1992-05-14

Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2) of the House of Commons, I have the pleasure to table, in both official languages, the report of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront.


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 63 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I rise at a moment when we are witnessing great and historic changes in South Africa, a moment that Canada has precipitated through many of its actions over the past decades.
What was once a great tragedy of our lifetimes has now become a story of renewed hope for all South
Africans, black and white. It is a story in which we, as Canadians, played an important role and one that bears repeating in this House.
Canada has been a leader in the fight against apartheid for many decades. It was John Diefenbaker who led in the Commonwealth-when South Africa left the Commonwealth-saying, however, that there would always be a light in the window for South Africa.
Our Prime Minister today is the Prime Minister who led the policy of the Commonwealth regarding sanctions; the former Secretary of State for External Affairs and now the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs was among world leaders in the policy against apartheid in South Africa.
Now that this system is beginning to crumble, the world's attention and particularly the attention of Canadians, is focused on the initial steps toward establishing a non-racial democracy, a moment that we can all celebrate. A dramatic milestone in the progress toward that goal came on March 17 when President de Klerk's call for a mandate to continue negotiations was overwhelmingly endorsed by the white electorate.

In the wake of that outcome, the Prime Minister asked me to visit South Africa to express in person Canada's strong support for the process of constitutional negotiations currently under way through CODESA, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.
During my four-day visit, I met many of the political leaders actively involved in the negotiations, including Nelson Mandela and President de Klerk, as well as many others, church and community leaders, academics and business people, who are working to bring about a peaceful transformation in their country.
The experience was a moving one, not only because of the insights that I gained at the formal political level, but also because of the many brave and dedicated people I met who have devoted their lives to combating the evils of the system which surrounds them.

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Unfortunately, the struggle for peace, justice and equality is far from over.

The road ahead is fraught with difficulty and danger. While in South Africa I strongly condemned to all whom I met the violence that continues to claim lives on a daily basis. It threatens not only to undermine the current discussions but to jeopardize the future of democratic development in South Africa. If that country is to have lasting change and assume its rightful place among the nations of the world, that violence must end.
I was discouraged by the tendency of leaders and groups to cast blame on others, rather than to accept collective responsibility for ending the climate of violence and finding new ways of dealing with solutions.
There are no easy solutions, but there will be no solutions at all until people are willing to work together.
The will among various parties to lay aside their differences and make common cause to end the tragedy of the violence could be a very important signal of the commitment that will be necessary to build a new South Africa.
The outside world can play only a limited role in this deployment, but as a countiy committed to encouraging a peaceful transition in South Africa through lo these many years, Canada stands ready to consider any calls from CODESA for support through the United Nations, through the Commonwealth, or through some other appropriate mechanism because of our concern for people and their well-being.
On the other hand, I came away from my visit to South Africa very encouraged by the prospects for success in the negotiating process. That optimism does not blind me to the difficulties. There are still significant differences of opinion in a number of crucial areas.
A broad consensus has developed among the parties on the general principles on which a new government would be based, a new constitutional order, and there is a strong sense of the critical importance that these discussions have for the future, not only for the countiy but for individual South Africans themselves.
In addition to our moral and other forms of suasion, we as Canadians can be proud of the positive assistance that we have provided to the development of a new democratic order in South Africa. Through what we have called our dialogue fund, for example, we are providing support in a variety of areas to help South Africans develop a democratic system unique to their own situation.
We provided assistance in constitution-making including the vital area of developing a judiciable bill of rights. As well, we are assisting in building a capacity within the democratic movement to develop policy in priority areas such as economic planning, economic analysis, education planning, and a capacity to become part of a permanent public service.

All this, in addition to the assistance we have provided and continue to provide to train black South Africans to play a significant role in the new South Africa.
In my discussions, I found that South Africans were grateful that Canadians, unlike some others, do not seek to prescribe our own constitutional system, or any other. Instead, it is our belief that a political settlement must be secured through a process of peaceful negotiations and ratified through free and fair elections.
It is almost impossible to separate politics from economics, and the issue of Commonwealth sanctions greatly interested the people with whom I spoke, especially since my visit coincided with the European Community's decision to lift its oil embargo.

In all of my meetings, I stressed that the Commonwealth policy on sanctions linked the lifting of sanctions to real progress in the negotiations. Only when there is agreement "on appropriate transitional mechanisms which would enable all the parties to participate fully and effectively in negotiations" would we consider lifting our trade and investment sanctions.
I also emphasized that we do not want to keep our sanctions on any longer than necessary. I sincerely hope that the agreement on transition mechanisms will be achieved at the forthcoming plenary session of CODESA, scheduled to start tomorrow, and that we can then
May 14, 1992

take another step in the normalization of our relations. Because if there was one concern among many expressed while I was there, it was that the capacity of the economy to revive will depend on international investment, international trade and only that will give life to the new democracy for the majority of South Africans.
In addition, the lifting of sanctions will not in and of itself restore economic confidence in South Africa. I go back to the question of the violence for a moment. There are many Canadian business persons eager to explore opportunities for trade and investment in South Africa. But political stability, especially an end to the violence, must come before South Africa can, with the help of the outside world, begin to rebuild its economy and be in a position to really attract that outside capital, that business investment, the travel and the interchanges that are so important as well, to address the many inequities that are left by four decades of apartheid.
The apartheid system had made South Africa a pariah to its neighbours, even though the trade and transportation links established during the colonial period that went on for so long, were very hard to break. With recent developments in South Africa, new links are being forged and we can hope for a new era of regional co-operation.
Ironically, the drought that is gripping all of that region of the continent now and is exacting a heavy toll on livestock and on human beings has proved a catalyst in promoting that new spirit of co-operation among the countries and governments of the region.
Canada with other donors has responded to the very urgent and tragic needs of this drought and will be providing $30 million worth of food aid to southern Africa. Much of that food will go through South African ports on its way to Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Of course, there will be aid to Mozambique.
For the first time in decades, ministers and senior officials from the other southern African countries are sitting down with their South African counterparts to discuss common approaches to this common and very tragic problem. We are of course applauding the collaboration in this effort and wish it well. We are prepared to aid in any way that we can.
The victory over apartheid is a victory for the human spirit and for right over wrong. But no victory is easy nor
Routine Proceedings
can it be cause for gloating or for premature celebration because we are not all the way there yet. The challenges of a new South Africa will be as great as the challenges to the old South Africa. The stakes are very high.
Canada played a significant role in undermining the pillars of apartheid, an abhorrent system that we have been strongly opposed and consistently opposed to. We must continue our efforts and continue to be diligent. While I was there, I assured the South Africans that I met from all walks of life that Canada has been there for them in the past. We will be there for them in the future both bilaterally and multilaterally, not just as an instrument of government policy, but because of the sympathy and interest and caring that individual Canadians feel for the people of South Africa. As they themselves are creating this new country, their own new country and their own new constitution, I make assurances to this House that Canada will continue to be there for South Africa.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure for me to respond on behalf of the Official Opposition to the minister's statement on the Convention for a Democratic South Africa which is going on in that country right now following the minister's visit to that region.
I congratulate the minister for coming before the House to do this, but may I remind her that this is only the second time since she took office as Secretary of State for External Affairs that she has done this.
The first time was following the minister's visit to Haiti on November 4. I think Canadians welcomed that because they got immediate feedback of what went on in Haiti. This occasion is only the second time that the minister has done this. I would say the taxpayers are not getting their money's worth with this minister.
The minister did participate in two debates in this House. One was an emergency debate on the fisheries. That was an all-party debate, and the initiation came from this side of the House. There was another emergency debate, again an all-party debate. The fisheries debate was initiated by the member for Burin-St. George's. We were pleased the minister took part.

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I send a clear signal to the Secretary of State for External Affairs that we would welcome more statements. I think it is good she is travelling to various countries of the world to represent Canada, but following such visits there should be a report to this House.
Our member for Kingston and the Islands did visit South Africa back in March. Upon his return he reported to our caucus, and that is as it should be. When a private member goes to another part of the world, he or she should report back to caucus so the whole party knows what is going on. But when a minister goes, the minister has a duty and a responsibility to report to this House. I leave that with the minister.
On March 17 white voters in South Africa were faced with a national referendum. The future of South Africa was at stake: no more studies, no more constitutional delays. The ruling minority was faced with a choice between maintaining the status quo and the lingering legacy of apartheid, or to give up the past and look toward a common future of shared power between all South Africans.
The question thus posed was: "Do you support the reform process begun by President F. W. de Klerk on February 2, 1990 which is aimed at achieving a new constitution through negotiations?"
The overwhelming response was a resounding 68 per cent in favour of ending the history of apartheid. Only one small region, northern Transvaal, registered a no vote at 57 per cent.
What does that mean to Canadians? It means Canada must re-examine our relationship with another country undergoing fundamental constitutional changes, a country undergoing a difficult period of intense introspection to find out what the future should hold for its people.
It is clear to Canadians that we have a role to play in the future of South Africa and southern African countries as a whole. It goes without saying that a post-apartheid South Africa promises to unleash the tremendous human and natural resources of South Africa.
Economic, environmental, and democratic development in the southern African region has been stifled
under the far-reaching effects of apartheid and underdevelopment. With change in South Africa comes hope for the entire region. These positive changes present many opportunities for all of us in commerce, in sport and in cultural exchanges.
This brings into mind the question of economic sanctions. Canada has stood on the front line against apartheid with our fellow members of the Commonwealth. We must continue to stand firm or lose the opportunities which lay before us.
Clearly a balance must be maintained between the defence of the principles which justified the imposition of sanctions in the first place and sufficient flexibility to encourage social and economic change. To this end Liberals believe that Canada must support the Commonwealth's plan adopted in October 1991 which stipulates a phased removal of sanctions after certain benchmarks have been met. Some of these benchmarks are being met as of tomorrow at the convention.
For example, Canada could assist the post-apartheid South Africa by offering her expertise in the development of a police force which serves and protects all South Africans. I notice the minister in her speech mentioned our assistance on constitutional matters. I hope they are giving better advice to South Africa than they are to Canadians.
We heard in Question Period yesterday about a referendum. The government is playing around with a referendum, not knowing what the referendum is for. It is not going to be binding. It may not be for all Canadians. It may be in certain provinces. Here is a government that is going to give advice to another country on constitutional changes when our own constitutional process is a mess.
There is a vision for a multiracial public service which will better reflect the ethnocultural diversity of South Africa. Canada can provide assistance in this area. Therefore I would ask the minister to inform this House why according to the estimates for her department there will be a decrease in the amount of funding used for the promotion of dialogue in South Africa. I refer her to page 2-106 of the estimates of her own department.
May 14, 1992

Liberals are pleased with the process to bring about a democratic transition in South Africa. The process known as CODESA, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, was started five months ago and consists of representatives from 19 South African political parties. This multiracial approach to solving the problems of South Africa is the key to the future, but many other obstacles stand in the way.
Tomorrow, May 15, CODESA will hold its first crucial plenary meeting. What can Canada do to help? Canada should express its willingness to provide assistance at the practical level through international organizations and bilateral relations. I notice the minister mentioned that she is willing to look at multilateral and bilateral ways of helping South Africa. I have already mentioned our offer to help in their police forces, et cetera.
Last, the minister is aware of the spectre of drought across the entire region of southern Africa. I would encourage her and her government to provide whatever assistance is necessary and to work closely with all international partners to address this emergency and relieve potential human suffering. I am glad the minister is addressing that because unless the international community comes to the assistance of that part of the region to make sure we do not again see thousands, if not millions, of Africans starving then the whole movement to a free democratic government will be meaningless. I am glad she emphasized that part of it.
I think it is time for straight talk with South Africa. It is time to recognize the great strides that President de Klerk is taking. When I came back to the House of Commons in 1988 after a four-year absence I contacted the former ambassador to South Africa, Mr. de Klerk, and he shared with me a five-year plan which President de Klerk had in mind. Following the report of the member for Kingston and the Islands when he returned from South Africa, we are now seeing this five-year plan falling into place.
But again I remind our government: no more double talk. Canadians want clear messages. As an example, I draw to the attention of the Secretary of State for External Affairs a statement of the Prime Minister on March 18: "We would not want to break ranks now, but we will be communicating with members of the Commonwealth to urge them to take some actions now
Routine Proceedings
which would send a very positive signal to the President of South Africa".
Then the secretary of state went on to say on March 18: "I will be asking them", meaning the Commonwealth foreign ministers, "to take some action that signals to President de Klerk how pleased we are with the added momentum we now see in the process. I think the time is certainly coming very soon when we will see the lifting of sanctions".
Now and very soon was the message given on March 18. On April 6 the same secretary of state announced that the European Community's decision to lift its oil embargo against South Africa was premature. She went on to say: "We think that the process is not far along enough to be wholly sanguine about removing sanctions".
In one forum the government wants to remove the sanctions now. Then a couple of weeks later we hear: "Oh, no, we cannot remove sanctions". That is not helping South Africa or any country to abandon apartheid and move to a free, democratic system.
The secretary of state has to learn that she cannot give double messages around the world when she is representing this country. She must be giving the same message as the Prime Minister of Canada, because she is representing the government, she is representing this Chamber and she is representing this country. I leave that message with the secretary of state loud and clear.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, I too want to thank the Secretary of State for External Affairs for having given the House an opportunity to discuss on the eve of the resumption of the CODESA negotiations the very important developments that are taking place in South Africa.
While encouraging progress has been made and the minister has outlined a number of the respects in which that progress has been made, it is fundamental that this House recognizes that many serious challenges still remain. There are many hurdles to be overcome before Canada and the Commonwealth of Nations can join in lifting economic and trade sanctions.

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When the influential and respected South African newspaper Business Day was quoted as saying "the smell of moral decay can be felt at all levels of government", all of us have to be deeply concerned.
We have to recognize that while the minister has spoken of violence and of the importance of putting an end to the cycle of incredible violence, the destruction, the death and the bloodshed, the minister has been far too vague in describing responsibility for that violence.
She says that the violence must end. We all agree with that. She says: "I was discouraged by the tendency of leaders and groups to cast blame on others rather than to accept collective responsibility for ending this climate of violence". Let us look at the facts, at some of the shocking revelations just in the last month about who is responsible for violence in South Africa.
In the last 10 days the current Government of South Africa released a former police officer and member of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Khethani Shange, who was described by the judge at his trial for the murder of five innocent people as being a "beast in policeman's clothing". The judge sentenced him to 26 years in prison. He was released after nine months of his sentence by the current government in power.
Second, another Natal policeman, Constable Thulani Philip Choeni, who had been sentenced to 18 years for two counts of murdering innocent black people, was released after 17 months of serving his sentence. As well just recently, within again the past couple of weeks, a white judge in sentencing a white policeman to hang for killing 11 blacks in 1988 found substantial evidence of a police cover-up in the investigation of that massacre.
Finally on the subject of violence and most disturbingly in the present political context, there were revelations just last week about General C. P. van der Westhuizen in 1985 who is today the chief of military intelligence in South Africa. He was then a senior officer who ordered the murder of Matthew Goniwe, one of the most important and respected anti-apartheid leaders. At the time the government blamed it on violence between black groups.
Westhuizen, who today is South Africa's chief of military intelligence, said in a 1985 memo: "It is proposed that the above-mentioned persons are permanently removed from society as a matter of urgency".
That person is still in charge today. Those assassinations were agreed to by the state security council of South Africa which included senior cabinet ministers, among them President F. W. de Klerk.
Let us be dear when they talk about the ending of violence. We all agree. Let us be clear that the primary responsibility for this rests with the government and the security forces of South Africa. Beyers Naude, the respected church leader of South Africa said when he appeared before the external affairs committee recently that unless there is international monitoring of violence in South Africa demanded or requested by the Commonwealth of the United Nations there will not be any meaningful process toward successful negotiation in that country.
On the constitutional front, Canada must be much clearer in stating that we will not lift economic and trade sanctions until there has been fundamental and irreversible change toward a truly democratic South Africa.
Even the minister is speaking in the vague rhetoric of power sharing. She talks about power sharing. It is interesting that those are the same words President de Klerk is using.
I want to quote from Beyers Naude that respected church leader from South Africa who said: "The question is whether this thing called power sharing really means anything except apartheid in disguise. It is our belief that it means absolutely nothing but that, so we think the choice should be quite obvious".
We know that the minister is under considerable pressure from the Canadian Exporters Association. The association appeared before the committee and demanded that sanctions be lifted immediately. In fact, it has been demanding for years that sanctions be lifted.
I want to appeal again to the minister and this government to recognize that those sanctions must remain. Canada must continue to show leadership within the Commonwealth on the question of economic sanctions until that change is truly irreversible.
CODESA is taking place tomorrow. But as Nelson Mandela has said in discussing the transitional executive council which has been proposed, that transitional executive council must be given executive powers immediately.
May 14, 1992

I want to speak on one other area. That is with respect to the profound importance of fundamental economic change in South Africa as well, to address the desperate inequities between rich and poor, to attack the grinding poverty which affects the lives of tens of millions of black South Africans.
Yes, there must be constitutional change. But at the same time Canada must be doing far more in concert with other nations to address the fundamental economic crisis and the crisis of poverty that faces these people.
We can do much more.
The minister mentioned the worst drought in the history of South Africa which is affecting that region. In fact, it has been estimated that 30 million of the region's 120 million people are threatened with malnutrition, disease and starvation, particularly in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique.
Canada is contributing $30 million. We can and we should be doing far more, particularly bearing in mind the billions of dollars spent by many countries including Canada on the war in the gulf.
In conclusion, I want again to thank the minister for giving the House this opportunity to discuss the important developments in South Africa.
The minister is reminded that Canada must be far more outspoken in insisting on an end to state-sanctioned and state-sponsored violence. We must ensure that those who are responsible are brought to justice, including those at the highest levels of the South African government. Canada must maintain strong economic and trade sanctions until that change has been truly irreversible. We must listen to the voices of the black South Africans on this question. We should listen to them as well in terms of our parliamentary relations with South Africa.
I must express on behalf of my colleagues our deep regret that parliamentarians from both the Liberal Parly and the Conservative Party travelled to South Africa recently. They were guests of the same government of South Africa which has blood on its hands from too many deaths and which continues to refuse to recognize the rights of the black majority to justice and freedom.
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I close by urging the government to hold the course, to do what it can on violence, to do what it can with respect to the drought in South Africa, with respect to the economic injustice in South Africa and of course, to ensure that at last that day will come when there is freedom and true democracy for all South Africans.


INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION
Mrs. Barbara Sparrow (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present today, in both official languages, the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group's report on the 33rd meeting.
I wish to say these meetings are extremely beneficial and important. This year we held in-depth discussions on economic conditions, the free trade agreement, NAFTA, the environment, fisheries, the Great Lakes and also the natural gas dispute between California and my province of Alberta. We also discussed international peace and security and human rights development.
In conclusion, the plenary session proved very intense. We all participated in debating the unity of our country, the Canadian health care system, which the U.S. delegates were very interested in, and the economic expectations for both our countries.


REVIEW OF EMPLOYMENT EQUITY ACT
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present in both official languages the second report of the Special Committee on the Review of Employment Equity Act. Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response thereto within 150 days.
I would like to expand on the recommendations of the committee very briefly and succinctly. The Employment Equity Act is the first and only of its kind in this country. It has now been in force for some five years and was subject to a review under the provisions of the act itself.

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The committee has recommended some very significant changes including expanding the coverage of the legislation to include more employers such as the federal Public Service, the RCMP, the Canadian forces, the Parliament of Canada itself and federal political parties.
It has also recommended the expansion of the federal regulated employers from those who have 100 employees to those who have 75 or more employees. It is recommending continued obligation for the preparation of employment equity plans, consultation with employees, the compliance with employment equity plans and the reporting requirements. It is requiring or putting in place some sanctions to require that those things actually happen.
It is also recommending that Employment and Immigration Canada be the monitoring body for the act and the Canadian Human Rights Commission be the enforcement agency. Most important, it is also recommending the establishment of a national employment equity strategy which would include a public education program which I believe and the committee believes is a most important significant part of all this.
In summary, the committee has tried in its recommendations to strike a balance between the legitimate concerns of employers and the legitimate concerns of the designated groups under the act.


Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Liberal Party.
As Judge Rosalie Abella in her report Equality in Employment, the Royal Commission Report stated: "Few matters deserve the attention of law more than the right of every individual to have access to the opportunity of demonstrating full potential".
Over the course of the last six years, the government has failed to show commitment toward employment equity. In order for employment equity legislation to be effective, it must cover as many individuals and groups as possible. It must have significant sanctions in order to ensure employment equity. It also must provide that everyone who does business with the federal government ought to be covered.
We in the Liberal Party believe that if you do business with the federal government, if you are employed by the federal government or any board, agency or commission, that the Employment Equity Act ought to be complied with. We believe that any company that has 15 or more employees ought to be covered by the act. We believe that grant recipients ought to be covered by the act. We are pleased that the committee adopted our recommendation that political parties and Parliament be covered by the act. We believe that the Human Rights Commission ought to have the authority to prosecute on its own initiative.
While we participated in and support many of the recommendations in the majority report, we felt compelled to issue a minority report because we believe that although the majority report does move a long way in terms of improving the present Employment Equity Act, it does not go far enough, and the employment equity legislation will not be fair enough even if the recommendations of the committee are adopted.
So, Madam Speaker, we are tabling a minority report to the report tabled by my hon. friend.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I see the hon. member for Comox-Albemi rising. I think he may want to read article 35 of our Standing Orders. He will see that when there is a minority report only one committee member from the Official Opposition may rise and give a succinct explanation.


Mr. Riis:: Madam Speaker, I think you have explained what a Standing Order is, and we are all aware of that. Considering the importance of this issue before the House and all the work that the committee has done, I would like to seek unanimous consent from the House to allow the member for Comox-Albemi to make a short statement on his minority report as well.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Of course, if there is unanimous consent I am quite prepared to recognize the hon. member. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I do not have unanimous consent.
May 14, 1992

Routine Proceedings


ENERGY, MINES AND RESOURCES AUTHORIZATION FOR STANDING COMMITTEE TO TRAVEL
Charles A. Langlois: That in relation to its study on sustainable energy and mineral development, eight members and one staff of the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources be authorized to travel to Kananaskis, Alberta from May 20 to May 21, 1992 to attend the conference on industry and hydrogen.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Does the hon. parliamentary secretary have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the honour to present to the House a petition signed by a number of my constituents living in the Napanee area situated in my riding of Hastings- Frontenac-Lennox and Addington.
These petitioners are supporting the government's commitment as stated in the Speech from the Throne of May 13, 1991 to introduce legislation which could permit a national referendum on the Constitution.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of western Canadians who point out that two Canadians, Christine Lamont and David Spencer, have been sentenced to 28 years each in a Brazilian prison and there they have suffered miscarriages of justice, cruel
and unusual treatment and certainly very clear discrimination in the sentencing and parole decision.
The petitioners point out that the cumulative effect of these irregularities provide ample ground for the Government of Canada to seek a remedy on their behalf and are calling upon Parliament to urge the Secretary of State for External Affairs to request the Government of Brazil to expel Christine Lamont and David Spencer and return them to Canada.


NATIONAL REFERENDUM
Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Madam Speaker, I am presenting this petition on behalf of my constituents of Simcoe Centre who have signed this petition: "The undersigned believe that constitutional amendments should be ratified by the people of Canada via a referendum".


VIOLENCE
Mr. Garth Tlirner (Halton-Peel):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present to the House petitions signed by more than 1,500 of my constituents, petitions which were prompted by the murder in August 1991 of Nina de Villiers. These constituents feel that vulnerable persons in our society are currently not being protected adequately by our justice system. They feel that crimes of violence against people are intolerable and constitute the abhorrent crime that society faces. They are concerned that sentencing in crimes of violence does not appropriately reflect society's intolerance and abhorrence of these particular crimes.
They are petitioning this House to review the justice system so that there is more protection for vulnerable people in our society.


COURT CHALLENGES PROGRAM
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise under Standing Order 36 and present a petition signed by many of my constituents from Malpeque, Prince Edward Island. It concerns the cancellation of the Court Challenges Program by the government.
This petition states: "Whereas the Court Challenges Program has been, should continue to be an essential tool in the evolution of constitutional rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms accessible to all Canadians seeking justice from the courts, the Court

May 14, 1992
Routine Proceedings
Challenges Program is an inexpensive government initiative that directly benefits all Canadians and costs approximately 10 cents per person per year".
These petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to consider the advisability of reinstating the Court Challenges Program.


RECOGNITION OF STATUS OF CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to table a petition signed by hundreds of Quebec residents from Montreal, Quebec City, Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot and several other regions.
The petitioners state that whereas many Canadians object as a matter of conscience to any war-like or military activity and do not in any way wish to participate in such activity; whereas a large number of Canadians refuse to be obliged to kill or be killed in a conflict they condemn or deplore; and above all, whereas some religious groups have already obtained recognition of their status as conscientious objectors in Canada, for instance, Quakers and Mennonites; and whereas the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes the right of all Canadians to freedom of opinion and protecting freedom of conscience means people have the right to refuse to do armed military service and to withdraw from that service for reasons of conscience, these citizens of Canada pray and call upon the government and the Parliament of Canada to pass legislation that will recognize the status of conscientious objector in the case of individual Canadians who wish to claim that status.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, as well I have the honour to present a petition which is signed by residents of Langley, Burnaby, Vancouver and North Vancouver, British Columbia which notes two Canadians, Christine Lamont and David Spencer, who have been sentenced to 28 years each in a Brazilian prison have suffered miscarriages of justice, cruel and unusual treatment in Brazilian prisons and discrimination in sentencing and parole; that the cumulative effect of these irregularities provides ample ground for the Government of Canada to seek a remedy on their behalf; that the only relief available from such severe punishment is for Canada to request expulsion in accordance with Brazilian law.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the Secretary of State for External Affairs to request the Government of Brazil to expel Christine Lamont and David Spencer and return them to Canada.


NATIONAL REFERENDUM
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands- Canso):: Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to present a petition signed by residents of Cheticamp in my riding of Cape Breton Highlands-Canso.
The petition calls upon Parliament to enact legislation providing for a referendum of the people binding upon Parliament to accept or reject constitutional amendments proposed by the government.
The second part is the acceptance or rejection of the proposed amendments to be determined by a majority vote of the total votes cast in the whole of Canada together with a majority vote in the majority of provinces with the territories being given the status of one province.
This is signed by residents of Cheticamp in my constituency.


Mr. A1 Horning (Okanagan Centre):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am pleased to present three petitions with approximately 200 names from my riding of Okanagan Centre requesting that the Government of Canada conduct a binding referendum on any constitutional amendments.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition similar to the one that the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway presented on behalf of Christine Lamont and David Spencer.
Basically what the petitioners request is that the Secretary of State for External Affairs request the Government of Brazil to expel Christine Lamont and David Spencer and return them to Canada.
May 14, 1992


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
Charles A. Langlois: I ask, Madam Speaker, that all questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall all questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tuesday, May 12, consideration of the motion of Mr. Lewis that Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and the conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of Correctional Investigator, be read the third time and passed.
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I wish to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 33(2)(a), because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended by 34 minutes beginning at one o'clock p.m.


Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Madam Speaker, I am privileged to be here today to speak on this very important piece of legislation, Bill C-36, an act respecting corrections and conditional release and detention of offenders and to establish the office of correctional investigator.
It is an important piece of legislation not only for what it does but largely for what it does not do. We have a chance, in looking at this piece of legislation, to determine where we are going as a society with respect to our corrections.
This act will replace the Penitentiary Act, the Parole Act and, in the 19 year use of the Inquiries Act, to authorize the office of the correctional investigator.
When I say that we look at this bill in conjunction with other legislation, I mean just that, that we are not really
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making the strides we should be making with respect to corrections. This bill only gives us half of the package.
On saying that, I want to congratulate the member for Scarborough West, the member for Scarborough- Rouge River and the member for Moncton from our party who have done an excellent job on this bill and have brought this bill to the piece of legislation we see today. They worked hard, presented a great many amendments, quite a few of which were accepted by the government. I want to thank the government for its conciliatory attitude.
The reason I say that this is only one-half of a package is because we still do not have the sentencing reform. We were told that this was to be a complete overhaul of corrections, parole and sentencing. This is what the government told us we would be getting, yet we do not have the sentencing reform, which is really the first part of the whole question. When in court the first question dealt with is sentencing, then corrections is dealt with, then parole is dealt with. But we do not have the first part of the package. Therefore, we are dealing with the second and third parts without having the first part.
As the member for Scarborough West said in his excellent speech before the House, this bill was introduced on November 4. There has been plenty of time for the government to compile what it wants to bring forward on the sentencing reform and bring it before the House with the common sense understanding that we would be debating the whole question at the same time or at least within a close proximity of time. Instead of just dealing with corrections and parole, we would be dealing with sentencing as well.
I feel that is not too much to ask of the government, yet we do not have it and I feel that is extremely unfortunate.
What we are going to have to do, of course, when we get the first part is then review the second and third parts again in light of what we have received with respect to sentencing reform.
However, at this point, because we are supportive of this bill, I do not want to dwell only on the questions that create problems, but I want to deal with a couple of areas, as well, where I think we have made some improvements. There are two areas with respect to corrections and parole where we really have to give a lot

May 14, 1992
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of attention. I feel that some attention has been given in these areas.
The first relates to the victims. It is important not to forget the victim when we are talking about incarceration and parole. The victim may be very concerned about what the offender will do when he or she is released from incarceration, even on a day parole. We have to be able to allow the victim to state his or her concern when dealing with this question of day passes or even parole itself.
The bill gives some consideration to this question. In clause 26, the rights of the victim, including giving the victim the eligibility dates and the review dates applicable to the offender under the act with respect to temporary passes or parole, are dealt with. It is important so that the victim, knowing the horror which he or she may have with regard to somebody being released from incarceration, can make some presentation to the Parole Board or to other authorities which could have a bearing on this question of parole.
Perhaps there is something which the victim will want the Parole Board or the officials to consider. That is not to say that if there is an alarmed victim that it is going to stop a parole or even temporary passes. It is important that this perspective be taken into consideration.
Also there are people who are victims, not in the legal sense, but in the actual physical or mental sense whereby the person who is incarcerated has caused some physical or mental damage to a person who either was not able to or decided not to or for whatever reason did not have that offence heard before a court of law, but may wish to bring before the Parole Board or other agency his or her concerns relating to the offender's passes or parole. I think that is important and this bill does take that into consideration.
It is also important to note the second area which has to do with native and aboriginal justice. There is a very important consideration here. Under clause 81, the minister:
-may enter into an agreement with an aboriginal community for
the provision of correctional services to aboriginal offenders and for
payment by the Minister or by a person authorized by the Minister in respect of the provision of those services.
That is important and I cannot stress this too much because we have not been successful in dealing with our aboriginal people with respect to corrections. Our correctional incarceration has not worked with respect to aboriginal people and we have to review that in total in conjunction with other aspects of native justice.
In particular we are finding the aboriginal people are more resentful as a result of their incarceration and the fact that any treatment or rehabilitation factor is not being utilized or not having any effect.
For the ability to be able to say to the aboriginal people we are going to put them in a facility in an aboriginal community and allow the aboriginal communily to work with this offender I think is a major step forward.
Clause 82 of the bill states:
The Service will establish a National Aboriginal Advisory
Committee, and may establish regional and local aboriginal advisory
committees, which shall provide advice to the Service on the
provision of correctional services to aboriginal offenders.
I feel that is a major step forward because it is absolutely vital that we not bury our heads in the sand and say that by locking away offenders we have solved the problem. If there is anything that has become evident in our society, it is that we need changes to our correctional system and this bill does provide some of these changes.
I listened very carefully to the petition presented by the member for Halton-Peel and the concern that people in his riding have with respect to violence in our society. I understand the point he is making and I sympathize with the concerns of the people in his riding because there is a very great fear out there.
In my constituency of Cape Breton-The Sydneys, we always took pride in the fact we were a non-violent society, a close society, a close community and cared for one another. We have had 10 murders in the last 22 months and that was before the horrendous shooting of four people in a McDonald's restaurant in Sydney River. This is just cold-blooded murder and we cannot ignore it exists in our communities. No community is exempt. If it
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can happen on Cape Breton Island it can happen anywhere in this country and we have to realize that.
Frankly I do not think we are meeting the needs of the community. As much as this legislation is an improvement it does not go nearly far enough. Perhaps the changes need not be made in this legislation itself but other pieces of legislation should be brought forward. I do not want to restrict the mobility and the thought processes of the government such as they are in dealing with the needs of our society at the present time.
I was listening last night to the MacNeil-Lehrer Report and they were discussing the recent riots in Los Angeles and actual racism in the cities in the United States. It was frightening, not because of what took place during the riots but that the needs and the questions in our society go unanswered. We seem to be going headlong into more urban problems, more violence, more misunderstanding, and more ignorance of the needs of our visible minorities.
One of the members of the panel that was discussing this question-and I say this just having heard the minister's statement on South Africa and the responses presented by the two opposition parties-one of the black Americans in discussing this whole subject said that in the United States a larger percentage of blacks are incarcerated than is the case in South Africa.
That is a very distressing statistic because we know what the situation is in South Africa. Maybe that country is not dealing with as much in corrections or what have you and there are various ways of ignoring that statistic and saying that it is not of vital importance.
Whatever excuse or explanation a person may want to give it is a vital statistic. It is important to realize that that is the case.
Also they talked about the fact that in the Los Angeles riots there were 8,000 people arrested. How is the judicial system going to deal with 8,000 people arrested if they are going to try each of these people?
And what if they do not try them? What if they say there were too many people arrested and they cannot possibly try them all? They are going to be given suspended sentences or whatever you want to do. What
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is that going to do for the shopkeepers or the victims of the violence in Los Angeles?
I will tell you what it is going to do. It is going to cause a further breakdown of respect for law and order and for our justice systems in North America. We have to be able to deal with violence when it occurs. We cannot have laws which say that those who are white can get certain treatment and those who are black do not get the same treatment because they are members of a visible minority. We cannot say that because someone's store was damaged and looted during the riot, that because there was so much lawlessness, the injustice that was done to them cannot be dealt with.
If we start saying that, if we start saying because it is group violence we cannot deal with it, but if it is one individual who is committing the crimes one at a time that is okay, our system can deal with it.
If we do that we are going to cause animosity toward the victim, naturally, and we are going to cause a complete misunderstanding and a tension in our various multicultural communities.
It is absolutely ludicrous to deal with these situations the way we are dealing with them and to say that because we are in Canada this cannot happen, that is in the United States.
We saw the situation in Toronto. It may not have been as extensive as it was in Los Angeles but it was no less important to consider. It was no less serious.
We have to deal with this question. We have to deal with the question that if we are going to have urban unrest we have to be prepared to have the law support it, and we have to understand why that lawlessness occurred. We have got to not wait until the lawlessness takes place, until the violence takes place. We have to deal with it beforehand.
The Minister of Justice in response to the situation in Toronto said that it is difficult to organize a meeting that would co-ordinate the services of the federal, provincial, and municipal officials.
It takes time. We do not want to do something before we are really ready to make sure it is done properly. It will probably be a year before we can have a conference dealing with these urban problems, but do not worry. I have talked to the mayors of the major cities and asked them to come back to us concerning their problems.

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Whoopee. What kind of a response is that to the needs that exist in our urban centres in this country. It is absolute neglect. It is absolutely burying their heads in the sand to the situation and to what needs to be done to correct the situation. To say that there is no racism in our cities is wrong. There is racism in our cities. The fact is we have to face that.
The first thing to do is to face it, and then to deal with it. First, government has got to face it. We have to deal with this very, very serious problem which seems to be getting worse. We seem to be having more drug related crimes.
The Minister of National Revenue, and I congratulate him, has been able to stop a lot of the narcotics from coming across the border. That is important, but the fact is in Nova Scotia there is very little being done to stop drugs from being landed. In our cities, there does not seem to be any shortage of drugs.
Either they are making it here in Canada or there is more coming across the border. I would suggest that illegal importation of drugs into this country is becoming more and more of a serious problem all the time. With the drug related problems comes violence, violence against women, violence against the family in general which feeds industries like pornography, particularly child pornography.
Where is the legislation that is needed in this question? We do not even have the first part of the problem with which we are dealing today. We do not have sentencing reform. The Minister of Justice, whose job it is to bring this legislation before the House, has not brought this legislation forward.
I suggest that we are not dealing with the question. In fact, we are not even keeping the same distance behind the problem. We are falling farther and farther behind the problem. We are saying in this country that we will wait until we have unanimous consent on something. It is obvious that we cannot wait any longer, but we are not anticipating. We are not dealing with the symptoms. We are not looking at the problem and saying: "What is the situation going to be in the future?"
I can say what the situation is going to be in the future if the government does not do something. If the government does not try to understand and deal with the problems of visible minorities in the cities, if the government is not going to support laws and to have reasonable
laws so that the police will know what they have to do and to act in a measured and responsible way so that the police morale is not absolutely downtrodden and we have the worst of both worlds, as seems to be the case in our society today, we are going to have a problem of incarceration that we never had before because we are not going to be able to incarcerate everybody who is going to be breaking the law in this country.
They would be breaking the law because they do not have suitable housing, they do not have jobs and feel that this is the only outlet. Nothing excuses breaking the law, but the fact of the matter is it is going to become an increasing regularity if this government does not do more to deal with the problem.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Madam Speaker, I have a question and a comment. I will tell the hon. member my question right away.
My question is: Why is the Liberal Party supporting this bill?
The comment I have is this: The hon. member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys must know that when this government talks about law and order, it is full of lawn ornaments. It tinkers with things. It is not doing anything substantial to make our communities safer for Canadians.
The problem is that we have to deal with this. This government says it is for law and order. What this government has failed to do is to give an emphasis to crime prevention. That is the key. That is what will make our cities and our country safer.
Together with that failure to deal with crime prevention on behalf of the Mulroney Conservative government and its economic policies, the trade deal with the United States, which I see the Liberals now support, and the social policies which have made so many people unemployed in our country, we are going to Americanize Canada. We are already seeing it. Toronto was a little bit of a mini Los Angeles.
We are seeing a government that in fact is doing nothing for law and order. It is simply tinkering. Surely, this parole act is another example of a bill that is doing exactly that, tinkering and purporting to say to the Canadian people: "We are for law and order, we are going to make things tougher".
May 14, 1992

We all know that what we have to do in the prison system is isolate violent offenders. We have to get some resources and some treatment in there. Then we have to get outside that system and prevent people from going into prison because it is often too late to do much when they go into prison.
I know my colleague, the member for Esquimalt- Juan de Fuca, is going to speak later on this morning about the prison system. I just want to come back to that question. I want to tell the hon. member before I sit down that yesterday in Montreal there was a meeting of people from all over the world to talk about crime prevention. I had a chance on Monday to meet with some of these people.
I got the manifesto of the Conservative Party in Britain on crime and law and order. I got the manifesto of the Labour Party in Britain. I got the policy in France and I will show the hon. member some writings that came from some very thoughtful Americans who want to change their country's policy. The key element of the policy people in those three countries where it is implemented in Britain and in France is to get local, to get into crime prevention, to get away from just providing more cops and more jails, to provide some real resources for people and real local control and talk about community safety. That is where it is at. That is crime prevention.
I ask the hon. member: Does he agree with me that this government has done nothing on that approach, not one thing? There is not one bill that deals with crime prevention.
We dealt with the estimates the other day. Was there anybody in the department that dealt with crime prevention? No. There is a heck of a lot of money for rich lawyers to prosecute in Vancouver especially and in Montreal and Toronto, the government's friends. Those budgets went up. However, the budget for crime prevention went down.
Does the hon. member agree with me that this Conservative government has done nothing for crime prevention? Will the hon. member tell me succinctly in plain language why his party is supporting this bill which I just think continues with a whitewash.


Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Madam Speaker, I want to deal with the hon. member's question first because I think that is my fault. I think I misled him on that.
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I was speaking about there being some consideration for victims now, the needs of victims and the feelings of victims and there is now a beginning in dealing with incarceration of aboriginals and the treatment of aboriginals and incarceration perhaps in aboriginal communities. I said that that was a step forward and we supported it.
I meant to go on and say that this bill does not go far enough and that the Liberal Party will not be supporting the bill.
The hon. member is right, I left that out. I thank him for bringing it to my attention because this bill is not sufficient. As I went on to say, I felt it was very insufficient. The hon. member is correct. As we heard yesterday in committee when the minister was there, not only is nothing being done for crime prevention but what is being said is misleading. The government is saying that there is money going forward for crime prevention but most of it, of course, is in the area of drug and family violence. The money is not for prevention. The money is for dealing with crimes after they have occurred. However, the government is calling it crime prevention. I think that is misleading. I agree with the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam that there is nothing being done, literally nothing, on crime prevention and that is a travesty.
In fact, in the budget for the Department of Justice, in the estimates, I think it is on pages 10 and 11, we see that they actually come in under what they estimated. There is a 10 per cent decrease in justice spending for 1992-93 over what was predicted would be the budget in 1991-92. Two of the areas where it has reduced expenditures are on family violence and on drug trafficking and drug related problems.
It is a tragedy. It is an absolute tragedy that the government is just burying its head. It has no idea what is going on in our urban communities and has no idea on how to deal with it. I feel that the sense of frustration that exists has been manifested in the petitions presented by the hon. member for Halton-Peel and their concern about violence in our communities. It reflects the fact that the situation is out of control and the government does not know how to deal with it.

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Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to participate in this debate today because the bill, of course, is a very important one for my riding of Kingston and the Islands where there are so many federal penitentiaries. When a bill is introduced that provides significant changes to the Penitentiary Act, it is very important that I try to make some comment on the substance of the legislation that is before the House.
I agree with the comments that have been made by my colleague from Cape Breton-The Sydneys that really what is going on here is, in large measure, window dressing and the government is failing to address some of the major issues of crime and punishment in Canada. Those particularly relate to the question of alternative measures and programs within federal penitentiaries, which in my view are not affected significantly by the passage of this legislation.
Part of the problem is the lack of funding for these programs and the cutbacks I learn about on a regular basis during the course of my visits to federal institutions. Those cutbacks, I submit, are at the root of the problem in dealing with corrections in this country.
As I listened to the Solicitor General make his opening speech in the debate the other day and to his parliamentary secretary, the hon. member for Niagara Falls, I could not help but recall lines from The Mikado. The parliamentary secretary said, for example, and I quote from page 10576 of Hansard:
All I can say is that unless you give a sentence that is commensurate in people's minds with the seriousness of the crime people will lose that confidence.
He was referring to confidence in the system. Of course we all know the jingle from The Mikado: "My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time to let the punishment fit the crime-the punishment fit the crime". The parliamentary secretary reminded me very much of that line as he spoke in glowing terms about how this bill was designed to correct the problem of sentencing and punishment in Canada.
Unfortunately, it fails to do that because as my hon. colleague has indicated and as the hon. member for Scarborough West has indicated in his very able speech in this debate, the government has failed to bring
forward its sentencing legislation which is an integral part of the corrections proceedings in Canada and which should have been dealt with at the same time as the penitentiary amendments that are brought forward in this Bill C-36.
I could quote from an editorial in the Calgary Herald. No one in the House would maintain that the Calgary Herald is anything but a supporter of the government. After all, it is in a city that elects more Tories per capita than I think any other in the country. I do not think there is anything but a Tory member from Calgary. Of course the government House leader is one of them. This is what they wrote in his paper. I would have thought he might have prevailed on his colleague, the Solicitor General, to do something more substantive.
Let me read from this editorial that appeared on October 10:
Keeping dangerous criminals in jail longer, as federal Solicitor General Doug Lewis proposes to do, will undoubtedly make Canadians feel safer.
So will the lengthy roster of parole related housekeeping measures the Solicitor General intends to implement.
But Lewis's changes won't necessarily make Canada a safer place.
Without concentrated efforts aimed at rehabilitating criminals already in jail and preventing potential offenders from falling into the vicious cycle of violent behaviour, Lewis's well meaning but short-sighted efforts can have little real impact.
I agree with the sentiment expressed in that editorial. I could go on reading it, but I think I have made the point.
What we are doing here is missing an opportunity when we are revising the Penitentiary Act to do something significant, to help with the rehabilitation of offenders in Canada. I am repeatedly faced with the argument, as are many members, if we just lock these people up we will solve the problem. With great respect we will not.
Sentences come to an end. Offenders are released. Without some meaningful programs to try to reintegrate offenders into the community and provide them with opportunities to obtain gainful employment, to lead something approaching a normal lifestyle on release, we will simply postpone the continuing problems with the offender and leave society at the mercy of these people upon their release.

This bill may answer the criticisms that some people are not held in jail long enough, but it does not do anything to address the serious problem of rehabilitation which I think is so significant and so important in the area of corrections.
For example, to be quite specific about some of the provisions in the bill, there is no distinction made in conditional release between first-time offenders and repeat offenders. In other words, one can be released from prison on terms whether or not one is a first-time or repeat offender. There might have been a distinction so that the person who has re-offended has a much more significant hurdle to overcome in being released. Unfortunately none is provided for in the legislation.
What is far more serious is the change in the law that will allow-and it is in the bill-non-violent offenders to be released on early parole even where the Parole Board believes they are likely to re-offend. That to me is a serious mistake.
What we seem to be saying in this bill is if it is a violent offence you will be held in. If it is a non-violent offence for which you are serving time, but a serious one like break and enter into a house, theft on a massive scale from a store, or a break-in of a bank which was not actually a robbery with violence, release will be automatic even if it is expected re-offending will take place.
This kind of distinction may be very nice for members of the Solicitor General's department to think as important, but I suggest in the eyes of Canadians there is veiy little difference between a person who robs a bank at gunpoint even it is is a toy pistol and somebody who breaks into the bank in the middle of the night and makes off with much more cash or breaks into a person's home when he is away and steals everything the person has.
There is a problem here in recognition of the seriousness of offences, the rigid classification that has been adopted and the apparent carte blanche that is given to the authorities to release persons. In fact the direction to release persons early is in my view inappropriate.
The Parole Board has the ability to make judgments in these matters. The Parole Board has for years been making these kind of decisions. I suggest it is appropriate that it continue to do so. The change in the law is not a beneficial one.
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With one exception under this bill all inmates must be released after two-thirds of their sentence regardless of their behaviour and irrespective of whether the Parole Board considers they may re-offend. The exception is an important one, I agree, but the fact is that is now the rule.
I suggest it is inappropriate when we do not have before us sentencing legislation which affects the length of sentences. It is inappropriate when good behaviour is not one of the factors to be considered, because it takes away any incentive on the part of a person sentenced to an offence to attempt to respond to the treatment that he or she is receiving in the institution.
I am disappointed that the government has ignored advice on this issue, particularly advice that came from the Elizabeth Fry Society of Kingston that submitted a brief to the committee stating its opposition to lengthening periods of incarceration rather than looking at other measures that might assist in the rehabilitation of offenders and to providing for these automatic releases instead of incentives and inducements either to behave, to get out earlier or to minimize the length of the sentence in other ways.
These are not provided for in the bill. It is a disappointment that the government has moved in that way.
Finally there is no effective supervision of offenders who are released at the two-thirds point in their sentence. There is only the usual term that they be of good behaviour and keep the peace.
Mandatory supervision was an important part of corrections. I realize in some cases there was an inability because of staffing shortages to provide any effective supervision. That is regrettable. It was helpful in many cases. It provided offenders who were perhaps new to the community in which they were living, and certainly new to living outside prison after a period of time spent in incarceration, with someone to whom they could turn for advice and assistance. Parole officers and persons supervising the offender on mandatory supervision were those kinds of people. They were available. They were helpful. They could provide advice, assistance and direction.

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That is being removed in many cases, in part because of funding cuts and in part because of this legislation. I am disappointed the government has failed to provide the support services which are necessary for those newly released, particularly those who find themselves in a different community from which they came or who are released after an extended period in prison.
Sentencing and parole are tied together. If inmates are going to be released after two-thirds of their sentence, surely it is worth while looking at the length of the sentence. Here the government was urged to do exactly that and introduce the two bills at the same time. Instead we have one and there is no sign of the other. There is no indication, no promise from the minister that the other will be forthcoming in a reasonable time.
We are left in a situation where the National Parole Board will become powerless to deal with various offences. Judges will now know that whatever sentence they give, however inadequate they may feel it is or however heavy they may feel it is, it is going to be brought to an end at the end of two-thirds of the sentence regardless of the behaviour of the inmate. This must be a little disappointing from the point of view of the judiciary as well.
Finally the government dealt with the office of the correctional investigator and went through some kind of further indication of its obsession with secrecy. Surely the correctional investigator's report should have come to this House instead of to the Solicitor General.
What we have done here is that if the correctional investigator gets into a prison and uncovers an unholy mess, the report will go to the Solicitor General and not to Parliament. There will never be any public exposure of anything that goes wrong in a federal prison if it is investigated by the correctional investigator.
Why would the report not be made public? Why would the information not be available to members of Parliament directly, instead of to the Solicitor General? It is an obsession with secrecy and it is reflected in the government's rejection of certain amendments.
I want to turn to the amendment I obtained leave of the House to propose last week when we were debating the report stage of this bill. From 1834 until 1961 members of Parliament had the right to enter any federal prison. For the last 30 years of that period it was during
business hours, but for the first 100 years or so it was at any time. That right is not being given back in this bill.
I moved an amendment to provide for that right to be returned to members of Parliament. I suggest it is a worth-while right. It is something that should be considered by the House. We received an extremely weak answer from the acting parliamentary secretary to the minister on this issue. The minister himself did not respond. The parliamentary secretary said nothing about it in his speech the other day.
Frankly I was disappointed that we did not get some reasoned explanation as to why this was not done. I think I know what the reason is. I think the hon. member for Scarborough West knows what the reason is. The government is obsessed with secrecy. The government is very much afraid that if members of Parliament drop into a prison and see something is wrong-a guard has been beaten or an inmate has been beaten-maybe something would get out to the public that things were not just hunky-dory in a federal institution.
With its obsession about letting out that anything could possibly be wrong, the clamps will be put on. Regulations will be passed by Orders in Council that restrict access to members of Parliament, senators and judges so that they may visit prisons only under certain terms and conditions and frankly at times that are convenient or appropriate in the eyes of the head of the institution.


An hon. member:: Sanitized conditions.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: As my hon. friend from Hamilton West says, sanitized conditions.
I want to say openly in this House that I have never had any difficulty in entering any of the prisons in Kingston. When I have sought to go, I have always been welcomed and what I have wanted to visit has been made open and available to me.
However I must say that I do not tend to exercise my privileges at night. I do not tend to go at the crack of dawn, at five o'clock in the morning or something like that. I do not go at eight, nine, ten or even one o'clock in the morning. It does not happen. I go during the day, during regular business hours for the most part. I was
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there once in the evening. Always I have had no difficulty in entering the institution.
In fairness I normally call ahead and make an appointment. I do not think I have ever dropped in and said I would like to take a tour that day, walk around and see somebody. Often I have been told that someone is unavailable to come to the visiting area. I have said that was fine, that I would go to the cell and visit the inmate there.
I have done that frequently in various prisons in my area. I found the visits always easy to arrange. Possibly it causes a bit of annoyance to the staff that I am going to that particular location, but if that annoyance were there it was not expressed to me.
I do not see a problem with this but the government apparently does. It is not willing to allow members to use their judgment as to when to enter a prison. It is a matter that will be entirely at the discretion of the institutional head, as he is described in the legislation, and of course in accordance with the regulations issued by the cabinet.
It is a serious omission from this bill that this right is denied. Members of Parliament exercise the function of an ombudsman in our society in many instances. We deal with complaints from constituents on a host of issues. In my particular case the inmates in the institutions located in Kingston are clearly constituents for at least a certain purpose. They may well have a vote in the next election, although that is not entirely clear. They have it now under a court decision that is under appeal. Whether they are voters or not, they are still living there and they are still entitled to some representation from a member of Parliament.
That is true of persons living in institutions across this country. Many other members have institutions in their ridings where the men and women who live there and also the employees who work there, are entitled to representation.
Surely it is not an expectation that the only place a member of Parliament is going to see either a prison employee or an inmate will be at the member's office or at the employee's home. Surely there is an expectation that there could be a visit on site on property owned and operated by the Government of Canada which is represented in this House by cabinet and by all of us in a certain sense. Surely there is an expectation we might be able to visit on site and see people who are living there,
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who are being cared for or who are working for the Government of Canada.
Every member of this House could go to another government office such as the income tax office and visit the employees there and talk to them. Why are we not able to go to a prison at will and talk to people there?
There are restrictions on this one. There are restrictions on prisons, and they are all in this bill. I submit that the minister was ill-advised in rejecting the amendment as cavalierly as he did. He chose not to speak to it, not to give any answer as to why it was inappropriate.
It is merely a matter of fear and trembling on the part of the government and its obsession with secrecy, its obsession to ensure that something embarrassing is not released. I am disappointed.
I can only express some optimism that when this bill gets to the other place, the hon. senators will move appropriate amendments to correct this glaring omission from the legislation in accordance with a bill introduced in the other place by Senator Hastings some time ago which would have corrected the previous Penitentiary Act that is now being repealed and replaced by this new corrections bill.
In summary, my final message on this bill is that what Canadians need today for their own protection and for the safety of us all are not necessarily longer prison sentences and the locking up of inmates. Those can provide some temporary relief. What we need is to provide a healthy economic environment for Canadians so that the incentive to commit crime and to repeat crime after one offence is taken away. In fact, there would be an incentive to live a law-abiding and normal existence, working and taking part in Canadian society.
That is what the government should be providing. That is the kind of environment that it needs to create. Providing for additional lock-up at great expense to the taxpayer is not necessarily going to solve these problems. It is a temporary measure at best.
Instead of spending its time and energy on relatively minor but important updating of this act, the government would be better off spending its money trying to create a healthy economic environment in Canada, trying to create jobs for Canadians so that they are able to obtain employment on release from penitentiary or whatever it may be.

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We need to provide the necessary training and work experience in the institutions so that, on release, the persons who have been incarcerated are able to take their place as working partners in our communities. In fact, I am safe in saying that some of the programs that the government has have been worth while in that regard, but we need more of them and not further cuts as we have been having for the last few years.
I encourage the Solicitor General to follow up on that aspect of this bill instead of dealing entirely with legal, technical changes.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Madam Speaker, I would like to say at the outset that in speaking to this particular bill, I am handicapped by the fact that I actually have some knowledge about this subject. Beyond that, my comments will be relatively minor but somewhat concerned about the lack of focus of this bill.
First of all, we have to understand in dealing with this particular problem that we are really defining class. I have spent seven years of my life working in prisons as an administrator, as well as outside of prisons as a probation officer supervising paroles. It was some 30 years ago when I was last directly involved in institutions and services on parole and probation and frankly things have changed very little since that time.
We currently have a situation where money counts when it comes to criminal justice. The people who end up in jail are generally poor. Poor people make up the vast numbers of our population in prisons that cost us so dearly out of our annual budgets.
We also have the victims of crime who are generally overlooked except for lip-service with regard to rehabilitative services or support services after they have been victims of serious crimes.
The most obvious, glaring lack of service is in prevention. We have in this country tens of thousands of young people whom we hear about during Question Period who are not even adequately fed, let alone nurtured and sufficiently concerned about to ensure a minimum of criminal activity as a cause of that neglect. I am not suggesting that poverty is the only reason for criminal activity, but I am saying that a poverty background breeds the potential for the development of alienation which ultimately leads to criminal activity.
We have the phenomenon of a breakdown of a family
and we lament about it, saying that we wish we could return to the old values. Wishing for the return of those values and actually going back to them are two different things. The reality is that a significant number of families in poverty are single parent families. Single parent families, by their very nature, are marred by the fact that one person, usually a young woman, is responsible for not only raising the children, but being the bread-winner and also the home-maker at the same time. For a significant number of these people, the only means of income should they wish to spend the time with their family, is welfare.
We actually have institutionalized in North America a welfare family system that is known in the United States as an under-class and here in Canada just blandly as the poor.
We have talked many times about altering the social welfare system, the support systems, in terms of economics for these families, but we have done very little to radically alter the kind of structures that these people must operate in.
The consequences of our neglect of the economic and social problems relative to this group of people is that it is a breeding ground for a continuous supply of deviant behaviour by very young people.
In the past we used the classic orphanage or training school as an arena within which we sent young boys or young girls for "correction". We have been shocked to learn, over the last few years, the response to some of the activities of the training schools that are not just confined to religious communities, but are actually the practices, tragically and unfortunately, in many state-run training schools.
We have now evidence of the continuation of these kinds of problems by seeing in every large urban area very young women, ages 15, 16 and 17 and younger, whose only economic source to survive in our society is prostitution. I must say, tragically, not only just young women, but young men as well. The free enterprise system allows the only marketable thing that they have to be marketed on city streets right across this country.
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We have a serious problem of youth prostitution, and again I repeat, no preventive services.
How does a government morally justify a high level debate about some minor corrections in the correction services when in actual fact it avoids discussing the real problems that exist in real lives in every part of this country? Does anyone in this Chamber think it is by accident that a young woman or a young man ends up on the street as a prostitute? Does anybody think it is purely by happenstance or the uncontrollable lack of will that creates the number of young, poor people who end up in our institutions or on our welfare rolls? Is there anybody in this Chamber who believes that the very breeding ground for the kind of violence that we see in our communities is no one's fault, that it just happens and we do not know the reasons for it and we do not know what to do about it?
As a fact, this Chamber's antecedents, through many parliamentary reports, have time and time again laid out the problems in the corrections field, only to find time and time again that governments of the day have lacked the will to deal with the real problems.
When a child is without love and security from its own natural parents, it is the responsibility of the state, i.e., the rest of the community, to ensure that what can ever be replaced for that child must be replaced. It cannot be replaced in the classic orphanages. We have found out now what a failure they were. It cannot be replaced in training schools. The best effort is given through foster homes or alternate options for that child.
Do we really provide service that is adequate for children in those foster homes? When I worked as a social worker, the maximum case-load was around 80. Now we have social workers in this country with caseloads of 300, 400 and 500 children in foster homes. Do we really know what kind of service we are providing? No we do not. Is it predictable that some children will end up in crime? Yes it is. As a matter of fact, the last place to go is to the professionals who work in this field: the psychiatrists, the psychologists and the social workers. All you have to do is look in any community and the neighbourhood will be able to tell you what child is heading for trouble.
Who of us in this Chamber has not sat at our own kitchen table and said that if somebody does not do something for Johnny or Susie, soon they will be in
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trouble. All of us have said it in our own communities, in our own neighbourhoods. We know and sense, as we see children grow up in the areas we live in, that some of those children are going to be in trouble and we also know that there are no real adequate services for them.
We do not supply the school districts with the wherewithal to assist services in the classroom. We do not focus preventive services right at the lowest possible level in the community. We do not ask the religious communities nor do we ask the existing public organizations to co-ordinate efforts toward prevention of crime through better child protection.
As a result of the difficult economic times we have in this country and the number of children who we are able to define right now as living in poverty, any one of us is able to say that a percentage of these children will indeed become our criminals in the next generation.
I want to read a quote from a Canadian Police Chiefs Association brief. This is the police of Canada making this statement, not a social worker, not a parliamentarian but the police of Canada making this statement and this appeal through their Canadian police association brief. "The answer to the crime problem is simple. We must eliminate poverty, hunger, prejudice, violence, drug use and mental instability. Additionally, we should provide quality education for all and stable employment to everyone". The Canadian police association brief.
Hardly a Liberal Party statement. Hardly a New Democratic Party statement. Hardly a statement by the Conservative government. This is not a political statement by a political organization; this is a statement made by those people who work in the front line of these problems every single day.
What has been this government's response? Window dressing. This bill is simply nothing more, as my colleague from the Liberal Party said, than window dressing.
In the case of my own colleague, the member for Brant, who has worked tirelessly along with other members on the committee to try to bring about some effective changes, there is a sense of great disappointment of the elephant labouring forth and bringing into existence a mouse.


Mr. Harvard:: At least a gerbil.


David Barrett: At least a gerbil my colleague says.

