1992-11-24

[Stage Direction]
A message from His Excellency the Governor General of Canada transmitting Supplementary Estimates (A) and Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 1993, was presented by the President of the Treasury Board and read by the Speaker to the House.

Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, I move, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 81(5) and Standing Order 81(6):
That the Supplementary Estimates (A) and Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1993, laid upon the table this day be referred to the several standing committees of the House as follows:

Since the list of votes sent to the various committees is long and detailed, I would ask that the list be printed in Hansard at this point, without being read.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
[Editor's Note: List referred to above is as follows:]


SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES (A)
[Stage Direction]
To the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs
Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Votes 5a, 15a and L25a.
To the Standing Committee on Agriculture Agriculture, Votes la, 5a, 10a, 15a, 20a and 25a.
To the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture
Communications, Votes la, 5a, 10a, 70a and 80a.
Secretary of State, Votes la and 5a.
To the Standing Committee on Multiculturalism and Citizenship Multiculturalism and Citizenship, Votes la and 5a.
To the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations
Industry, Science and Technology, Vote 91a.
Privy Council, Votes la sand 10a.
Public Works, Votes 15a, L16a and 35a.
Supply and Services, Votes la and 11a.
To the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources Energy, Mines and Resources, Votes L15a, 30a and 35a.
To the Standing Committee on Environment Environment, Votes la and 25a.
To the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade
External Affairs, Votes 10a, 20a, 35a and 36a.
Ib the Standing Committee on Finance Finance Vote 35a.
National Revenue, Votes la, 5a, 15a and 20a.
To the Standing Committee on Forestry and Fisheries Fisheries and Oceans, Votes 10a and 15a.
To the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General Justice, Votes la, 5a, 40a and 45a.
Solicitor General, Vote 25a.
To the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration
Employment and Immigration, Votes 10a, 15a and 20a.
Labour, Votes la, 5a and 15a.
lb the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs
National Defence, Vote 20a.
To the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women
Employment and Immigration, Vote 35a.
National Health and Welfare, Votes la, 5a, 10a, 15a, 20a, and 25a. To the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Regional and Northern Development
Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Vote 45a.
Industry, Science and Technology, Votes la, 5a, 55a and 60a.
[Stage Direction]
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To the Standing Committee on Hansport Transport, Votes la and 10a.
To the Standing Committee on Official Languages.
Privy Council Vote 25a.

[Stage Direction]
To the Standing Committee on Hansport Hansport, Votes 26b and 27b
Motion agreed to.

Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, over the course of the past three years the world airline industry has fallen into a deepening financial crisis. Since 1990 the industry has lost in the order of $ 10 billion.
Major factors contributing to those losses were the drop in demand occasioned by the gulf war, and the heightened security threat to travellers, concurrent increases in the price of fuel, all compounded by the subsequent recession.

Like most carriers around the world, the Canadian airline industry has experienced significant losses, high debt loads, a sluggish traffic situation and vigorous price competition. Unfortunately, there are no quick or easy solutions for returning our carriers to financial health.
Both carriers have already taken painful steps to stem the losses. A greater effort to bring cost structures into line with other carriers, however, must now be mounted if Canada is to retain its competitive position in the world aviation industry.
The Canadian industry needs rationalization. Capacity is too great for current demand and prices are too low to cover costs.

The difficulties faced by our carriers have arisen against the backdrop of rapid change in the global aviation industry. The world economy is experiencing rapid change. The globalization of the world economic system has resulted in major restructuring of many of our industrial sectors.
In response to increasing competitive pressures, carriers have consolidated, for example, British Airways and British Caledonian, Delta and Western Airlines, and
KLM and Northwest, both within and, in some cases, across national boundaries.
Carriers have also looked for opportunities to expand their global networks through a variety of partnership mechanisms. Examples of carrier alliances include PWA-Canadian Airlines and Lufthansa, as well as Air Canada and United Airlines.
In addition, the need for more extensive networks has encouraged the emergence of commercial practices designed to maximize a carrier's ability to capture and keep traffic.
Frequent flyer programs are one example with which air travellers are familiar.

The successful carrier of the future must have an extensive network and the means to attract a sufficient traffic base to support the enormous cost that these networks entail.
In the past 15 years a new fixed-cost element has emerged to become an essential feature of providing an extensive network of services. I refer now to the need to have computer and telecommunications technology strong enough to manipulate billions of pieces of information relating to fares, schedules, flights, seats, reservations, yield management, equipment, and staff assignment, as well as other aspects of airline operations and planning. Hence the importance of linking to a computer reservation system, the essential tool for sales and planning.
Very few carriers in the world are generating profits today. In this respect our carriers are not unique. For Canada, however, the trend toward globalization means that the financial difficulties facing our two carriers has put the Canadian industry at a crossroads.
The strategies we now pursue will dictate not only the structure of the Canadian industry but also the international position of our nation's airline industry.

Canada's transportation policy framework is set out in section 3 of the National Transportation Act of 1987. The framework is based on the principle of competition and market forces as the best means to achieve the goals of our transportation policy. This policy has been of direct benefit to travellers through reductions in price and
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increased services. The government is still firmly committed to this policy.
The policy has as its foundation the need to provide a safe, economic, efficient and adequate network of viable and effective transportation services to meet the needs of travellers and shippers and to maintain the economic well-being and growth of Canada.
In addition, the policy framework is sufficiently flexible to allow Canadian carriers the benefits of investments from foreign interests. As is the case in most aviation countries of the world, however, Canada's policy requires that air carriers be controlled in fact by Canadians.

Some have argued that the competitive principles which underpin our policy may not be sufficiently supported by the current regulatory regime of the National Transportation Act. The peculiar structure of Canada's airline industry, combined with the difficult market conditions that the industry has experienced in the past few years, have led some observers to suggest the need for reinforcement of our regulatory framework. It may be necessary to re-examine the framework to ensure that it will promote a healthy, competitive environment for the airline industry.
Let us look at the proposal of PWA, the Council of Employees and American Airlines.
For several months now, PWA Corporation has been engaged in discussions designed to improve its balance sheet and its ability to compete in the future. On Thesday, November 10, the chairman and CEO of PWA, Mr. Rhys Eaton, and the lead spokesperson for the Council of Employees, Mr. Sidney Fattedad, put forward a proposal for the consideration of the Canadian government.
This proposal requires that a number of conditions be satisfied before it can be completed. Let me outline the conditions in the PWA-employee council-American Airlines proposal.
Government funding requirements: The deal calls for significant amounts of government funding; a guarantee of up to $290 million is required until closing of the deal,
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$200 million from the federal government and $90 million from provincial governments. On closing the deal, PWA proposes to repay $100 million to the federal government. After the closing of the deal and for a period of 36 months thereafter, a continuing cushion of up to $190 million, $100 million coming from the federal government and $90 million from provincial governments, is required.
American Airlines investments. American Airlines is prepared to invest $246 million, to be taken in voting and non-voting convertible preferred shares, at the closing of the deal with PWA/Canadian Airlines if certain conditions are met, one of which concerns the Gemini system.
Before closing, the Gemini Computer Reservation Company must release PWA from its contract for hosting services such that a variety of administrative, marketing and data management processing services may be provided to PWA/Canadian Airlines through the American Airlines Sabre system.
American Airlines requires strengthening of PWA's balance sheet. To meet this condition PWA/Canadian Airlines is seeking to raise $125 million in equity by way of public issue and PWA/Canadian employees have stated they are prepared to contribute $100 million to $150 million through salary deductions for a period of three years in exchange for equity.
The agreements call for American Airlines to appoint two members of an eight-member board of directors on PWA/Canadian Airlines. Those members would have ongoing veto rights over certain management decisions, such as appointment of the CEO; annual business, capital and financing plans; capital expenditures over a threshold amount; mergers or acquisitions of assets over a certain amount.
The agreements also call for American Airlines to provide valuable processing services for PWA/Canadian, mainly through its Sabre system, such as operations planning; pricing and yield management; food and beverage support services; international base operations; technical services and accounting.
The agreement also includes the requirement that all current foreign route authorities of PWA/Canadian be in full force and effect as of closing.

These conditions raise for the government a number of difficult issues. In assessing these issues, the government has sought to balance the following considerations: the financial woes affecting the industry as a whole; the large number of direct and indirect jobs at stake; the impressive dedication and commitment of PWA/CAIL

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employees who are prepared to make a substantial investment in their company; the constraints on the finances of the Government of Canada; the need to not expose the Canadian taxpayer to an imprudent measure of financial risk; the assistance already provided to PWA through the purchase of aircraft at a cost to taxpayers of over $200 million and to Air Canada at the time of its privatization; the requirement of the deal for the federal government to provide financial assistance for an uncertain period of time, because the closing of the deal is dependent on the resolution of issues relating to Gemini, which are currently before the Ontario Court and the Competiton Tribunal; the need for a proposal that will lead to a return to financal stability in the airline industry; and the legal requirement that, at the end of the day, PWA/CAIL will continue to be controlled in fact by Canadians.

Our preference is to look to every reasonable alternative to preserve a competitive airline system in Canada. Given the importance of the issues at hand, the government wishes members of the Elouse to be apprised of the complexities of the issues. All key stakeholders have to be part of the solution.
To this end, the government will provide up to $50 million in financial assistance to PWA in order to provide an opportunity to explore with all interested parties, including provinces and employees, the actions necessary to minimize taxpayers financial exposure and to support a viable Canadian competitive airline system. [DOT]


Mr. Manley:: The minister's statement today contains many comments which we have been seeking over many months to elicit from that side of the House.
It contains, once and for all, a recognition that indeed the Canadian airline industry is in, as it has been for some time, a state of crisis. It acknowledges at last that the existing regulatory regime may not be serving the needs of Canadian Airline employees and consumers of the airline services for competition because it is leading to a lack of competition.
I am sure the minister does not need to be reminded of the statement of his predecessor, now the Minister of Finance, who said in the House of Commons on April 12, 1988: "The results of regulatory reform and the passage of the National Transportation Act have created a new environment and with it a stable, viable and very competitive airline sector in Canada".
Would that it were so. What we have in today's statement-as I say it is better late than never, but at last we have it-an acknowledgement that the structure of Canada's airline industry has led some observers to suggest the need of reinforcement of our regulatory framework and it states: "It may be necessary to suggest a recalibration of the framework to ensure that it will promote a healthy, competitive environment for the airline industry".
It is high time, but perhaps too late, that this minister has finally taken upon himself responsibility for dealing with this vital and important sector. We have gone through this now for many months. We asked him back in February what he proposed to do about what then was a looming crisis in the airline sector.
What did he say then? "It is in the best interests of consumers and the travelling public in this country to have two airline companies that are in the best possible shape. That is what we want to achieve in the months to come."


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Minister of Transport spoke for 12 minutes and 30 seconds.
What happened in the months to come? It was on February 4 in this House when he said that. In the months to come, Canada's two national carriers lost an average of $2 million a day. Ten months of inactivity by this government have gone by. Today it is putting up $50 million of taxpayers' money. That is 25 days' losses.


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November 24, 1992

Where has the minister been? What has he been thinking over all this time?
We look at the passage of time in this House and in the committee dedicated to studying these issues. In April, the Liberals on the transport committee said to that committee: "Let us study the problems in the airline industry". At that time, the contemplated transaction between American Airlines and Canadian was in the public news, saying that the discussions were under way, and many statements were being made about it.
The government sent members to that committee to shut down that inquiry, to refuse to permit the transport committee of the House of Commons to look at this crucial issue. In August when the AMR and Canadian discussions broke down and it was proposed that there be a merger between Air Canada and Canadian, again we asked for the transport committee to look at it. Again, the government refused to have the House of Commons transport committee conduct an inquiry into this crucial issue.
To his credit, the chairman of the consumer and corporate affairs committee had the nerve to hold two days of hearings on the issue before the government members on that committee refused to hear any more evidence about the crisis in this crucial sector.
In September we had the execution of an agreement to move toward a merger of Air Canada and Canadian Airlines. At that time the Leader of the Opposition asked that the government take some measures to review, with a high level panel of experts, what would be in the best interests of the Canadian taxpayer, the Canadian traveller and the Canadian Airline employees, to see what we should do and, if necessary, to give financial assistance to both airlines through tax abatement in order that there be time for that inquiry to be conducted.
The issues that the Leader of the Opposition asked to be reviewed are almost the same as those listed in the minister's statement this morning. On September 9 we were asking him to review these things to determine what should be done.
Certainly this is not a simple issue. It is not an issue that has a lot of simple solutions that anyone can put forward. There is a need for study. We are vitally concerned that taxpayers' money not be flushed down the drain in some last minute scheme to save any company that is going down the tubes anyway. That is
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important. But the time that has gone by that time that has been wasted on this refusal to listen, this refusal to act, this refusal to talk is what has really cost taxpayers, travellers and airline employees in this country.

Surely it is not a matter of favouring one airline over another, or of saving Canadian Airlines and thus endangering Air Canada. We believe that it is necessary for us in Canada to have two airlines that are competitive on domestic routes. That is the policy which the minister announced here in the House on February 4. There has been no policy to stabilize the aviation industry since then. The problems which have existed since February 4 existed throughout 1991.

Ever since the gulf war and the recession took hold, airline companies have been suffering. This is not news. The Minister of Transport surely can read the financial statements of the airlines as well as other analysts can. The failure to act for so long that gives rise to the crisis we face today has made it far worse, far more difficult to deal with, and created greater uncertainty in everyone's minds.
As to the solution that is put forward today, yes, we need to do a study; yes, we need to be careful with taxpayers' money; but to put $50 million in today without any clear indication of where the government seeks to go is to put a band-aid on a very serious problem while giving us virtually no indication of what outcome the government really hopes to achieve in this matter.
We do not know what conditions are imposed on this $50 million offer of financial assistance. We do not know whether the government has certain answers in mind for the series of questions posed by the minister which would serve as conditions precedent to giving the additional financial assistance that has been stipulated in the transaction that he outlined this morning. We do not know whether the Government of Canada believes that the transaction proposed between American Airlines and Canadian Airlines constitutes a change of control to American Airlines, remembering that the determination of that matter is appealable on public policy grounds to the federal cabinet. It is incumbent upon the government to come forward, to come out of the weeds, and say what it is it thinks of that proposed transaction. We do not know. We do not know what the government's view

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is on the long-term competitive possibilities in this industry.
If we do not continue to have two national carriers competing on domestic routes, what does the government have in mind to fulfil the repeated promises of this minister and his predecessors to provide competition in the airline industry in Canada?
We have no notion of that and yet, as I say, these are not problems that have recently emerged. These are problems that have been clearly on the public policy table for months and months and months. It is time this government took its responsibility once and for all and either addressed itself to these problems, came out of the weeds and told Canadians what it thought should be done, or get out of the way and let somebody else take over.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, the announcement today that the Government of Canada is going to give Canadian Airlines $50 million with no strings attached, no return to regulation and no forced ending to crazy competition is clearly outrageous.
This is the 82-day solution. Canadian Airlines is losing $600,000 a day. When you work that into $50 million it takes you to Valentine's Day in 1993. That is how much time this government has decided to buy Canadian while it dithers about what kind of long-term solution is needed.
This government has had not months to find a solution; it knew two years ago when I raised it in the House that the airlines were beginning to bleed. This bleeding has continued now to the point where Canadian Airlines is in jeopardy of going under.
The government knew two years ago and failed to act. It failed to take the matter seriously and the reality has come home to roost that the government is now finding itself in a crisis situation and does not know what to do about it. This decision is no decision at all. It is buying time with taxpayers' money.
I want to ask the minister what strings are attached to this $50 million. Is this an equity investment? Is this a loan? Is this a loan guarantee? Is this a gift? What is this? Is it just opening up the tap to allow taxpayers' money to flow through the minister's hands into Canadian and on to the floor as it continues to bleed?
By itself, $50 million is not going to do anything. All it is going to do is buy somebody some time to come up with a solution. For example, does this $50 million give the government a say in the operation of Canadian Airlines between now and the end of the 82 days?
The minister spent a lot of time in his statement talking about the proposal between Canadian and American, the employees and laying the framework for the international crisis in the aviation industry. All that is well and good, but one simple paragraph on the action the government was going to take and all he told us was that Canadian Airlines has a cheque for $50 million and he did not tell us what has to be done with that or what protection there is for the taxpayer with that kind of allocation.
There is no indication in the minister's statement that irrespective of a return to re-regulation he is going to call in Air Canada and Canadian and knock their heads together and say: "Boys, look. We have to stop this crazy competition. We have too many planes leaving the same airport within five minutes of each other, going to the same destinations half full. You have to stop doing that because it is hurting your bottom line". Anybody with a grade two education can figure that one out.
But no, the government has not decided to do that and we do not have to have regulation to do that. The influence of the Minister of Transport can be used to call in the presidents of those two companies to sort it out and provide a solution in the interim that will stop the bleeding while putting in place a long-term solution which clearly, from our perspective, is a return to regulation.
Even in his overview the minister would not use the word re-regulation. He talked about reinforcement of our regulatory framework or a recalibration of the framework.
The reality is that whether it is a policy change or whether it is recalibration or reinforcement, we have to put rules in place that on the one hand protect the bottom line of the carriers so they do not continue to bleed and that on the other hand protect the consumers, the people who fly on the planes, the communities which
November 24, 1992

rely on those planes for their economic development and their ongoing operations as a community.
The other thing that this non-decision does is it continues the difficulty the employees, not just at Canadian, but at Air Canada and the regional partners of the two carriers are experiencing. I have talked to them. I have talked to pilots, to flight attendants who do not know if they are going to have jobs tomorrow. This decision extends that anguish. There will be flight attendants, pilots, maintenance staff, baggage handlers and people at head office who will go home tonight and whose spouses will ask: "What are our chances?" They will not know because this government dithered instead of making a decision and instead of accepting its responsibility to govern, which it got from the people of Canada four years ago this week.
The government bought itself more time because quite frankly, it refused to admit when it accepted the deregulation policies handed down to it by the former Liberal administration that it was wrong. It was the wrong thing to do. It refused to accept that and as a result we have 30,000 or 40,000 people directly who will be going home tonight scared silly about whether or not they have a job and whether or not they have a future.
That is unfair. This government could have and should have and still could make a decision to do more than just an 82-day solution. It could find a real solution to the problems of the industry.
What we see today is an indication of the reality of this government. It cannot make a decision. It cannot recognize that its economic policies have failed. It has shown once again that this government literally is unable to govern and to make the tough decisions it needs to make. Mind you, it is quite good in making those tough decisions when it hurts Canadians, like the free trade agreement or the goods and services tax. It is okay for it to make those kinds of tough decisions. But the really tough ones are when it has to eat crow, has to eat its own words and recognize that perhaps there was a mistake made when it entered into economic regulatory reform. That is the tough decision that it is struggling with and that is why we do not have a decision today.
This announcement says it all. Not only has this government lost the moral authority to govern, but it has
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lost the ability to govern. Quite frankly, it is time for the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance, who is really running this show, and the rest of them to get out of here before they do any more damage to the transportation industry in this country or generally to this great country that we love. It really is time to call an election and let the people decide.


Mr. Plamondon:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The House does not usually let us speak on ministers' statements, but I would tell the Speaker that we regret it very much since we are the only party to have a clear position on this issue. Our critic on this subject is here and he would like to be able to speak. Therefore I ask the House for unanimous consent so that he can do so.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent in the House for an independent member to speak on the statement?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Mr. Nic Leblanc (Longueuil):: Mr. Speaker, for several weeks we have been hearing about Canadian Airlines and conversations between the government and that company. That seems rather strange to us because in 1987 we allowed the privatization of Air Canada in order to have free competition in the aviation industry, especially for passenger transport in Canada.
By privatizing Air Canada, which was running a deficit year after year, we gave it the ability to raise cash to renew its fleet. I remember that when we privatized Air Canada, the president of Air Canada at that time said: "We need to be privatized because we need cash to renew our aircraft fleet". It seems that is not exactly what Air Canada did. Instead, this company used the cash to lower its fares in an attempt to kill Canadian Airlines. In a way, it tried to eliminate Canadian Airlines and become the only major carrier in Canada. The way Air Canada acted was rather unfair.
Today, of course, Canadian Airlines is in a difficult position and so is Air Canada. Both companies are in difficulty. I think that if business people are not serious enough to work together to make their companies profitable, that is their problem. They must agree to

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operate the two companies profitably or they must merge.
I think that merger was discussed several times between Canadian Airlines and Air Canada, but they came to opposite conclusions. I think that private enterprise should be allowed to compete in a healthy way and that is what the government wants, I believe. If there is one company of this size too many in Canada, the two companies need only merge, seriously streamline their operations and make a profitable Canadian company. I think that is the only way to have a fair and just solution.
In that regard, I sincerely hope that the federal government does not meddle in private enterprise by subsidizing one company to the detriment of another. Clearly in this case if we help Canadian Airlines, we will just hurt Air Canada. We will have solved nothing because in a few months or years we will have the same problem: we will have to subsidize Air Canada. In this case we must let market forces operate and the business managers must be serious: either merge if necessary or leave the scene. It is their choice and that is free enterprise. If we want a serious aviation industry in Canada, we must let market forces work themselves out.
I sincerely hope that the companies will make another effort to talk to each other about merging or rationalizing so that Canada can have a solid and prosperous airline.


Mr. Nowlan:: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I was going to ask the consent of the House to make a few remarks, too. I was wondering if the House would agree. I know the rule set out in Standing Order 33 does not say other members can speak, but it does not say they cannot speak. That is the reason I would like to have a chance to make a few remarks if there is consent of the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to give the floor to the hon. member?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is not unanimous consent.


Mr. Edwards:: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry but I believed we were still in Tabling of Documents.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to revert to Tabling of Documents?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There is not unanimous consent.


EXCISE TAX ACT
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-374, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act.


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


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce today a bill respecting an amendment to the Excise Tkx Act. The intent of the bill is to solve a problem that has existed across the country in connection with the goods and services tax.
The great complaint about this tax is that it is visible or it is demanded by retailers at every sale. The trouble is that right throughout Canada we have provincial sales taxes as well. Every time someone goes to the store to buy something, they are faced with the goods and services tax and the provincial sales tax. At no time are the goods being purchased in any way or shape at the price advertised by the merchant.
Merchants know when they are selling goods to the public that there are taxes, and merchants ought to make clear the exact calculation of the tax and advertise the total price, not just the price without the taxes because this causes nothing but misrepresentation and concern to the public.
This bill will demand that when goods are advertised at a price they be sold at that price. If the merchant wants to add tax after, he can always advertise the goods plus tax at 7 per cent. Otherwise the goods are sold at the price advertised.
November 24, 1992


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


NATIONAL UNITY IN DIVERSITY WEEK ACT
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham-Whitchurch-Stouff-ville) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-375, an act respecting national unity in diversity week.


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


Bill Attewell: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Baha'i community of Canada for taking the leadership in this initiative. This national unity in diversity week would not only reinforce multiculturalism as a vital part of Canadian policy but would go a step further in educating Canadians to the fact that unity in diversity is a prerequisite for peace and harmony in our country and around the world.


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


CANADA LABOUR CODE
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-376, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code (scabs and essential services).


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 68(2), the motion is deemed adopted.
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Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to amend the Canada Labour Code to preclude Crown corporations from using scabs during a strike and also to maintain essential services. Indeed, for some time now the major central labour bodies in Quebec have been shifting toward responsible and civilized trade unionism.
This bill will encourage workers to stand up for their rights and interests as members of a society where the improved standard of living of individuals is achieved through consultation, especially in the case of exploitative governments. The same certainly cannot be said of Canadian unionism which still hinges on a strategy of confrontation and power relationship.
Let us think of the human factor and remember the victims of the tragedy in Yellowknife at the Giant mine, in 1992.1 want to thank the hon. member for Jonquiere for his support to this important legislation for the Canadian workers.


Louis Plamondon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. While fully supporting the bill introduced by the hon. member, I believe that this very bill has already been defeated once during this session. I am wondering whether it can be tabled twice.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I am sorry but I cannot allow a point of order of this nature at this time.
Mr. Saint-Julien moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.


PETITIONS
Mr. Peter Milliken (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, the petition I have the honour to present today is signed by numerous residents of the Kingston area.
These petitioners are upset and concerned that this government has introduced a tax on reading materials.
I think they, along with Your Honour and all members of this House, must be frankly disgusted that we are taxing the printed word in Canada when freedom of information is a cornerstone of our liberties, when freedom of the press is certainly a cornerstone of our

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liberties, and yet the government chooses to tax books, magazines and newspapers.
These petitioners are opposed to this tax. They have signed this petition in opposition to it. They call upon Parliament to repeal the goods and services tax in so far as it applies to the sale of books, magazines and newspapers.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before proceeding with this item, I notice that some members seem to want to have a private conversation. I would suggest that they take it outside the House.


Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have in front of me about 50 pages of petitions containing about 10,000 signatures dealing with the issue of child poverty in response to the fact that the minister of health announced six months ago that the government was no longer committed as it was in the House three years ago to the elimination of child poverty by the year 2000. Several thousand Canadians have been working together on this, including this morning when we had a breakfast. Members of the group are in the House of Commons gallery, led by Reverend Brian Weatherdon from Ottawa. Through this petition they have once again brought to the attention of the House that Canadians want the House of the Commons, the Parliament of Canada, to address the questions of child poverty immediately and not to defer them.
On behalf of this group I present these petitions and wish that the Government of Canada would listen to what they have to say.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to introduce a similar petition signed by people from all across Canada: from British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, and so on.
These people have signed the same petition on which my colleague from Winnipeg has spoken. They are calling on the government to take action in order to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.
This petition was sponsored by Partnership Against Poverty, headed by one of the most distinguished churches in my community, St. Andrew's at the comer of Wellington and Kent Streets.
I congratulate them and add my voice to that of my colleague from Winnipeg calling upon the government to fulfil the commitment of a few years back to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. It is only fair to fulfil the commitment this House voted on unanimously.


Mr. Jim KarpofF (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present two petitions this morning.
The first one points out that Canadian consular services overseas are to provide services in such matters as immigration and visitor visas.
It also points out that the consular services in New Delhi are overworked, that 75 per cent of the people who use those services come from the Punjab, and that it is difficult for people coming from the Punjab to travel to New Delhi.
It asks the government to open a new Canadian consular service and immigration office in the Punjab.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, my second petition, again signed by a large number of people from the lower mainland, points out that family class and assisted relative immigrants have historically been an important part of Canadian immigration and that family class and assisted relatives always have people in Canada to assist them in finding employment, housing and learning Canadian language and customs.
It points out that the government's present proposals would make it more difficult for family class and assisted relatives to obtain immigration. It calls upon this government to undertake a policy that would give first priority for immigration to Canada to immigrants in the family and assisted relative class.


Mr. Chris Axworthy (Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present petitions on behalf of about 6,000 Canadians representing the points of view of millions of Canadians and criticizing this government for not responding to the unanimous motion
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passed three years ago to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.
The Partnership against Poverty under the leadership of Reverend Brian Weatherdon has worked across this country gathering names on petitions from every province, every territory and every community across this country, pointing out the social and economic costs incurred by the enormous amount of poverty in Canada, the poverty of over 1.1 million children and growing every day, and the unfortunate nature of the comments of the minister responsible regarding the lack of any plan for dealing with child poverty by this government. He said there was no plan for dealing with the problem of poverty exclusively for children.
There were the commitments of the Prime Minister with regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the commitments of this House to eliminate child poverty. Yet, as this petition points out, these problems are getting worse.
On behalf of millions of Canadians the petition calls upon Parliament to take necessary actions to reaffirm its commitment to seek the elimination of child poverty and to do what this government has failed to do: develop a plan for the implementation of this commitment.


Mr. Jean-Luc Joncas (Matapedia-Matane):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the honour to table a petition signed by thousands of Canadians from across the country who humbly pray and call upon Parliament to continue to take whatever action necessary to reaffirm and achieve its goal of eradicating child poverty in Canada by the year 2000 and to develop an action plan for that purpose.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I am tabling a petition from residents of Manneville, Sainte-Gertrude, Val-d'Or and Louvicourt, in Abitibi, who say that violent movies on television are dangerous and therefore unacceptable because they incite more violence.
Routine Proceedings
They point out that all toys that incite violent games are unacceptable and production of such toys should be stopped. Freedom of the press should be restricted when reporting acts of violence as information repeatedly given on television, on all channels, as well as on radio, can act as an incentive to commit similar acts of violence.
Therefore, your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to pass appropriate legislation to eliminate violence in our society, thus affording our children better protection and our fellow citizens a better quality of life.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, petitioners request that the goods and services tax on books and reading materials be removed.
They point out that we have never had such a tax and that literacy is the cornerstone of a democracy such as ours. It also flies in the face of our country's competitiveness and productivity, supposed objectives of the government. They request that it be removed immediately.
I shall be introducing a private members' bill shortly to try to achieve that objective.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I have another petition in which petitioners request the CRTC to ensure there is no inappropriate language used in the media, particularly on radio and television. They feel that it is not necessary in entertaining the general public.
They point out that it is a form of abuse and violence and that Canadians generally oppose this kind of programming. They ask that this be done as soon as possible.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of presenting petitions signed by thousands of men, women and children from all across Canada who recognize that the incidence of violence against women and children is unacceptable.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to accept legislation that would provide relief and support to women as

November 24, 1992
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mothers to protect their children. They want legislation that will emphasize the need for abuser rehabilitation.
They also ask that a special effort be made in training police, lawyers, court workers and judges so they become knowledgeable about women and child abuse and that public attention be focused on this very important, long ignored problem.


Mr. John Nunziata (York South-Weston):: Mr. Speaker, my petition deals with section 745 of the Criminal Code. It is signed by approximately 1,000 people.
Under section 745 of the Criminal Code, convicted murderers are allowed to apply for a reduction in the number of years they are required to serve before becoming eligible for parole. Those convicted of first degree murder, for example, and sentenced to at least 25 years in prison, can have that 25-year period reduced to somewhere between 15 and 25 years.
The 1,000 people who have signed this petition are calling upon Parliament to rescind section 745 of the Criminal Code so that those convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to a period of incarceration of 15 to 25 years would not be eligible to reduce their parole eligibility.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended today by 31 minutes beginning at 1 p.m., in accordance with Standing Order 33(2)(a).



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Gerald S. Merrithew (for the Minister of Employment and Immigration) moved: that Bill C-86, an act to amend the Immigration Act and other acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.


Mr. Allmand:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is the third reading stage of the bill. It is usual for the minister or another minister to introduce the debate at third reading and give us reasons why we should support the bill. I do not see the minister here and I do not see anybody else here to move the debate.


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I appreciate my hon. friend drawing that fact to the House's attention. I am informed that the minister is on his way. There was apparently a delay that was not anticipated. I am sure he regrets the inconvenience to the House, but he will be with us momentarily.
I believe that the House may be disposed to giving the minister an opportunity to arrive as I am informed that he is fleet of foot. He has just demonstrated that, Mr. Speaker. Again I want to thank my hon. friend from NDG for raising the point.


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I had to rush to the House to address my colleagues on Bill C-86.

