1993-05-31

Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan) moved:: That in the opinion of this House, the government should protect public safety and help fishermen by making all necessary repairs and performing all necessary maintenance to all small craft harbours facilities throughout Prince Edward Island.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to bring forward Motion No. 585 on behalf of the fishermen of Cardigan, Prince Edward Island and in fact on behalf of all the fishermen of Prince Edward Island.
I was born and reared in a small community on the north coast of Prince Edward Island. We made our living in farming and on the sea.
I have a basic understanding of the problems that fishermen go through. I am well aware that fishermen start at three or four o'clock in the morning. They head out to sea having no idea what kind of conditions they are going to face during the day or what it is going to be like coming back into the wharf in the evening.
It is very important that proper funding be put in place to put the small craft harbours in safe condition for the fishermen.
The fishing industry is very important to Prince Edward Island. In 1991 the landed value in my province totalled about $70 million. Over 7,400 people are employed in the industry with over 5,000 working in the harvesting sector.
The fishing industry has grown by over 500 per cent since 1975. Unfortunately however, the funding for repairs to small craft harbour facilities certainly has not grown by any percentage since that time.
The 5,000 people who work in the harvesting sector rely on the adequacy of the small craft harbour facilities throughout Prince Edward Island. They rely on the wharfs as a place to tie up and do their work. They rely on the breakwaters to provide shelter from the sea. They rely on the harbour channels for safe passage.
If things are not kept in their proper order, fishermen and their families start to worry. Sadly when it comes to small craft harbours there has been much more worry and concern than repairs to the harbours over the last number of years.
It is because of this worry that I have sought that work be done on small craft harbour facilities in my riding and all across Prince Edward Island. I have lost track of how many letters I have written to various ministers of fisheries since I was elected. I have stood in my place during Question Period and posed questions to the various ministers of fisheries which were put to me by fishermen who well understand the problems they face every day.
I have made many members' statements concerning different problems with the harbours across Prince Edward Island. I have presented many petitions in the House, which were put together by the fishermen who understand exactly the problems they face.
Unfortunately throughout all of this the government has really done little or nothing for the small craft harbours on Prince Edward Island. The purpose of my motion is quite clear:
That in the opinion of this House, the government should protect public safety and help fishermen by making all necessary repairs and performing all necessary maintenance to all small craft harbours facilities throughout Prince Edward Island.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
As a member of Parliament this is the last tool I have in order to try to convince the minister of fisheries, the government and anybody else involved to come to their senses. The appropriate dollars must be put in place so that the small craft harbours are safe for fishermen to return to from their work so that their lives are not in jeopardy.
I would like to talk about two of the many wharfs in my riding. I know them quite well. The minister of fisheries should also know them quite well because I have written to him many times concerning them.
In March 1989, five months after I was elected, I wrote to the minister of fisheries, now the minister of Indian affairs, about the conditions at Savage Harbour. The wharf and breakwater were damaged and DFO had promised for years to do some of the work but nothing had been done.
One of the biggest problems at Savage Harbour is the breakwater, better known in that area as the black wall. In the late summer of 1988 I went out with a number of fishermen and was shown what the problem was with the breakwater.
I received a letter from the minister. Short-term repairs would cost about $75,000 and would secure the structure for at least two to four years. A more permanent solution would cost an estimated $700,000. Had the government listened to the fishermen, there would have been no $700,000 bill at all. If it had spent the $75,000 and listened to the fishermen, it would still have the black wall and the breakwater, and the wharf in Savage Harbour would be safe. Unfortunately however it would not listen to the fishermen or to me.
In March 1992 I wrote to the present minister of fisheries relaying the concerns of the fishermen that the entire structure might be destroyed. Fishermen were worried about their boats and their lives. In his response last November the minister stated: "My department is aware of the conditions at Savage Harbour. It is impossible at this time to find the funding to repair the breakwater". The $75,000 that was needed to repair this breakwater could not be found.
Six months later in response to two more letters from me the minister stated: "The estimated cost for the repairs at this location is $50,000 and funding is not
available at this time". This is concerning the wharf at Georgetown and $50,000 was not available.
In November 19901 sent my fourth letter in 12 months to the minister. I outlined some urgent repairs that fishermen wanted done at a cost of about $40,000.1 went on to tell the minister: "Neglecting the need for immediate repairs would most likely result in an increase of costs by several hundred thousand dollars". By not doing the needed repairs immediately, most likely the cost would escalate from a small figure to a very large one, as we see it did.
The minister responded a few months later, in March. This was after some winter damage, which shows exactly what can happen. The minister stated: "The funds required to complete this project which would be from $250,000 to $1 million are significant in a period of budgetary restraint and it is difficult to secure them".
It is difficult to secure them all right. The minister could not find $75,000 or $50,000. All of a sudden it goes from $250,000 to $1 million. The people in Georgetown must have a wharf. In the span of one year the government and small craft harbours lost about $1 million by not doing the job that was supposed to be done.
The fishermen find it difficult to understand and hear about budgetary restraint. When they see things like this happening, they cannot understand what path the government is on.
On numerous occasions the present Minister of Employment and Immigration made it clear he would not allocate the necessary money for small craft harbour facilities in my riding. Despite this, in 1990 he did manage to find over $8 million for wharf's in the riding of the member for St. John's West, the present Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
Over 10 per cent of the entire small craft harbours' budget in that year was spent in one riding. Still the $50,000 needed to repair the wharf in Georgetown could not be found, but $8 million was found. The people in Georgetown are Canadian citizens too.
There are a lot of issues involved in small craft harbours. There are questions of safety. The environmental impact of these dilapidated wharfs must be looked at. As well, there is the issue of basic fairness and how dollars are spent across the country. Fishermen are just looking for basic fairness.
May 31, 1993

If a harbour channel is not dredged, a fisherman is in risk of running aground when returning from a day on the water with his boat loaded down. If a breakwater is in disrepair, rough seas make it more dangerous to come into port. If a wharf is not in good order, a boat can be damaged just trying to pull up and off-load.
A prime example would be in Fortune Cove over the last few years. The wharf on the east side started to fall to pieces. The faces were falling off into the water. This made it very dangerous for boats to pull up. Boats could be lost or damaged with a large financial loss to the fishermen.
Fishermen realize their profession is a dangerous one. Harbours were once considered to be a safe haven from the dangers of the seas. However some fishermen I know have a greater fear of their wharf and breakwater than they do of the sea. Over the past few years a couple of wharfs in my riding have been condemned by DFO as being unsafe for use. For example, Eastern Graphic indicates the wharf at Machon Point as being dangerous and unsafe for public use.
What are the fishermen supposed to do? Where are they supposed to tie up? Where are they supposed to do their work? There is not enough room at the wharfs as it is and they are told at Machon Point that they cannot use it. I do not know what fishermen are supposed to do.
Part of MacAulay's wharf was below the water line. I wrote to the minister indicating the problem on December 14, 1989: "A section of the wharf is sinking. It is completely submerged at high tide. There are two fuel tanks located on this section of the wharf and diesel fuel is leaking from them into the harbour".
I feel it will be only a matter of time before a life is lost because the government has not lived up to its duty and looked after small craft harbours.
Some wharfs in Prince Edward Island also pose a threat to the local environment. I know a couple of cases where fuel tanks on the wharfs have started to leak into the water. I warned the minister of fisheries about the fuel leaks at MacAulay's wharf. The reason there was a problem at MacAulay's wharf was because the funding, and the small amount it would have taken at the time,
Private Members' Business
was not forthcoming. As the problem escalates and the wharf starts to settle, of course there is greater damage.
If a boat were to sink because of poor harbour conditions, the loss of fuel would have an impact on the sea birds as well as polluting the nets and lobster traps, not to mention that we might lose the lives of some of our fishermen or women. People often do not take the time to consider these things. The possibility is real and so is the threat to the environment.
The response to all of my letters and petitions has been one constant theme. All the ministers of fisheries have stated that there is not enough money in the pot to fund every project needed and that the work necessary in my riding is not high enough on the priority list, or our fishermen's problems are not high enough on the priority list.
Let us look for a minute at how the government did decide to spend the money over the last number of years. In the fiscal years from 1987 to 1992 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans spent about $13.5 million on more than 70 wharfs in Prince Edward Island. In those same years the small craft harbours spent over $24 million on just over 40 wharfs in the riding of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Shame.
It has been suggested to me that reshuffling the dollars was sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul. However if Peter is getting by far the most it is only fair that Paul gets a chance for a while. Our fishermen feel just like Paul. They are getting robbed continually.
How are fishermen from places like Fortune, Sturgeon or Wood Islands supposed to feel when they see the money pouring into the riding of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans while their wharfs and breakwaters deteriorate?
As well, it seems that the government can find lots of money before elections but not very much afterward. Before the 1988 election, the government managed to find $2.4 million for small craft harbours in my riding. By 1991 that figure had been reduced by 80 per cent. About the only hope we have in Cardigan and Prince Edward Island is if we had an election every year. We could spend lots of money if we had an election but slice it right after. That is not the way maintenance is done. Maintenance must be done every year.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
Of course the Liberal members of Parliament from Atlantic Canada know the exact same thing happened with the money from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. For a government that is so preoccupied in dealing with the deficit, it is strange that it will not spend a bit of money on maintenance.
Thke the example I used earlier in Georgetown where a $50,000 repair job became about a $1 million reconstruction job in one year, and all the government had to do was listen to basic common sense.
It is very difficult to tell fishermen that we are trying to save dollars and are in a restraint program. My constituents tell me that $50,000 is needed but the government says it does not have it. A year later, after the wharf was damaged by ice, and when we knew that the ice and the wind over the winter would do the damage, the bill became $1 million. It makes very little sense.
Even if the government had borrowed the $50,000 it would have been further ahead. Now it will have to borrow or come up with a million dollars to fix it or Georgetown will not have a wharf.
If one owns a house and the roof leaks, one fixes the leak. One certainly does not wait until the House falls apart to do something about it. If so, one does not have a roof over one's head. That is the same situation with the wharfs in my riding and on Prince Edward Island. They would not fix the roof so the house fell in.
Despite all the economic reasons and reasons about fairness, the issue of small craft harbours has one basic concern: safety. Fishermen should feel safe when they come home for an evening. I feel that if the minister of fisheries was actually a fisherman or had a son or daughter who made his or her living from the sea he would better understand the worry in the hearts of the loved ones when they know that the harbours their husbands fish out of are not safe. No argument about priority lists and budget cutbacks could ever satisfy a grieving family if a loved one was lost.
If the government does not do something soon to improve the conditions of the small craft harbours on Prince Edward Island something tragic will happen. The government certainly will not be able to say it did not know anything about it.
I and other members from Prince Edward Island have stood in Question Period. We made statements. We have all written to ministers.


Mr. McGuire:: Wasted ink.


Lawrence MacAulay: As my hon. colleague indicated, it is wasted ink. However for the safety of the fishermen we have to tiy.
The fishermen in Savage Harbour showed me what needed to be done with the black wall or the breakwater. The dollars could not be found. The $40,000 to $75,000 could not be found. Now they are talking about a $1 million project. Where in the name of God is the government going to find a million if it could not find $50,000? Georgetown is one of the sad situations really when $40,000 or $50,000 would have done the job.
Because of budgetary restraints, and possibly some people believed in this until we found out where dollars were spent in other areas, and to save money the government would not spend $40,000. Now it has to spend $1 million.
Graham Pond is another area where there is a big plant and a lot of boats tie up. I am not sure what the repair figure is there but I would expect it would be close to $1 million too. Launching is in bad shape.
I realize my time has run out. What fishermen want is just some basic fairness. It is pretty hard to tell the fishermen in my riding there are no dollars to spend on their wharfs, and breakwaters when we find that in the riding of the minister of fisheries there was more money spent on one wharf in one year than there was in the last five years in Cardigan.
All the fishermen ask for is basic fairness. I hope we have convinced the government.


Mr. Charles-Eugene Marin (Gaspe):: Mr. Speaker, I understand the concerns of the hon. member from Prince Edward Island, since I come from a coastal region where my entire riding is located along a peninsula. It is therefore with great pleasure that I rise to take part in this debate.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is responsible for 1,307 commercial fishing harbours and 800 or so recreational harbours. The department provides the facilities: everything from docks and winches for unloading to access roads and mooring buoys. The government is also responsible for keeping the harbours accessible
May 31, 1993

through dredging and other essential services. Depending on the operational requirements, these may include everything from parking lots to slipways, running water and electricity.
Some revenues are generated by fees charged for harbour services and for licenses. In some ports these revenues are significant. In some they are not. In others they are non-existent, but looked at nation-wide, and this is an important point to grasp, revenues have never come within shouting distance of paying the total bill for their maintenance and operation.
As other speakers have pointed out, there has never been enough money to do everything that needed to be done to keep all of them in first-class shape all of the time. This has been the case from the very beginning. It is very much the case now, when it is a priority for the federal government-and indeed for provincial governments-to cut deficits down to size. In this situation we have to make every dollar count. To do that we have to target spending precisely. We have to do what needs to be done most urgently.
Last but not least, we have to make sure that decisions about projects are based on a close and current understanding of actual needs. For this reason, in 1987, the government looked at a new option for management. Communities would be offered the opportunity to lease harbours from the federal government. Under this arrangement they would take over management and operation of the harbours. The work of management would be done by locally appointed bodies called harbour authorities.
I would like to explain what these bodies are. In terms of legal structure they are non-profit corporations. The directors are appointed by and represent the users of the harbours. Typically these include fishermen, processors and the communities themselves. The federal government leases the harbour facilities to these local bodies for a nominal fee. The harbour authority then takes over the day to day management, administration and operation of the facilities, but it is not asked to bite off more than it can chew. Responsibility for major repairs and other projects remain with the federal government.
Another characteristic of this approach is that the harbour authorities are authorized to charge and collect fees for services, for berthing, or for ice and water,
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security or electricity. They are also allowed to develop new services. As I will demonstrate in a moment, many have done so in a very imaginative way. Most important, harbour authorities are allowed to retain the revenues they collect. There is a condition attached. They must use it on the harbour. There is a variation on this approach. In some cases, management responsibility has been transferred to harbour authorities not through leases but through management contracts.
The management approach can be tailored to the distinctive needs of the community involved. For example, many harbour authorities in the Pacific Region have been established as arms of local town councils or municipal councils. In Newfoundland and Quebec, on the other hand, harbour authorities are made up of users and other local people. The directors of the authority at Fortune Harbour include a fisherman, an engineer, a fish merchant and a town engineer. At Ste-Anne-des-Monts the authority is headed by the local chief of the Surete du Quebec.
I want to emphasize that this is a completely voluntary program. The community must want to take over these responsibilities. It must make the first move. The program is also selective. Once an application is received, the federal government enters into negotiations with the community concerned. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans looks at the record of the harbour, at the requirements for upkeep, and at the potential it has for becoming self-sufficient in the matter of day to day operations.
Today, after three years of operation, we can say that the harbour authorities approach works. One hundred and forty-nine of these local bodies are now in existence, operating a total of 205 harbours across Canada. There are 26 in Newfoundland, 33 in Quebec, five in Saskatchewan and 23 in British Columbia. There are 5 in Prince Edward Island.
We know from what we hear from fishermen that management is better at these harbours. It works because decisions about harbour needs and opportunities are being made by people who understand the situation better than anyone else. Problems that come up unexpectedly can be dealt with immediately. Others can be pre-empted because people on the spot can see them coming. New requirements for service can be met quickly. New opportunities for revenues can be exploited before they fade away.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
Conflicts are now usually resolved locally without having to be bounced up to the political level. Fishermen and other users used to object strenously to paying fees for harbour use to the federal government where it was swallowed up into the anonymous vortex of the central revenue fund. There is much less resistance now when the money is seen to be going to a local body for obviously local uses.
Furthermore, local people are usually able to make better deals for their communities on the purchase of repairs and minor maintenance.
We have an excellent example of that from Prince Edward Island. A harbour authority was established in Georgetown about three years ago. The harbour is on the eastern shore of the island and it is an extremely important base for lobster and other fishermen. The Harbour Authority in that case operates in the management contract mode.
It became necessary to repair a section of the wharf at Georgetown. Previous to this arrangement, the job had been estimated at a certain figure. The Harbour Authority beat the bushes and came up with an estimate from a local contractor for a good solid job that met all specifications. It came in at one-quarter of the previous estimate.
Another advantage is access to funds. Previously, when the federal government had full and exclusive control of the harbours its only source of funding was itself. However harbour authorities can and do tap other sources: provincial, municipal and otherwise.
The approach also allows the community to develop new revenue-raising opportunities that might otherwise have been ignored.
Let me mention a few examples: the harbour authority at Petit Cap, New Brunswick now operates and rents for a fee, 50 or more bait houses. An ice-making machine is also a good source of additional income.
The harbour authorities have been a force for environmental improvement. A good example is the authority at Cheticamp Harbour, Nova Scotia. This local body organized a co-ordinated local drive to clean up this harbour, its shoreline and the wharfs. The harbour authority manager is quoted as saying that: "It means our wharves are clear. Fouled propellors and clogged cooling systems are becoming a thing of the past. Peer pressure is developing to keep it that way".
The largest fishing harbour in Canada is at Steveston, B.C. It is the base for 1,000 commercial vessels and pleasure craft. It too is being managed by a harbour authority. This body generates $1.2 million a year in revenues. Its activities have included development of a plan to respond to oil spills, fires and other emergencies.
This approach will not solve all the problems. Neither this system nor any other will give us the wherewithal to do, as my hon. friend suggests, all that should be done in every location. However along with an intelligent system of priorities it will help us to target the funds that are available to best effect. In this period that is a very important contribution.