May 14, 1992
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When is this government going to assume the responsibility that belongs to the government of the day to ensure that no child is in poverty?
When is it going to assume its moral and political responsibility to ensure that social services are available for children when they need them? When is it going to assume its responsibility as a tax collecting agency of the state to ensure that the priorities of tax collection and expenditures are on children? When is it going to assume its moral responsibility as the state as the family collapses because of a lack of support systems to deal with the problems of that family collapse? Pious words, phoney political speeches and lying promises do not solve this problem.
In the last federal election in this country the Prime Minister said that we would protect the social services and the social fabric to ensure that the impacts of any economic changes from trade agreements would not be felt. As we talk about this particular bill on corrections, we guarantee a supply of young offenders right across the spectrum in terms of drug abuse, in terms of violent crime and in terms of prostitution simply because of the economic devastation that has been wreaked upon this country by this government's economic policies with absolutely no moral sense of responsibility of picking up the pieces.
It was this government that told the Canadian people that the Canadian safety net, built up over so many years by consensus and previous federal administrations, both Liberal and Conservative, on a mixed economy basis, had a consensus about social responsibility in this country. In the last 50 years we have never seen such devastation to ordinary folks at the low end of the scale as we have under a laissez-faire, right-wing government that is neo-Conservative and comes in with this kind of claptrap bill to suggest somehow it is dealing with the problem.
The Tories are not even dealing with the problem and worse, they are not even dealing with the cause. Who is it who can justify the fact that they are capping social service expenditures right across this country when young people are on the streets as prostitutes? Who is it who can justify the capping of social expenditures while young people are dropping out from schools at a rate of 30 per cent before they finish high school? Is that the legacy this government wants to be known by?
As a politician, I have no hesitation in branding that legacy into the forehead of the less than human face of the Tory government in this country. You can go to any city and see the consequences of this social devastation. You can go to any town and village and see unemployed young people desperately looking for a place in this society in which they can express themselves in a positive manner. You can see the devastation of drug abuse, prostitution and violence simply because they are a homeless, faceless group in our society, totally neglected and have no idea of what the responsibility of this Chamber ultimately is in their lives.
Go into the urban areas and speak to a single mother and ask her how she gets by on her welfare payments and still has the time, the energy and the commitment to give comfort and love to her child. It is all right for the later day yuppies who are privileged in our society by a rapidly changing tax system that allows the wealthy to have nannies and day care for their children. The poor end of the scale that needs these basic support services for families, for crime prevention, if nothing else, is being left out.
To burden this House with a bill that is fraught with all kinds of political jargon about somehow changing things in our society is to make a mockery of the whole system that we say we are committed to as politicians.
How do we morally justify the fact that in the last five years low income families have actually seen their disposable income reduced the first time since the Great Depression in this country? Who is it on the government side who is standing up and speaking for the poor? Who is it on the government side who is standing up and demanding basic services for young people? Who is it on the government side who is responsible to ensure that no
May 14, 1992

child goes to school hungry every day? Who is it on the government side who is responsible to ensure that children stay in school?
Crime prevention, as pointed out by the Police Association of this country, is what the focus should be. I repeat what the Police Association said in its brief:
"The answer to the crime problem is simple. We must eliminate poverty, hunger, prejudice, violence, drug use and mental instability".
Name one part of this bill that deals with these basic problems. Name one speech you have heard from a leading cabinet minister dealing specifically with this problem. Name one time when you heard an emotional comment from those on the cabinet bench saying that they too have been on the food lines and seen children waiting for food in this nation.
My colleague is right. I know that I am not known to make heavy, serious speeches. I said at the outset in my comments that I hesitated to speak because I happen to know something about this subject.
The bottom line of our value as politicians must be measured by the compassion and the sensitivity we have in dealing with public funds. Spending $50,000 for a photo opportunity of the Prime Minister with children around him and at the same time not having $50,000 available for preventative services for children is frankly not immoral, but amoral. It is hypocritical for this government to spend $15 million on productivity propaganda while at the same time family life in this whole country is under serious threat because of economic limitations.
It is amoral for this government to spend massive amounts of money on propaganda for self-aggrandizement and at the same time ignore the needs of humble people who have no idea of what the nature of politics is, what the nature of power is and who essentially are absolutely powerless in a system, with very little idea of its functioning.
How does it feel to walk down the streets of our great cities and see very beautiful young men and women selling their bodies on the streets? How does it feel, when we make pious speeches about other countries' problems, to see the huge line-ups of women and children waiting for food? What impact does it have on the government benches to know that women actually
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turn their children over to public agencies for the opportunity of better care and a foster home, rather than maintaining the child in the home themselves.
It is a fact that if you add up the amount of money the state pays to place a child in a home away from its parents, or a single parent, it is more, if there are two, three or four children involved, than what it costs to keep the family together. The focus is totally wrong. The whole approach begs questions about our serious commitment to the protection of the community.
The last comment I am going to make is about the protection of the community. If we are really concerned about the protection of people and property, crime must be prevented by being concerned about the causes of crime and the people who are involved and the victims.
I am disappointed in this bill. Needless to say, I am disappointed in this government. More than anything else, the need for an election in this country is embodied in this bill itself. It is a total failure to deal with the basic causes of social disruption in our society by a government that, in my opinion, long ago abandoned its moral commitment as the overseer of expenditures for the needs of people.
Needless to say, I will not be supporting this bill. I am proud to associate myself with members of the Liberal opposition and my own party in making these statements and being critical of a government that deserves to be criticized and, frankly, thrown out of office.


Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: I am pleased to rise in this, the highest court of the land, specifically on the third reading of Bill C-36 as put forward by the Solicitor General.
When announcing this legislation, the Solicitor General boasted that it was the most comprehensive parole reform we have seen in years. He also noted that through this legislation: "Protection of society is the primary objective of this act. The bill reflects the government's determination to restore public confidence in the corrections system".
These are noble words, but does the bill really take a strong stand in favour of protecting society? Does it tighten up day parole and temporary absences so that it meets the minister's own test: the protection of society and the restoration of public confidence in the system?

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Or, as we have heard time and time again from this notion of sentencing in only an indirect way. This is what side of the House, is it merely window-dressing?	Canadians have been asking for some time now.
My constituents, many people from southern Ontario and across this land know too well the tragedies that have befallen too many area residents in the recent past. Their names are painfully familiar: Klaudusz, Mahaffy, de Villiers, Anderson, Edwards, French.
The provisions of Bill C-36 cover parole and temporary absences of all inmates. What Canadians are really concerned about are dangerous offenders being released from prison on day passes, escorted or unescorted temporary absence. There is ample evidence of persons who, while at large from a penitentiary, have committed various violent acts that could have been avoided by detaining inmates until the expiration of their sentences.
As I have stated before, not all inmates are in prison for violent crimes, nor will many be repeat offenders. However, this bill, Bill C-36, does not afford society the protection it deserves.
On June 29, 1987 a penitentiary inmate by the name of Daniel Gingras escaped an escorted temporary absence while visiting the West Edmonton Mall for the occasion of his birthday. What an ideal place to wander off and make good an escape. Daniel Gingras was later apprehended by the police but only after murdering two people, for which he was later convicted of first degree murder on both counts.
Members of this House may also remember Allan Legere, who terrorized the Miramichi region of New Brunswick after having escaped while on escorted temporary absence in Moncton, New Brunswick. Legere was eventually convicted of murder as a result of his attacks after having escaped.
There are other individuals who, while not murderers, have nonetheless been convicted of serious offences such as sexual assault, which society today is demanding it be protected from. Bill C-36 does not offer any consolation, nor does it protect society as the minister suggests.
Half of the question of the protection of society cannot even be addressed at this point because of the absence of corresponding sentencing legislation. By moving certain time periods for mandatory release and temporary absences upwards, the minister is trying to toy with the
They do not want dangerous offenders let loose on the streets on day passes. They do not want temporary absences and day parole made so readily available.
At the time the minister introduced this bill, he said the Minister of Justice would be bringing in some changes to sentencing. So far this House can only rely on the half-hearted measures contained in this bill.
The bill attempts to draw a line through first time non-violent offenders and repeat dangerous offenders. More clearly, the bill tries to distinguish offences such as break and enter, robbery, violent sexual assaults and murder. For the so-called first time offender, the bill creates a revolving door through which these classes of inmates will go.
My colleague from Scarborough, the critic for the Solicitor General Official Opposition described it best when he noted that first time non-violent offenders will be mandatorily paroled after serving one-third of their sentence even if the National Parole Board believes they will commit further non-violent offences. Thlk about a rubber stamp.
This measure of mandatory release for first time non-violent offenders is one of the major parts of this bill. I ask this House, does this measure promote public safety as the minister has repeatedly stated? They are non-violent offences, after all. We are talking about house break-ins, for example.
Let us turn our attention to this for a moment because more than one constituent in my riding of Hamilton West has put the following scenario to me. What happens when a thief is alone in the house and unexpectedly the homeowner returns after an evening out? What ensues? What could happen in the heat of the moment when the thief with the TV set or the stereo system under his or her arm encounters the homeowners? Would he drop it, politely say excuse me and walk out the door? Maybe a fight will occur and then the incident does become violent.
Obviously the minister is running the risk of an incident like this happening again because of releasing the inmate after only one-third of his or her sentence, thereby increasing the odds of a violent offence.
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I want to congratulate my colleague from Scarborough West on one of his amendments relating to escorted temporary absences. In the bill, an inmate may seek an escorted temporary absence for medical, humanitarian and personal developmental reasons. My colleague rightly felt that personal development was too ambiguous a reason and moved an amendment which classified this last reason as personal development for rehabilitative reasons.
As my colleague also noted, there is an absence of legislation dealing with the rehabilitation of inmates. We are not helping those inmates who are within the prison walls. Much of the rehabilitation for inmates is done by sociologists and psychiatrists and other professionals.
There is another area in which the public wants action. It wants serious programs for inmates that will prepare those inmates for reintegration back into society after serving time in jail. That is an example of constructive results from programs on which you spend money.
In the past, parole devices such as escorted temporary absences and day parole were used to bring inmates back into society on a gradual basis. I can see there is some merit in that but I cannot ignore the danger signals.
I want to read into the record the information I have from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 1990. In that year there were 234,836 reported cases of violent offences in Canada. These offences ranged from aggravated sexual assault to assault with a weapon, to discharging a firearm with intent of harm. Approximately
100.000	persons were charged.
In 1990 there were 1,000 reported cases of abduction in Canada. Roughly 100 persons were charged. There were
28.000	cases of robbery, with about 14,000 of those incidents involving firearms.
What I am saying, and this is my own belief, is that for violent crimes, inmates should have no access to day parole or escorted temporary absences and certainly never, under any circumstances, unescorted temporary absences.
I have introduced a private members' bill, Bill C-330, which is coming up for second reading debate in this highest court of the land very shortly. For violent offences, my bill would totally prohibit day parole or escorted and unescorted temporary absences for inmates unless for rehabilitative, medical or humanitarian reasons.
The one important caveat would be that for these
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reasons I just mentioned, permission would have to be sought from the Governor in Council, the federal cabinet. If dangerous offenders such as murderers desire a temporary, escorted absence, they would have to make that appeal to the ministers across the floor. They would decide whether to give permission.
This would be accountable responsibility and would remove that decision-making process from the National Parole Board and the corrections commissioner. Canadians are telling me in my constituency of Hamilton West-and I am sure in constituencies across this land that they demand accountability. Another aspect of that-bill which will shortly come to the floor of the House is that for first degree, premeditated murderers, life in prison would mean just that: life. There would be no chance for parole.
The bill before us today, Bill C-36, does not address any of that. It still allows for a judicial review after 15 years and eligibility for parole after 25 years. It is called the "faint hope" clause. It would be faint hope for the premeditated first degree murderer.
People say to err is human and after time in jail the person would be allowed the faint hope of returning to the outside world. My constituents are telling me that for the victims of that murder, the victims of that first degree premeditated, violent act and for their families, there is no faint hope.
Bill C-36 does not deal with that. I am reminded of the parable of the prodigal son. It is the story of the lost son who returns and is spumed by his brother because of the lavish feast set for his return. After bitterly disappointing his family for many years, the son who had been there for his dad demanded an answer. His father tells him that there will be more joy in heaven upon the redemption of one sinner than upon the 99 who need no redemption.
For those convicted criminals who have not committed what I see as the most serious crime of murder, these individuals must always be given the opportunity to redeem themselves and reintegrate themselves into society. There is no question of that. But for those who have committed first degree premeditated murder the redemption for them, I believe, is not to be found within society but within themselves.

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This bill before us today will certainly not get support from this side of the House. There is the lack of funding for those programs that are truly essential to deal with the root cause, the problems in our society today, in order to prevent the creation of more people to feed into a criminal justice system.
I am sure everyone would take great delight in closing down a federal prison or a jail in any community because there were not enough people to put in it. Would it not be a marvellous day one day to be able to do that?
When you think about it for a moment, the only way we are going to be able to do that is if life or property or the values of your neighbour are respected so that of course that crime is not allowed to happen in the first place.
Where do we start? We start with our youth. We direct our love and our compassion and our concern and our aid and do everything we possibly can to ensure that that young individual does not have to turn to a life of crime.
Sometimes it is not because they have turned to the life of crime, for whatever reason. It is because they have grown up in an environment that has caused them to turn to a life of crime. Has this government ever come forward with the fiscal policies or monetary policies or the programs for the children who are in need of help today in order that we can prevent filing them in a line and sending them off through a judicial system because they, through virtually no fault of their own, have had to turn to that life of crime?
Is it because we do not help those who are unable to find a job, because we have cut back on programs and services and the opportunities for those people who want a job, who want to be able to feed their families, whose children sit at home and must end up after school, sometimes not even in school, at the comer shopping mall? Is it because their parents did not have the money to provide or give them the opportunity to participate in the extra-curricular activities?
This government has presented for me personally, for my constituents in Hamilton West, for this side of the House, example after example after example over the last three and a half years, closing in on four years, of neglect of our communities.
I have always said that I have tried to bring Hamilton to Ottawa. Unfortunately what I have seen this government do is bring Ottawa to Hamilton. Be in your communities. Talk to your people. Get a feeling and understanding of what the root causes are of this problem. The government created Bill C-36 which is nothing more than weak-kneed rubber-stamping and toothless.
We have a future and our future is with our young people. Let us direct our resources at the programs that can ensure that we have youth who will one day hopefully grow up in a society that will not see all the problems which have caused the government to create a judicial system that is neglectful and that does not answer the questions that my constituents and other constituents want answers to today.


Jesse Philip Flis: Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member for Hamilton West and the previous speaker because both of them underlined looking at the causes of crime, something that this government is not doing.
My riding is in the Toronto area and his riding is in the Hamilton area. The bill says that the purpose of the bill is to contribute to a just, peaceful and safe society. It then says "assisting the rehabilitation of offenders and their re-integration into the community as law-abiding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and in the community".
The member has studied this bill quite closely. What is meant in this bill by community? If an offender from his riding, for example, commits a crime and then is rehabilitated back, would it be back to his community? The problem I am getting in my constituency is that people are being integrated back into the community, but the poor people of Parkdale-High Park are integrating former offenders from all over Ontario and from all over Canada.
Is it fair for the Parkdale community to be doing a job that other communities are supposed to be doing? Does the member have the same problem in Hamilton? How does he see the definition of community?
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Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Parkdale-High Park, for that question.
I suppose we can break it down by looking at the big picture. The big picture is that we seem to have a bill that is building and building and building. It gets larger and it is being adjusted and readjusted and worked on from a root or from its original conceptions, which I believe are very different today than they were years ago when we first started to put a law like this together. Maybe what we have to do is just set this bill aside, set this type of legislation or this direction aside for a moment. Let us start fresh. Let us clear our heads for a second.
This leads me into the second side of this issue. If there is a criminal who performs a criminal act, and we can break it down into the non-violent and violent, et cetera, and he performs that criminal act within the community of Parkdale-High Park or Hamilton West then the community deserves the payback from that individual who did the injustice in that community.
The member is absolutely right about where these criminals are being rehabilitated and where the day passes and parole and the rest of it is being carried out. We all know that it boils down to the almighty buck again with this government because it says that it is going to be more convenient. Go to a city and create a building where we can put all these individuals in order for them to try to rehabilitate themselves. What we are doing is we are taking these individuals, again lumping them all together with all their problems, where they are together in one building or one area, and then hopefully instructing them with books and what have you to rehabilitate themselves in order for eventual release back into the community, not into the community where the offence occurred, but in the community where the government has deemed that it will put all its resources together at one spot in order for that individual to be part of the lump of individuals that are eventually going to have to be released into the community.


Jesse Philip Flis: An abandoned liquor store in my riding.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: An abandoned liquor store in Parkdale- High Park, the member says. That is just terrific. Where is the rehabilitation, a cot in an abandoned liquor store?
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This bill does not put the emphasis on prevention and how to help an individual who is rehabilitatable, who has not committed the offence a second time but a first time, a non-violent offence, and went wrong somewhere along the way. Maybe we can help him or her adjust with the situation that created that individual to carry out that particular crime. Maybe they are very rehabilitatable, but let us rehabilitate them back into their communities where they are very familiar, where the crime took place. Maybe they broke a window at a grocery store and now part of that rehabilitation is to work in that grocery store and repay that grocer who had to pay for his window to be fixed.
Maybe that is the kind of rehabilitation we need but in concert of course with the programs that would be provided by psychiatrists and psychologists and all the other professional people who would help that individual.
Is that part of this bill? Is prevention part of this bill? Is money being directed or spent or part of this legislation being created in order to help those individuals who are currently in jail, who are in our society headed toward jail? No. That is what makes this bill a toothless, pathetic response to our communities.


Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill C-36, an act to amend the correctional system in Canada and to set out in the government's mind, new ways of proceeding with problems in the penal and correctional system.
Our party has opposed this piece of legislation. I would like to spend a minute explaining why we oppose it and then explain what I think should be done at the community level.
The purpose of the bill according to the government is to reform the correctional legislation so that it better reflects the values and concerns of Canadians. Above all, these measures assert that the primary duty of the correctional system is the protection of the public.
Our response is that the vast majority of the bill either codifies existing procedures or restates what is already in the Penitentiary Act or the Parole Act. It is therefore a deceiving piece of legislation, pretending to do what it does not do, namely reform correctional legislation. It only tinkers with it.

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The government states that it is to establish a statement of purpose and principles of parole and establish public safety as the paramount consideration in decisions relating to correctional release of inmates. Our response is that the bill pays lip-service to the protection of the public. The government is pretending that it is protecting "law and order", yet the bill exposes the public to danger in many different ways.
For someone like myself, as a member of Parliament who represents a very poor part of the country and a very poor riding, the question of parole, the question of institutionalization of inmates, the question of when people should be on the street, and when in an institution is not just an academic question, but is one which is paramount to the safety and concerns of citizens.
When we look at a piece of legislation such as this we must ask ourselves what is it that we are trying to accomplish here in Parliament.
What we are trying to do is to reach out and help people in communities to survive in what sometimes can be very dangerous situations.
This debate includes not only those people who are so-called law and order people and so-called reformers of the system, but also citizens who are afraid to step out of their houses and who are not quite sure why they are afraid to step out of their houses. Many are convinced that they should not be afraid to step out of the house. People are concerned that their children cannot get to school safely. People are concerned that they do not have a playground.
There are areas in my city in which people leave their kids on a bus. They send their kids on a bus a mile and one-half away rather than have them play in a large park right across from their apartment because of the drug dealing taking place.
The question of keeping people off the streets and in prisons and other institutions is by no means the only answer. In reviewing the legislation, I am struck by the limited approach of this government. One of the basic premises of our criticism and one that has taken place in this House since 1984, particularly since 1988 when I first came here, is the amount of money being taken out of
the system to deal with basic questions such as penal reform.
Look at the cuts in transfer payments, which we have discussed at great length, and the end product of the number of people who did not have access to proper training is one example. Look at the removal of the core area initiative with its many community infrastructures and how that affects downtown Winnipeg. Look at the withdrawal of training moneys for aboriginal youth. You realize you are setting up a situation in which people are going to be in difficulty.
First you have to ask yourself, what is the over-all situation affecting the behaviour of people? The over-all situation is that people have less and less support from their government. Government does not represent Ottawa or the legislature in Winnipeg or the city hall of main street. When you are talking about government you are talking about people who have formed an institution to doing something in common. When that institution no longer wishes to do things in common, claiming to be out of money, claiming that you are not a priority, claiming that it does not care whatever the language is, the reality is that once people feel that their community organizations as expressed through government cannot afford or support them, it leads to all sorts of anti-social behaviour.
Some of that is plain and simply withdrawing from society, giving up quietly. Other times the reaction is quite forceful and miserable. It leads to crime against property and against people. There is no justification for it. We have to believe in each other. We have to respect each other. We have to be careful never to set up a situation in which we blame the system and not assume that an individual must take responsibility for his or her actions. When a system leaves somebody, it is going to cause a reaction back. That is, the person will leave the system one way or the other. That is one part of it.
The other part of the problem is that once you set up that a person has done something contrary to the system, then you must have within government the capacity to respond properly. That responsibility is set upon on a number of principles. For example, the principle can be that we want to keep people off the streets and in prisons as long as possible. We do not want to let them out. We do not want them on the streets.
May 14, 1992

Canada, despite having one of the highest incarceration rates in the world and one of the highest numbers of people in prisons, has seen its city life degenerate one decade after another. You ask yourself, is this strategy working? Are we getting to have better neighbourhoods when we put more people in jail? The answer is no. Do we have a way of supporting people once they leave jail to ensure that they do not go back? The answer is no.
We do have people who are interested in this. We have people working in the John Howard Society. We have in Winnipeg on Ellice Avenue a new centre which deals with the questions of justice and crime and community support for communal action. These are important projects begging for money because the government does not see them as being important.
There are transitional points in which once a person leaves the prison system you wish that they could then be part of the community. The point is that this is rarely done in this society. Instead, we end up with pieces of legislation such as Bill C-36 because people are afraid and the government responds to their fear instead of responding to the underlying problems.
In Winnipeg North Centre, when I became a member of Parliament, I saw safety as one of the major issues. There is an easy route to go such as writing letters to the editor talking about crime in the streets, joining people decrying Asian street gangs. There are 101 easy ways to go. You can see it in this debate if you follow some of the government members. They are quite anxious to see people put back behind bars because of crime in the street.
I chose a different route, one I would like to share with the House. It is essential for the many here who are interested in this particular problem to understand that there are different ways of going about it.
Over a year ago I formed the Inner City Safety Council. This is the first opportunity used in the inner city to bring together different groups concerned about safety issues. We held a public meeting in May 1991 and had over 100 people in attendance. In Winnipeg's inner city it is not safe to go out some nights to attend meetings, so that was a big accomplishment.
People expressed their anger. There were so many
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fronts on which they felt threatened. We took that long list and said we should begin to work with different community groups on this list. Some people worked on their own and some people came to the office of their member of Parliament looking for support.
We used the facilities of the office of the member to communicate with others so that everybody knew what the other was doing. For example, the question of Asian gangs, is a big issue in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto, but is not an issue in Winnipeg, except in the minds of the newspaper writers. The Asian leaders feel very strongly that they are mistreated and they wish to participate in the safety council so they have an opportunity to say to people, "Do not characterize us in terms of gangs. Do not characterize our youth in terms of gangs. Help us find a recreation site". You can go for blocks in the inner city of Winnipeg and not find a recreation site.
I have had people say to me that it is a long way from the federal government, but it is not. The core area initiative, which is partly sponsored by the federal government, was about to embark on a recreation strategy. If you cannot spend time in the evening and time on the weekend with children from communities, particularly in communities of new Canadians in which people are working 60 hours a week for $5 an hour trying to make ends meet, if you cannot bring the children and youth into the community, by definition you are pushing them out and asking for trouble. Therefore, we work closely with the Asian community to overcome this image and to build some recreational support for it.
Second, in the Wolesley area there is a concern about violence against individuals, violence against gays, violence against women walking home, violence within families. We have had a very successful approach that has led to other levels of government having safety evaluations of school areas to inform people how to make their streets safer. In all three major business districts we have had community police offices open up, on Selkirk Avenue, Sargent Avenue, Ellice Avenue and down on Broadway. In one particular case, a businessman is paying for the space himself to make sure the community policeman is there.

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Those community policemen have made a big difference. There are a number of volunteers who work with them. In one of the offices there are 80 volunteers. I can say that as someone working as a politician in the inner city, 80 volunteers is a lot of people. They work seven days a week trying to help out. That is a municipal role, not my role. On the other hand, these community police officers are seen as being outside the mainstream of their police force. Therefore, they turn to us for support so that the police chief and the senior district police officers know they are doing important work and that they are supported by the community.
In another neighbourhood, in another community, there is a problem with drinking, which leads to disfunc-tional behaviour on the street which is very upsetting to the long-term residents. We have to fight to deal with substance abuse. If you go through the federal government and try to find a department that understands the contents of Chinese cooking wine, for example, tiy to trace back how Chinese cooking wine gets into the country and you cannot find it. Try to read the labels, which are not even in English and French but only in Chinese, and you wonder how these products find their way to Winnipeg.
There is a role for the federal government to help these groups solve these problems.
You can then go on to the problem of street prostitution. In one neighbourhood, in the Lord Selkirk area, people regularly drive through the neighbourhoods looking for young men and women, anywhere from age 12 and up. It is very discouraging for the parents and the community groups trying to fight this problem to find that they do not have the legislative framework to deal with street prostitution. They have no way of saying to the people driving through the neighbourhoods that they should not be driving through this neighbourhood looking for our children.
As a result of a public demonstration and a press conference, I wrote to the Solicitor General. He wrote back a long letter explaining why this could not be done under present circumstances. To the credit of the minister, he expressed an interest in this problem and indicated his willingness to get involved with a demonstration project if the neighbours found one appropriate to the government. This is the sort of response which is necessary from the government.
It is not necessarily a large battle, but it is one so
important to the infrastructure and the stability of a neighbourhood. It is more important to spend your time providing a legislative framework for dealing with child prostitution than it is bringing in Bill C-36, which walks away from the dilemmas being faced at the community level.
On the question of youth in the aboriginal community, those of you who know the western Canadian penal system will know that there is a heavy over-representation of aboriginal youth in our prisons. This is totally unacceptable and efforts must be made at the community level through drop-out programs and through other interesting projects to ensure that aboriginal youth have a future in our cities, that they are properly trained, that they have jobs and that there are education opportunities for them.
Last year, a group of youth from this community working with the Native Alcoholism Council of Manitoba came up with the idea that it should have a sobriety pow-wow. Without any particular organizational skills, the group sat down and worked out a weekend pow-wow. Forty-five hundred people showed up to celebrate sobriety. They are coming back this year to put together another program. I would challenge other members of the House to find a program that would help these young people support the reference for a sober family life and a sober personal life. It is fundamental to improving conditions within the aboriginal community in the inner cities.
There are a number of initiatives that can be taken at the community level. I look around Winnipeg North Centre where people are concerned about safety in the streets and turn to the federal government. Many of them want harsher treatment because they are frustrated and angry. Many of them want to know that the person living next door is not out illegally. They want to know that the person who has been let out on parole is a safe person. They want to know all these things and we cannot walk away from that.
They also want to know that there is a place for their children in recreation. They also want to know that if a senior is walking to the bus stop, there is enough of a support system, that there are police around and that the municipalities are not being squeezed so much by the federal government that there is nothing left for them.
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These are the sorts of things that we should be doing to help people. We cannot do it in a legislative framework without money and without commitment. The old cliche is put your money where your mouth is. You go out and you help people and you do not just give them the image that you are helping them without any of the particular support systems that they all need.
I am sure that this is not the first speech in the House asking the government to be more active in the area of penal reform. There are many organizations that have put forward the case more eloquently than I possibly could have.
Members of Parliament have to realize that the price we pay for the collapse of the social network is more than we could have imagined. We look at the fear that is not only involved with traditional poor communities in which there has always been a fear on the streets, but into families. Now we are into family violence.
For violence against women, which is an emerging issue, for violence against gays, for people gathering late at night and being attacked randomly by gangs, these issues have to be addressed honestly and openly and the different perspectives we bring to bear in the debate must be shared in such a fashion that at least there is a coalition that is willing to deal with it.
I hope that by sharing my small example in the House today of the Inner City Safety Council, people will come to realize that there are ways to be optimistic and there are people willing to deal with these issues both from a traditional recognition of the need that people be punished for behaviour contrary to the Criminal Code, and also very much so that people wish to have their communities maintained and supported.
I thank you for the opportunity of joining in this debate and wish the government would withdraw this legislation in favour of more appropriate action.


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough-Rouge River):: Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg has added a very important element to this debate on this corrections legislation.
It is an element that perhaps was not addressed terribly well. I do not think it was addressed very much at all in the actual piece of legislation. In terms of the field, the area that he has addressed, generally called the one
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of crime prevention, is one that we have not addressed well as a society.
We have a long way to go. There is a little piece of crime prevention that these correction amendments try to address. When you start off in this vicious cycle of crime, you start off with a criminal act and you have a police investigation and then you have the charges. You have the trial, you have the conviction, you have the sentencing and then you have the serving of time in a facility.
You have this attempt at rehabilitation which in many cases succeeds. In far too many cases it does not. The offender is back on the street and then you are in the area of prevention of crime before another crime is permitted.
Society can get a lot of bang for its buck in crime prevention, and this bill does not address it. There was the case in Chicago. It took 20 years to generate the statistics but back in the 1960s and early 1970s there was a great investment in day care for residents of the inner city in Chicago.
Only lately have sociologists tracked the crime activity in the area involving the individuals who were able to participate in the day care program. I do not have the exact statistics but the level of criminal activity by those generally in the community is somewhere up around 10 per cent or 15 per cent. For those who participated in the day care program, their rate is something like 0.9 per cent. That is a phenomenal difference. The investment in day care back in the 1960s has changed the lives of almost every one of those kids who were in the day care program.
I want to ask the hon. member who just spoke, how does he feel about the current federal fiscal restraints, which are impacting on social welfare programs, and about what dollars we are putting into crime prevention? How does he feel those fiscal restraints are impacting on our ability to address crime prevention outside of that cycle of criminal activity that I tried to describe?


David Walker: The issue of social program cutbacks cannot be stressed too much in this debate. People are saying: "You are soft in the head when you talk about this. It is really just walking away from the problem of people being criminals".

