question from my colleague for Parkdale-High Park who was pointing out that in the state of Bavaria in Germany farms are being subsidized as tourist attractions. It simply underlines the fact that countries will find one way or another of subsidizing their agricultural producers.
I want to add something to that and it has to do with the family farm. If we lose supply management, if we lose our marketing boards, I think it will result in a major loss of the family farm. It will accentuate and further push the trend toward larger and larger corporate farms.
Travelling through western Canada now and seeing some very well kept family farms is something to behold and something to look forward to. If we lose our supply management system, if we lose marketing boards, we will see fewer and fewer of those lovely family farms. It is not only in my opinion bad agricultural practice to lose family farms but we will lose some of the aesthetic beauty as well.


Mr. Len Taylor (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, it is with somewhat mixed feelings that I rise today to speak to Bill C-54, an act to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act.
I work with and talk frequently to the cattle producers in my area and throughout Saskatchewan, most of whom encouraged me to support legislation which they told me would provide the cattle industry with a check-off to help market its product in Canada.
February 24, 1992

Among those supporters of the beef check-off were Lynn Biggart from Cut Knife, Saskatchewan, an active lobbyist and participant for and in the Canadian Cattlemen's Association; John Feige from Parkside, Saskatchewan, president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers' Association; and Grant Cadieu from Spiritwood, Saskatchewan, son of the late Bert Cadieu, a former member of this House and a long time and tireless worker on behalf of Canadian Hereford breeders. All three individuals are qualified, respectable spokespeo-ple for their industry. When they talk to me I know they represent many other producers in whatever they have to say.
I have therefore been aware for some time that there was a cattlemen's lobby under way to secure funds or to help secure funds to help this industry deal with some of its most pressing problems, in particular the fight against low cost, highly subsidized European beef being dumped into the Canadian marketplace.
The idea for a check-off for cattle is one that was presented to me in a very positive way, a way that reflected a very real need within the cattle industry. I was receptive of the idea for a number of other reasons as well.
Earlier this year I attended the Northwest Hereford Club's annual meeting and I heard about the positive steps taken by people involved in the marketing of Hereford beef in Canada. I was impressed and therefore I thought that if the beef industry could take the ideas the Hereford breeders were incorporating into their work further then all producers in the beef industry could benefit.
I have already been impressed by the marketing ideas and promotions mounted by the supply managed sector. You know what I mean, Mr. Speaker, because you have seen the television commercials of egg producers, the let's get crackin commercials. Dairy people have the milk, it does a body good promotion. There are the recent butter commercials with the asparagus and the carrots dancing around on the television screen. These are great promotions. They have served their industries well and are helping to promote and produce good quality nutritional ideas among the Canadian public, certainly ideas that we all have to take to heart. They are also ideas that help us enjoy the fruits of the labour of Canada's farmers.
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Third, I was receptive to the idea of check-offs. I am already knowledgeable of and supportive of the checkoff system in the work place where wage earners have a small portion of their regular salary deducted and used in their collective interest during the bargaining process. In the work place this is called the Rand formula and it recognizes the fact that all employees in a specific work place benefit from the collective bargaining efforts of those who were elected to do the bargaining on their behalf. Therefore, because all members benefit, all members of that bargaining unit must pay toward the achievement of that success.
The cattle check-off, therefore, seemed to me to be just an extension of the Rand formula into the cattle industry. Everyone pays for the benefit of everyone else.
I was about to congratulate my friends in the beef industry for recognizing the positive and long-lasting benefits of co-operation and socialism in their industry until I received a copy of Bill C-54 and had a chance to read and analyse it, I realized that I was not entirely correct. This is not the legislation I was expecting. The legislation is not exactly as it had been described by my friends in the cattle industry. It is not the legislation I had thought I could support without question or concern. It is really nothing more than this government's attempt to tax the individual producer one more time, provide producers' money to projects over which after they have produced it they relinquish all control and influence over the funds that are expended on their behalf.
Not only do I see this as just another tax bill, but it is also a bill which denies accountability for the money raised.
While Bill C-54 will give my friends in the cattle industry a check-off, I do not think I can support the bill as it stands. I hope they will continue to pressure the government for amendments to this bill at the committee stage, or in fact to write new legislation that will give them exactly what they do want, which is an opportunity to participate in the marketing of their product.
There is no question in my mind that the act before us requires more study, because I am not confident that it can stand up to the scrutiny of the many producers out there who want to see the product they grow and sell for their livelihoods promoted and sales increased as a result of that promotion.

February 24, 1992
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It is possible that Bill C-54 will just end up being viewed by the producers as something with the same efficiency and effectiveness as the government's introduced and implemented GST. It amounts to nothing less than another tax, something that reduces the value of their product at the point of sale.
Our goal in this House, and let us make no mistake about it, is to ensure that funds taken at the farm gate translate into higher prices for the producer. Our task is to find the proper tools to achieve that goal.
According to the information provided by the minister prior to the drafting of this legislation, the commodity groups who are pushing for check-off legislation said they wanted check-offs that were commodity based, producer or membership controlled and accountable. This bill does not go that far, extending accountability only through the start up phase.
A majority of commodity based producers must agree to set up the agency in question, but then the membership of the board can be appointed by the minister.
The commodity group membership may never have to be asked for their input again in the process of the operations of the agency.
I realize that organizations that operate with a democratic structure will remain somewhat or totally accountable for these agencies. There are other organizations out there that are not all that democratic, and that makes this legislation unfair to the producers within those commodity groups.
Check-offs are seen as an effective means of promoting self-reliance and shared responsibilities. I agree with that entirely.
The minister knows how well the supply managed commodities have done in this regard. My colleague, the member for Mackenzie, outlined this quite clearly in his intervention in this House last Wednesday when the bill was first debated.
This is a time of economic difficulty in rural Canada. Mr. Speaker, I do not have to tell you or anyone else in this House, or anyone else in Canada for that matter,
that this is a time of difficulty in rural Canada. It is an all too obvious fact.
The fact that there were some 25,000 or, depending on which media you listen to, 40,000 farm people on the Hill last week protesting and demonstrating in support of the supply managed sector in this country indicates how serious the economic difficulties in rural Canada are at the moment.
During times of economic difficulty people in rural areas pull together. They co-operate to help each other out. Our history provides many examples to illustrate exactly what I am saying. That co-operation was evident on the Hill on Friday when the producers demonstrated their support for supply management.
To see the cattle producers and other agricultural commodity groups pulling together at this time to try to improve their economic well-being is only natural. I wish them well, and I hope that they will do as well in the future as some of them have done in the past.
Therefore, I support the amendment before us which would send the bill to the agriculture committee for further study.
The concept of a check-off for the cattle producers and others is a good one. It is an idea, a concept that requires further reflection, analysis and understanding to ensure that the final bill which we approve in this House will serve the interests of the cattle producers and the community in which they live, not just the interests of the industry group they are involved in.
These are valuable and worth-while goals to be achieved. Just as I respect the work of my friends in the cattle industry, I also respect the work of my colleagues on the agriculture committee. I trust that they will do the right thing when Bill C-54 comes their way.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to say a few words here today on this important act. I will save further comments for the committee stage and the third reading debate of this bill after it has had the study that I know it will get in committee.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I could relate very well to the hon. member's comments about how serious the economic situation is in rural Canada.
February 24, 1992

It is serious when one spouse has to work at another profession, whether teaching or nursing, to supplement the farm income, or when the equipment, such as a tractor, that used to cost $40,000 now costs $150,000. I honestly do not know how these farmers are making ends meet.
Since he is very knowledgeable about the crisis in the rural parts of Canada, I would like to ask the member what recommendations he would make to help alleviate this crisis if he were in government and if he were a minister of agriculture.


Leonard William (Len) Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the member for his question. I feel quite flattered that the member would consider my views to be worthy of an agriculture minister in this country. I feel very confident that in the next government I will perhaps be given the chance to ask my leader for the opportunity to serve this country in that or any other position on the front bench opposite.
I agree with and recognize the stress apparent in the farm community emphasized by my colleague and the hon. member. The circumstances in the rural community are primarily agriculture based, but they go beyond that.
As the stability of agriculture has been eroded so too has the infrastructure of the rural communities of Canada. The school systems, the health systems, and the business community in the rural parts of Canada have diminished considerably because the stable economic structure of agriculture is not there to support it.
I have seen all too often in my own province communities disappear. That situation began because fewer and fewer farmers were working in the vicinity of a community. As the farmers moved off the land the numbers of people who attended the local church and the local school and were available to purchase goods in the local stores or utilize the facilities of the local recreational centre, skating rink and community hall decreased. This created a situation in which all of a sudden that community ceased to have viability.
When we talk about the policies and the programs that we need to put in place we must first examine the viability of agriculture, we must look at securing an economic base for agriculture so that we can maintain the populations on the farms to ensure that we have people in the vicinity of rural communities to support the activities and the structure in the rural communities.
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First and foremost we must have policies in place that will provide for that economic stability in agriculture; that means a good price for farm products, whether beef cattle, hogs, grains, oilseeds or the cereal crops that are grown on the prairies.
We also need programs to address the needs of the rural community itself to which people from the farms have often gone to retire. We need programs that deal with housing and other issues.
Mr. Speaker, you are signalling me that my time is up. I hope that over the course of the next year many of the ideas that I and the members of my party are actively engaged in examining to address the needs of rural Canada and the election platforms that are put forward will prove to the Canadian people that New Democrats have a different and more positive way of viewing the changes required to secure economic and social stability in rural Canada, and that Canadians will give us the opportunity to put those ideas into practice when the time comes.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, perhaps today we should be looking at the original legislation brought in 20 years ago, proclaimed in the other place in this Parliament in early 1972. That legislation was the basis upon which our national marketing agencies were built. Agencies that were built on the foundation of the legislation passed in this House are now on the verge of being destroyed in secret negotiations behind closed doors at the GATT with no real input from this House.
This legislation was unique in its nature because in the British North America Act the various areas of jurisdiction within this country were laid out. For example, marketing within a province was a provincial jurisdiction. We refer to that as intra-provincial trade. When a product crossed a provincial boundary or was exported it came under federal jurisdiction. We refer to that as inter-provincial trade and export trade.
In addition to export trade, which is federal jurisdiction, the powers of the federal government were melded with that of the provincial governments in terms of marketing legislation. In turn, the provincial legislation had to call upon another piece of federal legislation, the Agricultural Products Marketing Act, to get more of the powers they needed to operate effectively.