It has been five months since we introduced Bill C-86 and since then the bill has been subjected to intense, detailed and exhaustive scrutiny by members of the legislative committee, by the Senate committee in its pre-study of the bill, by hundreds of individuals and organizations representing Canadians from all walks of life, and through their briefs, representations and presentations by members on both sides of the House at report stage.
With the exception of the behaviour that we saw last night by a party in this House, I have been impressed time and time again by the constructive co-operation demonstrated by everyone involved in the passage of this
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bill. Members of the legislative and Senate committees have repeatedly demonstrated a deep appreciation of what immigration means to this country and a genuine concern to ensure that the measures proposed by Bill C-86 are fair, practical and in the best interests of Canada.
I have followed with particular interest the work of the Senate committee which submitted a pre-study report that showed considerable care and deliberation. The Senate pre-study report concentrated on proposed amendments relating to refugee status determination and drew heavily upon the testimony of the first chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board, Mr. Fairweather, and Mr. Chefeke, the former Canadian representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
It is clear that members of the committee listened carefully to the testimony and raised in their pre-study report issues that have been in the forefront of the debate on this very important legislation. I commend them for it. I have not always agreed with what members have said about the bill, but I would like to say that I respect their views. I value the work they have done. This has clearly been an effective legislative process. Bill C-86 has been improved by that process.
What is remarkable is that on issues so often the subject of conflicting and polarized opinion, there has been enough common ground in most cases to work out reasonable amendments to the bill.
I had the chance to hear what the Liberal immigration critic, the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, had to say about the legislative committee and the government amendments. If I can quote him, the member said that there is no doubt this committee has worked better than most committees of which he has been a member and the government listened to reasonable arguments in many cases.
There is widespread agreement that Bill C-86 responds to a real need for change and that it is based on sound principles. Few would disagree that change is necessary if we are to manage immigration effectively and fairly in a changing world.
The effectiveness of our immigration and refugee system is being severely tested by mounting international
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and domestic pressures. This is a fact of life. Our current Immigration Act was developed 16 years ago with the experiences of the 1960s and the 1970s as sign posts for the future. In some respects, those were simpler times. It was easier to manage the immigrant selection system and abuses of our program were less pervasive.

The fact is, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet those objectives in the world of the 90s using the tools of the 70s.
That is why we need Bill C-86. Last June I indicated my commitment and the government's commitment to remain open to constructive amendments to Bill C-86 provided that they did not compromise the principles on which it is based. Let me state those principles once again.
First, and there can be no compromise here, Bill C-86 must preserve the integrity, compassion and humanitarian values of our immigration and refugee programs. Second, our immigration program must continue to serve the best interests of Canada and all Canadians. Third, the proposals must result in better management and control of all aspects of our immigration and refugee programs.
In accordance with those principles, Bill C-86 provides for improvements in three main areas. First, we will be able to make a better selection of candidates for immigration in Canada thanks to a better monitoring and management of categories and numbers of immigrants.
Thus, immigration will continue to contribute to the development of our society and to our economic prosperity in all regions of Canada. Second, we will be able to better protect the Canadian society through more stringent enforcement and control mechanisms in order to preserve the integrity of our programs and protect Canadians against those who take advantage of our programs and break our laws. Third, we will further streamline the refugee determination system in order to improve the effectiveness of an excellent program-recognized as such throughout the world-with fair decisions rendered more quickly.
Those are the three main principles underlying Bill C-86.

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It is clear that the majority of Canadians recognize the need for changes to the old Immigration Act and the majority agree that the focus of Bill C-86 is right. The focus is right; effective selection and management of the immigration program, better protection against criminals and terrorists and a fair, streamlined refugee determination system.
At the same time, concerns have been expressed about how specific provisions of Bill C-86 might work in practice. That is fair. I have listened to those concerns carefully. In many cases, most notably they have been with respect to the role of the senior immigration officer. Anyone who looks at how we do our work will see that those concerns are simply unfounded.
I am surprised at the lack of foundation because our experience as a country, as a people in Canada and the work of this department is surely not what sparks this unfounded concern. It has to be something else.
In most cases, as I said, there were legitimate concerns. There have been cases where the legislative concerns have been expressed and also cases where ambiguity could be cleared up. The government has responded, as recognized by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, to those concerns in a responsible and reasonable manner.
Amendments were brought forward to clarify, answer and otherwise improve Bill C-86. To name a few examples, methods have been found to continue to hold refugee hearings in camera. It was not there. It was a concern. It was looked at, considered, and taking the views of the many witnesses and the members of the committee, we brought about that change.
Ministerial oversight of section 46.01(c)(e) and 53.1 of the act will be maintained. It was not there. Reporting requirements for changes to the annual immigration plan have been enhanced and measures to more precisely target criminally inadmissible provisions have been adopted. These changes are a direct result of testimony presented to the legislative committee, recommendations in the Senate, a pre-study report and the comments of other interested Canadians. However, none of the amendments alters the basic goals and principles of Bill C-86. Indeed, I believe that these amendments help to achieve these goals.

The fundamental objectives of our immigration program, either social, humanitarian or economic, are very important.
As a government, we strongly believe that the majority of Canadians share those objectives. We should all be pleased that the legislative review process has identified ways to make Bill C-86 even more effective in achieving these shared goals.

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that Canada maintain an immigration and refugee program that is fair, balanced and effective, an immigration program that can operate in the demanding conditions of the world today, a world which many people simply want us to ignore, but we cannot with the trust that people have given us ignore that reality. That is what Bill C-86 is all about, reality.
I think that the majority of Canadians share these objectives. We should all be pleased that this process has identified ways to make Bill C-86 more effective in achieving these shared goals.
It will give the men and women who deliver Canada's immigration program the tools they need to meet these challenges.
It will ensure, at a time when countries all over the world are facing growing demands to cut back on immigration, that Canada can maintain its tradition as a welcoming, compassionate nation, ready and able to help those in need. It will ensure that at a time when growing numbers of people around the world are seeking to circumvent or abuse immigration programs, Canadians will be protected. That is important. It will ensure that those who wish to come to Canada and those who seek refuge in Canada can expect timely, fair and compassionate treatment.
Before I finish, there is one more point I wish to make. It has been clear since Bill C-86 was first introduced more than five months ago that certain members opposite had little criticism to offer about the substance of the bill. In fact, both opposition critics who are here today praised different parts of the bill. Last night, the NDP abandoned any pretension that it wished to attack the bill itself. Instead, it attacked the process.
November 24, 1992

The NDP tried to introduce gridlock government to Canada. Some time today I expect that attack on process to begin anew. I expect the hon. member for Trinity- Spadina or another member of his party to try and suggest that this bill is being rammed through without due regard to the parliamentary process. That was the premise of the circus last night.
That simply is not true. I am not saying that in a partisan way. I am just asking members to look at the facts. Bill C-86 was introduced more than five months ago. Since then, an all-party legislative committee has spent some 61 hours studying the bill. Most bills in this place receive between 20 and 40 hours of study, fully one-third less than Bill C-86. In fact, of the 73 bills passed by this Parliament since May 1991, I am only aware of two other bills out of 73 that have been studied longer by a committee.
During the study of Bill C-86, more than 110 witnesses from all across Canada, coast to coast to coast, appeared before the committee. Still more witnesses appeared before the Senate committee. By the time third reading is completed today, this bill will have been debated in this House for more than 20 hours. Again, this is well above the average.
When you hear people say that this bill needs more study, think about the facts: Sixty-one hours of committee study; 110 witnesses; a Senate pre-study and more than 20 hours of parliamentary debate.
The record is clear. There has been an exhaustive debate and study of Bill C-86. It is a good piece of legislation. It will ensure that immigration continues to contribute as it has for more than 125 years to the social and economic well-being of Canada and of Canadians. Canadians expect as much. I urge all members of the House, on whatever side, to join in passing this bill.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, as I said on other interventions with respect to this bill, this bill represents the most extensive amendments to our immigration laws since 1976-77. It is a bill of 128 clauses, comprising 113 pages.
When the bill was tabled on June 16, which by the way was during the last week of the sittings before we adjourned for the summer, it was brought on for debate after two days. In the committee the minister said that it took him and his officials eight months to prepare this
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bill. We all know that he has a large number of experts and officials to help him in such matters. Yet, when he put the bill before the House, a long and complicated bill as I just mentioned, he gave the opposition two days to examine the bill before it was brought on for debate. We were expected on second reading of that bill to speak intelligently about the bill without having really an opportunity to examine it properly.
We were not the only ones. Although I have specialized in immigration to a certain extent and while my colleague from Spadina has specialized in immigration, it was still extremely difficult if not impossible to examine this bill properly in the two days before we started second reading debate. We consulted with immigration lawyers, NGOs and other groups that work full time in this area. They had no time to do it either, so we could not seek their advice.
My point is this. All this pious talk by the government from time to time on parliamentary reform and respect for Parliament and respect for democracy is really a pile of nonsense. Once it brought the bill on for second reading debate in June, as I say two days after the bill was tabled, it immediately introduced time allocation and allowed only one and a half days of debate at second reading.
I give credit to the legislative committee, chaired by the hon. member for Lethbridge, who I think did an excellent job. I see him entering the House. I congratulate him. He was fair. He took a reasonable approach in the committee and agreed to the extension of hearings beyond what was originally planned. He gave, I thought, a good hearing to those people who wanted to be heard. I also give credit to the chief government spokesman, the hon. member for St. John's East, who also took a fair and reasonable approach in the committee. It was principally because of these two members that we were able to get some improvements in committee.
There were improvements in the committee. After what we said in the opposition within the first few weeks after the bill was tabled, criticisms that we raised and then were raised by the witnesses time after time when they came before the committee, the committee finally accepted the soundness of the arguments that were being made and made some changes. For example, as pointed out by the minister, it changed the provisions

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with respect to public hearings. The bill provided that hearings on refugee cases would be public. Nearly all the witnesses said that was wrong, that it would put the family of the applicant in jeopardy, that it could put him or her in jeopardy. Therefore, the government changed that. It has now gone back to the old rule, which is that hearings before the refugee board will be, by general rule, in camera and only in public by exception. That was one change that was made.
The committee also changed the very harsh detention procedures that were provided for in the bill. The bill provided that once a person was put in detention for an immigration question, there would only be a review every 30 days. That was a waste of government resources and harsh and unreasonable with respect to these immigrants.
I must point out that immigration detention is not for people who are charged with criminal offences. They would go into the regular court system. This is for people who have not committed criminal offences but for one reason or another are deemed to require detention because they may not appear for hearings or whatever.
In any case, the government agreed to an amendment on that. It also agreed to amend the provisions with respect to fingerprints. All those fingerprints will now be destroyed once the immigrant becomes a Canadian citizen.
To a certain extent the provisions on inadmissibility with respect to terrorism and criminality were changed to make them more reasonable. Changes were also made with respect to the permanent residence card.
Certain changes were made in committee and those changes improved the bill. On the whole, the committee worked well. There were only seven members of this House on the committee: four government members, two members from the Liberal Party, and one member of the New Democratic Party, and this is a House of 295 members.
There are a lot of members in this House who are concerned with immigration and refugee matters. The place where they can get involved is during the debate in this House. As I said, the government only allowed one and a half days at second reading on that debate.
Yesterday, it provided for only one and a half days' debate at report stage with 86 amendments to deal with and has also curtailed the time for third reading, the debate in which we are now involved, to one day.
In this House we will only have a total of four days and those days have already been cut back. Yesterday we lost a lot of time because of the voting on the closure procedure. We lost about an hour. Today we lost more time because of the statements that were made. Although there is an attempt to make part of that up, it is not going to make up the total time.
Here we have an extremely important bill, the most extensive bill on immigration since 1976, on an issue that is causing problems all over the world, in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States and Italy, with the mass movement of peoples and we are only spending a very limited amount of time discussing it.
It is not just the question of involving the members of this House in an issue they are all very concerned with. It also involves the general public. Although the press is allowed to come in and report the committee's work, very little reporting is done of those legislative committees, whereas the proceedings of this House are televised and the general public, not just the experts and the NGOs, can be informed with respect to debate. If the debate only goes on for a few days, there is not much chance to deeply penetrate public opinion on these issues.
I talked about the importance of the issues and why it was necessary that we debate these things at greater length in this House. Experts tell us that the population of the world will increase by three billion people in the next 30 years, by three billion people. That is going to impact on all countries in the world. Right now we have 20 million refugees in the world as a result of civil war, tribal conflict, totalitarian oppressive regimes, drought, hunger and so on, for many reasons.
That is going to increase and we have to give attention in our public policy formulation to these issues. It is not just a question of bringing a bill before the House and ramming it through in a few days. If we intend to develop our immigration policy wisely we need to spend some time on it. How are we going to deal with this vast increase in population in the world? What kind of rules are we going to have? How are we going to balance order with humanity? I do not think we have done that in this
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debate which is being rammed through in an obscene manner.
We in the Liberal Party have always agreed with a dynamic immigration policy but we also believe controls are needed. The doors cannot be wide open. The flow into our country has to be controlled or else the country will lose the good things which attract people to it. A program of assisting people to integrate into the Canadian way of life is needed. Our party treasures the valuable role immigrants and refugees have played in this country. The greatest eras of prosperity in this country have followed the great waves of immigration, whether it was on the prairies, or in the big cities of Ontario or Quebec. We have had the greatest eras of prosperity following great waves of immigration and some of the controversy which took place with respect to some of them completely disappeared after a few years.
I recall in the 1950s when I was at McGill University that because of the Hungarian revolution against the communist regime, over 30,000 people fled Hungary and came to this country. They are all well settled today. They and their children are doing an outstanding job as Canadians. It is the same with the Czechs who came in a similar situation and the Chileans and the Ugandan Asians and so on. They have all contributed greatly to this country.
As I have said, some improvements were made in Bill C-86 in committee but many of the offensive provisions remain and because of that, the bill is still badly flawed.
Despite those amendments this bill will still make it more difficult for law-abiding, hard-working immigrants to enter Canada. It still puts barriers in the way of legitimate refugees. As a matter of fact, very little was done to deal with that issue in the committee or in the report stage yesterday.
The bill opens the door to inequity and capriciousness in the selection of immigrants and it suspends traditional legal safeguards which are customary in Canada. For example, it provides for deportations without hearings. It provides for the suspension of rights through retroactive provisions. Throughout the entire bill there is an emphasis on enforcement as opposed to fairness and humanitarian values.
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Finally, Bill C-86 transfers a lot of matters which are presently in the law and are subject to the control of the House of Commons and Parliament to the minister and his officials who can now change the law by regulation and Order in Council. There has been a massive transfer of authority from Parliament to officials and the minister in this bill and that leaves the whole process open to abuse. We never know from year to year what kind of government we are going to have or what kind of minister we are going to have. We could have a very good minister who believes in fairness and who may use these provisions with wisdom, but we could also have a minister who would not.
Parliament must be in control of these things. We are the elected representatives of the people. There is a role for Orders in Council and while there is a role for regulation where things can be done by the government without consulting Parliament, I believe it has gone beyond that point in this bill.
I want to mention some of the things still in this bill that are wrong and are unacceptable. To begin with, one of the major criticisms of the bill is the new powers given to the senior immigration officer in dealing with refugees at the border. When I say at the border, I also mean at airports, points of entry and so on.
Under the present law, the law as it was before this bill, we had a two-stage hearing for the screening of refugees. The first stage was to decide on the credibility of the refugee's case and also whether the refugee was eligible to go on to the full hearing, the second stage. There was a lot of criticism about that first-stage hearing. It was felt that it wasted a lot of time, it prolonged the process unnecessarily, was costly and really was unnecessary because the overwhelming majority of cases that went to the first stage went on to the second stage in any event. While we wasted a lot of time with this first-stage hearing, it did not really screen out many individuals.
On the other hand, there was due process at that first stage. The refugee applicant had the right to an attorney, he was fully informed of his rights and he was protected in presenting his case at that first-stage hearing.

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The government has gone along with the proposal that the first-stage hearing should be abolished and in Bill C-86 has abolished the first-stage hearing. That is good. However, it has given some of the authority that was held by the officials at the first-stage hearing to a senior immigration officer who will now have the right to turn away refugee applicants without any hearing, without any representation by attorney, without any due process.
The refugee appears at the airport or the border claiming refugee status. The senior immigration officer can look at his documents and his papers and on the basis of five criteria that are written in the law can say: "I am sorry. You cannot come in. You cannot even get to the refugee board where you and your attorney can plead your case".
In effect, the government in this bill has put a barrier between the refugee applicant and his right to a fair hearing before the board. In doing that, it has not solved any problems. As a matter of fact, it has gone against the legal and justice traditions of this country in doing that.
The minister in his speech this morning has said that he listened to the concerns about the powers of the senior immigration officer at the border and he says they are unfounded. These criticisms do not simply come from members of Parliament, such as myself and the hon. member for Trinity-Spadina and others who participated in the committee. These criticisms come from lawyers and immigration experts who have worked in the immigration field for years. They say that these issues to be decided by the senior immigration officer are not simply black and white issues which can be decided by looking at documents. There are many grey areas where the applicant should have a right to explain and to plead his case.
But no, the government has not listened on this particular matter and has stuck to the provisions of the bill. We are going to have a bill, we are going to have a law if this continues to be rammed through, where a senior immigration officer, without any right for the refugee to be heard, will be able to turn away that refugee before he ever gets to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is the board that is supposed to determine whether or not the person is a valid refugee.
There were estimates made before the committee that 45 to 50 per cent of the applicants could be turned away by the senior immigration officer at this first step without any right to be heard by the refugee board.
That is a very offensive provision. We had amendments in committee with respect to that, to change it or to do away with it. For example, I had an amendment which was similar to the recommendation in the report from the Senate. All were rejected. My amendment was to the effect and was four square with the Senate proposal that if the senior immigration officer felt that the refugee was not eligible, then that entire matter should be referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board where it would be examined as a preliminary issue before it examined the substance of his refugee claim. That would be fair because before the board is the full right of due process with the right of representation.
The minister this morning said that he respected and thought the Senate had a great report, but in effect he has refused to agree with most of the recommendations made by the Senate committee, which was chaired by a Conservative senator and has a majority of Conservative senators on the committee. I do not know what is going to happen when the bill goes to the Senate. It will be interesting to watch that. The Senate is going to get a bill that it criticized in many respects and asked for amendments in its pre-study. However, we will see what happens.
Another major issue that was raised by witnesses and was not changed by the government is the whole question of the split decision before the board in recognizing a refugee. Under the present law, when a refugee goes before the Immigration Refugee Board there are two members of the board present. In order to win the case, to be recognized as a refugee, a claimant only needs the positive vote of one of the two members of the board.
That was done by the government a few years ago because it felt the benefit of the doubt should be given to the refugee. Somebody fleeing from a situation of oppression, who has been persecuted because of politics, religion, ethnic origin, tribe or whatever, has their liberty in danger. They flee a country, come to Canada and claim refugee status. The law said that if one of the two members of the board could be convinced, the claimant would be accepted as a refugee.
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In this bill, the government has now made it mandatory in three areas where the refugee claimant will have to get the votes of both members of the board. It has not really explained why it has done that. Why is it necessary?
The government says the system worked well before the board yet it is changing the rules and requiring two votes in certain matters. We tried to change that in committee. Our amendments were turned down. We tried to change it again yesterday at report stage and it was turned down. One can only assume that the rule was put in simply to keep out more refugees.
One could understand if it was to keep out refugees who did not have a good case, but it is likely to keep out a lot of legitimate refugees. It will bring about unfairness among different individual refugees. Some will get in because they only need one vote. Some will be turned away because they need two votes.
I must say-immigration lawyers confirm this-that a lot of time will be spent before each board hearing deciding whether it is a case that requires two votes or one vote. There is a chance the backlog will be built up again with all this nonsense and this new, unfair provision.
We also attempted to amend the provisions on family members. The government says that in assessing an applicant for immigration, it will assess the entire family, including those who are not accompanying the immigrant to Canada. We feel that is not fair and it is not the traditional way. Only members of the family accompanying the parents or the principal members of the family should be assessed for admission. That amendment was turned down.
We tried to put criteria into the law which would guide the minister and the officials in the granting of visitors' visas, and it was turned down.
Members of Parliament in all parts of this House have had terrible horror cases where Canadians have tried to bring members of their families from their countries of origin as visitors to visit with them and they cannot get them in, even when these individuals have homes in their countries of origin. They have jobs, they have other members of their family, they have every intention of returning but they are systematically turned down.
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We tried to change that, but the government refused. The government still has in this bill extremely wide provisions to block the admissibility of immigrants with respect to criminality and to subversion.
I want to make it clear that we in the Liberal Party are totally opposed to the admission to Canada of criminals, terrorists, subversives or people who engage in espionage. That was already in the law, but the government has put in new provisions which go too far.
For example, there is one provision that says that if people are found to be a threat to the security of Canada beyond terrorism, subversion and espionage, they can still be excluded. We asked the minister and the officials what sort of thing could be beyond terrorism, subversion and espionage. They cannot give us examples.
The criminal lawyers that appeared before the committee just could not imagine what might be a threat to the security of Canada other than those three things which are already in the law.
It is the same with the new provision which was directed supposedly against organized crime. We agree that people involved in organized crime should not be admitted to the country. The provision is written broadly. It states that: "If the officials have reasonable grounds to believe that a person belongs to an organization which might reasonably be involved in crime at some time-". The wording of the section keeps going on. As was pointed out in the debate yesterday, it could include somebody that worked for Exxon in the United States. That organization was convicted of an environmental offence a few years ago. Witness after witness tried to bring this to the attention of the government officials, said the clause should be narrowed, it should be made more specific, but they did not do that.
Great powers are also given to the minister and his officials in managing what are now called streams of immigration. They can retroactively change the rules with respect to certain streams that will be admitted and those that will not.
Somebody could proceed under the new rules of this bill quite considerably down the path to being accepted as a refugee and then the government could decide it was not going to accept any more refugees from that stream. It could suspend or cancel all those applications

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and take people from, let us say, another class, another and writing in English or French. It is going to make the stream altogether.	decisions on paperwork.
There are other flaws in the bill. I have tried to highlight some of the more offensive sections but the bill is still seriously flawed. We look at the direction the government is moving from some of the things it has done in recent months.
Yesterday or last Friday the government announced it is moving over 200 immigration officials to Vegreville, Alberta. Vegreville is probably a very good rural Alberta town, but a town that is principally an agricultural centre. The government is going to set up a Canadian centre for immigration. This is where it is going to review immigration applications; not in Edmonton, Winnipeg or Vancouver, which are immigration centres, but in Vegreville.
The government is setting up this centre, which will review applications simply on a paper basis without any face to face interview with the immigration applicants. How inhumane can you get? Most of these immigrants cannot speak English or French. They cannot fill out the documents properly without assistance, yet they will have to fill out documents which will be sent to Vegreville. They may be accepted or turned down as immigrants without any face to face interview. Since they will be living in the big cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Edmonton, many of them will have no chance to get on the phone and ask: what happened to my application? One wonders about provisions such as this.
I have no objection to moving all kinds of government departments and parts of the government to Vegreville when it is appropriate to do so, but to move an immigration centre to a small community where there are not the community support services for immigration, probably very few if any immigration lawyers or centres for the assistance of immigrants, is inexplicable.
Even though everything is supposed to be done by paper there, I am sure as a member of Parliament and having dealt with immigration matters over the years, people will be phoning us and asking about their applications. It is stuck out in Vegreville.
In any case, this is the direction the government is moving. It is trying to deal with immigrants as faceless phantoms. Decisions will be made based on paperwork without any contact with these people who have a hard time not only speaking English and French but reading
Look at the way it handled the domestic worker issue. Most of our domestic workers come from Third World countries. The government put in a provision just this spring where applicants now must have grade 12 and a six month course to be a domestic worker. No consideration is given to the fact that the person might have been a very good caretaker of children for years and years. That will not count because in many of these countries, whether it is the Caribbean or Asia, they just do not have the opportunity to take six month courses in domestic work and many of them do not have an opportunity to go to grade 12.
On March 27 the government changed the family class regulations. Now it will only accept under family class people under 19, unless they are in school or they are handicapped.
I had an amendment yesterday on appointments to the board. I got a copy of a letter the other day from a member of the board who resigned, saying that the board was rampant with racism. This person said he was obliged to resign, that the way the work of the board was being carried on in Toronto was unacceptable to him and he wrote a letter to the Privy Council resigning.
I raise these issues because this bill is giving more and more authority to government and officials. The government tells us not to worry, everything will be done well, these officials will be well trained. There are many good officials, but the government has been cutting them back as well. They do not have the time, they are over-worked and over-burdened; their tempers get short sometimes.
We see what is happening already. The government introduced a special program with respect to Yugoslavia but only a small percentage of visas have been issued under that program. In effect, the program has not worked. Worse still, the government while announcing the special program for Yugoslavia, did not announce a similar program for a country that is even worse hit, Somalia.
I raise these issues because it indicates to us that it is not a good thing to pass a bill like this, which will give even more authority to officials and to Order in Council and to regulations and to the government, when they have shown us already the sorts of things they are doing. They made the decision to switch these 200 employees to
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Vegreville and set up this new immigration centre which will handle applications based on paper and not face to face interviews. They did not have to come to Parliament, they did that through just an administrative decision.
It is the same thing with the special programs for Yugoslavia and the one that does not exist for Somalia. I could go on.
The minister said this morning that this bill received more attention than any other bill that he can remember. It goes to show that he has a pretty short memory. He has only been in this House since this Conservative government came to power.
I must tell him that before this Conservative government was in power it was customary to give a much longer period of time to the examination of bills. As a matter of fact, when we in the Liberal Party were in government, if we had put an allocation of time on a bill it was considered a national shame. It was an outrage. Now this government does it systematically. Allocation of time and closure are provisions that are meant to deal with abuse by the opposition in filibustering bills.
I could understand if an opposition party decides to carry on systematic filibustering and opposition day after day after day. Then you bring in a closure motion or an allocation of time. But we do not even get a chance to make our first speech and the government rams in these time allocation rules on major, very extensive bills.
The minister's memory is extremely short. Yes, the process worked pretty well in committee on this bill, but it did not work well at all at second reading, at report stage or third reading. The time is extremely limited for the issues to be discussed and, as I pointed out, there are only seven members of this House in the committee, whereas there are 295 members in this House and many of them have something to say about immigration matters. Many of them come from constituencies with large immigration populations.
In conclusion let me say that Canadians want a controlled immigration policy, but they also want fairness, equity and humanity. This bill unfortunately will
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give us the opposite. I have to say that many provisions in this bill move in the opposite direction of fairness, the opposite direction of equity and the opposite direction of humanitarian considerations. I mentioned some of the examples.
The government says that the purpose of the bill is to allow it to better manage the immigration system. It certainly will do that but at a great cost with retroactive measures, with deportations without hearings, with the ability to switch, pick and choose streams of immigration; things that are not traditional in our system and not in the law at the present time.
Therefore, despite some improvements that were made in committee, this bill is still unacceptable and we will be voting against it at third reading today.


Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, in the 20 minutes I am given I wish mainly to reflect on what Bill C-86 means in the present world we live in.
First, I wish to reply to the minister when he said sarcastically that I withdrew yesterday from criticizing the bill and criticized only the hasty process by which this very large and complicated bill has been rammed through. I do criticize the process, as my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace has, but the minister then hurried away in case he might hear an answer to his wisecrack.
What the minister said is clearly not true. The amendments that I proposed in the committee were nearly all rejected by the committee, especially the important ones. Likewise, the amendments I moved yesterday were all rejected by the Tories. The Tories in the committee and the Tories in the House stonewalled all the important amendments proposed either by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace or by me.
Bill C-86 is very harmful, as has been said by a great many Canadians, including expert lawyers who have had a chance to get to understand what the bill does.
I fully agree with the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace in his criticisms of the bill, but since I have only half as much time allowed to me I will not repeat them in detail. However, I will simply review them in order to reflect on them because I want to ask why this bill has been driven so hastily and with so little openness to

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genuine criticism by this government. Why were so few substantial amendments accepted?
Some people have suggested it is the fear of the Reform Party in order to get back the votes of wandering Tories. Some people have suggested, and I think there is more to this, that it is a fear of immigrants, and I will come back to that.
The cabinet and the bureaucrats are insistent on establishing far greater control in their own hands of the immigration process, free from public knowledge, from public criticism and free from parliamentary criticism for the large part rather than emphasizing trying to give better service to Canadian citizens, residents, immigrants and refugees.
The Conservatives have reduced the chance for due process at the border, particularly in the matter of access to legal counsel. They have made permanent residents less secure. Some of them can now be removed without an inquiry. They have given less priority to family class and they have introduced a brand new, very rare principle of law called retroactivity. They can retroactively cancel immigration applications, investors' funds and work permits, and that threatens all people. It even threatens Canadian citizens when they try to apply to bring relatives here through sponsorship.
They can be very selective about it. They made higher immigration barriers such as the powers of the senior immigration officer to turn away probably a majority of the people without their having the oral hearing that the Supreme Court guaranteed.
There would be no second look in the refugee division when facts are brought out to show that the decision of the division previously was wrong. The power of the SIO to send people back to what the government is pleased to call a safe third country has a very important international meaning.
This safe third country provision, sending them back saying they should have made a refugee application somewhere else, is most significant because most refugee producing countries have no direct passage to Canada.
The safe third country rule can shut out, therefore, the big majority of claimants who have been coming in the last 10 or 20 years. It implicitly bars people who have darker skin than most Canadians.
Canada's policy on refugees has always been a bit ambiguous. After World War II there was the UN Declaration of Human Rights; I believe it is article 13 that said a person has the right to seek protection against his own government or her own government from a foreign state. Canada largely ignored that and still selected refugees mainly if it felt they would turn out to be useful economic immigrants.
In 1973 the convention refugee claimants from Uruguay and Chile and generally parts in the south started coming to Canada mainly from countries that had been invaded by U.S. investment, U.S. CIA operations and U.S. arms.
In Canada there was an intense controversy over Sikh refugee claimants which produced the same decision, guaranteeing an oral hearing to anyone in Canada who makes a refugee claim.
This was a human rights landmark in Canada's immigration process. It was a high point. Since then this government has been sliding in the other direction, especially since the end of the 1980s when the Soviet power collapsed and the cold war had ended. Without the communist threat Canada's principles of refugee policy began to veer uncertainly because previously they had emphasized automatically bringing in people who were fleeing from a communist country.
When a boatload of dark-skinned people landed illegally in Nova Scotia and the people welcomed them with tea and sandwiches, the Prime Minister and the then minister of immigration started worrying publicly about invasion. You would think they came ashore with machine guns or bazookas or something. All they came with were dark skins. Canada's policy began to waiver then.
I want to look quickly at post World War II migration patterns. They concern some other countries more than Canada but Canada is part of the North Atlantic bloc. Especially I want to look at the migration patterns of dark-skinned people to the United States, the chief world investor in the past four decades, including in those countries in the south which are sometimes called Third World countries.
Investing first began in industrialized agriculture in those countries, replacing subsistence farming with agribusiness, cash-cropping for export to the United States and northwestern Europe.
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Investments were also developed in low-wage manufacturing, drawing the women from the farms, later the men, because they could not work effectively without their women to share the work on the farms. In the factories were produced exports for United States and northwest Europe.
An example is Santo Domingo. The United States invaded that in 1965 to prop up a military industrial coup. It was followed up with U.S. investments, sheltering some of the refugees in the U.S., and migration jumped 12 times, from 4,500 between 1955 and 1959 to 58,000 between 1965 and 1969.
In Haiti, U.S. investment in the 1970s for industrialized agriculture and manufacturing for exports to the U.S.A. and northwest Europe also coincided with mass immigration beginning to the United States. El Salvador had heavy U.S. investments in the 1970s, mingled with the 14 rich families there that monopolized the agriculture. They forced a mass exodus of former campesinos, farm owners, from the farms to farm day labour and industrial labour.
In the 1980s there was civil war by resistance of the people against a United States armed tyranny of the landowners. That caused massive emigration from that little country; from a country of five million people, almost 600,000 moved to the United States, illegally, but they are there as cheap labour.
There are examples of the same also with Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thiwan. In the 1970s in all these countries there were massive flows of American investment with military collaboration and massive migration from those countries to the United States; 81 per cent of all Korean immigrants emigrated to the United States. Almost 100 per cent of Filipinos who emigrated went to the United States. The United States received 70 per cent of the Caribbean immigration but 100 per cent from Santo Domingo, as I mentioned before.
From Central America, the United States receives 19 per cent but from El Salvador, 52 per cent.
The pattern is that cheap labour, cheap land and cheap resources are invested by the United States for their super profits. They also bring about in return massive migration because at the same time the United States' market for low wage labour in the 1970s drew them to the United States.
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It is similar with Japan. It is expanding its investments into southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. It has now drawn cheap labour from those countries in spite of its
2,000	years of racist exclusionism.
We also note that northern Europe during the 1970s invested heavily in north Africa, the Middle East and south Europe. It also brought cheap labour from those countries to northwestern Europe.
What does this mean for Canada's immigration policy? These are the countries with which Canada is a partner. Canada is part of this group of north Atlantic countries, mostly reflected in the North Atlantic Treaty, but also as a trade bloc and part of the ones that conquered and colonized the countries of the south.
For two to three decades these north Atlantic countries, including Canada, have invested and intervened politically and with armaments in the southern neighbours. The rich countries grew richer and the people of the poor countries grew poorer. While tens of billions of dollars net were taken each year by the north from the south, puppet governments with arms from the north suppressed the revolts of the people.
One instructive example is Arabia, which was partitioned after World War I and again after World War II. It was manipulated a couple of years ago into the gulf war so as to restore north Atlantic control over the oil resources there.
During the same decades, mass migration brought on cheap labour from the Caribbean, Africa, south Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands to the United States and northwestern Europe. The northern economies are staggering badly, partly under the weight of the debt that the Third World cannot pay, a trade in dollars of debt that it cannot pay. The cost of policing it, providing arms and lending it the money to buy arms are all putting it further in debt. Now that our economy is staggering, we have racial conflicts breaking out against the visible minorities in many of the north Atlantic countries.
What I have attempted to suggest is an understanding of Canada's present situation in the world regarding immigration and refugees. Canada, as a north Atlantic country, is beginning to show fear of refugees. Canada talks about not being able to absorb all the refugees who might come here. That is quite true. Neither I nor