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Let us be practical. Let us use one practical example. When the government changed the UI legislation, it made it nearly impossible for people who were not UI recipients to receive training.
If you are an aboriginal youth leaving school somewhere between grade eight and grade eleven and you seek out a training opportunity and you are asked bout your UI, you do not have an opportunity for UI because you have never had an opportunity for a job. How do you get into the system?
There are several training projects in downtown Winnipeg which were effectively reaching the aboriginal youth which have had to change their focus to find UI recipients. The government is leading itself away from the problem because it will not finance the proper servicing.
Rumours abound and the government hints it is going to have great new training programs and so forth. The reality is every month that passes, someone else misses an opportunity to be trained to enter the labour force. Projections in the 1990s are that one of four entrants in the western Canadian labour market is going to be an aboriginal youth.
How can you train a labour force that cannot access the training programs? It is a phenomenal problem that nobody wishes to discuss. If you are not trained, you cannot get an entry level job. What are you going to end up doing? You do not have to be a genius to figure out that you pick up a stereo some place and go sell it some other place. You do not have to be a genius to figure that you will become involved in break and enters, stealing bicycles or whatever.
If you have to feed yourself, you have to feed yourself or you enter into prostitution. Let us be practical. If there is not an opportunity to earn an income legitimately, people have to stay alive somehow and one of the options they choose, unfortunately, is criminal activity. Rather than dwell upon the criminal activity, the organization of government should be dwelling upon the reality that we are not reaching out.
This gives us an opportunity to comment on one other problem. The government has responded to a longstanding request to have an office of correctional investigator
with authority to initiate investigations rather than take them at the request of offenders.
I wanted to say it is this sort of opportunity missed that makes this legislation so weak. Here we have a public problem. We all treat it as a public problem. We are discussing it in Parliament. We have an opportunity to open it up, to have people approach an investigator with specific complaints, and the government pulls away from the public dimension and makes it solely a person who reports to the Solicitor General. This is an opportunity lost to make the public more aware of some of the concerns of the Solicitor General and of an investigator.
Our party has worked on this since the mid-1970s. We were hoping that this particular legislation would be an opportunity to make it an officer reporting to Parliament. That way we could, from time to time with a committee, hear about these issues firsthand and make it a little bit simpler for the public to get involved.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I would like to advise the House that we have now completed five hours of debate at third reading of Bill C-36. We will now continue with 10-minute speeches which will not be followed by the usual period of questions or comments.


Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: Madam Speaker, there is no doubt that there are serious problems of crime in Canada, serious concerns Canadians have about the level of criminal activity and real concerns on the part of those who have been unfortunate enough to be victims of crimes. Their concerns, interest and views are not being considered.
Once the government decided to look at the question of the detention of offenders and the release of offenders, one would have thought that the government would have looked at how best to solve the problems of criminal activity and that the government would have asked what causes criminal activity and how best it can prevent it.
Instead, the government has pursued its normal route which is not to look to prevention, but to look to what we do after criminal activity takes place and look to ways we might deter criminal activity, not by any mechanisms of prevention, but by mechanisms of punishment; not by asking what we can do to ensure our society is better for people so that they do not turn to criminal activity, but to blame them and punish them if they do turn to criminal activity.
May 14, 1992

A good example of this arose last week with the presentation by the Minister of National Health and Welfare of his brighter futures budget which was designed to address the concerns and the problems of children at risk.
All those advocates for children and all those social policy groups that face the problems of children and attempt to help children on a daily basis and attempt to address the concerns of poverty pointed out to the minister that a national child care program was the single most important vehicle through which to assist children at risk.
Needless to say, the minister did not pursue that route and went on to engage in what is partly a public relations exercise and what is clearly a band-aid approach, and not a very effective band-aid approach at that, to the concerns of children living at risk.
If we want to look at where this approach takes us, this approach which does not deal with prevention but deals with punishment, at finances or resources available for the building of prisons but not available for community projects, for social services to ensure that crime does not take place, we only have to look south of the border. If we ever needed to be reminded of the problems of a society with a very large gap between rich and poor, with a very large lower class, with a large group, millions of people whose concerns are not addressed, high unemployment and so on, we could look at the examples in Los Angeles of where that neglect leads a society.
In Canada the gap between rich and poor is getting larger, not smaller. Those who are poor are getting poorer and those who are rich are getting richer. Unemployment remains at extremely high and totally unacceptable levels.
It is no wonder that, faced with despair, with lack of opportunity, with no hope, some Canadians turn to crime. It is not enough, as this bill tries to do, to stress that the government does not have the money to deal with crime, that the approach taken is one of ensuring that through a competitiveness approach people will find jobs and will therefore be able to sustain themselves and their families.
It is not a question of whether the resources are there. It is a question of when we are going to spend those resources and when we are going to assist people rather than make life more difficult for them.
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The Canadian Police Association, in its brief to the committee, was quite clear on how to deal with criminal activity and how to reduce it. I am sure we would all agree that the police forces across Canada have a great deal of experience and expertise in dealing with the issue and understanding why people commit crimes, in meeting criminals on a daily basis and learning about their problems and their needs.
The Canadian Police Association said the answer to the crime problem is simple. We must eliminate poverty, hunger, prejudice, violence, drug use and mental instability. Additionally, we should provide quality education for all and stable employment for everyone.
Why would the government not listen to the Canadian Police Association? Why would it continue with its approach to keep prisoners in jail longer without any effective rehabilitation programs, without any approach at the provincial level, at the level of providing people with adequate incomes in order to maintain themselves and their families? Why would the government not pursue an approach of providing hope and a future for Canadians?
Criminologists would point out the same approach. One criminologist who appeared before the committee, Irvin Waller of the University of Ottawa, said the exclusive reliance on cops, courts and corrections is not sufficient to stem the tide. Over and over that evidence is being presented. We know that is the case and we know that prevention is what we must do in order to deal with problems with crime.
The Canadian Police Association said we must educate our youth about all drugs and the dangerous results if they abuse these substances. In order to accomplish this goal, someone is going to have to jar federal, provincial and municipal governments into providing funds to deal with this danger. Responsibility is passed from federal to provincial to municipal authorities with no additional funds being granted.
It is going to take an investment in people. It is going to take an investment in Canadians to ensure that we really and truly address our concerns and our problems about crime in Canada. This bill does not even begin to address crime from a prevention point of view. Surely that is the only approach that will work.

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The bill raises some issues about victims and the treatment of victims. We all know that the victims of crimes have very legitimate concerns and worries. They have not been listened to. Their concerns have not received a response. They have basically been forgotten by the criminal justice system. They have demanded leadership. They have demanded that their views, their concerns and their emotional problems be addressed. They do demand harsher penalties because at the moment that is all they can get from this government.
What we need is a concerted approach to deal with criminal activity, not the approach that this bill presents.
Just in my closing minutes, we have to ask ourselves, bearing in mind the concerns that Canadians have with criminal activity and the level of crime in Canada, whether or not this bill will make Canada a safer place, whether or not it will reduce criminal activity, and whether or not it solves any of the problems that Canada is facing with regard to criminal activity.
Clearly this bill will not. Clearly the witnesses at the committee pointed out that it would not do so. Why would this bill be introduced? Why would we be introducing a bill at this time which will not deal with our crime problems in Canada? It will not attack the root causes of criminal activity in Canada such as poverty, desperation and loss of hope which this government has compounded by cutting funding to provinces, downloading to the provinces so that they do not have the funds to address these concerns either. Why would the government do this?
Presumably it is to show Canadians that this government is getting tough on crime by responding to that need for harsher penalties rather than addressing the core issues. It is a hoax on Canadians to address the issue in this way. We should be addressing the issue at its core. We should be trying to solve the problem, not trying to perpetuate the concerns and the demand for harsher penalties without dealing with the core problems of poverty, social unrest and despair.


Jesse Philip Flis: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing since he is my twin for the Voyageurs Program. I know that our students are going to enjoy the twinning. The students from Parkdale- High Park will be visiting Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing and his students will be visiting Parkdale-High Park where they will see that we are a just society and that we have a real community feeling. I compliment him on his remarks.
I always look at the purpose of any new bill. The purpose of this bill is "to contribute to the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society". Is that not beautiful?
Now let us look at the reality. The purpose goes on to say:
-assisting the rehabilitation of offenders and their reintegration into the community as law abiding citizens through the provision of programs in penitentiaries and in the community.
I want to come back to the word "community". I looked at the definitions in the bill and they define what an institution is, what a day parolee is, what service is, what a visitor is, and what an offender is. But nowhere in the bill is community defined.
One of the main purposes of this bill is to reintegrate ex-offenders into the community. Whose community? My community of Parkdale-High Park? When a serious offender has murdered a whole family or a serial killer is from another city, is it fair that my community of Parkdale-High Park has to rehabilitate that person?
There is no legislation federally, provincially or municipally to protect society, to protect innocent people who go to work daily, who send their children to school daily. There is an oversaturation of group homes, correctional homes, rehabilitation homes or whatever we want to call them. Parkdale has become a dumping ground. The people of Parkdale-High Park are not putting up with it any more. They are telling that through me to the rest of Canada.
This bill will not help address the concerns of Canadians about crime. It will not help the case of victims. It will not begin to address the serious concerns we face in this area today.
I stress again, let us define community. We can have two or three correctional homes within blocks of each other. There is no federal legislation to limit the number of rehabilitation homes that we can have in one com-
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munity. There is no provincial legislation to limit the number of rehab homes in one community.
The cities have legislation, something to the effect that they cannot be closer than 800 feet or 800 metres from each other. This means we could have one on every block in a constituency like Parkdale-High Park.
All the experts drew up this legislation and all the experts went through all the stages and not one thing will improve. The streets will still be unsafe. Parents will still be afraid to send their children to school. This is why we are voting very strongly against this bill.
I appeal to the government to look at what it means by community, define it and put it in the legislation. Our community has had enough. It is to the point where it has called in the Guardian Angels to patrol the streets because it feels that the officials, politicians, police and law enforcers have lost control. The people are taking the law into their own hands. This government does not see that. The government cannot understand why there was such violence on Yonge Street in the city of Toronto just a couple of weeks ago.
A mother phoned me just the other night. Her son was picked up for theft. The mother has a good job and earns a good income, but Revenue Canada was so insensitive that it garnisheed her wages for five years of back income tax and did not notify her. She does not have enough money after paying for her rent and food to give her son spending money when he goes to school. As a result he stole. He should not have done it. He knows that.
This is how an insensitive government through a department like Revenue Canada operates. No one in that department would sit down with this mother and say: "Okay, we realize you can't pay $1,700 monthly. Let's spread it over a longer period. Let's reduce the amount of payments". There is no one in the bureaucracy that has that sensitivity.
As a matter of fact, because of the cutbacks of this government in the Public Service there is such insensitivity to people that our constituency offices are being flooded with frustrated people who cannot get through to the bureaucracy and if they do, it will not listen to them.
I had a case recently where a person called because he could not get through to the UI department. He ran out of money completely. He threatened to set himself aflame in front of my constituency office. Thank God my assistant was sharp enough and quick enough to get help for this person. Otherwise he could very well have set himself aflame.
I do not think that this government realizes what is happening out there in all its departments. Be it immigration, employment or Revenue Canada, it has lost contact with the people.
One used to be able to go to Immigration and get help from a bureaucrat to fill out an application form. What has this government done? Now one fills out an application and sends it in. Six weeks later, or maybe six months later, one might hear from the government.
Is it any wonder that the Canadian public is angry, is frustrated and is threatening to set itself aflame. These are the root causes of crime in our country, especially in our big cities. This bill is not going to correct them.
The Prime Minister should change his ways. He should listen to the people out there. He should not spend $22 million on some donkey road show. That $22 million should be used to hire a few more public servants who will sit down with the people face to face and listen to their troubles. There is no one out there who will do this. These people are coming to our constituency offices and our constituency offices cannot handle the volume.
When I was a member between 1979 and 1984 I had one person running my constituency office. For five years one person handled all the immigration cases, the Revenue Canada cases, the UI cases, and you name it.
Then I had a four-year break; from 1984 to 1988 I had a sabbatical. I went back to education and enjoyed that very much. From 1988 to 1992 I have been back in politics. Now I have two people in my constituency office in Parkdale-High Park and they cannot handle the volume.
The Prime Minister and the government of the day should wake up, look at what is happening in this country and look at what they have done to this country.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.
Madam Deputy Speaker:: The parliamentary secretary, on a point of order.


Mrs. Tardif:: Madam Speaker, does the House agree to call it 1.34 p.m.?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent to call it 1.34 p.m.?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: It being 1.34 p.m., I do now leave the Chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 1.34 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Derek Vincent Lee: Mr. Speaker, May 10 to May 16 is National Police Week. I would like to call on the House of Commons to reaffirm and renew its support for police forces across this country by responding to some of the many challenges currently facing the police community.
Parliament must review the law governing electronic surveillance to ensure that police can effectively carry out pretrial investigations which will both provide admissible evidence and ensure safety to undercover police.
We must review the law governing proceeds of crime to allow reimbursement of police investigation expenses and to invest in crime prevention.
We must also make other financial and procedural resources available to police forces in efforts to keep our communities safer and well policed.
Better policing is part of the solution to many of our urban crime problems. I hope that all members will join with me in saluting Canada's policing authorities.


TIM HORTON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION
Mr. Terry Clifford (London-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, children going to summer camp is as much a part of Canadian life as hockey. Going to camp, however, costs money and unfortunately not all Canadian children have an opportunity to share in this experience.
One truly great Canadian, Tim Horton, recognized this fact and dreamed of creating a camp for underprivileged children. That dream has come true through the efforts of the Tim Horton Children's Foundation. This charitable organization operates children's camps in Parry Sound, Ontario; Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia; and Kananaskis, Alberta, with plans for one in Quebec.
To assist these camps, Tim Horton operators from coast to coast donated all the moneys from their coffee sales for a 24-hour period. This year's Camp Canada Day raised more than a half million dollars across the nation.
Together with members of Parliament who represent these camps, I call upon this House to give sincere congratulations to Tim Horton store owners, their staff and customers for making a summer dream for 2,000 children come true.
Tim Horton would be proud.


JOB TRAINING
Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, the government's latest propaganda piece better known as the Agenda for Prosperity is replete with doublespeak and flimflam. There is continual reference to retraining in the flyer: "Skills training and retraining are necessary tools in a competitive job market". "Promote training and learning". "I trained for a better job". "We can sell to the world".

mi
May 14, 1992

These are the words, but the reality in Cornwall, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and other communities across this country is that just six weeks ago the government initiated a policy allowing UI recipients to pursue three consecutive years of training at a community college.
Now, with seven months remaining in 1992, the funding for this praiseworthy initiative has run out. The paper exaggerates that after consulting with Canadians the government listened and delivered. What it did not say is that it could only deliver for six weeks.


MUSEUMS
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to inform Parliament of concerns of an important group of my constituents.
These constituents have written to express their support for the following:
That the sharing of cultural experiences in and among our distinct regions is vital to the future of Canadian people.
That museums and related institutions who welcome over 50 million visitors per year are important agents for sharing cultural wealth and diverse experiences.
That the vitality of non-federal museums is dependent upon the already established federal programs such as MAP (which, thank you, has already been extended to 1995) the Canada Council, amongst others.
That the federal government explicitly assure the public and the museums and related institutions that it will maintain its commitment to directly fund and support non-federal museums in its revised constitutional proposals.
This statement is endorsed by 55 dedicated volunteers in Regina. I trust their views will be considered in the coming days.


EARTH SUMMIT
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, poverty, technology transfers and the lifestyles of the world's well-to-do are indispensable elements of environmental sustainability discussions.
The 1992 UNDP report among others says that those who wish to tackle global pollution must tackle global
poverty as well. Both issues are central to the earth summit taking place next month in Brazil.
Despite the internationally recognized links of environment and development, pollution and poverty, this government fails to honour its commitment to achieving 0.7 per cent in development assistance to the Third World and to aggressively pursue indispensable bilateral and commercial debt relief for the world's poorest countries. Developing countries also need access to our environmentally sound technologies. The Canadian initiatives to assure this are lacking.
I ask the Government of Canada to make a commitment of $100 million additional to present ODA and green plan commitments in order to carry forward earth summit initiatives and to press the United States to sign protocols on climate control and other environmental initiatives.
The future of the globe and of our children depends upon political will expressed at the summit in Brazil.


GEORGE-ETIENNE CARTIER
Alan Redway: Mr. Speaker, May 20 next week marks the 119th anniversary of George-Etienne Cartier. He was much more than just one of the Fathers of Confederation. "But for him Confederation could not have been carried", said Sir John A. Macdonald.
Cartier was a nationalist, expansionist and a forceful dynamic proponent of the creation and survival of a workable Canadian nation.
It was Cartier who negotiated the transfer to Canada of the Hudson's Bay Company lands. While Sir John A. Macdonald was ill it was Cartier who negotiated the entry of both Manitoba and British Columbia into Confederation.
Although he died before the CPR was built, the concept of a transcontinental railway binding our country together originated with Cartier. More than any other Canadian he was an embodiment of what Pierre Berton has called the national dream.
Our Canada owes its very existence to George-Etienne Cartier and we must never forget it.


BUY CANADIAN
Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, among the admonitions decorating the front page of the government's $15 million exercise in truth control is the stirring instruction to buy Canadian. It is right there. It is No. 4.
All well and good. It is clear Canadians want their government to buy Canadian goods and services in preference to others. Unfortunately because of the free trade deal the government cannot.
For any Canadian government purchase over $25,000 the free trade deal requires the government to give eligible American goods and services treatment at least as favourable as the most favourable treatment it gives to Canadians.
For example, the government recently bought $100,000 worth of American carpet for Parliament's own Wellington Building.
Canadians may be saying: "Hey, government, buy Canadian", but the government has to say: "Okay but only so long as Canadian means American too".
New Democrats unlike the Liberals say buy Canadian, period, and to blazes with the trade deal.


PERSONNE D'ABORD GROUP
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, on May 10, members of the Personne d'abord group in Quebec City, supporters of this organization and Sylvain Lelievre, a well-known singer, met in what became a veiy moving experience. Mr. Lelievre's benefit performance was marked by its intimacy, simplicity and humanism.
People with a mental disability are often erroneously labelled by society as mentally retarded. Most members of this movement organized to show that they are full-fledged members of our society and that they have certain rights. Personne d'abord puts people first. I hope they keep up the good work. They are on the right track.


DOCKSIDE MONITORING PROGRAM
Francis G. LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago the fisheries minister announced the removal of all federal government support for the dockside monitoring program as of May 31 as part of a whole package of administrative changes.
The dockside monitoring program enforces quotas assigned to fishermen through the observation and weighing of catches as they are landed. This program is generally viewed as helping achieve a fair application of the individual quota system and provide reliable and detailed stock information.
Yet the minister has made a mess of the whole program. As before, fishermen who can ill afford it will be forced to pay the costs of the program through user fees. Just about everyone is confused about the host of other program changes announced, including the minister's own officials who seem unable to explain the new program to fishermen.
I urge the minister of fisheries to take immediate steps to explain and clarify this new program and to maintain the present program and federal funding past May 31 until the changes are fully understood by fishermen.


CANADA HEALTH AUXILIARY WEEK
Mr. Murray Cardiff (Huron-Bruce):: Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to remind members of the House and all Canadians that this is Canada Health Auxiliary Week.
There are more than 120,000 health care volunteers affiliated with over 800 auxiliaries in local communities across Canada.
They are making a valuable contribution each day in humanizing the care given to hospitalized patients, in raising funds for much needed equipment and services, and in sponsoring educational programs within their communities.
The high quality service provided by these volunteers makes life easier and more pleasant for those Canadians who must rely on our health care service. The efforts of
May 14, 1992

these dedicated volunteers are important elements of a strong and caring community.
I invite all Canadians to recognize the work and dedication of health auxiliaries as well as their enormous contribution which makes our Canadian health care system unequalled anywhere in the world.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, two days ago I received a copy of a letter an individual with a Ph.D. sent to Revenue Canada. He says:
It is with regret that due to my financial and employment situation it is impossible to send an additional $3,427 in income taxes over the $18,205 already paid. There is simply no money left. I am still unemployed. I am struggling from day to day to keep a roof over my family.
It is unfair that severance income paid to laid off workers is fully taxed upon receipt. Why can the government not allow taxes on severance income to be paid over a period of time rather than all at once?

Workers who lose their jobs because of difficult economic times have enough trouble as it is, and I think it is unfair and unrealistic to burden them with huge taxes. After all, they need the money, Mr. Speaker.


NATIONAL TOURISM AWARENESS WEEK
Edna Anderson: Mr. Speaker, this week is National Tourism Awareness Week. It offers Canadian the opportunity to recognize the tremendous contribution made by the 600,000 individuals who are employed in our tourism industry.
Last year the industry contributed $26 billion to the Canadians economy. Our tourism industry however has another vital role to play that goes beyond economics. Never before has it been so important as in our time of constitutional renewal for Canadians to visit and get to know other parts of our country. It is after all only in reaching out that we will be brought closer together.
I myself had the opportunity to visit Yukon recently, and the beauty of that region is something I will not soon forget.
This week let us recognize the talented individuals who bring Canada to the world and who help reveal to Canadians what foreign visitors are discovering time and time again, that Canada is a nation to be treasured.


PAY EQUITY
John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, women in the Public Service are looking for a fair pay equity settlement.
If the government clings to its current policy, women in the Public Service will not get what they deserve and what rightly belongs to them. Pay equity has been the law of the land since 1978. It was reinforced by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Despite the law, about 80,000 women in the Public Service are out hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay and have been forced to take legal action.
Worse still, this government says it will not honour any decision by the Human Rights Commission in support of the case brought forward on behalf of women in the Public Service.
That is a shameful attack on human rights. I urge the government to abandon its insane policy, give leadership, treat its employees properly, meet its obligations as the law demands and, above all, be fair and just.


NATIONAL ROAD SAFETY WEEK
Mr. Lee Richardson (Calgary Southeast):: Mr. Speaker, next week, May 17 to 23, is the Canada Safety Council's second annual National Road Safety Week.
Each year motor vehicle collisions claim the lives of approximately 4,000 Canadians and result in injuries to over 250,000 Canadians.
The Canada Safety Council and Transport Canada have made significant progress in improving road safety in recent years. For instance, the national rate of seat-belt use increased 85 per cent last year and road fatalities were at a 28-year low in 1990.

May 14, 1992
Oral Questions
These encouraging statistics show that Canadian motorists are becoming more responsible as the result of increased safety awareness by drivers as well as concerted efforts by the Canada Safety Council and other road safety organizations. With such partnerships in safety, I am confident we can achieve 95 per cent seat-belt use in Canada by 1995.
The Canadian Association of Japanese Automobile Dealers and its dealers in 330 communities across Canada are corporate sponsors of the Canada Safety Council's Road Safety Week.


THE ECONOMY
Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, the government's latest $15 million public relations exercise is now being delivered to Canadian households.
Canadians have said cut taxes, cut the deficit and ensure social programs meet basic needs, and have been saying this for years. Clearly, the government has not been listening. It has increased taxes, doubled the deficit since 1984, slashed social programs and reneged on its commitment to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.
While this government is talking about prosperity, Canadian business, farm, and consumer bankruptcies have reached record high levels and are still climbing and job losses continue at record levels. Stats Canada just last week released figures showing that average Canadian families earned 2.2 per cent less last year than the year previous. So much for prosperity.
If this government was committed to prosperity it would be committed to full employment policies, sustainable living wage jobs, universal child care and essential adequate levels of financing for social programs such as social assistance and medicare.


PERLEY RIDEAU VETERANS HEALTH CENTRE
Mr. Barry Moore (Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle):: Mr. Speaker, there was more good news today for our veterans. Veterans Affairs Minister Gerry Merrithew
and Ontario Health Minister Frances Lankin signed an agreement which will result in veterans moving from the venerable Rideau Veterans Home here in Ottawa into the state of the art Perley Rideau Veterans Health Centre.
This agreement means veterans will have 50 additional beds and in better surroundings. Veterans will now have access to 250 beds at the new veterans health centre.
The federal government will be paying $36 million out of the total cost of $65 million and the new facility will be ready in late 1993.
This is further concrete proof of this government's determination to provide veterans with the best possible institutional care and conditions which they very much deserve.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. A royal commission has just finished a study of the electoral process. It worked for two years, employed 75 high calibre experts, received 900 briefs, hired 180 researchers at 28 universities, heard testimony totalling 14,000 pages, and spent $18 million. The commission's conclusion was that spending limits during a campaign were absolutely essential in a democracy. Why will the Conservative government not acknowledge this fact in the referendum process?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, as the member for Hamilton East knows, the royal commission report is currently before an all-party committee and those kinds of questions are being looked at.
One of the considerations that the government took into account in preparing proposed plebiscite legislation was the referendum bill prepared by the Liberal govern-
May 14, 1992

Oral Questions
ment in 1978 in which it stated in this explanatory document that it would be an infringement on freedom of speech and freedom of association to force people into umbrella groups and that without these kinds of identifiable umbrella groups it would become an impossibility to limit expenditures.
The advice given to the Liberal government of the day is basically the same advice we are getting, albeit that was before the charter of rights. Now we do have the charter of rights. We are not opposed to limitations.
As the hon. member will know, if she consults with her representatives on the committee studying election law reform, our representatives are calling for the retention of spending limits at general elections. If in fact spending limits were possible, given the charter of rights, given the legal opinions we have, the predecessor Liberal government had, we would consider it, but we are given the best advice we have, that it is not possible.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the $18 million royal commission says the minister's interpretation is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Page 324 states: "Freedom of expression cannot be meaningfully achieved unless the laws that govern this process explicitly seek to promote fairness, equal resources. Nor should electoral law assume that inequalities amongst participants are irrelevant to the outcome of elections".
We see the referendum process as a means of uniting the country. The minister says maybe there will be a referendum; maybe there will be a plebiscite; maybe he will respect the outcome; maybe he will not; maybe it will be in every province; maybe it will be in some; maybe it will be conducted fairly; maybe it will not.
Why is the government playing games at such a critical time in our country's history?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, of course, the hon. member for Hamilton East has distorted totally what I have said.
As I indicated in my response to her first answer, the question of limits is not something this government or the party to which all of us belong is something we object to. Indeed, we will be seeking limits.
I think she will understand that it is quite one thing to have limits on registered political parties at a general election when you are talking about having everybody compete on the same basis within the same constraints and another thing to have a referendum where the number of committees and groups you might have participating is impossible to control because of the infringements on freedom of association and freedom of speech that Marc Lalonde who was then minister stated in this document.
If the member disputes what I have just said to her, if she disputes the legal opinions, perhaps she should discuss it with Marc Lalonde who reached the same conclusion in 1978.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the basic rules of democracy apply both to a referendum and a general election. That is the position taken by the Lortie commission, which explained that in a a democracy the rules of the game must be fair and equitable and financing must be equal. We did that during the 1980 referendum, so we have nothing to learn from you on that score.
Why is the government trying to hide behind the charter, when the royal commission was clear and specific about the need for spending limits in a democratic process? Is it really serious about this process or is it just playing games?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated the other day, when the House is asked to consider proposals for holding a referendum, we want those proposals to reflect a process that is open, fair and democratic. If the bill that will be tabled does not meet all the intended objectives, I imagine members will propose amendments, and the House will deal with them as appropriate. Obviously, if there is a referendum, we want the process to be fair and equitable for all concerned.
The hon. member for Hamilton East said in referring to the spending issue, that there had been equality in this respect during the 1980 referendum. Perhaps I may recall a statement by the hon. Leader of the Opposition on June 30, 1980, in which he said that although the amounts spent by the federal government during the referendum campaign in Quebec were somewhat in excess of normal levels, he did not intend to apologize to anyone for that fact. He was defending an untenable

May 14, 1992
Oral Questions
position in 1980, and I can assure you I do not intend to defend a similar proposition today.


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister just said that a referendum must meet the test of being clear, transparent and democratic. The Prime Minister will know that opposition parties were not consulted on the make-up of the referendum bill to be tabled tomorrow. We were advised what is to be in the bill that will be tabled tomorrow.
The Prime Minister will also know the last time opposition parties worked together and talked about referendum was in the Beaudoin-Dobbie report when we produced a clause on referenda that said the following: "A referendum should require a national majority and a majority in each of the four regions". All three parties, with the knowledge of all three leaders, signed the Beaudoin-Dobbie report.
Given that commitment in the Beaudoin-Dobbie report and given that the House leader yesterday in answering questions said that the test of what constitutes a pass in a referendum question is irrelevant, will the Prime Minister give his word today that any referendum question must pass in all four regions of Canada-Quebec, Ontario, the western provinces and the Atlantic provinces-before this government, the Prime Minister's government, would proceed with constitutional change in Canada?


Harvie Andre: First off, Mr. Speaker, the Beaudoin-Edwards committee was dealing with an amending procedure. They did talk about an amending formula that would involve regional majorities.
This is not a referendum. This is enabling legislation for a plebiscite which would not be legally binding.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Harvie Andre: This does not supersede the constitutional amending formula which requires approval by seven legislatures representing provinces with more than 50 per cent of the population, as well as the House of Commons and the Senate.
In regard to the position taken by the Liberal Party, I would like to read from this document. This is the government of 1978. It reads: "The government is
convinced that any attempt to limit expenditures must involve unacceptable infringements of freedom of association and speech. Limit on the size of contribution or expenditures which may be made by individuals would preserve all democratic rights while ensuring that no contributor would have an unfair advantage because of his wealth".
In other words, in 1978 the government of the party he supports reached the same conclusion that we have reached based on the charter of rights or the common law that preceded the charter of rights.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, the minister ought to acknowledge that in 1980 the government of the day, indeed all members of Parliament of the day in this Chamber participated in a referendum process, participated under an umbrella organization and participated in a referendum in the province of Quebec where there were spending limits. That is the reality and that is the last word on referen-dums in Canada.
Canadians have taken note that the Prime Minister has not risen to answer a very straightforward question. I ask the Prime Minister, with great respect, once again. Will the Prime Minister give the people of Canada an assurance that any referendum question put to the people of Canada must pass with a majority in each of Canada's regions-in western Canada, in Ontario, in Quebec and in Atlantic Canada-before this Prime Minister and government shall proceed with constitutional renewal in this country? Yes or no?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I do not know why my good friend is so aggressive on this particular question.


An hon. member:: It's rather important.