Joseph Blair (Joe) McGuire: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to rise in support of Motion No. 585, sponsored by my colleague from Cardigan.
First, I would like to mention the question I raised in the House last Tuesday concerning the groundfish package ior Atlantic Canada and the misleading answer that the Minister of Employment and Immigration gave. The groundlish quotas for Atlantic Canada were cut last December and five months later the government still does not know how it is going to compensate the fishermen for the 70 per cent reduction in the quota.
I asked the minister last Tliesday if he would do as the minister did in Newfoundland. As a result of the fact that the unemployment insurance for the fishermen ran out on May 15 I asked the minister if the government would do what it did in Newfoundland and provide assistance now that could be claimed back when the package is finally ready. The Minister of Employment and Immigration jumped up from his seat and immediately said: "Yes, indeed, we will move now. As a matter of fact, fishermen and plant workers can go to the CEC office tomorrow and make their applications".
May 31, 1993

That is not true at all. The fishermen have gone to employment and immigration offices and have not found applications for anything there, let alone advance assistance to tide them over until the package can come into play.
I called on the minister to clarify his answer but he has made no effort to do so, either privately or publicly, since he gave the incorrect response. It is only fair that the fishermen in Atlantic Canada know there is really no advance assistance coming to their aid.
I would now like to address my remarks to Motion No. 585 and go over what has happened in my riding with the budget for this year. The small craft harbours program for Canada has a $72 million budget. I will now read the list of the 10 wharfs in my riding of Egmont and what each is receiving from this $72 million budget: Alberton wharf is receiving nothing; Miminegash, where a little work was done last year and where a real mess was left, is receiving nothing; Howards Cove, where the south wall is caving in and a major reconstruction project must be done, is receiving nothing; Egmont Bay, which last year was promised a reconstructed slipway, is receiving nothing; Hardys Channel, where last year boats could hardly make it out of the harbour mouth because of the sand, will have dredging funds provided, and even though it is a year late we are very thankful that these funds did come through for that harbour; Seacow Pond harbour is receiving no funds this year; Skinner's Pond harbour is receiving no funds this year; Fishing Cove, or Cape Egmont, is receiving no funds this year; and West Point is receiving no funds this year.
We now come to the wharf where during the past provincial election there was a great hue and cry about what the government was going to do there. The local papers were full of all the things the federal government was going to do if only the people in the first district of Prince county would vote Conservative. It was going to spend in excess of $3 million in a plan that would be phased with approximately $1 million a year being spent until the wharf was basically fit to work from.
These are some of the things that were said during that time. The wharfinger said: "What we really need is two wharfs. The understructure of the wharf is out"
Private Members' Business
according to Mr. McRae "and the steel underneath is rusted out because it is so old. The wharf has been in this condition for the past 10 years. The wharf has gone beyond repair". The manager of the Tignish Fisheries Co-op is quoted as saying: "It is not safe for big boats to come into the harbour. Many boats hit the bottom because of sand and planking in the harbour". The harbour manager is quoted as saying: "Someone is going to be killed at the wharf".
Small craft harbours personnel were rushing up to Tignish and drawing up plans of what they were going to do and an announcement was going to be made before the provincial election was over. The senator in the area and staff from the Department of Public Works came up and made the commitment that the completion of repairs was anticipated to take several years. The senator promised that the government would not hold back until all this work was done.
We found out what it did. Instead of the more than $3 million project that was going to be announced, the government announced a fund of $305,000. When we take the consulting engineering fees off that amount, the money spent on the actual work done will be a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
The provincial minister from the area says: "Obviously we are being penalized because of our political colours. The last thing we need in the next couple of weeks is to hear that we are going to get more band-aid solutions". He feels that they should not settle for a wharf repair project of a couple of hundred thousand dollars. That is exactly what we got; a wharf repair project of a couple of hundred thousand dollars which will affect a very small area and not even the area that is condemned. The area on the south block that is condemned will not receive one penny this year and probably nothing in the years to come if the spending habits of this government are followed.
Over the past nine years we received practically nothing. We had minimum maintenance on a couple of our wharfs but basically the $72 million a year on average that was spent over the past nine years was spent in other ridings, in particular in ridings that supported the government.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
I would like to know where the $3 million that was promised went. There was great concern over our fishermen's safety. At all the meetings held in this particular harbour there was great concern expressed and much tear-jerking and crying over the safety of the fishermen going in and out of the wharf.
Yet when the election was over that concern evaporated. Given the results of the election the fishermen themselves did not believe what the Conservative candidates, the Conservative senators and the small craft harbours personnel were saying in this case.
In June of last year the minister of fisheries stated in the House that in excess of $2 million would be required for this particular harbour. Actually it is a double wharf, Judes Point and Tignish Shore, but they have the same entrance. Given that $72 million and the condition of this wharf, where is this plan that was drawn up by the federal bureaucrats which was supposed to be implemented this year and continued over the next couple of years?
When will small craft harbours go back and clean up the mess it left in Miminegash? If one went down there and took a photograph of the conditions that were left after the block washed out a couple of years ago, one would see that the condition of that wharf is a disgrace.
P.E.I.'s fishermen have been discriminated against for the past nine years, even when they had two Tory members from P.E.I. representing them in the federal government. They were represented by the former Minister of the Environment from the riding of Hillsborough and another member from Cardigan at the time. Both of these gentlemen have been removed from the political scene but we hear they are anxious to try their luck again. I would say they would need a lot of luck to remove the two sitting members from that area of P.E.I.
Even when they had representation from P.E.I. in the cabinet they still could not get a penny for the fishermen in Prince Edward Island. This is where they stand on the priority list as far as Prince Edward Island is concerned. They stand at the very bottom.
I think it is time to put party politics aside and do what is necessary for the fishermen of Prince Edward Island and support the present infrastructure. I do not think we can afford to sit back any longer and let the wharfs return to nature, as some of them are. Sometimes it is
even hard to recognize that there is a wharf in a harbour in some areas of Prince Edward Island.
This work needs to be done now and I encourage the minister and the government to set money aside to address this very serious problem.


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, the House has just had the most extraordinary confession by my hon. friend from Egmont. He has just told this House and the people of Canada that Prince Edward Island's fishermen have had ineffective representation in this place for the last few years.
I say to the member: Wait until after the next election. If the incumbents cannot provide effective representation perhaps the people of Prince Edward Island will find somebody who can provide them with effective representation.
I would like to think, at the risk of seeming to be less than humble, that the people of South Shore on the other hand have not had ineffective representation. When I reflect over the last four and a half years I am really quite delighted with the work that has been done by small craft harbours with respect to what is going on in the South Shore.
My hon. friend from Cardigan was talking about expenditures in the riding of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. He was being a little bit mischievous when he did that because when he used that figure of 10 per cent he was talking about 10 per cent of expenditures on projects in excess of $250,000.
My hon. friend knows perfectly well that the vast majority of expenditures is on projects that are under that amount. My hon. friend also knows that the building of a wharf is an expensive proposition. A major wharf project is $1 million, $1.5 million or $2 million. Naturally the people of the community might have to work for several years to get support for a particular project.
I know, for example, the fishermen of Port Medway in Queen's county were in need of a wharf for many years. I am delighted they were able to get that wharf. It was a $2 million project and it took several years to get the wharf. It was the same for the people of Milltown. I might say I fought for it. It was one of the first projects I was successful in getting for my constituency. It was a project of over $1 million. We have to work to get such stuff.
May 31. 1993

A project such as the one in the riding of St. John's West naturally distorts the figures in that particular year. My hon. friend really ought to look at the figures to see a fairly balanced and fair representation.
We do not come here just to sit and listen to debates in the House of Commons. We come up here to represent our constituencies. That means going over and pestering them at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans sometimes to see that the priorities are the priorities we are here to reflect. I am really delighted we have had a fair bit of success in South Shore.
As I was listening to my hon. friends I tried to scribble down a list of projects that I know happened in the South Shore: Fox Point, Mill Cove, Little Tmcook, Big Tan-cook, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Hunts Point, Ingomar, West Head, Clam Point, Bear Point, Shag Harbour, Newellton, and there are more. Those are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head. That is representation.
I would be glad to spend some time with my hon. colleagues advising them on how to dialogue with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and how to dialogue with the small craft harbour people both in the region and in Ottawa to see that they effectively represent their fishermen.
I give fair warning here and now to anybody who is interested, whether it be those in the small craft harbour branch or whether it be my hon. friends opposite, that I am not finished yet. There are a number of harbours in the South Shore that still have needs.
For three years I have told the people of Stony Island on Cape Sable Island that the number one Shelburne county priority is to get them the new wharf they need. I am going to continue to pester until I get that wharf for them. Similarly East Port Laberge is veiy badly in need of some port work. Some dredging needs to be done in Sandy Point and some dredging needs to be done at Chester Basin. I intend to raise my voice, whether it be in this place, over the phone to DFO or wherever, to see that the needs of those fishermen are attended to because that quite frankly is why they sent me here. That is my job. My job is to be the South Shore's representa-
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tive in Ottawa, not the other way around. That is the way I see my job and I intend to continue to do my job that way.
I must say I want to thank my hon. friend from Cardigan for bringing the topic of small craft harbours before the House today. It is a topic that is perhaps not well known to a lot of Canadians. It is obviously something that impacts us in coastal Atlantic Canada to a tremendous degree. I do not think people often realize just how expensive these wharfs are.
We cannot just take a little dock and tie up a multi-tonne fishing vessel to it. When we have ferocious seas from time to time in Atlantic Canada, obviously we need to have break walls constructed and the wharfs have to be constructed in such a way that they will last for many years. It is complex and it is expensive.
This infrastructure is absolutely and unequivocally essential to the cariying on of the fishing industry. A wharf to a fishermen is like a highway to a trucker or an airport to a pilot. We cannot move grain out of the west without rail lines. All these bits of infrastructure are critically important. We have literally hundreds and hundreds of fishing ports in Atlantic Canada.
I must admit I am perhaps playing mischief with my friends opposite, but the reality is that there is never enough money to go around. My friend should not play mischief with the budgetary matters before us.
One day I sat down with a small craft harbour person in South Shore. He and I figured on a piece of paper that we could spend $40 million to do all the work that needed to be done in the South Shore constituency alone. Yet government finances being what they are, there is only $70 million available for the small craft harbour budget.
The topic my hon. friend put before us today has to do with safety and repairs. That is a number one priority. Each year officials do their best with the budgets made available. They would be the first ones to tell us they could probably use a budget five to ten times the budget made available to them. First is emergency repairs and doing the work that has to be done. Then the money for maintenance is taken off.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
Much has been made of a couple of examples. Again there has been some mischief made with the examples used. Different things happen from time to time so we cannot say the same problem has been extended as certainly was implied by my hon. friend.
By the time the maintenance money is taken out and by the time the money for emergency repairs is taken out, frequently there is not a lot of money left. That is a practical problem we have in government. I will not go into it as I could very readily. I would be glad, if I were given another hour, to go over the debt problem of this country which is the legacy of the government of my hon. friends opposite. I will not do that.
I	want to mention Prince Edward Island in particular. My hon. friend asks: "Where did the $3 million go?" I will tell him where it went. There were 195 small craft harbours projects in Prince Edward Island in 1992-93 in 59 locations. Over $3 million was spent in Prince Edward Island. That is not a bad sum on a per capita basis if we look at spending in Prince Edward Island. As we sit here today there is work going on at Graham Pond, North Lake, Milligans Shore, Seacow Pond, Skinner Pond and Northam.


Mr. Kilgour:: There must be an election coming, Peter.


Peter L. McCreath: I am glad my hon. friend from Edmonton talks about it. There was an article a few days ago in The Hill Times by Mr. Warren. It showed that like a lot of people he does not really have knowledge of small craft harbours. He was making reference to the fact that a couple of projects have been announced in the South Shore and to me personally the implication was that these things were only happening because there was an election coming.
II	Mr. Warren and others like him would do a bit of research they would know there have been small craft harbour projects every year. My hon. friend opposite suggests there is no expanding except during an election. He should have been around after the 1988 election. He would have found out that it was shortly after the election we had the extension put on at Bear Point. We had a whole new wharf done at Newellton. We had work done at West Head wharf.
It was not pre-election boondoggle spending as he implied. It was having aggressive representation in Parliament and recognizing that the needs of our fishermen are a priority and their safety and the ability of the industry to perform are absolutely essential.
I thank my hon. friends opposite for bringing this topic forward. Perhaps they should go back to the drawing-board and work just a bit harder. Then maybe they would represent their constituencies as effectively as some of my colleagues on this side have been able to do.


Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of comments. What Canadians are seeing is a perfect example of what I think is a fairly corrupt political system. The small craft harbour system seems to be expensive as the hon. member just said. It works this way: We give them the government contract and they give us the votes.
It is an old form of political patronage which should not exist in this country. As a matter of fact I believe even further, after hearing this debate, that we need to reform our political system. We have a 19th century system where the people on the east coast have too many seats in Parliament and the people in the west have too few. We should have representation by population. Therefore we would have more members from western Canada, the new growing areas of Canada that have real problems, and would get rid of the silly patronage system of small craft harbours.
The maritime provinces should unite into one province. Then the federal government should give them power over things like small craft harbours. We could take the whole matter out of the House and could get rid of a patronage system. Or they could have the patronage in their own backyard and not use the money of my constituents to do it.


Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in this debate for a couple of minutes. I was interested in listening to my friend from South Shore speaking on the topic of small craft harbour repairs. He went on to say that in his area all the harbours seem to be in pretty good shape. It is kind of ironic because in that part of the country apparently they have wharfs and no fish. In our part of the country we have one of the last unspoiled fisheries in Canada and there is not enough wharf repair and dredging. I commend my colleague from Cardigan on his motion. It brings to the attention of Parliament the many problems we are having on Prince Edward Island.
May 31, 1993


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



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North) moved:: That this House regrets the continued inability of the government to address the tragedy of unemployment, especially among the young and particularly with regard to education and job training and retraining, and call for the immediate initiation of a national apprenticeship program and a national youth service program as major steps toward resolving this situation.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a very sad fact that hundreds of thousands of young Canadians have seen their futures put on hold by the current recession.
Many people in their twenties still have not had their first real jobs. Others have been forced to suspend their post-secondary education because they can no longer afford the tuition. At the high school level 100,000 young Canadians are losing hope and dropping out every year.
A recent Gallup poll revealed that 45 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 29 expect their standard of living to decline over the next 20 years. This discouraging view of the future may be based on an awareness of a grim reality.
Between 1980 and 1990 the incomes of workers younger than 25 shrank by 20 per cent. The recession has hit them the hardest. The youth unemployment rate has increased faster than any other group. It is obvious that many young Canadians are in a very difficult situation. They are in grave need of assistance.
The government seeks to deny this but Liberals realize that something must be done for young people. We have presented this opposition day motion because unlike the government we believe that Canada's youth needs help.
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The federal government could be and should be doing more to help them.
I entered politics at a very young age. One of the reasons I became involved so early was that I felt young Canadians lacked a strong voice in government. I felt the concerns of young people were being ignored. As a member of Parliament I have devoted a great deal of my time to defending the interest of Canada's youth. I have done so in large measure because I do not believe we must accept the conventional wisdom which states this generation of young Canadians is doomed to a life of diminished opportunities.
I sincerely believe we are standing on the threshold of what could be a new golden age. Advances in computers, medicine, science, communications, environmental technologies and many other fields are occurring at a breath-taking pace.
There are potentially limitless and unimaginable opportunities in India and the nations of southeast Asia as their economies continue to expand. In eastern Europe and Latin America there is a demand for Canadian expertise in communications, primary resource technology and infrastructure construction. No, the future need not be as bleak as some would paint it. However the potential opportunities I have just described will only materialize after a great deal of hard work on the part of Canada's young people and support from their governments.
Young people today face many daunting challenges, not the least of which are the many questions young Canadians have about their own futures. Wherever I meet with young people, whether in my riding of York North or in some distant corner of Canada, I meet people who are worried about getting good jobs after they graduate from school. Who can blame them when
421,000	young Canadians are unemployed? Many of their friends cannot find work after they graduate from university and the government has cut the budget of its summer employment program from $149.3 million in 1985 to $88 million in 1993.
I know the government thinks we are exaggerating the seriousness of this problem. The Minister of State for Youth said in the House on March 18 when speaking