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anyone else says that we should take 20 million refugees. However, Canada and the other countries of the north Atlantic community are not seriously trying to deal in any other way with the problems that drove these refugees from their homes, whether they are strictly political problems or whether they are economic problems caused by ruin of the land through agribusiness, industrialized farming systems brought in by the north.
They do not offer a solution either by admitting them to Canada and other countries of the north or by enabling them to survive where they are. The money available to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to sustain them in their camps or to help them to return is so small that they are in desperate physical condition.
Canada also seems to be showing fear of immigration. That is why there is this big emphasis in the bill on control. The cabinet and the bureaucrats must control the immigrants, the Canadian permanent residents and even Canadian citizens.
I have a question which I want to leave with this House and those who are listening. The question is: Will we let Canada sink into a fortress mentality? We have been increasing the arms budget. Once the Soviet Union is gone, we cannot justify helicopters for chasing Soviet subs, but we are buying them anyway. For what? For another Oka or perhaps for intervening again in the Middle East?
In fear we are arming ourselves more and more and it is a question of what for. Are we going to renew the kind of wars of conquest that were symbolized by Columbus 500 years ago this year, wars of the north, that is western Europe and north America, against the south? Will we recognize that we cannot do that again and even survive ourselves? The world is being ruined by wars. The world is being ruined by a greedy approach to agriculture and a greedy approach to manufacturing which produces, regardless of who can consume, regardless of who needs to consume, regardless of who gets a chance to consume, only for a high-priced market.
Will we recognize that we are in danger of ruining the planet we live on as well as destroying the people? Will we join with the people of what we call the Third World, people largely of the southern continents, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, southern parts of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, as equals for the survival of all of us and listen to their needs which are vastly greater than ours because of the unequal trade relations we have enforced with our military for five centuries? Will we join with them as equal human beings for survival of the human race on the planet?
This is the question that Bill C-86 is bringing to the minds of several people. Canada does not have an independent world military system like the United States, Britain or France, or such as Germany or perhaps Japan would like to have if it changed its constitution.
We are not a big player on the world scene. That is one advantage we have because we are not committed, we are not locked into hundreds of military bases around the world. We are into a very few. We have not committed ourselves so deeply to the military domination of the world. We have a choice before us. We can work for a policy of peace and co-operation rather than domination and fear. We can begin that by re-examining our immigration policy, asking ourselves why we are afraid of refugees, why we are afraid of immigrants, why we do not provide, as our amendments ask to provide, even the right to legal counsel when a person is at the border and in danger of being turned away.
The government has said they can have legal counsel if it is available, but it will not do anything to make legal counsel available. The government has said: "We won't send anybody back to a country where he or she fears persecution", but it will not tell us how the person is to get from the border point to those who will decide that that person should not be sent home.
All the amendments that we put in order to have the good intentions expressed by the government put into action were met with saying: "Trust us. We wouldn't do anything unkind or unfair or unjust". Laws are not meant to put all that power solely into the hands of government, cabinet and officials. Laws are meant to be in the hands of all the elected representatives, such as all the members of Parliament. That is the main fault in this law and raises the question of what is this government afraid of.
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St,

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William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Spadina for his remarks and also for the great contribution that he made throughout the work in committee, day in, day out, long days in which we worked together. I want to thank him.
In the minister's remarks, he said he thought that the pre-study report of the Senate was an excellent report. I was a bit surprised that he said that because he accepted very few of the recommendations of the Senate committee.
I am just looking at the Senate's report now. It made 14 recommendations. As far as I can see, the government only accepted two of them. It accepted the recommendation that hearings of the refugee division should be held in camera as a general rule. The government accepted that change. The Senate also said that the definition of terrorism should be redefined. The government did that.
Of all the other recommendations, and there are 14, that is really only two. For example, on safe third country, the Senate states that a precondition should be a treaty between Canada and the country, in which treaty it should be clear that that country adheres to the entire convention on the status of refugees, not just article 33. It also states that that country must have a refugee determination system that complies with Canadian principles of fundamental justice; in other words, it has to have a system more or less like our system where one has a hearing and so on.
The government did not accept any of those recommendations because the SIO is given all these powers. By the way, the Senate recommended that if the senior immigration officer should decide that a refugee was not eligible, the case should go to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a determination. That was a major recommendation. The government did not accept that.
The Senate said that the provision on the split on making a unanimous consideration on the board is wrong. It said that it should be reconsidered, that the split decision was unacceptable.
In any case, I want to ask the hon. member what he thought of the Senate report. Does he think that the government has really paid any attention to this report, despite the rhetoric of the minister in saying what a wonderful report it is?


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for
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his question, as well as for his very kind remarks.
I wish to say that I benefited greatly by his experience when we were on the committee together, he having been in Parliament twice as long as I and having had a great deal of experience that I have not had. We gave the best possible representation that I can imagine on behalf of the people who wrote to us, phoned us, telegraphed us and presented briefs as well as those who came and spoke to us.
I do consider with him that the Senate report was very encouraging. It did not propose amendments because that would not be in order at that time. It did propose recommendations. I hope to see all its recommendations reappear as amendments. The only technical point I would disagree on with the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace is that the government did not redefine terrorism at the Senate's request.
Instead, after its request the government withdrew its proposed definition of terrorism. I do not really know whether we are better or worse off. We have an undefined word there and what it is going to mean, who it is going to exclude I do not know.
Certainly, I did not like the definition that the government had there. It would have excluded far too many people, but we do not have a good definition yet. The government just backed away.
The other proposals that the member refers to are certainly very necessary, such as for a safe third country. The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace and I tried every way we could think of to get some recognition of the points that the Senate was making and got none at all.
Therefore, the minister is obviously speaking with his tongue in his cheek to put the best face on it possible when he says that the member and I were satisfied with the work of the committee. We were satisfied with the conduct of the committee. The conduct was fair and considerate but the decisions of the majority of the committee were very unfortunate.


Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Lethbridge):: Mr. Speaker, I am proud to participate in this third reading debate on Bill C-86. Before I start I understand that due to the ministerial statement this morning, there is unanimous agreement to debate this bill through the lunch hour or at least into the lunch hour.

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I am wondering if the Chair would find if there is such unanimity.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to extend debate until two o'clock?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to assure you and other members as well as any Canadians who may be watching today that the committee stage to Bill C-86 worked veiy well.
We sat throughout the summer months when other members were presumably at the cottage or the lake and we heard some 110 witnesses, some 48 of which were groups. We reviewed 116 briefs and 186 letters.
The result of that was some 102 amendments. I agree that a number of those were technical but about 70 of those amendments really flowed from the evidence and from the skill and expertise of the members who sat on that committee.
We came together and debated each of those clauses, clause by clause, and the collective judgment of the committee was that some 122 amendments, of which 70 flowed out of the evidence, should be made.
If I were the member for Trinity-Spadina or Notre-Dame-de-Grace or any of the government members, I would be immensely proud because it was not always that way that members of the opposition could substantially change the direction of a bill by canying the judgment as a question of logic and common sense.
Second, as the chairperson of that committee, I want to thank the committee members because they did work hard. We heard some 61 hours of evidence versus an average of around 30.1 note that the rules of the House for the most part are agreed to by all of the parties.
Canada's Parliament now really has about half of the legislative jurisdiction and yet we sit practically all year long. Contrast that with Britain and France and other unitary states where the Parliaments have to do all of the whole range of constitutional legislative authority. Bills like this in France and in Britain would very quickly go through a second reading stage; most parties agree to a two-hour debate in which the two or three parties present their views and then it goes off to a committee for an extended process. This committee worked very well.
I particularly want to state that the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace and the member for Trinity- Spadina, representing the two opposition parties, were both very fair minded in their questioning of witnesses. They brought out points that were unique and needed to be brought out and which often resulted in amendments. The government members-the member for La Prairie, the member for Red Deer, the member for Surrey-White Rock-worked very hard on this bill. We were led most ably by the parliamentary secretary, the member for St. John's East.
Committees cannot work unless you have a good parliamentary secretary with whom you can place calls to go back to the minister and fight with the minister and push the officials to get amendments through. The distinguished member for St. John's East did that on behalf of all of us and deserves plaudits which I am happy to share.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Blaine Allen Thacker: The parliamentary secretary can only operate if we have a minister who is prepared to accept the judgment of the parliamentary secretary and the officials and the Minister of Employment and Immigration did that very well. I can remember some years ago being a parliamentary secretary. If you have a minister who is a little bit nervous about the process and not confident in himself, then you cannot do very much in committee. If you have a confident minister who knows the bill and is confident with his officials, then you can get a lot done. That is what happened here.
The officials gave us very good reasons concerning many of the amendments that were put again in this House. They had been withdrawn at committee stage. The officials provided us with very good reasons why some things could not be done. It became a question of judgment and a question of what is right for the broad context of the nation as a whole.
I am confident that when the Chair reviews the record it will find that it has gone well.
With respect to the witnesses, they did a good job. We as members of Parliament know that most witnesses come in with a very narrow special interest group, really special pleaders. That is not to criticize them because we invite them in. Taxpayers pay their way in. As members of Parliament, we have to take a much broader view. We have to do what we think is right for Canada as a whole,
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given the international context and what would represent the national interest.
When you think about that you realize-and we all know this from the evidence that came before us in committee-that Canada is incredibly generous in terms of immigration and particularly refugees.
I think of those refugees in certain parts of the world who go into countries and do not get any permanent residency status or landed immigrant status with the view to becoming citizens and could spend the rest of their lives with no nationality. They cannot go home to the country where they are being persecuted, not an illusion of persecution but real persecution. In this country we give them a chance to become Canadians. The vast majority have gone on to become very successful Canadians. As Canadians we can be proud that we are one of the most generous countries in the world.
Another point I would like to make, and it is really ironic, is that some bright young student should do a master's degree or even a Ph.D. by going back and tracing the history of the immigration law of this country. In the immigration law in the earlier years, every change was opposed by groups. Often when further changes were brought in years later, those same groups came back and praised the original amendments that they had originally opposed and did not want any more changes.
That is exactly what has happened on this bill. We as members of Parliament have the duty to put that into proper context and to come up with our best judgment. I believe the committee did that, representing all three political parties in this House.
What is in the amended bill? First of all it retains our historic goals of which we can be immensely proud. Family reunification constitutes approximately 64 per cent of the 250,000 immigrants this country will accept this year.
I remind Canadians that in the last recession immigration dropped down to as low as 80,000. While members might criticize Conservative members of Parliament, I believe it is unjustified in this case because it is true that some Canadians have fears of people from other parts of the world but that is not unique to Canada but to the
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human condition as a result of our coming from nuclear families and the tribalism that affects us all.
The fact of the matter is that it would be a lot easier for the Conservative members of Parliament, the Conservative government and the Prime Minister to cut that back because of this mythology. It is a myth that immigrants and refugees take away jobs from Canadians. It is exactly the opposite.
If the argument were true that immigrants take jobs away and leave the country poor, Canada would be very poor because with the exception of one million aboriginal peoples in this country, we are all immigrants and the country has done very well; we are number one, as the United Nations points out, of all the countries in the world.
The Conservative members of Parliament and the Prime Minister deserve a lot of credit and plaudits for standing up to the mythology and saying we are in tough times because we are making this enormous adjustment from an industrial manufacturing infrastructure to a post-industrial information microchip service industry in which banking and commerce and all of those types of things are more important. That is an enormous adjustment for the people to have to make but it has to be made.
In spite of that we have the vision and the courage to keep the immigration and refugee level up because it is important for other parts of the world and because it is important for Canada. The underlying point I would like to make and which I believe passionately is that the world will not long permit 26 million people to occupy this vast, rich, bountiful country.
If we existed anywhere else in the world except next to the United States we would have long ago been taken over. If these 26 million people lived next to China or India or the other high population areas of the world, they would have swept in and took us over. They would not have been able to stop themselves. It is only because we are next to that mighty democracy to the south of us, and even it tried in 1812 and soon realized that Canadians were not going to put up with that. Nonetheless, we would not have been as successful against other people as we were against the Americans.
Refugee protection is another important arm of this bill and refugees constitute about 20 per cent of the
250,000	people who come in on average. The third

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component is economic growth. That is about 16 per cent.
Another way of looking at it is that for each 100 people who come in, only 16 are coming because of their skills. That has gone on for a number years and because we believe in family reunification, those people, that 16 per cent, are able to then sponsor their immediate families; sisters, siblings, parents and children.
They are also able to assist another group, a broader group than their families, which permits them to get into the extended family and the clan basis which is so important to other cultures around the world. Only 16 out of 100 come for their actual skills. The other 84 per cent come under family reunification and refugees.
I believe we should be proud of that but nonetheless there is a strong body of thought out there that Canada should be selecting a lot more rigorously for skills.
There has been some criticism and I do not believe it is well founded anymore because I believe we as a nation have to stop these bogus refugee claims. The reason is that they block real refugees.
There are some 10 million-plus genuine refugees in camps around the world today. Those are the people our constituents want to help. Instead, an enormous amount of time and an enormous amount of money are wasted in western worlds by a group of refugees who are really asylum shopping or genuine immigrants trying to get ahead of the line by posing as refugees.
That is not fair. I truly do not believe that it is right or fair that we as Canadians should be devoting so much time, money and effort. The Immigration Review Board spends a lot of its time on those types of claims. I really do not think it is a proper way for us to be spending our resources when genuine refugees are languishing by the millions and millions in camps around the world.
There is another reason the refugee process has to be changed a bit. It does protect and continue the Immigration Refugee Board. That process was opposed by many people in 1987. As I said earlier, many of those same groups are now back saying it is a good deal and do not change it any more; they love it. The fact of the matter is
that it needed to be changed, it has been changed, and I think it has been changed in a way that is positive.
I would like to be a bit partisan because I am a member of Parliament and I belong to a political party that I believe deserves more credit than it is getting for many of the very tough decisions that the nation has had to take and which other nations around the world have had to take, even those led by social democratic parties and by liberal parties. The irony of course is that they are being equally criticized in their countries. Canadians need to see that and understand that in a broader context.
Last night was a bit of a fiasco, but I cannot be very critical of it. When we were in opposition we would sometimes get our knickers in a knot too. We would end up forcing the government to vote on all sorts of amendments. We would go into the late hours of the night and sometimes early into the morning.
Canadians need to know several facts about the opposition amendments. In some ways I was amazed at the lack of realism of some of the amendments. Some of the amendments they proposed would have prevented this minister and future ministers of immigration from ensuring that immigration continued to benefit Canada and would cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
If most Canadians realized that roughly $1 billion was spent on immigration, they would be angry with us and saying to us that we needed to look at it closely. They are hurting. They feel overtaxed in spite of the good services they are getting in this country. They would want us to look at it very closely.
The NDP proposed several amendments which I believe would seriously undermine the minister's ability to protect Canada and Canadians from terrorists and criminals. In its view, even if we have reasonable grounds to believe that someone is a terrorist or is a member of a criminal organization or has committed criminal acts, that person should be allowed into Canada. That means that if we have police reports or even affidavits from witnesses we would not be able to keep that person out. I just believe, as a question of judgment, that most Canadians would want the minister to have the power and would not want such a person to be here.
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My colleagues opposite seem very concerned about the transportation companies. This government has indicated its concerns as well. But we have to recognize this bill does not seek to impose higher costs on transportation companies. Rather, it seeks to ensure that the transportation companies fulfil their responsibility for the people they bring to this country being properly documented. If carriers do so they will not bear any costs. It is only if they fail to check the people they bring here for passports, visas or whatever travel documents are appropriate, that they will be required to pay a fee.
Unfortunately the threat of penalty seems to be the only way we can ensure that they meet their responsibilities, particularly the international airlines. Our domestic airlines have worked very hard and well at making the system work. It has not been true with respect to some international carriers and this bill gives the minister the power to ensure that it happens.
I think the Liberal Party proposed that eligibility decisions for refugee claimants should be made by the Immigration and Refugee Board. I am convinced these decisions are straightforward and factual decisions which can effectively be made by a senior immigration officer.
Moreover, I am convinced that the Canadian taxpayer should not be burdened with the additional cost of up to $200 million over the next five years if we were to agree to have such decisions made by the board.
I could go on and on about it, but I would like to turn to my conclusions. No other nation has an immigration policy as open and generous as Canada. Our welcome reception of immigrants and refugees has given us the reputation as a caring, compassionate nation internationally. People come from many other countries to study Canada's immigration system, the department as well as the Immigration Review Board. They come to learn how we do it.
It is an expensive system and many other countries cannot afford it. I do not think we should be sitting here in our rich splendour, saying that every other country has to come up to our standards exactly and do things exactly the way we do, as long as they are meeting the principle.
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As I said earlier we admit some 250,000 immigrants a year. That is up from 80,000 during the last recession. Politically it is certainly easier to reduce.
Canadians are concerned about immigration, about costs and lengthening delays. We must manage our immigration policy. We need a new set of tools and that is what this bill will provide.
In short, I believe that over all it is good public policy. I urge members of Parliament to vote in favour of it later this day.


Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, to me this legislation is unacceptable because it goes against certain fundamental democratic principles. I would appreciate if the hon. member would comment on some of the points that seem to deviate from these principles. For instance, the right to appeal a decision has been eliminated or substantially restricted.
Another example of what I see as a serious infringement of the rule of law is the use of the principle of guilt by association. I wonder whether the government realizes that under a provision of this kind, Nelson Mandela, whom the Prime Minister hugged repeatedly in front of the television cameras, would have trouble emigrating to Canada.
I would also like some comments on the economic aspects because I think the legislation is not very consistent when it denies work permits to people who claim refugee status, which practically forces them to live on welfare.
In other words, the government cuts off people's income and then has to spend more on social assistance. Whether it is federal, provincial or municipal, it is still taxpayers' money.
I would also like someone to explain why the retroactivity principle has been applied to immigration, which I feel is a contradiction of the most elementary principles of justice.
I would also like the hon. member to comment on the fact that immigration officers are given arbitrary powers which are actually judicial powers in disguise, especially since the claimant in most cases is not entitled to a

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lawyer or hearings are held without a lawyer being present, although that right would seem to be one of the basic principles of the law in this country.
I would appreciate the hon. member's comments on these points.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I will try to take my colleague's points in order.
With respect to lack of appeal-and I am not sure if he said lack of appeal-there are proper appeal procedures in this bill. It is true there are not as many steps as could be taken under the old bill, but under the old bill there were cases wherein the legal system was abused. It led to people staying in the country for years and years. Those people did not get status and, as he said, were sitting around. Sometimes they were even on welfare waiting for all this to occur and years passed. Some of them had families back in their home countries.
It is an obligation of the country to have an appeal process and there is one on the proper questions of the law, for example. It has to be an orderly and quick process. That is what this bill will provide. If my friend looks at it carefully maybe he will change his mind.
Turning to guilt by association, that was largely a question of how to word some of the clauses so that a member who belongs to an association abroad, some members of which do bad things, could be blocked. Some members belong to associations where maybe a wing of the group is terrorists and the others are decent people trying to carry on.
We struggled with the wording. The member would have been more than welcome to come to the committee. I am not criticizing him for not being there because he does attend committee meetings. On this one we were struggling for words that would do the job. We had legal advisers and lawyers from the Department of Justice. Outside people had their views. We struggled as members.
Often a certificate is required from the Solicitor General as well as the minister before certain things can be done. Then there is an appeal mechanism through the courts as well. We think we have a mix that will work.
We can always draw examples of somebody working for Exxon Corporation who technically could be blocked, but in the day-to-day administration we know that will not occur. There has to be a certain degree of trust. Even under the existing act we could find wording that would give a minister or a bureaucrat who wanted to be abusive all the powers to do that. That gets back to the general way our society works, which is pretty fair-minded. We have those judges. If somebody gets too far out of line a judge will snap their suspenders and snap them hard.
With respect to refugees on welfare while the process is going through, I am absolutely satisfied the time will be reduced as a result of the screening mechanism and all other administrative changes. It should not take more than six months. The vast majority will be settled within six months. That is not too bad.
When we look at the other provisions of the bill, they say that once a person is admitted all the rest of his or her family can come in instantly. That is a great improvement to the existing situation. We did hear evidence as to how the existing law really did cause some genuine hardships. That will not happen.
With respect to the arbitrary powers, my colleague opposite is probably referring to section 46.01. This is the power of a senior immigration officer to do an administrative review when somebody shows up at the border to see if the person should be admitted. If there is any dispute at all the vast majority of them will go through to the Immigration and Refugee Board. However, I would ask my friend to read section 46.01 carefully. It gives that SIO power. I want to read it because it is not unreasonable:
A person who claims to be a Convention refugee is not eligible to
have the claim determined by the Refugee Division-
That means he is not eligible to have the claim go on to the IRB where two members will sit and there will be legal counsel and all that. It continues:
-if the person
(a) has been recognized as a Convention refugee by a country, other than Canada, that is a country to which the person can be returned;
That does not seem to be unreasonable. It deals with somebody coming from western Europe, the asylum shoppers. If they are already in the western world, the United States or western Europe, why should we spend time and money going through that process again? They are in the western world. Meanwhile there are millions
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of good refugees languishing around the world and we should be bringing them in.
It goes on:
(c)	has, since last coming into Canada, been determined (i) by the Refugee Division not to be a-refugee-
It is reasonable if the person who was here before and found not to be a refugee leaves and comes back and the SIO says: "No, no, your claim was looked at a few months ago. I am not going to let you in again". I do not see that as unreasonable. People should not be able to step out and start the whole process over again with all the legal costs to our taxpayers.
Here is another one:
(d)	has been determined under this Act or the regulations, to be a
Convention refugee;
If they had already been through it and found to be a convention refugee, why would they go through again? The CSIO can make that decision. These are largely decisions that will be administrative based on paper.
I should not take more time but I certainly could.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Lethbridge is an eminent lawyer. Over the years I have known him to speak in favour of due process.
I cannot understand when somebody's rights are in jeopardy, as a refugee's are, why he thinks it is all right that he could be turned away by a senior immigration officer without any right of representation, any right to be heard and could be returned to a country where his life or his liberty would be in jeopardy.
I want to refer him to the Senate report. The Senate, which is chaired by a Conservative senator and which has a majority of Conservative members, said that it was opposed to that. It felt that where eligibility is concerned and the senior immigration officer would turn down a person on the basis of eligibility, that matter should be referred to the IRB, which was a unanimous report of the Senate on that point.
All the witnesses from the Canadian Bar Association, the Association of Immigration Lawyers, the Law Union of Ontario and the Association des avocats immigrants du Quebec said that this is an area, the decision-making process before the CSIO, where there should be the right to be heard and the right of due process because serious rights were in jeopardy.
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As an eminent lawyer, I do not see how the hon. member can justify otherwise.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, my support is predicated on the actual wording of 4601 which we had a lot of evidence on. We heard the lawyers who came in, and it is quite proper for lawyers to be arguing due process as we all should as members of Parliament and former lawyers. The officials, as I remember, came back and actually were able to show us how these were easily determined administrative decisions and that if there were any doubt about any of that, it would automatically flow through to the IRB.
That is the way it should be. I am saying to my friend from Notre-Dame-de-Grace that if that turns out not to be the case, I have absolutely no doubt lawyers will bring applications and they will find a way under law or under equity, as will the judges, to remedy it and declare that section somehow ultra vires of Parliament or they will find it to be a violation of the charter. They will find a way, but I do not think it is going to happen. I looked at it very carefully. I fretted about it but the officials carried my judgment when we got right into it word by word.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate.
Since the early eighties when I was the Minister of Employment and Immigration I felt that the way in which this country deals with those thousands of people victimized around the world is one of our most important responsibilities.
It used to be said that a country is determined by how it treats its least fortunate. In this world of interdependence I think we are as much judged by how we treat the least fortunate around the world.
In that case, I can only say that this bill we are debating in its final reading is a tale of tragedy. First, there is the tragedy of the people we are dealing with. The numbers of refugees who appear on our screens each night on the news are only a small sample of the enormous misfortune and suffering experienced by tens of thousands of men, women and children around the world.
There is a tendency in this country to think that somehow we are threatened by these movements of people.

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We are very privileged because if you look at what is happening today in Germany, Croatia or Afghanistan, they are host countries that are accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees. The kind of drumbeat of fear and concern that is being raised by certain sources in this country is really one of illusion.
The other tragedy that this debate recommends is what we are doing about it. The bill in front of us represents a major change in the governing philosophy this country has used since the end of the Second World War to deal with these mass movements of people who have been victimized abroad.
It has been one of the important acts of stewardship of the Parliament of Canada to ensure that Canada has an open door policy and not a closed door policy. This bill almost caps what I have seen over the past several years as a major turning away from that philosophy.
It is a major shift in the attitude toward immigrants and refugees as if somehow we have turned them into a scapegoat, something to be feared and something to be cautioned against, as opposed to saying something that is part of our responsibility as a privileged nation to provide for open and active reception.
Just think for a moment that at the end of the Second World War Canada accepted hundreds of thousands of displaced persons who had been thrown up in the turbulence and turmoil of the Second World War. There were hundreds of thousands of Canadians, many of whose sons and daughters are sitting in the House of Commons today because they got that chance.
Think for a moment what happened during the time of the major revolt in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary in the mid-1950s when again Canada opened its doors to tens of thousands of Hungarians, Czechs and Poles who were escaping communist tyranny. We are not talking about small hundreds, we are talking about tens of thousands.
Think of what happened when Idi Amin took over Uganda and expelled the East Indians who had been part of that country for generations. Again, this country was a leader in accepting tens of thousands of people who had been ethnically cleansed from Uganda at the time.
Think of the record that was jointly shared by both the previous Clark government and the Trudeau government, accepting over 200,000 refugees from Indo-China. There were 200,000 in contrast with what happened in this House of Commons when 26 refugees arrived on the shore of Nova Scotia.
We were called back into emergency session of Parliament because it was portrayed by the then minister of immigration as being a national emergency that somehow Canada was going to be invaded by this great hoard. If that was not a clear signal of the changes that we are now beginning to see the final fruits of in this bill, I do not know what was.
It was a clear sense that all of a sudden the government had broken with that continuity of policy. It had begun to take a totally different attitude. It had begun to go back to the days that Irving Abella wrote about in the 1930s in her book None is too Many when the philosophy of the Canadian government was how many to keep out and not how many to bring in.
It was an exclusionary policy based upon sheer discrimination. Sadly, Bill C-86 only brings to a final stage that kind of Draconian, discriminatory closed door attitude that has since become the new hallmark of Canadian immigration refugee policy. It is so ironic and sad in a way to hear the Minister of Employment and Immigration and other members on the other side of the House talk with some pride about the honours that have been given to Canada for our work dealing with refugees, taking a lead.
It is as if somehow this justified what they are doing now without recognizing that the bill that we are now debating contradicts and rejects the very fundamental premises upon which Canada acquired that sense of reputation and distinction. It is turning its back on those previous positions and policies and philosophies that were taken by both Liberal and Conservative governments over the past 45 years.
When the record of this government is written, which will be done in the next six or seven weeks, when the historians finally get a chance to sift through the sand and find out what it did, this will be one of the blackest marks on the record of this government. It is basically saying that rather than responding in an open, generous and progressive way to the incredible problems of dis-
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placed persons and refugees, of victims of tyranny and economic deprivation, it is withdrawing inside the fortress.
I admit we are not alone. There is no question that is the dominant response by the various neo-conservative governments in the western world, and we are seeing it. Look what happened in Britain a week ago. It refused to take people who had been kicked out of their country in Bosnia. Is our record any better?
I recall with great force the announcements of the minister last summer about accepting 25,000 families from the horrible situation in former Yugoslavia; great fanfare, great announcement, great public photo opportunities, but if you look at the record today, about 150 to 200 families have been accepted. It is disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.
We see what is happening in Somalia with the incredible human suffering and when representation and pressure were made to see if Canada could bring out particularly orphaned children and others, the response of the Minister of Employment and Immigration was to the effect that they really would not fit into Canada.
Never mind the big cases that hit the newspapers, look what has happened. You can go to any office of any constituency of any member of Parliament in this country and they can tell you what is going on in the Department of Employment and Immigration in terms of exercising some judgment based upon compassion or humanitarian-ism, looking at it case by case to see if there is some kind of judgment call that could be made as the responsibility of the minister.
I recall when I was in that post, Friday nights when I left Ottawa to go back to Winnipeg with two briefcases full of cases to look at, it was the most awesome and heavy responsibility I have ever had in my life because I was making literally judgments about life and death for so many people.
The reason the minister was given discretion in the Immigration Act of 1977 was that some human judgment based upon a sense of fairness or equity or compassion could be exercised. That has ceased to exist. There is no judgment being made, it has been turned into an assembly line. The assembly line is reject, reject, reject. There is no compassion being exercised, there is no sense of justice being used.
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The standard formula now is "no point going to the minister's office, it does not care. We know that we will simply get the black dot, the rejection slip".
Look what it is doing. The latest announcement is it is going to set up new immigration processing centres in Vegreville. Vegreville is a great place to have it but are we turning our immigration refugee procedure into an assembly line in which you run the paper through as if it were some kind of mass-produced washing machine? We are talking about human beings here, we are talking about people's lives-people who need the kind of interface with an immigration officer; talking to families, listening to their cases, having officials know there is a philosophy to judge as to whether that case deserves some sort of fair treatment.
Now we are turning it into a paragon of efficiency. Even at that, the government is downsizing the department by 25 per cent. Increasingly there will be less and less human contact and the long lines of refugees sitting in the camps in eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America will never see anybody again. The long lines of people trying to reunite with their families from the Philippines or India will never get to have their applications even considered by the human eye.
Then we get Bill C-86 on which my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace waged a wonderful rearguard action trying to hold back this juggernaut that is moving against us. The government attempts to justify it as a way of getting better control. It is fooling people but it is not telling the truth.
The so-called third safe country principle? If someone has come from a country that Canada considers a proper country of good bona fide credentials then they automatically get rejected at the border under this legislation.
How do we explain that for long periods of time the United States of America under the Reagan and Bush administrations rejected close to 85 per cent or 90 per cent of all refugee applicants from Central America, especially during the turmoils in Nicaragua, El Salvador and now in Guatemala. For ideological reasons the Government of the United States would not accept that someone fleeing terrorism or the death squad in Central America was a bona fide refugee because the government of America was supporting those regimes.