Martin Brian Mulroney: He says it is rather important, and I agree with him. It is so important that he ought to wait to see the bill before he begins to criticize. When the bill is tabled, and it has yet to be tabled, I believe that it will meet the criteria of fairness, transparency and equity that I have mentioned. If there is any disagreement with that-


Brian Vincent Tobin: Do regional majorities count?


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend talks about regional majorities. The premier of Alberta for example would disagree with that. He would say: "Why a regional majority? You have to have a provincial majority", which is a reasonable question of debate. The debate will begin when the bill is tabled.

I think my hon. friend will find-


Harvie Andre: He keeps talking from his seat.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend will find that it meets that test-
Soine hon. members: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: Perhaps the right hon. Prime Minister could elevate the discussion.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House leader for that helpful comment. I have to, in fairness, give the opposition a 10 on that one. I just want to assure my hon. friend that it will either meet the tests of fairness to which we referred or I am sure that the House will make sure that it does.
There will be a debate, a very vigorous debate. Surely, the most fundamental thing is democracy as exemplified by a vigorous parliamentary debate. There will be a bill that will meet these tests. If these are challenged by my hon. friend then we will see and the House will decide. That is the way a democracy must function.


Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. It was reported today that the premier of Quebec said he had received assurances from the federal government that a national referendum would be held only to break a deadlock. In other words, the government will consult Canadians only to put pressure on the provinces.
I would ask the Prime Minister to make his intentions clear to this House. Will he hold a referendum only if the current negotiations fail?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, we certainly want the current talks to succeed. I certainly hope they do. We made a good start, and I hope that very shortly, the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs will give us a favourable report.
However, if it were impossible to reach an agreement, as a nation, we would have to break the deadlock somehow. We could not remain paralysed as a Parliament, as a government and as a nation. If no agreement is reached, the people will have to vote on the proposals.
Oral Questions
Mr. Bourassa has already said that the offers could either be for independence or renewed federalism. We will have to define renewed federalism, and in order to transmit this redefinition to Quebecers and Canadians, we will have to consult them directly. This might mean using a referendum mechanism to take the pulse of the nation. I think that is quite legitimate and normal.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary for the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister speaks of the need to consult the people of Canada. I would like to say to him that while we are in agreement with that, surely the results of that consultation must mean something and must have some implications for the actions the government will then take.
His government House leader said yesterday that he did not support the recommendation of a consultative referendum, as defined in the Beaudoin-Edwards and the Beaudoin-Dobbie reports, which were signed by all three parties of this House including the Conservative Party.
Those reports indicated there should be in any consultative referendum a double majority or a majority in each region of this country which would include the four regions. Also, the north would be involved as one of the regions. There would be a majority in each region plus a national majority.
Does the Prime Minister still support that recommendation which his party signed and agreed to in two parliamentary reports?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, it is generally understood that because of the 1982 amending formula the ultimate decisions cannot be taken away from the provinces and the federal government, that the amending formula requires their assent.
To deal with the point raised by my hon. friend, let us say that as Prime Minister and as leader of the NDP or the House, we said today that we will take the position that the results of this referendum to be held would be binding in such and such a way. It would be irreversibly binding upon the country.

Oral Questions
If we held it and some of the provinces disagreed, the premiers would quite properly say: "Who do you think you are? We already have a constitutional arrangement since 1982 which requires and mandates the approval of seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population and anything at variance with that is unconstitutional."
Therefore, we could not execute it even if we wanted to. We are stuck with an amending formula that has been there since 1982. We must try within the difficult parameters of that reality to consult with people, to try and make sure that-


An hon. member:: It is meaningless.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says that it is meaningless. It may be, but it is part of the Constitution. I do not think she is suggesting that we can arbitrarily or capriciously change that because the only thing that was lacking in that Constitution of 1982 was the province of Quebec, the signature of Quebec.
We are trying to bring the country together. In that process, we would not want to do something that would be unconstitutional. I think my hon. friend would agree with that.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: My supplementary is for the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker.
No one has ever suggested in this House nor do I believe have the people who served on the two committees I referred to ever suggested that a referendum was to supersede the constitutional amending formula process. No one has ever suggested that in this House nor in those committees.
We talked today about 1978. We talked about 1980. We talked about 1982. Now could we talk about 1992?
There have been two reports unanimously supported by the three parties saying that a consultative referendum should have an interpretive mechanism and that interpretive mechanism should be the regional majority and national majority.
those three parties in good faith that this would be as a serious part of any referendum considered by his government or any future government.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend says that she is not recommending something that is going to supersede the constitutional process.
Well, what is it going to do? What is it going to do? What would the results-


An hon. member:: That is what she is asking you.


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says that is what she is asking me. I understand that.
I am asking her in light of the Constitution why she is asking me something that is already resolved by the Constitution.


Ms. Hunter:: Do you want to switch places?


Martin Brian Mulroney: My hon. friend says: "Let's switch places".


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, may I say with affection and respect that I do not think Canada is ready to have happen to it what is happening to Ontario.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I agree, say, with the question of a regional majority or I agree with a double majority, or say the House would declare that it was in favour of a provincial majority in each province. It might be a very interesting and important statement but it would have no constitutional value whatsoever.
That is because the constitutional amending formula of 1982 requires the permission of the duly elected legislatures of seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population. There is nothing we can do to change that unless, as we did at Meech Lake, we get the agreement of the provinces to so agree.

I would ask the Prime Minister again if he is prepared to respect those recommendations which I have to assume were taken in full knowledge of the current amending formula in the Constitution and were taken by


PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.

May 14, 1992

On January 14 of this year the minister indicated that his government intended to provide drug manufacturers in Canada with longer periods of patent protection.
The comprehensive Green Shield report clearly states that: "Further extensions to patent life will result in continued high levels of increases in drug costs for Canadians".
My question for the minister is simple. When will the minister come clean with Canadian consumers and tell them that the true cost of increased patent protection will be higher drug costs for all Canadians?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I was not in the House yesterday, and someone else pointed out that the study published a few weeks ago was not based on the same figures. The Green Shield study was not based on the same figures as the studies by our own Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. There was no criticism of what was done here in Canada.
The study simply mentioned-and I think this is important-the current trend among physicians to use more expensive drugs, new products coming on the market and the simple fact that more and more drugs are being prescribed every year. Mr. Speaker, we are concerned about the fact that Canadians are paying increasingly higher prices, and that is why the Minister of National Health and Welfare had a meeting in January with his provincial counterparts. In fact, he will meet them again by the end of this month. With the co-operation of the provinces, we will be able to keep prices under control as much as possible.
I am, nevertheless, very pleased that as a result of our controls, the price of patented drugs has increased below the rate of inflation since we adopted Bill C-22 in 1987.1 think that is a significant achievement for this government.


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, the Green Shield report has completely discredited this
Oral Questions
government's previous commitment to price stability for prescription drugs in Canada.
Will the minister assure Canadians that there will be no changes to drug patent policy until there is a full parliamentary investigation into the rising costs of prescription drugs in Canada today?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member referred to the impact of Bill C-22, and perhaps I may recall a few figures that were released since the people in the other place objected to Bill C-22 in 1987. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have announced significant investments, including $270 million in Montreal, at Merck-Frosst. I have a few more here I would like to mention: Boehringer, $135 million over a five-year period; CIBA-GEIGY, $225 million over a five-year period-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for York West.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the same minister. On October 6, 1986, his colleague the government House leader who was the minister responsible at the time said in this House: "In fact, any impartial examination of the new legislation would show that there will be absolutely no increase in drug prices as a result of this legislation".
I ask the minister why has this government once again broken its word to Canadians?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, when we tabled Bill C-22, we made it clear that we would have a board that would control increases in the prices of patented drugs. The hon. member knows perfectly well that the federal government exercises control over patented drugs through the patent system, while non-patent drugs are a provincial responsibility.
We submitted a report, and frankly, I am surprised this is the first question we have had on the subject in five years. Every time we tabled reports in the House, I waited patiently to answer questions, because in each case, the price of drugs increased less than inflation. That is what happened during the past five years. In

Oral Questions
June, we will have a report from the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board that will probably say the same thing.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I guess at the time, the government House leader was not talking from his seat because he was talking through his hat.
Given that the government promised no increases in the cost of prescription drugs and given that the Green Shield report has in fact established that the cost has gone up 11 per cent, will the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs do the honourable thing and order immediately a roll back of the prices charged to Canadians and hospitals for prescription drugs? Will he do that?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, it is particularly important to ensure that we can do basic research in Canada in the drug sector. We had no system. People in Canada were acting more or less like pirates. We were copy-cats, and we had no legislation that would allow Canadians to do basic research in the drug sector. Now we do have such a system, with Bill C-22. We are now attracting young researchers from all over the world, from the United States and Europe, who are coming to do work in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, in fact across Canada, to do research -


Mr. Speaker:: Let us move on. The hon. member for Kamloops.


THE ECONOMY
Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, Canadians were shocked this week when they received in their mail boxes junk mail from the Prime Minister pointing out the results of the prosperity tour. The mail says that personal taxes have been cut as a result of the budget.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Nelson Andrew Riis: It says that within three years the deficit will virtually be eliminated.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday StatsCanada said that income taxes have gone up. The Minister of Finance's own department said that he will not meet his deficit targets for this year, and the chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank said the deficit could be as high as $38 billion.
My question for the Prime Minister is, why is this government sending out this prosperity fairy-tale to all Canadian households?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International TVade):: Mr. Speaker, I have the document right here to which my hon. friend was referring. It says: "Over the past months, in consultations across the country, Canadians have asked for a number of things". We have said precisely what has happened. In one instance it says "cut taxes" and in the recent budget my colleague, the Minister of Finance, cut personal income taxes, putting $500 million in taxpayers' hands this year and $1.2 billion next year.
Those are the facts. That is what this document is reporting, the facts about how the budget is responding to Canadians' requests and how the budget is responding to the needs of the economy, so that the performance of the economy will improve in future years.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that this is the government of tax, tax, tax. They know their taxes have gone up.
It says that "by the mid-1990s the deficit will be virtually eliminated and the government can start paying off the national debt".
That is absolutely false, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Prime Minister why he is continuing to send out this misleading advertising. He is actually misleading households right across Canada. Will he withdraw this and apologize to the people of Canada for misleading advertising?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, the information is not at all misleading. What this document points out very clearly is that it is the socialist governments in the provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario which are the governments of high personal and high corporate taxes. It is the federal government, a Conservative government, that is the government of low taxes.
May 14, 1992


EMPLOYMENT
John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
Thousands of unemployed Canadians are being told by his officials that the training fund, under section 26 of the Unemployment Insurance Act, has run dry. Those taking training courses are being forced to drop out, while others will not even have a chance to start a course.
If the minister is so committed to training, why is he allowing this to happen, and what does he intend to do about it?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: What we are going to do, is within the fiscal framework. We spent, in just the province of Ontario, $300 million more for training unemployed people in this fiscal year. He is talking about section 26. What he is not telling Ontarians or members of this House is that the 1991 budget for fee payers under section 26 was $43 million for Ontario and that this year it has been tripled to $123 million. He is not saying this to the people who will benefit from these courses all year long.


John V. Nunziata: Mr. Speaker, the fact is that thousands of people are being turned away. In the past two years the government has chopped $200 million for training from the Canadian Jobs Strategy budget. Now training money for those on unemployment insurance has run out in certain areas.
How does the minister expect Canada to become more competitive when he is denying training opportunities for thousands of unemployed Canadians? How does he expect unemployed Canadians to find a job in a recession without training?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear that the Liberal Party is finally buying into what has got to be done.
He complains about section 26. Why does he not stand up and admit to Canadians that his was the political party that opposed amendments to the UI act in this House to pass this section 26 training. Now he complains there is
Oral Questions
not enough, when we will be spending three times more in 1992 in Ontario than last year.


Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont-Dundas):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
Yesterday I met with officials from his department and 400 of my constituents who are involved in the section 26 fee-payer option to discuss their future in this program.
I would like to put a human face to the issue raised by my colleague from York South-Weston. Yesterday some of my constituents were served notice that their benefits would be cut off as there are insufficient funds left in the program to see them through to graduation.
Will the minister provide the necessary funding to the fee-payer option so Canada's unemployed, who are trying to better themselves and re-enter the work force, can actually do so?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, when we are discussing the issue of fee-payer programs, members must be aware of the fact that we do not guarantee that the UI recipient will be on unemployment insurance for a full three years without there being a review of the program year after year.
Each year, we review our fee-payer participants and ensure that criteria for qualifications are respected. This is what is happening. I acknowledge that there is a great demand out there for more training. That is why in the Labour Force Development Strategy we have entrusted the Labour Force Development Board with the mandate of making its recommendation to the minister of employment which it will be making.


Robert (Bob) Kilger: Mr. Speaker, last year the government did an honourable thing with that program. Now it slams the door in their faces.

My supplementary question is for the same minister, Mr. Speaker. Due to the mismanagement of the fee-payer option, some participants in long-term programs will be unable to graduate. Many hoped to register in post-secondary institutions, but the news announced yesterday jeopardizes their career plans.

May 14, 1992
Oral Questions
I therefore ask the minister to assure us that the necessary funds will be available for this program, which is very worth while, gives hope to many jobless Canadians and seeks to put Canada back on the road to work and prosperity.


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, it is nice to hear that it is honourable. It is honourable under the law that we reformed despite the Liberals' fierce opposition. Today it is fun to appear to everyone as holier than the pope, but what he does not say-
He said that it was honourable to spend $43 million in Ontario last year under section 26. This year, we will spend three times as much, $125 million, just to meet the needs of Ontarians.

[English)


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the right hon. Prime Minister, who last night observed that Afro-Cana-dians had had many rivers to cross and said that as long as he was Prime Minister he would cross those rivers with us.
We have a river to cross, and it is a statement by the minister in charge of the Constitution that the present constitutional revisions will contain no recognition of equality in the preamble, in the Canada clause or in the body of the charter.
My question for the Prime Minister is simply this. Why should I as a member of Parliament and why should those who are members of ethnic, most particularly coloured minorities, vote for a proposition that so explicitly excludes us?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for the reference to our participation last evening at the WAZEE awards, which are the new awards to celebrate the achievement of black Canadians.
I think all members of the House would join with me in congratulating the five recipients last evening, and all of those minority groups but in particular the black Canadians who contributed so much to the well-being of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Martin Brian Mulroney: In my brief remarks last night I discussed the evils of racism and the need to include all of our citizens in all of our processes and that included the
constitutional process. It would be of little value if people were excluded.
I would be happy to hear from my hon. friend in regard to any specifics he has in mind, because obviously we would want the Constitution of Canada, if it is successfully amended, if it is going to meet thS criteria of fairness and openness and justice, to make sure that black Canadians and all Canadians could identify with the Constitution as an instrument of unity.
He makes precisely the point why so many Frenchspeaking Quebecers do not identify, as they perhaps ought to, with the Canadian Constitution. It is simply because it was not endorsed in 1981 and we would want all Canadians, including black Canadians, to feel proud of the Canadian Constitution.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that any non-Afro-Canadian Liberal or non-Afro-Canadian New Democrat that had been invited last night would have been pleased to congratulate the winners of those awards.
But I nevertheless have to say that I appreciate the Prime Minister's remarks with respect to the Constitution. I put the question to him squarely, provided that he understands that Afro-Canadians are not asking for anything special. I ask the Prime Minister if he will support in section 27 a non-contingent provision that all in this country are equal to all others regardless of race or ethnic derivation absolutely?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to examine that with my hon. friend, but I think that is already adequately covered in the charter. I may be wrong, but I will be happy to examine that very carefully with him.
My hon. friend said that he would have been pleased last night to have been invited-


Howard Douglas McCurdy: I was invited.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Oh, he was invited, because the implication is that he was not, which surprised me-


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Non-Afro-Canadians.
May 14, 1992


Martin Brian Mulroney: Non-Afro-Canadians-I was there.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Mr. Speaker:: We are coming to the close of Question Period and I would like to move ahead as expeditiously as we can. The right hon. Prime Minister.


Martin Brian Mulroney: It was a marvellous event, clouded only by the fact, I should say, on the way out, a group of people said to me: "Give our love to Howard".


CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
Yesterday and this morning, the Minister of the Environment confirmed Canada's commitment to stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions.
Given Canada's record as one of the highest per capita carbon dioxide producers in the world, when will this government commit Canada to cutting-not to stabilizing-carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2005, as many industrial nations have already done? In other words, will the government back up its rhetoric with some teeth?


Mr. Lee Clark (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, as you know, Canada has provided leadership as one of a number of industrialized nations which has made a commitment to stabilizing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000 at 1990 levels. Despite the fact that we have not achieved our first goal of ensuring that other nations going to Rio have accepted that, we feel that good progress has been made and the convention which will be signed there will be a first step in that direction.
It is also important to indicate that we will continue with our objective of stabilizing those emissions by the year 2000 and we will work in co-operation with energy ministers and other partners throughout Canada in so doing.
Business of the House STATISTICS CANADA


Mr. David Berger (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Science and Technology. Not only does the government want to destroy Canada's science and technology infrastructure, it wants to hide the evidence. Last year the government tried to cut science and technology statistics but was forced to back down because of the public outcry. Today it is at it again. Will the minister pledge to reverse the ridiculous decision to cut the science and technology section of Statistics Canada?


Hon. William C. Winegard (Minister for Science):: Mr. Speaker, the science statistics will be collected every second year and there will be an estimate made in between by sampling some of the larger companies.
The United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden all work on the same basis as Statistics Canada intends to do. It has not hurt their research efforts.
Instead of my hon. friend worrying about R and D statistics, he would be far better off talking to his colleagues who want to put in regulations that keep Canada non-competitive in terms of R and D in the pharmaceutical industry, for example. The only way we will have an increase in R and D is for us to have regulations so it is possible that people can join us, not what he wants to do.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of the Hon. John Ningark, Minister Responsible for Renewable Resources, Minister of Government Services and Minister Responsible for Women's Directorate from the Government of the Northwest Territories of Canada.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the government House leader with regard to the business of the House next week. Perhaps he could explain what will transpire tomorrow. I believe the House will be sitting Tuesday through Friday of next week. Could he indicate the business of the House.

May 14, 1992
Business of the House
Also while he is on his feet would he be so kind as to table the document from which he was quoting.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon I intend to begin second reading on Bill C-73 and we hope to carry on and complete second reading of that tomorrow.
In view of the necessity to deal with the plebiscite legislation in some order, to have this tool available, I would like to talk through the usual channels with the opposition parties concerning scheduling next week. I think that will affect everything else we are planning to do.
He asks about this document. It is a public document. Not only would I be willing to table it, I want to circulate it to everybody who can read. Had this document been read, we probably would have had quite a different Question Period over the last couple of days because it addresses all of the concerns that were raised by members opposite during that time.
Certainly I will table it and as I said, distribute it if I can.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, my final question is for the government House leader. In order that we might expedite and facilitate further discussion in the House both during Question Period and other times, at page 10627 of yesterday's Hansard, he indicated that at the committee stage the legal advice that the deputy leader of our party was seeking would be given.
In view of the co-operation that supposedly was extended to members of the opposition, would the government House leader not now entertain providing copies of the legal opinion, both that done by the PCO as well as outside legal counsel, concerning the charter provisions. Would he provide that advice and that information as well?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, in a sincere attempt, and I say this genuinely, to tiy and get some consensus on this legislation which is veiy important to those of us who want to keep the country united, I engaged in conversations with the hon. member and the House leader of the New Democratic Party on three different occasions. There were briefings provided to officials from the offices of the leaders of both parties.
It seems to me that instead of gaining co-operation, it provided fodder for Question Period and resulted in an escalation. This issue is becoming more partisan than
what I had in mind when, in fact, I departed from the usual practice of bills being presented to the House and coming as a surprise to the opposition without their having any input.
Now the hon. member is saying: "Please supply us with more fodder at this point in time". He will understand if I suggest that perhaps I made a mistake involving the opposition in consultations early on, I do want to take some of the steam out of this issue. It is hurting the country, hurting the integrity of the country and hurting what we are all trying to do in keeping the country together.
I assure the hon. member that as the bill proceeds he will be provided with the legal opinions. He also has my assurances should those legal opinions give him or anybody else in this House cause to suggest amendments that might put in place limits and so on of the kind we have been accustomed to, that the government would be very receptive to that. I also say at this point in time that is not a very high likelihood.
If he would have patience and agree with me that we are better off to treat this issue in a more non-partisan manner, we would be better serving the country to proceed in that way.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I wish to pursue this issue with my hon. friend, the government House leader. I think he was saying that we could likely plan to proceed with debating the enabling legislation next week.
Would the government House leader consider the possibility at least of using Committee of the Whole as a way of dealing with this legislation as opposed to a legislative committee? I am just saying we should explore that as a possibility.
Was he saying that we would perhaps depart from the normal rule that any amendments put during committee have to be within the general parameters of the bill and cannot exceed the limits of the bill? When talking about some of these issues, whether it is spending rights or what he is suggesting, they would also obviously go beyond the scope of the bill. Could he clarify that, particularly in anticipation of what could be an amendment?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, in terms of how the bill might be treated in Committee of the Whole, absolutely. As I indicated in our conversations, that certainly has some attractions. It gives it the possibility for a broader
May 14, 1992

understanding because even if everybody does not participate, sitting and listening to the debate they have a better understanding of what is going on. It aids in the understanding of the intent and purposes and so on. So I am favourably disposed toward that sort of approach and look forward to conversations to implement that.
Again, I get back to the original motivation and my motivation in talking to the opposition parties in respect of this legislation. I believe that the country is best served when the parties in this House, which hope, want and are working for a united Canada, will be in agreement and certainly in terms of process, maybe not every detail of it, but in general agreement on process. When that occurs we can make all kinds of changes as the hon. member knows and that is what we are striving for.
I can give the member the assurances that whatever improvements are possible they will certainly be considered and we will find a way to implement them.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to belabour these points, but repeatedly the government House leader has risen in his place-and I wish to reserve the right to check the record-but I would suggest that this perhaps might be a point of privilege in terms of the way in which he attributes the motive of myself and perhaps to a certain extent, my colleague from the New Democratic Party, with regard to the so-called consultations that he believes have taken place.
In law, Mr. Speaker, there is such a thing as an innocent mistake. Perhaps the hon. House leader is having an innocent mistake but there was no such thing as consultation. Let us be clear. Let us be candid and frank with one another. What took place was a briefing of individuals and we were told what was contained in the bill.
I say this with respect. The hon. government House leader has requested that the hon. member be patient. Well, I think the hon. member and all hon. members in this House have been very patient.
We have been waiting since May 13, 1991 when the throne speech was delivered in this House wherein enabling legislation was mentioned. We are being very patient with the government House leader. I would hope that he would not continue with this continuous refer-
Business of the House
ence of attributing motives to members of Parliament which is inaccurate. His memory is extremely selective when it comes to discussions which we have had, both privately and publicly.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, like the hon. member I do not think we should be prolonging this. It is just further evidence of what I was trying to avoid by having the private conversations.
The three meetings with the hon. member present where we discussed the contents of the bill, plus one where there were representatives from his leader's office, were for the purpose of informing the members what was in the bill and seeking feedback.
Surely, it is obvious to anybody that if it is just one-way transmittal, one meeting will do. If there are three meetings, what is the purpose of the other two? To hear suggestions and so on and so forth. That notwithstanding, the reality is that the hon. member and his party had the opportunity through those three meetings to pass on suggestions for improvements. That did not happen.
I have not received any recommendations beyond the general ones that we discussed privately. Those are the same issues that have been discussed in Question Period, spending limits and so on. I explained in private as I have explained in public the constraints of the charter of rights in terms of having umbrella committees and restricting people to participation and so on. It was in that context.
I did not say that the hon. member suggested that I attributed motives. I am simply relating what happened. We had three meetings on the subject, one with officials. The subject matter has been on the floor of the House for the last two days and one day last week. I am simply making the observation which I hope people will understand when I get accused in the future of not discussing with the opposition some of the government plans, where my motivation is coming from.
I thought that would be a tool for smoothing things. It turned out to work in the opposite way. That is not to ascribe motives; it is simply to describe what happened. Like any reasonable person, I learn from experience.

May 14, 1992
Government Orders


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, just to remind the House and I will conclude with this.
The government House leader is quite correct. He did not give an undertaking with regard to consultations. The people who gave an undertaking were the Prime Minister and the Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs. That is point number one.
Point number two is when we were summoned by the government House leader to be told as to what was contained in the bill, the courtesy of being shown a draft bill in irregular form was not given to members of the opposition. That is point number two.
Point number three is that the hon. government House leader is quite correct. He did mention in that session that there were some charter arguments he was concerned about. At that time, nor since that time have we been afforded the opportunity to see the legal opinions of PCO and outside counsel which he gave an undertaking to go out and seek.
If that information was made available, we would all be in a better position to make suggestions and improvements in order to facilitate an obviously important piece of legislation for the government.
I wish to make those points on the record. I still reserve the right after reviewing the transcripts to see whether or not the comments made by the government House leader have in fact breached the rules of this House. I would then have a point of privilege in the sense that he has attributed motives to myself and to others.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, very briefly let us agree that we see recent history differently.


Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, it sounds like deja vu because one week ago today we were on the referendum discussion debate and differences. That is going to be with us. I have some sympathy for much of what the House leader said.
We, the Independents, are going to be briefed tonight at five o'clock. That is certainly a healthy scene. We might not get the legal opinion.
Coming back to House business, I asked this question one week ago and the Minister of Veteran Affairs was
here in the House. The government House leader was very kind and said the merchant marine legislation was in the Department of Justice. He said and I quote: "I think we are talking about days, not weeks".
I know he has a lot on his mind. What has happened to this legislation? Can he give us any new advice as to how close we are to having that legislation tabled along with all the other important things that are going on around here?


Harvie Andre: Regrettably, I would like to be able to tell the hon. member it was approved in cabinet yesterday but that did not happen because it is still going through the processes at justice.
Again, the last time I checked it still is considered to be something that will be ready shortly. Let me say that I will spare no effort to make sure it is passed sooner rather than later.
I think it would be inexcusable if we were to adjourn for the summer without this being in place. Given the number of weeks left we are looking at just a few days.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Harvie Andre: that Bill C-73, an act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to offer explanatory comments on Bill C-73 which will enable Canada Post Corporation to create an employee share ownership plan for all of its 57,000 employees.
The legislation will allow the Crown corporation to do several things.
One, it will build a stronger partnership between management and employees, thereby resulting in more harmonious labour relations in Canada's postal system.
May 14, 1992

Government Orders
Two, more harmonious labour relations will better position the corporation as it invests in new technologies and expertise it needs to expand into new areas of business activity at home and abroad.
Three, it will put its present and future employees on an even footing with the employees of other enterprises in the communications and distribution industry, particularly those of its competitors who offer employees a stake in the company as a way of building better esprit de corps thereby improving service and economic performance.
Four, it will continue to improve its service to the people of Canada and will do so with reasonable competitive rates.
Recent years have seen a massive operational and reputational turn around in Canada's postal service. Canada Post management has enacted the fundamental changes Canadians have demanded. It has diligently and methodically fulfilled the commercial mandate given it by the government.
It has moved Canada Post from the 1970s when the corporation was the butt of jokes to the 1990s where it has become the subject of praise from business journals, customers and global postal administration.
It has once again become a source of pride for Canadians.
Canada Post has been scrutinized by independent reliability measurement. The corporation has instituted a customer service orientation that now sees Canada Post working with literally hundreds of large and small Canadian enterprises to improve their chances of success.
The corporation has achieved the financial self-sufficiency demanded of it and has sustained profit for reinvestment in important operational and technological improvements.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, there is one area where we have been less successful. Despite many years and millions of dollars spent on negotiations and settling labour disputes, we have been unable to achieve a lasting peace in the postal system.

As members of this House and all Canadians are aware, costly strikes in the postal service have spelled untold hardships for businesses in every part of the country. They result in loss of business for Canada Post, some of which simply does not return once the strikes are over.
These disruptions which have become all too ritualized in nature threaten not only Canada Post's ability to predict and deliver the strong economic performance that enables prices to be afforded. They also threaten the job security of the work force at Canada Post.
It is this government's firm belief that the residual ill will and economic ill effects of these disruptions must come to an end. We believe they can be overcome only when the fact is faced that the workers and management of Canada Post need one another, not as adversaries but as allies, if they are to build upon the prosperity that has been won through fundamental change.
Management and employees must be given the means, the incentive and a clear direction on behalf of all Canadians for a new and productive partnership to be forged.
We believe this legislation is the next common sense step to ensuring that such a partnership evolves. The ultimate goal must be to set aside the notion that Canada Post exists only as a battle ground for outdated labour management struggles for philosophical and operational control. No concept could be more discredited in the economic realities of this decade.
Canada Post must become part of a more enlightened mindset that favours co-operative partnership between management and employees as the means by which job security and corporate viability are achieved. Service improvement has been the cornerstone of the Canada Post of the future. Service, reliability and stability in our postal systems are factors underlying the legislation introduced today.
By creating a share structure that allows employee participation through this share ownership plan, government is recognizing the role that employees must play if Canada Post is to continue to progress in a future that is laden with challenge and ripe with opportunity. Capturing that future demands a partnership in which the

May 14, 1992
Government Orders
factors of survival are jointly understood and the fruits of success are jointly shared.
The challenge of global competition has caused Canadians to explore new relationships, to ensure survival and enhance success. The barriers between regions and sectors are coming down. Businesses are forming strategic alliances to pool expertise, technology and information. Workers are embracing new skills and young people are becoming attuned to the life long learning that the 21st century will demand.

Like so many other companies facing the challenges of an expanding market, Canada Post Corporation has managed to make the necessary adjustments indispensable to future success.