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about the situation of young Canadians: "I do not think it is an ideal situation but it is certainly not desperate". We disagree and so do the hundreds of thousands of young Canadians who are unemployed, who have dropped out of high school or who cannot afford a post-secondary education.
The government turns a deaf ear to these concerns. Confronted with the needs of young people, the standard Conservative responses are either "we are doing enough" or "we cannot do anything else".
We Liberals reject both statements. The government is not doing enough. The government could do a lot more if it really cared about youth issues. We Liberals reject the status quo that is keeping young people down. We want to effect positive change.
In the speech I mentioned earlier, the minister for youth concluded that his government is "doing what has to be done to help young people of this country prepare for the challenges of a constantly changing world". I find that hard to believe. Despite the government's constant claim that we Liberals are exaggerating the severity of the problem, I have never heard young people or youth serving organizations contradict us. I have sat down with small groups of young people from every region of this country. I have visited grade schools and high schools in my riding and throughout Canada. Last week I addressed over 2,000 high school students at Roy Thomson Hall. The feelings we Liberals have are always confirmed.
In all my meetings in York North and elsewhere, in all the public meetings the Liberal youth committee carried out across Canada, no one has ever come to me and said that things are going well for young Canadians or that the government is doing a fine job.
The minister congratulated himself because employment and immigration spent $211 million in 1992-93 on programs specifically aimed at young people. It seems strange that he is satisfied with that, given the fact that there are still 100,000 high school students who drop out every year. Students are dropping out at a time when 28 per cent of those between 16 and 24 are functionally illiterate and 44 per cent fail to meet the requirements for functional numeracy. It is strange that the minister feels he is doing enough when we consider that Canada has a youth unemployment rate of 17.8 per cent when the rate for the over-all population is 11.4 per cent. Look at the youth unemployment across Canada: 38.4 per cent in Newfoundland, 23.7 per cent in Nova Scotia,
21.2 per cent in Quebec, 17.5 per cent in Ontario, 16.6 per cent in Manitoba and 17.9 per cent in Alberta. Among returning students 17.9 per cent were unemployed last summer compared to 14.5 per cent in 1991 and 10.6 per cent in 1990.
During the first 12 months of the recession, youth bore 60 per cent of the decline in employment. This unemployment comes at a time when post-secondaiy education is being placed out of reach for an increasing number of students. Since 1986 the Conservative government has cut $9 billion in transfer payments to provinces which should have gone toward education. Because of this and other budget cuts, tuition fees have increased by 58 per cent over the past five years. This year's increase was 8.5 per cent, more than four times the rate of inflation.
Young Canadians are further disadvantaged by the government's narrow-minded approach to training which pits different groups of Canadians against each other. By slowly transferring its responsibility for training to the UI system, the government is setting up a system where only those who have worked qualify for training.
Many young people leaving school have trouble finding first jobs and therefore cannot get into training programs in order to upgrade their skills. Training programs geared toward non-UI eligible clients such as youth, the disabled or women trying to re-enter the labour force are constantly being cut back. Young Canadians find themselves in a depressing catch-22. They cannot get jobs unless they have the skills and they cannot get the skills unless they have jobs.
The Liberals are proposing a better way. Through public hearings the Liberal Senate and House of Commons committee learned that the common thread that runs through many of the problems associated with young people is a loss of hope brought on by a lack of opportunities. In response to the concerns of the people we met, the committee came up with several recommendations to help equip young people with the tools they need to succeed.
Our recommendations include: a commitment to eradicating illiteracy and innumeracy; reviewing the financing of post-secondary education to protect its accessibility; increasing the public awareness of co-operative educa-
May 31, 1993

tion; the creation of a national apprenticeship training program; the establishment of a Canadian environmental youth force; the introduction of tax-based incentives to encourage on the job training and the development of a national system for matching jobs to the available work force.
We are committed to an education system that recognizes the importance of preparing our children for school and provides them with a school system of the highest calibre. Upon their graduation we are committed to ensuring that they have access to post-secondary education and apprenticeship training. Canada needs a work force that is second to none in skills and flexibility. We need a highly skilled work force that can adapt easily to changes and technological applications in organizational structures.
We need to bring Canada's apprenticeship training system up to the level of our competitors in the industrialized world. For example, Germany has established a very successful training system that produces more skilled workers than Canada does at a lower cost because young people in Germany have the option of going into training programs at an early age. The drop-out rate in that country is less than 10 per cent while in Canada it is 30 per cent.
The number of apprentices in Germany represents 7.1 per cent of the work force. In Canada, the number is 1.1 per cent. In Germany, the average age of an apprentice is 17, whereas in Canada it is 26. The German system is more efficient. The average length of an apprenticeship in Germany is two to three years, while in Canada it is four to five years. In Germany, the cost is only $51,000 over 3.5 years for an apprenticeship and the apprentice earns $25,000 over that time. In Canada an apprenticeship costs $170,000 over five years and wages are $120,000 over the same period.
If we are going to be able to compete against Germany and the rest of the developed world, we need to reform our apprenticeship training system. That is why a Liberal government would be committed to working together with the provinces, business, labour and other partners to establish a national apprenticeship program. This would help keep young people in school and help ease the transition from school to work. A Liberal government would also put in place tax-based incentives to
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encourage on the job training in order to equip Canadian workers and industry to secure their future to training and retraining.
Another way that a Liberal government would help young people is through the establishment of a Canadian youth service designed to allow young Canadians to gain skills and develop useful work habits. Through this program young people would work on environmental protection or clean-up projects, or they would help respond to the social needs of their particular communities. We would pursue this initiative because Liberals realize that governments must be active participants in society. Liberals realize that people economics must come before balance sheet economics.
Of course the Conservatives scoff at this idea in their obsession with fighting inflation at the expense of everything else. An economist once wrote that the ultimate aim of economic activity is to increase people's happiness, not satisfy arbitrary accounting equations and I agree. Liberals believe in putting human consideration before all others. Besides being more humane that approach is the best guarantee of ongoing prosperity.
As our leader has said: "The comprehensive investment strategy in the Canadian people is the key that will unlock the door to a prosperous future for Canada". A prosperous Canada will not be possible without a highly skilled work force. That highly skilled work force necessitates the investment in education and training that we are advocating today. The government wonders how it will pay for these programs when it can barely afford the $211 million it now spends on special youth programs.
A government is judged by the priorities it sets for itself. Two hundred and eleven million dollars seems like a large amount of money in isolation but it is small compared to the $5.8 billion the government is spending on a fleet of helicopters designed to hunt Soviet nuclear submarines. A mere 1 per cent of the total projected costs of the cold war helicopter program would provide an additional $15 million for youth programs. The government refuses to even consider that option. It has made its choice. At a time when 1.6 million Canadians are unemployed, record numbers of businesses are going bankrupt and the federal debt is mushrooming and the Conservatives are spending our money on helicopters instead of people in need.

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That is not surprising. Canadians have lost hope in this government which has bitterly forsaken them in its last dying days. Mercifully in a few months Canada will have a new government that respects Canadians, understands the link between social, environmental and economic policy and is willing to do what must be done to ensure that young Canadians once again look toward the future with hope and self-confidence.


Hon. Pauline Browes (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration)):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to respond to some of the things my hon. colleague has spoken about today. Youth and youth employment, hope and opportunities for young people in Canada are of prime importance to the prosperity and future of our country. I think it is important to set the record straight on a couple of issues that my colleague has talked about.
I would like to remind the hon. member that the amount of money that has been put toward youth employment has been increased by $5 million. Some 400 youth employment centres have opened in the last few weeks across Canada to help young people. Last summer
179,000	young people got jobs through their youth employment centres.
The hon. member talks about what the Liberal Party might do if, God forbid, it would ever get in power again. Under the last Liberal administration youth unemployment increased by 5.3 per cent to an all-time high of 18.2 per cent. That is an outrageous record.
The Liberal program on youth talks about eradicating illiteracy. I would like to mention to the hon. member that some $296 million over five years has been put forth on this issue. This government invested $739 million in 1991-1992 to provide 377,000 young people with training and employment assistance including basic skills training.
Some $6 billion of taxpayers' money goes to the provinces for post-secondary education. We have allocated $24.6 million in new funding over the five-year period in co-op programs across Canada. The apprenticeship program has been excellent. We have been able to build the sectorial partnerships leading to more innovative programs.
The hon. member talked about the environmental youth force. It is another area where I think he should really have known what has been going in the last few years. Forty million dollars from environmental citizenship has been put forth to provide funds for youth in environment projects. I think the hon. member has been sleeping for the last couple of years and does not know what has been going on.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker if anybody has been sleeping in this place it has been members of the government.
I have been travelling throughout Canada in the past year listening to what young people have to say. There is a common theme to what they have to say about the Conservative government policy and I am sure the hon. member shares my view because we have over 400,000 young people unemployed.
The government boasts a great deal about its co-operative education program. In 1989 it was committed to quadrupling expenditures on co-operative education but it has not met that target, even though the hon. member knows co-operative education is a very effective way of giving young people the skills they require.
On behalf of young people I take a great deal of offence to the arrogance this government has demonstrated in the past nine years with regard to youth issues. It speaks a great deal about the stay-in-school initiative yet it cannot provide members of Parliament with an assessment of the program. Is it having a positive impact and has the high school drop-out rate dropped as a result of that program?
This summer we are going to see young people out on the streets. We are seeing the manifestations of the anger and frustration of young people everywhere throughout Canada, including the past weekend. We have seen young people on Yonge Street in Toronto whose frustration levels are very high.
I find it quite remarkable to see that members on the opposite side can always hide behind helicopters and deficit reduction schemes-which they have been total failures at reducing-and forget about the human element of governing.
It is apparent to me that this government has run out of ideas. It has no political will to bring about positive change and restore hope to young people. We have only
May 31, 1993

seen cuts in key areas of education and in summer employment opportunities. We have seen no progress in key areas that would provide young people with the skills required.


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest this morning to my hon. friend. I think he will admit that the stay-in-school program that the federal government has embarked upon has been fairly successful.
If we take a look at some of the statistics that are coming out today, rather than the 30 per cent drop-out rate that everybody has been using, including myself, over the last period of time, Statistics Canada has said our drop-out rate is down to about 18 per cent.
My hon. colleague from Scarborough, the Minister of State for Employment and Immigration has told me the drop-out rate is 8 per cent in Scarborough. It is getting much better and I am pleased to see that.
One of the reasons may be economic. If young people are not able to find jobs then they are not enticed out of school at an earlier date. I think that may be important. One young man in my community who I know very well was enticed out of school for a job that paid him about $20 an hour. He thought it was far better to get into that than to stay in school. Now that is not as readily available.
I understand the Liberals are proposing a national apprenticeship program as part of their youth platform. I wonder if they have received the co-operation of provinces on that. Second, which apprenticeships are they referring to, because as everyone knows there are many types of apprenticeships? Third, what is this going to cost the national treasury? Have they costed this type of thing out to ensure they are not duplicating federally what the provinces are doing? Could he expand a little bit on the apprenticeship program?


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the sincerity of the minister's question.
Before 1 answer his question I want to bring to his attention the cost of inaction. A recent study by the Conference Board of Canada suggests that Canadian society will lose $4 billion over the working lives of the
137,000	students who dropped out of school in 1989.
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There comes a point in the history of a country when governments must realize that essentially they have to move away from balance sheet economics to people economics, to give the skills to young people that will make them competitive with the students and young people of other countries who will be competing for the same global marketplace.
Our apprenticeship program should be modelled a great deal on the German model which has been extremely effective. Second, apprenticeship should not be relegated just to traditional occupations. For example when people think of apprenticeship they often think about plumbers and carpenters.
Modern day industries and industries of the future, such as environmental technologists, have to create apprenticeship programs. We will have to expand the number of areas sectorally for apprentices so that more people, more businesses and more co-operation takes place within Canada. In this way more young people can participate in programs and we will continue to have a supply of skilled labour that can meet the challenging times ahead.


Mr. Jean-Guy Hudon (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister Responsible for Constitutional Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the opposition claims that this government has not taken the necessary action to solve the problem of unemployment, especially among young Canadians, and that it has not put forward the education, training and retraining programs required by the present situation.
The opposition also demands that we develop national programs to correct the situation. Let me go back a little to the speech given by my opposition colleague who tabled the motion. I find it a very interesting speech, especially the part where he brings out the difference between apprenticeship programs in Canada and in Germany.
I agree with my hon. colleague that a great many young people in the streets of Toronto who are victims of the present economic situation are asking, as people always ask here in Canada: "What is the government doing for me?" We can find people like that in the streets of Toronto, Montreal or Quebec City or in Valleyfield or Beauharnois in my riding.

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We see a fundamental difference in apprenticeship programs between America and Europe. In Europe, apprenticeship is part of a long tradition, but here we have a lot of trouble establishing such programs and I know something about it. I am from the education sector and before that I was director general of a school board where we wanted to set up such a system. The greatest difficulty was not necessarily with young people but mainly with business. Business seemed quite prepared to tell us: "Train them for us and we will hire them afterwards". But when businesses took the young people they said: "They are not trained to our liking". We were always trying to set up apprenticeship programs, but they do not fit in with the mentality of business, first of all, and of education and government in North America.
I think that this difference of mentality between Europe and America is very obvious when it comes to apprenticeship. I praise the desire of my hon. colleague and of the Liberal Party to set up such a system, but I know that the biggest problem he will meet and that we will also meet on this side of the House, because this idea is progressing on our side too, will be the negative reaction to it from business.
They want trained young people, but when they get them they are not trained well enough to their liking. I think that we have a great deal of work to do. I admire the courage of proposing such a measure and think that it is appropriate. The other point that must be made- because there is always the issue of overlapping federal-provincial jurisdiction and we will always run up against it-is that we will have difficulty co-ordinating it and making young people aware of the program.
Look at what is happening now with high schools. When I left teaching in 1972 almost no one dropped out of school. Why are there more dropouts today? It is not the federal and provincial governments' fault if so many people drop out of school these days. The education system is at fault for not appealing to young people's interests. The school system is not interesting for young people because it is no longer dynamic. One way to make it more dynamic will be to provide apprenticeship training. The federal government could set up the best possible apprenticeship policy but if it is not co-ordinated with the provincial governments and the local authorities, namely the school boards, and developed
further with them then let me say that I am sceptical. I have great confidence in the apprenticeship system but little confidence in that procedure.
There is no doubt that no other government has done more for the recovery of Canadian workers and the labour market. In that regard, people unfortunately still try to make comparisons in terms of figures. How much is being invested in labour force development in such an area or such a riding? I find that unfortunate because even if we have statistics, as we see just for my riding of Beauhamois-Salaberry, showing convincing increases, the results do not match the amounts that we have always invested in it.
In 1988-89, in the riding of Beauhamois-Salaberry, for the various programs, job development, Challenge '88, as it then was, job entry, labour shortage, sections 24, 25 and 26, $7,396,541 was spent for all programs. That is a lot of money. The following year, $7,739,000 was spent, or about $250,000 more. In 1990-91 it was $9,457,000 and in 1991-92 it was $10,891,000. Do not try to tell us that the argument about money stands up. Funding increased from $7,396,000 to $10,891,000.
The problem is that education and labour force training are not only a question of money. We can stubbornly hold to our positions on both sides of the House. We can say we did more and our colleagues opposite will say that we did less. Those figures are from Statistics Canada and are clear. How come I have more problems in Beauhar-nois-Salaberry today than in 1984? I will explain why. We could have doubled and tripled the amounts spent, but there would still be problems. One of the main problems was the shutdown of Dominion Textile in Valleyfield. The employees have a recovery plan to reopen it. Spending money on education will not reopen it. Why did Dominion Textile in Valleyfield close?
At one point, I received workers from Dominion Textile who, like the young people in the streets of Toronto, said that it was up to the government. If Dominion Textile in Valleyfield closes, it is the government's fault. I said: "When you but a shirt in the store, do you look behind the collar? Would you undress for me and look at the collar of your shirt to see where it was made?" He replied: "It was not made in Canada. It would cost too much". Let me say something. When we do not buy Canadian because it costs too much, we are taking a job away from ourselves, our wives, mothers-in-
May 31, 1993

law, fathers-in-law or sons. That is the problem with Dominion Textile.
Mr. Speaker, you should have seen the discussion I had last year with representatives from Goodyear in Valleyfield. I told one of them: "Listen, you come and demonstrate in front of my office as a Goodyear employee, but you do not even have Goodyear tires on your car". He said: "Four Goodyear tires are not going to make a difference in the attitude and economics of the company". To which I replied: "I agree, but the image you project is awfully important. That is my car parked over there; I have four Goodyear tires on it. I traded my car in recently, but it is still equipped with Goodyear tires. Why? Because I have the honour of having a Goodyear plant in my riding. So, as the representative of that riding, I must have that brand of tires on my car. I would think that if you work for Goodyear, you would at least use your own product and insist that your family at least use that product".
Essentially, the financing of employment programs may have gone up from $7,396,000 to $10,891,000 in my riding, but I also have to develop this attitude that I have to take my own responsibilities. It is up to consumers to take their responsibilities instead of blaming the government all the time. Employment programs do not show that government resources are increasingly limited. What happens in the end? Things are getting worse and worse.
A finance ministers' conference has been going on in Ottawa since yesterday. They want to agree on deficit reduction. When the deficit is reduced, let us face it, I too as a member of the House of Commons will be affected in terms of my salary and benefits. Every one in this country will be affected because that deficit has to be paid. We are going to have to face that situation realistically.
Results from manpower training are never in proportion to the money invested, but rather to the attitude we will instill in this country that all Canadians must take their responsibilities and say: "I am responsible for my share of the pride in this country and for the training
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which will allow this country to grow, or else it will just sink."
Here are some statistics on employment. In 1992-93, the department planned to invest $3.55 billion to help train and employ over 900,000 workers. That is a lot of money, $3.55 billion. While they say we are giving less, that is still quite a bit of money. Assistance is provided in areas such as job creation, training, intensive special counselling, work sharing, worker mobility and self-employment.
The total amount spent by Employment and Immigration Canada on training and employment assistance will be $3.8 billion. This money will help over a million Canadians. This year more than 300,000 workers will receive job training by taking courses commissioned by the department or enroling in other courses on their own as fee-payer trainees.
Fifteen million dollars will be made available to workers who have to relocate. We want to have the organizational flexibility and the flexibility of having manpower in the various regions. For the first time, we have set aside $300 million to meet the needs of laid-off workers. The figures speak for themselves and I could go on. I would like to come back to what I was saying earlier. Training is not just a matter of figures but also of mentality. An hon. member said that we invest more in helicopters than in training. This is false. Let me ask a question. Who builds these helicopters? The federal government? No. These helicopters are built by workers.
I remember that during the election campaign of 1988 the nuclear submarine program, which was later dropped, was an issue. Who builds these nuclear submarines? They are built by workers. Members in this House are upset, and rightly so, when they see that GM, Chrysler or Ford in the automobile industry are closing various plants in spite of the fact that some years ago, when I was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, GM in Oshawa was awarded the contract for building light trucks. Who makes these trucks? The federal government? As a matter of principle, people are scornful about military expenditures. Why? Because it makes a good election platform to be opposed to such expenditures.