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Under this legislation we have to send them back to the United States, which means they go back into the cauldron. They go back where their lives and their families are threatened and endangered.
How can we say that is a criteria that must be honoured not as an exception but as the standard rule with no right of appeal? Look at the story that came out last week. It was I think again a sign of the times. Dr. Sam Ifejika, a member of the refugee board, resigned because he said: "I have been asked to explain my positive decisions a number of times but I have never been asked to explain my negative decisions. The direction of the refugee board is against the letter and spirit of the United Nations convention on refugees and Ottawa's proposed new immigration law would foster this inhuman policy".
This is their own appointment. This is a member of their own board who resigned because he said in effect the whole weight of government policy is: How do you close the door and keep people out?
It really surprises me because this has not been the tradition of the Conservative Party. I recall very well when I became the successor to the minister of immigration, Mr. Atkey, when he said one of the responsibilities of a minister of immigration is to make sure not to open up the Pandora's box of fear and intimidation about refugees and immigration. Yet that has been the underlying philosophy with this government since the day it came in.
It has broken that continuity and it has turned its back on traditions that have been established successively through the St. Laurent, Pearson, Diefenbaker, Trudeau and Clark governments and I am not sure why. I guess we could all speculate as to what would be the reasons for this shift, this major transformation.
I can tell hon. members and I think all my colleagues who are in the House with me would agree that it will not last very long. When there is an election and the people of this country change the government, what is now Bill C-86 will be the law for only a short period of time. This is not the way we would deal with immigrants and refugees around the world. We cannot accept that Canada should so clearly turn its face against its responsibilities. Let us not quibble about that. All those bureaucrats and people who are getting the engine running and putting the pieces together had better make it temporary because it is not going to last that long. There will be a change back to the far more humane and responsible Liberal notion of what to do.
This government may have some short-term satisfaction that it has shown the Reform Party it can be tougher on immigrants than the Reform Party can be, but it is a false victory that will not last any longer than this government will last.
While I have the opportunity, let me just say that another part of the picture is missing. The amendments proposed by my colleague were very important. He said that one of the things which has to be done about the whole area of immigration and refugee policy is to make it more democratic and more accountable. Appointments to the board should be approved by Parliament. Regulations tabled must be put in a way that they can be not only examined but also rejected by parliamentary vote. There must be a far more open system of examination so that it is transparent and visible.
We have also put forward that if there is going to be a proper refugee immigration policy there must also be deep concern for what happens after people arrive here. What are the present figures? I think over half of those who come into this country do not receive proper education in French or English. It is no wonder they become a problem when they are not even given one of the basic tools to survive, which is one of the languages of the land. The Government of Canada continues to shrink the second language programs in this country.
I will not have time to fully get into this and it may be a debate for another time, but there must also be an international response. We cannot pretend that we can solve these problems simply by ourselves. If Canada surely wanted to show leadership in this world, this is an area that we could take on as our own to try to bring the countries of a developed, industrial world, which have wealth and advantage and privilege, to ask: How do we deal with the vast amounts of human suffering? How do we make sure people will not be freezing in the cold of Bosnia this winter, or dying of starvation in Somalia, or being left to neglect in Afghanistan for tens of years, or
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being left hanging around the camps in the Middle East as they have been for the last 40 or 50 years?
Surely this area has been neglected by all the countries, but because of our tradition and reputation we can provide an important contribution to the world by drawing attention at the G-7 and at the United Nations population conferences for a brand new definition of what is a refugee and how the world comes to grips with an enormous and gargantuan, but singularly human, problem.
I say that we cannot take on that kind of leadership ourselves until we undo this kind of legislation which sets Canada back 75 years.


Mr. Fernand Jourdenais (La Prairie):: Mr. Speaker, I have been carefully listening to my colleague opposite make the same statements I have been hearing for the last eight years to the effect that the Conservative government has done nothing good during that period.
I heard him say a moment ago that since we have been in power, in the sole area of immigration all they have heard is no, no, no. I would like to ask him if he remembers-since he was a member of the government before 1984-what were the immigration quotas set by his government compared to the ones our government set in 1992, just to see if he is right in claiming that all we can say is no, no, no and no.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I said that this Conservative government turned down refugees, not immigrants. There is a difference.
Under the Trudeau government, we adopted a new approach toward refugees. We enlarged the meaning of the term refugee. We established several special programs for refugees from Central America, for example, and from Africa and Cambodia too. We also set up a meeting of several host countries in order to develop a common program.
Our principle regarding refugees was to view each case on its own merits, be it on compassionate, fair or other humanitarian grounds. We cannot fail to notice that it is no longer the case these days with a minister who turns
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down just about every appeal. That is what I told the hon. member and he knows the situation well.
At the same time, we are in the midst of a recession. We therefore approached unions, management and NGOs in order to establish acceptable immigration levels. A decision should be arrived at in consultation with all these stakeholders.


Fernand Jourdenais: Mr. Speaker, my colleague just mentioned that it is indeed refugees that our minister is turning down. Is it really humane to let these people wait for six or seven years before telling them if they qualify as refugees? That was the case when I came along in 1984. There were six or seven appeals. People had to wait for six or seven years without knowing whether or not they qualified as refugees and if they were going to be accepted or rejected. At the very last minute, after six or seven years, they were told: "Sorry you are not a refugee, the system does not allow it. You are not included, you are not in the right category". In 1987 we changed the system in order to make the waiting period much shorter and with the new scheme, it will only be six months to a year maximum. Does he not think that what we are offering now is by far superior to what the Liberals had in 1984 and before that?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I remember the time when the hon. member chaired the House sub-committee on immigration. He made several recommendations which were rejected by the government. I quite agree with him, we need an efficient process but at the same time it is extremely important for that process to be fair and equitable. Members made some substantial recommendations but, unfortunately, their own government rejected them.
We would have had a much better system if it had accepted the recommendations made by these members and by the committee. Unfortunately, because of this government's negative philosophy, it will not be possible.


Fernand Jourdenais: Mr. Speaker, I would point out to you that my colleague from Red Deer and I would like to share the allotted time. I will use about 10 minutes and he will take the rest.
I would like to outline how Bill C-86 will lead to improvements in the management of immigration. Bill C-86 is above all about management. Management requires research, analysis and a systematic step-by-step

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approach. However, management in the 1990s requires much more than that.
Legislators today must have the courage to experiment and adapt creatively to the environment. As Gordon Fairweather, the retiring chairman of the Immigration and Refugee Board, said: "The international migration of people is one of the great social issues of this decade".

While immigration may not be at the front of everyone's mind, it is certainly at the back. Polls show that more than half of Canadians believe the country needs immigrants and that we are not accepting too many. Of Canadians, 72 per cent agree that immigrants contribute to Canada's economy and almost 70 per cent believe they add to Canadian culture.

This is not a time for a tougher, closed-door approach to immigration. We are a welcoming people, but please do not take us for granted.
Canadians want good management and they want us to make it easier for families already here to reunite. They want us to block people trying to sneak in illegally and they want us to give preference to immigrants with marketable skills. They want these skilled people settled in areas where those skills are most needed.
Good management is based on values. Although we need skilled immigrants, we have tried not to sacrifice humanitarian values to economic expedience.
The amendments in Bill C-86 will ensure that Canada remains what it is, a very welcoming country. The three pillars of our immigration policy adopted in 1976 have not been touched. Family reunification, protection to refugees and migration for economic growth are still there.

The new bill proposes to eliminate the first level of the refugee determination system by having a fully trained senior immigration officer at the port of entry make key decisions. In certain instances the senior immigration officer will be able, on the basis of facts, to exclude the person from the refugee determination process. I say on the basis of facts because the officer is not called upon to exercise judgment or make a subjective assessment.
Overpowering your staff is not good management. What the senior officer must do is direct every refugee claimant to the refugee determination process. That is the rule, except in five instances where objective facts show that the person should not access the system.

For example, if the Minister of Employment and Immigration and the Solicitor General issue a certificate saying a person is not admissible because he or she is a criminal, then the senior immigration officer has no judgement to make. All he or she says is: "I'm sorry, you cannot access the determination process, you're excluded".
Another way to manage the flow of refugees is to keep accurate records of every newcomer. Many refugees have no identification while others have ID they admit is fraudulent.

With claimants like these, their fingerprints and faces are their only identification. The only way to record their entry into Canada is to fingerprint and photograph them. That is what we mean by adapting creatively to the environment. This is what Canada is. Canada's Auditor General recommended that measure to prevent multiple claims and abuse of provincial and municipal welfare programs.
If someone comes here as an immigrant, we must investigate him. If they just show up with no identification, we have no idea who they are and we are entitled to find out.
When a refugee becomes a Canadian citizen, there is no need to keep his fingerprints. The major amendments to the act are as follows:
First, our officials will be better able to manage our intake of immigrants according to the goals agreed to by provincial governments, the private sector and non-gov-emmental groups across the country.
Second, better control of abuse by detecting people who try to skirt the rules, by preventing terrorists or criminals from entering the country and by removing those who have no right to remain here.
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Third, better management of the refugee claimant system by making it more cost-effective, fair and humane.

Fourth, we will better manage the needs of provinces and regions by selecting skilled immigrants and bringing them here quickly.
Fifth, we will better administer the program by improving the quality of service, lessening paperwork, speeding up decision making and cutting costs.
We need effective tools for managing the numbers and selecting people who best meet Canada's needs. The current act is deficient in this regard.
That is why Bill C-86 proposes selecting more skilled immigrants, business people and investors to contribute to regional development and help seed our future prosperity.

What we need is a better balance. This is the reasoning behind the proposed streaming of immigrants. These amendments will better enable us to select people who contribute to the labour market. Good management must show measurable benefits.
This shift toward economic migration will not be dramatic. To ensure that the numbers and types of immigrants we let in reflect the plan, the make-up of each stream will also be determined in consultation with the provinces and other interested groups.

Here are some proposed streams. Stream one people will be processed on demand, with no limit to how many are landed each year. Family identification is still central to our policy. However, we have enlarged the family class definition so we have to make distinctions. Families-the father, mother and children, including adopted children-will get priority. The children are not subject to any quota or level. Hence someone already living in Canada can sponsor a spouse, fiance and dependent children including adopted children. Stream one also includes convention refugees who need protection and immigrant investors.
Applicants in stream two are also on a first come, first served basis but they are subject to limits set out in the
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plan. People in stream two could include parents and grandparents of people already here and refugees who are government assisted or privately sponsored. It also includes those let in under special programs.
Stream three people are skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs who meet our economic needs. Once our targets are met no others would be accepted so no backlog would occur.
In addition to these three main streams, investors and skilled immigrants will be selected for different regions across Canada according to their needs.
The amendments propose that we select skilled immigrants who are willing to go to areas where those skills are needed. That is, we will impose a condition on their visa that they work in such areas.
Today we impose the same conditions on temporary workers, except temporary workers have no landing rights whatsoever. Now we plan to tell skilled immigrants not only that we will impose a condition on their visa, but we will land them and allow them to become citizens.

If I had to characterize this bill in a few words, I would use the words common sense, for that is what this package is all about. Our legislative framework needs updating for the times. We must start doing things that make sense, that will help us meet the challenges we face today.
Bill C-86 makes sense because it lets people do then-jobs. It makes sense because it means faster processing, according to clearly understood rules, applied consistently-
Personally, I believe that immigration has made a great contribution to Canada and the world. This legislation will ensure that it remains an asset throughout the 1990s and into the future.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very concise survey of the advantages he sees in the bill.
I would like to ask him at least one question concerning a matter that I am sure he heard raised by quite a few witnesses about what happens, as it does happen, when

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the refugee division of the Immigration and Refugee Board makes a mistake, misunderstands the evidence.
There are cases on record to show where they misunderstand the evidence and declare a person not to be a refugee in spite of evidence which indicates the other or the case where evidence comes in later. Perhaps the refugee has not yet left the country but evidence arrives that just was not available at the time he or she was here. Or, there is the case where the country's circumstances have changed for the worst so that if the board decided while it was looking at the case that it was safe to return there could be changes both ways.
Sometimes when a refugee leaves the country it is very unsafe because of the government in power which has threatened to persecute him or has persecuted him. Then there is a change. This happened in Eritrea. Then the Canadian government can pass the information on to the board saying that the government has changed and it is now safe to send people home. However, in Eritrea it was found that the new government was just as hostile to some of the political groups as the old government had been.
How do we get that taken into account? We were told by the government all that would be looked after under humanitarian and compassionate consideration. That is not satisfactory to many people who have been directly concerned with refugees because humanitarian, compassionate consideration is supposed to be for reasons other than refugee status.
I do not know how many times the present minister has risen in this House in response to a question from the opposition asking whether he would use his humanitarian, compassionate powers on behalf of a certain rejected refugee claimant. What he says is: "We have a good refugee system. He has been found not to be a refugee and I am not going to interfere". In other words, his humanitarian, compassionate grounds have nothing to do with refugee status. To say that there cannot be an appeal-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. Time is running out. If the hon. member wants an answer, it is time to end his comments.


Fernand Jourdenais: Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has just made another great speech on immigration, as usual. His question is three or four fold, but I will try to be as concise as possible.
His question is: what happens when the refugee division of the Immigration and Refugee Board makes a mistake? When making a decision on the basis of the five criteria, the senior immigration officer will have to take into account any change that may have occurred in the country of origin of the refugee claimant.
What the board does presently is to examine each case, determine whether the individual is a refugee or not and, at the request of the minister, review claims that were turned down. We have seen decisions overturned and claimants be granted refugee status following a review.
What if the people left the country after the decision was made? The officer's decision to turn down a claim is based solely on facts, on criteria. It will have the same effect.
I agree with the member opposite because we have been working on the same committee for eight years and I understand his position. There have been instances where there were problems, but-what can I say-nobody is perfect. This is the second time in eight years that we change this legislation.
I chaired the committee in 1987, as some members pointed out, and I worked very hard to have the legislation changed. I had suggested several changes at the time, eight of which were actually incorporated in the legislation, and I will keep on working to have yet more deficiencies corrected in the future.


Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: I appreciate my colleague's sharing his time with me because there are a number of members who want to speak on this bill. I want to commend all members of this House for their interest and participation in this debate.
This is extremely important legislation and we all agree, all of us who sat on the legislative committee and all members of this House, that this country has been
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enriched by immigration. If we look around our House, with very few exceptions we are all either immigrants or descended from immigrants.
The purpose of this bill is to enable the government to better manage immigration. The idea is to make it easier for legitimate refugees to qualify, to make it faster and more efficient for immigrants to be approved and to also screen out those who abuse our hospitality.
Prior to 1989 the refugee determination system was not as efficient as we would perhaps have liked it to be. That, combined with the increasing number of people who were seeking protection from persecution in their own homelands, resulted in the inevitable long delays. The system, as we know, became bogged down. Rather than give up in despair, the government established the Immigration and Refugee Board and now our refugee status determination system is finally under control. We need to ensure that our refugee program stays that way.
We want to ensure that every legitimate refugee receives a fair hearing. However, there will always be a few who will try to take advantage of our good will. My constituents told me in a survey this summer in no uncertain terms that they do not want an open door for criminals, they do not want those coming in who would abuse their hospitality.
This nation and all Canadians are generous to those in distress, but we do not appreciate being taken advantage of. Our current system for determining refugee status is a considerable improvement over the previous one but it still needs to be more efficient. The vast majority of cases are now processed within six to twelve months but every one of us from our experience in our offices knows of examples that have taken longer than that.
The government's very reasonable goal is to process all claims within six months. Not only do these delays impose additional hardships on people who are accepted as refugees, but they encourage some who will not qualify as refugees to use the process just to stay in Canada. The problem is not with the refugees who are sponsored by the federal government or sponsored by private organizations such as church groups. In these cases the determination and selection process happens abroad and the reception and settlement process for these individuals is planned. The problem can be with people who show up on our doorstep, usually at an airport, and ask for refugee status.
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Last year there were approximately 30,000 people claiming refugee status this way; 30,000 potential refugees is not an insignificant number. There are provisions in Bill C-86 to deal with this situation. One provision is to work with the airlines that would bring the would-be refugees to Canada. Air carriers must be held responsible for passengers who have inadequate or improper documentation. In the past four years that number has been about 23,000, or nearly one-quarter of the persons who presented themselves at Canadian airports.
Another consideration is that there are clearly situations in which the person does not need the protection of Canada. These people should be denied access to the determination system. Processing a refugee claim can run anywhere up to $50,000 and Canadian taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for individuals who are simply trying to take advantage of our good nature.
Another consideration is that we are working with a number of national governments to try to stem the practice of people claiming refugee status in several countries, refugee shopping if you will. There is an agreement among some European countries that the first country the claimant enters takes responsibility for processing the claim. It sounds like a good system.
Misunderstanding has arisen on the proposal to give senior immigration officers, or SIOs, increased responsibility in determining whether a person deserves access to our determination system. This is not to be a judgment call on the part of the immigration officer. The criteria for making these decisions are clearly spelled out. The senior immigration officer will receive special training to make these decisions. The SIO will simply look at the five exceptions that would deny access to the individual. If none of these exceptions applies the person would automatically have access to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
The intent of Bill C-86 is to streamline the system. We want decisions to be made faster. Everyone wants them to be completely fair.
Experience has taught us that the current two-stage procedure with a preliminary hearing and a more detailed assessment is not the best way to handle this process. The reason is that over 95 per cent of claimants move on to the second stage. Let us eliminate the first stage which we know is costly but not always effective.

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We can cut three to six months off the length of time it takes to make a final determination. We can save Canadians tax dollars and work permits can be issued as soon as a claimant has been accepted.
A moment ago I mentioned the problem of claimants arriving without documentation. We also get claimants from democratic countries such as the United States. Confusing as it may seem, some claimants while their claim is pending return to the country where they say they are being persecuted. In these specific cases, we are proposing that both members of the Immigration and Refugee Board who are hearing a claim would have to agree on the person's right to refugee status, not just one member as is the case now.
I hasten to add that in other cases as long as one of the two board members accepts the person's claim, that will be sufficient for refugee status.
I am sure that hon. members will agree that once a person has been accepted as a refugee, we should help that person become a productive member of Canadian society as quickly as possible. Right now there are delays for as long as two years before some people are landed.
Bill C-86 will help us speed up the process of granting permanent residence. These people will be able to include family members in their applications. I know hon. members will agree that people are much happier and more productive when they are together as a family.
I know that hon. members agree that we must protect those who genuinely need our protection. On the other hand, Canadians' tolerance and compassion are stretched to the limit when individuals who do not qualify for refugee status remain here, taking advantage of our generous system.
Bill C-86 will correct this anomaly. The backlog before the Federal Court is so enormous that it could take several years before a decision is reached on a claimant's appeal to stay in Canada. Bill C-86 does not take away anyone's right to appeal but we can speed up the process by having the review conducted by one judge rather than three and having it reviewed in the trial division of the Federal Court. We have limited resources and they should be used to help people who are genuine refugees and in need of our help.
We have all heard the horror stories of criminals who get into Canada claiming to be refugees. This is not a situation that Canadians tolerate. Crime is on the rise in our society and we certainly do not need to import any more of it. Individuals convicted of crimes can already be refused admission into Canada, but what about persons whom we know have been involved in criminal activity but who have not been convicted? Bill C-86 will help us keep these undesirable people out of Canada.
Immigration and refugee determination has always been and will always be a contentious issue and I along with any member of this government will welcome any constructive suggestion on how to deal with this sensitive issue. Let us all remember that Canada has the most generous and open refugee system in the world. We should be compassionate toward people who deserve compassion, but we should act decisively with those who abuse our generosity.
Our immigration and refugee system must continue to earn the respect and confidence of Canadians. It has been and will continue to be an important program for contributing to national unity and prosperity and the measures that we are proposing in Bill C-86 will help to curtail abuse of the system and defend its integrity. I would urge all hon. members to support this extremely important legislation.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-86, an act to amend the Immigration Act and other acts in consequence thereof. Before I get into some of the specific concerns I have about the bill, I would like to say that when you are a member in an urban riding, as I am from downtown Toronto, Canadians should understand that about 75 per cent of the work that we do in our offices is related to immigration. There is not a day that passes without us opening another eight or ten new files on immigration.
This was actually one of the things that shocked me when I was first elected in 1988 because I had always believed that with any immigration difficulties we had a rather large department of immigration coast to coast with the required number of man-years that could basically look after any of these complex problems, whether they are refugees, people claiming refugee
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status in Canada or Canadians trying to land family members from other parts of the world.
We soon discovered that the reason people came to members of Parliament rather than deal exclusively with the immigration department was that the basic system, the basic machinery, in that department was not really working well.
I do not need to take a political shot here at the government in the sense that when we were in power that our immigration system was perfect and since the Conservatives took over it got a lot worse. This has always been a very difficult department to manage and operate.
The challenge for us is to constantly work at reviewing this legislation and amending it so that it can deal with the complex issues that face us on an ongoing basis. These issues do change, sometimes because of situations that we cannot foresee or crises around the world where all of a sudden we will have large numbers of people who want to claim refugee status in Canada and sometimes the system no matter how well we try to design an act it is just not good enough.
One of the frustrations that we have on this side of the House during this particular debate is the fact that my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace has presented many constructive amendments that were drafted not just by the member alone but were put together and organized by him after listening to many experts from across the country. These experts work on this issue day in and day out, some as professionals and people who have been actual victims of our system, and so our colleague, the hon. member from Notre-Dame-de-Grace presented all of these amendments to this House and the government basically rejected all of these amendments. I find that approach to such a complex issue a little arrogant. We are not trying to settle political scores on this side of the House while we are trying to put forward a constructive amendment to a very complex bill.
If we reviewed the witnesses and reviewed the experience of my colleague for many years, it seems to me in the spirit of trying to design and create better legislation, it would have served the government to be a bit more
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receptive to some of these amendments which ultimately would have served all of us a lot better.
This is important because this type of attitude, this rigidity toward the Immigration Act, eventually is transmitted through the entire department and it becomes part of the spirit of the people that are delivering and implementing the act.
I know in my own specific riding I have had such cases. I cite the Dularie Boodlall case. This women was a victim of violence in Trinidad. She came to my office because she had a deportation notice. She had explained to the officials that her life had been threatened, she had been beaten several times, here is the documentation. The police had documented this information. The officials wanted to deport her back to an environment where her husband was living, where she had received threats to her life. The system, the department, rejected her appeal.
She came to my office several times. I know she also went to the member for Tfinity-Spadina and I believe she went to the member for Parkdale-High Park. The various organizations in the city appealed to us and it was only after very forceful representations in this House that the minister reversed his decision and we were able on humanitarian and compassionate grounds to get that specific case reversed.
My point is that we are constantly being presented with cases in our offices. We are constantly receiving representations from churches and other credible organizations where people are pleading for help and quite often even with all of the resources that we have we sometimes cannot get the minister's office to reverse its position.
What concerns me about this legislation is the fact that we, as MPs, will have even less opportunity to take on those very sensitive cases because in this legislation we are delegating so much authority to public servants. Therefore the political culture, those of us who are dealing directly with the people that elect us, will have less to do in our relationship with them. I think this is a basic flaw in the legislation.
It is very important that we put the government on notice that this aspect of the legislation is very weak. It may appeal to an element in our country that tends to be very right wing in their attitude about the way we process

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and handle refugees and deportations. Taking the humanitarian tone out of the system is wrong.


Mr. Speaker:: It being two o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 30(5), the House will now proceed to statements by members pursuant to Standing Order 31.


AUDITOR GENERAL OF CANADA
Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to lay upon the table the report of the Auditor General of Canada to the House of Commons for the fiscal year ended March 31,
1992.

I remind hon. members that, under Standing Order 108(3)(e), this report is deemed to have been permanently referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, the recent report by the National Transportation Agency confirms that Canada lacks a policy on national transportation.
Some two years ago this Conservative government cancelled passenger rail service from Sudbury to Winnipeg. Communities like Marathon, Terrace Bay, Schreib-er, Nipigon, Red Rock, Dryden, Kenora and Thunder Bay must rely on highways, which in the north are not great, or expensive airline tickets.
This government has in essence denied passenger rail service to over 350,000 people from northern Ontario. This Draconian measure deals specifically with people. Let me give an example.
Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Kokanie of Thunder Bay, whose son died in The Pas, Manitoba, were unfortunately not able to travel by air or by car since Mr. Kokanie could no longer drive. Unfortunately, because of their disabilities they could not take any means of available
transportation and because the train was not travelling, they could not attend their son's funeral.
This is not an isolated situation for those 350,000 residents. We call upon this government to immediately restore passenger rail service to the 350,000 people from northern Ontario.


SMALL BUSINESS
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, as part of the Canada 125 celebrations, on November 18 six businesses in my riding received awards from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency recognizing their endurance for over 125 years.
These businesses fall into the category of small business in the area where 80 per cent of jobs in Canada are generated. In fact, 99 per cent of Canadian companies have less than 100 employees.
These six businesses that were established over 125 years ago are Bentley's Ltd., The Snook Group, Wilson Fuels, Pugsley's Pharmacy, Dominion Bridge Atlantic, and Tingley Monuments Ltd. They have all proven their ability to survive through recessions, two world wars, and all of the challenges businesses must face by continually demanding excellence in every aspect of their operation. One business, Pugsley's Pharmacy, was once operated by Sir Charles Tupper, former Prime Minister of Canada.
As a small business person myself, I take my hat off to each and every one and wish each of them another 125 years of success.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, in Canada if journalists are critical of the government, they can find themselves in the doghouse. In Mexico if journalists are critical of the government, they can find themselves in the cemetery.
The Canadian Centre of International PEN, a writers' group, sent a letter recently to our Minister of Justice expressing shock at the recent murder of another prominent Mexican journalist, Ignacio Mendoza Castillo, on November 13 in Mexico City. I say another because 20 reporters have lost their lives during the first half of President Salinas' term.
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PEN has called for Canada, the United States and Mexico to make human rights and freedom of speech a non-negotiable item of the North American free trade agreement negotiations. I quote from their letter: "It is imperative that the Canadian government communicate its concerns to the Mexican government over this brutal murder and the continuing threat to other journalists and writers working in Mexico. We also call upon the Canadian government to reconsider its position and to take the initiative in calling for improvements in human rights and freedom of expression in Mexico before NAFTA is legislated into law".


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, following a complaint by a merchant in Val d'Or, 14 male letter carriers and one female letter carrier were each suspended five days without pay for delivering flyers too soon.
Normally, a merchant expects quick delivery so that potential customers are aware of a sale as soon as possible.
This was the exception that proves the rule. The customer complained about the negative impact on his sale: 1,500 of his 12,000 flyers were delivered three hours before closing time in Val d'Or on November 16.
Since in other cases management tolerates and even approves early delivery of flyers, there was no need to punish employees who thought they were doing a good job.
The outrageous part of this story is that Canada Post is not imposing the suspension today-I have a copy here-but at the end of April 1993.
Canada Post abuses a system that has become far too authoritarian and I think a suspension is too drastic. A reprimand in writing in the employee's file would have been enough.
Canada Post shows a complete lack of understanding and respect for its employees and as far as I am concerned, the human relations branch of Canada Post in Quebec City and Ottawa deserves no respect either for the time being.


CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL
Nic Leblanc: Mr. Speaker, a few months ago, the Minister of Transport and the Minister of National Defence decided to purchase three Airbus aircraft plus spare parts from Canadian International for $195 million.
The purpose of this decision was to save Canadian International. Unfortunately, Canadian International survived for only a few months. Today, the Minister of Transport is giving Canadian International a few months reprieve with $50 million. How many hundreds of millions of dollars are we going to spend to help Canadian International survive a few more months?


M6 LANDFILL SITE
Bill Attewell: Mr. Speaker, last Friday the IWA announced the M6 landfill site in Markham was one of three sites on the short list of dumping grounds for ultimately 40 million tonnes of metropolitan Toronto's garbage.
Today, I want to strongly object to the M6 site because it would violate Transport Canada's bird hazard guidelines which state that a dumpsite should not be within eight kilometres of an airport.
The Markham-Stouffville hospital heliport is located only 3,000 metres from the M6 site. This is a 24-hour emergency service. The M6 site is only 2.5 kilometres from the edge of the proposed Pickering airport boundary. Garbage dumps attract thousands of sea-gulls and other birds which threaten air safety. Why does the NDP government want to risk people's lives by ignoring Transport Canada's guidelines?


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, last Tuesday in Charlottetown, P.E.I., a federal tax court judge stated that he had no jurisdiction to rule on arm's length cases brought before him under Revenue Canada appeals and UI insurability.
This ruling has national implications and all such appeals are now suspended until the problem is resolved.

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This leaves citizens who have been denied UIC benefits under section 32(c) of the UI Act and section 25(1) of the Revenue Canada Act which deals with the term arm's length with another extended wait before decisions are made in their cases. They have already waited a year.
In addition, the appellants in the case will also have to fund these legal arguments out of their own pocket. It is difficult to believe that a judge refused to rule on the interpretation of federal legislation, but it is more difficult to believe citizens who have been refused UIC benefits have to pay for the lawyers and judges who argue the case.
I urge the Minister of National Revenue to give an order to have this impasse resolved immediately and to lift the burden of paying for the resolution of the impasse off the shoulders of disqualified UI claimants by providing funds to have these cases argued and resolved.


WHITE RIBBON AGAINST PORNOGRAPHY WEEK
Mr. Ken  Janies@Sarnia-Lambton: Mr. Speaker, as all members of the House will know, October 25 to November 1 was the annual White Ribbon against Pornography Week.
In my riding of Sarnia-Lambton, I was presented with 275 white ribbons from a delegation of the Catholic Women's League from St. Peter's Church.
Members of St. Peter's Church wore these ribbons to show their support for this important cause. Recently, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the anti-obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code as they apply to publications, video tapes, movies and other pornographic material.
This law is important. It is needed to protect women and children against violent and sexual exploitation. The federal government is now considering a law on pornography and children to protect the most vulnerable in our society from sexual exploitation and abuse.
I would like to reassure Canadians that our government is committed to fighting the violent and sexual exploitation of women and children.


CHILD POVERTY
Chris Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, today is the third anniversary of the unanimous House of Commons motion to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.
I rise today to lament the fact that this government has failed to fulfil the promise it made to Canadians three years ago. The Prime Minister constantly reminds this House of his commitment to Canada's children, yet their situation is getting worse and not better.
More than 1.1 million children are living in poverty in this country and an estimated 700,000 are using a food bank each year. As if to highlight this government's hypocrisy, the Minister of National Health and Welfare has chosen today to announce a campaign to spotlight Canada's participation in the UN Year of the Family in 1994. We know this government's track record and hope that this will not be another multi-million dollar advertising campaign. We hope that this is not an attempt by the government to inflate its own image while drawing attention away from those issues of real importance to Canadian families, like having a job to come home from each day and enough food on the table each night.


HUTTERITES
Mr. Felix Holtmann (Portage-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, across Canada's prairie provinces thrive 20,000 people whose commitment to agriculture and to the rural economy knows no equal. Followers of Jakob Hutter, dating from the mid-sixteenth century, the Hutterite brethren have developed a commitment to social and moral values that many other Canadians can only dream of.
In Manitoba, 6,000 Hutterites produce a third of our pork and one-quarter of our eggs and turkeys. Hutterian women maintain skills and crafts that many Canadian women have abandoned for other pursuits.
Although it may not be for everyone, the Hutterite way of life has withstood the test of time in Canada for over the past 100 years. The next time you are in
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Manitoba, I invite you to visit a colony and see a refreshing and distinct side of our Canadian mosaic.


NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report has been made public today. It will identify government waste, as it should. But there was waste here in the House of Commons last night which will not be mentioned. The NDP, suffering from its abysmal showing in the polls, lower than it has ever, ever been, decided to hold roughly five hours of votes, thereby necessitating the expenditure of thousands of dollars of precious taxpayers' money. A vote that would normally have taken a fraction of the time was extended by approximately five hours. That was an irresponsible act, a charade that will be recognized as such by the people of Canada in the next federal election.