After decades of operating on a taxpayers' subsidy, Canada Post has, for three consecutive years, earned a profit. I might say the people of Canada have directly benefited from these earnings. As the only current shareholder, the Government of Canada has received payments from Canada Post of $65 million by way of dividends.
The exception to this recent pattern of profitability is the loss which will be recorded for the year just completed largely as a result of the CUPW strike. However, Canada Post management fully expects that the corporation will return a profit at the end of the current fiscal year and will continue to do so in subsequent years.
The introduction of this employee share ownership plan will allow employees to participate directly in the prosperity they create. As we know, businesses that do not offer return on investment or businesses that do not finance their capital needs through other means do not stay in business very long.
Donald Lander, the President and CEO of Canada Post, told the consumer and corporate affairs and government operations committee of this House on October 31,1989: "Just breaking even means in the long term you go broke. If we at Canada Post fail to invest to keep pace with the competition or to introduce new services and concepts for the business of moving information and goods, the future for the corporation and its employees is bleak".
Canada Post has been doing a lot better than just breaking even. The corporation invests in new technology, plants, equipment and infrastructure at the rate of $400 million to $500 million per year, at a total of over $2 billion since becoming a Crown corporation. That investment has created economic activity and has positively contributed to Canada's competitive position.
Over the past 10 years Canada Post has developed and built new systems, brought in new standards and created a level of efficiency which is second to no other postal system in the world. It handles 50 per cent more mail than it did nine years ago; upwards of 40 million separate pieces to over 11 million homes and businesses every business day. According to the latest business report it has done that with a 98 per cent rate of on time delivery.
In addition, Canada Post's basic letter rate is the second lowest in the western world, measured in terms of the time required by an average worker to earn the price of a stamp. This is an incredible feat considering that we have a population which is sparsely distributed in six time zones across the second largest country in the world with what is among the world's most difficult terrain and weather.
It is these investments that have turned a slow and backward government department, which only sometimes delivered the mail, into a modem, efficient corporation which does what it is supposed to do, namely, deliver the mail on time and at a reasonable price. These investments make Canada Post one of the country's largest users and developers of high-tech systems and equipment.
Canada Post is not a simple, passive purchaser of new technology. Through its partnership with other high-tech companies, it has worked to develop new systems and technologies which are world leaders. We are now selling our expertise to other postal systems around the world.
It is safe to say that ten or even five years ago if any hon. member had suggested that post offices from other countries would be coming to Canada Post to leam better ways to deliver the mail, he or she would have been laughed out of this House, but that is what is happening now. It is happening because Parliament of Canada gave Canada Post management the flexibility to create new and better ways to deliver the mail.
May 14, 1992



The Canada Post Corporation is now a profitable business because it was able to acquire the tools it needed to carry out its mandate. The proposed legislation will make it even better able to meet this challenge.

Over the past 10 years, Canada Post employees have not only had to make major adjustments in their thinking about the objectives of the corporation, but they have been the ones who have done the work of rebuilding it into a customer-oriented, modem and productive company.
We think they deserve to have a share of the profits that will be earned as a result of their efforts. This plan gives Canada Post, as an employer, the opportunity to offer its employees the same thing that many businesses, particularly its competitors, offer to theirs, a piece of the action.
It will also help to put Canada Post on an even footing with its competitors and will help put its employees on an even footing with employees of other major communications and distribution companies. It will allow Canada Post to offer current and potential employees a more competitive compensation package.
A more competitive compensation package means that you are able to hold on to the expertise you had and also attract people with the new skills which are necessary to operate a complex, highly mechanized communications business. Let us make no mistake about it, today's Canada Post is a business. It is in competition, not only with other couriers and delivery services, but also with new information transfer technologies like fax machines and direct data transfers.
In that competitive climate, the successful company will be the one whose delivery is the fastest, the cheapest and the most consistently reliable. As I said, Canada Post has been proving to Canadians, particularly to Canadian businesses which make up over 80 per cent of its volume, that it can do the job. This legislation will help it do it better.
It will have another positive effect. It will inspire confidence in the reliability of the postal service. Now when you drop a letter in a mail box in Ottawa for Vancouver, you will know that the driver who collects it
Government Orders
is a part owner with a vested interest in getting it to the depot safely at the proper time.
You will know that the individual sorting it is another part owner with a vested interest in getting your letter into the right bag and the handler who puts it on to an airplane at the Ottawa airport has a vested interest in its getting on the right plane. The inside worker in Vancouver has a vested interest in getting it to the right delivery person, and that delivery person who drops it through the front door slot at the address in Vancouver has a vested interest in doing so without unnecessary delays.
Employees with a direct financial stake in the way their company performs will themselves perform better. We believe this plan will instil in the men and women of Canada Post a new sense of pride in the jobs they are doing and a new sense of commitment to the new customers and Canadians the postal system was created to serve.

This decision was made for the sole purpose of enhancing the existing partnership between Canada Post and its employees, so that together they can continue to be able to respond to the changing needs of Canadians. Under the legislation, share ownership will be limited to employees of the Canada Post Corporation.

No member of this House, no member of the general public and no other business will be entitled to participate in Canada Post shares under the legislation tabled here today. This is not privatization. It is the enabling of employee participation. The government believes that this is a simple yet common sense step of which Canadians will approve as a means to improve morale and service in our postal system.
I urge members of this House to join with me today on behalf of Canadians in enthusiastically supporting this initiative.
As I have indicated to the House, we have reason to be pleased with the progress made at Canada Post. It is common sense. Twenty-five per cent of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange have employee stock savings plans like this. It is not new territory we are treading on. It is a well-proven technique that works.

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It is becoming acceptable. I want to read from a document on proposed reform of the Ontario Labour Relations Act, the discussion paper of the Ministry of Labour, November 1991. It states, among other things: "Labour relations reform, while essential to the government's objectives, is only one element of an over-all agenda for the renewal of Ontario's economy which includes, amongst other things, encouraging worker investment and ownership in Ontario companies in a manner which recognizes the benefits of worker participation for both labour and business".
I am sorry there are no members of the New Democratic Party to hear that message. I am not reflecting on their attendance. I am sure they are all doing important things.
The reality is that I would hope we could deal with this legislation fairly expeditiously. It is a common sense approach. It is successfully being used by 25 per cent of the companies trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The hon. member for Beaches-Woodbine is suggesting we expand it. That may well be something for the future. The advice we have is that the 10 per cent allocated to employee stock savings plans is a common amount in terms of these types of systems. To take the next step and go below that, we are talking about privatization which philosophically does not offend me but does represent a different step than the one we are taking here and would have to be dealt with at another time and in another piece of legislation.
Air Canada has plans like this in place. It is a very common thing. We have the New Democratic Government of Ontario suggesting that its proposals for its social and economic agenda and renewal of Ontario's economy talked about encouraging worker investment. Wherever we are on the political spectrum, left or right, we can only come to the conclusion that it is common sense and it is something we ought to do.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would like to advise the House that under Standing Order 74, the first two speakers have 40 minutes with no questions or comments. The third speaker will have 20 minutes plus questions or comments.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to both the speech of the minister and the second reading of this bill on behalf of my colleagues in the Liberal Party.
In 1985 the Prime Minister told Canadians that Air Canada was not for sale and that he had no intention of privatizing Air Canada. Never has the opposite of the truth been stated with greater accuracy. Only a few years later Air Canada was sold off.
Today we are discussing a bill to sell 10 per cent of the shares of Canada Post. The minister has just told us he philosophically does not object to privatizing Canada Post but that this particular bill is not doing that. Again, this is less than totally accurate.
Whether or not one disposes of the shares to the in-laws of MPs or to the employees of Canada Post, one is privatizing that part one is selling off, by definition. In fact we are talking about a bill to privatize 10 per cent of Canada Post this time. The minister has already indicated that he does not philosophically object to selling off our postal service. Notice the emphasis on the word "service", Mr. Speaker. The minister keeps talking about Canada Post "business", Canada Post "competitors".
Down the concession, the 4th line road of Sarsfield, Ontario, there is no competition for Canada Post. The person delivers the mail. Canada Post is a monopoly. There is no competition for first-class mail. No one else can legally do it. It is against the act. So let us not talk about competition.
I wonder how many companies are delivering mail in the riding of my colleague from Cape Breton Highlands-Canso besides Canada Post. None. Canada Post is it. It has a monopoly. That is the same in my colleague's riding, my riding or the riding of the hon. member for Pierrefonds-Dollard sitting across the way. Canada Post delivers the mail. That is it.
The minister might say: "Oh, yes, but Canada Post has competition in the sense that other people deliver parcels". It may be so in that regard, save and except that he probably forgot to tell us that Canada Post recently invented its own courier system. It has even bought one overseas when it bought shares in an outfit in Australia that owns something else in Europe called G.D. Express. It spent something like $48 million to do that.
The minister says that for three years Canada Post has made money. Of course the minister is in no position to refute my statement right now. let me put it that way. I challenge the minister right now to tell me how much profit Canada Post will make this year. Of course the minister is not responding. We will note that he is not
May 14, 1992

responding at this particular point to the statement I am making.
Very simply, Canada Post's losses this year-losses, not profits-are in the order of $100 million. That is the loss we are talking about at the Canada Post Corporation this year.
The minister tells us today that the greatest thing he can do right now, his greatest scheme, is to sell off 10 per cent of the shares of Canada Post to employees. There is a lot wrong with that.
First, I do not think we should privatize the post office at all. My party has taken that position in a dissenting report to the report entitled Moving the Mail: Canada's Postal Service in the 1990s. This report was a report of the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations. I am very familiar with it because I wrote the recommendations on behalf of my colleagues. I was the postal critic. I was the one who prepared, together with a very able staff, the recommendations in that report. I bring to the attention of the House some of those recommendations and the historic position my party has had on this issue.
Let us listen to what the Conservative majority on the committee said. Recommendation No. 36 reads:
That the Government of Canada privatize Canada Post once adequate financial performance, comparable to private sector levels, has been attained and once the industrial relations climate has improved.
That was the recommendation of the Conservative members of the committee. The Liberals on the committee said that Canada Post should remain a Crown corporation. That was Liberal recommendation No. 36. That was the position adopted by our caucus. That is the position I took on behalf of my colleagues and that is the one I still hold today.
Why? Is this some sort of a fetish that we cannot privatize anything? No, that is not the case. Very simply, the reason is that we are talking about a national postal service which can serve rural and urban Canada. It will deliver the mail not just in Ottawa, Toronto or Vancouver, not just electricity bills because of course that is a paying proposition, not just that kind of mail, but mail from someone living in St. Isidore de Prescott who wants to write to someone in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan. If that is what that person wants to do, that too is part of the system.
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The destruction of our postal system is just one of those things that this government has been doing. It has been dismantling it piece by piece, along with some other elements of our Canadian infrastructure, the railways and everything else.
On every post office in my riding there was a flag of Canada. "Canada Post-Poste Canada" appeared on the front of those post offices. Do we know what it says now? There is a pigeon wing and it says "Mail-Poste". That is what we have now, and we are asking why we have a national unity problem when in some of our rural towns and villages the only place where there was a flag of Canada, the only place where the word "Canada" was written down, was on the post office. This government approved in cabinet an Order in Council necessary to make Canada Post change its corporate logo, change its corporate identity, and remove the reference to Canada on its operations, on its plants and on its buildings.
That is not the only place where that has been done. Why has it been done? To please whom? Not I, Mr. Speaker, and not my constituents. One has to wonder just what is gained by that. Is it to please those who would not want to see the word "Canada" in parts of our country? Is it to please those who want to privatize the post office and by removing the word "Canada" from it, by pretending that this is just another company like a chain of doughnut shops, think that it would be easier to sell later without that name on it? Which is it, or is it both?

People attending the Liberal convention in Hull several weeks ago had an accountability session during which they asked parliamentarians questions. Do you know what the first question was, even before national unity and all the other issues? The first question was asked by a lady who got up and said: "I will ask the first question. What will the Liberals do to put the Canadian flag back on post offices when you regain power?" That was the first question, asked by this lady from Quebec who was at the convention. What does that tell us? It tells us that Canadians care about these institutions, even if the government pretends that they do not. It also tells us that the service should be protected and improved. You do not do that by selling 10 per cent of the shares to the employees, to parliamentarians, to the businessmen's associations or to anyone else. That is not the way to improve service.

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I have raised before the issue of Canada Post in my constituency. Since we are talking about labour relations, I will refer to the instance of the post office in Dalkeith, Ontario.


An hon. member:: Where is that?


Don Boudria: My colleague asks where is Dalkeith. It is in Glengarry county in my riding.
In Dalkeith, Canada Post asked for tenders to deliver the rural mail. It had belonged to the same family for 25 years; the husband for 16 years and when he died the wife took over the run delivering the mail. A 64-year old widow bid to get her job back. She did not even ask for an increase. Do people have to bid to get their jobs back? Yes, they do now, because it says these people are technically contractors. They are not real employees. As far as I am concerned when you work some place for 25 years, regardless of what you call it, you are an employee, you work there and she worked there.


An hon. member:: If you die your wife takes your job.


Don Boudria: The member across is raising an interesting point. I will come back to that in a minute.
This woman had been working there for eight years, a widow, 64 years old. Canada Post tendered her job and gave it to someone else to save $1,500 a year. At the same time, Canada Post was buying corporate memberships to golf courses for its executives. At the same time it had a box at the stadium in Toronto.


An hon. member:: How much does that box cost?


Don Boudria: It costs hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to pay for those kinds of things. Yet this constituent of mine lost her job for $1,500, a job she had had for eight years. I can understand, and perhaps the member across will think in his own way: "Well, it is a contract. Perhaps this person after this length of time, if she was asking for an increase she should have bid against the other person". She was asking for nothing. She just wanted to continue the job she was doing. She lost it.

Canada Post also has a policy to convert post offices. Converting them does not mean closing them, Mr. Speaker. Well yes, it does mean closing them for all of us and all Canadians, except the so-called dignitaries in the tower of Babel at Canada Post. It calls it conversion. If you do not like a word, you change it. They do that pretty regularly at the Pentagon in the United States. They invent words to try to lull people about the atrocities that are going on.
So what is going on with Canada Post? It is converting post offices. It means closing them and giving a franchise to someone somewhere to sell stamps. That is conversion.
For example, I will tell you about the village of Fournier in Prescott county this time. Last week in the village of Fournier in Prescott county, Canada Post called all the people of that community to a meeting, a consultation-that is another word. It means that it informs the people that the post office is being closed. It is called a consultation. It is more polite than calling it a briefing or a notification. It is called a consultation. It consults the people. The people come in, sit down and are told how the post office will be closed.


John Harvard: You are just told.


Don Boudria: As my colleague from Winnipeg St. James rightly said, a consultation means that they are just told, period.
So the people there listen and since it was a consultation, someone dared to ask Canada Post, "What will you do? You are closing the post office. What will you do? What will you offer us?" Well, it did not know; it was negotiating and trying to find a place to sell stamps. Someone at the meeting-you will understand that the ordinary people in my riding have a right to be puzzled- asked the Canada Post representative, "Would it not have been wiser to find a place for the stamp concession before closing the post office, instead of waiting till it was closed and then trying to find somewhere to sell stamps?" Surely there is something wrong in that approach. No, for Canada Post, it makes sense.
May 14, 1992



Right now the people of Fournier have no idea whether they will have any place in the village where anyone will be selling stamps or any other postal service.
In 1985 or 1986 Canada Post adopted its five-year corporate plan. The plan called for the privatization-I am sorry, I should not have said that, Mr. Speaker, I apologize profusely-for the conversion of 5,221 rural post offices in Canada, all of them. That was the original plan.
The then member for Winnipeg and I cannot remember his riding, the late Dan McKenzie-


An hon. member:: Winnipeg-Assiniboia.


Don Boudria: Winnipeg-Assiniboia I guess was the riding-protested this in the caucus of his party. The beleaguered minister responsible for Canada Post, Mr. Cote, walked out of the caucus room that day, pretty badly bruised by his colleagues, and came up with a compromise. He said he would not shut down the post offices in rural Canada, save and except when the postmaster resigned, retired, or died.
Canada Post looked at all that and said it could not really be called that because it was not nice. It said it was going to close down post offices-I am sorry-convert rural post offices when it had a natural opportunity. That is what it is called. Someone dies, I suppose that is natural. Someone retires, that is the process of aging, maybe that is natural too, and if someone quits I suppose not wanting to do something is probably natural as well. That is called a natural opportunity.
So it converted the postal delivery system when it had a natural opportunity. I want you to know you do not close down the post office when someone dies. It is not the same says Canada Post. Okay, so that worked for a while, the natural opportunity business.
But after a while Canada Post got fed up with rules. Well, rules are meant to be broken, Mr. Speaker, as some of the members across the way will probably know-I know, of course, being the objective, non-partisan person you are that you are above that-but the people across the way will know that rules are meant to be broken.
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So Canada Post looked at this and said: "How can we cheat? Here is what we will do. We will go see a postmaster", which it did again in my riding, and said: "Postmistress, tell us, you have worked around here for a long time. You are only 60 years old. You are really not 65 but how about going home? We will give you so many thousands of dollars and we can naturalize your opportunity right now". So the postmistress was bought off and went away.
The member across might be wondering what is wrong with that. Simply that it is the opposite to what was promised by the government that this would not happen. You force someone to retire, or you intimidate them, then you offer them the money, then you make them quit and once they retire, forcefully or otherwise, you declare it a natural opportunity. You shut down the post office. That is what it has been doing all across rural Canada.


Mr. TVemblay (Lotbiniere):: If they quit, they quit. Do your own job.


Don Boudria: The member says if they quit they quit. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is very interesting. The member across the way, if he goes back to his riding every now and then surely must know that that is not how constituents feel.
[Translation\
I know Rural Dignity, I know the post offices that have been closed in Canada. I know what they and many people throughout Canada, including those in the riding of the hon. member who just made a remark, are demanding.

Let us get back to this privatization issue-I am sorry, the selling of shares to employees. You need the right euphemism, you know, because Canada Post would not like it and I certainly would not want to offend the people in the tower of Babel, the spaceship or whatever it is called, at Canada Post headquarters.
The Toronto Star wrote in an editorial on May 10,1992, about the privatization-I am sorry-the selling of shares to employees the following. It is entitled "A new postal issue":
If Canada Post Corp. thinks financial incentives would speed the
mail and improve worker morale, maybe it ought to set up a
profit-sharing plan.

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The idea is worth considering, given the chronic malaise at the post office where labour-management feuding at times has been likened to class warfare.
The Progressive Conservatives have come up with an infinitely more complex incentive scheme that looks suspiciously like a back door route to privatization.
This is not an opposition member saying this. This is a neutral party, The Toronto Star.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Don Boudria: There you go. I knew it would get a reaction from the members across the way. Perhaps now they will pay attention.
I read further from the editorial in question:
And why to share in the profits, the government says.
The slim bill now before Parliament is only five pages and extremely fuzzy on a few crucial details.
It gives no hint as to how the non-voting share would be priced, or what the rules would be for redeeming or transferring them if a worker wanted to dump them.
It provides for dividends to be set by Canada Post "in accordance with the rights, privileges, restrictions and conditions attaching it to the shares".
And what might they be? The government isn't saying.
Until it fills in some blanks, why would MPs bother to debate such a sketchy proposal?
Unfortunately on that count we have no choice. The government proposes the legislation and the House disposes.
I read further:
But there's an even bigger question here.
If the government allows postal employees to buy stock in the enterprise, how long would it take Ottawa to conclude that everybody else should have the same right?
In other words it is one small step to one giant privatization.
Andre insists that the employee stock scheme is not the first toward privatization of what is a fundamental public service. But then, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney once assured Canadians that the then crown-owned Air Canada was "not for sale" either.
It goes back to what I said initially. Just because the government says that it will not sell any more of the shares is no reason at all. It is no comfort for me. I simply do not believe it.

Today we have the first step in privatizing Canada Post. I feel that the government should think much longer, even for several months, before going ahead with such a plan. Mr. Speaker, I must tell you that in a few months,
Canadians may be free, that is, the government opposite will be defeated. Canadians will be liberated, of course, and you will have guessed, Mr. Speaker, that this government will be replaced by a Liberal government, which we will have in six months, I hope.
Meanwhile, to give the government six months to think it over-

I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word "that" and substituting the following therefor:
Bill C-73, an act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act be not now read a second time, but that it be read a second time this day six months hence.


Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly pleased to have the opportunity to discuss this legislation.
I must say the opposition is very much united in opposing this particular legislation which amounts to nothing more than being another step along the inevitable process for the privatization and piecemeal sell-off of Canada Post as we know it today.
My riding is in the interior-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I would like to interject here. I find the amendment in order and I think we should carry on from there.


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, my riding is in the interior of the province of British Columbia. I represent the Okanagan-Shuswap area.
Like many of the rural areas throughout not only my province but throughout this country, there are a number of small communities where the central post office has become very much a way of life of that community, people meeting each morning to pick up their mail and to pick up parcels. They use the opportunity on a daily basis and utilize the post office as a kind of community meeting place.
In that respect, the post offices in our rural communities are very much a part of the heartbeat of those communities. That is why it has been so damaging to see the impact of the government's strategy to close those post offices and to privatize the services. It has done irreparable harm to the lifestyle in many of our communities.
May 14, 1992

There is a community in my riding where the post office was one of the largest rural post offices that had been closed to that date. I speak of the community of Enderby. The impact in that community would have been quite dramatic had not the community itself taken some fairly aggressive measures and successfully, I might add, convinced the powers that be at Canada Post to at least consider rather than fragmenting the service and piecemealing it off to various parts of the community to at least maintain a central facility. At least the people still have, although it is a privatized retail outlet, a facility not far from where the original post office was located that is maintaining that very vital service to the community.
I might add that not all communities in Canada have been as fortunate as Enderby to have been able to at least maintain that centralized service. There are many communities throughout Canada and other parts of the Okanagan that have been less fortunate. For example, in the community of Westwold, which is in the riding of Kamloops held by my friend and colleague from the Kamloops area, the post office was closed. It was virtually the only outlet available in the area. People fought it, there was virtual insurrection, there were mass protests and yet the government remained absolutely opposed to any thought of reorganizing that postal outlet. It closed it and the community lost a very vital service.
Not long ago to the south of me in the community of Penticton, again a community that is in the riding of one of my friends and colleagues, the member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt, that post office was also closed, again despite the very strong vocal protests from the many people in that community about the loss of that service.
The service was broken up, it was fragmented and was divied up piecemeal to other retail outlets. As I say, that has a very dramatic impact in those smaller communities throughout Canada. In many cases it does tend to fragment the community. As I said before, the post office is very much part and parcel of community life. It is part of the heartbeat of that community. In closing those offices, the government has done much harm to the lifestyle of rural Canadians.
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This particular bill, as I mentioned, continues that process. The bill is supposedly to allow 10 per cent of Canada Post non-voting shares to be made available for purchase by Canada Post employees. Supposedly, according to the minister, the bill is to help eliminate the labour-management tension that currently exists at Canada Post.
I submit that that is a specious argument. The argument does not hold true to the reality of the situation faced by the employees at Canada Post and that is why we oppose the bill.
I think the argument can be made and has been made time and time again that this government's long-term agenda and this initiative falls hand in hand with its strategy of full privatization of Canada Post.
The bill will do nothing to promote labour management peace. The argument used by the minister that it will eliminate the labour-management tensions is simply a smoke-screen. It will do nothing to eliminate the problems that have existed for years at Canada Post, tensions that have developed because of poor management practices and a very poor management relationship with respect to the employees of that organization.
Canada Post has proven in the past that it cannot be trusted to stop harassing the workers. It cannot be trusted to stick to its word. This bill, I submit, does nothing to resolve that critical shortcoming in terms of the past management practices of this particular Crown corporation.
The bill does nothing to maintain or improve the service in our rural and urban postal outlets. It does nothing to address the inadequacies of what the government has proceeded with in terms of the closure of hundreds and hundreds of rural post offices across this country. It is well-known that the long-term strategy of this government is to close down virtually every rural outlet in Canada, to take that service and piecemeal it off into the retail sector.
I submit part of that strategy is simply a way of getting around the difficulties that this management structure has found in giving a fair deal to the workers and the union involved. It is much easier just to go around it, privatize it, and then it does not have to deal with the realities of union-labour and union-management negotiations.

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Privatization has been a policy tool used by this government many times in the past. We have seen the government on one hand say it would never privatize Air Canada and lo and behold what do we see happening, the privatization of Air Canada. Again it is just proof in point that the government cannot be held to its word.
I just want to read into the record a comment made by the minister responsible for Canada Post. This is an article in The Ottawa Citizen dated May 1,1992. Here the minister insisted that the immediate privatization is not in the cards. But on the other hand, and I quote: "He refused to rule out future privatization except to say nothing will happen until after the next election".
That is a caveat you could drive a Mack truck through. I would suggest it is very much part of the minister's over-all plans that should this survive the next election -and that alone as we know is highly dubious indeed -but God forbid should it survive the next election, we can see very clearly in the minister's comments that are quoted in this May article in the The Ottawa Citizen that his strategy is to privatize Canada Post, sell it off to the retail sector, and to remove this government from yet another area of responsibility to the Canadian people.
This again is the minister responsible for Canada Post speaking and let me quote: "If I had to bet I would bet that in the next couple of decades you will see post offices being privatized all over the world and I would not mind seeing Canada first".
There it is in black and white. The minister is saying he not only wants to privatize the postal service in Canada, but he wants Canada to be a world leader in the privatization of our postal outlets.
That is not to say there are not incidents where utilizing postal services through retail outlets are in fact in many cases beneficial for the public, but that does not justify throwing the baby out with the bath water. That does not justify closing virtually every postal outlet that we now know, the rural outlets and I would submit many of the urban outlets when the time comes.
That does not justify cutting the heart out of the quality of service that people across Canada have come to expect and essentially, to reiterate my argument, cutting the heart out of those rural communities that
have come to rely on the post office as far more than just a post office, but as part and parcel of their community lifestyle.
The minister insists that this bill is designed only to make Canada Post employees feel proud to be a part of Canada's postal service. The problems that this corporation has had with respect to labour relations are not going to be eliminated by that. Those problems are deeply rooted in a long history of bitter labour-management distrust, a distrust that has been fostered, I submit, by years of mismanagement.
The company has rarely negotiated with its workers in good faith. Any concessions that have been gained by the workers have come as a result of hostile and often bitter negotiations. There are a litany of problems that hardly make Canada Post employees proud of their employer and proud of the situation they are in.
There are over 100,000 outstanding grievances currently registered at Canada Post. It has been over six months since the back-to-work legislation was passed regarding the operations of Canada Post. What has this government done? Absolutely nothing. It has sat back, cooled its heels and allowed the status quo to prevail. There is still no agreement, although the workers went back, albeit against their wishes, with the abiding faith that this government would keep its commitment to realize an agreement that would be satisfactory to both the corporation and the workers.
Is there any agreement or any movement toward that agreement? I suggest that is not the case. It demonstrates the reason for the lack of trust among the employees of Canada Post and among the employees throughout the Public Service Alliance of Canada. It demonstrates again why this government cannot be trusted and in the future will not be trusted.
The union did what it was asked to do. The employees went back to work. Canada Post did not do what it had agreed to do, namely, to come up with a reasonable contract to ensure the workers protection.
If the government and Canada Post wish to create an atmosphere of goodwill, they are not going to do it through this piece of legislation. They are going to do it if they could simply realize it by honouring their commitments and providing these workers with a collective agreement.
May 14, 1992

The end of July 1992 is going to mark the third year that postal workers have been without a collective agreement. This has not been for a lack of trying. It has been for a lack of commitment on the government's part to honour agreements which should be honoured.
We are not going to change that kind of distrust that develops as a result of the actions of this government through a 10 per cent share offering. This piece of legislation is not going to do the job it is intended to do. It is a smoke-screen. It is only one step further along the government's agenda to privatize Canada Post and to sell off the assets.
It is because of this that my colleagues and I cannot support this legislation. It is because of this that we remain vitally concerned about the future of other postal operations, not only in my region, in the Okanagan-Shu-swap, but right across Canada in the many rural communities. There are many outlets still which have not been closed but which we know have been targeted.
I am concerned about the rural outlets in my community and in the north of my riding in the Okanagan- Shuswap, the community of Canoe. It is my understanding that particular postal outlet has been targeted as well as other outlets in my own constituency.
We cannot continue with this process. We cannot continue with throwing people out of work, with cutting the heart and life-blood away from the communities that these post offices have served. This is a vital issue. It is an issue on which people in the interior of British Columbia, in the interior of Alberta, in the interior of Saskatchewan, of Manitoba, of Ontario and right across this country have said to the government that what it is doing is wrong.
There may be some reason, some rationalization, for the offering of retail services. For gosh sakes, let us not tear apart the community structures that have become very much a part and parcel of our Canadian way of life. This government does not understand rural Canada. It does not understand small-town Canada. The reason for that is that the people who are setting the agenda for this government are the corporate elite of this country. It is Bay Street that speaks for the corporate agenda of this country.
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It does not understand what it means in a small community in the interior of British Columbia, in the community of Enderby, in the community of Penticton, in the community of Westwold, in the community of Canoe. It does not understand what it means to take a post office away from the people and divvy up the outlet to a store or another retail facility. It changes the nature of that community. People have said that time and time again and I wish that the government could understand the dynamics that take place when it does that to our small communities.
We looked at the same thing with the loss of services in the RCMP. Thank goodness we had 19 members of this caucus from the province of British Columbia who stood up and were accounted for and supported their communities in getting those RCMP services back into the communities where they belonged. It was only because of the strong voice of those committed members from British Columbia that we were able to convince this government to undo the damage it was about to do.
I only wish that we could convince this government of the same thing with respect to post offices. For gosh sakes, do not go any further. You have gone too far already, do not close any more urban or rural outlets, particularly the outlets in our smaller communities because it is cutting the heart out of those communities. That is why we cannot support this legislation.


Mr. Pat Sobeski (Cambridge):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment and then follow it up with a question.
I guess what this legislation does seems to be common sense. Some 10 years ago Canada Post drained each year about $600 million from taxpayers to support it. Over those 10 years there has been a turn around in which Canada Post is now paying a dividend. Other than this year, in which we have had a disruptive strike, there has been a turn around and it is now paying a dividend.
What was part of the reason for this turn around? I would suggest to the hon. member that it probably has a lot to do with the employees, both managers and the workers for Canada Post. If I were working for a company or a corporation that had that great a turn around, I would like to share in some of the profits. It

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seems to be logical that if I am working for a company that has turned it around, I could do that.
It is clear that the federal NDP is opposed to this. I have here the Speech from the Throne from the NDP government of the province of Ontario. On April 6, on page 10, the throne speech said worker ownership legislation will come forward for a final debate. In Ontario the NDP government is saying it is supporting worker ownership legislation.
In November of 1991 the same Ontario NDP government, in its controversial Ontario Labour Relations Act, had a positive part in there and the suggestion was that it wanted to encourage worker investment and ownership in Ontario companies in a manner which recognized the benefits of worker participation in both labour and business.
I am standing here a little confused. The federal NDP is saying no to worker participation in the ownership of companies, but the Ontario NDP is saying yes.
Could the member please explain to me, talking out of both sides of his mouth, which is it? Are you in favour or not in favour?