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Are the frigates built by the federal government? No, they are built by workers in Nova Scotia and at Davie Shipbuilding in Lauzon, and others across the country who fulfill subcontracts dealing with guidage. One only has to look, but of course one does not look at that.
What are the spin-offs, by province, of the purchase or the construction of the helicopters being built right now under the Canadian program? Why do people not look at that? These helicopters are being built by workers. They are being made by cousins, uncles, aunts of all of us here in this House, by people in our ridings.
As a government, we cannot think that we create jobs strictly by taking money and throwing it on the floor. I must buy a product. Build me desks, microphones, lights which work and glasses. Make me suitcases and wallets. Do something for me. I must buy a product with that money.
When I buy a product, the discussion is necessarily on that product. Some say: "Well, this is not necessarily the product which I would have bought". I can see my colleague across the floor. It is true. One may disagree with the type of product which the government can buy but one thing is sure: when one buys something as a government, one becomes an economic agent and one puts Canadians to work. This is what happened with the F-18 program. I have more examples concerning Quebec. This is what happened with Canadair. It is also what happened in various other sectors and this made our purchasing program an indispensable tool and an important lever for the economy, because it put people to work.
Let us leave that vicious circle which consists in comparing strictly with money. I am not trying to defend my position because if I only had to talk about money I would say: "The evidence is there". In fact the evidence is not there, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to adjust to the realities which the economy is constantly imposing upon us now.
I believe we will have to work at changing mentalities in this country. One might tell me this is easy to say. It may be easy to say, but it is not so easy to do. I want to go back to the very interesting comments made earlier by my colleague in his speech concerning apprenticeship, and to what I said at the beginning. Why is there not an apprenticeship system here in Canada? It is not necessarily because we do not invest the required money.
Earlier, the minister of State showed that we invest more money in apprenticeship programs than before. It is because we do not, in this country, easily adhere to that idea. This concept is not part of our culture and traditions, and I think it is very unfortunate. The best training system is not school per se. It is school combined with an apprenticeship system to ensure that young Canadians' training is compatible with the realities of the workplace.
Can we honestly ask ourselves the question? We will have to work harder in the different departments, and especially with the provinces, because I know what is going to happen. As a stakeholder in the field of education and as one who comes from a province which is experiencing problems in integrating its training programs with the federal programs, which is in fact the case for all the provinces, I know that every time we will be confronted with this problem we will say: "This is my jurisdiction, stay away from this issue".
I know that my time is up, but I would like to summarize by saying that the training and job creation equation is not in direct proportion to the money invested, even though we have invested more in 1991 than in 1984-85 when we came to power. We must change programs, like we did in 1984-85, and gear them to careers but, more important, we must change this mentality of blaming the government for all those problems. It is not necessarily the government's fault. It also depends on consumers who must make logical choices to ensure that we will put Canadians to work before giving jobs to others elsewhere.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, first I want to say that I enjoyed the comments of my hon. friend opposite.
His remarks, by and large, were quite correct in that the challenges we face in a very complex world with very many factors impacting on the ability of governments to do anything are great.
He started his remarks by indicating that he comes from a professional background in education. I think that people who are educators certainly see the shortfalls in the system and must be terribly frustrated when repeated efforts to try to improve the system, to ensure that education is affordable by all, and the programs are
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in response to the reality of the current labour market when those things simply do not happen.
The member must also recognize that when we deal with training in a Canadian context we have some difficulty with jurisdiction. Education is a provincial responsibility, there is no question about that.
The federal government is the senior government and it, more than any other government or collection of governments, has a responsibility to lead. Competitiveness is the responsibility of the federal government. The development of international markets is the responsibility of the federal government. The development of the labour market is a joint responsibility in which the federal government must play the leading role.
We cannot have a Canada where we have 10 or 12 different ministers deciding what is a national program or priority when it comes to skill development or labour market development. The federal government must lead. I recognize clearly that sometimes that is fraught with difficulty because of jurisdiction.
The member talks about the need for things like apprenticeship training, but in order for governments to lead they must have some credibility. A government without credibility cannot lead anybody anywhere. It cannot even lead its own members.
We are dealing with a government that has had nine years-and he is a member of this government-to change things, to convince provincial governments that we have to change our ways, to come in with a workable, doable, fundable national apprenticeship program.
Unemployment has risen in the last three or four years. We have had record levels of bankruptcy during the recession. Right now we are still stuck in what the government likes to call a jobless recovery. It is jobless because consumers have lost confidence. He touched on that.
If consumers do not spend and do not have confidence that they are going to have a job next month or next year they will not go in and buy a new refrigerator. If they do not buy the refrigerator, whoever would transport that refrigerator from upper Canada to my riding in Dartmouth to the Micmac Mall makes one less shipment. One fewer person drives a truck to Dartmouth. There
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are two fewer packers at the other end and there are five fewer people working on the line.
If we are talking about jobs and development we must have a government that has credibility when it speaks about economic matters. We must have a government that has a plan and a strategy for growth that encourages people to come along with them, and that is when we get job creation.
Could he please tell me if he still believes that the government opposite, which has presided over a period of record bankruptcies, record despair and near record unemployment, has the confidence of the Canadian public to pull us out of the recession we are in?


Jean-Guy Hudon: Mr. Speaker, this is a very hypothetical question that could elicit politically partisan answers from either side of the House. In any case, I am not so naive as to think that this government has not had its share of problems. The point is whether Canadians will maintain this perception to the very last. That is another problem.
I was elected to this House in 1984.1 remember that in 1986-87 we were very low in the polls in terms of popularity and credibility.
Perhaps the hon. member would care to explain how we managed to get five more members elected in Quebec than we had in the 1984 election. This morning credibility, and Canadians who are listening to my reply and who heard his question must be holding their sides is hardly the issue. It will mean something when there is an election, and then people will think differently. I agree that a government needs credibility, but I am sure that as far as the economy is concerned this government certainly has more credibility than the previous Liberal administration when it was in power, when it was piling deficit on top of deficit. The member is going to say that we have a deficit. That is true. But just try and find one penny that was added to the deficit through our programs since 1985. What is increasing the deficit is the damned interest payments we have to make on the deficit. We did not add a penny more.

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Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, the question I have for the member asks about the part of the opposition motion dealing with unemployment and the continued inability of the government to address the tragedy of unemployment, especially among the young and particularly with regard to training and education.
In a confidential internal memo from the assistant deputy minister of aviation within Transport Canada that was partially quoted in The Toronto Star today, there is a section that says it will save $230,000 by cutting all student jobs except selected jobs on co-op programs.
I want to ask the member for the government if he supports the decision of the bureaucrats of Transport Canada to remove $230,000 from wages for students. We know it is very difficult for a student to get a job, to earn enough to go back to university or to college. Does he support the decision by Transport Canada to cut these jobs this summer?


Jean-Guy Hudon: Mr. Speaker, I would like to see those Instructions, but if what the hon. member says is true, it reminds me of what I said earlier. We do not create jobs in this country for the sake of creating jobs but to put people to work. When businesses cut jobs, they do not realize, any more than governments do or even the average citizen, in many cases, that in this country jobs are primarily generated by the private sector not by the federal government. It is terribly easy to say we will cut all summer jobs for students. People tend to forget that these jobs are a guarantee for the future of our country, because these people are still in university.
I want to check the facts, but it is tempting, and it is easy. For instance, if they cut our budgets in the House of Commons, what do we do? First, we cut all part-time jobs and the surplus employees who are hired to help out here and there. That is what the department is doing, if the hon. member's information is correct. That is what the department is doing right now.


Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to have an opportunity to address this issue as a result of the motion the Liberals have introduced to the House today which reads:
That this House regrets the continued inability of the government
to address the tragedy of unemployment -
-and so on.
Quite frankly regrets is a very mild word to use in the context of so much tragedy in this country resulting from unemployment and poverty, as noted by the UN report over the weekend. This country finds itself in not a regrettable situation but a tragic situation. It is a situation that visits itself upon youth more tragically than others.
Not too long ago, in 1985, the United Nations sponsored International Youth Year. It did so on the premise, as I have said before in this Chamber, that if something was not done about the then mounting rate of unemployment among youth, there was a serious danger of widespread civil disobedience and civil strife occasioned by masses of alienated and increasingly powerless youth. It was the design of the United Nations during that year that the various governments around the world would take appropriate initiatives and examine the problem of youth unemployment and what could be done about it.
As one of the members on the government side indicated, in Canada at about that time the youth unemployment rate was a little over 18 per cent. I find it interesting that the government is criticizing the Liberals over the fact that their unemployment rates were so much higher than the unemployment rates among youth occasioned by this government when in fact the unemployment rate among youth is again mounting toward 18 per cent, being presently at 17.6 per cent.
What we are talking about today as it concerns youth is really the failure of the efforts that year to gain from this government and perhaps other governments appropriate initiatives focused on the particular problems of youth. After all, those youth who do not get jobs now while they are still under 25, indeed under 30, may be those who in the future will never get jobs. That is the critical issue.
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Mr. Speaker, you have probably read about the discussion about generation x, which may be an overblown concept. However it is perfectly clear that a great many of those young people who in 1984, 1985 and 1986 were seen to be the future and are alienated, powerless and rebellious people because they did not have jobs are the people that even now are a problem in terms of their ability to be profitably employed in decently paying jobs because they were robbed of their opportunity back in those days. Again we face the prospect that the 17.6 per cent of young people who are unemployed today may in the future still remain unemployable, and that would be a tragedy for us all.
We cannot afford the present situation in which 60 per cent of the increase in unemployment over the last couple of years has been based on youth while at the same time we are aware that there will be a diminishing complement of youth in the future to support an aging population. Therefore it is not something that just concerns youth alone. It concerns the way in which we will be able to maintain our standard of living and ensure that those who are retired and aged will be able to enjoy a proper retirement.
I talk about International Youth Year because it was the year in which the New Democratic Party had a youth task force that went across this country looking at the problems that existed among young people in Canada. We came up with a number of recommendations. I notice that a great deal of reference has been made to a task force report from the Liberal Party.
One of the things that has come out in the exchange that took place just a little while ago in the parliamentary committee on employment and immigration was that we heard a great deal from this government about what it has done for young people. The minister spoke about the slay-in-school initiative, which is a good program, that essentially consists of public relations, to encourage young people to stay in school.
We talked about the summer employment program for youth and its related programs. That is good. We are talking about a total of about $205 million. As this government will hasten to say, most of the money that is being provided to young people comes out of programs that are not specifically targeted for youth such as the Canadian Jobs Strategy.
One of the things that must be said in connection with evaluating what the government has done and in criticiz-
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ing, if that is appropriate, what the government has not done is one sentence among a number of sentences prepared, curiously enough, by the Library researchers supporting that committee. They went about trying to find out what this government was doing for young people. This sentence is: "Details regarding the effectiveness of youth-related initiatives delivered in the previous fiscal year are absent".
Back in 1985 the Prime Minister, the then minister of youth, and the Minister of Employment and Immigration all promised that they would develop a coherent and specific program to address the problems of young people. We are left with something in the order of a $200 million budget in the hands of the minister of youth. The minister of youth is supposed to be an advocate for young people. At the very least the minister of youth should have a handle on that number of young people who are served by programs that deliver to the needs of young people.
Year after year we have asked for the data, the specific figures on how many young people are being served under programs of employment and immigration or anywhere else so that we would have some handle on what this government is doing. That way we could judge its adequacy or inadequacy in reasonable terms.
The minister of youth not only has made no effort to find out what those numbers are but he has done nothing to improve the program to any degree at all. How can the minister of youth serve as an advocate if he does not know what is being done?
We have a problem. It is that in the whole vast area in which the government claims it is doing so much for youth we cannot get any specific figures. However we do know that the Canadian Jobs Strategy was cut by $200 million. If we can assume that 40 per cent of that program is directed toward youth then clearly youth have not been well served as their unemployment rate rises to nearly 18 per cent. In the meantime the amount of money being contributed to training and other programs for youth is being cut.
This is a tragic time for young people. We know that the costs of unemployment are high. They are high not only when unemployment exists among youth but when it exists among their parents. When poverty becomes too extensive and too deep for too many then we have automatically shut out many young people from any prospect of success in the future.

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The crime rate among young people has risen 404 per cent in the last five years. That is one gauge of the tragedy that we can see in the number of youth on the streets of our cities. We see it not only in crime but in mounting manifestations of youth frustration such as occurred on this very Parliament Hill.
As in Germany, unemployment among youth leads to scapegoating and conflict within the nation. I warned this government four years ago that we would find that kind of conflict within our society.
Are we ever going to be served properly? Are we ever going to come to grips with the fact that there are priorities that must be established? Obviously the most fundamental of all priorities must be to ensure that our young people will not be lost to us forever.
I notice that the Liberal motion calls for the initiation of a national apprenticeship program and a national youth service as major steps toward solving the problem of unemployment among youth. We had some idea to what extent that program has been worked out by the Liberals after the question was posed: How was the national apprenticeship program supposed to be implemented, will it involve co-operation with the provinces and in what fields will it be targeted?
We got a vague answer that said that apprenticeships should range among a whole host of new skills beyond plumbing, carpentry and that sort of thing. That may be true but we would expect that if they were going to make a proposal there should be some detail associated with it.
The Liberal recommendations include not only a national apprenticeship program but the adoption of a tax-based system to encourage work place training. In our task force report back in 1985 we also called for a national apprenticeship program in co-operation with industry, with the provinces and with labour.
It is true that we only have one-sixth the number of apprentices in this country as they do in Germany. It also must be clear that there is a very different educational system in Germany and the notion that we should simply borrow from Germany is something that we rejected in our report five years ago.
There needs to be a Canadian solution. That Canadian solution should certainly be tax-based, and indeed a grant levy system. We were specific, not vague. There should be a grant levy system in support of work place training. We say that a more elaborate development of initiatives already taken by the federal government subvented by a funding source would be extremely useful.
A national youth service is a major step. I looked at the Liberal agenda for youth and at the 10 recommendations and surprise surprise, there is nothing about a national youth service. That is one of more curious things about this.
What I find is the Liberals saying: "The federal government should establish a Canadian environmental youth force in which young people could participate in environmental rehabilitation and education projects around and across Canada". I and my party have no objection to an element of national youth service that would include the environment. However that sounds an awful lot like those old job creation programs the Liberals had before they lost their last government in which youth were seen cutting grass and picking up stuff from ditches rather than getting a decent background and work experience of the kind that would be necessary in the future. I hope that is not what they are talking about.
Let me say this, the mention in this motion of a national youth service is another straight steal from the full employment program of the New Democratic Party in which a national youth service is proposed which would provide a wide spectrum of job experience for young people. It would include not only summer work experience but also something else we recommended back in 1985. That is an expansion in co-operation between the educational institutions and the provinces of work experience in co-operative initiatives at the high school level.
In addition to such proposals as a national youth service, back when we had our youth task force we suggested a number of significant things. I mentioned the federal stay-in-school program earlier. It is not a bad program. It is decent in its public relations, through
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television and radio and various other vehicles, encouraging young people to stay in school.
More significant than that in our examination is the situation of youth in which we talked to young people without exception. They said they wanted more counselling in the schools. We found that there is about one counsellor per 1,000 students in the schools. Encouraging young people to stay in school is not a series of 20-second bits on television. Sometimes personal problems are involved. Sometimes it involves close one-on-one discussions with those adults who have the experience and knowledge to help them stay in school.
I would suggest there be a more intensive effort in that direction. Perhaps some funding could be provided in co-operation with the provinces to ensure that not only do we have good teaching but we have good counselling in the school system as well. That might be a more significant thing than PR in maintaining attendance at school because it is a problem.
It is true that recent figures indicate there has been a drop in the drop-out rate. We must always doubt new statistics but if that is true, it is salutary. However, we still need to do much more.
We also said in our task force report that illiteracy should be addressed. Whatever the drop-out rate or whatever anything of the sort is, we do have a serious situation: 28 per cent of our high school graduates cannot read adequately; 44 per cent cannot add, divide and subtract adequately; 30 per cent of the general population is illiterate.
It is certainly obvious that we must have something more than a voluntary approach to illiteracy. It must be a targeted program to achieve zero illiteracy within 10 years. That cannot be done on an ad hoc or voluntary basis, however useful that might be. It must be a part of a national training program addressed not just to youth but to the population in general.
We are not just concerned about ensuring that apprenticeship and training programs are there. We are also concerned about who the clientele is for such programs, who will be selected, who will be inclined to take advantage of such programs which involve experience on the job primarily.
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One of the things one realizes immediately is that there is a bias inherent in all that we do. It favours a predominance of higher income people in the post-secondary institutions, particularly universities, and favours low income people in apprenticeship and training. We must find some way to eliminate that bias.
There has been a great deal of talk about accessibility to universities. We must do something about the student loans program. Certainly we must counter the negative steps taken by the government in terms of eliminating interest relief and cutting back on the loan allocations for students. We must find a system of supporting people in training and in school that ensures they are all able to subsist in an equal way so that there is no bias in access or choice.
I will now turn to one of the things the Liberal program did not offer.


Pauline Browes: Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize the importance the hon. member has put on education and training in his career as a member of Parliament. He has identified many areas in which it is important for young people to be involved in terms of education in Canada.
As a percentage of the gross domestic product, Canada spends more on education than any other OECD country. It is not a matter of spending money; it is spending money smarter that we have to look at in terms of the future.
With respect to some of the moneys that have been spent, I notice the hon. member talked about the stay-in-school initiative that has established some $67,000. He also indicated that it is a very good program. Overall with Challenge '93, stay-in-school, the youth strategy and other programs concerning literacy and so on, some $210,000 has been spent in terms of specific youth projects.
The hon. member talked about work place training, recognizing the importance of the Canadian Jobs Strategy and the importance of partnerships. I would like to mention the student ventures school which has been established in metropolitan Toronto to help young people start up their own businesses. This is a first for North America. We need to have young people starting their

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own businesses because over 80 per cent of all the jobs are in small businesses in Canada.
I would like to ask the hon. member about the importance of jobs in the private sector. We have now established the Canadian Labour Force Development Board which has grown out of the Canadian Jobs Strategy, to have the private sector involved in choosing where the training should be. The private sector knows what jobs training needs to be done. It is very much involved with the provinces in terms of establishing the types of training programs the federal government should purchase.
What would the hon. member see as the role of the private sector in training and the importance of the private sector within the context of training and educating our young people?