February 24, 1992
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This was Confederation working at its finest. When we had federal legislation looking after the trade within Canada between provinces federal-provincial agreements were developed and signed by all provincial ministers of agriculture in this nation to work together in an harmonious way and create order out of chaos. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were trade wars going on within Canada between the provinces. This legislation and the resulting marketing agencies which were set up created order out of that chaos. It brought a level of stability to this nation for producers in the poultry sector. The poultry farmers of Canada were here on Friday with their counterparts in the dairy industry, which operates under different legislation, to defend that legislation and ensure that the government does not trade it away.
It is also unique in that each producer was assigned a quota for a system of planned production, a system of planned production that ensured that Canadian consumers had adequate supplies of high quality foods at a reasonable price. They had some of the best production in the world with no shortages of supply, no chaos at the farm gate level. The processors had a reasonable return for their efforts and unjustified increases in price did not take place.
These organizations had to work under government supervision at both federal and provincial levels. There were two classes of orders and regulations that had to be prior approved by the supervisory body, the National Products Marketing Council. Any change in price had to be substantiated by the cost of production formula.
The over-all annual global allocation also had to have prior approval. It was a system that not only worked well for the producers of this country but ensured the continuing share for each province. The poorer provinces of Atlantic Canada certainly had a level of stability and an alleviation of fear about their operations. Their operations could not be wiped out by a couple of van loads of eggs from other provinces dumped on their markets to depress the prices. It also provided a level of income which they had not seen for years and years.
In February 1972 I bought eggs at 19 cents a dozen at the same time as those eggs were selling at a supermarket in Toronto for 56 cents a dozen. The production cost
for that product was a minimum of 38 cents a dozen. No wonder there was chaos in the marketplace.
This act brought stability that has lasted for 20 years. Now it is threatened and may be traded away. We can be proud as Canadians that we were able to develop such a system envied by producers in other parts of the world, not only from the United States, whose farmers were on the hill on Friday supporting us in our efforts, but farmers from Europe and other nations. They wanted to help us defend a system being threatened by the forces of transnational corporations who want to destroy the most sophisticated system in the world. It has not contributed to world surpluses. Yet we have not once seen the government come to the defence of these systems which have been under a concerted attack in the media, an attack that started on the floor of this House in October 1990 as a result of a statement made by the Minister for International Trade, an attack that has continued to this day in the media.
In fact, at 6.30 last night on one of our television networks here in Canada, a former negotiator of this government, who negotiated the free trade agreement, stated that these boards are bad for the country, bad for the consumers and should be done away with.


Mr. Milliken:: He was bad for this country.


Ralph Ferguson: Absolutely. Look what he did to us in the free trade agreement. Now he is having second thoughts. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands says he was bad for the country. Now he is having second thoughts. He finally woke up and he is realizing this. Now he is targeting the poor farmers of this nation who provide us with such ample supplies of food.
It is obvious that these statements are a reflection on the government's true intent to end these systems that have not received one cent in government subsidies since they were established. They provided adequate supplies of top quality food, the best quality food of any country in the world, at a reasonable cost to consumers. The price setting mechanisms for these agencies and the production targets of course, as I mentioned earlier, have to be prior approved through regulation by the National Farm Products Marketing Council and receive the blue star approval of Privy Council. Thus the interests of the processors, the producers and the consumers are protected.
February 24, 1992

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I was shocked on February 12 when the Minister of National Revenue announced an export tax on tobacco. There is quite a story behind this. In this House in the last few days of the previous government we brought in an amendment to amend the National Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act to include tobacco and tobacco products, a simple amendment just to add those words.
A member of the Official Opposition at the time stood up and refused unanimous consent, even though thousands of tobacco farmers were protesting on the Hill. That refusal came from the Official Opposition benches at that time. Then the letter from the Leader of the Official Opposition-


Mr. Lewis:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think the hon. member is making a well reasoned speech but he just made an allegation that a member of the opposition refused unanimous consent. My hon. friend knows that there is no way in the world that he can back up that statement and I think it should be struck from the record.


Mr. Baker:: Mr. Speaker, on that point of order, if you go back in all of our precedents dealing with this question, you will find that a member has a perfect right to say in this Chamber that the nay came from a certain side. He does not have a right, however, to say who gave the nay. For the minister to stand up and raise that as a point of order draws attention to the fact that it was at the time the Official Opposition that refused.


Philip Derek Lewis: That of course is completely specious and my hon. friend knows it. I will be glad to wait around to give him time to look that word up in the dictionary. It is absolutely improper to reflect upon who said yea or nay in a vote or to refuse unanimous consent. My hon. friend knows it. My hon. friend is an experienced member. He is in full flight in his speech. He is on the front bench of his party, which may be easy to do these days. I think my hon. friend knows better than to reflect and make an allegation like that. I would suggest that his speech would be better phrased if he left that kind of citation out of it.


Jesse Philip Flis: Before making a ruling, Mr. Speaker, I think it is very easy to check Hansard of the day and to check that it was on the other side of the House where the nay came from.
As my hon. member mentioned, we do not mention names but we do know where the nay came from and where the unanimous consent was not given.
There has been no minister here all afternoon to listen to this important debate. Now a minister trounces in to raise a point of order. That is how interested they are in the farmers of this country.


An hon. member:: A phoney point of order.


Jesse Philip Flis: Correct.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I think that hon. members on all sides were able to convey their message and I ask the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex to return to the debate.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I want to make it very clear that I did not name the member who refused to give consent, nor the constituency he came from.
I believe Hansard will speak for itself if we look that up. I was present in the House at the time.
Less than two months later, the Leader of the Official Opposition at the time sent a letter to the Ontario Tobacco Marketing Board dated August 17 or August 19, it does not really matter. It assured its members that if they formed the government, it would give them their tobacco marketing agency. There is no tobacco marketing agency yet today.
The suggestion that they are on the side of the farmer has to be closely examined, but I want to just go on to the announcement of February 12 and the export tax. To put a tax on the export of tobacco-the purest tobacco of any country in the world with less tar, chemical and nicotine content of any country in the world-will simply destroy the export markets.
Today I received a call from three growers in my riding who immediately realized the damage that has been done to their industry. Bill Thuss and Tony Sleagers of RR3, Strathroy and Gene Vineue of RR2, Strathroy advised me that one of the major tobacco processing companies in Canada, RJ.R. MacDonald Inc. is no longer purchasing tobacco for export markets as a result of this tax.