NATIONAL DEBT
Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, while acknowledging the very serious problems of deficit and debt which confront Canadians, a recent article in the Fraser Forum confirms the improving trend of some important fundamentals in the federal government's financial management. They bear repeating.
One of the most encouraging realities is the reversal from deficit to surplus in the program operating account, excluding debt costs. Eight years ago the federal government spent $16 billion more on program spending than it collected in revenue. Last year the government spent $10.1 billion less on program spending than it collected on revenue, despite the presence of the recession.
Primarily this has been achieved by controlling the rate of growth in government program spending which has been held to 3.9 per cent annually over the past eight years, as opposed to 13.7 per cent in the 15 years before that.
The level of federal debt has become unacceptably high but real progress has at least been made in curtailing its rate of growth. That is a trend we simply must follow until the debt begins to fall.


SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, last year two women, two of my constituents in Halifax who were employed by the Public Service Commission of Canada in the staffing branch, lodged a complaint of sexual harassment against their superiors. Both a management review and the departmental investigation found sexual harassment had occurred.
When one of the complainants attempted to transfer, her efforts were repeatedly blocked. What has happened? Today she is effectively out of a job. Today the other complainant was informed that her contract is being terminated. The investigation of the department stated that a punitive approach had already been taken against these women.
What guarantees does this government offer that there will be sanctions against sexual harassers and that women who complain will not be punished?


MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT PENSIONS
Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Mr. Speaker, I believe that pension benefits for members of Parliament should be reviewed. Members of Parliament make monthly contributions to a fund that pays their pensions. The fund is self-supporting, nonetheless the public perception is that the pension is far too generous. For example, some people think that members qualify for pensions too early.
I hope that members on both sides of the House will support a review of members' pensions by an unbiased panel.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, an interesting thing is happening. At this time many people are growing more and more concerned about the sunken Soviet submarine which contains plutonium and the possibility therein for a massive pollution of that particular region of the world, particularly the ocean and the fishing stocks, et cetera. We are also entering an entirely new era where nuclear waste is going to be transported by ship, thus creating the possibility of

November 24, 1992
Oral Questions
having to deal with this kind of situation over and over again.
I say is that perhaps this government and other governments that have a say in this should learn something from this sunken Soviet ship and try to reach an international treaty to prevent the shipment of nuclear waste by sea under any circumstances.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton -Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada has released several positive statements pointing to hopes that the economy is beginning a sustained recovery. August, September and October showed excellent increases in the GDP, employment, retail sales, as well as housing and auto sales.
Consumer confidence is improving and emphasis should be placed on this. If consumers return with a sustained level of spending it will help this country tremendously in gaining back a more prosperous standard of living.
Indications from our neighbours to the south point to improvements in growth in the U.S. economy. This will have a direct impact on Canada's recovery.
These are good signs and ones that should give renewed hope to all of our citizens.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, in his report tabled today in the House, the Auditor General of Canada stated that as a result of tax loopholes for foreign affiliates, the federal government is losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
I would like to ask the Minister of Finance why hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars invested in Singapore, Switzerland, Barbados, the Netherlands and many other countries are tax exempt, while Canadians have had to swallow 32 tax increases in eight years?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, the taxation of foreign affiliates is indeed a veiy complex matter. This government took action in 1988 when it introduced the general anti-avoidance rules into the Income Tax Act.
The hon. member must recognize we have to have a tax system that is competitive, that ensures our tax regime is consistent with international norms and that is not more punitive than tax regimes in other countries because that is part and parcel of a positive investment environment. That is what we have been trying to achieve and that is the balance we have been trying to strike.
I am not sure whether the Auditor General has really recognized the actions we have taken with respect to the general anti-avoidance rules.


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, with great respect to the Minister of Finance, he cannot do his own job and he should not tell the Auditor General how to do his.
In 1987 the Department of Finance announced that it would review the tax rules on interest deductibility of foreign source income and foreign affiliation. More than five years later, in 1992, these studies have not been completed. What is the government waiting for? Why is the government giving a tax break to corporate agencies and people in Hamilton, Bermuda, but not to those in Hamilton, Ontario? Why are there tax breaks to businesses operating in Barbados, another tax haven, and not to businesses operating in Canada?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I repeat that in 1988 my predecessor brought the general tax avoidance rule into the Income Tax Act. Again, I remind the hon. member that Canada's tax policy has to be consistent with international norms.
Hon. members stand up in the House day in and day out and talk about a positive investment climate. We need investment in this country and we need to have an environment that is competitive, that encourages competitiveness and that will encourage investment and the creation of jobs.
November 24, 1992


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, it is clear the government does not know how to administer tax measures.
According to the Auditor General's report tabled this morning, the government had allocated $422 million for preparing, introducing and managing the GST, the goods and services tax.
However, the government spent $808 million, which is twice as much. The GST costs more than was expected, revenues are lower and the deficit is higher than was anticipated, and so forth.
Will the government finally admit that its administration is out of control and go to the people with a general election?


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should be very careful as to how he reads the Auditor General's report. Nowhere in the report does the Auditor General state that the planning, preparation or the administration of the GST is costing more than what was provided to Parliament. Nowhere. I challenge the hon. member to show me. In fact, I had a meeting yesterday with the Auditor General and we concluded that was not the case.
The fact of the matter is that the hon. member is comparing apples and oranges and we are comparing apples and apples, or oranges and oranges. The Auditor General concludes in his report that-


Mr. Boudria:: Some fancy footwork now.


Mr. Fontana:: It is twice as much. Can you not count?


Otto John Jelinek: They get very nervous when there is an honest answer coming to a falsified question.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Otto John Jelinek: The Auditor General concludes: "We found that there was no departure from reporting requirements for budgetary expenditures. The costs were disclosed in various main estimates by year and were spread among all involved departments and agencies". The bottom line is the same between the Auditor General's report and our projections on the GST.
Oral Questions


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. On page 49 of the Auditor General's report the Auditor General says: "In September 1990, the Department of National Revenue, Taxation, again advised the Department of Finance about concerns it has with existing legislation. Taxpayers can transfer foreign subsidiaries' losses to their Canadian parents; move Canadian corporation's income offshore and convert income of Canadian corporations into tax-free income".
Why has the Minister of Finance ignored the warnings of the Department of National Revenue on this matter? Why does he consider helping companies to invest in tax havens more important than creating jobs in Canada?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the introduction of the general anti-avoidance rules into the Income Tax Act in 1988 has in effect taken care of most of those issues the Auditor General has referred to.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance says that the introduction of antiavoidance rules in 1988 has taken care of this matter. Then I ask the Minister of Finance, why is the Auditor General of Canada raising a concern about this matter saying that it has not been taken care of in his report tabled today for 1992? You had better check your calendar, Mr. Minister.


Mr. Speaker:: Hon. members ought also to place their questions through the Speaker.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister of Finance why he says this matter was taken care of in 1988 when the Auditor General in his report tabled today for 1992 says that it has not been taken care of. Can he explain this discrepancy between the views of the servant of Parliament, the Auditor General, and what he just told this House?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, my response remains the same. I will certainly look into it in more detail. However, the fact of the matter is we believe that those issues have been covered as a result of the introduction of the general anti-avoidance rule which was brought in by my predecessor.

November 24, 1992
Oral Questions


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance who will know that any government's priority must be to find ways and means to put 1,600,000 Canadians back to work, to give them jobs they most sorely need.
The government keeps telling us that it does not have any money and yet in No. 2.58, the Auditor General says that hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue have been lost as a result of corporate loopholes. That is what it says. In spite of what the Minister of Finance is saying about what happened back in 1988, the Auditor General is saying that hundreds of millions of dollars are lost each year because of corporate tax loopholes.
Will the Minister of Finance do the right thing in an effort for fairness and justice in our tax system? Will he close those loopholes, collect those revenues and create those jobs with that additional revenue?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, again my predecessor has the record of closing many of the hundreds of tax loopholes which were left there by the previous administration. The fact of the matter is that many of the same members are now saying: "We need some incentives in the system to encourage jobs and to generate investment". I wonder to what specific loopholes the hon. member is in fact referring.
I can tell the hon. member that one of the best ways for his party to contribute to job creation is get off this protectionist kick it is on that suggests we should become a closed economy, that we should not open our doors to trade, that we should not open our doors to investment. That is not our approach.
Our approach is that we are open for business, we are open for trade, we believe in the free trade agreement with the United States and-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Okanagan-Simil-kameen-Merritt.


Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen-Merritt):: Mr. Speaker, it seems that the government has had eight years to close those loopholes and it has in fact put all of Canada out for sale.
While the Auditor General points out the tax unfairness between the corporate taxpayers, he also points out that the small business community suffers while our large corporations profit. Will the government now
recognize that the small business community is the future creator of jobs in Canada and will it move immediately to level the playing field for that sector?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I agree, Mr. Speaker, that the small business community is one of the major components of job creation in this country. That is why we are continually taking steps to encourage the small business sector.
I note one of the tax loopholes that the New Democratic Party refers to at all times is the capital gains exemption that is applied to small business. That is one of the loopholes I suspect it wants to do away with. That would not help small business. It would hurt small business.


John R. (Jack) Whittaker: Mr. Speaker, it seems that the government's fiscal and monetary policies have created a situation where we have over 1.5 million people unemployed. At the same time we look at the Auditor General's report and we find that the foreign affiliates of Canadian corporations have invested more than $90 billion offshore in offshore tax havens.
Will the minister commit now that this multimillion dollar tax rip-off will be shut down and the money used for job creation for those 1.5 million desperate unemployed people in Canada?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, my predecessor brought in provisions such as the large corporation tax and the general anti-avoidance rules as ways and means to close a number of these loopholes. There is also the fact that the scientific research and development incentive was part of the former administration's $1 billion boondoggle. Those kinds of things were closed. There have been a number of loopholes which have been closed.
If there are any further examples, we will certainly take them into consideration.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. Today the Auditor General told us that the government gave 22 untendered contracts ranging between $35,000 and $743,000 for the so-called prosperity agenda, all in contravention of Treasury Board rules.
November 24, 1992

I want to ask the minister: Why does this tired old government think that rules are made to be broken? Why does the minister tell Canadians to tighten their belts at the same time as the purse strings are being loosened for Conservative Party hacks and supporters?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International IVade):: Mr. Speaker, let me say to the hon. member that this government was off and running with the prosperity initiative drawing out ideas from people across the country. We were developing policies as to how we would respond to the people of this country in bringing about a package of policies which would do exactly what the hon. member wants and that is to move this country into the nineties, into the next century with a series and a composition of policies that are designed to improve the competitive position of this country.
The hon. member asked a specific question about tendering practices. The practices that were followed were consistent with the spirit of the rules. However, because of the urgency of getting the prosperity initiative launched, there was not sufficient time to follow the policy to the letter. It was with a desire to move ahead as quickly as we could that we took this action.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I can tell that this is a very tender subject with the government across the way.

My supplementary is for the minister who just answered. The Auditor General also declared today that two thirds of these contracts were paid even before the work was done.
Therefore, I would ask the minister the following: when will this old and tired government learn that the taxpayers' money does not belong to the Tories and that they cannot use it to reward their friends?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, it is hard for me to understand how the
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member would describe the government the way he has when we are anxious to get out and do things that will help the success of this economy. It is precisely for that reason we have been subject to this comment by the Auditor General.
My hon. friend should know that the spirit of the policies was followed in the way that we went about handing out the contracts because of the importance we felt of getting on with the job and dealing with the problems we are addressing, problems countries around the world are facing. It is because we were anxious to get out there that we took the action we did.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works.
Despite the Auditor General's previous reports which indicate that lease/purchase agreements is a very costly method of acquiring public buildings, how can this tired old government justify entering into a 25-year lease agreement in 1991 for the Louis St. Laurent building in Hull?


Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, for a number of reasons.
On the contrary, this government very energetically pursued the request of DND to provide some long-term stable space for the department. We acquired some valuable additional assets, converted them into a lease/ purchase agreement, avoided moving expenses and, perhaps more important, preserved 40,000 square metres of space on the Outaouais side which helped to preserve the important proportion of space traditionally allocated on both sides of the river.


Eugène Bellemare: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the same minister.
We know that the Department of National Defence will no longer need the Louis-Saint-Laurent building after only 10 years of a 25-year lease contract with a purchase option.
We know that this building has cost private industry $41.5 million and that, according to very conservative figures, taxpayers will probably have paid more than $270 million at the end of the contract.

November 24, 1992
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How can this exhausted government which refuses to follow the advice of the Auditor General justify this gargantuan squandering of public funds?


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, over the term of this lease/purchase agreement there will be ample opportunity because of the turnovers that Public Works and this government require to utilize that building fully.
Although at the time the timeframe that DND required it may not have been apparent, it will be fully utilized and will present good value for the money when the analysis is completed.


Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.
Today the Auditor General reported on the procurement policies of the Department of National Defence. He used these words among others: defective, cumbersome, ineffective, very expensive, wasted costs amounting to several billions of dollars, and equipment exceeding existing or planned capabilities elsewhere in the world.
Will the Prime Minister at least take the first two steps necessary to bring the department's spending under control: freeze the $4.4 billion helicopter program and fire the Minister of National Defence?


Hon. Marcel Masse (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member we have everything to fire in the department.

I read the Auditor General's report a few hours ago and I found it very interesting on the whole. Most of the analyses were made in co-operation with and with the collaboration of the Department of National Defence and over the last few months we have modified a number of our policies in accordance with the Auditor General's suggestions.


John F. Brewin: Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report says that these programs and problems are continuing.
The report additionally says that virtually all projects examined experience schedule delays and cost overruns. Spare costs exceed 50 per cent of alternative costs. There are severe deficiencies in the naval reserve and militia and substantial deficiencies in the air reserve, programs which cost over three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Will the government concede that Department of National Defence spending is completely out of control?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the answer to that question is a definite no. The department must take into account the constantly evolving international situation, it must consider the fact that most of these major projects take 10, even 15 years between the time of their inception and the delivery of the products to the department. We are very aware of the importance of the public funds invested in these projects and that is why we will abide by the Auditor General's suggestions and streamline some of our procedures.


Mr. Douglas Young (Acadie-Bathurst):: Mr. Speaker, in his report, the Auditor General says that the annual deficit and the debt are of great concern to Canadians. In the last budget, the forecast for the deficit was less than $28 billion and it has now reached $35 billion.
Why will the Minister of Finance not accept the Auditor General's recommendation and recognize that the Tory government must give Parliament and Canadian taxpayers more precise information on the debt and the deficit and more realistic comparisons between anticipated results and the actual figures?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I genuinely appreciate the comments of the Auditor General because he recognizes the importance of controlling the deficit and dealing with the structural debt problems. I also appreciate the fact he has indicated that we should be taking more steps to communicate these to the Canadian public.
I find that most encouraging and I find the hon. member's question most encouraging, because day in and day out we get criticized from opposition members for advertising and for spending money on the dissemination of information.
November 24, 1992

Things such as Where Your Tax Dollars Go is something that is available to all Canadians. We try to send out this kind of information on a monthly and quarterly basis.
If the hon. member's question is in the form of a representation to do more of that, I will take that under serious advisement.


M. Douglas Young: Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General states in his annual report that the government has given absolutely no indication that it intends to publish the performance score card he asked for last year on its action plan to reduce the deficit. That action plan incidentally has seen the predicted deficit jump from $28 billion to $35 billion.
Is it because the Minister of Finance is too embarrassed to report accurately on his government's performance with respect to its eight-year stewardship, or is it just that the Tories do not understand what kind of damage they have inflicted on the Canadian economy as a result of their policies?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I will have an action plan to propose to the House of Commons and the people of Canada on December 2. I hope the hon. member will stand in his place and support us.


Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
According to the Auditor General, Canada's international debt exposure to regional development banks, plus this government's debt forgiveness last year to Poland and Egypt, comprised billions of dollars of Canadian undisclosed debt. Why is this tired old government hiding its real and total indebtedness from the Canadian people?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, speaking of a tired old government, we have a tired old opposition party over there, the Liberal Party, that has not had a new policy idea since the seventies.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: As the hon. member knows, Canada extends credit to a number of sovereign states for many reasons: to promote Canadian exports, to support
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our foreign policy objectives and to aid in the economic development of less developed countries.
The government remains of the view that the principle of the ultimate collectability of these sovereign loans is the basis upon which we participate in the Paris Club, a group of creditor countries. It is in that forum that we deal with these particular issues because there are other countries involved in precisely the same activity and we work at that in a collective manner.


Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, if the minister would look at the report he would see that the Auditor General and this government-to-be do not agree.
My supplementary question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Canada pays more per capita to international development banks than any other nation despite the fact that full audits are not available.
We know the good track record of non-government organizations in alleviating global poverty and promoting sustainable development. We question the performance of international development banks.
Will the Secretary of State for External Affairs guarantee no further cutbacks to NGO programs?


Hon. Monique Landry (Minister for External Relations and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's chapter on regional development banks points to a very complex aspect of our international co-operation activities. Nevertheless, I think that these regional development banks play a very important role in the support they give developing countries.
Of course, our program is very varied and supports different activities of our development partners for the benefit of the countries concerned. These partners may be NGOs, which my colleague just mentioned, the private sector, institutions and also regional development banks which we think play a very important role.


MANPOWER TRAINING
Mr. Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Our constitutional proposals included transferring labour force training to the provinces. Today,

November 24, 1992
Oral Questions
because Canadians said no in the referendum, we seem to be saying to them with some bitterness, "No, too bad. You should have said yes".
Nevertheless, since eliminating overlap could save $250 to $300 million and the transfer could be done through an administrative agreement on manpower training, does he not find that our attitude toward Quebec seems to be intransigent, since there is consensus on this issue in our province?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, it is not with bitterness but rather fully aware of the people's verdict on the provisions of the Charlottetown accord that we will deal with the request to transfer jurisdiction or authority.
The problem now is that it is crucial for the competitiveness of the Canadian economy to have a trained labour force. Surely within the present constitutional framework a way can be found with the provinces and the private sector to avoid duplication and ensure that taxpayers and Canadians who need training benefit from a coherent, well-co-ordinated program. That is the challenge before all of us parliamentarians. In January, I intend to call Canada's ministers of employment and immigration together to see how we can better co-ordinate our activities so that Quebec workers end up benefiting from these training programs.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
Last Thursday the Bank of Canada raised its interest rates by almost 1 per cent, but the value of the Canadian dollar still fell. Clearly speculators do not believe that the government is going to keep interest rates so high when the Canadian economy is in such bad shape. Today the bank rate has gone up almost another full percentage point.
What strategy does this government think it is following? Does the minister not realize that keeping interest rates lower and letting the dollar find its own level would be far healthier for the Canadian economy?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, financial markets internationally have been very volatile over the last month or so. In so far as Canada is concerned, it has put upward pressure on interest rates and downward pressure on the value of the dollar.
I am concerned about this volatility and I am concerned about the effect that it will have on economic recovery, but I reiterate the point that I have made on previous occasions: there is international uncertainty and volatility. I note that today the European banks have had to raise their interest rates in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Norway and Greece.
The hon. member is aware of the exchange volatility in the U.K., France and other countries. There also appears to be an element of speculation in recent financial market developments.
I want to assure the hon. member and the country that the government is not changing its economic policy stance. We are committed to the principle of price stability. We are committed to the principle of fiscal consolidation and we are committed to the principle of economic restructuring. We will continue to follow those policies.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, the key question is whether this government is committed to a policy of full employment and economic expansion like the United States government that has just been elected seems to be.
The minister should be aware that a reduction of three percentage points in Canadian interest rates on a sustained basis means 125,000 new jobs. It means the difference between thousands of small businesses surviving or collapsing.
Will this government place these new jobs and the survival of these small businesses first and stop trying to maintain the value of the dollar by pushing up interest rates?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting proposal. I am rather attracted to the hon. member's observation that he is attracted to the Clinton policy initiatives.

November 24, 1992

Oral Questions
President-elect Clinton is very much in favour of the free trade agreement because he thinks it is good for Canada and for the United States. President-elect Clinton is very much in favour of the North American free trade agreement because he thinks it is good for jobs in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Does that mean the hon. member is going to support that as well?
The hon. member knows better. You cannot just simply dial a phone and reduce interest rates by 3 per cent. That is being naive.


CANADA LABOUR CODE
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State and the government House leader.
This is further to the question I directed to the Minister of Labour on November 17, 1992, concerning inclusion in the Canada Labour Code of the preventive withdrawal of pregnant workers. The answer I received was that cabinet had approved the bill in question and the minister intended to table the bill in the very near future.
Can the minister let the House know today when this bill, which is extremely important for all Canadian women, will be placed on the legislative agenda for consideration at the earliest possible opportunity in the House of Commons?


Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member pointed out, my cabinet colleagues have agreed in principle with this very important bill which deals with the redeployment of pregnant women.
I can assure the hon. member and other members of this House that the government intends to table this bill in the near future. I want to congratulate the hon. member on the interest he has shown in this matter.


AUDITOR GENERAL'S REPORT
Hon. William Rompkey (Labrador):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence. The Auditor General this morning listed case after case where the management of capital projects by DND has been, in his words, ineffective. Yet this tired old government and this tired old minister have kept in place exactly the same management procedures for the production of the EH-101 helicopter.
Why has the minister not put in place new management procedures for the EH-101 helicopter, as recommended by the Auditor General, so as to save the Canadian taxpayer billions of dollars?


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, this is more or less the same question 1 was asked before.
The hon. member may wish to take a careful look at the Auditor General's report, which says that one of the problems with big projects was the fact that some members would insist on having part of the work done in their ridings.
The Auditor General does not encourage the policy of using the department's big projects to do regional development. I hope the hon. member will read this particular chapter very carefully.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-THnity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of National Defence along the same lines. However, I assure him it is not the same question. It goes from the general to the specific.
In this report the Auditor General reveals that the difficulties observed in the management of defence programs is related to problems generated early in the project life cycle during project initiation.
Given the magnitude of the EH-101 helicopter program, $4.5 billion, the third largest program for the government ever, will the minister have the Auditor General review the program at this stage of its life cycle?

November 24, 1992
Oral Questions


Marcel Masse: Mr. Speaker, it may not be the same question but the spirit is the same, so the spirit of the answer will be the same as well.
We have already followed up on some of the Auditor General's comments, including his suggestion to tighten procedures.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. In his statement this morning, the Minister of Transport outlined the government funding that was sought by Canadian Airlines in order to complete its transaction with its employees and American Airlines.
My question is this. Is the giving of the loan guarantees which were sought by Canadian still under consideration by the government or is the $50 million offered today the only and final assistance to be given by this government to Canadian Airlines?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I outlined in my statement this morning the hurdles that were in the way for the Government of Canada to be able to intervene in this matter.
I have said many times in the past that we were very impressed by the desire of the 15,000 or 16,000 employees of Canadian Airlines to save their airline. It is for that reason we came to the table. We have put our proposal on the table and it has been accepted. Both the company and the employees are already saying that they are very satisfied with the government's response to their request.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt the employees are pleased to receive any assistance they can get from the government. However, my question was a very specific one.
The minister outlined the conditions that were sought by Canadian Airlines in the proposal that was put to the government last week. The minister's statement reveals a willingness to contribute some money but does not respond to the loan guarantees that were requested.
Will the government consider giving the loan guarantees that were sought in order to complete the American Airlines transaction, or is this the last and final offer of assistance this government is prepared to make to Canadian Airlines?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the obvious conclusion is that the hon. member did not really read the statement I made in the House this morning. I explained that responding to the proposal in its present form would expose both Canadian taxpayers and the employees themselves to losing their investment outright because we do not control one of the fundamental conditions of this proposal, which is that PWA is to leave the Gemini system altogether before the other conditions set by American Airlines can come into play. An affirmative response in this respect would mean putting considerable amounts of taxpayers' money at risk, as well as the personal contributions of employees.


FISHERIES
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister of fisheries about some tired old clam beds in my riding.
I have heard from over 500 constituents along the Bay of Fundy shore and the Northumberland Strait shore through meetings, letters and petitions requesting that the government establish conservation measures to protect the clam stocks along these shores.
I would like the minister to tell us if under section 43 of the Fisheries Act the department can establish these conservation measures, and will it?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I am never too tired to pay attention to the siren call of the soft-shell clam.
I understand that the hon. member is tired of waiting for a solution to the problem to which he alludes. The existing regulations do not provide us the tools to properly manage and control the clam fishery. New regulations are being prepared. We expect to have them in place during the early part of next year. They will require all persons fishing clams, tired or not, to be
November 24, 1992

licensed and will also deal with persons fishing clams recreationally.
I think that the hon. gentleman's problem will be resolved early next year.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. It concerns the plight of Christine Lamont and David Spencer, who are held in Brazilian prisons on 28-year jail sentences.
Last week the House of Commons justice committee again strongly and unanimously urged the minister to request the expulsion of Chris and David from Brazil, noting that in addition to the earlier miscarriages of justice they had documented, their lives are now threatened because of violence in Brazilian jails.
My question for the minister is very straightforward. How much longer is she determined to wait, how much longer must the lives of Christine and David be at risk before this minister finally listens to the voices of the justice committee and thousands of Canadians and seeks their expulsion from Brazil?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I think that it is important to repeat once again that the process of expulsion in Brazil is neither automatic nor easy and in fact it would be unprecedented in modern times, particularly given the legal process that is going on at the moment.
I am sure the hon. member will be glad to know, because of representations on behalf of the Government of Canada, we have been able to obtain some information about the state of the process that is going on at the moment. The case is under active consideration in Brasilia. The appeals are before federal judges. They have had advice from the Attorney General.
We are optimistic that these cases will be heard in the very short term and we will have some answers on the length of the sentences about which we understand the Attorney General of Brazil has stated he would like to see some differentiation.
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Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, through you to the same minister. David Spencer in a letter from prison in Brazil said: "The important thing for fair-minded souls in Canada to understand is to say we are waiting for local remedies to be exhausted is to say we will do nothing".
In view of the fact that the lawyers for both Christine and David in Brazil and Canada have made it very clear that the process of appeals and transfer could take many more months, if not years, I want to ask this minister specifically why is she continuing to wait? How much longer will she wait before she finally acts on the unanimous report of the justice committee, before she finally recognizes that their lives are at risk because of the violence in Brazil? How much longer will this minister continue to fail to live up to her responsibilities as minister on behalf of these Canadian citizens?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, I think that I and the people in the embassy have more than lived up to our responsibilities with regard to Mr. Spencer and Miss Lamont.
I should point out that the lawyers for Mr. Spencer and Miss Lamont do not have anyone in Brasilia, whereas the embassy does have people there. They are very close to the appeal process that is going on and is under very active consideration in Brasilia right now. We believe and have every reason to believe that our information is correct.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Valcourt that Bill C-86, an act to amend the Immigration Act and other acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: At the suspension of the debate the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood had eight minutes remaining.

November 24, 1992
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Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, as I was saying before Question Period began, we on this side of the House were disturbed by the fact that all of the amendments put forward by our critics in committee were rejected by the government side of the House.
A lot of those recommendations were as a result of listening to many experts from across the country, as well as the experience we have had as members of Parliament. Constituents would come to us from time to time on highly sensitive issues or on issues and problems that could not be addressed by the Public Service or situations where the Public Service, in the opinion of our constituents, was not really giving a fair judgment or a fair evaluation.
As I have said, the rejection by the government of all of our recommendations is not really working in the true spirit of amending the bill in a constructive way.
This is a very complex bill. I have not read every line of this bill, but I want to refer to the section we have to deal with on a regular basis in our constituency offices. That has to do with the section relating to the minister's ability to suspend the normal process and let people come to our country by way of a ministerial permit. Quite often the minister will act on the advice and information presented by a member of Parliament.
There have been many, many times in the last four years where the minister of immigration, including ministers previous to our current minister, the hon. member for St. Paul's, when minister's permits were approved for those people whose names were given to the minister by members of Parliament.
What concerns me about this bill is the fact that we are delegating more responsibility to the front line officials which would create a situation in which a member of Parliament would not be in a position to even put forward a request for a minister's permit on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
I have known of many examples where officials in the department have either not reviewed all of the information in their possession or even if they did have the whole file at times their judgment was debatable. Hence, as members of Parliament we would present this to the
minister's office and often we could get that decision reversed. This bill works against the ability of members of Parliament, especially those in urban areas, to do their job properly and effectively.
There is no mention and no recognition in this bill for members of Parliament to have any special support or ability to appeal on behalf of those people who have been rejected by senior officials.
I notice that section 121 states:
The Minister or the Deputy Minister, as the case may be, may authorize such persons employed in the public service of Canada as the Minister or Deputy Minister deems proper to exercise any of the powers and perform any of the duties and functions that maybe or are required to be exercised or performed by the Minister or Deputy Minister, as the case may be, under this Act or the regulations, other than the powers, duties and functions referred to-
Then there is a list of subsections. It concerns me that we, as elected members, are often put in situations in which we use our judgment as to whether or not a particular person has the credibility and conditions to be allowed to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. This section works against our individual ability to try to use our own offices to try to help these people. That is my interpretation of the bill.
I had a situation just three weeks ago in which a senior business person was coming to this country. He had been here three months previously. We worked hard to get him into the country. He came from Bangladesh, but this particular time because he came via New York and he could not speak English, the officials in our immigration section in New York wanted to turn him away.
I called as the member of Parliament appealing to let the man in. Business meetings were already arranged. I finally had to write a formal letter guaranteeing that if I did not make sure this person returned, I would give up my seat. That was the only way I could get this person into the country. In other words, the immigration officials were not respecting the judgment and the information we had on our end and they were quite cocky about it.
Nothing in this bill shows any respect for the individual judgment of the representations being made in the individual offices of MPs. I continue to voice my objection to that particular aspect of the bill.
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Mr. Ross Reid (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I have been anxious to respond to my friend from Broadview-Greenwood. There are two points in particular to which I would like to respond.
I will come back to the question of the role of the member of Parliament as protected by the legislation or inferred by the legislation in helping determine immigration cases. I think that is something we want to discuss in this House as a principle, particularly as we look at long lines of people who want to have immigration dealt with either through family unification or other processes.
The comment my colleague has made a number of times is that the government has rejected all opposition amendments. I want to point out first of all that the legislative committee in sitting for 61 hours discussed what at one point was about 200 amendments.
As the government brought forward its 70 amendments, some of which were technical, a number of which responded to concerns of witnesses and opposition members, opposition amendments were withdrawn. They were withdrawn with consent by the way which did not need to be given, under which there was no obligation for the government to operate to give that consent in allowing them to be brought back into this House.
It is important to recognize that the minister in his speech and in the process has acknowledged this in terms of amendments. The government has responded in a number of areas setting dates for the tabling of the immigration plan and changing it. With respect to provisions on mobility, terms and conditions, and obligations, changes are provided to that.
There is the whole question of fingerprinting information. There is the question of ability in carrier sanction, protection for medical reasons against public health and safety, offences being offences in Canada and abroad. There is the role of the minister being reinserted in terms of people being returned from Canada and in terms of certification.
We have amended the whole question of detention reviews. The provision concerning senior immigration officers in some areas has been tightened up. Confidentiality of hearings has been tightened up. We have responded to the question of split decisions and the whole area of permanent residence and war criminals.
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To say that the government has not accepted any opposition amendments is not correct and I just wanted to correct that. The government spent 61 hours in the legislative committee, its members of the committee, in terms of negotiating with members of the opposition addressing their concerns. Government was there and was responsive.
I want to respond to the question of the role of the member of Parliament with the minister. First of all, the government has made it very clear that the question of the humanitarian and compassionate grounds process is not visible and therefore is not properly accessible. Gordon Fairweather has been asked to design regulations and consult on how to make that process accessible because that is the place my colleague and I access the system for refugees.
If my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood is suggesting that as members of Parliament we should have a priority position in terms of our ability to affect the immigration procedure I do not think he would find support for this. Thousands of our constituents-more his than mine-have been waiting for years to have the system bring people into this country to reunite families. If he is suggesting that we should have a system, not necessarily in a priority, but a system more capable of responding to us and that the role of political interference in the system should be enhanced, I do not think there would be support for that across the country.
Yes, as representatives of the people we do have a responsibility to make the case. But to expect that we would have a role that would influence the system to benefit one over the other is something we should be very cautious of, particularly in the use of minister's permits. I would love to hear his comment on exactly that point.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's response to the point of amendments. I was quite specific when I mentioned that my colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace had specific amendments which were rejected last night one by one. Not one of them would have hurt any aspect of this bill. Every one of them would have improved it. That is the point I was making, that there was a rejection of an honest attempt to improve the bill.