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. It gives me the opportunity to refer to Jobs Ontario Youth, which is particularly aimed at young people, and Jobs Ontario Training, both of which are predicated on the notion that the private sector not only has a role but in our view also has an obligation.
That is why we proposed a grant levy system for funding training. Those industries that provided training would have a tax forgiveness while those that did not provide training would have to pay an additional tax. This would be one way of stimulating their involvement in it. If an adequate contribution by private industry could be had without those kinds of measures, then certainly that would be fine with us.
Most certainly, if there is going to be a relevant training program it must be based on industrial need, on economic need within the community or the province, within the sector to ensure that we do not waste money as we did in the past. People were being trained with skills that were archaic by the time they finished their work. It requires that those who are going to hire be involved in the training. That is elementary.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. He mentioned that the unemployment rate for young people is creeping back up and is almost at the 18 per cent level. I wonder how he would square that with the reality that over the last two, three or maybe four years the Challenge program, which is a summer make-work program, has had a declining amount of money available to it.
Certainly each year in my riding, whether it is in Thunder Bay or Atikokan, which are two different CEIC districts, there is less money available to assist the private sector in hiring young people. There is less money for the public and the not for profit sectors to hire young people. It is getting very difficult to create that kind of opportunity for young people because in this case, Challenge 93 is less than Challenge 92, which was less than Challenge 91.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Of course the Challenge program delivers a number of subprograms. SEED is particularly directed toward summer employment for university students. It is a summer experience program. In fact it was funded at $88 million and has been raised by $5 million this year. However this is after a long period of time in which there have been continual cutbacks in the amount of money spent for student summer jobs.
When this government came into office $240 million a year was being spent for all of the Challenge-type programs. It was not called Challenge then; it was youth summer employment. In fact in real dollar terms from 1984-85 until now the amount of constant dollars that have been available for summer student employment has almost halved.
In fact the $5 million increase we had this year certainly cannot be deemed to be in proportion to the vast increase, that is, the 6.7 per cent increase in the number of youth unemployed. That generally corresponds to the figures on an annual basis or during this summer.
This government has shortchanged by a considerable amount its contribution to youth summer employment. That is a tragedy in a time of high unemployment.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, like the member from the Conservative side of the House, I would also like to pay tribute to the hon. member from Windsor-St. Clair for the passion, the information and precision of his facts. He has advocated the youth portfolio, the view of youth and especially the view of research and development very well in this House. If I might say, he is one of the unique members of the House. On behalf of the NDP, he has really pushed us in those areas, pushed the House and pushed the country.
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Like many members, I have to attend a graduation. There are two big suburban high schools in Coquitlam and Port Moody, British Columbia. They are excellent schools and great kids, 17 and 18-year olds. I have a chance to give a short message. What short message would the hon. member suggest be given, based on his experience as the youth critic over the last four years, to the students who are graduating right now in Canada? What would he say to them?


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I can give the speech in a few seconds that I would give to a graduating class.
I can say however that what I would tell most students really has very little to do with my role as critic for post-secondary education or any of those other things. It would be to tell them, as I told them as a professor: Do what you are going to love doing best for the rest of your life. Understand that excellence in anything is best achieved if you love what you are doing. Success in anything is best achieved if measured in terms of doing something that you would enjoy doing.
On the other hand, I think it is important for young people to have the information available to them that allows them to make appropriate choices within the breadth of interest they may have. Some things have become increasingly clear. As a result of the absence of decent counselling and the absence of a system for providing advice to young people to make appropriate choices, too many of them are making inappropriate choices. Too many young people are choosing vocations for which there is no real market. It does not mean that they cannot do something in which they are interested. It is that they had better be very careful about choosing that part of what they are interested in doing that is more likely to be a marketable skill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Would the hon. member for York West indicate to the Chair whether his party is splitting the time of its speakers.


Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking for 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes question and answer, followed by my friend from St. Boniface for the remaining 10 minutes.
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This Liberal opposition day motion deals with the critical challenge facing youth. When we speak of unemployment, apprenticeship programs, training and the youth corps, the motion is not only valuable but very timely. We identify summertime with many things, one of which is the quest for summer employment of Canada's youth, particularly those students who will be returning to school.
I remember as a student not too many years ago seeking employment during the summer to sustain my high school fees which at that time were $500 a year, followed by my university tuition fees. Opportunities seemed unlimited. I remember working for Cilio Carpenters Co., E & M Precast, and two summers at the North York Board of Education on a number of very interesting community projects. I also worked with the Summer Canada programs in effect at that time. I had a feeling as a young person leaving school and looking for work to pay my tuition that there were no bounds or limits to future opportunities. All I needed was the desire and the willingness to pick up a shovel or pen and work for three months. In fact I probably had a better appreciation of the so-called struggles of academic life.
Times have changed. Perceptions have changed. When I meet with young Canadians in my constituency office now I get a very different message from the one I had when I embarked on summer employment, as did many others in this room. They do not have that sense of hope or that sense that opportunities are unlimited. They have the reverse feeling, one of very low expectations.
Talking about expectations, a recent Gallup survey studied the perceptions and feelings of young Canadians. It discovered that within the age group of 18-year olds to 29-year olds in Canada over 45 per cent of these expect their standard of living to decline over the next 20 years. Only 20 per cent of the sample actually expected an improvement. That is a pretty dismal failing mark for one's future when we have those numbers expressed by young Canadians who are pursuing a variety of different career choices.
When we look at some of the statistics we begin to understand why over 45 per cent of young Canadians do not look to the future with any great sense of hope. The youth unemployment rate for April 1993 was 17.8 per cent, which translates into 420,000 young people. In my

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province it is the same ratio, 17.5 per cent or 150,000 young Canadians without jobs.
Look at the statistics of the student summer unemployment rate for students aged 15 to 24 returning to school. In 1988 Canada had an unemployment rate for student returns of 10.2 per cent. It went up in 1992 to 17.9 per cent. Last year in my province the figure was over 20.3 per cent.
Looking at the Challenge and SEED programs that I announced in my riding a few days ago, there were a number of very worthy initiatives, unlike my friend from Windsor who suggested that somehow people are picking up garbage in the alleys. These are very worthy and interesting projects that were approved with my urging and with the support of the local Canada employment office. These will provide a number of young Canadians with very productive summer jobs.
However, looking at the big picture, just at the time that college and university student enrolments have increased from some 790,000 in 1985 to over 900,000 last year, the number of jobs being created thanks to the federal summer programs is diminishing because the number of dollars being given to those efforts has almost been halved. In 1985, 94,000 jobs were created. In 1988, 76,000 jobs were created. Last summer only 54,000 jobs were created.
The creation of jobs is going down as the number of students going into post-secondary education is going up. Is it any wonder that of those young Canadians in that survey, over 45 per cent had very diminished expectations and a lack of any hope. That is what government should be about, providing hope and opportunities. When we looked at the most recent federal budget-the ninth in this government's record-there was no opportunity for young people and mature people. There was nothing about youth and inspiring a sense of excitement in young Canadians. In fact the budget presented by this government was described by government members as a budget that was intended to stay the course.
When we read the statistics on unemployment going up and job creation going down, how can we justify a budget that actually promotes itself as a budget of staying the course as if that course was working for Canadians across the country.
The motion presented by my friend, the member for York North, also talks about the need for apprenticeship programs. Compare us to other countries in the world. For example, last year Germany had over 1.8 million Germans on apprenticeship programs, which is over 7 per cent of the German work force.
Last year in Canada apprenticeships totalled 128,000 Canadians, which is 1.1 per cent of the work force. We talk about the new economies, the economies of high tech, the jobs of yesteryear and the jobs held today by a generation of Canadians who are reaching retirement age.
I look at my own constituency in the construction field or the trades where the majority of individuals are the age of my parents: the carpenters, electricians, tool and die makers and bricklayers. These are jobs that computers will not be overtaking and are jobs that still require the knowledge and talent of those professions. Yet where are the apprenticeship programs that are to train and encourage young Canadians not to be ashamed of learning a trade through college or apprenticeship and will actually change the psychology from one of regret because the person did not go on to university to being in a position of having a very positive undertaking?
However, we do not have the infrastructure for apprenticeship programs which permits young Canadians to enter that trade and to learn those skills. We do not have a jobs corps or a youth service in this country. That is why our party will be talking about those initiatives during the campaign.
When we speak of the economy of tomorrow, when we talk about the jobs of tomorrow, when we talk about a world that is changing the way it does business and with whom and how, it must begin to bring in the variables of our youth. Rather than being happy and complacent about youth that have diminished expectations, we as a government and a national Parliament, as an institution, must take hold of that youth constituency and reverse those diminished expectations into exciting prospects. They will find who they can be and in the process what they can do for our country.
That is why today, of all the topics that we could have selected for an opposition day, we in the Liberal Party and caucus decided to talk on the eve of summer of the challenge facing young people. Also, as they face it, our country faces it. If we do not overcome it, they will face a problem and our country will face a crisis.
May 31, 1993


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. friend's speech because back in 1980-81 there was a special committee struck in the House of Commons led by the the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace. It was made up of members of all parties. I and my colleague from Calgary West had the privilege of representing our party. We produced a report entitled Job Opportunities for the 1980s. I believe that report is probably as relevant today as it was a decade ago when we did it.
We split our committee up. Some went to Holland, Germany and France and we all went to Britain to examine the apprenticeship programs, how they operated and so on. One of the major differences between the European system and the Canadian system is that in Europe when an individual takes an apprenticeship, that individual is assured of finishing the apprenticeship. In other words it is like going to school. One passes the various years and tests and one progresses. At the end of the apprenticeship program, whether it is three or four years, one is not assured of a job but one is assured of receiving one's journeyman's papers.
Unfortunately, the system we have in Canada is last on, first off. When a company has a slow period and downsizes, the apprentices go first. Therefore our young people are not assured they will maintain their apprenticeship during the period because of the union requirements that are not there in the old countries where their systems of apprenticeship have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years.
I would like to ask the hon. member how he proposes to establish apprenticeship programs in this country and convince the unions that when these apprentices come on, they remain on until they finish their apprenticeship programs. They should not be laid off in lieu of journeyman workers who are working at the plants. How is he going to solve the problem of making these apprenticeship programs work?


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's intervention and question. I do not think it is only a case of dealing with the problems that unions might have in terms of the last on. first off scenario.
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I think it probably affects those businesses and operations that also may not be unionized. Perhaps there is also in those factories and plants a system of respecting seniority which one wants to have because the other problem in our economic spectrum seems to be-at least from my riding's perspective-older workers. A lot of those firms and companies do not want to invest in a so-called 55-year old plus worker who may be closing their work life. I do not want to begrudge the seniority aspect in the firms.
I remember a few years ago a plan to address this problem by a former Liberal government, which was very successful by the way, that offered an incentive to those firms to hire young Canadians particularly as a first job opportunity.
The government not only encouraged these firms, but picked up part of the salary. It was of direct benefit to a firm to take a chance on a young person and offer that first job opportunity. The problem was in building one's resume and file in terms of presenting those credentials to that employer.
The program, initiated by the member for Winnipeg South Centre when he was minister of employment, produced very good results, allowing young Canadians to acquire first-time work experience. The businesses were being helped in part by the national government picking up the salary so it encouraged those businesses. It made financial sense to hold on to those individuals. Obviously if those individuals were given the benefit of that experience then it became a win-win situation.
I believe, as this motion tries to address it, that we need to be creative as opposed to simply saying that there is nothing we can do or that things are always too costly. I think there is a way around those problems confronting many of our young Canadians today.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, the motion today is first and foremost one about the tragedy of unemployment.
The question we have to ask is why it is a tragedy. It is because there is a loss of hope among those who are unemployed. There is a loss of confidence. Once one is unemployed and cannot find employment then one starts to believe that one no longer is able to make it. Then despair sets in. Once that happens it becomes very difficult to turn it around.

May 31, 1993
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I am delighted that my colleagues have brought forward this motion. It is one of the most significant challenges facing all levels of government today. Let us look at the current situation.

In this country today, more than 1.6 million men and women are out of work. Many people say this figure is closer to three million, if we include those who have stopped looking because they think there are no jobs out there and those who had to retire because at their age they had no other option.
Today 421,000 young men and women are looking for jobs. They are ready and willing to work, to make a commitment to society, but they have no jobs.

It is a serious tragedy when we see over 1.6 million Canadians, more than 400,000 of whom are young people, without work. They are people who have lost hope in many instances. They are people who are beginning to lose confidence. They are people who are starting to despair.
Let me share with my colleagues and people who are listening just a few cases that I have in my riding. There is a well-skilled carpenter who started his trade at a very young age and has never been unemployed for any significant amount of time. He has been unemployed for more than a year with no hope of finding employment and he had been working for over 30 years. He came to see me with two others who had the same kind of experience and they despair because they do not believe there is any work on the horizon.
Let me talk about a young man who recently married. He and his wife are putting off having children because his wife is still employed but he has been unable to find employment. He is young, husky and strong with the right attitude but he cannot find work.
The accountant came to this country a number of years ago, worked very hard and was extremely successful. His company downsized and some people were let go. He has been unable to find work for the last sue months and he
has written literally hundreds of letters. He comes with the very finest qualifications and recommendations.
What about the women who are new Canadians? In their own countries they were teachers, librarians or civil servants. They are highly educated by all normal formal standards and yet there is nothing, absolutely nothing. They are willing to take on any jobs available.
In one case a woman has two young daughters who will be going to university in September. She is wondering whether she and her husband will have the money to support their children while they go to university.
Let me talk about some recent university graduates. A young woman graduated with a degree and did outstandingly well. She had high marks and tremendous recommendations. She has been looking for work for months and has found nothing.
A young man with a masters degree in economics has been a graduate for a couple of years. The best job he has had so far paid $6.50 an hour for six months. That was a contract and it is over.
I know a graduate with an MPA, a masters in public administration. He has a tremendous attitude, is willing to work but has had only short-term jobs. He just lost his last job that lasted a few months.
A man roughly my age and not yet ready to retire has lost his job. He cannot find a job in spite of the fact he has held some of the most senior positions in his line of work. He is despairing and losing hope.
There is nothing for the unemployed youth out there. They come in and talk to me frequently. Denise is willing to do anything: cut grass or paint. There is nothing out there.
Boris likewise is willing to go and plant trees anywhere or break rocks if necessary just to get a job. Peter is anxious to help his single parent family, his brothers and sisters but there is absolutely nothing out there.
When we look at youth unemployment we have to look at two categories. We have to look at those who are already in university and want to earn some money because student aid has not kept up and tuition fees, incidental fees and book prices have gone up. They now pay the goods and services tax and they are no longer able to keep up. In many instances where their families were able to help this is no longer the case.
May 31, 1993

We are also looking at young people who want to go to college and university for the first time and for whom there is nothing out there. For the very few there will be short-term, poorly remunerated jobs that will not allow them to save enough money to go on to further study and hopefully get a better job.
Youth unemployment today is roughly 18 per cent, over 400,000 people. In some provinces, it is in excess of 35 per cent and close to 40 per cent. This is absolutely shocking.
What does the media say about this? One would assume that a member from the opposition would be less inclined to support government but let me share with the House what students looking for jobs find difficult and frustrating. They are saying: "It is wrong to saddle youth with diminished prospects". That was written in the month of May. "Governments get failing grades in the summer job funding department" was another article that has been written.

One says: "There is nothing out there for students". Another article says: "Few opportunities for young people". Another article mentioned about this deplorable situation.

If we look at the government's major initiatives in summer employment we will find something very interesting since 1991. The Challenge program funding in 1991 was $143 million but it is now down to less than $116 million. Where the SEED funding was at $80 million, it is now at $88 million. It is a very slight increase but compared to the decrease in the Challenge funding of course it is not at all the same.
The number of jobs that are now created is roughly the same as what was created before in spite of the fact that there is more unemployment, less money and these young people are in the situation where their tuition and incidental fees have gone up at astronomical rates.
Let us also remember these are tremendously difficult times for our young people. There are virtually no jobs and if there are jobs they are short term, poorly remu-
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nerated and will last only a few days or perhaps a couple of weeks. There have been massive cuts to the education sector. Transfers from the federal government to the provinces from 1985 to 1994 will be reduced by roughly $10 billion.
Basically the same amount of money has been spent for training and re-training, yet there are so many more unemployed. Student aid has not kept up. I could go on but I know I am coming down to the last couple of minutes.
I want to call the government to action. I asked the Deputy Prime Minister on May 11 what he was going to do about the more than 400,000 unemployed youth. Did he come forward with specific programs? Did he say: "Look, I will restore hope; I will remove the despair"? No, he talked about some philosophical arguments of getting it all right. While the government is getting it all right, there are a lot of people going hungry.
The Liberal Party is committed to establishing a national apprenticeship program and creating a Canadian youth service dedicated to environmental protection and responding to the social needs of our communities. We want our young people to get back to work. We want them to learn from work. We want them to be able to go to college and university and make even larger contributions to society. We want all Canadians who want to work to be able to work because with a job people find hope again and lose their despair.

They are ready to make a contribution to the development of this great country of ours. That is what we want as a party and as the next government of this country.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the hon. member a question.
Given these national programs, does he now see a role for the national government in education? I do. I come from the greater Vancouver area and I see a role for the federal government in English as a second language. It should be funding some of those programs. Maybe the Vancouver school board would not have been on strike if there had been a little extra money from the federal government. There are so many classes in English as a

May 31, 1993
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second language. Kids need that extra schooling or they will be behind from day one.
The second area is national standards for retraining. I wonder if the hon. member could comment on whether he feels the national government now has a role in education.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question.
There are a number of roles that a national government could play. My colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre and I as well as others, have asked that this be explored. I have a paper I published on that very issue.
I think it is important to set up a mechanism whereby these national standards can be available. There are some, by the way, in the professions. A group of professions has a red seal, where they can transport their credentials and qualifications from one province to another. There are certain professions in which it is easier to move from one area to another. It seems ludicrous to me that I can be a doctor in one province and yet not be able to go directly to another province and be a doctor. Teachers, mechanics or what have you should also be able to move from province to province provided certain qualifications are fulfilled.
With respect to the jurisdictional problem, because that is always an issue, let us set up a mechanism and invite people to participate. If it works as well as we think it will, those who do not get on the program initially will be able to follow later.
With respect to English or French as a second language, there has been a national role and I think that must be strengthened. I think we must do that in co-operation with the business sector and the provinces.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand -Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned some statistics on the number of jobs created by SEED and the SEED funding since 1991.1 want to remind him that in 1985 at the start of all of this, SEED funding was $149.3 million while this year it is only $88 million. It has almost been cut in half since that time. The full-time post-secondary enrolment in 1985 was 789,000 while today it is up to 921,300.
As my colleague knows, being our critic for education, the need for these jobs is greater than it has ever been and the funding has been cut back.
I wonder if the hon. member could give us some examples from his portfolio of how this sort of cutback has really hurt university students in their search for summer jobs.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question on the downsizing of the funds that have been available for youth. It is particularly frightening because student debt has gone up at an alarming rate. It has more than doubled at certain levels and is at a point now where people are thinking about not going to college or university for fear of not being able to repay.
We have examples where tuition fees have gone up 300 per cent within the last few years. In some cases incidental fees are in a similar range. This is something Canadians have not realized because there is so much out there, but students have been hit from any number of sectors. They have been hit with the goods and services tax, additional incidental fees and additional tuition fees. Fewer jobs have been available for shorter periods of time. These have not been as well remunerated. Fewer funds have been available and the student aid program is completely inadequate. The students are in the eye of the needle. They are being hit from all sectors. Very often parents who were able to help cannot provide nearly as much as before.
There is tremendous despair. People are saying: "What is the use of getting an education? I might not be able to pay the money back. If I do get a degree or diploma will I be able to get a job?" Once one is faced with those particular realities obviously there is tremendous hesitation.
Not only do we need constant programs such an apprenticeship programs and others I have mentioned to get people back to work, but we also need to break this vicious cycle where people have said there is no use. We have to be the government that restores hope, removes the despair and creates a climate where people can work.
May 31, 1993


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a word or two about the very important subject of unemployment and in particular youth unemployment which is of great concern to the government.
My hon. friends opposite would have people believe they are the only ones in Canada concerned about this problem. I want to say to them there are very dedicated, hard-working public servants in 450 Canada Employment Centres who are very concerned about this problem. These people are the front line troops working with Canadians young and old to deal with problems of unemployment. Their challenge is a great one.
The function and role of the government in this regard is to assist these people through the employment centres. Our friends in the Liberal Party think the purpose of the government is to employ everybody in Canada.