February 24, 1992
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It will in fact destroy those export markets and destroy jobs here in Canada. It will force the countries purchasing tobacco to buy inferior products that contain more tar, nicotine and other chemicals than our Canadian product does.
I ask this government to reverse its position. It is simply not acceptable. It is a further nail in the coffin of this industry in Canada. Those countries will be forced to buy from another market and buy a product even more injurious to their health than Canada's tobacco.
I also ask the government to stop delaying tactics regarding a marketing agency for apples. I know the original act calls for the government to establish these marketing agencies through proclamation when it is satisfied, following plebiscites or declarations, by Lieutenant-Governor in Council or by other means, that the majority of producers in Canada or regions of Canada are in favour of such an agency.
The words "by other means" according to the Department of Justice interpretation I received in 1974 could be a petition by producers. What is the delay? Will this government accept a petition by producers to get the apple marketing agency under way? An agency is required to stop the importation of products grown under very, very cheap labour in other parts of the world. These products have been imported to Canada and are destroying the orchards of the producers who own them.
These products are perhaps treated with chemicals, herbicides and pesticides that are banned in Canada. We have a zero level of tolerance on these imported goods. How can the Canadian consumers expect to have quality products if we have one set of standards and the government allows importation of other products treated with chemicals that are not allowed in Canada?
I want to go just a little bit further. I believe this government intends to destroy the agencies we have. Page 119 of the free trade agreement under definitions chicken and chicken products means chicken or capons, live or viscerous and chicken parts, and so on. It goes on to point out that without limiting the generality of subparagraph 1, there are 13 different types of further processed chicken that are not considered to be chicken. All they have to do is process it in the United States: chicken Kiev, chicken breaded Kiev, chicken cordon bleu, chicken breaded cordon bleu, and so on. Now the
door is wide open for further processed products. Yet we have an agency that is going to be destroyed.
I am very concerned about the legislation before us today. I hope I have laid the ground work and legislative history of this act and why it was brought in. It is an act of this House that may be disembowelled by the actions at GATT because the amendments will allow the agency to be set up to collect levies for research and promotion. Is this a set-up for when these agencies lose their effectiveness under the GATT negotiations? Is this what is happening? Does the government intend to disembowel these agencies; take away their powers to establish a system of planned production to market their products across this nation; open the door to products that are produced in other countries under a different set of standards and regulations than they are here in Canada? I have to wonder.
Although they could carry on as agencies, they would have no powers of pricing, establishing quotas or providing any degree of stability to primary producers.
Of course under the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act, the import controls come from the Import Export Control Act. It has worked very well over the years. It is administered by another department. It does not come under the jurisdiction of Agriculture Canada. If there is a shortage of a product developed here in Canada, they are allowed to bring in a specified amount of the product.
I should point out that when these original agencies were set up, the quotas were established to reflect the level of production of the previous five years for that particular province or the individual producer involved. The amount of imports was set up on the same basis of the average amount of imports allowed into this country over the previous five years. What could be fairer than that?
Under article XI of the GATT, if a country has its production established under restrictions, those same restrictions shall apply to imports. Consequently I think it has been a very fair system and I am very fearful that this piece of legislation will go hand in hand with the government's intent to sell those producers down the tubes at the GATT. That will put us not into an interprovincial trade war, but into a multinational trade war that will threaten to destroy this country, our standard of living and all of rural Canada.
February 24, 1992


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to ask the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex a question or several questions.
I listened with a great deal of interest to his very reasonable and objective assessment and review of the legislative history of the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act.
I too was here in those periods of gestation when there was a milk war and a chicken war between provinces. That really laid the groundwork for us to come together and provide this House with the debate on the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act. It in effect allowed supply management and marketing boards in many of the designated products.
The member is correct. I am not sure who said "nay". I think it is a little more tangled. I did not get into that part of the debate between the Solicitor General and the hon. member who is very experienced, not only as a practical farmer in Ontario, but briefly as Minister of Agriculture before the government changed.
As I heard the debate I was thinking that there is a little more to it. I remember there was an election and there were farmers outside. I was very interested because I have tobacco farmers right in the heart of my riding in Atlantic Canada. They were very interested in this small little amendment of getting tobacco named as a designated product. There was quite a history. I know that the climate was certainly not too conducive to resolving issues on the basis of logic at that particular time. However, history and Hansard will show who said what.
I really do appreciate the minister and the ex-minister, the member for Lambton-Middlesex, reviewing that history. It is a sad state and Doug Fisher is totally right. My time is moving so I had better get to my question about the state of this Parliament and where the debate really is. Really the action is outside. This place has become more or less a charade. This is an issue that
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brought more than 30,000 farmers, and I thought the farmers were rather silly to even suggest that type of number. We all know how to arrange political meetings. You make sure you have a small hall then you manage to expand it. You do not have a large hall only half empty. Whether it is 30,000 or 40,000, you can argue the figures, the place was packed. It would have been more politically interesting to have 10,000 or 15,000 coming and then show up with 30,000 or 40,000. However, they were here.
They were here Friday. Today we have other problems, as Question Period showed. There are plant closures, cod problems, et cetera, et cetera. Yet there was very little discussion of what happened Friday, because it is still out there.
I wanted to ask the hon. member about the fear he has in terms of what is going on in the GATT. Quite frankly I think that is going to be almost as much of a moment of truth for the farm community affected by supply management as anything that is going to come out of the constitutional committee that is hopefully going to be tabled here on Friday. It is fundamental.
My time is already starting to run out before I can get to the question. However, one question is, and I alluded to it in a question to the Minister for International Trade in Question Period, can this member, with his knowledge, rationalize how the Americans intend to maintain article XXII, which provides them with supply management protection, if we do not receive clarification and strengthening of article XI?


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the member for Annapolis Valley-Hants. I have often admired him. He is very astute in his observations.
One of the things he mentioned was that a lot of the action takes place outside of this place. He is absolutely right. I refer to the fact that these agencies may be destroyed, agencies which were set up under legislation established on the floor of this House and I believe he was a member of the House at the time. They will be destroyed in secret negotiations outside of this House, negotiations that are perhaps only beneficial to the transnational corporations I mentioned.

February 24, 1992
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He was also absolutely right in his comments regarding the rising tide within the United States of what is happening in terms of these GATT negotiations. He referred to article XXII of the GATT which provides a waiver for the United States to control the importation of dairy products, sugar, peanuts and cotton.
We talk about cross-border shopping. The Canadian farmer could not sell milk, and neither could a store, to an American to take back across the border because of that GATT waiver. If we are thinking of doing away with article XI and not fighting for it while we let the Americans keep article XXII or the GATT waiver then there is something wrong in this country. Even though 64 American senators sent this letter to the President, even though dairy farmers in the United States were here supporting us the other day on the Hill because they want a similar system, and even though legislation passed through the United States Congress last June, it was vetoed by the president.
I was shocked when I heard one of the reasons it was vetoed from one of his assistants. They were afraid that there would be increased costs to the consumer in the United States.
The American farmer gets just a little more than half what we get for our milk. They are going bankrupt by the droves. We have the best system in the world. We have to keep it.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I have a very short question for the member for Lamb ton-Middlesex.
He has produced this document Compare the Share, which is an excellent document. However, what bothers me about a document like this, subtitled Canadian Farmers Need a Fair Share of the Consumer Food Dollar, is that when we are dealing not only in the House of Commons but in our offices and out on the front lawn-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park.


Jesse Philip Flis: The hon. member refers to a veiy important document. I wonder if he would be kind enough to table it in the House.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Absolutely. I would be happy to table this document produced by my colleague from Lambton-
Middlesex. I have to ask the question and then I will table it.
The difficulty I have, as an urban member, is in trying to understand why the national media, with the exception of one or two journalists, has not taken this document and gone through it to help educate the people in the urban areas. I would specifically like to ask the member that question.
The final part of my question concerns Looking Ahead: Phase Two in this document, which points to a direction in which we should be examining corporate concentration in the wholesale distribution and retail food industry. I find that very interesting. I know a lot of people in the retail food industry who are quite proud of the prices they are giving consumers. Yet we also know that the farm gate is very low in relation to that price.
I would like to ask the member for Lambton-Middlesex why there is no national media coverage of something that has been promoted around this House of Commons for almost a year? Second, how do we get a task force on corporate concentration in retail and wholesale?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member, in 45 seconds.


Ralph Ferguson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The national media have not picked this up, but other media have. It was in the London Free Press, and newspapers in New Brunswick carried full-page ads this last week. I am delighted with what has happened across Canada. Some of the churches are handing it out, as are other organized groups, such as the British Columbia dairy farmers, the Dairy Farmers of Canada, and so on. I am just delighted with what has taken place. However, I believe that the national media may very well be part of a concerted attack on our marketing board system.
However, as for Looking Ahead: Phase Two, I want to advise my colleague for Broadview-Greenwood that phase two is about 80 per cent complete. It is coming along very, very well. We are looking more at the distribution sector and the profit centres. We do not think the corner store is taking more than a reasonable mark-up. In fact, a lot of them are working with a very narrow margin of profit.
February 24, 1992


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before we resume debate, I would just remind you that only ministers can officially table documents. Nothing prevents hon. members from leaving documents for information purposes at the table, but that is not a formal act of tabling.