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I want to go back to the point about the role of members of Parliament. I am not talking about political interference, but when I have a woman in my constituency office who has been a victim of violence, when she shows me a file that states a senior official wants to deport her and put her back into a situation where her life is in danger, as a member of Parliament I should be able to assess that crisis situation. I can tell you that it was not the first letter, the second letter or the third letter that brought results, it was when the member for Trinity-Spadina, the member from Hyde Park and myself-and we all know the case that we are talking about-did a full frontal assault on the government that we got some action.
That was just one case. I can tell you, and I say this with respect, in downtown Toronto we have a lot of immigration problems. We have situations where there are family trust opportunities, where people have a business. They expand and start another one and want to bring in a relative from another country. It all looks legitimate to me, but they get rejected by the officials. As a member of Parliament, what the heck are we here for if we are not to take those cases where people feel they are not getting proper justice from the Public Service?
I have a situation right now where I have written to the ambassador in South Africa about a young married couple, the Korolia family. The daughter is Canadian and married to a South African gentleman. She is pregnant. The father who is back here runs a successful business. He has offered him a job so the family can be reunited but the department has rejected giving him a work permit.
When that person comes in my door and asks for help, are you telling me I should say: "I am sorry, I cannot help you. Go and deal with the bureaucracy."


Ian Angus Ross Reid: I did not say that.


Dennis Joseph Mills: No, but you started off by saying that I am trying to interfere with the system. You are darned right I am trying to interfere with the system.
If the act is delegating to unelected officials the ability to make judgment calls without any kind of a judicial process, then surely to goodness they should understand that MPs, who are publicly accountable to the people who either support or not support that MP, should be given some respect.
I would suggest to the government that by and large I am with most officials in the Public Service of Canada all the way. I do not care whether it is in business or in government, but every now and again you run into some bad apples. There is nothing more frustrating than when you run into a bad apple when you are trying to represent somebody in a legitimate case. I do not care if you are an MP, you get crisis situations and that is what we are here for.
I just wish there was some kind of directive in this bill, as there is designated some kind of special judgment in respect to officials, that when members of Parliament are representing special cases, fully accountable, that they be properly heard on behalf of their constituents. I do not think the member for St. John's East really objects to that.


Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, I would certainly like to identify with the remarks of the member for Broadview-Greenwood.
On the issue of a member of Parliament having access to that process, the process is so basically outrageous and unfair that there needs to be some public representation made to the minister's office.
I just did a quick consultation with several of my colleagues and I cannot identify with the remarks of the hon. member when he said that the minister's office deals in a fair and equitable way with interventions from members of Parliament. I would use the example of many Indo-Canadians of the Sikh persuasion who live in the area that I represent. Parents are trying to bring children into the country. It takes years and often fails.
In the case of two brothers, the mother had gone to India. As tradition requires she had gone to arrange a marriage of the one who had become engaged. The majority of the family were all Canadians. The other brother gave up because of the outrageous time period. He wound up marrying the woman in India and the individual who became engaged is still waiting to have that ceremony conducted in Canada.
A Sikh member of our community, a Canadian citizen, and his wife had gone back to India. He tried to come back to visit his family, the majority of whom are British Columbians and Canadians. The immigration department refuses him a visitor's visa. It says: "You cannot visit. We think you are going to try and bring your wife
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into Canada to stay here". They had been long-time residents.
This process is so outrageous, it stinks so badly that it needs the intervention of members of Parliament to make sure there is fair play and justice. There ought to be a visa office in the Punjab. It is so overdue just on family unification and basic decency that this government ought to be putting that visa office in.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, my response to the member will be short.
I have a situation in my riding today and I am almost embarrassed to admit that I cannot do anything about it.
A Greek family has been here for 11 years. He got bad advice on his landing papers. He has two children, nine and eleven years old. Three weeks ago, after many representations from my office, the government deported the mother and family. Now the kids are living as wards of the state. When we have an immigration system that is acting that way and rejecting solid political advice, there is something wrong with it.


Mr. Harry Chadwick (Bramalea-Gore-Malton):: Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to indicate that I am splitting my time with the member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley, five minutes and five minutes.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member has 10 minutes maximum with five minutes questions or comments.


Harry Chadwick: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to debate a topic of such importance to the future of our immigration program.
The objectives of Bill C-86, the reunification of families, the protection of refugees and the promotion of economic growth were in fact in danger of being seriously compromised by the system's increasing inability to handle the convergence of pressures and by the related erosion of confidence Canadians were expressing toward our immigration programs and objectives.
In this climate, the government understood from the outset the urgent need for a constructive and open examination of the methods, processes and criteria we use to select and bring people to Canada. We understood as well that this examination had to involve as many Canadians as possible. That is why the government
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undertook the most broadly-based and yet focused consultative and educational immigration strategy in Canadian history.
These open-ended consultations dealt with such critical issues as the number of immigrants we would accept over a five-year period to meet our domestic needs and international goals; the speed with which we should bring immigrants to Canada in the context of our ability as a nation to handle the increase and the best way to integrate newcomers into our society.
As well, the past eight years have seen other significant developments, including a gradual and controlled increase in over-all immigration levels, a parallel expansion of the services essential to integrating new Canadians into our way of life and a long-overdue overhaul of our refugee determination system in response to historically unprecedented pressures on the program.
These amendments clearly provide Canada with the tools to manage change in the 1990s. A common thread running through all the consultations, deliberations and debate on Bill C-86 has been an acknowledgement of the need to manage our immigration program more effectively, with greater fairness and with greater relevance to the needs of Canada as a whole. This is what Bill C-86, as now proposed, sets out to accomplish. Specifically, the proposed amendments offer a rational, workable formula to manage change in three distinct but interrelated areas of immigration policy.
First, Bill C-86 provides the means to further streamline our refugee determination system to ensure that fair decisions are rendered and rendered quickly.
Second, Bill C-86 would better protect Canadian society by tightening enforcement and control measures to defend the integrity of the system and protect the public from those who would abuse our programs or break our laws.
Third, under these amendments we could select effectively those who come to Canada through improved management of the categories and numbers of immigrants, thus ensuring that immigration continues to contribute to our social development and economic prosperity.
If I may, I would like to touch very briefly on each of these three crucial areas.

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I believe everyone here today and most Canadians understand the need to streamline our refugee determination system. Quite simply, the time required to process claims and make decisions is still too long and that is not fair to legitimate claimants.
The speed with which we can remove rejected claimants remains slow and that erodes the effectiveness of the system. The consequence of all the delay is further pressure on costly support programs and that certainly is not fair to taxpayers.
The co-ordinated changes proposed in this bill will serve to create a more workable, clear-cut and streamlined refugee determination system. These changes include, among others, the elimination of the first level or credible basis hearing which was proving ineffective, improvements at the immigration and refugee board level to accelerate processing, cuts to administrative costs to allow genuine refugees to more quickly become part of the community, new procedures to expedite the landing of convention refugees with cuts of up to six months in the waiting time for landed status, and more timely, effective and fair removal procedures in cases where claims have been rejected.
The impact of these changes, including faster family reunification and a more efficient decision-making process will only enhance the special position Canada has in the world for its work on behalf of refugees. Complementing these changes, Bill C-86 proposes measures to better protect our immigration system from abuse.
At our borders we will give immigration staff the power to search individuals and to seize documents and vehicles used in smuggling operations. We will expand the authority of our immigration officers to fingerprint and photograph refugee claimants and increase the penalties for people caught smuggling. The net result of these efforts will be to more clearly distinguish between those who should benefit from Canada's generosity and those who should not.
Clearly, in a decade that promises continuing international volatility, large-scale movements of people and economic uncertainty, the ability to more effectively manage our immigration system is a priority. The changes Bill C-86 proposes will ensure that our immigration program can deal with change while fulfilling its time-honoured role as a contributor to national growth and prosperity.


Mr. Benno Friesen (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I have taken part in debates like this over the years. In 1975 I was a member of the green paper committee to examine the total reorganization of immigration legislation at that time. It was a major project because it had not been done for many years. The government of the day did a thorough job issuing study papers and providing background papers on the subject of immigration.
I also worked on this matter in 1987. I was the parliamentary secretary at the time when we were dealing with Bill C-55 and Bill C-84 and now as a member of the committee that dealt with this matter on Bill C-86.
I have had some continuity on the subject and I would like to offer some of my observations. As I say, in 1975 when we were debating this legislation and it came into effect in 1978, one of the fundamental tenets of that legislation was the determination on the part of the then Liberal government-and I agreed with its determination-that Canada is a sovereign country and coming to Canada is a privilege and not a right and that we as Canadians need to preserve the authority of our sovereignty.
In that mix we should never forget our commitment historically and to the present and contemporary days to compassion for those who have not had the advantages that we have today and to preserve those. In those days we designed refugee legislation that was to accommodate a flow of 300 refugees a year. That was about 1977, 1978.
The House will remember what happened when the boat people and their trauma came to our attention and Canada opened its gates. After that the idea of refugees took a dramatic turn in our consciousness in Canada. We have continuously wanted to maintain that posture of compassion and understanding, openness and hospitality to those people who are genuinely in need.
When we redraft legislation we have also to take a look at the process. The government drafts legislation on the basis of the information it has, on the basis of the agreement of its caucus. It drafts the legislation and then it is exposed to the opposition. The opposition does what it ought to do as good opposition parties do. It exercises its role in examining and opposing those sections that it
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believes are wrong. Any good opposition will do that and it will do it with all of the energy it possesses.
To give maximum exposure, to make sure that process works, we move into a committee system and, to speak frankly to it, in most cases the witnesses who come before the committee are brought there by and large, not exclusively, by members of the opposition. That is fine.
It is only as you sharpen the examination by people who oppose certain sections that you refine a bill. If everybody agrees you get very little refinement. I applaud that system.
Members of the opposition in this bill did an excellent piece of work. I commend the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace and the member for Spadina with whom I sat in committee who were thorough and persistent and who put forward amendments. They did very good work and I enjoyed working with them.
They opposed certain sections. They did not always oppose and that is what I appreciated about their work. They opposed where they thought they should oppose and agreed with those sections they thought were positive in their view.
If the member for Edmonton will be quiet for a minute I will carry on.


Mr. Kilgour:: Save us the cliches.


Benno Friesen: I have learned a few from you.
The committee did its work but in order to bring these witnesses we brought witnesses who opposed but what struck me in going through these processes, through these several stages that I have seen in my time here in Parliament, was that the same witnesses appeared several times and said the same thing each time, even though we were adjusting previous legislation.
For example, here is what Mark Schelew of Amnesty International said in 1987 when we were debating Bill C-55: "It is an about-face on Canada's humanitarian record that may place people fleeing persecution in jeopardy".
In 1992 when we were debating revisions to Bill C-55 he said: "We strongly urge you to stick to the status quo".
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What made the difference? In 1987 he opposes Bill C-55 and in 1992 he supports Bill C-55 and he says: "Do not change it. Keep it where it is. Do not do what you are going to do now in terms of adjustments".
I suggest that if we are going to have witnesses, they ought to be credible. To be credible, one ought to say something consistently. If one believes it in 1987, one ought to believe it in 1992, unless something has changed and it did. Reality set in.
While he condemned it in 1987 as being the end of compassion, he saw that in the intervening years between 1987 and 1992 the bill actually worked, that the refugees did come, that they had access, that the system was operating and that refugees were lining up to come to our shores. It was not exactly what he had thought it would be in 1987.
The Canadian Bar Association came before us this time, members like Lome Waldman of immigration fame. The Canadian Bar Association says the system is working. It says it in 1992 and Bill C-55 has done all right. Lome Waldman does not always agree with that and Lome Waldman in 1987, when he was opposing Bill C-55, said: "The long-term aim of the immigration department is to eliminate all refugee claims within Canada. The government has spent millions of dollars and innumerable hours consulting on this problem and everybody's recommendations have been ignored altogether".
It has not been so. Since when have we turned off the taps regarding the refugee flow? What Lome Waldman said in 1987 did not happen in the ensuing years. There is an old adage that if a prophet prophesizes and it does not come true, you ought to get rid of the prophet, at least the prophet's standing.
We had Gunter Plaut appear in 1987. He said: "If C-55 would have been applied to me when I was coming to Canada, I would not have been allowed into Canada. In 1992,1 have read the bill several times and sometimes it occurred to me that it would be easier if the clock were turned back to admit Nazis to this country, as we have done in some profusion, than to admit those they persecuted".

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In 1987 he says not to do C-55 and in 1992 says that it would be easier for Nazis to come in than for Jews. Can we accept the credibility of witnesses who say things like that, first of all that are not accurate and second that do not happen? As I say, the old adage is if the prophet prophesizes and it does not happen, maybe we ought to examine his prophecy status.
More than that, I want to point out that for all of the doom and gloom that has been sent our way regarding Canada's position on this issue, it has not come to pass. I point out that in 1987 the member for Vancouver- Kingsway at that time said this is a government that has cut back on immigration. When we came into office the flow was 89,000 and today it is 225,000 and he says it has been cut back.
When we want witnesses we ask them to be credible. To be credible they have to say things that are consistent. The fact is that Bill C-86 will strengthen our immigration system, it will keep out those people who are not interested in the welfare of Canada. I speak specifically to section 19(l)(k); people who are not interested in Canada's welfare but have other ulterior reasons for coming here. It consolidates Canada's sovereignty.
I confirm what the Liberal government passed in 1975, that Canada is a sovereign country. It is a privilege to come to this country. We want to extend that privilege to as many people as possible, to those who have the welfare of Canada at heart.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley for his comments which were mostly accurate, especially the parts that were so favourable to the opposition members now and the opposition members when he was in opposition.
However, I would ask him if he would acknowledge two points that he did not make but that were relevant. When people condemned Bill C-55-this was one of the major objects of condemnation-it had the principle of safe third country in it. When the witnesses came before us, that safe third country principle had not been amended.
It was partly amended within the committee and I believe the member will remember the day I came over to ask whether the word "any" could be introduced
there. I am told that word has made it a great deal better. I do not know whether the member thinks so.
What I am pointing out is that the condemnation was expressed before the amendments. Second, it was expressed before the minister of the time decided not to proclaim that safe third country section of the bill so that all the people who might have been sent away under the provisions of that were not sent away. They were allowed to have their claim examined.
Is it not true that the present bill restricts the safe third country provision further as it does not include the caution that was included five years ago; namely, that the person shall not be sent back there by the IRB if he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution in the country where they had refuge?
Those are two circumstances that the hon. member did not mention but that considerably changed the minds of some of the people I know who were concerned with refugee law and I am wondering if he would comment on those.


Benno Friesen: I would simply say to the member from Spadina that there are a lot of things about the bills that I did not mention, both Bill C-55 and Bill C-86.
I would say also that I would agree with him that he has proposed amendments that have perfected the legislation, and I think members of the department would agree. I do not say this with any sense of gratuity or anything else. I say it and I have said it to him privately that what he has done in committee has been very good work.
When he says that he included the word "any", I take his word for it. I believe he has made some good suggestions to the legislation.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: With your help.


Benno Friesen: Enough of the accolades now, right Dan? With regard to the safe third country concept, the difficulty with discussing this is that we lock ourselves into time periods. Safe third country was a concept which in 1987 and 1988 had an impact that it does not have today. The world has changed.
Tike a look at the iron curtain, take a look at what is happening in Latin America and in all other places in the world that have undergone very large changes. I subscribe to the safe third country concept because underlying the safe third country concept is the doctrine of
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refoulement on which the United Nations has spoken very straight forwardly and very eloquently.
I might say parenthetically that the Canadian representative of the UNHCR has endorsed this legislation, as the member will agree. The doctrine of refoulement is at the heart of what that convention is about and safe third country incorporates that concept so that refugees who had a genuine fear of being brought back into the area of persecution from which they had come should not be and would not be sent back.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make some general comments about the legislation before us today and about the operation of immigration facilities in particular.
It is interesting that over the years it has been one of the most difficult agencies for people to deal with. It also is one of the most poignant and heart-rending experiences when in a constituency office you are dealing on a regular basis with people who have come to Canada, set up homes, built businesses, got jobs and contributed to this country and then they attempt to reunite their families by bringing them to Canada.
Over the term I have been here, the government has professed to put family reunification up as a priority. I for one have to say that this is not a priority the way it is working when there are long, long separations between family members, between parents and children. When that occurs, it is very sad indeed. The first item is the problems that are as a result of enormous bureaucratic red tape. This is an agency that is absolutely overwhelmed. The resources to handle these cases in an expeditious manner are not in place and it becomes very difficult to tolerate. Tempers flare and there is a kind of sadness that pervades the entire process.
I have been working with a family on the sunshine coast for going on eight years where there has been an attempt to reunite a mother with her two children. Of course, as time goes on the children qualify at one point and they do not qualify at another. There are extensive delays. That occurs in the Philippines. There definitely needs to be some additional resources, especially applied to family reunification.
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The most difficult area I have found is working with Indo-Canadians, Sikhs who live on the west coast of Canada, immigrated to this country, made a tremendous contribution in terms of the work and to the community where they live. The people are hard-working, industrious, well thought of. They try to bring children into this country and there is just an enormous period of time before they are able to effect those reunifications.
In a lot of cases some minor medical ailment prevents the reunification altogether or there is a situation where the process drags on so long that because of the age of the child, the reunification cannot be carried out.
The member for Broadview-Greenwood mentioned an outrageous situation of an Indo-Canadian and his wife who came from the Punjab many, many years ago. He had become a citizen of Canada and his wife had not. They had raised their children in Canada and they are all Canadians. He went back to India after he retired. He wanted to pay a visit to his children in Canada and he was denied the opportunity. He could not even get a visa. The argument by some immigration officer who handled the case was: "What if he tries to stay in Canada. He is a Canadian and if he tries to leave his wife in India, that would be an outrageous thing". Such thoughtless and inhumanitarian approaches to immigration outrage everyone who touches that case. It is almost an argument that the motivation is racism that is putting those decisions in place. It goes on and on and on. There are many, many cases in a similar vain. It causes enormous frustration.
When you are dealing with the minister's office you invariably wind up with the folks for immigration who have been assigned to that office. I am absolutely assured that they handle what they can but they are overwhelmed by the task.
This is especially true for those that have been assigned to handle the work of 290-odd members of Parliament whose constituents are constantly raising these kinds of concerns. In that process of being overwhelmed, the file falls down and then it goes to a busy immigration office somewhere and it falls down. Months

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and months go by before you hear back. Usually it involves another process and more months go by.
It is an extremely frustrating situation for members of Parliament and for the families involved. These are not the marginal cases where there really is some question or doubt. These are legitimate family members who are known in the community, whose children are known and established in another area and it is simply a push for the reunification of that family.
For example, we have had situations with Chilean refugees where we could not make no headway. At that time it was not the Conservative government that was in power. It was a Liberal government. The minister at that time was the member for Winnipeg South Centre. The office was as difficult if not more difficult to deal with when the Liberals were in power. I guess it is probably the same thing; understaffed, no resources and maybe a difference in attitude if it is an Indo-Canadian family rather than another family that is trying for unification.
I recall when the member for Winnipeg South Centre was the minister of immigration how outraged the community of Campbell River in British Columbia was. There was a longstanding Chilean family who had come to Canada because of the tremendous conflict in Chile. They had established themselves working in the mines in this country and eventually in western mines outside of Campbell River. It wound up that a brother and his family had to leave Chile. The only place they could get to was Switzerland. They were being threatened with expulsion from Switzerland back to Chile.
It was virtually impossible to get any kind of co-operation from that minister's office or its staff. They came up with 10,000 reasons why that family could not be removed from Chile. One of the Chileans who worked in the mine there actually happened to be a high ranking officer in the police before he left Chile. The father used to be a general in the police force. When this family left Chile, the friends within the police force had said: "Hey, it is time to get out of this. Your union activities are not putting you in a very favourable light here and you are in serious personal danger".
It was a clear indication to him from his friends that they were not going to have a choice. Bad things were
going to happen to that family. That family was out of there in a shot to Switzerland. We fought like crazy. Finally almost every person in the city of Campbell River had to sign a petition and letters and go after the minister to say: "We know these people. We respect them and they are hard working members of our community. Family reunification is a legitimate thing to do". It took forever, but eventually that happened. This is a ridiculous thing to have to do.
These people were in clear personal danger. They were entitled to come as refugees. They had a very large family who were prepared to support them. That individual today is working in that mine as a constructive member of the community, well thought of and held in high regard like the rest of the family and does a tremendous job. Every person in that community who had known that large and extended family knew that would happen. Yet, you could not convince in any kind of a timely way the immigration office to do that.
Certainly the minister is busy. I do not say that in a derogatory way. The staff are overworked, but there are some very useful things that could be done. One of them is to provide more resources in the office so that when a member of Parliament's complaint is brought up, it can be handled in an expeditious way. These are not frivolous complaints.
The second thing is that there really does in some areas of the world need to be additional Canadian immigration or visa offices. The Punjab is an example. You get this crazy situation where it is thousands of miles to travel from the home village to New Delhi. You get to New Delhi. It takes forever to deal with them there. Month after month after month goes by. A medical that was valid at one period of time is no longer valid at another. By the time you get your appointment, your medical is gone. There should be a visa office there where the resources are easily within reach. It would certainly cut down the time if we are serious about reunification and we can put some of these families together that have been waiting for years to get together.
It is a simple matter of resources. I know the government has its program of cutting of government services, user charges for it, but these in many cases are really inhuman when it comes down to the family level.
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There is a person in Campbell River right now waiting to marry a woman for the last couple of years to whom he is engaged in India. His brother finally gave up the ghost, managed to go to India and marry the woman there without any of his family present but felt that he had to do it. He expects his wife to be in Canada much sooner than the other.
We have got some tremendously difficult situations where families cannot even visit. I have three quick suggestions that could make this a lot easier and a lot more humane. The first one is the government would respond. The government and the minister of immigration's office should respond quickly and effectively to the interventions of members of Parliament. These are not interventions for political purposes or to jump the queue. They are often to try and put parents and children or brothers and sisters back together. Those are the ones that really motivate people to act and make them extremely angry when they do not. Those interventions should be facilitated.
The second thing is that in the minister's office, and I bear no grudge against the people who work there, I think there needs to be more of them so they can move through these interventions more quickly.
If my riding is typical of many other ridings, there seems to be enormous log jams in the Philippines, the Punjab and India as a whole. There really does need to be some resources put into those areas so that visas are issued to parents wanting to visit their children, family members wanting to visit Canadian citizens. They are citizens like any citizen of Canada and yet they are being deprived of the opportunity to visit.
Nobody from Britain has this kind of difficulty. Nobody from Europe or any other area of the earth has this problem. In my experience, these two locations are a critical element.
Another thing seriously concerns me. I would just mention this. As we watch people leaving certain countries of the world, I wonder what is being done. I do not have the information. I raise these simply as flags. Certainly the tension and the difficulties in South Africa are creating enormous news today. We have watched people who we would consider as war criminals being given amnesty. Certainly they are not going to be able to live in their own communities.
I would expect that we are going to get a situation where there is an enormous demand for a place like
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Canada to accept these individuals. I would ask what is being done to make sure that we do not accept these people as citizens in this country.
We have the situation in El Salvador in Central America where people who have committed just horrible offences against humanity have been given amnesty by the government which inflicted many of these problems. I wonder what is being done to make sure that we do not get these individuals as citizens in this country. There are indications that process is under way and that has already happened.
With those remarks let us get greater attention paid to family reunification problems within the minister's office. Let us get more resources within those offices and in certain key bottlenecks where family reunification is probably the highest priority in immigration, concerns such as the Punjab and the Philippines. Let us get some resources into that area so that these visits and these reunifications can be obtained, where families can maintain contact and if possible be brought together.


Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer a few comments with respect to people from far away lands who want to visit Canada because you really wonder whether some of these cases are being handled fairly.
I know that immigration people are overworked, there is understaffing, but there are some cases that raise serious questions.
For example, there is a couple who has lived in my riding for more than 20 years. They are of Pakistani origin. They want to bring a nephew to Canada, just to visit for a few weeks in the summer. To secure that visitor's visa they are prepared to post a bond and pay a two-way aeroplane ticket to get the nephew to Winnipeg for a visit.
However there is no way they seem to be able to convince the minister's office and the Canadian authorities in Pakistan to provide that visitor's visa. They point out in a telex to me that the boy is about 15 and only in the ninth grade, although I do not understand the relevance of that. He has never travelled before, and I do not understand the relevance of that. The father of the nephew earns about $230 Canadian a month. I know it is not a lot of money for Canada but over in Pakistan I hear it is not that bad.

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The Canadian authorities in Islamabad, Pakistan, point out that given the economic situation, the lack of any previous travel and the commonly held belief that education and future opportunities are better in Canada, the visa officer was not convinced the boy would only be a visitor to Canada. We really have to wonder whether that is fair adjudication. Would they treat a case in this way if the nephew lived in France, Germany, England, Iceland, Sweden or Norway?
This family who lives in my riding is absolutely crushed. They consider themselves to be honourable and honest people. I want to read just a line or two from the letter that the uncle wrote to me: "Indeed myself and my wife love Kashif", the nephew's name, "very dearly and my only wish is to have him visit and experience the adventure of travel and see this country which would be an educational experience for him".
I have dealt with this case for months and I cannot get it moved. I just find there is something wrong. This is a young boy. The uncle and aunt simply want to bring him to Canada for a few weeks. They are prepared to offer anything to underline the fact that they are honest and not trying to play any games.
I feel that as a member of Parliament I have to bring this forward because I just do not think it is fair. It is these kinds of cases that make us wonder what is really going on.
If I could ask a question, I would like to ask the previous speaker whether he feels these cases are common in the area he represents.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I never seem to remember everything that has to go into a speech, but I identify completely with the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg-St. James.
Over the 13 years I have been here I do not know how many times we have asked immigration if we could put up a bond and to name the amount; we would get numerous people in the community. We know the families well. They are honest and have integrity. They would never break their word. Yet immigration will not even let a nephew or another relative visit. Many times I have offered to put up a share of that bond and have said: "I know these people. I have known them for 20 years. They are an honest, fine and upstanding group of people. I would trust them with anything". Yet immigration accuses them of conniving and trying to bring people into Canada illegally.
If there were to be another addition it would be a fourth item. If nothing else, let us put up a bond for people who we know and are trusted members of our community. We would put up the bond to endorse that these people are honest and upstanding and that we know they will live up to every letter of the conditions laid down by immigration.
I am very thankful the hon. member raised that, it is such an important point.


Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich-Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to comment on this bill.
We have seen this afternoon a theme developing on the examination of immigration problems in Canada that a disproportionate amount of time in the office of every member of Parliament is focused on the problems of immigration and visas and the heart-wrenching stories from constituents and families trying to bring in then-relatives from other countries. I am hearing echoes in this Chamber from my colleagues on both sides of the House.
The system is not working. What is at stake is Canada's reputation as a humane and caring society. If this government cares for Canada's reputation in that regard, I urge it to reallocate the resources necessary to do the job properly.
I know immigration officials in my constituency are overburdened. I phone them on a regular basis and usually there are more clients in the office than there is staff. If we have anything to do with that, as members of Parliament we have to expose this inadequacy. The morale in the immigration department is at a low ebb, and quite rightly so. They are the ones who are being targeted for all the criticism. It is not the immigration officials; it is the government that should be targeted for criticism.
Canada has a reputation of being a humane and caring nation. We do need immigrants of the kind that has been described in this House, hard working people. We do need a humane policy where families can be reunited even for a visit.
I know of two sisters originally from Sri Lanka who wanted to bring an auntie over who had served as a maid. But if one is not a white Anglo-Saxon, one is suspect; that may not be the reality but that is certainly the perception. As a Canadian member of Parliament, that
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perception eats at me because that spectre of racism is something that should be fought on all fronts.
I urge this government to reallocate the resources to address the problem in a real way so that Canada's reputation will stop being tainted.


Raymond John Skelly: Just to terminate my remarks, I identify as well with the remarks of the previous speaker that the immigration officers in the field are overworked, absolutely overwhelmed by an incredible task. There are many attempts at fraud and attempts to circumvent Canadian law, but in the process of defending that with resources that are too few and too far between a lot of honest cases get thrown to the wolves.
The point raised by the member for Winnipeg-St. James, the possibility of being able to put up a bond to allow somebody to come in on a visit, just a visit to keep family contact together, would be useful. More resources, greater attention to things like family unification items with the pleas of members of Parliament, visa offices and extensions of the visa offices into areas such as the Philippines, the Punjab and other hot spots with a tremendous build-up and where people get lost on the waiting list, would be very useful additions.
It would make honest Canadian citizens a lot happier in a more humane process.


Mr. Rob Nicholson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, if possible, I should like to split my time with another member of my party. I will not use up the total time allotted in saying a few words on this bill.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak. It is a very important piece of legislation, perhaps one of the most important pieces of legislation Parliament will pass. It touches an area that goes deep, to the heart of what we think of ourselves as Canadians and what we are as a nation.
I would start off by saying that this country has had a wonderful history of helping people and welcoming people to its shores. When I think of all the people on earth, I do not know which country has been more open
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and more generous over the years than the people of Canada. When there have been problems throughout the world, and there have been many, Canadians have responded.
I remember when I was a teenager there was a brief moment in the history of Czechoslovakia under communism when people were able to escape from that country. I remember many people coming to Canada and being welcomed. They were legitimate refugees escaping a tyrannical system in their own country and Canadians were glad to help them out. There are many examples in our history where people fleeing persecution have been welcomed to Canada's shores.
One thing I believe about Canadians is that they do not want their hospitality abused. They want a system of immigration and refugee determination that works. There is a perception-and I believe it is a correct perception-that the system has been breaking down in this country, that the system has not worked well.
Several years ago Bill C-55 was brought in by this government. It was designed to deal with a number of aspects of Canada's immigration and refugee determination. Many of the same arguments I have heard in this Chamber for the last couple of days I heard then. People were saying that Canada was closing its doors and that Canada was turning away legitimate refugees. I remember at the time having to look at the bill and thinking it was a reasonable response to a very difficult situation. As I say, I do not think my comments cooled down any of the rhetoric on either side.
I remember being at a meeting in Welland with the previous Minister of Employment and Immigration, now the minister of health. There must have been 20 or 30 people outside protesting with signs and handouts that Bill C-55 was going to do a number of terrible things.
All I can say is that did not come to pass. The bill was a reasonable attempt to deal with a very difficult problem. I would suggest that we have the same thing today with this bill. I do not agree with the critics who say that Canada is turning its back on legitimate refugees and that Canadians are setting up a hostile environment for people who want to come to this country.