Ron J. Duhamel: Tell us what you are going to do.


Peter L. McCreath: But of course that would involve unlimited taxation and absolute lack of control.


Ron J. Duhamel: Do something.


Peter L. McCreath: Of course the opposition members can spend all kinds of money because they have no authority to do anything at all.
My hon. friend opposite wants to know what this government is doing. I will tell him. This government has invested $3.55 billion in 1992-93 to train and assist more than 900,000 Canadians. I recall it was this government that brought in Bill C-21 to change unemployment insurance from being passive to active and assist unemployed Canadians through retraining and developing skills so they would be employable. Every member opposite, including the hon. member for St. Boniface who is making so much noise right now, voted against that. Their concept is not one of looking to the future. Their concept is not one of having faith and confidence in Canadian businesses and Canadian entrepreneurs to develop employment. Their concept is a 19th century one.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I was just wondering if it was my arrival in the Chair that caused this uproar or was it like this all morning.


Peter L. McCreath: Madam Speaker, we are so delighted to see you.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: It being two o'clock the House will now proceed to statements by members pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland -Colchester):: Madam Speaker, I call on the Minister of Agriculture today to expedite the release of funds for the extended federal-provincial development agreement with the Government of Nova Scotia.
The agriculture development season is now well under way but there is still no sign of the announced funding. This delay puts organizations such as the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture and their member farmers in a very difficult position and interferes with their programs and planning.
Land development by farmers is only practical if it is done now during the short window of opportunity in Nova Scotia. Marketing groups must organize now in order to be ready for the harvest season and take advantage of that market. Human resource development is necessary now if our industry is to remain competitive in Nova Scotia.
For all these reasons and many more it is essential that this funding be released. I again ask the minister to expedite release of these co-operation agreement funds.


REFUGEES
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Madam Speaker, this morning a group of concerned Canadians held a press conference in Toronto to announce that they would declare a sanctuary unless there is a fair review for legitimate refugees who have been denied that status in Canada.
Although the refugee determination system is basically a fair one, mistakes are made due to negligent lawyers, incompetent translators, inadequate information and

May 31. 1993
sometimes biased board members. In these cases a fair review is required although they are not taking place, and have not for more than a year.
Right now the Toronto group knows of 24 cases in which the individuals are in danger of death if deported. In virtue of the Geneva convention and the charter of rights the government has a legal obligation to protect innocent refugees. There should be a just review where mistakes have been made.
The Toronto group has said that if the government does not protect these refugees it will declare a sanctuary. It will not abandon these people.


COMMUNITY SAFETY AND CRIME PREVENTION
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, on May 26, 1993 the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada announced the appointment of a special advisory committee to help him develop a Canadian strategy on community safety and crime prevention.
The committee will consist of 29 members selected on the basis of their interest and experience in community safety and crime prevention issues.
Ms. France-Claude Goyette, of the Centre d'aide et de lutte contre les agressions a caractere sexuel in Val d'Or, was selected to represent Abitibi-Temiscamingue.
I am very glad and proud that Ms. Goyette accepted the responsibility to continue the work done by the national seminar on community safety and crime prevention so that everyone in Abitibi will get the benefit of her experience.


CANADIAN ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN
Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon -Dundurn):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
In the past 20 years the council has changed and grown but several things have remained constant. The council has maintained a reputation for excellent, ground breaking and accessible research on women's issues, and for advocacy on violence against women, reproductive health, poverty, women and politics, teenage women and the legal status of aboriginal women.
This year the council is celebrating its diversity and is proud to be representative of the Canadian population, including its most senior members.
The council has made over 400 recommendations to the federal government over the last 20 years and a number of these recommendations have been influential in shaping Canadian public policy.
On behalf of the New Democratic Party I congratulate the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women for a job well done.



Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today and bring to the attention of the House an important anniversary.
The Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women was founded 20 years ago today in response to one of the recommendations of the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women.
The advisory council is a government funded, independent organization whose mandate is to advise the federal government on women's equality issues and inform the public of these matters.
The council has done an excellent job in fulfilling that mandate. Its ground breaking research and advocacy for women's rights helped lead to the women's equality provisions now contained in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On behalf of the members of this House I thank the council for 20 years of commitment to the goal of full equality for the women of Canada and I wish it many more years of success.
May 31, 1993



Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Madam Speaker, I wish to join with the two previous speakers to congratulate the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women on its 20th anniversary.
The council has an exemplary record in the pursuit of equality for women in Canada. Established pursuant to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970, the council's mandate has been to advise the government on issues of concern to all Canadians, most particularly to women.
Since then the council has worked tirelessly on more than 400 recommendations to the federal government. In addition it has produced over 300 publications, books, background papers, fact sheets and briefs to parliamentary committees. Such publications and recommendations were ground breaking in terms of advocacy, research and reform. For example, the advocacy work on behalf of aboriginal women contributed to the 1985 amendments to remove discrimination against women from the Indian Act.
The council itself has become much more representative of the changing face of Canada and of Canadians with the appointment of Dr. Glenda Simms as its president in 1990-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I regret the member's time has expired.



Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Louis-Hebert):: Madam Speaker, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Due to its tremendous credibility it continues to play a leading role with research and policy recommendations on matters of interest to women. For the first time in its history, the three most senior positions at the council are held by women from the black, native and francophone communities, reflecting the diversity of our country.
The government can look foward to more excellent research and insightful policy recommendations based on the NACSW's consultations with many different groups of Canadian women.
I invite everyone to join me in paying tribute to the NACSW for its excellent work and in wishing it every success for the future.


TAXATION
Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Madam Speaker, there have been two serious blows by this government against my constituency, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. One was the Government of Canada going back on its promise to build the Polar 8 and now the second is the cutback on grants in lieu of taxes.
The municipality of Esquimalt has suffered a $500,000 loss because of an arbitrary cut in the grant in lieu of taxes. I have received a complaining letter from Mayor Chris Clement and two councillors, Jim King and Ray Rice. They lay out the problem clearly and lay it at the feet of this government.
I ask in all fairness that the government of the day treat everyone fairly in this country, particularly my own constituency of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, and restore the level of grants in lieu of taxes to as high a level as last year.


SENIORS' MONTH
Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to remind you that June is traditionally Seniors' Month in Canada.
Every year at this time communities all across the country get together to mark Seniors' Month. Celebrating this event offers an opportunity to promote appreciation and respect for seniors and to recognize their continuing contribution to society.
Today seniors are more numerous and more visible and, for the most part, are healthy and independent. Their accomplishments are wide-ranging and the enthusiasm they bring to living life to the fullest is an inspiration to all of us.

May 31, 1993
The recent renewal of the seniors' initiative for another five years indicates the important place older Canadians hold within the Canadian family. The Minister of State for Seniors will launch Seniors' Month with the senior showcase in Ottawa on June 1 and 2 at the Citadel Inn.
It is with great pride and enthusiasm that I urge all members and all Canadians-


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


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Madam Speaker, last year my leader called the Toronto riot a wake-up call for this government.
Nazi violence on Saturday night was another wake-up call, and it literally happened on Parliament's doorstep. On Saturday night, not 200 feet from where I stand now, dozens upon dozens of neo-Nazis gathered on Parliament Hill to give fascist salutes and scream "white power". When they had finished they engaged in a riot with protesters at the foot of Parliament's lawn and then viciously beat people along the sidewalk on Elgin Street.
This neo-Nazi riot left a score of people in hospitals and it left many of my constituents, Jews, non-whites and others, terrified.
The government must show leadership in dealing with racism. There will no more wake-up calls. The time to act is now. In the past we have called on the minister responsible to introduce tough legislation that addresses the issue of hate crime and racism.
Today, on behalf of my colleagues in the Liberal Party, I call on the government to introduce tough anti-hate legislation and to set up a working group to address this disturbing problem.


CAMBODIA
Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Madam Speaker, Cambodians are struggling to gain democratic control over their war-tom nation.
Under observation and support from the United Nations, Cambodia has just completed its first free and democratic elections. As the ballots are counted, we can
reflect on this accomplishment and congratulate the Cambodians on their determination.
An election in Cambodia is a different proposition than one in Canada. Violence terrorized voters as the Khmer Rouge attempted to first boycott and then disrupt the election process. In spite of death threats, rough terrain and torrential rains, voter tum-out reached a stunning 90 per cent.
Cambodians have demonstrated their desire for democracy and we must urge all parties involved to respect the outcome of balloting. We in Canada often take our safe and orderly election process for granted. We do not realize that a democracy like ours is the envy of the world.
I congratulate the people of Cambodia for their courage. I am sure that I am joined by all Canadians in wishing Cambodians the best in confronting the overwhelming challenges yet to be faced.


PATRONAGE
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, Here with a patronage list beneath the bough The Hairdresser, Baby-sitter, Innkeeper and Thou All will be subjects this week of our rebuke Which the Tories will try their utmost to refute
Quietly sat Brian on his stool at the Ritz
Thinking who should go where on his patronage wish list
"If I needed a coif," said he of big chin
"Perhaps a dye job from Renaldo will make me look in"
For hosting his cronies where they would often meet Fernand Roberge was awarded his own Senate seat For since the 'ol days they both certainly knew That sooner or later they'd unseat Joe Who
As Duncan Jessiman wrestled cash from the blue chips Three senators were asked to serve up their pink slips lb make room for a Tbry bagman, that's kinda "Kafka"
At least that way they'll be able to pass NAFTA
Is Brian's sense of history somewhat deflated?
For "you had an option" now seems to have faded 'A little non-partisan camouflage and nobody will notice"
Says Brian to himself, "I did it 'my way'-Hocus Pocus".


PROVINCIAL PAPERS
Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to report that on Saturday the employees of Provincial Papers, Abitibi-Price Inc. and the Ontario government announced the completion of a deal that will preserve over 600 jobs and transfer
May 31, 1993

ownership of Abitibi's Provincial paper mill to its employees.
The announcement follows months of planning, development and negotiations among the mill management, the unions-the Communications, Energy and Paper-workers Union, the Office and Professional Employees International Union, the International Union of Operating Engineers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers-Abitibi-Price Inc. and the Government of Ontario.
The operation will be run by the current mill management, who by the way are part of the employee owners group, while ownership is shared by non-union employees, 25 per cent, and by unionized employees, 75 per cent.
The NDP Government of Ontario provided $18 million in financial assistance to help the Provincial Papers employees turn around and restructure the mill. This is another indication of the NDP's continuing commitment to invest in initiatives to protect jobs and strengthen industry in communities like Thunder Bay.
Congratulations.


WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton - Charlotte):: Madam Speaker, today marks World No Tobacco Day. Each year this day is celebrated with the intention to discourage tobacco users from consuming tobacco and encourage all of us to become aware of the problem and to take appropriate action. I hope the minister listens.
This year's theme. Our Window to a Tobacco-Free World, appeals to the world's health services and professions to set an example by refraining from smoking and by creating smoke-free premises.
The government, through the Department of National Health and Welfare, supports this effort. The national strategy to reduce tobacco use encourages collaboration with health services and professionals to develop and distribute programs to reduce tobacco use.
I would like to congratulate groups across Canada that have organized activities that will raise awareness of this year's World No Tobacco Day theme.


BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister is travelling to Washington this week to meet President Clinton. The reports out of Bosnia are appalling. All Canadians sincerely hope this topic is on the Washington agenda.
The international community has been unable to address the Bosnian conflict properly. The lack of action on behalf of the Canadian government has been distressing. Canada has failed to take on its traditional leadership role in peacekeeping and peacemaking. Canada was not directly involved in recent UN deliberations. Canada was not a part of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's consultative trip around the world. Most important, Canada was not a part of of the Washington plan to protect safe havens.
This most recent initiative falls far short of the goal of protecting the people of Bosnia. Steps must be taken as an interim measure to ensure that safe havens are properly protected and assisted.
The Prime Minister of this country and President Clinton are obliged to discuss the resolution of the conflict in Bosnia.


BARLEY MARKETING
Mrs. Louise Feltham (Wild Rose):: Madam Speaker, on March 31 Dr. Colin Carter released his study on barley marketing. Since that time barley producers in Wild Rose and across Alberta have anxiously awaited the announcement of a dual continental market for barley.
A dual marketing system would allow producers the right to decide how they wish to market their own barley. A dual marketing system would also result in an increase in net farm income of $52 million in Canada as a whole and $31 million in Alberta alone. That extra income would mean a lot not only to our farmers but also to the taxpayers of Canada.

Oral Questions
Barley farmers would like a decision made now so that they will be able to plan for the future. I urge the government to endorse a dual continental barley marketing system as soon as possible.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister.
The United Nations has just vigorously condemned the Conservative government's record on poverty. According to the UN, Canada has the worst record of any industrialized country in this respect. The Conservative government ignores youth poverty, tolerates the use of food banks and lets more than half of Canada's single mothers live in poverty.
How can the Prime Minister justify these Conservative economic policies, when the UN accuses him of turning a blind eye to poverty?


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I have looked at the report of a United Nations committee which is about six pages long. It is seriously flawed. It did not do a great deal of work or investigation and did not understand the situation in Canada at all.
As a matter of fact I can tell the hon. member there has been immeasurable progress in alleviating poverty over the last decade. A number of programs have been undertaken by this government. A number of people have been taken off the tax rolls because of the change in our tax system over the years. Tax credits which were not there before have not only been established but enriched over the years.
Unfortunately we still have poor people in our country, but we are working toward alleviating poverty with all the work that we do in government.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, it is amazing that only a few months ago the government had no hesitation in spending millions of dollars of
Canadian taxpayers' money to brag about a United Nations report. It is amazing that today, because it does not like the results of the same organization, it sloughs it off.
The UN report states that during the entire Conservative era there has been no progress made on alleviating poverty in Canada. The UN, hardly an enemy of Canada, says that the government record on child poverty, on homelessness and on food banks is deplorable.
We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet we are condemned internationally because the Conservative government has disregarded the reality of poverty.
At the meeting today of ministers of finance, will the Government of Canada follow the suggestion of the United Nations and "recommend concerted government action to eliminate the need for food banks?" Or will it carry on with the same harsh policies that have left thousands of Canadians without hope?


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I just came from the finance ministers' meeting. The hon. member will be pleased to know that New Democratic finance ministers, Liberal finance ministers and Conservative finance ministers are working co-operatively in assuring that we tackle our deficit and our debt situations. They are working co-operatively on methods of economic growth and job creation. The co-operation there has been excellent. All ministers are buoyed by the mood.
Let me just point out to the hon. member some of the measures that have been brought forward over the last period of time. The child tax benefit adds $2.1 billion in new benefits directly targeted to groups such as single mothers to whom this report does not refer. Nor were they considered in the deliberations. The equivalent to married credit of $300 million per year, increases in the child care expense deduction, $500 million child development initiative targeted to children at risk, and $3.8 billion in training and adjustment in 1993 were brought forward. I could go on and on but I will not.
The hon. member knows we have taken many steps to alleviate poverty in the country. They have been successful and we will continue to work to alleviate poverty in any way that is possible.
May 31, 1993


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, the fact is that if the minister takes the time to read the UN report, he will know it was the Canadian government that refused even to provide statistics on the homeless of Canada.
When it comes to vaunting its record I would like to ask the minister how he can stand in the House and brag about his government's accomplishments. The fact is that the situation today for single mothers, for kids living in poverty, for hungry children and for homeless Canadians is worse than it was when his government took office nine years ago.


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I do not believe it is and I think the facts bear that out. A six-page study by a committee of the United Nations does not make that a fact. I might say the same organization, the United Nations, ranks Canada the second highest of any country in the world in terms of quality of life.
We are getting conflicting reports from the United Nations. I guess the hon. member chooses to pick the one she likes the best just for the opportunity to be in opposition.
She may want to take a look at another study that was done by the University of Chicago press for the United States National Bureau of Economic Research which said that Canadians fight poverty better than other countries in the world. It pointed out that Canada's social programs, unlike those in the United States, have reduced poverty and narrowed the gap between the rich and poor.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Madam Speaker, the United Nations report justly criticizes the Conservative government for "the omission from the government's written report and oral presentation of any mention of the problem of homelessness".
I ask the minister why this Conservative government is shamelessly trying to cover up its poor record of tolerating not only poverty and hunger but also homelessness in this country.


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, this government is not covering up anything and the hon. member knows that, absolutely nothing.
Oral Questions


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, according to the United Nations the problems of poverty, including homelessness in Canada, are directly related to "the fact that the federal government appears to have reduced the ratio of its contributions to cost sharing agreements for social assistance".
Will the government move in today's finance ministers' meeting to repair this deficiency in its policies and finally do something concrete about the problems of poverty in Canada as they have developed and become worse over these nine sad years of Conservative government?