An hon. member:: Perhaps if we had unanimous consent.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to table that document?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join the debate on Bill C-54, an act to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act and other acts in consequence thereof.
On the surface the bill would enable the establishment of a national agency that hopefully will have the authority to collect levies on domestic and imported products to support research and development to help our farmers. Perhaps it is difficult to argue against that. However, can we trust this government?
Only recently we have seen a series of actions on the part of this government which make this bill look like a charade, make-up, and camouflage. Why is that? Very recently we heard the debate about the GATT proposal that would require Canada to abandon the import controls it now uses to protect dairy, egg and poultry farmers from cheap imports and replace them with a system of tariffication. That is not acceptable to the egg, dairy and poultry farmers.
This GATT proposal is most definitely a consequence of the pressure being placed by the United States on Canada. Shall we resist it? Shall we resist it with all our efforts? I submit we should.
What is at stake in this GATT proposal is the survival of the supply management system, the marketing boards that in essence provide a stable income and fair return on the cost of the labour and industry of our farmers. This system provides Canadians with a steady supply of
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quality foods now and in the future and ensures an orderly system that spreads opportunities for all from coast to coast.
At stake, under this GATT proposal, is the viability of a $10 billion industry and 100,000 jobs. It affects farmers, their families and other communities for they are the businesses that supply farmers and the processing plants that rely on the raw products from the farmers. If you kill the egg, dairy, poultry industry you kill many more. There is a domino effect on the other industries in the country. Ultimately, the consumers will be affected because the very survival of a self-sufficient national food system is put into peril.
Were this sad scenario to occur, and I hope it does not, we would not be able to preserve our arable lands that are environmentally friendly.
In Manitoba, and across the country, we have seen a steady rise in the number of those who must receive welfare to survive. We have seen a steady rise in the number of unemployed. They would like to find jobs but they cannot find one. In Manitoba there has already been an increase in emigration, in the exit of people from my home province of Manitoba to other provinces. Therefore, when we heard about the GATT proposal it was yet another blow which created a sense of pessimism and gloom, as has also been indicated by the National Dairy Council of Canada. At this juncture, allow me to read a news report from the Winnipeg Free Press of Saturday, February 22. It is titled: "Couple Fear for Future of Dairy Farms". It reads in part:
"Wayne and Teri Fuchs are expecting their first child but they don't know whether their future son or daughter will grow up on a dairy farm. The couple, who milk 25 cows near Steinbach, are worried that a new international trade agreement being negotiated in Geneva will set off a chain of events that will force them off the farm".
That is fear, fear on the part of Canadians who now have farms. They fear for themselves today and they fear for their children tomorrow. So Canada must fear for itself.
Shall we allow this government to sacrifice a primary industry to its unfettered free market dogma? The answer from Canadians is an unequivocal no.

February 24, 1992
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On July 22, 1988 in Geneva our former trade minister said, and I quote in essence: "We are not going to accept any settlement of this GATT round that is going to endanger our dairy farmers".
Three and one-half years later, 40,000 farmers braving sub-zero temperatures gathered on Parliament Hill last Friday. Yet the Prime Minister did not have the courage nor the courtesy to talk to them, to hear them, to learn from them.
In 1987, one year earlier, the government's initial proposal respecting the GATT negotiations today was a strategy toward tariffication away from the marketing board, away from supply management which is opposite to the present claim that is being purported in this bill. No wonder I doubt the sincerity of this government.
When I heard the eloquent presentation of my Liberal colleague, the hon. member for London-Middlesex, I could not help but truly thank him for his excellent presentation. It makes Canadians know the real sincerity of this government.
I ask whether we can trust this government. Let us examine the trade minister's letter of last month to his colleagues on the government side. He said that Canada would not withdraw from the negotiations even if it loses supply management.
Now we have this Bill C-54. What do we believe? On the surface the bill if passed will enable some degree of control on imports. It will thereby ensure collection of levies that will help promote research and development for the farmers and producers.
I ask again whether we can trust this government which has been rejected by 90 per cent of Canadians today?
The farmers at the farm rally last Friday asked this government that they be allowed to stay on their farmlands for another 125 years. Let us allow it to happen.
Let us recall some of the messages on the placards that they brought with them. I will read a few: "Farmers' Survival Means Canada's Survival", "Canada: The Third World Country", and "I Cannot Farm If You Do Not Help".
In conclusion, while I would like to see beauty in this bill, while I would like to see an element of protection for our farmers in this bill, that cannot be guaranteed until this bill is fully and critically examined at the legislative committee. Then we can ensure it truly will be a tool that will keep our farmers on their lands for another 125 years.
I must say that food is a social glue in any society. Our farmers deserve their survival and deserve our support.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak on this bill.
Governments generally, and maybe this government in particular, are not interested in having one unified voice for all Canadian farmers. The government is having enough trouble as it is with the present situation that its somewhat retarded reaction on GATT has brought to the farmers across Canada.
For the first time in many years the farmers under the marketing boards and those outside have felt the need to come together and take an established position which recognizes the need to defend farmers.
Grain growers, poultry producers, dairy farmers, they are all fighting together the position the government took on GATT originally and which it has moved away from but also are trying to bolster the position it claims to have now.
They are trying to make sure that the negotiations the government is having at GATT will not devastate supply management and supply managed marketing boards. They are not feeling very happy with the position the government has taken.
In these amendments to the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act, the government is doing a number of things, none of which is going to improve the act particularly.
First of all, it is repaying a political debt to certain groups of producers. It is continuing to divide the farmers. If one group of farmers does not say what the government thinks it wants to hear, it will try to organize another group of farmers. That group will be given some responsibility and the government will expect to hear the answer from it.
The government is not interested in hearing one single voice from the farmers when it can hear a wide variety of voices and opinions. If it gets advice that it does no like from one major group, it can always go out and create another group. That group will tell it exactly what it wants to hear. Then those farmers who have stated the government's point of view will have some ability to operate within the system. That is the payment of the debt.
February 24, 1992

The government is also making sure that supply management and marketing boards do not proliferate and become stronger. In fact, the government may be driving the marketing boards further down by passing these amendments.
The effective promotion of marketing will be considerably diluted by the possibility of a dozen or so other agencies which will suddenly take to the field. Therefore, we will have less funds to establish the kind of marketing that has been done by the established agencies.
It is ironic. The marketing boards should not worry because at the level at which the government has been supporting them at GATT there may not be any supply managed marketing boards left after the next GATT negotiations.
It would mean that the government would have succeeded in doing what it has been trying to do for the last many years.
This government is ideologically opposed to marketing boards. Everything it has done over the years has indicated that, even to the point of its position as far as the Wheat Board is concerned. It is not a supply managed marketing board but has been affected by lack of support by this government.
Bill C-54 before us is a proposal to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act and other acts in consequence thereof.
This legislation has been around for 20 years. It was an attempt that worked marginally and in many cases worked very well along with the Dairy Marketing Act for those 20 years in providing the farmers with the marketing tools needed to become self-reliant market oriented individuals across the world but particularly in the Canadian domestic market.
These amendments will have the effect of limiting the effectiveness of the original legislation. We have not been a smoke and mirrors operation because this legislation will allow a few organizations to form agencies to do the few things they want to do without having to deal with the original act. That act required a considerable amount of work and organization on their part.
If this act is amended, they will be able to change that structure and become an organization which can do promotions, collect money for promotions and possibly
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do research. Even that has been dealt with rather differently than in the past. On the surface these changes may seem innocuous. In actual fact they may have the effect of limiting the effectiveness of the original bill.
These marketing boards that have been established under the act have all of the rights that are being put in place by the amendment of this act. If anyone of the agencies wanted the ability to establish levies or to raise fees, it could do so under the present act. It would mean that it would have to organize a marketing board of some sort to be able to do so.
The present act has functioned well in Canada. The reason it has functioned well is that there have been similar acts in each of the provinces. These acts permit the establishment of marketing agencies across the country as well as marketing boards within each province.
This process has allowed them to establish an umbrella organization which can do the kind of promotion and work for the development and marketing of the particular product being produced.
What the government is proposing here today is to set up a companion act which will permit the establishment of very similar agencies. These agencies would simply take funds from the producers by way of check-off and then permit a producer group to administer those funds in what is called promotion of the product without any necessary reference or responsibility to the producers initially. I consider this a very inefficient way of doing what the government wants to do.
In terms of straight efficiency and furtherance of a market oriented approach, the government has left this up in the air. What it intends to put in place with these amendments is a second tier of this particular legislation which would develop into a second tier of agencies as well.
These agencies would exist along with the present agencies for poultry, eggs, turkey, hatching eggs and so on, but it would not have the somewhat difficult requirement of organizing and making sure that we have all producers on the same side. A few producers would be able to control the market pretty generally in this particular situation.

February 24, 1992
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I have another concern about this particular legislation, that is the inclusion of imported products. We will no longer be extolling the virtues of the Canadian product, say Canadian beef for instance, but we will be using Canadian money to help sell and improve the marketing of imported products. The U.S. has been doing this to us for many years. It has been putting a tax on our product which it then uses for developing the sale of our products in that country to some extent. At the same time it has put in place customs duties which make our product considerably more expensive relative to its product.
Supply management has been good for producers. It has also been good for consumers. The Consumers' Association of Canada has been very short-sighted in its approach to the effects of supply management. It does not really understand the structure under which supply management has been put in place. By having secure producers we have a secure supply. The Consumers' Association will say that we are paying more than we would need to pay for products produced under supply management.
However, as the member for Lambton-Middlesex told us a few minutes ago, if we take dairy as an example, we possibly pay more for our dairy products now but we do have a secure supply. The dairy producers from the United States who were here the other day told us that they were starving with their system, that they would not be around very long, and that the only organizations that would be producing dairy products in the United States would be those organizations that are vertically integrated, the transnationals that have put themselves in a position to take over the industry as it collapses.
Once those industries have control of production in the United States, the prices will go up according to what the market can accept. If by that time we do not have any producers in Canada, which is the logical conclusion of the GATT negotiations that are supposedly going on, then there will be no farmers there to keep the price down at the cost of production level, which is all that you and I pay for, Mr. Speaker, when we buy dairy products, eggs, poultry and so on produced in Canada.
We pay the cost of production. The cost of production may be a little less in some places in the United States,
but if the multinationals, the transnationals, become the producer, the wholesaler and the retailer, the price of those products is going to be out of reach very quickly and we will have no farmers producing in Canada to alleviate that situation.
The GATT negotiations have become a process of destroying marketing boards. In place of those marketing boards we are going to get a check-off system to be used to promote our own and imported products. That is not what the farmers wanted. That is not what they gathered here on the Hill for yesterday. That is not what they have been talking about for the last several years.
What they want is a structure that allows some comfort of protection of the pricing system that they already have, as we have been told many times today, a pricing system that guarantees the farmer the cost of production and is probably the best kind of production structure in the world because it does not gouge the consumer but does make sure the farmer can go on producing.
As I mentioned earlier, ideologically this government has never been in favour of orderly marketing. John Wise, who was Minister of Agriculture in the previous government, did proclaim to believe in marketing boards, but he did not run again. Many of us would like to know exactly why.
Orderly marketing, as I said, is not ideologically a position this government likes. It believes that the free market should be allowed to take effect, but the free market will not work in the provision of food.
What the government does at every opportunity it has is undercut in every way the orderly marketing system. It is quite willing to stand up now and say how much its members have done to defend the marketing boards. They stand up and shout: "We believe", but what they have done is undercut the foundations of marketing boards to a great extent, and they are continuing to do so under the GATT negotiations that we have been hearing so much about lately. They are quite willing to say: "Yes, we will support them now" because they know they have undercut the foundations to the extent that those agencies are crumbling.
February 24, 1992