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: I thank the member for his question. It certainly does not surprise me that the member is confused. However, I hope that I can go to some degree to clarify his long-standing confusion on this and other issues.
First of all, we already own Canada Post. You are trying to sell back essentially something that the workers themselves already own as being Canadians and voting members in this society.
We tried to do that out in British Columbia years ago when Mr. Bennett decided he would teach British Columbians a great lesson in capitalism and sell them something that they already owned. He created a massive enterprise called the B.C. Resources Investment Corporation, BRIC. It has become known, subsequent to that, as B.C.'s really incompetent incorporation; $10 shares are now selling at 49 cents. If that was Mr. Bennett's lesson in capitalism, I would certainly be sceptical of the lesson in capitalism of which this government is about to try to convince the workers of Canada Post that it wants to entertain.
That privatization scheme by Mr. Bennett out in British Columbia was an unmitigated disaster and it lost
millions and millions of dollars for the people of British Columbia. I submit that this hare-brained scheme that this government has with respect to selling back shares of a corporation that the workers themselves already own is just as hare-brained as Mr. Bennett's was.
The minister has said that the share offering is to placate the workers to make them feel good about Canada Post. I say to my hon. friend, how can the workers feel confident, comfortable and good about their Canada Post when they see in British Columbia and Yukon 104 offices that have been closed, when they see in Alberta and the Northwest Territories 170 offices closed? In Saskatchewan 235 offices have been closed. All of these total across Canada some 1,598 closures and planned closures.
How can you feel confident about your future, about your job, about your family when you might be next?


John Harvard: Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I was a resident of British Columbia when those infamous BRIC shares were distributed to the people of British Columbia. At the time of their distribution they had a value of $6. Now I am told by my good friend from Shuswap that they are worth 49 cents. Somehow I always knew that I would never make a nickel out of those rotten BRIC shares.


An hon. member:: Neither did I.


John Harvard: My hon. friend from British Columbia has just confirmed it.
I want to make one comment and then a question with respect to the current debate. There is no doubt in my mind that through this particular bill the government is trying to plant a a seed which it hopes will some day produce full-blown privatization of Canada Post.
I am opposed to it, my party is opposed to it and if it ever came to reality in this country it would be a disaster.
Let me make this one observation. There is a tremendous amount of commercial business intercourse between Toronto and the nation's capital. Because of that business activity, there is naturally a lot of postal activity. One can imagine that if Canada Post were privatized, chances are that the level of service between Toronto and Ottawa would be very good and chances are that the price, compared to today, to the consumer would be very competitive. In an area of intense commercial activity between Toronto and Ottawa, I would not be surprised
May 14, 1992

that a privatized corporation like Canada Post might even produce a better price. That is just part of the story.
For example, the business activity between The Pas, Manitoba and Winnipeg is not so intense. Do you think that if Canada Post were privatized it would provide the same level of service at the same price between The Pas and Winnipeg as it would between Toronto and Ottawa?
In other words, what I am aiming at is if you privatize Canada Post, you wind up with several tiers of service and if you happen to live in a choice spot in Canada, you might get good service at a good price. If you live in the outer regions, in the hinterland of Canada, you will get poorer service at a much higher cost.
Therefore, my question is very simple. Would the previous speaker from British Columbia concur with my observation?


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: Mr. Speaker, to be short, I most wholeheartedly do concur with the observation. The arguments my hon. friend has put forward are quite to the point.
The fact is that this entire bill, as I said before, is really a smoke-screen. This entire process of privatization is not in the long-term interests of either the workers of Canada Post or of the public they serve. There may be situations, as I said before, in which the rationalization of services is cost-efficient, but in the long run what will happen should this entity be privatized and taken apart and the entrails scattered to the private sector, is that we will have a deterioration in the quality of service and a substantially higher cost to the taxpayer.


Mr. Jim KarpofT (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend has been focusing mainly on the rural post office. I want to have him comment on the impact on the larger cities.
I represent Surrey, which is the fastest growing metropolitan area in Canada. Since the 1988 election my riding has increased by 10,000 households. By the turn of the century there will be 800,000 people south of the Fraser River. It will be bigger than the city of Vancouver. What is the post office planning to do? It is planning to close
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the sorting services in Surrey and take all the mail into Vancouver and bring it back.
The Surrey municipal council is opposed to it. The total regional district, the GDRD that represents all the municipalities on the lower mainland, is opposed to it because it goes against the liveable, regional plan in which it wants people to be able to work in the areas where they live. It does not want to have all the businesses shifted downtown.
Do you think this first step in privatization, of issuing shares to a few employees, only 10 per cent, will in any way change the management style of the postal corporation so that it would then listen to the concerns of the municipal council, the GDRD and its employees who are located in Surrey and who easily have transportation to work without having to go 35 or 40 kilometres into a major city which takes hours of travelling? Do you think this is in any way going to stop the management simply burying its head in the sand and against all advice, against all economics, and deciding to close such a major postal service as the Surrey sorting plant and take that mail into Vancouver?


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend from Surrey has pointed out the reality that not only do we experience difficulties in smaller communities but certainly even in our larger communities. One of the fastest growing communities in Canada, the community of Surrey, will experience some real difficulties in terms of what this government perceives to be a rationalization of services.
I believe his question was whether the share offering, the 10 per cent share offering, is going to cause the management to understand the new reality in employee-employer relationships and to be able to breach the historic bad blood that has developed between the employees and the corporation itself. I really cannot see that happening, Mr. Speaker.
The management of Canada Post has never been overly concerned about the views and attitudes of its employees. In fact, if anything I would submit that it has been one of the best examples of poor management structure that we can find in this country.

May 14, 1992
Government Orders
It has been completely unwilling to move with respect to the negotiations. It should have come up with a final contract for these workers. As I said before, these workers have been without a contract for three years and I do not think that this 10 per cent share offering is going to cause the management to see a new light.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret that the hon. member's time has expired.

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: The hon. member for Humber-St.Barbe-Baie Verte-Education; the hon. member for Saint-Leonard-Social housing; the hon. member for Nepean-Public Service; the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond-Fisheries; the hon. member for Dartmouth-Historic sites.
Resuming debate. The hon. member for Broadview- Greenwood.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-73. I am delighted because my relationship with the postal service of this county goes back to 1980 when I was working here on Parliament Hill. I worked as one of the advisers to the committee of cabinet responsible for Government of Canada communications.
At that time I was a critic of the postal service in this country. I was someone who did not quite understand the complexity of running a national postal service. I did not understand the federal presence that our postal service provided to the people of Canada, not just in our major markets but in every region, every small remote town and village that we have.
I remember one day speaking to a gentleman by the name of Ed Rowerth who was one of the public relations gentlemen for Canada Post. He was here in Ottawa and he took me out to lunch and said: "You know, Dennis, you have the post office all wrong".
He went on to explain to me that in the major market of Toronto the Canadian postal service was really the most efficient company in Canada.
Well, I looked at Mr. Rowerth and I said: "Explain it. How do you figure that the postal service, which many of us as Canadians tend to complain about, how do you come up with that kind of a statement?"
He said they took an independent productivity analysis and took what the stated objective of the service was and compared the process of measuring productivity that other corporations in the private sector use and came up with about a 98 per cent productivity rating.
I asked how it was that we all feel that the post office is really not doing the job we expect it to do.
He said that in the city of Ibronto they handle 20 million pieces of mail on a daily basis. Twenty million pieces of mail go into the Toronto postal system on a daily basis.
He said that they consider a regular service-three-day delivery at that time which was back in 1980-would only get 98 per cent of it delivered. When one takes 2 per cent or 3 per cent of 20 million pieces, a lot of different people are affected.
As a nation, we have always focused on those two or three percentage points that do not come within the 48-hour or the 72-hour delivery. We focus on that mistake and do not realize that 98 per cent of the time when someone puts mail in a box on a Monday, it is there on the Wednesday. That is productivity which very few companies in the private sector can match. I became a fan of the postal service. I became a fan of touting this service whenever I got a chance.
The second thing that we do not appreciate as Canadians is its contribution to the federal presence. I remember in 1981 we decided to put the "Canada" word mark on every post office in Canada. I think there were something like 3,700 signs all across the country.
The purpose of that was to remind each and every Canadian that this was the Government of Canada, this was a national post office. You could get the same service in a post office in Whapmagoostui in northern James Bay as you could at postal station G or J in my riding in downtown Toronto. Canada Post was one of those galvanizing agents that was controlled, monitored and supported by everyone in this Chamber.
May 14, 1992

What the government has done in its dismantling exercise in the last few years is under the name of efficiency. It has tried to reduce and diminish this federal presence in the Canada post office service, and I am opposed to it. I am opposed to it not because I am against privatization. I am not against privatization. I am opposed to it because this is a service to the community which Canadians need to know, need to feel is there for them all the time.
It is not a corporate service. In the corporate world, there is an objective and the objective is that at the end of three months, six months, nine months or a year, we must show a profit, earnings per share. That is what management, that is what employees must do in the private sector.
This is an institution where earnings per share cannot be the number one priority. Service to the public has to be the number one priority. The public in the village of Torrance, Ontario that might only have 100 people living there, 50 people all year round, has to have the same service as a community that has two million people. The post office was one of those bonding agents.
It is inevitable when we get into this privatization mode that the values of the corporation have to change. If one is in the private sector, the idea of talking about the federal presence, the Government of Canada presence, is not a primary objective. We see now with our national postal service that it has removed the Canada word mark from thousands of post offices and I do not know how many trucks and whatever other instruments that are part of the total postal service.
As someone who is a strong Government of Canada person, I am opposed to dismantling the post office in that way. I am opposed to the fact that the word mark was taken away. I am not opposed just for the sake of opposing; I am opposing because the Prime Minister a few months ago talked about patriotism in this country. I support him when he said: "We must be more patriotic". The Prime Minister should be consistent. Thking the Canada word mark off our national postal service flies in the face of his suggestion of "let us be patriotic".
I am not opposed to the idea of equity participation for employees. I worked for Magna International, a large corporation. An entire corporation was built on the idea of equity participation for all of the employees. In the particular case of Magna the shares were given to the
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employees in the form of a dividend at the end of every year, as a percentage of the over-all profits. Therefore, I am not standing up here opposing the idea of equity participation.
In this particular bill there is no criteria set down for value. What will the value of these shares be? Will it include the assets of Canada Post in remote regions of the country? Will it include the assets of Canada Post in the major markets where the asset values are naturally in the hundreds of millions of dollars? What is it that we are buying here? There is no criteria set down in this bill as to ascertaining value for these employees. That is a pretty serious weakness in the bill.
What about shareholders' rights? There is no shareholders' rights definition. The only definition of shareholders' rights that I see is under section 27.2(4), the exclusive right to vote. It reads:
The shares held by the minister have the exclusive right to vote at
meetings of the shareholders of the corporation.
I do not see any rights defined in here for those shareholders so I think that is a serious weakness in this bill.
No one in here would be against the principle of improving morale. No one in here would be against the principle of improving productivity. I feel pretty sure that this is not the way to go.
The government's track record on this process has not been very good. Look at what happened with Air Canada. The government put a value on the Air Canada shares and dumped them on the market. Even the independent evaluators said the government dumped them at about $2 below their true market value. I am a little suspect because it has not defined rights and it has not defined value.
I would ask the government: How do you get your money back? Who decides when dividends are declared? What are dividends going to be declared on? Is there a dividend formula in this bill? There is no dividend formula. There are no rights. There are no criteria for assessing the value of the post office.
I am not opposed to the principle of equity participation, to improving morale or to improving productivity, but I do not think this bill does it. I want to talk a little about morale in the post office. In my riding I have two postal stations, J and G, and I have the big eastern plant in downtown Toronto where the majority of the separating for the entire city of Toronto is done.

May 14, 1992
Government Orders
I remember vividly last summer how we went through a period of tension and frustration between management and the letter carriers. I remember the day when I had hundreds of senior citizens lined up on the Danforth waiting for their pension cheques and a couple of single mothers waiting for their baby bonus cheques. Somehow those cheques did not get delivered before the strike happened, even though the letter carriers had agreed to deliver them.
I remember the tension that existed because the letter carriers wanted to deliver all those cheques to the senior citizens and to those people who needed their baby bonus cheques, et cetera. But there was this block in communications and somehow the message was not being transmitted to management that the letter carriers wanted to do that.
It was only by a fluke that I happened to be around that day. I talked to a lot of the letter carriers. We faxed a letter to Mr. Lander at head office. I will give him full marks. He reacted quite quickly. He was sympathetic to the frustration we were going through, but it was the communication breakdown that caused a lot of that pain.
If I were to try to come at the post office from the point of view of building morale and improving productivity, I would make sure the communication skills on both sides, management and employees, were worked on and improved upon on a constant basis. As management I would rethink the idea of a federal presence.
I would ask the government that still has control of this post office to rethink the words of the Prime Minister when a few months ago he called on all of us to be patriotic. There he is sitting with an instrument. He can pick up the phone and call Mr. Lander, president of the Canadian postal service, and say to him: "Put that Canada word mark back on every post office in this country".
Let us never forget that this is a public service for each and every Canadian. It is important that we remind everyone of that. Until we get those basics in order, let us forget about these undefined, not well thought out, not worked out attempts at gimmickry. To suggest that
post office employees can buy shares of something where values are not defined, criteria are not defined and rights are not defined is not the way to manage a company.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the member's discussion of this bill. He may have a certain amount more financial business experience than I have, but I have been involved in management.
There are a couple of things I would like him to expand on. I am puzzled like he is. I thought I had a fairly good grasp of the idea of shares and how to purchase shares in corporations. They can give certain rights, rights of resale, rights to influence the direction of the corporation, rights to influence the policy, the administration and the management, and rights to make a profit. The formula is based on the profits the company made during the year divided by the number of outstanding shares and the kind of shares. I am bewildered. I look at the bill and I see none of the elements I would have thought were involved in a normal share purchase.
Certainly my understanding of gaining control of a company is in terms of directing the management of it and influencing the policy decisions. You either have a fairly small company in which you get 51 per cent control or a fairly large company in which the shares are so diversified that effective control can be obtained by maybe 25 or 30 per cent or even less of the shares.
The government is still going to own 90 per cent of Canada Post. It will still be the one directing the administration and the policy. I do not see how this is going to influence in any way the working relationships, the policy direction or the ability of workers to have input into that corporation.
Maybe I am missing something. Maybe the member, with his much more vast experience in the marketplace, sees something in this bill that I do not see.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I do not really see anything positive in this bill. I see the thought of trying to improve morale and the thought of improving productivity. The concept of equity participation is a good one and I support it.
May 14,1992	COMMONS
The management of the post office in the last few years, along with the various postal workers' unions, has done a pretty good job. There is no question in any corporation there are differences and there are problems. I know in my own community my good friend John Demarco continues to remind me-and I continue to try to fight for it-of the fact that the Government of Canada really does not show a lot of good faith in the way it handles the superannuation fund of postal workers. It is using that fund and not giving full value to the people who are paying into it.
Nothing is perfect, I grant that, but I do not support the concept of privatizing something that contributes so much to federal presence. I will tell the House what I am concerned about. If we continue to put this institution into an almost totally privatized state, what would bother me is that those people in the major markets are going to get a special class of treatment, much better and far superior treatment, than those people who are in disadvantaged regions of the country, disadvantaged by population and other support services. I am afraid we are going to have a two-tiered and maybe even a three-tiered postal service in this country when we are all supposed to be equal.
The postal service was supposed to be a common service to the public across Canada. I think this kind of tampering works away at weakening that. I do not see anything productive in this bill other than the general idea. There is nothing specific in it that is good.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on some of the points made by the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood.
I appreciated his openness and honesty in sharing with us his corporate background as vice-president of public relations for Magna. He can compare whether the government really and truly believes in equity participation, or is this a sham too, as he called it, another dismantling exercise? I suspect it is the latter.
I also appreciated the fact he said that service should be provided equally and efficiently regardless of where we are in Canada. I recall my days, bom in Fosston, Saskatchewan, which they used to call a one-horse town. I hope they are getting the same kind of mail service there in Fosston, Saskatchewan as I am getting in Parkdale-High Park today, although I doubt whether that is the case.
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What bothered my constituents a lot was when Canada Post dropped the word "Canada" from its logo. Now it is just Mail-Poste. Perhaps the member could draw on his corporate experience because the government will not tell us why it dropped the word "Canada". Could he maybe share with us why he thinks the government dropped "Canada" from the logo? Surely would that not be a selling point? Let us face it. The government will privatize Canada Post as it has privatized a lot of other corporations. However, what would lead it to drop the word "Canada"?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I will give the member 30 seconds to answer that.


Dennis Joseph Mills: The alienation existing in this country quite often happens when people do not realize the services the national government brings to them.
We put the "Canada" word mark on all of those post offices right across the country in 1980. This was done to show every region of the country that the Government of Canada exists in every community. It is there for everyone, we hope everyone is proud of it, and we are proud to be there. It is showing the flag.
Mr. Speaker, give me 10 more seconds. This is very important.
We did it in 1980 because we were in the process of a referendum. We made sure. Now we are heading back into another possible referendum and the government should rethink it, especially in the province of Quebec.


MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing the House that the Senate has passed the following bill, which it submits to the House for approval:

Bill S-9, an act to incorporate the Northwest Canada Conference of the Evangelical Church.
Pursuant to Standing Order 135(2) the bill is deemed to have been read the first time and ordered for a second reading at the next sitting of the House.

May 14, 1992
Private Members' Business
It being five o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 30(6) the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt) moved:: That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider
the advisability of developing a healthy small-business sector in
Canada by targeting more federal contracts to the small-business
sector and establishing a more aggressive "Buy Canada" program.
He said: Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons I put this motion on the books is because of the tough times small business is going through now and its need for a bit of a break. I am pleased it was drawn and selected for voting.
Of the businesses in Canada 97 per cent are small businesses with 50 employees or less.
From 1981 to 1989 small business created 81.5 percent of all new jobs in Canada. This is a substantial number of jobs within Canada, a substantial employment base, a substantial amount of money.
It does not go without note that small businesses reinvest their profits in their businesses within Canada. They expand. They create employment within Canada.
The proprietors of the business usually purchase their goods and services within Canada. This has the pyramid effect, starting with a little bit and ending up with a heck of a lot more.
This is in opposition or totally different from what we see with the large multinational companies, particularly in the primary sectors. Those companies use their profits out of the country, use them for research and development outside of the country, use them for exploration outside the country, and use them for development of other properties, businesses, manufacturing companies, et cetera, outside of Canada.
I wanted to target the small business community to show small business that we in government, the federal government in particular, care about small business.
The motion is particularly applicable at this stage because 13,496 businesses declared bankruptcy in 1991. Bankruptcy is up more than 50 per cent since this recession began. There are 3,611 companies that went under in the first three months of 1992, including 1,291 business failures in March of this year.
What are the reasons for those? There are a variety of reasons. I can hit at the high interest rates. I can hit at the goods and services tax, the free trade agreement and a number of other factors. The fact that people are not buying. The cross-border shopping problem has run a number of small businesses out of business.
The main thrust is that we have to ensure that we encourage value-added production of our primary industries, whether it be mining, forestry, or fruit production as in the Okanagan and Similkameen region.
In my area the last commercial cannery has just gone under in the past few months. That was the last cannery left in the Okanagan, although in that case, because it was a small cannery, it had a fair number of sales. Certainly, it could have expanded if it had been assured of sales. If it knew it had sales through the federal government it would have helped.
Looking in that area particularly, two years ago I put a question on the Order Paper in which I asked for facts and figures with respect to the purchase of food products, both fresh and processed, where they were purchased and the quantities in which they were purchased. Unfortunately, the response was essentially that these were let out to government contract and there was no way for the government to monitor the point of sale or purchase of these goods.
It is easy to sit back and say: "Well, yes, that makes sense if you contract out, if you contract these which you have to do for our federal institutions". But it seems to me that there is an area where we could have and perhaps should have done something more.
I refer to two particular words in the motion. One is to develop a healthy small business sector in Canada by targeting more federal contracts. I am suggesting that this is one area that could be specifically targeted to ensure that people in those areas know how to bid on

federal contracts, how to make sure that their products are known by the federal suppliers and that the federal government ensure that information is disseminated and that it tries to ensure that the contractors purchase these goods.
The other one is an aggressive buy Canada program. By aggressive I mean going out and ensuring that certain things happen to make sure that we as a federal institution purchase Canadian goods wherever possible.
It is interesting to look at what the federal government has done so far. It has a number of systems in place where it does encourage purchasing of Canadian goods and certain small business goods through the Department of Supply and Services. It purchases $8 billion in goods and services, 60 per cent of those on a competitive basis, 40 per cent on a sole source basis to procure goods and services for the federal government.
The government has a number of initiatives in place: Canadian content premium policies, area buy policies, Canadian value-added profit policies, various policies under Atlantic initiatives and western initiatives to buy within the regions. That is a positive.
I believe that we have to be even more aggressive in ensuring that we buy our goods and services wherever possible from our small business community.
The Minister of State for Small Businesses has said a number of times that his department is looked on as under 100 employees. That is fair enough; 100 employees is a reasonable number when considering a small business.
We have to aggressively look at purchasing from those outfits whenever .possible and ensuring that the content is Canadian or value-added production with Canadian resources.
Looking at this particular motion, it was interesting to see what restrictions the Canadian government has to deal with in ensuring that it can buy from Canadian small business or Canadian producers.
Of course, we have certain limitations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It limits to some extent the amount we can purchase locally before it has to go out onto the foreign market. Under the GATT agreement we have to open it up to foreign bids
Private Members' Business
without premium to our own bidders on anything $204,000 or over.
It is interesting to look at the free trade agreement and government procurement to find that at the present time we have to open up our markets to the United States bidders at $29,000 Canadian. I guess the argument is that with the free trade agreement it is only fair that we open up our markets if the United States opens up its.
Yet, looking in the register of United States Barriers to Trade 1992, we find that the United States does not have the same sort of restrictions as we do. This book lists certain barriers to the free trade agreement things that may be looked on in any countervail situation, retaliatory measures for such things as the softwood lumber countervail duty. But the fact remains that there are certain exemptions in the free trade agreement for the United States under its various acts, particularly its Buy America Act.
This book states on page 6: "The U.S. federal departments and agencies are required to abide by the Buy America Act to favour suppliers based in the United States when buying goods and services". Generally, the act demands that only domestic products be acquired for public use in construction, alteration or repair of public buildings or public works. Well, it appears that it has made certain exceptions and exemptions from the free trade agreement and to some extent have ignored the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
In 1989, under the U.S. Small Business Act, 18 per cent of prime contracts and 39 per cent of subcontracts representing a total value of $59 billion were awarded to small businesses. Of these, approximately $13 billion in contracts were specifically designated by contract officers as being "set aside" and available exclusively to the U.S. small business concerns.
It is interesting to note also that under the small business administration, small business is usually defined as one with up to 500 employees and $3.5 million in annual receipts, although companies may range in size up to 1,500 employees.
What it has done is substantially expand its definition of small business and has ensured that it can, under various guises, whether it be public security which is one of it favourites, give contracts to the small business community.

May 14, 1992
Private Members' Business
This cuts off the availability to the United States market for our small business people. I turn to a letter I received at the end of February 1992 from LA Systems Ltd. of Penticton, British Columbia. This is a manufacturer in my riding that creates recreation products designed for use in public parks settings. Mr. Tim Arbuthnot states:
It has recently come to our attention that the National Park Service has created a hurdle we find difficult to accept. It appears their policy is to "Buy American" only and have implemented this policy due to their financial involvement on several of our specified projects. We are not well versed on the ins and outs of free trade but have always assumed the Canadian Government has encouraged the manufacturing sector to export. At this time there is no other product being produced like the "Waterplay" components we design and produce. As a small business we influence several jobs dependent on our sales success and we are set on pursuing the North American market along with a number of overseas locations. We are poised to sell our products that are in great demand to the offshore countries and find it hard to believe that we would be faced with these free trade barriers in our own backyard.
That is only one example of many of the problems that industries and small businesses in Canada have faced in trying to enter the American market.
With the view that the free trade agreement was to open up the markets and ensure that there was a broader sales base for our manufacturers, it seems to me that those are not working very well for our local manufacturers and we have to be much more aggressive in ensuring that we help our businesses as it appears the Americans are helping theirs. We must ensure that small business remains viable by ensuring that we target a certain number of businesses as the Americans have to purchase from the small business community.
In looking at some of these small businesses, I wonder if the free trade agreement is not working and if we got skimmed as it appears we did in the area of procurement within the United States market and yet have a ceiling of only $29,000 Canadian against the United States into the Canadian markets. We have to be somewhat concerned in a North American free trade agreement.
I refer specifically here to a problem that has been run into by SunDew Foods Ltd. of Okanagan Falls, British Columbia. It states in a letter to Michael Wilson:
I am very concerned about the actions of your government pushing ahead with the NAFTA. I own a small food processisng company in the Okanagan Valley which processes about 8,000 tonnes of tree fruits and berries each year. We have a payroll of some $500,000.00 per year and put about $1,000,000.00 into the Okanagan farmer's pockets. Our experience with the CUSTA has been bad enough. The level playing field we were promised has proved to be elusive. Our company is now getting regular petitions from communities in Washington who would like us to re-locate across the border. They can offer us lower taxes (both municipal which is 20% of mine and there is no state tax for my company), lower cost of money, lower labour costs and the ability to label my products with an 'American Made" label for ready access to the USA market. I can dump product back into Canada because of the FTA.
Mr. Speaker, you are motioning that my time is up. However, under the rules I understand that I have 20 minutes to speak.
We did not get started until 5.04 p.m. when I rose to my feet. I would assume that I would be able to speak until approximately 5.24 p.m.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It really does not matter whether we did start at 5.04 p.m.. Private Members' Business starts at five o'clock.
I will allow the hon. member extra time but I do not necessarily have to do that.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your leniency with me on this topic and I will try to wrap up as rapidly as possible, given your generosity.
What I would like to do specifically at this stage is to turn to some suggestions for the government in trying to push forward with what I see as the thrust of this motion to ensure that Canadian small business is helped out and those producing Canadian products are helped out by the Canadian government.
First of all, I see that there should be a small business set-aside program so that more government contracts are set aside for Canadian small businesses similar to the set-aside program in the United States. Also, there is a premium of 12 per cent in the United States added on. In other words, it is a 12 per cent incentive to the United States suppliers.
May 14, 1992

I would suggest that perhaps Canadians might want to increase theirs from 10 per cent to 12 per cent on the evaluation of Canadian bids for contracts of companies or large companies bidding on contracts in which they subcontract out to smaller Canadian subcontractors.
Also, in the spirit of ensuring that value-added production is encouraged across Canada, Canadian companies that intend to use value-added products in agriculture, forestry and mining industries should be further favoured.
Added to that, I would suggest that in the Department of Supply and Services Canada, while it has certain programs set out to ensure that its booklets get out to members of Parliament-many of us have tried to ensure that our producers are made aware of these contracts- perhaps a more aggressive program could be undertaken to ensure that the local MPs are made aware of the type of over-all projects that are on the go. They should be assisted by the Department of Supply and Services to identify small businesses within their area so that they can get on the mailing lists and be kept informed by Supply and Services Canada.
Further, sometimes the bond security is somewhat onerous for small business and this should be reviewed, particularly in the regions in ensuring that small business within the regions can competitively bid on service jobs for the federal government as opposed to having them come in now from across the border in some cases.
Finally, it appears from what I have been able to dig up that the free trade agreement is not helping us. It is hurting our small business community and I would suggest that the free trade agreement should be abrogated to ensure that Canadian preference be given in all procurement of Canadian businesses.


Hon. Paul Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the wonderful opportunity he has presented to the House and to members of Parliament to talk about small business in this country.
I do not think that it is fully understood how aggressively the Canadian government moves toward trying to help small businesses in this country and how much has actually been done and enhanced in the last number of years.
Private Members' Business
I could start by saying the small business tax in this country happens to be the lowest small business tax any place in the world. For small businesses, there is a benefit there.
I must admit that I am a little confused. I have not been regularly called in front of the committee. As a matter of fact, I have only been called in front of the committee one day in the last two years and no New Democratic Party member attended that meeting. One came and registered and left two minutes after.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. While I hesitate to interrupt the member, you have pointed many times that it is improper to point out the absence of any member from the House or committee. I would suggest the cabinet minister is well aware of that rule.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: That is a point of debate.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, what we have tried to do at Supply and Services is to make the system much more friendly to Canadian corporations.
In the old system to get on the Supply and Services source list you had to go and make an application. It took a long time and there were a lot of details. We have tried to- simplify that by getting rid of the source list over at Supply and Services and move toward a computerized electronic bulletin board known as the procurement opportunities board. As of June 1 that will change to the open bidding service.
A number of new companies that have opened within weeks can now, through a telephone number and connection, get access to the open bidding service, or the procurement opportunities board if you like, and they can see what opportunities are there for government buys and they can bid immediately. They do not have to be pre-cleared. We have dispensed with all that.
I have been in touch with every major business and industrial organizations and associations. I talked to them to see what we can do at Supply and Services to make our bidding more attractive to them and to their various industry members.
They have been working with us, by and large to make this a much more friendly system. I am very proud to say we have come a long way in changing this.