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, that is not true. The hon. member himself said that they did not have the statistics. I am not sure how they could base it on a flimsy six and a half-page report without having the facts in front of them.
The hon. member understands that and I am sure he is just using it as a political ploy. The finance ministers are meeting today and they are meeting in a co-operative effort to combat some problems we have in this country. One major problem is debt and deficit because the higher the debt and the deficit go and the more interest payments various levels of government have to pay, the less they have for social programs.
I am surprised the hon. member, being the finance critic on that side of the House, did not stand to say how pleased he was to hear the gross domestic product figures that came out today, showing that we had in the first quarter of 1993 an annual rate of growth of 3.9 per cent and that manufacturing jobs had increased by 28,000 in the last month.
That is the way to eliminate poverty, to get the economy going and to create jobs. That is how Canada will get back on its feet after the recession we have been through.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Madam Speaker, my question is for the same minister. I have to say I find it strange that he can recite a University of Chicago press story that says we are better than the worst industrial nation in the world in terms of social justice but cannot even remember which committee of the United Nations wrote the report we are discussing now.

May 31, 1993
Oral Questions
That committee was the United Nations Monetary Committee on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The report says that this country, which is better off than virtually any other country in the world, has made little progress under this government in the elimination of poverty.
I have a question for the government which I hope he will answer. I am going to be quite specific. Will the government respond to the specific concerns cited in this document? Will it reinstitute the Canada Assistance Plan transfers that were cut? Will it increase its level of social housing expenditures above the present level of 1.3 per cent? Will it act-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I think a question or two or three have already been asked.


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, there were myriad questions there. It is safe to say to my hon. friend in the New Democratic Party that the measures taken over the last number of years have improved the situation for the poor in the country. There is no question about that.
The best way to alleviate poverty in a country is to have jobs, to have growth and to see the economy grow so that people can get back to work. That is the best method. If people take a look at our safety net programs and compare them to those of other countries in the world, they will find that ours rank very high around the world, including our health care. By the way, this report said that Canada has done a good job with human rights, as I recall reading it.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Madam Speaker, no one doubts there are some good things the report said about Canada, but one of the things it specifically condemns the government for is the cap it places on the Canada Assistance Plan. That is one of the things for which this government is scorned.
Will the government in consultation with the provinces consider lifting the cap on CAP as a means of addressing the issue of poverty?


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I might say that the transfers to the provinces have been increasing annually on average from 1984 until this year by over 5 per cent, about 5.6 per cent.
As far as CAP is concerned, CAP had a cap put on it for three provinces at 5 per cent. The other provinces do not have the cap put on CAP, if I could put it that way. The hon. member knows that.
With inflation running at 1.5 per cent, an increase of 5 per cent a year is still a large increase. When he stands and talks about reductions in transfers to provinces he is totally wrong, because they have increased some 60 per cent over the last nine years.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Madam Speaker, they were cut. I asked a specific question about what was cited in the report, whether they would remove the cap on CAP.
Today the Canadian Ethnocultural Council is meeting here. It has a concern shared by this UN committee with respect to the cancellation of the Court Challenges Program. That is a very simple thing they can do in response to that program.
I ask the minister, will this government reinstitute the Court Challenges Program for the benefit of those minorities who have been denied the opportunity to use that program?


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, the New Democratic Party has opposed every cost cutting measure that this government has taken, every single one.
Not only have the NDP opposed them but it wants the government to spend additional moneys over and above those we have cut on new programs, new grandiose schemes and so on and so forth. This country cannot afford it.
If the NDP took a look at itself and its policies and where it is in the eyes of the Canadian people today, I think it would understand it is on the wrong track.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
On Friday the Deputy Prime Minister would not commit the government to a prompt review of the decision of the National Transportation Agency regarding the Canadian Airlines/American Airlines transaction, hiding behind the law and the process.
May 31, 1993

This minister will know that under section 258 of the National Transportation Act that government has an obligation to review the transaction on public interest grounds.
Why will the government not state promptly whether or not it agrees with the decision of the National Transportation Agency so that this industry can begin to return to normal?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, the NTA has reviewed the transaction that was proposed to it by AMR and PWA. It tabled its report last Thursday late in the afternoon. We are examining the contents of this report and will advise in due course.


John Paul Manley: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Transport cannot keep hiding behind the law and the process. Neither the public, Air Canada, Canadian International or Gemini stand to benefit from this gradual deterioration. As a result of the minister's failure to take decisive action, the situation is going from bad to worse. Will the minister agree it is necessary to moderate competition before the industry tears itself apart?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, 1 think the hon. member for Ottawa South is confusing the issue. In its report submitted to us last Thursday, the National Transportation Agency decided to approve the transaction between PWA and AMR. They examined eight different aspects of the transaction and concluded they would not disallow it.
As far as the industry's problems are concerned, our two major carriers have shown in recent testimony that they know perfectly well their problems are caused by overcapacity. They have the means to reduce this overcapacity, and they can do so at any time.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton -East Richmond):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.
Oral Questions
On two occasions last week members of my caucus put questions to the government concerning the decision by the Minister of the Environment to give $200,000 in untendered contracts to Mr. David Small who is also the campaign manager for the leadership bid of the Minister of the Environment. These contracts violated Treasury Board rules requiring that all contracts of more than $50,000 go to public tender.
Why did the minister split almost $200,000 in contracts into amounts of less than $50,000 when contract splitting is specifically prohibited by Treasury Board rules?


Hon. Mary Collins (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Environment) and Minister Responsible for the Status of Women):: Madam Speaker, I will elaborate on my answers on this last week. When Mr. Small was first brought on by the department to undertake his work for the Rio conference it was anticipated that his first task would be of the order of $50,000.
The work obviously grew from that point and Mr. Small became the appropriate person to carry on after the UNCED conference in terms of a follow up. He was asked if he would continue on the work. Indeed under Treasury Board guidelines that is possible if it is the only person, the appropriate person, to carry on the work that is within those guidelines. That work was completed and Mr. Small did an excellent job on behalf of the Government of Canada.


David Charles Dingwall: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.
Surely the minister is aware of the Treasury Board guidelines which read: "Contracting authorities should not split contracts or contract amendments in order to avoid obtaining the approval required by statute".
I direct my question to the minister responding. Why were contracts given to David Small deliberately split in direct violation of Treasury Board rules? Why did the Minister of the Environment knowingly violate the regulations of his own government in order to favour his campaign manager?

May 31, 1993
Oral Questions


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, I would ask my hon. colleague to perhaps listen carefully to the explanation.
When Mr. Small was originally contracted by the Department of the Environment-not the minister, by the department-to undertake the initial work for Rio it was felt this would be approximately $50,000. He undertook the beginning work. It was recognized that further work was required following the UNCED conference which was in fact in accordance with Treasury Board guidelines which indicated that in some cases it is not possible, practical or cost effective to seek bids. Certain exceptions are allowed, obviously in cases of emergencies, where it is not in the public interest or where only one person can do the work.
I am sure my hon. colleague would agree that a person who has developed and implemented a plan for the UNCED is the appropriate person to carry on afterward with the work of the implementation of that plan. That is what Mr. Small has done. He has done it effectively on behalf of the Government of Canada, the Department of the Environment, and I applaud his efforts in doing so.


REDRESS
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Madam Speaker, we join with all colleagues in the House in strongly condemning the racial violence that resulted from the Heritage Front event on Sunday evening. We ask the government to strengthen the Criminal Code to deter future hate related activities.
In the absence of the Prime Minister, my question is for the Minister of Multiculturalism. It concerns redress for Canada's racist legislation which imposed a head tax and an exclusion act on Chinese Canadians. Since elderly claimants after waiting nine years have totally rejected the government's redress offer and consider it an insult, particularly a pre-election medal to compensate lor years of suffering, will the minister meet with representatives of these elderly claimants and engage in good faith bargaining to find a fair compromise to truly redress the suffering of these elderly pioneers of which there are many?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Madam Speaker, I have indeed brought back and appraised the government of the responses that
I have received from the six communities that I had the privilege to meet and carry on conversations with.
I tried to be helpful wherever I could. The matter is now being examined very carefully by the government. I hope to be able to report back as soon as I have a further piece of information from the people I have met.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I know the minister is sincere, but surely the Minister of Multiculturalism is there to be a strong advocate for people who have suffered this kind of discrimination over the years not just to appraise the government.
My supplementary question is for the same minister. Since the Italian and Ukrainian Canadians who suffered unjust wartime internment also have refused the government's redress package, will the government also negotiate individually, and I say negotiate not just consult, a compromise redress settlement with these groups rather than attempt to impose a clearly unacceptable package at the 11th hour before an election?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, I have carefully brought back the comments that were made to me by the representatives of the communities that I have met. I have always carried on those discussions in a very clear and open manner. I had the privilege of meeting many of the same people during the CEC deliberations both yesterday at the president's meeting and again today at the parliamentary day.
I can assure the hon. member that their concerns and the manner in which they brought them forward are very much appreciated and are being examined very carefully right now.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott -Russell):: Madam Speaker, my question is also for the Acting Prime Minister.
On May 21 the Minister of the Environment claimed that the work oi Mr. David Small as a communications adviser and his work as a campaign manager did not overlap. The minister said: "There is no issue here". However, Mr. Small conceded over the weekend that he held both positions concurrently.
May 31, 1993

How can the government then justify the actions of the Minister of the Environment who rewarded his leadership campaign manager with taxpayers' money? Does the Acting Prime Minister still think that there is "no problem here"?


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, I am sure my hon. colleague or members of his caucus have people who have worked with them over a period of time who on their own time undertook other activities whether related to their past leadership convention or other kinds of political activities.
People employed by the government on a contract basis are quite free to participate in other kinds of political activity after they have fulfilled the requirements of their contract. I assume that is what Mr. Small has done.


Don Boudria: Madam Speaker, assume my eye. What we have here is the minister who said one thing and Mr. Small who said something that was directly opposite.
Canadians have a right to know which of the two, if either, is the truth. That is what is at stake.

I would like to ask the minister this: Can she finally tell us the truth? Did Mr. Small work for the leadership candidate at the same time as he held a government contract, yes or no? That is all we want to know.


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, let me assure my colleagues once and for all that Mr. Small was employed on a contract by the department to undertake certain activities, certain responsibilities.
He fulfilled those responsibilities in every way. What he did with the rest of his time obviously was up to him.


Mr. Brian Tobin (Humber-St. Barbe -Baie Verte):: Madam Speaker, the Minister of State for the Environment is skating better than Wayne Gretzky these days.
Oral Questions
Last week the Minister of State for the Environment said that no contract was given in excess of $50,000. We now know that that is wrong.
Last week the minister said during Question Period that Mr. Small was not the campaign manager of the Minister of the Environment. We now know that that is wrong.
Last week the Minister of the Environment said: "When he came on board the team to work during this race he resigned his position with the department'. We now know that is wrong.
I want to ask the Minister of State for the Environment what actions this minister and the government are taking to investigate properly this conflict of interest and to recover taxpayer funds which have been used improperly to subsidize a Tory leadership race.


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, again it is not very difficult to put forward the answer.
Mr. Small was employed under a contract for the Department of the Environment to carry out certain responsibilities. He carried out those responsibilities. The taxpayers' dollars were used very effectively in the work that he did for the department to follow up the UNCED process and related to the green plan.
I can assure my colleague that taxpayers' dollars were indeed used appropriately in the employment of Mr. Small.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Madam Speaker, Treasury Board rules make clear that contracts cannot be split to avoid the requirements of the Treasury Board rules on the letting of contracts.
All contracts over $50,000 are to be publicly tendered to give every Canadian an opportunity to do that work.
In the case of Mr. Small contracts were systematically broken up to less than $50,000 to deny Canadians the opportunity to compete for that work and to guarantee that Mr. Small was given the work. In one case the contract was exceeded by $33,000; not by $1, not by $10, not by $100, but by $33,000.

May 31, 1993
Oral Questions
Canadians want to know what this minister is doing to make matters right and will she quit making excuses for the Minister of the Environment.


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to serve with the Minister of the Environment in the excellent work that he does, but let me clarify it again perhaps in looking at the Tteasuiy Board guidelines. Treasury Board guidelines are not hard and fast. They say that normally there are public tenders but there are exceptions.
In this case the department reviewed the potential people that might be employed. Mr. Small was chosen because of his excellent background and expertise in international work and work related to the environment.
He completed his first contract. He had done the work leading up to UNCED. Further work was going to be required so in the normal course of events he was asked to stay on and complete that work. I think that is logical and is good use of the taxpayers' dollars and I can assure everyone that Mr. Small undertook his work very effectively for us.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
I have in my hand a memo dated March 18 from the assistant deputy minister of aviation to the deputy minister of transport. It outlines a series of cost-cutting measures implemented by the department. A number of them make sense, I will say that right off the top. However a number of them give me great concern as they relate to aviation safety.
The key one that really concerns me is a decision to reduce frequency of dangerous goods inspections to save seven person-years and $500,000.
I have given the minister a copy of the memo. Will he investigate this to make sure that things like hazardous goods inspections are not decreased? If anything they should be increased. Will he give the House a commitment to do that?


Jean Corbeil: Yes, Madam Speaker.
[English)


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, the other area where the memo suggests cuts are being made is in the area of air traffic control overtime.
We all know that Pearson has been a nightmare for a number of years. It is particularly worse in the summertime during construction.
Will the minister revoke the decision to reduce overtime until such time as new air traffic controllers can be put in place so that there is a full complement and not the under-serviced area that is already there?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, the question of safety is of prime importance in the Department of Transport. When Mr. Justice Mo-shansky tabled his report he reconfirmed that the Canadian skies are safe.
With respect to these reductions I think the hon. member would certainly be condemning the Minister of Transport if attempts to cut the operating budgets were not being made in accordance with the cuts in all other departments.
I can assure him that the cuts are being made at the level of service and not at the level of safety.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. On February 2,1 spoke in this House about the case of Mr. Robert Maltais, of Amos, who is waiting to be heard by a Federal Court umpire. I wrote to the Chief Justice, the Hon. James A. Jerome, the same day, and he never acknowledged receipt of my letter.
For months, Mr. Maltais and his family have been anxious about a technical administrative error made in his file by an unemployment insurance computer. Can the minister confirm to me today that an umpire will be in Abitibi soon to hear Mr. Robert Maltais's case as well as the 31 other outstanding cases? I have the feeling that Canada's umpires have forgotten about Abitibi-Temis-
May 31, 1993

camingue because the last time an umpire was in our area was in April 1990.


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Madam Speaker, I understand and sympathize with my colleague. Of course, the judges who hear these cases and Federal Court judges in general have been overloaded with work in the past year. Other cases from other areas have also been added.
I believe that the Chief Justice is aware of the hon. member's concerns. By the way, I also know that my colleague is interested in tight control on government spending. Obviously, we cannot at this time increase spending as spending on the courts must be controlled. I will ensure that the information or the question raised by the hon. member will be forwarded to the Chief Justice so that he can consider it. I do not think that the government should intervene in the day to day operations of the court, but I will ensure that my colleague's concerns are submitted to the Chief Justice for consideration.


UNITED NATIONS
Scott Jon Thorkelson: Madam Speaker, my question is for the minister answering for the minister of external affairs.
In the post cold war environment, the United Nations has played an increasingly crucial role in the world's political and economic affairs. The UN is funded by contributions from its member countries and Canada has consistently paid its assessed dues. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for our neighbour to the south.
I would like to ask the minister: What is the status of Canada's diplomatic efforts to urge the United States government to pay its badly overdue contributions to the United Nations?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, as the hon. member acknowledges, Canada has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure that all UN members pay their dues in full and on time. Both the
Oral Questions
Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs have mentioned this issue at the United Nations and in bilateral meetings with the U.S.
Since 1990 the United States has been making annual payments both of its dues and arrears. Today its arrears are much smaller both in relative and absolute terms than they were in 1990.
We are confident the U.S. will continue to recognize the importance of paying arrears. However, we will continue to make this point with the United States and indeed with all other countries that are tardy in paying their UN fees.


REDRESS
Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Madam Speaker, in 1984 the Prime Minister promised the Chinese, Italian, Ukrainian and German communities that he would finally settle the redress issue by negotiating in good faith.
We know that the government negotiated in good faith for the Japanese redress. The minister of multicultural-ism had a mandate then.
Why has the Prime Minister denied the minister a mandate today and ordered him to impose a take it or leave it proposal on these communities? Why the double standard?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, I was very proud to bring forward a series of initiatives which I thought would be very helpful in advancing an issue the Prime Minister is personally committed to doing something about.
I had a very clear understanding. We discussed it completely with members of the six communities. They have now responded in a very faithful fashion and in an articulate and clear way. We in turn are now very carefully examining what they have said to us.


Shirley Maheu: Madam Speaker, negotiating and having a mandate are two different things. The minister made it very clear that he did not have a mandate for this particular issue to my

May 31, 1993
Oral Questions
colleague from York West and also the parliamentary secretary.
On the weekend, 100 neo-Nazi skinheads gathered to give fascist salutes and scream racial slogans. Later they rioted and charged through the city streets. This is not a joking matter. These events took place in Ottawa and right here on Parliament Hill.
When will the Prime Minister finally take action to combat racism and establish a comprehensive hate-crime strategy?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, we do not condone violence to settle any differences. Canadians are revolted by the hatred that some people are trying to spread. Ottawans are very clearly expressing their displeasure and dissatisfaction with the message.
We established a program some five years ago making racism one of our most important priorities. The hon. member would want to examine what we have been doing over these last five years in terms of heightened awareness and public education.
I want to take a moment and give particular commendation to the city of Ottawa for having reconstituted the coalition for racial harmony. It did this very quickly after some discussion with our officials earlier today. Councillor Mahoney has indicated there will be a very positive and proactive response by this time next week which I am sure all members will be pleased to hear.


FISHERIES ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands - Canso):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Fisheries, I will direct my question to the Minister of Employment and Immigration who shares with him the responsibility for the fisheries assistance program in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
On the weekend, I met the fishermen of Cheticamp who out of frustration are occupying the offices of Fisheries and Oceans, as are their fellow workers in Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. For
fishermen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the fisheries assistance program the government announced two weeks ago is an insult. It is inadequate, ill conceived and five months late and it is not even ready yet. Fish stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are in crisis. When will the minister put in place an assistance program that reflects this reality?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, I suppose it is indeed difficult for any level of government to correct overnight the situation due to the environmental phenomenon of the near-disappearance of several Atlantic fish species. Of the nearly 30,000 fishermen and plant workers in that industry, 7,200 are affected or covered by this program.
As my colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, indicated, many of these programs require consultations with the workers and fishermen to be implemented. Without such consultations it cannot be done. We advanced $191 million to try to help the people. If we can make improvements we will, but it will be done through discussion and not by occupying offices.