I think the farmers have every right to suspect the motives of this government when it starts meddling with this very important act and does things to the act that have the effect of reducing the effectiveness of the act and spreading it across commodities without requiring those commodities to establish structures that will improve the marketing of the particular product they are attempting to produce.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, as I have been listening to the speakers throughout the afternoon, I am beginning to see another instance develop here where once again this government is tending to weaken institutions that have traditionally had strong national powers to make sure national standards are maintained, which made our marketing boards the envy of the world and which gave our family farms all kinds of reassurance. The member has just said that once again we are seeing another example of this government's dismantling operation. Does the member see in this bill a further possibility that national standards will not be maintained or will be weakened; in other words there will not be enough resources to provide and maintain national standards?


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, what is happening at GATT is undercutting the marketing board structure to the extent that this bill touches the legislation under which those marketing boards were established. It will become ineffective or maybe even unnecessary if the marketing boards collapse in their present form.
This bill is not changing the situation so that marketing boards have any security of continuing. What they are providing in this particular bill is the possibility for other agencies which they may call marketing agencies, but they will not have that security of supply management, that security of orderly marketing which the present bill has put into place. What we will get instead is a proliferation of marketing agencies, which will promote their particular product but will not give the producing farmer any security that he is going to get the kind of price he needs to survive.


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, I will have to issue you an invitation to visit the fine city of Prince Albert, indeed the whole constituency which includes half the province of Saskatchewan.
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Nevertheless, I would like to ask the member a question. I was only elected to this House in 1988. The GATT negotiations, which are so much a part of the discussion of marketing boards, have been going on since 1985, that is the current Uruguay round.
Lately the government has certainly taken the approach that it is backing marketing boards 100 per cent, that it is backing the supply management sectors, and that it is going to bat in Europe with all the muscle and ammunition it has. There are farmers over there, along with the Prime Minister.
It strikes me that it is awfully late in the day to be taking that kind of an approach. In fact, it is almost hypocritical to be taking that approach now. My impression is that the threats to our marketing structures, the Canadian Wheat Board, supply management and the Crow rate in western Canada have all come from the United States, from the American side of this debate. It has been American agribusiness interests like Cargill, Continental and others that have put the heat on this government both through free trade and at the GATT to undermine these kinds of structures.
At the same time at the GATT negotiations it seems to me that rather than condemn what was happening through the American Export Enhancement Program we have lined up with the Americans against the Europeans. We had the Minister of State for Grains and Oilseeds running around western Canada telling farmers to dump their grain on the lots of Mercedes dealers and really making villains out of the Europeans at every meeting I heard him address, including the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool annual meeting.
I was just wondering: Has this always been our approach? Surely we need the European common market to support us, but all I have seen from this government in the past is an attack on the Europeans, falling in with the Americans, with the net consequence that the Americans are getting their way and destroying what is left of the structure of our agriculture.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: There is no doubt that what we are seeing here is an attempt by members of this particular government to try in some ways to shut the door after the horse has gone. They are trying to convince you and the Canadian farmer that the door has been shut all the time, that this was their policy all the time, when we know it was not.

February 24, 1992
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The tobacco fanners have been trying to establish a marketing board for many years. They finally got a small amendment to this act, but by that time they had expended all their money and all their energies and tobacco was on the downslide anyway. It is was longer valuable. Consequently they did not get the marketing board, which might have saved their industry, at least for some farmers.
It is the same now for apples.
Relative to the position taken by this government on GATT and the need to bring onside the fanning community of Europe, it is a very good method that this government has overlooked. The farmers of Europe operate very much as we do in the marketing structure. They recognize that what is good for them would be good for our farmers as well. The American farmers recognize that what is good for us is good for their farmers. The farmers in most of the industrialized world who are producing dairy products and so on recognize our system as being effective. They would be onside. But we have alienated them and they are not on our side, not because they think our system is wrong, but because we have set it up in such a way that they think they would be better off not supporting us.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in this debate and follow the remarks of several of my colleagues this afternoon. The debate, in terms of the public, would seem to be a pretty inconsequential matter involving amendments to the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act, which in terms of Bill C-54 before us today allows check-offs of certain produce so that there can be income and revenue to help with research and other things, which seems to be a laudable objective, and also to help advertise certain produce and production.
Other members have said, with actually a better understanding than I of the farm community, we should take that bill with the amendments and get it to the Standing Committee on Agriculture where the motion is at the present time and really just have the farm interests in to analyse and dissect if some of the
purported reasons of this amendment to the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act is going to do what the bill and the sponsors of the bill say it is going to do.
I am not going to spend much time on this. In fact, I am not going to spend any more time on that aspect of the bill. Certainly the thrust of the debate has developed right from the start. Since the subject matter of marketing boards and national marketing agencies has come before the House, that has been the concern of all members, certainly from this side of the House. It is a very well justified concern. We do not have to go any further than the memory and the echo of the 30,000 to
40,000	farmers who took a day off to come here and fill the lawn of Parliament Hill on Friday last in a most fantastic demonstration of solidarity and concern that their very future and the future of the family farm is at risk.
We have all heard those cliches about the family farm. In the agricultural world you get the vertical operation and the corporate structure of the vertical operation, which is certainly much more akin to the United States. If you ever wanted to really feel the concern of family farmers, you only had to stand out there for the two to three hours that many members did with the crowd and obviously some others on the stage. With those numbers in a most restrained and disciplined way, they tried to bring their message forward. I tend to agree. This is a difficult thing, but I can understand the dilemma of the government because there are a lot of political ramifications to this. I am not going to belabour that very much in terms of the Constitution. Here we are talking about the amendments to the act affecting marketing boards today. At the end of the week we are supposed to have a report from the constitutional committee. I would not be surprised if the GATT round does not strike them and clarify article XI which allows Canada to have these marketing boards, and that that omission, along with whatever the recommendations are from the constitutional committee, could very well provoke and perhaps should provoke a parliamentary crisis in this House with a vote that could very well bring on an election a lot sooner than a lot of people think or warrant.
February 24, 1992