May 14, 1992
Private Members' Business
A lot of the information which has been talked about has been unfortunately a bit of misinformation. Here in this Chamber, we at Supply and Services have a buy Canada policy. We have always had a buy Canada policy and I will tell you how it is described.
Every country in the world has a buy whatever their country is policy. About 4.6 per cent of the contracts that we would let out are opened up under GATT. That is at the level of $204,000 U.S. and above and they are in very specific areas. They exempt areas such as police, the Solicitor General, justice, fisheries and oceans, communications, national defence. There are so many exemptions, we only have about 4.6 per cent of our contracts opened up under GATT.
When the free trade agreement came along all we did under the agreement was open up those same contracts that were opened up under GATT but took it from the $204,000 limit and brought it down to the $29,000 Canadian or $25,000 U.S limit.
It is therefore that same narrow group with all that myriad of exemptions, defence, transportation, justice and Solicitor General. All those things are exempt and and not even considered. It is only those other few contracts which add up to about another 3 per cent of the contracts. Less than 9 per cent of the contracts from Supply and Services are opened up under the free trade agreement.
We do buy internationally. If we have three people in this country who will compete for a contract put out by us, then we go ahead and we have an exclusively buy Canadian policy and we will compete with those three companies. I do not like awarding contracts; I like competing for contracts and letting the person who gives the taxpayer the best value win.
Say there were only two companies in this country that could supply these goods. We would then take a look at it and say no, on this one we had better go for an international competition or no, on this one we are going to go for a sole source or we are going to go for a competition among the only two suppliers there are.
I want everybody to understand that there is a preference for Canadian goods except for that less than 9 per cent. Over 91 per cent we try and target toward the Canadians in the number of contracts.
In the last three years, to try and encourage more people to come and to bid on federal government contracts, we have developed a supplier development
program over at Supply and Services. We go around the country doing supplier development seminars. We have done 60 or 70 in the last year, or maybe it was more than that. We try to do them in conjunction with the provinces. If I am in a certain area, I will speak at lunch time about what we are trying to do to encourage new people to come. I remember being at one in Sudbury, in northern Ontario. We had 300 entrepreneurs there and they came to hear what we at Supply and Services were offering in the way of trying to get them in to sell to us.
We coupled that along with the Ontario government. It was there also making its pitch along with National Defence and Ontario Hydro. So we were all piggy-backing together to try and make sure that the entrepreneurs in that area knew exactly what we were doing.
I want to tell the hon. member that I have had the opportunity of doing those same seminars in Saskatchewan. I have done some personally in Quebec. We ended up coupling with the province of Quebec so that their ministry of supply and services and ours went around the province to a number of places and put on shows on how the entrepreneur could sell to the provincial government or the federal government. I think this is a good way, and a good effort.
At the present time, through the lists we have and people who have shown an interest, we send out a publication called The Supplier to some 87,000 people, entrepreneurs on our lists, and we are encouraging more to come along all the time.
I want to tell the House that besides going to an electronic bulletin board, which is making it much easier and much simpler and much more cost-effective for businesses to access what the government is interested in purchasing, I have also tried to simplify some of our policies.
When I got to the department I found out that over the last 40 years various governments, in their wisdom, had layered on 27 different directives on how to do procurement, but nobody had ever taken one away. For example, we had nine policies on Canadian content. That caused an awful lot of paper work for the people in small industry. They did not want to really read books on how to do nine different policies, and they had to sort of stick handle their way through all nine of them. Some of the directives were redundant but most of them were still alive, in one way or another. Businesses had to do a lot of costing formulas. We have abandoned them.
May 14, 1992

As of April 1 of this year we are down to one directive, except in two small sectors: one in the computer sector where they have asked for a year extension while we do another little study to make sure that we are not making it more advantageous for foreign companies over Canadian companies, we are doing an extra study there, and the second exemption happens to be in shipbuilding.
By and large, we have tried to make it much simpler for Canadians so that they will be able to understand what our policy is. The policy is based on the rules of origin, the same rules of origin that are used in international trade, which we have in the free trade agreement and are under discussion at the GATT.
I want to tell the hon. member that I am very pleased at this opportunity today. And in the other two hours that will be allocated, I believe, to this motion, we will be able to go a long way toward discussing and dispelling any myths there might be that Canadian small business is not important and also let Canadians know how they can sell to the Government of Canada, because we certainly do want to have more and more companies in Canada bidding on our opportunities.
I do want to say that, yes, the Americans do have their buy America, they have their small business set aside. That is why the level on the FTA is at $25,000 U.S. or $29,000 Canadian. That is why we end up having, in reverse, the same protection. It is not that it is going to the United States and we do not have it explicitly, but the fact is that we end up buying in Canada. If we wanted to I guess we could go to France, but we usually try and buy it right here in this country.
I want to say to the Americans that the advice we have had on this is to not ever put something like that in, because it becomes an extremely expensive procedure with so many appeal provisions and so on in there that it delays the process.
Private Members' Business
It is a great thing to talk about small business in this country.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I too salute the member for bringing forward this motion. I would like to continue where the Minister of Supply and Services left off. He happens to be in charge of one of the most efficient and most supportive departments in all of government as it pertains to small and medium-size businesses.
I have watched this organization for a number of years. When I arrived in this city in 1980, if a business wanted to do business with the Government of Canada, most of the action happened here in Ottawa. Now the department has been structured so that the Department of Supply and Services has a certain percentage of allocation in western Canada and in Atlantic Canada. It is a fantastic thing. There is no excuse for any small and medium-size business in this country not having access and doing business with the Government of Canada.
What most small businesses do not realize is the opportunity that exists with the Government of Canada. Quite often they do not even have to be part of a bid process. Sometimes, if you have a creative idea or if you have a product or a service that is innovative, you can put it to the Department of Supply and Services in the form of an unsolicited proposal.
You do not always get it but I know of many small and medium-size businesses that have been fortunate enough to come up with innovative ideas that the Government of Canada has purchased without even going through the bid process. I am sure that it measured the percentage of profit that the business got in order to make sure that taxpayers' money was not being abused, but the point is that there is a great opportunity in the Department of Supply and Services for all types of products.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski). Order p ease,	e por example, in my own riding there is a company
hon. minister has 30 seconds to wind up.	called Woods. It manufactures sleeping bags and tents
for the Department of National Defence. Think of the Mr. Dick: I want to thank the hon. member for number of shirts the Government of Canada buys for the bringing this up. I wish I could go on. There will be other Mounties. Think of the amount of food the Government speakers on our side in the next three hours of this of Canada buys for the federal penitentiaries and all the debate who will be able to explain all the opportunities, related products and services.

May 14, 1992
Private Members' Business
If I were going to suggest one thing, not to small and medium-size business but to the Government of Canada, it would be nice if all the various products and services that are bought on an annual basis were listed. Then the 1,700,000 entrepreneurs out there could scan through the index of products or services. It would be a real shock. Most businesses when they think of the Government of Canada, think it buys airplanes, Polaris 10s. They do not know about the smaller products and services that are bought.
Think about the number of cars and trucks that the Government of Canada purchases. Think about the number of contracts that one could or might participate in supplying all the parks in Canada.
There is an opportunity here for small and medium-size businesses that really goes beyond imagination. In my opinion, it is only limited by the amount that Canadian entrepreneurs want to hustle. What the person has to do is either get in the car or jump on a plane and come to Ottawa or go to the local Department of Supply and Services and say: "Here is the product or service that I have to offer. How do I get on the government list? How do I participate in this-


An hon. member:: Use the computer.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Use the computer. Well for those small and medium-size businesses that are computer literate, and I am sure most of them are, hook up the modem and away you go.
The point of the matter is that there is great opportunity. We are talking about an institution that literally buys billions and billions of dollars in Canadian products and services annually. I would hate to see what would happen to the Minister of Supply and Services who did not give priority attention to small and medium-size Canadian entrepreneurs. The person would be out of business overnight if he or she did not pay attention to that force which creates 80 per cent of the jobs in this country.
I salute the member for putting forward this motion because, as the Minister of Supply and Services said so well, it gives us an opportunity to talk to the people of Canada in the small and medium-size business sector for two hours and tell them to take advantage of the opportunity that exists. If in any way, shape or form you run a small or medium size business and you feel that you have been abused by the Department of Supply and
Services then do not hesitate to write to any member of Parliament here.
My personal experience with a lot of other small businesses is that by and large, the Department of Supply and Services is one of the best run operations in the whole Government of Canada and I encourage Canadians to take advantage of it.


Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Liberal member for Broadview- Greenwood for the good things he just said about the Department of Supply and Services and the work that it does to promote Canadian companies and try to have ' them obtain more.
We are all aware that the international economic environment forces Canadian companies, including our small and medium-sized businesses, to be more competitive. A trading nation like Canada cannot ignore the reality Canadians live with every day. I fully agree with the hon. member for Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt to do everything to develop and support viable small businesses that create jobs which are vital to the welfare of thousands of Canadians.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, the government has put forward many initiatives in this regard, taking into account our international commitments, especially in the area of federal government procurement.
However, I certainly do not agree with the opinion or viewpoint of my hon. colleague on the best way to help our small and medium-sized businesses. I do not wish to discuss the principle, since we agree on that point, but rather the ways proposed to meet our business people's needs.
On this point, I wish to thank my hon. colleague for giving me an opportunity to speak and give an overview of my government's procurement policies. He will be able to see for himself that the Department of Supply and Services has reformed and adapted all its policies, in close cooperation with small and medium-sized Canadian companies.
Mr. Speaker, as you saw just now, the Minister of Supply and Services is very well informed of what our small and medium-sized businesses need to be competitive. That is why he launched a series of working seminars in 1989, in cooperation with representatives of small and medium-sized Canadian companies across the country. The message was very clear. Our small and
May 14, 1992

medium-sized businesses wanted a chance to compete for federal government contracts and thus to be able to develop new expertise or new products and to take on new international markets.
Our business people know that they must face national and international competition to survive and that is why they are not trying to be protected from this competition but to meet it.
Every year, the department organizes a number of working seminars across the country, to keep the business community informed of our initiatives and receive its invaluable comments.
The minister's determination to update his department's policies, together with the needs expressed by our small business community, were signs that a genuine revolution in the contract distribution system was about to occur. It did.
In April 1990, an official announcement ushered in open bidding and the procurement opportunities board which enables potential suppliers to examine requirements for tender documents. This is the folder we were talking about. That is how we promote these new policies.
It is no longer necessary to be registered on our supplier list for contracts over $25,000, and every supplier has direct access to our procurement requirements on a daily basis. Incidentally, as of June 1, 1992, our procurement opportunities board will offer a new range of services, including a supplier matching index, access to other data bases and electronic dissemination of tender documents.
For the past two years we have had a procurement system that is accessible, fair and effective. In fact, Canadian small businesses have applauded the efforts of the Department of Supply and Services to create a system in which suppliers select the contracts on which they wish to bid.
Under the new system suppliers can bring grievances before the procurement review board, and I would like to point out that this is a first in Canada. The procurement review board was created by the free trade agreement, and we decided to extend its mandate to cover procurement by Supply and Services.
At last, we have a procurement system that helps small businesses be more aware of both business opportunities
Private Members' Business
for subcontracting as well as opportunities for bidding on contracts.
If the hon. member opposite had taken the trouble to find out about the department's current policies, he would have moved a motion to congratulate the Minister of Supply and Services or at least could have suggested new ways to help improve these policies.
The hon. member may be tempted to stress the fact that some contracts are awarded on a sole-source basis. That is quite understandable, provided one ignores such elementary considerations as production rights, national security, sole source of expertise and the government's financial resources.
We want to offer our contracts to all Canadian suppliers, and that is why they are announced in advance on the Procurement Opportunities Board, to attract new supplies.
We regularly challenge Canadian entrepreneurs to prove they are able to supply the goods and services required. This new approach helps us discover new suppliers in Canada and obtain the best price for the Canadian taxpayer.
I think it would be hard to imagine a better procurement system. We are constantly in touch with the chambers of commerce, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, provincial governments and, of course, with thousands of suppliers.
They know our policies are on the right track, and I am sure they could give the hon. member plenty of information on the subject if he cared to call them. In fact, I suggest he discuss this with the businesses in his own riding.
Determined to make further improvements, Supply and Services Canada has started streamlining other policies, including the policy on Canadian content, a potential source of confusion and difficult to implement. We now have only one policy which is entirely straightforward. As we must, and subject to our international obligations, we always stress buy Canada whenever bids are sufficiently competitive.
To take advantage of this preference, suppliers must be able to certify that the goods they offer are entirely produced in Canada or that the end product meets the rules of origin criteria.

May 14, 1992
Private Members' Business
As far as services are concerned, the value of the work done in Canada by staff located in Canada should generally represent 80 per cent of the bid value.
I come from the small business sector, and I know all about the expectations and the problems faced daily.
The open bidding system is the cornerstone of the government's wide-ranging reform of the contract award system.
These changes have been successful. The Chambre de commerce de Bois-Franc in the riding of Lotbiniere, which is next door to mine, was able to make good use of the resources made available by the department to help regional businesses land government contracts worth a total of nearly $300,000, in a little over a year's time; other examples are Micromall Corporation in Vancouver, Distributed Links in Gloucester and Services carto-graphiques 2+1 Inc. in Gatineau.
The hon. member wants us to award more contracts to Canadian small businesses. I am pleased to announce that 80 per cent of our suppliers are small businesses, and this figure does not include sub-contractors. As you know, Mr. Speaker, a contract may be awarded to a single contractor, but there will be hundreds of small businesses across this country to whom jobs will be subcontracted, which means that small businesses are still one of the federal government's major partners.
I would like to say to the hon. member from the opposition that the government works in co-operation with Canadian small businesses, that the small business sector is vital to our economy, that we have introduced some very innovative policies to help our small businesses, and that our small businesses are taking full advantage of these policies.
In concluding, I would like to say that as Canadians we must all demonstrate our strength and our determination to face the global economic challenges, and we must be more competitive. That is why we have completely revamped the Canadian government's procurement system, to maximize the competitive edge of our businesses on national and international markets.
We have one goal and that is the security and prosperity of Canadians, their children and their grandchildren.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity tonight to join in the debate on this motion on small business.
First of all I want to commend the hon. member for bringing forward this motion which I think is important because it shows support for small business. It is a motion that recognizes the importance of having a healthy small business sector in this country. It is a motion that offers some support, hope and confidence to the small business sector. Certainly, that confidence and hope is really needed today.
Many of our small business operators are losing confidence in the economy. It is no wonder when you look at the number of record bankruptcies in this country, or the some 1.5 million people who are unemployed across Canada or the slow growth in the economy. It is no wonder that small business operators lack confidence in the ability of the current government to bring us through this recession.
There was a study done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and I want to quote exactly what it had to say about confidence in the small business sector:
The causes of low confidence are rooted mainly in a continuing
deep dissatisfaction with government.
Those are not my words. Those are words from a study done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. It says that the causes of the low confidence in the business community are rooted mainly in the continuing deep dissatisfaction with the government.
That survey went on to indicate certain areas where the small business community was very dissatisfied with government policies. The main concern was with tax policies. Of the small business operators who responded, 80 per cent indicated that high taxes were a significant concern to them. The government knew this but it went ahead anyway and introduced the GST. It introduced it at a time when consumer spending was really needed to generate economic growth.
What has happened since the government introduced it? Retail sales have really suffered. More and more people are going across the border to shop in the United States. In fact, the number of same-day trips to the United States by Canadians has gone up 116 per cent since 1986.
May 14, 1992

The main concern was taxes. The second concern that this study outlined was government regulation and red tape. Having been a small business person myself, I certainly agree that there is too much red tape and too many regulations. All of these things put demands on the small business sector. As a small business operator, it takes a lot of his or her time to fill out various forms and to provide information that is requested by the government. That not only takes time, but it sometimes takes money. Sometimes the operator has to hire a person to come up with the various figures or information.
As I said, I feel that we have excessive red tape and regulations in the small business sector. I would like to see the government get rid of this excessive red tape.
As we know, the small business sector is the one that really provides the new jobs. It has been estimated that small businesses create approximately eight out of every ten new jobs in Canada. That is one reason why we should do everything possible to help and stimulate small businesses.
Yesterday I asked a question of the Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism regarding the Small Businesses Loans Program. Under this program, where the government guarantees part of the loan, the guaranteed loans to small business have gone down 45 per cent since 1985. That is approximately $660 million. That is money that is sitting in bank vaults that could be out there in the economy creating jobs and helping to get the economy going.
What I had suggested to the minister was that he look at this program seriously and have an emergency meeting with the bankers across this country and promote that program. I have many people in my riding, as I am sure there are across the country, who would like to take advantage of this program, but unfortunately they are having real problems in getting the money through the Small Businesses Loans Program.
As I said a minute ago, I am pleased to speak on this motion or on any effort to assist small businesses because of the major contribution that it makes to our economy. Certainly, in my province of Prince Edward Island it also makes a major contribution. In fact, I want to give a couple of statistics.
In 1989, companies with less than 50 full-time employees maintained a labour force of 20,000 which was
Adjournment Debate
about half of the total employment in the private sector in the province. Between 1979 and 1989, Prince Edward Island experienced a net gain of 9,200 jobs. Of those 9,200 jobs, 80 per cent came from firms employing 20 employees or less.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It is six o'clock and the hon. member has a minute remaining in debate. This is one of those selected items pursuant to Standing Order 92(1), so the next time it comes up the hon. member will still have a minute or a minute and a half remaining in her debate.
The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 is deemed to have been moved.

Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, since February 25,1 have often raised the problem of the lack of social housing in the greater Montreal area.
On February 25, when the Minister of Finance tabled the budget in the House, he proposed cutting the funds for Canada Mortgage and Housing to build new co-operatives.
I have often criticized this policy which deprives thousands of Canadians, Quebecers and Montrealers, of adequate housing.
This evening, during the four minutes I have to raise this issue, I will deal specifically with the question I asked the minister on April 30. Before doing so, I would still like to give some figures on what has happened since this government took power. With the latest budget, the Conservative government hopes to save $622 million over the next five years, and this cut affects tens of thousands of housing units in Quebec alone.

May 14, 1992
Adjournment Debate
Indeed, this policy abandons more than 500,000 low-income Quebec households. In Montreal, this cut means that 500 units will not be built this year, in a region where 10,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing and 615,000 live below the poverty line.
In light of these figures, the Minister of Public Works dared to say in this House not long ago, on April 30, that there was a surplus of social housing in some parts of Montreal. If there is really a surplus of social housing in the Montreal area, I would ask the government to explain why there are waiting lists. Why do people ask for social housing every time members of Parliament meet their constituents?
I must also say that since April 30, the minister has answered my question about surpluses in certain neighbourhoods. My office tried to telephone the minister to find out in what neighbourhoods these surpluses were, in order to refer my constituents who come every day asking for social housing.
I do not know how the parliamentary secretary will answer this question, but I hope that, with the minister's answer, he will give me the addresses or the districts where these surpluses are so that starting tomorrow morning, we can contact our people in Saint-Leonard who need social housing or co-operative housing and refer them there.
Mr. Speaker, you are indicating to me that my four minutes are up. Thank you for your patience and I eagerly await the parliamentary secretary's answer.


Mr. Dave Worthy (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tiy to respond. First, the hon. member has expressed concern with the social housing efforts of the government. We have had to fit our program within the general restraint that we experience right through government. We have to live within the 3 per cent increase of expenditures for social housing, but that does not mean that any people have been abandoned. There are over 650,000 households in Canada now that the government is assisting and will continue to assist. There will be 18,000 new households that will get new assistance this year.
The member also mentioned the co-ops. He is concerned and I am concerned about those with the greatest need in these waiting queues. They should be served. We
know that the co-op effort, as admirable as it is, is not totally targeted to those in need. As a government member I would be surprised if the hon. member would want to take funds from those who have real targeted needs to subsidize others who do not have the same need.
The final point he addressed was on the surplus, that actual portion of the budget. With respect to the availability of social housing in Montreal, it is done in conjunction with the Societe d' habitation du Quebec. A study done by the society indicates that out of a portfolio of approximately 16,600 units, 642 are currently vacant. About two-thirds of these have been spoken for and will soon be occupied. The remaining one-third is made up of vacant units currently being renovated or in need of major repair.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret the hon. member's time has expired.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon members of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada marched on Parliament Hill demanding their justly earned pay equity settlements. Some 68,000 federal employees are owed money by this government according to its own pay equity legislation.
Over a month ago I asked the President of the Tteasury Board to ensure that this government meets its pay equity obligation. He commented: "We feel that we have respected the law fully". That was from the President of Treasury Board.
The Canadian Human Rights Commissioner disagrees. In his annual report he highlights the weaknesses of the current legislation, adding that these were accentuated by the government's refusal to implement full pay equity for women working in the federal Public Service.
Not only does the legislation lack teeth, the onus to uncover inequities is left entirely to the employee, but the government will not comply even with this feeble legislation.
Only two days ago my colleague from Ottawa West again asked that the government live up to its pay equity obligations. This time it was the parliamentary secretary who evaded the question and he shifted the blame on to the unions. He chose not to mention that the government tried to ignore a key five-year study which the
May 14, 1992

Adjournment Debate
Treasury Board had actually participated in together with the unions.
Treasury Board did not like the results of the study so it tried to ignore them.
A human rights tribunal established by the Canadian Human Rights Commission rejected the government's attempt to bar these important findings. The government challenged the tribunal in the Federal Court and the Federal Court, the country's highest law-making body, ruled against this government.
The minister makes a lot of noise about the money it has already paid toward pay equity, but he fails to mention that he still owes his employees a billion dollars. This is not a gift. This is not a handout. This is money that these people have rightfully earned according to this Government of Canada's laws.
Federal pay equity legislation itself is not good enough. Since 1987 the Human Rights Commission has been suggesting amendments that are essential to bring this legislation in line with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Now the government has suggested that it could introduce new legislation to eliminate any retroactive pay equity claims prior to 1990. Instead of working to make the laws better, once again this government is working only to protect itself.
Again and again this minister and the government have evaded the issue. I will ask one more time, for the nurses who marched on Parliament Hill today, for the physical therapists and the librarians, and for all women who work in female-dominated jobs: Will this government finally agree to give these people the settlements that are their basic rights?


Dave Worthy: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the wage gaps based on official statistics, the wage gap in the Public Service is 24 cents. This shows a gradual improvement and we are confident that the gap will continue to decline.
Furthermore, it is much smaller for newly hired and/or younger female employees, which implies that it will continue to decline in the years ahead.
It is to the credit of this government and its efforts in the field of equal pay that the wage gap is and has been declining.
With regard to the pay research bureau, the closing of the bureau will have no significant impact on the wage gap or pay equity settlements. The bureau is mandated to collect information on rates of pay, employee earnings, conditions of employment and related practices prevailing both inside and outside Public Service.
We have other various measures that can be used to compare the salaries of men and women in the Public Service. Treasury Board as the employer believes that the comparisons of salary ratios and participation rates on the basis of occupational categories are more relevant and useful.
On pay equity in general, the government is undertaking a major reform of the job classification system to design and implement a universal job evaluation plan. This will provide a durable basis for maintaining equal pay for work of equal value. The government supports that principle and we are proud of the progress that we have made in this important field. Its implementation and maintenance will continue to be pursued.


FISHERIES
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, on February 20, 1992 I posed a number of questions to the Secretary of State for External Affairs with regard to the French foreign fleet that has been given a certain allocation of fish off what is known as the Sydney Bite. It was given 1,300 metric tons of cod in 1990 and in 1991 it was given 1,600 metric tons of fish.
I have now been informed that for 1992 the French foreign fleet will get 100 per cent of its last year's quota; namely, 1,600 metric tons.
I find it totally unacceptable that the Government of Canada would provide much needed fish stocks to foreign nations while at the same time jeopardizing Canadians who make their living from the sea.
I am very much aware of the fact that international agreements have been consummated by Canada and other countries. Surely as a nation which has respected the laws and traditions of NAFO, the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization, we have a right to exercise prudent judgment on behalf of not only our own fishermen on our fish stocks, but as to the consequential effects that has for the entire fish stock wherever that may be.

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Adjournment Debate
It is unacceptable for the Government of Canada to sit while this particular issue is raised to an all-time high level of concern by fishermen in Atlantic Canada and fishermen in my own constituency of Cape Breton-East Richmond.
I must say that I am extremely disappointed in the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and particularly in the Secretary of State for External Affairs and the Prime Minister, who have not afforded the fishermen in my district nor the fishermen in Atlantic Canada the kind of respect and support that they need in order to curtail foreign overfishing.
There has been a proliferation of factory freezer trawler licences which have been given by this government at will to many different nations throughout the world, only to have them fish and to catch fish which in many instances is the foodstuff for the cod.
I would hope that the parliamentary secretary who will be responding to my concerns and to the questions I have raised will reconsider the approach of the Government of Canada and put pressure, real pressure, on other foreign nations that are doing overfishing in our waters and outside our 200-mile limit.
Therefore, I would also hope the parliamentary secretary would accede to the advice we have given time and time and time again on the floor of this House to unilaterally extend the nose and tail of the Grand Banks in order to extend the jurisdictional management of the waters off our coastline.
It is a resource which is not looked after properly and prudently by the Government of Canada. The fishermen in my district, fishermen in all of Atlantic Canada, who have been doing so for hundreds and hundreds of years will be denied that opportunity which they believe and I believe to be rightfully theirs.
I urge and I impress upon the parliamentary secretary here today to bring real influence, real support, for the fishermen of Atlantic Canada by doing the most appropriate thing on their behalf and on behalf of their families.


Barry D. Moore: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the respect and the needs of the fishermen, the minister does have the wants and the needs of the fishermen at heart.
The French allocations in Canadian fisheries waters are governed by the proces-verbal of agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of France relating to fisheries for the years 1989 and 1991, which came into force on March 30, 1989.
The agreement provided for its extension beyond 1991. The arbitral award in the Canada-France maritime boundary dispute was not rendered before November 1, 1991 and Canada has honoured its obligations under the agreement.
The total French quota in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has not changed from 1990 to 1992. It remains at 4,000 tonnes. The current French quota in 4T-4VN is set at 1,600 tonnes, up by 240 tonnes from 1990, while in 4RS, 3PN is set at 2,400 tonnes down by 240 tonnes from 1990.
The increase in the 4T-4VN French quota was made in 1991, as a result of a major decline in the 4RS, 3PN cod stock. France receives only the quotas provided in this agreement and not any preferential treatment.
With regard to the Spanish and Portuguese fishermen, they fish outside of Canadian fisheries waters. Far from receiving preferential treatment, they do not receive allocations in Canadian fisheries waters and do not have any access to our ports.


HISTORICAL SITES
Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, the subject matter which I wish to address I had previously raised on March 17, 1992. In my original question in the House I had questioned the Minister of the Environment and my supplementary was directed to the Prime Minister.
Concerns I had that day are concerns I still share with many people in my community. There was a concern over the fact that close to North Preston, the municipal authority of the county of Halifax had made a decision to site a large municipal dump next to the community, within about seven or eight kilometres.

May 14, 1992

The human ciy went out immediately that this dump was unacceptable to the community. I know a lot of people will say everybody is opposed to garbage being put in their backyard but this was a special circumstance because the community of Preston is the oldest large indigenous black community in Canada. It has been there for over 200 years.
When the Preston community was first settled well over 200 years ago there was an influx of blacks from a whole variety of places and a lot of them were Loyalists who escaped slavery and came into Canada.
When they landed in Canada they were sent out to what was known at the time as the barrens. Halifax was a small, well-developed regional capital. Dartmouth, on the other side of the harbour, was a very small village at that time.
The blacks who arrived were not welcomed with open arms. They were accepted because they had to be but they were put out on what was known at the time as the barrens. It was the worst land you could find in the Halifax-Dartmouth area. It was called the barrens because it was barren. They were put out there to try to eke out a living on land where barely a string bean could grow. But that is where they were left because they were not really treated as equals with whites in society.
Unfortunately, history has not changed as quickly as we would have liked it. What has happened over the last few years is that society as a whole has tried to grapple with that very complex and ugly monster called racism.
Indeed, about a year ago young blacks in the city of Halifax were sparked by an incident that should not have lit a fire, but they were sparked to rampage through a part of downtown Halifax. The media referred to it as a riot. What they were doing was expressing a great deal of frustration that even in today's society the needs of young blacks in our cities and all across our country still are not being realized.
That is not the way we solve our problems in Canada; we do it by compromise and consensus. The leaders in the black community, the non-black community and three levels of government got together and came up with a report. The Minister of State for Multiculturalism had a representative on that particular committee.
Adjournment Debate
The report came out with a lot of recommendations. Recommendation No. 10 was in recognition of the fact that historically, black communities had been the sites of white dumps in Nova Scotia, like Afrikville in Halifax and the Crichton Avenue area of Dartmouth. In every area in Nova Scotia where a black community was adjacent to a white community, the dump was always in the black community.
It has come today to symbolize a past of oppression and discrimination, that black communities were not as good as white communities, but they were good enough to take the white communities' trash.
So, the committee on which we had a federal representative said: "Yes, we agree to all of these recommendations, and we agree that there should never be a time where a dump is placed in a black community again". Not a year later one of the signators to that report, an agency of the signator, the municipality of the county of Halifax, through the metropolitan authority, decided to place a dump next to a black community. This was not just any black community. The lands in question most likely were historic lands, the site of some of the earliest black settlements in Canada and indeed that might be the site of the underground railroad.
So, I asked the minister and the government whether they would give an assurance that they would do everything they possibly could to ensure that this dump site did not go on that particular location. It was a parliamentary secretary who had answered. I have to give full marks here because shortly after, the Minister of State for Multiculturalism met me out in the hall. He gave his commitment as a minister of the Crown and he gave the support of his department to work with the community to prepare the case and to do whatever he and this government could to ensure that we do not repeat the wrongs of the past when it comes to the location of dumps in and among black communities in Nova Scotia.
So, today I am hoping that the parliamentary secretary will be able to give me a further update as to the actions of the government and the Minister of State for Multiculturalism.
In closing, I wish once more to put on the record that this is one of those areas where partisanship has not played a role. I do not think there is a member in this House who believes that racism can go unchecked whenever it rears its head. And I want to give full marks

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Adjournment Debate
to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism for his help to date.


Barry D. Moore: Mr. Speaker, further to the hon. member's question posed on March 17 regarding the East Lake site near Preston, Nova Scotia, I would like to first say that we are all aware of the proud, long and rich history of the black community in that province, a history that stretches back some 200 years where their allegiance to the British Crown brought the black Loyalists to Nova Scotia's shores.
I am sure that we would all wish to see the contributions to this nation of black Nova Scotians commemorated in a meaningful and appropriate manner. It is for this reason that the Advisory Board on Historical Sites will be considering the subject at its next meeting this June in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.
Concerning the landfill site, given the fact that the East Lake site is on provincial Crown land, I urge the member and other people to continue approaches to the provinces and to the municipal authorities on the landfill site.
In closing, I am pleased to advise members of the House that the National Historical Sites Directorate is currently preparing a major research study on black history in Canada for consideration by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: A motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at ten o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.25 p.m.