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It is just the opposite. One very frustrating aspect is the widespread belief, and I believe there is basis to it, that the system is breaking down, that the system is being abused. I get this all the time from individuals very close to Canada's refugee determination system. They will tell me that our system is a mess, is not working and is open to abuse.
As a member of Parliament I make considerable use of surveys I take of my constituents. There is always a danger when we send out surveys that we will skewer the result one way or the other. I cover a wide range of topics when I send out surveys, but it came back loud and clear that the concerns of the refugee determination system were not limited to people very close to the system. It is a perception in my case of the people of Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake who write to me and return my surveys. They say there is something wrong with a system that takes so long to process refugees or does not move quickly against individuals abusing the system.
That feeling is out there. These are ordinary Canadians, Canadians who I know are a part of the generous and open country I believe is Canada. I believe it is incumbent upon us to respond to those legitimate concerns.
This is why I have said personally to the Minister of Employment and Immigration when I have seen him that he was on the right track and this was an opportunity to put in a place a system that worked better for everybody.
This is a step in the right direction, removing individuals who are blatantly trying to abuse the system. At the same time it is fair to the individuals who are legitimate refugees. One very frustrating fact that every member of Parliament faces are individuals who get caught up in the system and are waiting for years. The huge backlog militates against them trying to get established in Canada and getting on with their lives.
The minister's bill that attempts to try to streamline the process, expedite the process, is in the best interest of everybody. That is one of the reasons I welcome it. I ask hon. members to remember the arguments that were made five or six years ago with Bill C-55, that those things did not come to pass; that in fact Canada did not close its doors in 1986 and we are not going to be doing that here with this bill.
I was talking with the parliamentary secretary just before this about the subject of safe third countries. I live in a border community. This comes into play in my area.
I can say quite frankly after I was elected in 1984 I had a group of individuals come in to see me, wanting to talk about the refugees from Buffalo. I said: "From where?". They said: "The refugees from Buffalo". I know they have trouble paving the roads over there and I know they have some difficulties, but I never quite heard of refugees coming. I was told the refugees were not exactly from the United States. They were from other countries, came to the United States and then they came to Canada. In my ignorance of the particular circumstances I said: "Why come here? They are safe in the United States". They said: "They don't like it, you know, the Reagan administration and all these things are very difficult for them".
I see Mr. Clinton has indicated in some of his campaign speeches that there will be a change of direction in the United States. I say that without having specific knowledge of the American refugee determination system except to say I believe they have a system. They subscribe to the same laws as we do.
I have to disagree with those individuals who say to me that there is no third party, there is no safe country, we cannot accept people staying anywhere. I always say to them that if the United States is not a safe third country, I am not going to argue with them. They may not like the Reagan administration or its successor but how about other countries of the world? How about Britain? Britain has a system of law that as far as I know is very similar to Canada's. Can they stay in Britain? Is that a safe third country?' I am told the best idea is to have them all here in Canada. All the refugees should come to Canada.
There are many Canadians, myself included, that say no. I can see where an individual is at risk in his homeland, but I cannot go the next step and say it is not good enough if they have been to Britain to have their case decided, or any other country in the world. I cannot buy the argument that Canada is the only place, particularly when some of these critics were telling me six years ago that Canada was becoming a terrible place, that it was closing its doors. I disagreed with them then, I disagree with them today.
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I see my time is just about up and I certainly want to share it with my colleague, Mr. Speaker. I ask members of Parliament to talk to their constituents, even talk to the individuals who are legitimately wanting to immigrate. It is a frustrating thing when people say to me: "Pm trying to bring in my relatives from the old country but the delay is horrendous" because much of our resources are directed toward security in the refugee determination system and it becomes very difficult for them to bring in their relatives from the old country.
It is in all our interests to support a bill like this which I believe strikes a reasonable compromise. There are many members of the New Democratic Party and many members of the Liberal Party who say this bill is not reasonable. I think it is. If we turn our mind back to just six years ago, that was a reasonable bill. I suggest this is a reasonable attempt to correct what each of our constituents is telling us is a problem.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the remarks of the member from Niagara Falls. I just want to say that when he talked about the issue of abuse, I do not think anyone in this House would disagree with him. We certainly are not promoting in any way an abuse of the system, for that matter an abuse of any system.
What we are trying to communicate to the government, as we debate this very complex bill, is the fact that we are being presented with cases on a regular basis where the system is abusing the individual. The judgment that the system is abusing the individual is being presented to us and as MPs, it is our job to make an evaluation whether or not the person is abusing the system or the system is abusing the individual.
I have had many cases where I have believed that the person was abusing the system and I told them that I could not help them. What we are concerned about is when we have a legitimate case and we need a mechanism to plug into that humanitarian and compassionate ground spirit which exists in the bill. We need a system that will react to that in an expeditious manner and respect the judgment that we are making on the individual cases.
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Does the member not feel this is a reasonable request, when MPs are being presented with cases and are putting their own accountability on the line concerning whether it is a good case or a bad case? Let us assume that it is a positive one and we go to bat.
Does he not think it is reasonable that there should be some respect, that the system should react to our judgment in an expeditious way?


Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, the member touched on a couple of things.
He talked about the question of whether in some cases it is a question of the individual abusing the system or whether it is the system abusing the individual.
Let me say that I disagree with any system that takes years for there to be a determination. I agree with that in the refugee determination system, I agree with it in the criminal system and I agree with the idea that justice delayed is justice denied. It would be wonderful if we all lived until we were 300 and would have time for these things.
However, people's lives are short and a reasonable determination with safeguards is what we need. To that extent, I believe that a system that cannot cope within a reasonable period of time is a system that in a sense abuses the individual who was a part of that. I hope this bill will expedite that. I believe it will.
On the other hand, the member has said that he has seen examples. Certainly in my riding of Niagara Falls, from individuals close to it I have heard the opposite, of individuals abusing the system. What we want to do is strike a reasonable balance and that is why I support the bill.
With respect to the last part of the member's comments which he turned into a question: Should the opinions of members of Parliament be respected? Should they be listened to in the system? Of course they should be. We are in the business of trying to help individuals. None of us who has appointments each week in our ridings can escape the fact that people come in to see us and they want help.
They want us to expedite their case. They want us to cut through red tape. They want help from the system and therefore, to that extent, I agree with the hon. member that the system should take into consideration that members of Parliament have a legitimate concern in helping the people who live within their constituency and

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that their views should be taken into consideration in the system.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before resuming debate, 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 Ottawa-Vanier, Linguistic Duality; the hon. member for Mount Royal, Employment; the hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway, Christine Lamont and David Spencer; the hon. member for Davenport, Substance Abuse; and the hon. member for Comox-Alber-ni, Human Rights.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for St. John's East for 10 minutes maximum.


Ian Angus Ross Reid: Mr. Speaker, I take your very subtle hint very subtly.
I find it interesting as we look at the conclusion of this debate that we have come to view the bill from the perspective of the member of Parliament. In most cases I think many of us would have an aversion to doing that. It speaks very much about the role that members of Parliament play in the immigration and the refugee determination system, partly because of the frustration so many people feel, partly because we are seen in many cases as the front line of government, partly because those that need our help with the system have a different type of political culture than we do.
I have been quite involved because of the influx of Bulgarians and eastern Europeans to St. John's and other parts of Newfoundland and I have quite willingly and actively made their case before the minister, before the IRB and certainly before the department in the agency process.
I can tell you with some pride that we have had small but very important results. The one I take the greatest satisfaction from is the Neuman Boykoff case where the minister in the national interest granted a minister's permit.
We have heard a number of comments about the minister's office and the department and their ability to respond. We have over the last few days heard a litany of cases. I too could stand here and rhyme off a series of
cases that I am not satisfied with but it is important to recognize that we have a perspective problem sometimes.
The department deals with over one million applications a year from all over the world to come to this country. This year we are expecting to admit 250,000 people. My view on those numbers is well known. I hope it can be increased. It benefits our country, particularly the regions and provinces like mine.
When we look at the concerns and the numbers of problems, it is important that we look at it in the perspective of the volume that is being dealt with, not only inside Canada but by those who represent this country on the front line around the world.
My friend from North Island-Powell River raises some concerns about our ability to be responsive in different parts of the world. It is important that we recognize that not only the flexibility but the initiative to be responsive is one the things that is important and is contained in Bill C-86.
Before I leave the minister's office-and God forbid that I defend the Minister of Employment and Immigration, particularly after what he has put me through in the last five months-but one great frustration the minister's office and the department has is the Privacy Act. A number of times I have found myself standing before the minister making a case when he quite simply was only able to say no to me. I was able to find out after the fact that the base of the case I was making was erroneous. I was factually wrong. The position of the minister and the department is that they are unable to make a case. I have been part of that. I suspect I will be part of it again. However, it is a situation they find themselves in and that we all find ourselves in.
We have heard about the most difficult problems we as members of Parliament face and as members of Parliament we reflect what our constituents see and that is the question of visitors' permits. One thing this legislation does is remove an assessment of the whole family whether they are coming to this country on a visitor's visa or not. We have discussed a series of amendments on how best that problem can be dealt with. One of the problems of setting criteria is that it becomes a condition against what we must give a visitor's visa for. Despite the
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fact that criteria are met and we know the visitor may be inclined to stay in the country, we are not able to say no.
One of the better suggestions came from my colleague from Scarborough-Rouge River who talks about the bond. However, one downside is that the bond becomes something that is either not able to be collected upon or becomes a fee. I believe there is a nub there that should be pursued. People that want to come to this country are repeatedly denied access, quite often after coming here successively with no problem. It is something we must be able to respond to over a period of time.
One of the other great concerns that has been expressed is the question of family reunification. That continues to be a concern. We have heard a number of things said about it. There is no question that the ability to process applications more quickly is going to benefit those who have a focus on family reunification. The change in the assessment of applications from a post by post basis to a global basis not only will make the assessments faster for most people, but it will make them fairer. Whether you apply in Delhi or apply in London, your application will be assessed relative to all the other applications, not just those in the post that you have applied to. The busier posts will not demand applicants wait longer.
The flexibility that we talk about is also found in the minister's ability to set up centres of excellence. He has made it clear this will not apply in areas such as family reunification, but it will allow us to move our resources around to respond to the needs of demand, be it in the Punjab or wherever. Perhaps because there is a real focus for investor applicants in a certain area, we will be able to set up a focused processing centre, a centre that specializes in one particular area.
In terms of family reunification, I think it is important to recognize that Bill C-86 says that in the case of refugees, dependent children or family in that sense will be assessed with the refugee. Medical provisions that would normally apply will be waived and it is hoped that will allow for family reunification of refugees in as quick a period as six months.
There was a comment a little bit earlier that involved the question of race and ethnicity and preference in the system. I thought I did not need to remind this House
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about the application of the charter to the government as it relates not only to people in this country, whether they be citizens or not, but people around the world.
I think it is very important that we recognize the source of immigration into this country. In order of source, they are in January to December 1991 Hong Kong, Poland, China, India, the Philippines, Lebanon, and Vietnam. Seventy-five per cent of the immigrants into this country are coming from Asia, South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East or the Pacific. Three per cent come from the United States and 21 per cent come from Europe. I think it is important that Canadians not have a misconception about the source of immigration and the focus of the immigration policy around the world.
We have heard a lot about this bill. One of the great frustrations for those of us who have tried to deal with this bill is coming to understand how immigration law works and how the law and sections in the act relate to each other. I expressed concerns in the veiy beginning, particularly about the refugee determination system, and the role of the SIO. I was also, frankly, quite concerned about the appeals process. I expressed some concern about the provisions it would provide for fingerprinting. No, I am not 100 per cent satisfied. I never will be. Frankly, if that was able to be done in the designing of legislation, I would be worried about it.
There is fear whether we can guarantee as best we can refuge to those that come to our shores demanding it that do not have refuge elsewhere that we can give them that, that the system is fair in terms of our ability to make proper assessments about refugees and about immigrants and that we are not keeping people out of this country merely on a whim or on a trumped up reason.
I believe at this point that Bill C-86 is a legitimate attempt at balance, protecting the interests of Canadians and our tradition of responsibility around the world.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief question for the member for St. John's East. He has referred to the need and the possibility of speeding up applications and processes and so on. I would like to ask him whether he believes that the telephone and mail-in system proposed for Vegreville, Alberta, will overcome the backlogs that I have been told-I do not claim to have seen them-exist in the

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Toronto and Vancouver offices where the pilot projects are.
I understand that in Vegreville they will have good supervision, from the Deputy Prime Minister if necessary, but can the member comment on the status of possible backlogs in the pilot projects and whether that new system will work according to schedule.


Ian Angus Ross Reid: Mr. Speaker, as my friend knows

and I thought he had a legitimate question until he put in the political dig-there are no guarantees, quite obviously.
I go back to one of the first things I said in my comments a moment ago; we tend sometimes to lose perspective. The perspective that I would bring him back to is so much of the application process and the processing is pro forma. I have been dealing with a man here in this city who was trying to have his family come in from Africa. He has to go to Cornwall to physically sit down and fill out the application. Why, I am not quite sure. His response to me was that it was quicker.
I think the process in terms of being able to clear off the majority of the things that can be dealt with and have been done in a system that responds to the ability of the officers to deal with it, when there is no need for a face-to-face meeting, will cut down the time. I think that processing and that process will, in fact, allow us to separate the easy from the tough.
The minister talked about perhaps evolving a system where there would be automatic approvals without any process. Where it is very evident in a refugee determination case that this person is indeed a refugee, you do not need to have a hearing; go straight ahead and avoid all of that problem. I think if we can do that, if we can focus the system such that that which does not need our attention and our resources in any complicated way is speeded up, so that the resources are available for the things that are difficult, that are tricky, that are going to take time, either in terms of work or in terms of thinking, we in this country will be much better served as well as those who depend on that system to do exactly that.


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, the member was telling us he was not going to defend the minister and then proceeded to defend the minister.
Would the member tell us, since my experience has been extremely negative with this minister in terms of granting cases on the compassionate discretion which all ministers have, if he knows just how many cases this minister has approved under his ministerial discretion since he took office. My experience in Edmonton, and I believe it is the experience of members in every part of the country, presumably including St. John's East, is that this minister has been reluctant to allow any case on a matter of ministerial discretion.


Ian Angus Ross Reid: Mr. Chairman, we may be mixing it up. I know my colleague across the way does not do it deliberately. There is a process for appeal under humanitarian and compassionate grounds to officials in the department. There is also the process that would allow the granting of a minister's permit, which is separate.
I have had a number of cases that I have brought to the minister's attention. On the largest and most controversial, the minister made a decision that was positive in terms of a world renowned sculptor who had come to St. John's and had set up in St. John's, both at university teaching young people and doing unbelievable sculpture in the constituency of our friend from Burin-St. George's in commemoration of miners at the St. Lawrence mine.
What I think is important is that the minister recognizes that the system does not work and has not worked. The key reason it has not worked is because it is not visible and it is not transparent. He has asked the now retired first chairman of the IRB, Gordon Fairweather, if he would design regulations in consultation with the community to provide for criteria against which a humanitarian and compassionate appeal can be made. One of those clearly is the question of changed circumstances. Another is the question of the IRB not being as responsive as it should be or where conditions are the same. These are the sorts of things he is doing.
That is because this minister recognizes that that process and the pressure upon him and his successor and predecessor ministers is something people have a great deal of difficulty with and that process with Mr. Fair-weather is in fact in response to the community who has asked him to do exactly that.
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Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by making a few comments about why we need immigration to Canada.
I am sure all of my colleagues on both sides of the House as well as Canadians in general will agree that if we are not to allow immigration to Canada, by the year 2011 we will start to see a decline in terms of our present population.
To that extent that will pose a tremendous challenge to both the government as well as to the people of Canada in terms of the shrinking tax base in Canada. Simply put, by the year 2010 we will have almost double the amount of people on the retirement role in terms of people who are receiving pensions. We will have a shrinking in terms of the work force and, as such, we will have less taxes being paid to the government coffers.
That by itself is a good reason why we have to look for means and ways in order to do two things: first, continue to provide the quality of services to the people that they are accustomed to. At the same time, that will be good reason for us to say that without immigration, we will not be able to survive as a nation for very long.
The hon. member mentioned the fact that the vast majority of immigrants to Canada come from Third World countries. That is true and I want to tell him why. Simply put, it is because historically immigration to Canada has always been from countries where they have depressive regimes, a lack of economic opportunities, civil wars and so on.
All these people who have come to this country since the very early days up until now have come from countries where opportunities were not available. Certainly another factor why we are not getting immigrants from Europe is because Europe is faced with the very same situation we are faced with. That is a decline in terms of the population in Europe. The birth rate in Europe is in the same category as that in Canada. They do not have enough production in terms of population in order to sustain the population growth.
That is why we do not see many people coming from Europe to Canada. The other reason is that they have good opportunities in Europe and there is no reason for them to emigrate.
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A cohesive immigration policy would be good from both the outside as well as the inside. In other words, if somebody is to look at it as a package, they will look at the input and find the input to be going well and working smoothly and find the output also going well and working smoothly.
From the input in terms of the people who are coming to Canada, the system is not really working efficiently. I am not saying this because I want it to be personal or because I want to attack the government. Sometimes the government has not put enough resources on the outside in terms of the immigration offices abroad, around the world, in particular in countries where there is a lot of demand on our immigration offices.
As such, there is a big overload there. We are finding more and more people trying to jump the queue, jump the system and find shortcuts. That is why we are seeing some people taking the risk of trying to buy their way into Canadian society and dealing with the problems when they are here. To help alleviate and solve that problem the government has to provide more resources. Another thing is that once those immigrants arrive in Canada, it does not matter whether we are talking about family class, government sponsored refugees, business class or the independent applicant, they just get into society-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. It being 4.45 o'clock p.m., pursuant to order made Monday, November 23, 1992, in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading of the bill now before the House.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the yeas have it.

Government Orders
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Call in the members.


PAIRED MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Larrivee	Milliken
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the motion carried.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 30(6), the House will now proceed to consideration of Private Members Business as listed on today's Order Paper.
November 24, 1992



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Douglas Fee: moved that Bill C-305, an act respecting the award of the Victoria Cross, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to finally be able to rise in this House to speak to my private members' bill, Bill C-305, an act to restore the Victoria Cross. It seems to have taken a long time to get to this point.
I presented Bill C-305 for first reading in this House on October 2, 1991. In the interim, I have been very encouraged by the support that the principle incorporated in this bill has generated across the country. It is also most gratifying to see the support that the Victoria Cross has received within this House.
I have members on both sides of the floor offering support and encouragement for the reinstatement of the Victoria Cross as Canada's premier military decoration. The Victoria Cross is a simple piece of bronze suspended from a crimson ribbon. The bronze is cast in the shape of a cross with the royal crest and simple inscription for valour. The cross is made of bronze taken from a cannon captured during the Crimean War.
The decoration is older than the dominion of Canada. It was first instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856. One of the first Victoria Crosses issued was to a Canadian. Lieutenant Alexander Dunn from Toronto won his Victoria Cross in the Crimea in 1856 during the famous charge of the light brigade. Since then, 93 Canadians have received the Victoria Cross.
Lieutenant Colonel Fred Tilston of Toronto recently passed away, leaving two living Victoria Cross recipients in Canada, Charles Cecil Ingersoll Merritt and Ernest Smokey Smith, both of whom live in British Columbia. They earned their Victoria Crosses during the Second World War.
Across Canada we hear of many stories about the heroes who have won the VC. It is interesting to note that the third Canadian to win a Victoria Cross was
Private Members' Business
William Hall. William Hall was from Nova Scotia and he was black. His award for gallantry was presented in 1857 at a time when members of his race in the United States were still in slavery.
Canada Post recently did a beautiful vignette on Valour Road in Winnipeg. The nation notes with sadness the passing, and reports on the health, of any recipients of the Victoria Cross whenever they fall ill or pass away. The Victoria Cross has a significance that is too important to lose.
If we allow the Victoria Cross to disappear, our nation is diminished. For that reason, the debate this afternoon is extremely important. The Victoria Cross is a prominent symbol for Canadians. It is a symbol of our history, our heritage and respect not only for those who have earned the Victoria Cross through their gallantry but for those who fought along side of them. They fought in defence of liberty, freedom and peace.
It is also important because there is a proud tradition in this country, a military tradition, that most Canadians do not know or understand. Canada is a peace loving nation. We have never initiated a war and, God willing, we never will. It is not the Canadian nature to attempt to take by force of arms that which is not our own.
We have answered on several occasions the call to arms in defence of liberty and freedom. What is important in this debate and important in this House is that we understand that the courage and bravery recognized in the 93 Canadians who have received the Victoria Cross still exist.
We still have brave, courageous men and women who even today serve under the flag of the United Nations, proudly wearing the Canadian flag on their shoulders. They are willing to undergo personal risks and exhibit extreme bravery. Canadians make a contribution to peace and freedom far in excess of the expenditures of our country, but that is another story.
For those who serve today, the premier military decoration ever awarded to a Canadian is not at this time available. It is not recognized in the Canadian honours and awards system.
Canada has evolved on the road to independence. The evolution of a Canadian system of honours and awards began in 1967 and was implemented in 1972. At that time, through an omission, the military decorations

November 24, 1992
Private Members' Business
awarded to Canadians were all basically dropped, deleted or ignored.
It was suggested that separate Canadian military decorations would eventually be established and the Victoria Cross may be replaced by a distinctly Canadian decoration. Twenty years later no decision has yet been announced.
The Prime Minister rectified one oversight when he indicated that all Victoria Crosses won prior to 1972 could still be properly worn as the premier decoration. However, no provision has been made for any such medals to be awarded after that date. That is why we are here today engaging in this debate.
I became aware of just how seriously Canadians consider this problem when I was talking to a Royal Canadian Legion Branch in Sylvan Lake. At that time I explained why it no longer existed in the Canadian honours and awards system. It indicated to me in very strong language that it did not want just an explanation, it wanted the medal reinstated. It challenged me and asked me to do something about it. It is because of that branch and because of the hundreds of other veterans who have been encouraging me that I stubbornly persisted in pushing this bill forward.
This bill is written to establish a Canadian Victoria Cross. It proposes that it be distinctly Canadian, the premier decoration for bravery and would be incorporated into the orders of precedence of the Canadian honours as the senior gallantry award. Victoria Cross records would be maintained at the chancellery at Government House and costs associated with administration would be assumed by the Canadian government for Canadian purposes. Any future changes to the royal warrants would be issued by the Queen of Canada.
I feel very strongly that the principle of retaining the Victoria Cross not only has my support and the support of a majority of members of this House, but the support of all veterans' organizations, many serving members of the Armed Forces, the Monarchist League of Canada and the support of thinking Canadians.
The Royal Canadian Legion at its convention in 1986 passed a resolution petitioning the Prime Minister to restore the Victoria Cross as an award made to members
of the Armed Forces for valour. Again, this year at its convention in Quebec City it unanimously endorsed a similar resolution asking the Government of Canada to retain the Victoria Cross as the highest available decoration for valour. It added that the responsibility for recommending and awarding the Victoria Cross should rest with the Government of Canada with the investiture made by the Governor General as the representative of the Queen in Canada.
Bill C-305 has been endorsed by many members of this House. I thank the many members who have written in support and offered encouragement of the bill. I am also encouraged that the Prime Minister is on record in the Legion's magazine as recognizing the special place of the Victoria Cross in the history of the Armed Forces. The Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition has also written in support of it, as has the leader of the New Democratic Party.
By presenting this bill I implore the government to heed the call of Canadians to respect our military tradition and our heritage, to establish military awards to recognize potential bravery and courage on behalf of our serving military personnel. I encourage it to follow the lead of Australia and, with the consent of the monarch, to re-establish the Victoria Cross of Canada as the premier military decoration. In so doing we are honouring the 93 brave Canadians who have been recognized. We also honour those who fought beside and in the tradition of them. We honour an award that was first presented by Queen Victoria to a Canadian.
Many times we debate in this House bread and butter issues, issues that have to do with the stomach and the wallet of the nation. We are talking here of an issue that affects the heart and soul of that nation. This is not an expensive issue. It costs this country very little to recognize bravery, courage, commitment and sacrifice. It costs very little. Ib those who have been recognized with Victoria Crosses, the cost to them in many cases has been horrendous.
Last week I paid tribute to the late Colonel Fred Tilston who, while showing extreme bravery at the battle of Hochwald Forest in 1945, was wounded three times and eventually lost both his legs. It cost the nation very little to give him the Victoria Cross and recognize his extreme bravery. What it cost Col. Tilston is far more than that.
November 24, 1992

We all pray that no Canadian ever need face armed conflict or go to war against another. It was just two years ago that Canadians joined other forces of the United Nations to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Today Canadian peacekeepers are active in 12 countries and those brave men and women in many cases face danger on a daily basis. We do not have a military decoration to recognize any who show extreme bravery in those circumstances. It is reprehensible that we are in that situation and it is reprehensible that we have not done anything to rectify it.
An argument has been made that this is perhaps not a proper topic for a bill before the House of Commons. A valid argument was made that honours and awards are properly established by the royal prerogative rather than a bill of the House of Commons. I have been convinced that this might be so and I would not want this bill to detract in any way from the significance of the Victoria Cross, but I do feel it is important that all members in this House have the opportunity to express themselves.
I would offer that nothing can detract from the significance of the Victoria Cross and it should be re-established.
By carrying on with this debate I want to indicate very strongly the arguments and reasons for reinstating the Victoria Cross. I do not intend to let my efforts to get this medal reinstated as the premier Canadian military decoration stop at all. I intend to pursue the matter with the Prime Minister, the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Veterans Affairs and whoever else need be contacted.
The Victoria Cross is an international honour. It is available still to members of the Commonwealth. Like other international honours such as the Nobel Prize, the Victoria Cross has transcended geographic and political boundaries. Ninety-three Canadians have been awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous acts of bravery and daring. This links us to a tradition going back to the Crimean war. It is older than our nation. The Victoria Cross will always have a special place in our honours and awards system and that place should be front and centre.
I will try and be short because I know there are several other members who want to address the issue as well.
Private Members' Business
The Victoria Cross is very special to Canadians and nothing that we can say or do in this House is necessary to embellish the bravery of those Canadians who have been recognized with it. Likewise, we cannot diminish the significance of those that have been awarded. It is going to stand throughout our history as the premier military decoration ever awarded to a Canadian. Even if through some mishap we fail to restore it to the forefront of the Canadian honours and awards, we cannot dimmish its significance. Our failure to do so will diminish our significance because no nation that aspires to greatness, and Canada is a nation that has the potential for greatness, will ever achieve it if it refuses to honour those who made that greatness possible.
It would be our shame if we were to sit back and let this important part of our history and heritage be lost. Canada should have its own military honours. The fact we do not is a ludicrous oversight and it makes no sense for us when establishing military honours to discard the tradition of an award that has been revered by all Canadians; a tradition that reminds us that when we are called to battle Canadians have always conducted themselves with honour and with bravery.
I have been very inspired by reading the reasons for the awarding of several of the Canadian VCs. Canadians do not know enough of our military history and heritage. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that we have allowed the travesty that this bill attempts to correct to occur.
In my riding alone there are three items that are connected to the Victoria Cross. Canadian Forces detachment in Penhold has recognized with Mynarski Park the bravery of Pilot Officer Andrew Mynarski who lost his life during the Second World War while attempting to save a comrade who was trapped in a burning Lancaster bomber. The medal that his family received was small consolation for the supreme sacrifice that he bravely paid to attempt to save a comrade.
I have also been watched very closely by members of the R. L. Zengel V.C. branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in Rocky Mountain House. Sergeant Ray Zengel was a native son of Rocky Mountain House. He won his Victoria Cross in the First World War and his medal is a prized possession of that branch.

November 24, 1992
Private Members' Business
Why do Canadian youth not know the stories of our heroes? Why do we not celebrate their accomplishments and thank God for their contributions and sacrifices? If we as a nation truly appreciate what they did, we would all understand the significance of this piece of bronze and we would all join in demanding its reinstatement.
Stories of valour extend into every province and area of Canada. I attended a 100th anniversaiy in my riding last summer and one of the most significant elements in that family's history and anniversary was the Victoria Cross, won by one of the members, Corporal Alex Brereton.
Two weeks ago during remembrance services in all comers of this nation we listened to the intonation: "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them".
We all replied then, along with millions of grateful Canadians: "We will remember them". Yet every year fewer Canadians can remember the sacrifices of those who served in wartime and even fewer who can remember the faces of those who paid the supreme sacrifice.
To lose the Victoria Cross is to lose the faith of those who selflessly sacrificed and contributed so much to our development as a nation and earned us the freedom and strength of the nation we enjoy.
I am asking in this bill that we not allow the symbol of recognition given to the bravest of the brave to be diminished. I am asking that we restore the Victoria Cross and all it symbolizes to its rightful place of predominance in Canadian honours and awards.
The time allotted today does not possibly allow for all members who would like to speak on this topic to do so. It is an important issue, one that many members should be participating in. Therefore I would ask the unanimous consent of the House to make that possible by designating Bill C-305 as a votable item.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: 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. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take part in this debate. I congratulate the member for Red Deer on his initiative in bringing forth this private member's Bill C-305 to reinstate the Victoria Cross.
I have long advocated that Canadians should take more pride in themselves, our institutions, our history and our heroes. The Victoria Cross, even though it was originally an award from the British government, has long epitomized Canadian heroism. People from around the world admire and respect those 90-plus Canadians who have been decorated with the highest military award that could be possibly be won by a Canadian serviceman or woman.
The Victoria Cross is the stuff of which legends are made. As has been mentioned by my hon. colleague from Red Deer, the names on the honour rolls, including Billy Bishop, Smokey Smith and one person from my home province, Frederick Thornton Peters, the only resident of my province to win the Victoria Cross, summon up the vision of selfless heroism in the face of danger. To read the stories of these people who were awarded the Victoria Cross, one cannot imagine what they went through in the face of so much danger. It was not uppermost in their minds at the time; certainly they had no thoughts of receiving the medal. A year ago I had the opportunity to travel to Italy on a pilgrimage with veterans. One of the men I spoke about, Smokey Smith, was there and we visited the area where he received his medal.
It is my sincere wish also that the young people of Canada could see these heroic figures in the same light as they see many of the heroes of other countries, especially the United States. I believe that we in this country are far too quick to look beyond our shores and ignore many times the people and much of the heritage of our own country. The reinstatement of the Victoria Cross as a Canadian award would help to alleviate this problem.
I strongly support the reinstatement of the Victoria Cross as the highest Canadian award for valour and would urge members of this House to support this private member's bill. We are certainly mature enough as a nation to retain this honour with its historic name
November 24, 1992

and have it remain as the greatest symbol of Canadian heroism.
I agree that the medal could be awarded along the lines it is in Australia, with Canadians making the determination as to whom should receive the medal. It will therefore take its rightful place as the greatest honour a Canadian could possibly receive. I hope each of us in the Chamber will take the stand on this matter that our conscience dictates.
Since I have been in the House I have been troubled by the relative lack of importance which sometimes is attached to private members' bills and to the whole process of bringing private members' bills before the House.
I feel the executive branch of government does not always attach much importance to the backbenchers on either side of the House. A very talented group of members have been elected to the House of Commons, but under the constraints imposed by rigid party line and party discipline many of their good ideas never come to the floor of the House of Commons.
I had sincerely hoped that during the constitutional discussions and all the parliamentary hearings the message would have come through loud and clear that members of this House should be given a greater role in the formulation of legislation.
To my mind one of the major reforms which must be carried out in this country is the strengthening of the role of members of Parliament. From talking to other members in this House, I know there is widespread support for this particular piece of legislation, the one we are discussing today. It is one of the many good ideas that can come from the ordinary member.
Whether or not this legislation ever passes will depend unfortunately on whether or not the executive branch of government wants it to. Individual members of Parliament should have more input into the drafting of legislation and should in my view be able to initiate more legislation from the floor of this House.
It was mentioned this afternoon on another piece of legislation that maybe we should not have that say. I believe that members of Parliament, members of this House, have to play a more vital role in the running of
Private Members' Business
this country because Parliament is the very essence of democracy.
The people who are here have been sent to the House with a specific job to do. I believe they could be doing a better job if they felt more freedom in the matter of introducing and supporting legislation, wherein committees could play a bigger role in amending legislation and legislation coming back here. It could all be part of the process.
The people of Canada have grown cynical about the political process and about politicians as a whole. Perhaps part of the reason is that they see us many times blindly following party discipline when we should be speaking and voting as our conscience dictates. That would be good. We should be speaking and we should be voting that way.
This is a good piece of legislation. It will help us redefine and re-emphasis the things that make us proud to be Canadians. I am very proud to support this bill and I urge other members to do likewise.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before giving the hon. member for Regina-Lumsden the floor, I would like to point out that the Chair has been informed the hon. member is having some health problems. I can assure him that the House will bear with him and that he should feel free to remain seated, if he so prefers.