There is not a member from the Quebec side of the government who is going to feel very secure, regardless of constitutional proposals. We can all speak as Canadians on the constitutional proposals. We will wait and see the committee report, but this is the bread and butter of what makes a country tick. It is the farmers and the land. The farther you get away from the land-I have an old fashioned philosophy-the more unreal and perhaps more artificial you get.
There was nothing artificial about those 30,000 to
40,000	farmers with their little children who came and physically demonstrated their concern for the future.
This is one reason I am glad to have a chance to speak today. I am glad the government House leader has had that ingenuity to in effect get this bill before the House so members have a chance to put more pressure and have a chance to speak on this fundamental issue of marketing boards, which as other speakers have said, has not really had that much attention during the five years of the Uruguay round.
As far as I am concerned, the old signals went up. While there were rockets fired over the Peace Tower on January 1 to welcome in the New Year, the real rocket in terms of marketing boards was the Dunkel report in December when Mr. Dunkel tried to bring forward a consensus after five years of negotiation and in effect said to all 108 countries: "Listen, countries of the world, these are my proposals for solving all the problems of trade around the world". There was not anything in the Dunkel report about article XI.
Long before that report it should have been clear to our negotiators in Geneva, to Mr. Dunkel and other countries of the world. We will give and take on many subjects and we will give and take in many areas of trade. There is one part of our fragile economy going through the recession and economic problems that a lot of other countries are going through around the world. There is one part that has been under stress and strain, agriculture. But there is one part of agriculture that is not under stress and strain. The previous history was outlined in the very tremendous speech of the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex earlier when he reviewed the legislative history, when there was instability with certain areas of production of eggs, milk and chickens. I was here in the House when that bill came before us, as I said in a question earlier. I am not going to get into the
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debate from where I sit because it is not quite accurate to say that the opposition of the day, and I was in that opposition, was against the concept of marketing boards. Quite frankly it is not fair to say that.
There was a member in the opposition who turned and became a member of the Liberal government, the then member from Crowfoot. He fought night and day in several sessions of the agriculture committee. He would not even drink coffee because he thought the government of the day, the Liberals, were going to pollute his coffee so that he might go to sleep and could not carry on the fight for a national farm marketing council which was set up. The fight was not just over the general principles of the bill. It was over whether there was going to be producer representation. There were many other aspects of a very complex question. That was part of the tangled fight between opposition and the government of that day. We finally got the national bill. The history about tobacco that was said here earlier is also correct.
We got the bill. Mr. Speaker, long before you came down the political road and perhaps many years before you were out of school, because you have that gentility of youth. There was stability in certain areas of production, dairy, chickens and eggs, to name three that have marked and helped the Canadian farmer. It has really been the backbone of an area of our economy that has been under stress and strain. That is why it is absolutely incredulous to me. I say I am glad, in a backhanded way, that the government House leader has brought this before us so we can talk about it, but in the general principle of common sense. You have the old axiom: "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or "Don't fix it if it ain't broke". You can tangle that up as this is tangled up. Supply management has obviously been good for stability for the farmer and it has also been good for the consumer. We can talk all we want about sovereignty. We can talk all we want about special status and distinct society. My God, are we going to be such a distinct society in this nation from coast to coast that we will not have our own farmers producing our own farm production and we are going to get it from the vertical operation south of the border?
I was told this three or four years ago, long before the free trade debate heated up and became an election issue in 1988. Quite frankly, I lost a very good supporter over the free trade debate in 1988 who was a turkey producer.

February 24, 1992
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The member for Lambton-Middlesex would know this but I did not know it three years ago, after the Uruguay round had started. Then, of course, we had the free trade matter before the House. I did not know that there was one vertical turkey producer in the state of Pennsylvania that produces more turkeys than the total Canadian production. I know the same thing is repeated in at least four different instances with chickens. Not family farms, not having your son or daughter trying to take up where the old man was and keep the old furrow going, as you harrow and plough and build again for the future. Do not take your income and hope it is going to pass on because the acreage is going to appreciate and that is how you are, perhaps, going to get a pension.
No, these are not family farms. These are vertical, corporate agribusiness operations. Is that what we are going to get if GATT does not go the way we want? I tend to agree. It gets to be criticized by a lot of my former colleagues. I would have loved to see the Minister for International Trade in Europe two years ago when we needed a delegation.
When Dunkel dumped his report in December-there is a lot of alliteration so you have a lot of d's there-we got dunked. I am afraid the Canadian farmer is going to be dunked. The Minister for International Trade is a fine decent man, but he is not in support of marketing boards. He is a free trader. We know he is a free trader because we know about the free trade situation, and I will not fight that battle.
Quite frankly I come from the deep east in Nova Scotia. We believe in the sea, the winds and the currents. You cannot sail against the wind unless you know what you are doing and it is hard to sail against a current.


An hon. member:: The minister does not know what he is doing..


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: A lot of the things that have been said here should have been said a couple of years ago, when we carved out our balanced position, by the Minister of Finance and the then Minister of Agriculture. At that time I was on the other side of the fence with the government and perhaps I should have tried to speak out a little more. My common sense said there was something wrong. We had our caucus. This was discussed in our caucus, but I will not get into that.
There is a fundamental flaw with us now trying to shut the door when everyone has been led out to the pasture. For wheat and beef we are for free trade and yet when it
comes to milk, turkeys, chickens and eggs, we are for protected trade. I say that is why our negotiators now and/or this last minute entourage of ministers and farm leaders would have, quite understandably, a heck of a time to say: "Hey, we do not mind the bam door being opened for the world to come in and for us to sell out in wheat and beef. But, hey, keep the door barred in terms of chicken and other production, dairy and eggs". That is a fundamental problem we face.
I am disturbed by that. I was disturbed when we pronounced this balanced approach. Frankly it was a case of the left hand not agreeing with the right hand because it was trying to go in two different directions. They were trying to sail with different winds, one from the north and one from the south. You cannot do it. The birds have come home to roost. The unfortunate thing is that the only people who are going to get gored, in general, are the Canadian public and certainly our farmers unless this is stabilized.
I say it is up to every member, and especially every government member, who has a farm community that has supply management to take a stand and to let that government know that regardless of all the other problems we have, we are not going to throw away the supply management and the security of that for the nebulous status of a weaker, in effect almost non-existent, article XI.
If the United States can play it both ways, why can we not play it both ways? I asked a question in the House today. Much to my horror, I found out some time last week-and I guess it has been there for some time; I am looking at a letter dated November 25, 1991, which I got by fax today, confirming what I had been told last week-that 62 American senators-and this is in their system, I appreciate that-have written President Bush and in the letter say: "Hey, Mr. President, negotiations are going along in Geneva". In part of it they say: "The Europeans are under current GATT negotiations with the unreasonable demands made by the European Community negotiators. We feel that the willingness of the U.S. negotiators to unilaterally concede article XXII", the section that gives them protection, that is, vertical protection for their vertical operations, admittedly, but protection for their production of milk, cotton, sugar and peanuts. They have had other programs before. They have had eight other commodities protected under article XXII.
February 24, 1992

In effect, this letter says that the price is too high, that the Europeans are asking too high a price, and they have asked the President not to compromise on article XXII. If that is the position at the moment of 62 senators-and I appreciate it has not quite come to votes yet and the President has not yet signed the GATT deal, if there is a GATT deal-surely to goodness and mercy, if the American Senate, powerful as it is-and we all admit it is pretty powerful-can bring the concerns of their constituencies to their President, why can we not do the same here?
The irony of it is that it is the United States that is trying to break down the supply management in this country. When you get that double-dealing situation of their asking for protection to extend-and to be fair and honest, they have had this waiver under GATT; they have had it and they want to maintain it-goodness gracious, it is too mild to say it is not fair that for the American pressure that is attacking our supply management situation here in Canada, i.e., marketing boards, for them to come one way and attack us and then to have the nerve to make sure their President protects their interests to keep their commodities protected under article XXII, something just does not ring right on that.
I certainly hope that at some stage our minister of trade is going to take a public position, or else privately first with President Bush or the Americans, and say: "Look, you cannot have it both ways. If you want to get rid of our supply management, then how are you going to justify protection under article XXII for your commodities?" If they get protection under article XXII, then we need the same protection of the clarification and strengthening of article XI of GATT.
There is another element in this whole thing, and my time is coming down pretty quickly, I think. I am not going to get into the debate on that Globe and Mail editorial today. Frankly the Globe and Mail editorials are travesty compared to what the Globe and Mail editorials used to be when it was a national paper expressing national news.
All they have to do is read the report of the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex, which has been referred to by the hon. member for Broadview-Green-
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wood, regarding not only stability for the farmers but decent food, good food for our consumers for everyone's benefit. The price of food and percentage spent by the Canadians for food is down now. He has all the figures there.
The whole thing is ridiculous if an industry of $10 billion is going down the drain, and that is the concern. Even the government admits the concern that GATT is not clarified.
We can debate whether they have been strong enough or whether it should have started earlier. But we have heard the Prime Minister and other ministers admit that this will be a dire straits situation if we do not get it strengthened and clarified.
Yet as said in a Globe and Mail editorial, you get an industry that has been stable and has been contributing to the Canadian economy and/or taxes. There is another element to this whole business of marketing boards and stability of that section of agriculture, that you have money there to help pay for some of these social programs that have made Canadians so particular and so distinctive and are a source of pride for all Canadians. You have to have a viable industry all across the board, especially here. We know so many are going down the drain.
I throw out again-and I hope someone asks me the question-that I do not understand when you are beguiled with the answer, "Oh, well, this is what the negotiators or some of the experts are saying. Do not worry about the import quotas to protect your marketing boards. You are going to have tariffication and pay high tariffs. That will keep out products so we will still be able to maintain the family farm".
In conclusion-I hope someone asks me the question-how do you rationalize and reconcile the tariffication under GATT where there are supposed to be big high tariffs to help protect this marketing board situation? It loses the protection of quotas because article XI has not been clarified. How do you rationalize that with the free trade agreement, which is reducing tariffs and completely eliminating them? Quite frankly, I think there has been a lot of duplicity here on this argument of tariffication.

February 24, 1992
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Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member, who has given a good dissertation on this very complex subject. I know from the discussions we have had in caucus that he is supported in general by my colleagues.
I do not have many farmers in my riding. I do have a few in one area, and I know they have been watching this issue very closely. Along with my other colleagues from Newfoundland, I have met with about 20 dairy, poultry and egg-producing farmers from Newfoundland who are really scared that this will have a very negative effect on them. It may be surprising, but we are looking at somewhere in the vicinity of over 3,000 people in this area who are directly affected.
I was interested in the hon. member's comments at the end on the rationalization between the tariffication, which seems to be an alternative-and not a very good alternative, as I understand it, and as has been put to me by the people who are worried by this move-and the free trade as it was negotiated, which seemed to have some difficulty with this area. I would ask the hon. member if he would like to enlighten us on how he perceives this so-called conflict and precisely how it relates to what the government says it is doing.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member, who is a very distinguished member of this House. He has had much more expertise in the navy and in the maritime world, with his contributions to the naval service of the country.
I am bothered. I do not have the answer. I have been told by some experts that because it is a GATT deal which is international it will supersede the bilateral deal of free trade between Canada and the United States. On the other hand, the primary flow of goods, certainly agricultural goods, is between Canada and the United States, and if you get tariffication and high tariffs under the GATT deal, if it comes to that, as I think of the bilateral agreement on free trade, which is to reduce tariffs, I think you will have to have some type of negotiation with the Americans on this, to try to negotiate with the Americans to try to maintain the high GATT tariffs, because the free trade says to reduce tariffs.
It is American pressure that got us into this quandary of supply management perhaps going out the window without article XI being clarified so that they can pump a lot of their surplus production, which we do not have under marketing boards. I do not think they will be very willing negotiators to try to protect the tariffs, even if we could get them, and that is not the way we want to go.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Annapolis Valley-Hants to elaborate a bit more for me on his insight regarding a potential parliamentary crisis.
Was he suggesting that the disciplined, orderly message we received from the farmers of Canada last week on the front lawn of Parliament Hill might have some influence on some of the rural members of the government side? Or, was he suggesting that if the GATT discussions do not come down in our favour it might suddenly twig the conscience of 10 members over there? I guess they only need to lose 10 members and we would have an election. Could he just elaborate a bit on that?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, we are getting a little off the amendments to the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act, but I did mention that in my speech and the hon. member has been here all day paying close attention.
I come from the philosophy that directs me in this whole world of politics. The only consistency in politics is inconsistency and uncertainty. If we have that as a creed, we are not going to be totally surprised at anything that might happen.
All I am saying in a futuristic, prophetic and/or potentially pathetic way perhaps for some is according to my insight and instinct. While it is complex it is not too sexy. It is not as dramatic as a car plant closure or even as graphic as the cod industry and the things that are happening to fishermen on the Atlantic coast. It is basic to the land and to so many people including then-relatives that depending on what happens members are going to have to take a real stand if we do not get a clarification or strengthening at the GATT.
February 24, 1992

They have to let their leaders know that, and then we put that on to the constitutional package which is coming down at the end of the week with all the uncertainties there. Yes, I think Parliament is a lot more fragile than a lot of people think.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I have a short question for the hon. member who was former chairman of the transport committee of this House. He has respect from every side of the House, and I have admired him for a long time.
I am just wondering about this legislation which permits levies to be collected from Canadian producers to promote products produced here in Canada. I am relating here to the fact that in 1989 we had one million pounds a week of no rolled beef coming into Canada from the United States. No rolled beef is ungraded beef.
Last year it was not one million pounds a week; it was three million pounds a week. How can we differentiate between Canadian beef and American beef coming in here to ensure those levies that protect the Canadian producers are not applied to the no rolled beef coming in, increasing consumption of imported beef rather than our own Canadian beef?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I am glad the question was short. My answer is going to be shorter.
I think that is one of the very good reasons we have to get this into committee, to have some of the experts answer that question.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to stand this afternoon to debate Bill C-54, government initiated legislation to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act.
This act may appear to be perhaps inconsequential as it is brought forward to this House for its first substantive debate on Monday, February 24. As one analyses this act, it can do nothing but raise concern, especially in view of the fact that on Friday as mentioned by my other colleagues we had 40,000 farmers and friends demonstrating on the Hill, farmers who represented the supply managed sector of our Canadian agricultural industry. This legislation is in fact linked to just those groups of producers in this country: the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, the Canadian Thrkey Marketing Agency, the Canadian Chicken Marketing Agency, the Chicken Broiler Hatching Egg Marketing Agency, along with
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milk producers from my riding of Northumberland. These are the very groups most concerned at this very time in Canada about the security of their future.
I was very pleased that eight busloads of people from my riding of Northumberland came here to demonstrate on the Hill in Ottawa. I was extremely proud of their representation among the 40,000 producers and friends on the Hill on Friday. I want to encourage them to continue to express their concerns to this government on all issues. In this case, their concern was to convince this government that it must protect article XI under the GATT which is being negotiated at this time.
I will do everything I can to protect not only the supply managed farmers in my riding but the many hundreds of other farmers in my riding whose jobs on the land affect thousands and thousands of jobs in my riding of Northumberland.
Farm production, agricultural production is a national security issue for me. Although I know that in Northumberland we have the most efficient and hard-working farmers to be found anywhere in Canada I am not convinced, I have not studied the facts, that my farmers in Northumberland, as hard as I can protect them, are able to produce for this whole country of 26 million people.
Any piece of legislation that comes before the House that speaks to anything which can have an impact on farmers in my riding or anywhere in this country is going to receive careful scrutiny from me. I will be in constant contact with my farmers as well to ensure that their concerns about any legislation which may impact on their well-being will be heard by the House of Commons and any committee that will be reviewing legislation coming forward.
This legislation appears simple. It will provide enabling legislation for the creation of national promotion and research agencies. It will be up to each commodity producer group to decide for itself whether it wishes to implement an agency that will promote and research its particular product. Although there are groups in support of this legislation there are other groups that do not support this legislation. There is some sense that this could be yet just one more regressive tax on farm production in this country. Certainly we know that our farmers are beleaguered in this country right now and do not need, as does no Canadian, any further taxation at this time.

February 24, 1992
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What we need is a cut in taxes to try to spur our economy and brighten the future for all Canadians, not just our farmers.
I am concerned that this legislation does not guarantee that the government would continue to fund its own programs for research and promotion of our agricultural products in this country. I do not feel secure in simply hearing the words from this government that this legislation would not someday be a substitute for the funding the government now puts into research and the promotion of agricultural products in this country.
There is a very important role the government must play on behalf of agricultural production in this country to secure the health of our agricultural production in this country. The legislation is proposing a check-off system, or a levy, to be set by producer-agencies if so desired by each producer group. Presumably that levy would be applied equally to every member of that producing group.
We know that there are many farmers who have unequal incomes within producer groups.
We have some dairy farmers who are quite prosperous at the moment, thanks to GATT's article XI, but we have other dairy producers who are trying to come into the business, are having to make large investments and are not so wealthy at this particular time. Yet, it would appear that this legislation would be applying levies equally across the board to every producer within a producer group.
Could we not work out some sort of guaranteed formula so that we could have a reasonable application of levies to individual members within producer groups. If this legislation were to affect only a regional producing group and every member within that producing group had to pay this levy, would that input, the investment of that region in promotion and research, benefit other regions? Why should that happen?
Can we be assured that, as one of this legislation's detractors says, the check-off system is not an elaborate way of funding farm organizations and directing money to groups controlled by agribusiness and not farmers? The person who has this concern asks if this is a possibility. I would want to be absolutely convinced that it was not a possibility before we put this legislation into place.
Farmers and producers would be paying the levy. We want to give the opportunity to farmers and producers to be involved in the research and promotion of their products but we worry about just adding on another tax without the guarantee that the government will continue and increase its own proportion of funding for production and research.
We also worry that this is a type of user pay system for the farmers only. Yet research and promotion does not only benefit the farmers; there is a great benefit to consumers. If the government does not increase its support for research and promotion then the farmers alone are paying for something that should benefit all Canadians. That is why we must support and put a greater emphasis on the federal government's role in providing the funding required for adequate promotion and research in agriculture in this country.
There is no doubting the fact that we are living in a global community where whatever we produce is in a trading environment and we are trying to liberalize and free trade around the world. However, as I said at the beginning, I consider agricultural production to be a national security issue. This country must never lose its ability to be self-sufficient in agricultural production. If we lose our ability to feed ourselves, how will we feed ourselves? Who will feed us and at what cost?
I have seen other small, vulnerable countries that have lost their ability to feed themselves. I have seen net exporters of basic food commodities become importers in order to survive, and I have seen the cost that they paid. At first, it looked as if prices of commodities in distant lands, across the border looked cheaper, just as Canadians, many of whom are involved in cross-border shopping, look south and say: "Canada's food is expensive. Look how cheap it is in the United States". For these small, vulnerable countries the same situation seems to exist. They were encouraged to get out of their production of basic crops for survival and get into cash crops for export.
They found that those cheap prices which seemed so enticing just outside and beyond their borders suddenly became very high and exorbitant. Those poor people were more hungry than they had ever dreamed of being before and those who had so little became dispossessed of the very, very little they might have had. I never want to see that kind of situation occur here in Canada.
February 24, 1992

I have a very deep concern about any legislation that will affect farm production in this country in any way.
I will want iron-clad guarantees from the committee that reviews and examine this piece of legislation that it enhances protection for farmers in our country and in no way detracts from their ability to survive and feed us, to feed all of us who should be so grateful for what our farmers do for us but who in fact have so little appreciation for the value of their work. We all must become more aware of the agricultural economy in this country and do everything we can to help protect it. It is a national security issue.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Northumberland for those excellent remarks and the clear message that she always leaves with us.
I know the riding the hon. member represents very well because in the 1950s I supplemented my income and put myself through university by working on tobacco farms in her riding. She will know the regions of Osaca and Elizabethville of which I speak. It was very sad when the tobacco industry was on its way out. Many would cheer that because the product did create health problems. However, I was actually very excited at how entrepreneurial these former tobacco farmers were. They tried growing com, peanuts, and soya beans instead of tobacco. However, by the time that product reached harvest the price dropped and they were working for nothing.
I would like to ask the member what has happened to those tobacco farms not producing tobacco anymore. Are they producing food with which we can feed Canadians and the starving people in developing countries? If not, does she recommend anything the government can do to help transfer from one crop to another?