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lumsden):: Mr. Speaker, I take pleasure on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party in supporting the private member's bill put forward by the hon. member for Red Deer and supported by the hon. member for Hillsborough. I want to congratulate the hon. member for bringing the bill forward. If there is anybody in this place who is opposed to it, I would sure like to know who it is.
The Victoria Cross is recognized as the top medal for valour in Commonwealth countries and is even shown that kind of regard in other countries. I do not know what the honours and awards commission was thinking about when it completely removed the Victoria Cross from the Canadian list of orders of precedence. They could not have been thinking.

November 24, 1992
Private Members' Business
In 1972 the Victoria Cross was left out of the Canadian system of honours and awards. In 1990 another sequence of medals was introduced, for example the Cross of Valour in the highest position. The Victoria Cross is no longer in the sequence but is validly worn if it was won before 1972.
It is very possible that one of these times a Canadian will do something of the order that earns the Victoria Cross, carrying out his duties under the United Nations flag. If that should happen and that person's exploits were of the kind, quality and calibre that has happened before with other recipients of the Victoria Cross, then it should be issued as the first order in Canada. It should lead the list of the orders of precedence. I do not know why they had to meddle around with this, if you will pardon the expression.
I was somewhat noted for being a Canadian nationalist. I swore an oath when I became a member of this House to bear allegiance to the Queen. She is the Queen of Canada and there is no reason on earth why, if there is another award of the Victoria Cross because it can be won in peacetime as well as wartime, she cannot present the award or the Governor General as the Queen's direct representative here.
The Royal Canadian Legion has made it very clear, very plain. Last April Comrade Fred Williams wrote to the Prime Minister and stated that the Royal Canadian Legion most strongly requested that any new bravery award system included provision for the permanent retention of the Victoria Cross as Canada's highest military award for valour.
We can do no less. I urge my colleagues from all parties to put this legislation through without any wrangling about it, and I do not think there will be. This is one area where all parties are unanimous in support of this bill. The only other thing I would like to see happen is some improvement being made to the small pension, the small honorarium awarded with the VC. It is a carryover from before the First World War. I sure would like to see something done with that, not so much in an effort to repay them, because we can never fully repay the recipients, but to put something a little more material behind the award in addition to the award itself. I would like to see the minister and his department come up with
improvements in the awarding of a pension in conjunction with the Victoria Cross.
I had the great pleasure, as my hon. friend from Hillsborough mentioned, of being in Holland, Sicily, and Italy on the 40th anniversaiy of the liberation of Europe, and many parts of it liberated by Canadians. We had in our group with the minister Fred Tilson and Smokey Smith who never did anything or said anything to draw attention to themselves. However, when others found out there were two VC winners with us, it was interesting to see how many people went to see them just to have the honour of meeting them and getting their autographs.
You have to hear Smokey Smith's version some time of how he won that medal. His version was that a German soldier filled his brand new battle-dress tunic with holes after he had just had it tailored with box pleats and dry-cleaned. This soldier shot him and put holes in his jacket. He said he got mad and took his Sten gun and stitched him from bottom to top. You ought to hear him tell it. He is very funny and a very good person.
It was also a pleasure to meet with Col. Merritt, who mingled with all of us. I was only an OR during the war and always looked up in awe at majors and colonels and so forth, but he was one of us. We were proud to have both him and Smokey Smith with us. I will never forget that trip if I live to be 1,000.
I want to leave this in the hands of the House in the hope that there will be no question about supporting the bill. Like the hon. member for Red Deer, I appreciate the indulgence of the House to make this a votable motion which means it gets another couple of hours debate. I hope then other hon. members will take the opportunity to get up, even if it is only for five minutes, to say things about this and put their support behind it.


Mr. Lee Richardson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have the opportunity to speak in favour of the private member's bill before us today. It addresses an issue that has been of concern to many members of this House for some time now.
For 20 years Canadians have not been eligible to receive what has traditionally been the highest award for valour bestowed in time of war, the Victoria Cross. As a
November 24, 1992

seconder of this bill, I am anxious to see it passed into law so that the situation may be rectified.
Many of us have worked with individual veterans, legion branches and constituents on the issue. I believe there is a strong desire among the public to see members working to pass a bill such as this one. Public confidence in Parliament is strengthened when members are seen to be responding to the clear wishes of thousands of individual Canadians.
Established in 1856 by Queen Victoria, the Victoria Cross was, for over a century, the highest award for gallantry available to Canadians in time of war. Since that time only 93 Canadians have ever won the VC: four before the Boer War; four in South Africa; 69 in World War I and 16 in World War II.
As a unifying symbol for this country and others throughout the Commonwealth, the VC is unsurpassed. Canadian recipients have come from all walks of life, from every province and from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds but the common denominator for all of them was their shared loyalty and sacrifice for this country.
When my hon. friend's bill was introduced here in October of last year there were three surviving recipients of the VC in Canada. Since that time one has died, leaving two living reminders of our past and of our duty to ensure that their heroism is not forgotten.
I need not remind hon. members of the place the Victoria Cross holds in the hearts of tens of thousands of Canadian veterans. Over the past few years many veterans have felt that their contribution to the country has been forgotten or demeaned.
The reintroduction of the Victoria Cross into the Canadian honour system will go a long way to confirm our respect for Canadian veterans and for the men and women who serve today in our Armed Forces.
Private Members' Business
Tell that to the Canadians who won the VC in World Wars I and II. Tell that to the families of those who died in the defence of our country. I do not believe for a moment that they saw themselves as anything except Canadians answering the call of their country.
Although Canada was bom out of compromise, her maturity as a nation came in battle. Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, Normandy all were battles in which we fought alongside our allies: Britain, France and the United States. We did not enter these conflicts as a vassal state. We entered out of commitment and loyalty to our friends in World War II, out of recognition that war was necessary to rid the world of a monstrous evil.
I am not trying to glorify the horror of war. The suffering and sacrifice that came from our involvement wounds us to this day. It is true that the Victoria Cross was introduced by Britain in the aftermath of the Crimean War. Indeed, VCs were forged from the canon barrel employed in that conflict.
The VC is truly an award that cuts through national borders. Soldiers from many Commonwealth countries ranging from Australia to Pakistan and New Zealand have won the cross. So is its British origin an argument against reinstatement? Certainly not.
We have retained countless traditions that date back to past years. In Quebec, the civil law code finds its origins in the Napoleonic code. Our country's most distinguished lawyers are honoured with the designation Queen's Counsel. The Governor General represents the Queen in Canada. Tradition and the continuity of symbols is part of what binds a country together.
By reinstating the Victoria Cross, we are acknowledging not only the value of our history, but also are expressing confidence in our maturity as a nation. This bill provides for a Canadianized Victoria Cross. We would not be alone in this.
Why was the VC eliminated? I believe that a grave In 1989, the Australian government officially incorpo-error was made in 1972 when the Trudeau government rated the Victoria Cross into the unique Australian deleted it from the honour system. It was a decision that honours system. If the Australians, who occasionally outraged veterans and non-veterans alike. Why, many display far more of a republican sentiment than Cana-asked, would the government want to remove one of the dians ever have, feel culturally secure enough to reinmost potent symbols of our nationhood? Many have said:	state this symbol of their Commonwealth heritage, then
"Because it is a foreign award".	I can see no argument against our doing so.

Private Members' Business
The proposed system would see the Governor General bestow the Victoria Cross on the advice of the Canadian government of the day. All responsibility for the cross would rest in Canada, the administration, ceremony and so forth. In this way, there would be no doubt as to the true nature of this decoration, an honour conceived in an era long past, but preserved and strengthened with an eye to the future.
By voting for this bill, we are sending a very clear message to the Canadian public. We are listening to their concerns. They have told us that we have an obligation to conserve that which is most noble in our past, to respect the wishes of those veterans who sacrificed so much, to maintain an honours system that both reveres our Commonwealth traditions and at the same time is uniquely Canadian.
I look forward to this House joining us in working to make Bill C-305 law. We owe our Armed Forces and our veterans no less.


Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton -Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this debate. I want to thank the hon. member for Red Deer in bringing forward this bill to Canadianize the Victoria Cross.
This is a very important matter. It has been discussed and debated for 20 years in Canada. I find it incredible that we allowed the Victoria Cross to be dropped from the awards and honours Canada gives out. I find it incredible that we allowed the Trudeau government in 1972 to drop it from the awards.
I have stood up on several occasions in the House to encourage the government to reinstate the Victoria Cross. I also co-sponsored the bill of the hon. member. He deserves a lot of credit, as do other members of the House, for pushing this issue to the point where now we have a votable bill before the House of Commons. I hope that members of the House of Commons will see to it when this does come to a vote that it is passed.
On June 9,19921 rose on a statement pursuant to S.O. 31.1 would like to read into the record what I said at that time:
Mr. Speaker, I strongly believe that our government should
Canadianize and restore the Victoria Cross medal as the highest
accolade for an act of valour in the face of the enemy.
In 1972 when the previous government brought in the new Canadian orders of bravery the Victoria Cross was omitted. I believe it is time this policy be reversed. The Victoria Cross should be reinstated and awarded by the Governor General on the advice of the government of the day.
After listening to the many views of many veterans on this issue, I strongly believe the Victoria Cross should once again resume its position as a distinguished part of Canada's awards for gallantry.
I still hold that position very strongly today. A few days later, I got up and asked the Associate Minister of National Defence if she would Canadianize the Victoria Cross. I want to read into the record my question and the answer. I was very disappointed with the answer and I urge the government not to interfere with this private member's matter and to allow members to vote on it as they wish. I would hope and I think that most members will vote in favour of this bill to Canadianize the Victoria Cross.
The question I asked on June 12, 1992 was:
Does the minister support the restoration and Canadianization of the Victoria Cross as Canada's highest medal for valour in the face of the enemy?
The minister responded:
I know my hon. colleague's interest in this subject, but I would like to point out to him that the Victoria Cross is a British medal bestowed by the Queen. It is not a Canadian medal. Obviously Canadians would still be eligible to receive it. It is given for extraordinary valour in the face of the enemy. We hope we do not have to face such an enemy.
But, at the same time, within Canada we have been developing our own system of honours and awards over a number of years. The final component of that would be to develop our own awards for valour in the face of the enemy. That work is not complete but it is ongoing.
I am sure that the hon. member would agree that it is important that we have within Canada a method of recognizing bravery of Canadian men and women in the Armed Forces.
I want to say we can have that method and that method is to bring forward a Canadian Victoria Cross. That is what we should do. We can Canadianize it. We can recommend through the right channels to the Queen that this Victoria Cross be awarded to particular people rather than put aside this tremendous symbol of courage, tradition and history that is so esteemed by so many veterans across this country.
Earlier this year in the Legion magazine of March 1992, the Victoria Cross was discussed. It pointed out that Australia has become the only Commonwealth country to nationalize the Victoria Cross. The Legion magazine
November 24, 1992

states: "The Queen signs letters patent authorizing the Governor General to award the VC on the advice of the Australian government. The Queen has made it clear that even the Commonwealth republics can advise on the Victoria Cross". That is what the Monarchist League of Canada chairman, John Aimers, said. "The Victoria Cross could be made more Canadian. Certainly we would want it given out only on the advice of the Canadian government. I think all the royal societies are united on this one." The article goes on to talk about how the Legion for years has been calling for the previous government and this government to Canadia-nize the Victoria Cross and to pay a little bit of attention to this very important matter.
Canada is a young country but we have traditions and symbols. This is a part of our history and perhaps it is time to Canadianize the Victoria Cross, to retain it as a part of our history. It is so important. Too often in our society we devalue the symbols and traditions of the past, but this is one that is important to not only veterans but I am sure it is also important to those members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are serving today. I am sure they would like this award to be there for their valour if it is needed in times of conflict.
In closing, I just want to say that I support this whole-heartedly as I believe many members do. I want to pay tribute once again to the member for Red Deer who, with courage, presented this even though there were indications that the government and others in society wanted to do away with the Victoria Cross. He persisted and his efforts have been laudable and admirable. I hope that we can see in the next short while the announcement that the Victoria Cross will be Canadia-nized.


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


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Mr. Speaker, no. I think it is very important that the opportunity be provided to other members who are not able to be present in the House tonight to have the opportunity to debate this very, very important matter. By having the question put now, that would be foreclosed.
Adjournment Debate
I salute the hon. member for Red Deer for his initiative in introducing this item, and his persistence in seeing it through. I congratulate him in having had it been made a votable item. It is so important that the House have the opportunity to vote on this item. I too hope to see the day when the decoration is-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry, but 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 deemed to have been moved.

Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, further to a question I asked on May 5 this year, the Secretary of State informed me that they were in the process of completing agreements with British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario and that it was expected the conclusion of these agreements between the provinces and the federal government would be announced very shortly.
This was six months ago and there has been no announcement so far either by the government or by the provinces and I wonder what is happening.
It is rumoured that an agreement in principle was concluded by the federal government and the provinces. This agreement, worth $177 million according to some people, is about to be approved by the federal cabinet, and the minister is expected to make an announcement a few days from now.
Meanwhile, we are still waiting, and I wonder what this government thinks about the promises it makes, the

Adjournment Debate
expectations it raises and how it has disappointed certain groups, especially official language minority groups which are greatly dependent on the federal government for their survival.
Young Franco-Ontarians are still waiting for the minister's official announcement on the Cite Collegiale, a post-secondary institution, the College du Nord, the College du Sud and the College du Sud-Ouest. Franco-Albertans are still waiting for the announcement concerning their community centre in Edmonton. Franco-Manitobans are still waiting for an announcement about infrastructures and institutions that will help guarantee their survival.
For the past 10 years, our Constitution has granted Canadian parents the right to educate their children in minority language institutions. Although these are legal rights, governments lack the political will because they have no way of making these institutions, these minority-managed school boards a reality without the assistance and support of the federal government.
On August 31 I wrote to the premiers of all the provinces, including Ontario, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta to ask about the status of this constitutional right of francophone minorities to manage their own educational institutions, as they do in New Brunswick and Quebec.
Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia have yet to answer my letter. The premier of Alberta informed me of a bill, now in second reading, which deals with the issue of school boards for the language minority in Alberta. Saskatchewan mentioned a bill tabled before its legislature adjourned. The Newfoundland Minister of Justice told me that a report would be submitted by the end of the school year on structures for the administration of schools by the francophone language minority in Newfoundland.
Despite these few rays of hope, here in Ontario a number of municipalities have passed resolutions against establishing French schools in Ontario. They include Georgian Bay, Campbellford, Fludson, Petawawa, Elliott Lake, Brampton and other municipalities which have endorsed a recommendation to oppose the creation of francophone school boards in Ontario for financial reasons. These municipalities refuse to recognize the constitutional rights of Ontario's francophone minorities. This is a deplorable example of intolerance and lack of understanding on the part of the majority.
It is not always easy to live in a minority position. It is not always easy to survive in provinces where there are groups that are fiercely opposed to the very existence of a Canada that sees itself as the very expression of linguistic duality.
Time is of the essence. Today, November 24, 1992, I want to ask the parliamentary secretary: when can we expect a clear and specific announcement of the Conservative government's position on establishing minority school boards and thus providing the possibility of establishing certain institutions that are essential if we want to survive as a minority and as Canadians in our province?


Mr. Vincent Della Noce (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State of Canada and to Minister of Multi-culturalism and Citizenship):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier. When he says that it is difficult to live as a minority, I must tell him that I fully agree. Believe me, I have been there and I know something about it.
I can also say that the promotion of linguistic duality as a fundamental characteristic of Canada has always been a basic principle of this government. We have never backed away from our leadership role in this issue and we never will.
Our actions speak for themselves and eloquently and precisely illustrate the seriousness of our commitment. In the last few years alone, these actions have produced tangible results in supporting official language minorities.
We can mention in particular the opening of the Maison de la Francophonie in Vancouver and Cite Collegiale in Ottawa and the creation of no fewer than six school and community centres in eastern Canada, the building of a new campus for Heritage College in the Ottawa Valley and the funding of 10 community radio stations serving English and French speaking minority groups.
I will remind hon. members, if need be, of another program that requires no actual construction but speaks to the hearts and minds of young Canadians. It is Voyageurs Canada 92, a program in which most of us had a role to play this past year; 27,500 young Canadians travelled all across our country. This project, an original
November 24, 1992

idea of the Secretary of State, is one of the largest youth exchange programs ever undertaken in Canada's history.
It is no doubt the most spectacular event, but there are others which are just as important in their own way. I am thinking for example of Hospitality Canada and the exchange program of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, both sponsored by the Government of Canada.
We are asked whether linguistic duality is really a priority. Of course the answer is yes. We showed it when we passed the new Official Languages Act in 1988 and also when we allocated $1.5 billion over five years to minority language education-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I must interrupt the hon. parliamentary secretary, since the rules for this debate are very strict.


EMPLOYMENT
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, there is a crisis in Montreal. Between one-quarter and one-third of the people in the city are living on some form of social assistance. When I walk along the streets, almost one in every five people I meet is unemployed.
In some areas of my riding, like Snowdon and Cote des Neiges, every fourth person is out of work. Tkken together, the unemployed people in Montreal could fill the Olympic Stadium more than five times. Retailers, manufacturers, builders, industrialists, as well as our people, have been touched by the massive unemployment in the city. There is not a family who does not have a sister, friend, brother, mother or father who has not lost a job as a result of the made-in-Canada recession, brought on in large part by this Conservative government's poor fiscal and economic policies.
In particular, the anglophone and allophone communities have been extremely hard hit by the recession. They have not been encouraged by the report from the Conseil de la langue frangaise showing that even fully bilingual members of their communities suffer discrimination in the work force, including the public sector despite section 15 of the Official Languages Act.
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The recession has spared no one in Montreal. It has hit both men and women. It has hit people from all walks of life, be they professionals, managers, sales people or construction workers. It is hitting young people and old people.
I am deeply concerned about the welfare of the people of Montreal. I have often asked ministers in this House what they intend to do about this crisis in Canada's second largest city and the motor of the Quebec economy.
On May 15 the Minister of Employment and Immigration answered by flaunting a job training program that he supports out of the unemployment insurance fund. Today people who have started this program are unable to finish it because this government refuses to continue to contribute to this fund.
Since July, people who applied to this program have been turned away. This Tory policy for upgrading our work force is just a sham and these people who themselves contributed money to this fund while they were working on the understanding that there would be some money for them when they needed it. These people are honestly trying to improve their own job prospects and this government is letting them down.
In fact, a recent Conference Board of Canada report has concluded that this Conservative government's economic policies are responsible for this recession. This government's policies are, in large measure, responsible for the number of people out of work in Montreal. The government's policies of high interest rates, high taxes and deep spending cuts have made the recession in Canada longer and deeper than anywhere else in the world. Its policies have actually added to the deficit and contributed to unemployment by killing economic growth in this country. Now, with 204,000 people out of work in Montreal and 1.5 million in Canada, we learn that the finance minister plans to cut government spending yet again on unemployment insurance, Old Age Security and family support. This will not stimulate the economic growth and will not help the people who are in Montreal to find work.

November 24, 1992
Adjournment Debate
When will this government produce and fund concrete measures to help people get back to work? That is a very serious problem and it is time this government undertook something.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, I wish to respond in greater detail to the question of May 15 by the member for Mount Royal.
The government shares the concerns of all Canadians with the effects the economic slowdown has had on job creation, unemployment and ultimately the increase in those receiving social assistance.
To reduce Canada's growing social assistance caseload, the government is undertaking several different initiatives. First, the government has negotiated agreements with all provinces to enhance the employability of social assistance recipients. These agreements marshall a combined federal and provincial effort of $400 million to give social assistance recipients priority access to employment programs.
Second, a $50 million pilot project has been established with the provinces of British Columbia and New Brunswick to help social assistance recipients obtain employment and achieve self-sufficiency. This project is breaking new ground in government's approach to helping those on social assistance and will hopefully pave the way toward a more effective income support system in the future.
Third, the government's current strategy in the area of training will ensure better opportunities for all Canadians, including those at risk of ending up on social assistance. Under the labour force development strategy, actual spending for labour market programming is expected to increase by 62 per cent over a four year period, from $2.5 billion in 1989-90 to $3.55 billion in 1992-93.
This year federal labour market assistance will help about 900,000 unemployed Canadians. This assistance, combined with a growing economy, will contribute toward reducing welfare rolls and lead to economic selfsufficiency for many Canadians.


CHRISTINE LAMONT AND DAVID SPENCER
Svend Johannes Robinson: Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow up on questions I asked in this
House earlier this year and, indeed, as recently as this afternoon, of the Secretary of State for External Affairs with respect to the plight of Christine Lamont and David Spencer, two young Canadians who are currently serving 28-year prison terms in Brazil.
Christine Lamont and David Spencer went to Central and South America because of their deep commitment to social and economic justice for the poor, the powerless and the dispossessed in that region. In 1989 they were caught up in an appalling nightmare which started on December 17, 1989, with their arrest.
The subsequent trial of Christine and David was in many ways a miscarriage of justice, conducted under conditions of extreme politicization. Indeed, the judge himself indicated that he was under tremendous pressure from police and politicians to convict all 10 of the accused.
Cardinal Ams, the Archbishop of Sao Paulo who has been intimately involved from the beginning of this whole affair, has spoken out on his profound conviction of the innocence of Christine and David; indeed has written a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister in this regard.
Christine and David were convicted and then to compound the injustice, to change from miscarriage to in fact travesty of justice, the Court of Appeal increased the sentences to 28 years. As foreigners under Brazilian law, they are not entitled to parole. This indeed is far worse than a life sentence in Canada.
Under Brazilian law, indeed the Brazilian constitution, there is provision upon the request of a foreign government for the Brazilian government to expel foreign nationals in its prison. This is a power which has been exercised in a number of occasions. The minister today in the House suggested that somehow this was unprecedented. That is absolutely false. There are many precedents for this. Indeed, just recently a Chilean national was expelled pursuant to the request of his government.
In June of this year, the justice committee unanimously urged the government-unanimously, all parties-and the Secretary of State to call for the expulsion of Christine and David under Brazilian law. They said that waiting for appeals, waiting for a transfer of offenders treaty, was unacceptable and placed them at risk. That risk is even greater now, particularly after the tragic riot
November 24, 1992

and deaths and murders of 111 prisoners in a Brazilian jail in late September.
The justice committee last week reiterated its unanimous appeal to the minister to seek the expulsion under Brazilian law of Christine and David. The Prime Minister said that he has spoken with the President of Brazil, now impeached, seeking justice for these two people. We do not know if he sought expulsion, but certainly we hope so.
I want to take this opportunity to once again call upon the government and the Secretary of State for External Affairs and the Prime Minister to wait no longer, to stop their shameful stalling, to listen to the justice committee, to listen to the voices of Canadians, to listen to the families and to seek the expulsion of Christine Lamont and David Spencer under Brazilian law.
Their lives may be at risk. Certainly a grave miscarriage of justice has been done, and the time is long overdue for this minister to act on behalf of these two Canadian citizens.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister confirmed in his response to the hon. member's question on June 17, he did indeed raise the matter of Christine Lamont and David Spencer with the President of Brazil during the earth summit in Rio de Janiero. He raised it again in letters to President Collor when he was still in office, and more recently to President Franco. The position of the government in this case has been guided by respect for the due process of law. At the moment there are two appeals pending in this case before the federal courts in Brasilia, one on whether the trial court had jurisdiction to hear the case and the other on the length of the sentences.
At the direction of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, our ambassador in Brasilia has been actively pressing to ensure that the judicial process continues without delay. He has learned that a decision on whether the appeal on the sentences will be heard, and indeed perhaps a decision on the appeal itself, will be forthcoming in the very near future.
He has also learned that the Brazilian Attorney General has submitted an opinion to the court that the
Adjournment Debate
sentences of the individuals involved should be differentiated according to their degree of involvement in the kidnapping. This could result in a reduction of the sentences that Christine Lamont and David Spencer received.
We understand that the opinion of the Attorney General is given considerable weight in these cases. Should there be undue delay in this appeal, however, or should it be denied, the situation would be reviewed again.
I would also point out that a transfer of offenders treaty with Brazil was signed on July 15 which when in force would enable the return of Miss Lamont and Mr. Spencer to serve any remaining portion of their sentences in Canada with the benefit of Canadian provisions.
Our ambassador has been actively lobbying Brazilian ministers, the leaders of the two chambers of the Brazilian Congress and the chairmen of the legislative committees responsible for reviewing the treaty to move it as quickly as possible through the Brazilian approval process. All have assured him that there are no problems that might delay ratification.
Finally, I would like to assure the House that everything possible is being done to ensure the safety and welfare of Miss Lamont and Mr. Spencer while in prison. The Consul General in Sao Paulo has visited them frequently and made numerous representations to the Brazilian authorities to improve the conditions of their imprisonment.


SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, this week a cargo plane bringing $2 billion worth of cocaine was seized in Quebec, thanks to the superb effort of the RCMP, the Canadian Air Force and other agencies.
Let me congratulate them and the thousands of officers who each day try to keep these terrible drugs out of Canada. Yet for each shipment that is caught, untold other shipments of illegal drugs slip through our border, move into our streets and ruin the lives of thousands of Canadians.

November 24, 1992
Adjournment Debate
Countless reports and statistics tell the story of this tragedy. A recent survey conducted by the Children's Aid Society of metro Toronto found that 12 per cent of parents use crack. An estimated 156,000 Canadians use cocaine and 36,000 use LSD.
The fact is stronger drugs like the comeback of heroin in the streets of Toronto are on the increase. The recent study by a major health insurance company found that the increase in cocaine use in Quebec ranks number two in all of North America, second only to Washington, a city fraught with street crime, drug wars and abuse.
We know that alcohol and drug abuse are responsible for between 70 to 90 per cent of all crimes committed in Canada. The Addiction Research Foundation recently estimated that drug abuse costs the Canadian economy $11.5 billion each year. Our youth in particular are becoming victims of drug use.
In the face of the alarming increase in hard substance use like heroin and crack we need measures that tackle the program twofold: to help cut off the supply through tougher policing and air surveillance with seizure of drug profits and second, and most important, to look at choking the demand.
The fact is we cannot succeed in addressing Canada's drug abuse program by getting at the suppliers. It does not work in the United States or in Europe and it is not working in Canada. What we need and what we are waiting for from this government is a coherent policy that looks at demand, that builds drug education programs for youth, that builds rehabilitation programs to get users off drugs and help them rebuild their lives; in other words, prevention and cure.
I urge this government to improve programs and to look also at the serious rise in the measure of prescription drugs. The reports from constituencies across the country, especially in Montreal and Toronto, are to the effect that the money, the programs and the educational initiatives must work together. We know that $270 million has been put into the substance abuse program, but we still do not know, six months later, how this money is being spent. Is it spent with community groups and volunteer associations in building drug prevention
and rehabilitation programs that deal with the cause as well as the symptoms of substance abuse?
I am anxious to hear from the parliamentary secretary tonight, not some round-up of general statistics, but specific examples on what this government is doing with and for the people affected.


Mr. Ken  Janies@Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Davenport for raising this most important issue, one which concerns all Canadians, especially those with children. It gives me the opportunity to tell how the government is dealing with harm caused by substance abuse.
In 1987 we announced Canada's drug strategy. Phase one brought $210 million over five years. Seventy per cent of this money was directed at prevention, education, rehabilitation and treatment. Communities right across the country have been mobilized.
The results were that first-time alcohol use by youth between grades seven to 13 has dropped from 84 per cent to 65 per cent. Between 1987 and 1991, 1,100 native communities participated in addiction awareness week, compared with only 84 communities in 1987.
At the end of March the hon. Minister of National Health and Welfare confirmed this government's longterm commitment to reduce harm caused by substance abuse. Two hundred and seventy million dollars, an increase of about 18 per cent over phase one, was allocated to Canada's drug strategy. The strategy still emphasizes community participation. Once again, over 60 per cent of the strategy money is geared toward prevention in which the hon. member is interested.
This government continues to be determined to tackle alcohol and drug abuse. Canada's drug strategy continues to provide both financial and technical assistance to local communities.
Thirty million dollars over five years will be given to community action programs and $77.5 million will be allocated to cost shared treatment programs in partnership with the different provinces. These moneys will target groups that our nation-wide consultation recommended.
November 24, 1992


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, I gave notice of my intention to transfer this question to debate on the adjournment motion because it sat on the Order Paper for eight months without the courtesy of a response.
The question concerns the International Year for World Indigenous Peoples, an idea originally advanced by the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec through its ambassador at the UN, Ted Moses.
1992 has marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus landing in America, the beginning of the colonial era which saw the annihilation of aboriginal people by disease, wars, starvation and slavery. More recently governments have followed a more subtle process of cultural genocide using annihilation of self-esteem, destroying of people's roots or their contact with the land.
Around the world this has resulted in social problems such as chemical abuse, suicide, dependency on welfare, problems that colonial powers could easily argue are self-inflicted or based on character flaws of the oppressed.
There were many people, myself and my party included, who hoped that 1993 could mark the era or the end of an era of idolizing colonizers and the beginning of a period during which the injustices of the colonial period would be recognized and redressed.
There are some 300 million indigenous people in the world, but how many will be represented at the United Nations during the inauguration of the international year? How many will Canada be assisting to travel to New York to participate in the deliberations? How many is Canada consulting on the draft of the resolution which Canada has lobbied to present, proclaiming the official beginning of the international year on December 10? Indeed, how many have been involved in planning with the Government of Canada its activities at home and abroad during the international year?
When I attempted to find out the answer I was embarrassed. No wonder the minister's office called my office yesterday and asked me not to raise the question in the House.
Adjournment Debate
In 1990 Canada assembled a disinformation crew from External Affairs and Indian Affairs to travel around Europe sanitizing the Oka crisis. More recently this bunch intercepted a report of the transnational corporation subcommittee of the UN working group on indigenous peoples on the James Bay Cree and circulated it to government departments for comments prior to its publication. The Cree of course were not one of those consulted.
Unfortunately the same wrecking crew has been put in charge of Canada's participation in the International Year of Indigenous People which is turning into a whitewash of Canada's record on aboriginal people while trying to maintain an international image of sanctity. The result is that Canada is contributing perhaps $90,000 to $100,000 to the UN voluntary fund and its over-all budget for the international year is so small that it will have no impact whatsoever on indigenous people around the world.
Canada says it has no money to assist Canadian aboriginal organizations to send their representatives to New York. Canada even tells them that their speeches would have to be vetted by the government if they joined the Canadian delegation so that they would not embarrass the government. Canada is only taking one aboriginal person, Chief Wendy Grant of British Columbia, to be a part of its federal team at the inaugural meeting.
Canada is paying to have representatives of the departments of External Affairs and Indian Affairs to argue full time against the collective rights of world indigenous people and against the principle of self-determination, even though these principles are enshrined in the United Nations charter. They are working on a resolution proclaiming international year which Canada is going to present, and according to one international participant Canada's resolution is getting weaker and weaker, draft four is worse than draft three, draft five is worse than draft four. Canadian aboriginal organizations have not been consulted in the resolution until the last possible minute.
The worst result is that Canada has used the international year as an opportunity to divide and conquer aboriginal people at home.
The whole process is one which-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order please.

Adjournment Debate


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's remarks on this subject.
I was prepared to provide an answer to the questions that he has raised until I listened to his vitriolic and unconscionable caricatures of the government's work with aboriginal people. Therefore, I would not dignify his remarks by a response.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 38(5), the motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to be adopted. The House therefore stands adjourned until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.30 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, November 25,1992