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to respond. In fact, the shift that has occurred in production in my riding for those farmers who were involved in the production of tobacco has been quite devastating to many of them.
It was very interesting that there was an agricultural assessment of the quality of lands in my riding some
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years ago. Tobacco had been such a high-priced crop for farmers and as a result the land upon which it was grown was considered to be a quality, number one quality land. However, when the market changed and it became no longer possible for farmers to continue their tobacco production they found that a lot of the soil that had been producing tobacco was not suitable for many other crops. Therefore, research to find other ways to use those lands to produce food for Canadian consumption and export was very important. It is still an ongoing process.
However, many of those acres of land which had been cultivated for tobacco are not being cultivated today because the land is too sandy and just not suitable for many other crops.
Some have looked at com, some have looked at tomatoes, and a few are looking at peanut production on those lands. There is a need for research. It is the responsibility of our federal government to assist in the research process and not leave all of the responsibility to the farmers themselves, who are the most vulnerable and in many cases the least able to pay for research.
My concern with this legislation is that it is important to recognize the need to continue research to find diversification of agricultural production without putting the total burden on farmers, who without adequate research are simply going out of business with the result that their lands are not being used.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a preamble and a question. I was very interested in what my colleague was saying about the difficulties farmers are facing both in the international market as well as in their own industry here in Canada.
We live in one of the richest countries in the world in terms of agricultural land; yet our farmers are faced with bankruptcy on a daily basis. They have to straggle. I wonder what is the situation of farmers in Third World countries are in, where they have absolutely no government support, no government research centre. I know the answer to that.

February 24, 1992
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I want to ask ray colleague if she is aware of any studies that have been done in order to determine what it is we have to do as a society to protect our farmers. I agree with her statement that when the farming industry goes down, the whole society collapses. Historically, farming has been the backbone of any country, of any society anywhere in the world, when we talk about societies with an agricultural component.
I want to congratulate her and commend her. Those
30,000	farmers who came to the rally on the Hill visited my riding of Ottawa Centre. I was delighted, along with my constituents, to receive them where they spent a magnificent day and made their message very clear. I want to ask my colleague if she is aware of any study that has been done to determine the issues we have to deal with in order to provide our farmers with a permanent safety net.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I personally am not aware of particular studies. It has always been my experience that when you are faced with a problem, you had better go and speak to those people who are most directly affected by the problem.
I would say that the number one experts in Northumberland, in Ontario or across this country on the issue you are asking information about are the farmers themselves. Some of the farmers are very highly educated, but are vulnerable to the economic stress in farming the land today. We have many well qualified agricultural academics who, along with the farmers, work on very complex issues and help them by suggesting the best remedies. They do carry out many small research projects and can give advice and direction.
For me personally the farmer himself is the number one expert on what requirements should be in place to assist them and protect their survival.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague if, in the course of her observations with respect to the farming community, she has noted the incredible stress on the wives, the families and the impact it has on the state of marriage and divorce as the farm home and the farmland add to the complications of a veiy difficult life in the first place.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the very excellent question. As farms are weakening and
being destroyed and going out of production, it is not just land, crops, equipment and bank accounts that we are talking about. We are talking about farm families. The social destruction that is occurring in farm families across this country is enormous. It is very heart-wrenching to hear the individual stories.
Farmers are very proud people individually. It has been my experience that they do not always care to share with each other their personal economic problems. There has been in fact a dramatic increase in the numbers of suicides, family breakdowns, violence even in our wonderful agricultural communities. This situation must be addressed. In fact, farms cannot survive without off-farm income. There is not a farmer that I know of who is not involved in survival through off-farm income. Not just the farmer, but his wife and kids are all involved in the process. They are all working hard. They are the most hard-working people I have ever encountered. When they are working so hard and they cannot make ends meet, the stress within families and the amount of family breakdown is something we cannot tolerate.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to speak to Bill C-54, an act to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, there is a serious threat to agriculture in Canada today, and especially to agriculture as regulated by this legislation. I am of course referring to GATT and to the possible loss of GATT article XI(2)(c), which would allow foreign produce to enter Canada. Canadians want to maintain article XI, and they need the kind of protection we now have in this country.
Mr. Speaker, a few days ago, I heard some people say that Canadian farmers should be more productive, and one of these people was Professor Gilles Paquet of the University of Ottawa. Professor Paquet is probably good at figures. However, he tends to forget that although dairy producers in Canada, including those along the U.S border, have slightly higher production costs than their U.S. counterparts, they would have no trouble competing with these people provided subsidy levels were more or less the same on both sides of the border. However, that is not the case.
February 24, 1992

In the United States, some of the subsidies offered farmers are absolutely incredible, while in Canada, our farm producers receive very little in the way of subsidies. For instance, dairy producers get only $6.03 per hectolitre, which represents about 8.5 per cent or 8.9 per cent of their total income. I imagine the hon. member for Sarnia-Lambton knows that even better than I do. In the United States, however, farmers receive far more substantial amounts.
Nevertheless, some people insist that Canadian farmers should emulate American farmers. It is not easy, because the Canadian farmer is not competing with the American farmer. He is competing with the Treasury of the U.S. Government. It is not easy; it is well nigh impossible. I do not know a single trade or industry that could compete with the Government of the United States. If major industries cannot do it, how can we expect the individual farmer to compete with the U.S. government?
This leads us to the subject of the bill before the House today, whose purpose is to amend the Farm Products Marketing Agencies Act.

I must say that at the present time we are at the eleventh hour of the final day of the GATT negotiations, literally speaking, and we are very worried. I think this bill is a good measure, although it certainly does not address the most fundamental issue for many farmers in Canada today.
Nevertheless, I know that people such as the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the pork producers and so on, would like to have the check-off systems that would be permitted at the national level so they could put funds together to launch a national advertising campaign, for instance asking Canadians to eat more beef, pork or whatever product a producer group wants to get together and make such a pitch. The other thing that it would do, of course, is permit them to do research collectively. At the same time, that would free up funds elsewhere. Who knows, maybe farmers could collectively buy some of those funds that are freed up and help at some point in the future to launch, if ever necessary, measures against
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unfair practices of producers in other countries, if that was ever deemed to be the appropriate thing to do.
Just in case anyone is very concerned here, we are not reinventing the wheel in Canada. In fact, U.S. producers do most of those things already. As a matter of fact, I am told that they even use some money from check-offs to engage in countervailing activities and that kind of thing. Certainly the Americans are not shy about using this kind of measure.
I think the hour of adjournment has just about arrived. With that, I will end my remarks and continue at the next opportunity.


PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, February 21, consideration of the motion of Mr. Loiselle that Bill C-26, an act to amend the Public Service Employment Act, the Public Service Staff Relations Act and other Acts in relation to the Public Service of Canada, be read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee H; and the amendment of Mr. Gauthier (p. 6964).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It being 6 p.m, pursuant to the order adopted Wednesday, February 19, 1992, the House will now proceed to the deferred recorded division on the amendment of Mr. Gauthier and the main motion for second reading of Bill C-26.
The first division is on the amendment.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.

[Stage Direction]
Blondin	CharesT
Gibeau	Hopkins
Kaplan	Stevenson
Wilson(Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia)
Wood
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the amendment lost.
The next vote is on the main motion.


Mr. Angus:: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the House might be disposed to apply the previous vote to the vote we are about to take, in reverse.


Mr. Hawkes:: That is certainly all right with us, Mr. Speaker. I think the member for St. Catharines would like to make a brief intervention.


Mr. Gauthier:: Mr. Speaker, I would like my vote to be recorded with those of my party. I apologize for not having been here to vote on the amendment, but this is quite an important day for me since two of my assistants who have been with me for 16 years are retiring, and I wanted to mention that.


Mr. Sobeski:: Thank you, for recognizing me, Mr. Speaker. The reason I abstained from voting on this particular motion is that I am honoured to be named the chairman of the legislative committee that will review Bill C-26.


Mr. Bellemare:: Mr. Speaker, since I was with the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, we arrived a few seconds late. For this division I would like my vote to be recorded with the Liberal Party, my party, against the government.



[Stage Direction]
Blondin	Charest
Gibeau	Hopkins
Kaplan	Stevenson
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia)
Wood
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I declare the motion carried. Therefore this bill is referred to Legislative Committee H.
Bill read the second time and referred to Legislative Committee H.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: It being 6.28 p.m. the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at ten o'clock a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.28 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, February 25,1992