Francis G. LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, the fishermen want action, not hand waving. These people are desperate. For many their UI ran out weeks ago. There are no fish. Therefore the fishermen cannot fish and the plant workers have no fish to process. They have no income and the meagre make-work funds that have been promised by the minister's department are tied up in red tape.
When are the fishermen and plant workers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence going to receive concrete proposals from this government?


Bernard Valcourt: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is talking as if nothing is happening.
A program has been announced and is being put in place. We are aware of the people who were drawing unemployment insurance whose claims have finished. That is why we have announced measures.
The Liberal way would be to take taxpayers' funds not caring about the deficit or anything and to just throw money at the problem. That is the way they did it for 16 years. However that is not the way to go and it is not what we are doing. We are going to work with that sector
May 31, 1993

in a positive way to try to help them during these difficult times.


KEMANO PROJECT
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice and it relates to the growing scandal surrounding the controversial Kemano water diversion project in northern B.C.
We have learned by way of a letter from officials in the minister's department that the department has issued a gag order on former and current employees of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It possibly prohibits them from appearing before the B.C. Utilities Commission inquiry into the Kemano project.
My question for the Minister of Justice is this: What is the government hiding? Why will he not allow these employees to appear before that commission and give full testimony and evidence on this project? Will the minister lift that gag order?


Bernard Valcourt: Madam Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans I did not receive notice of the hon. member's question.


Brian L. Gardiner: My question was for the Minister of Justice.


Bernard Valcourt: I can assure him of one thing. If there is a public inquiry taking place it has powers to order the production of witnesses. I am sure the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has issued no gag order prohibiting people from testifying before any public organizations in B.C.
All I can say is that this is a serious allegation by the hon. member. It will be looked into and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will get back to him.


HOUSING
William D. (Bill) Casey: Madam Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for housing.
Oral Questions
The Colchester Rural Housing and Repair Society is very anxiously awaiting release of CMHC funding to continue its important work for the upcoming year. Will the funding be available and if so, when can it expect it?


Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's interest in this.
Agencies such as the one he inquired about will be receiving word soon from Canada Mortgage and Housing about their eligibility for funding. In this specific case, I can give him positive news. There will be funding available which will be something in excess of $100,000.


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport and concerns that internal Transport Canada memo of which the minister has been given a copy.
It reveals the overtime pay cuts for air traffic controllers at Pearson International Airport at Toronto. It shows that safety is being compromised in the name of fiscal restraint because cuts mean delays in the busy season and tie-ups for passengers. Cuts mean staff reductions at radar stations and newly constructed terminal control units. Cuts mean that morale has hit a new low. Despite the minister's assurances, safety is being compromised.
Why is this minister, and every minister who I have questioned on this same subject before him, placing fiscal restraint ahead of safety?


Jean Corbeil: Madam Speaker, I am surprised to hear the hon. member mention that employee morale is low because of overtime cuts. What we have heard in the past is that people do not like to be forced into overtime.
I can assure the hon. member again that cuts in the operating budget of the Minister of Transport will not affect safety in spite of all his fear-mongering. There has been an inquiry on that. It has been declared that the system is safe.

May 31, 1993
Routine Proceedings



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table, in both official languages, a nomination which was made recently by the government.
This certificate nominates Mr. Richard Cashin as a member of the National Transportation Agency. Pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 110(2) it is deemed referred to the Standing Committee on Transport.


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 11 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


[Stage Direction]
100TH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 100th report of the Standing Committee on House Management concerning changes in the membership of standing committees. With leave of the House, I intend to move for concurrence in this report later this day.


Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Madam Speaker, I have the hon. to present, in both official languages, the report of the legislative committee on Bill C-124, an act to amend the Currency Act with amendments.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



HOUSE MANAGEMENT


Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, with leave of the House, I move that the 100th report of the Standing Committee on House Management, presented to the House today, be concurred in.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Since the report has just been tabled, I would ask that the report be read.
[Editor's Note: Report read by Clerk of the House.]


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


Iain Francis Angus: Madam Speaker, I wish to seek the concurrence of the House in the 95th report of the Standing Committee on House Management.
That report recommends that the following members be added to the list of members at large of the Economics envelope: Messrs. Blaikie and Langdon.



*ft

May 31, 1993

Routine Proceedings


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, I take this opportunity to present today a petition collected by a constituent in my riding of York West whose name is Robert Swannick. He lives in the south part of the riding.
He has circulated a petition among friends and neighbours urging the government and Parliament to call a referendum on the whole question of bilingualism and to allow the voices of Canadians to be heard on this very important issue.
According to the petitioners, the acceptance or rejection of the proposed amendments should be determined by a majority vote of the total votes cast in the whole of Canada, together with a majority vote in the majority of provinces with the territories being given the status of one province.


Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West-Revelstoke):: Madam Speaker, I rise pursuant to Standing Order 36 with two petitions, which are the latest in a series of petitions presented by me and my colleagues in the New Democratic Parly.
The two petitions are signed by approximately 75 Canadians from the Ottawa-Hull area. Without going into all the formalities because the House is familiar with them, the petitioners call on Parliament to press the government to finally, after some seven years, move to proclaim parts II and III of the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act.


Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, the petitioners ask for a commitment to a comprehensive national health care program. They want the discontinuation of current freezes and reductions in the
funding formula for health and post-secondary education.
They want new agreements on health through consultation and negotiation. They want a reaffirmation of the commitment to the guarantees of the Canada Health Act to Canadians of universal, accessible, comprehensive and portable health care delivered by public non-profit means and free of user fees or extra billing.
They want the withdrawal of Bill C-91 that gives brand name drugs a 20-year market monopoly. They want provisions for the production of low-priced generic substitutions.

They ask for the preservation of medicare in Canada.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 488 and 499.


Mr. Proud: With respect to the recent announcement of the re-establishment of a naval reserve base in Charlottetown (a) has Treasury Board given final approval to this project and, if so, what is the breakdown of funds and, if not, when is approval expected (b) how many trainees will there be and what type of training will they receive (c) how many instructors are needed (d) how many full-time jobs will be created (e) has an area of Charlottetown been designated and (i) if so, which areas were chosen, for what reasons was it chosen and what was the cost of the land (ii) if not, which areas are being considered (f) has a firm been awarded a contract and (i) if so, which one and by which process hired (ii) if not, when will bids be taken for the project and what are the provisions for obtaining details on the architecture, design and engineering requirements for the facilities?


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs):: 1. (a) On 11 February 1993 Treasury Board provided the following approval for the Naval Reserve Division Charlottetown project at a total capital cost of 18.5 million budget year dollars.

May 31, 1993
Routine Proceedings
Expenditure authority of 4.7 million budget year dollars was granted to purchase training equipment and furniture; to carry out minor renovations to an interim facility; to perform project management activities; and to undertake the design and the development of firm cost estimates for the construction of the long-term facility.
Preliminary approval was given to construct a standard design Naval Reserve Division permanent facility. Final approval to construct the permanent facility is expected to be sought during the spring of 1995, after the preliminary design and environmental studies have been completed.
Approval in principle was provided to lease an interim facility and to purchase the property for the permanent site. Expenditure authority to lease the interim facility and to purchase the permanent site will be sought after the market apprasials and property negotiations have been completed and the offer to lease or sell has been signed by the owner of the site selected.
(b)	The new Naval Reserve Division will recruit and train 100 primary naval reservists. New recruits will initially learn basic seamanship skills, ceremonial drill, and military general regulations and procedures.
Those who successfully complete recruit training will be assigned to a specific naval occupation. The occupational training will include seamanship, navigation, maritime engineering, communications, cooking, logistics, medical support and administration.
(c)	Sixteen instructors (reservist) will be needed to carry out training within the Naval Reserve Division.
(d)	Ten full-time military jobs will be created. No civilian jobs will be created.
(e)	The interim facility will be located in the West Royalty Industrial Park. This is the only location in Charlottetown with existing facilities which are available for lease and which, with minor renovations, are suitable for the near-term accommodation requirements of the new unit. The near-term berthing requirements of the Naval Reserve will need to be met by leasing space at an existing marina.
The long-term needs of the Naval Reserve Division will be met by constructing a standard design facility on the downtown Charlottetown harbourfront.
This location will provide the Naval Reserve Division with high visibility, accessibility and a distincly nautical presence within the local community. This image is important to a Naval Reserve Division because it enhances recruitment and determines how well the unit will be accepted into the local community. In addition, a Naval Reserve Division needs ready access to its small boats and to navigable waters to carry out afloat training.
The Department of National Defence has asked the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation to identify a firm site option on the downtown Charlottetown harbourfront for the permanent Naval Reserve facility.
The cost of the property will not be known until negotiations have been completed.
(f)	No.
(i)	N/A.
(ii)	The design of the permanent facility will commence after a firm site option has been identified and purchased.
Design activities are scheduled to begin in May 1994. The design work will primarily include the site adaptation of a standard design Naval Reserve Division facility which was previously developed by the Department of National Defence. To minimize time and cost, the site adaptation will be carried out by Public Works Canada (Atlantic) in accordance with a specific services agreement with the Department of National Defence.


Mr. Althouse: 1.	How much methyl bromide is used in Canada on an annual basis for each of the following uses: (a) commodity and quarantine fumigation (b) soil fumigation (c) residential fumigation;
2.	What proposals to reduce the use of methyl bromide are being put forward by Canada in each of the next four years in the areas of: (a) commodity and quarantine fumigation (b) soil fumigation (c) residential fumigation; and
3.	Are warning labels on produce grown with the use of methyl bromide being contemplated at consumer point of purchase?


Charles A. Langlois: am informed by the Departments of the Environment and National Health and Welfare as follows:
May 31, 1993

1.	A December 1992 study jointly commissioned by Agriculture Canada and Environment Canada estimated that some 200 tonnes of methyl bromide would be consumed in Canada in 1992. The report further indicated the following breakdown;
(a)	50 per cent-Space fumigation (i.e. ship holds, grain silos, et cetera); 5 per cent-Commodity fumigation (including quarantine);
(b)	45 per cent-Soil fumigation;
(c)	0 per cent-Structural fumigation (including residential.
2.	(a) Over the next several months, Environment Canada will be consulting with affected users of methyl bromide in order to identify specific means to reduce use and emissions of methyl bromide in commodity and quarantine fumigation applications.
(b)	Canada will freeze imports of methyl bromide at 1991 levels of importation beginning January 1, 1995 as required by the amended Montreal protocol under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Canada will also reduce imports by 25 per cent beginning January 1, 1998. Over the next several months, Environment Canada will be consulting with affected users of methyl bromide in order to identify specific means to reduce use and emissions of methyl bromide in soil fumigation applications.
(c)	Methyl bromide is not used in residential applications in Canada.
3.	No. Labels indicating that specific agricultural chemicals have been used in the production of food commodities are not required in Canada and there are no plans to introduce such a requirement for methyl bromide or for any other agricultural chemical in the immediate future. The safety of agricultural chemicals must be established through detailed testing before they can be used in or upon foods sold in Canada. Therefore, the use of warning labels on such foods would serve no useful purpose and could be misleading to consumers.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The questions as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered.


Charles A. Langlois: I ask Madam Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?
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Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Bevilacqua.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I will appreciate the hon. member for South Shore indicating to the Chair whether he will split his time with another member of his party.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, the gentleman I was splitting with is not available this afternoon so I will be using the full 20 minutes. I know that will bring great joy to my hon. friends opposite. I notice they always listen with such attentiveness when I speak in this place.
I would like to pick up where I left off. In beginning this discussion I had mentioned in my remarks earlier the role played by public servants in the Department of Employment and Immigration and the tremendous job they do in assisting people with employment.
I then went on to mention, and I recall there were a number of members opposite making a great deal of noise concerning themselves with this, the question of how much money was being spent. I recall the hon. member from St. Boniface in particular.
I had made available a number of statistics pointing out the sums of money the government has devoted. Interestingly enough when I made the point it seems this was at the point at which the time ran out. I was making the point that this government's philosophy is very clearly different from that of its predecessor.
It is our view that it is not the direct function and role of the Government of Canada to employ directly as many Canadians as possible regardless of the cost to the taxpayer which that process involves.
We see it rather as the role and function of government to create the environment within which the private

May 31, 1993
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sector can be the engine of the economy and the basis for employment opportunities and growth.
This fundamental principle demarcates for those who may wonder what the difference is between the party in government in this country and the parties on the other side. Clearly the New Democratic Party tends to be more clear about what it stands for.
I have noticed over the last few months, particularly as we approach an election, that the Liberal Party offers many policies and alternatives. Some of them are conflicting one with the other. However, it seems to me it is all designed to attempt to offer to every Canadian whatever his or her heart may desire and not to concern itself whatsoever with the cost to the Canadian taxpayer for implementing whatever that program may happen to be.
For example, there is the one referenced in the motion before the House right now. I noticed that earlier today the Minister of State for Employment and Immigration asked a very specific, unequivocal and direct question of the member for North York. He was asked what exactly were the costs of implementing the program that he proposed. I noticed in his answer that he tended to waffle around, equivocate and never gave a specific answer as to what the cost in real dollars would be to implement this program.
I think it is important in looking at this whole issue to understand the philosophical differences that exist from one side of this House to another. In terms of the long-term goals obviously we all have the same goals. We want the best for all Canadians. We want employment opportunities not only for young people but for all Canadians who seek them. As long as there is one Canadian unemployed, that is one too many.
What is at issue on different sides of this House is the means by which we respond to that difficulty. As I have said before it is our view over here that it is not the function of government to simply employ people and put them on the payroll. Rather it is the function and role of government to create the environment in which economic development can occur and flourish.
For example, we see that it is the role of government to use its resources with respect to infrastructure development for transportation and to set in place a tax regime that allows the competitiveness of business to
improve. Not only can we compete effectively in our domestic market but we can compete in our export market.
It is interesting to note that this government has brought in some very historic changes to the tax structure of this country, all of which have been opposed by my hon. friends opposite who seem not be interested in improving the competitiveness of Canadian business.
The much maligned goods and services tax was presented to Canadians through obfuscation and hysterical talk as a whole new tax. There was neglect in mentioning that it replaced a hidden tax that in the last year it was in place taxed Canadians $1.5 billion more than the GST did in the first year it was in place. These are the differences between that side and this side. It is the same with respect to the approach to trade.
.(1515)
Canada is an exporting nation. Our domestic market is not large enough to sustain the standard of living Canadians want. A quarter of the jobs in Canada result directly from our exports. Therefore we need export opportunities and to be competitive in order to export. This is the best means by which the government in the long term can provide employment opportunities for Canadians regardless of what their ages may be but particularly with respect to our young people. As we look ahead to the 21st century they will live in a society in which job opportunities in the productive sector will be directly dependent upon productivity and competitiveness. One of the things opening up the trade barriers has done is force Canadian companies to become competitive.
Those who would suggest that this is the wrong approach and that we should not do it need only look at the experience we had with cross-border shopping. Canadians will not even shop in Canada to buy goods that are uncompetitive in the pricing structure. They are looking for the best buy. If they have to go to Buffalo, Bangor or Seattle to get the best buy they are prepared to do it.
It is better that we reshape the Canadian economy in such a way that Canadian companies can compete not only abroad through exports but right in our own country. That is the thrust of the policies of this government.
May 31, 1993

What does that do in the short term? I realize what I am talking about here are the long-term, fundamental economic principles by which the Canadian economy can grow and prosper and by which Canadians now and in the future will have excellent solid employment in good high-skilled, high-wage jobs. That is where we are going. What do we do in the short term? Obviously in the short term there is a role for government to participate.
We have the SEED grants which assist our students. We would love to have three times as many. I would have no trouble at all this coming summer using a budget in my own constituency in the South Shore if the Department of Employment and Immigration had a budget three to four times the SEED grants. We would be able to find young people anxious and ready to take advantage of it. My hon. friends opposite would immediately say: Just triple the budget, no problem, quadruple the budget or quintuple the budget.


An hon. member:: Tax and spend.


Peter L. McCreath: Exactly. Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend.
Where does the money come from? My friends opposite have opposed every cost saving measure this government has come in with. I have not yet heard any recommendations from the Liberal Party as to which taxes should be increased or what new taxes it will bring in if it ever gets the opportunity.
This is the joy and the luxury of being in the opposition. It can be in favour of everything. It can spend money on all manner of programs and it is never called to account. I should tell my hon. friends I do not think they will be called to account on this one either. When the election comes this fall Canadian people are not going to be seduced by nonsense that says we should give everybody what they want. They are not going to be fooled by that.
In the short term we have to help people. We have unemployment insurance to help people who find themselves unexpectedly unemployed. We could have unemployment insurance that pays people to stay home, or we could have unemployment insurance that recognizes that rather than have people sitting at home and drawing unemployment insurance they could use the time trying to improve their own educational standards and developing some skills that they might be able to use in seeking alternate employment. That is the approach the govern-
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ment has taken in that respect. It was that approach in Bill C-21 which was opposed by my hon. friends opposite. They wanted people simply to stay home and draw unemployment insurance. From time to time we need job development programs when there are severe difficulties.
Right now as we speak all members will know we have a very severe crisis in Atlantic Canada with our fishing industry. Last year when the real crunch hit in Newfoundland NCARP was brought in to provide funding to sustain people during this particularly difficult time.
In the rest of Atlantic Canada we have a similar situation right now. Last July quota cuts were announced of 30 per cent in the groundfish stocks in the Scotia-Fundy region and then in November the scientists came in and said that they had the numbers wrong and they told the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans at that time that he would have to make 70 per cent quota cuts.
At the urging of many members of the House, from both sides I might say, the government started working on a response program that would assist people. About a month and a half ago it did announce a program, and it is a very good beginning.
I have to say to my hon. friends on both sides of the House and to the government that this program is only a start. There are many hundreds of people in the maritime provinces who will not be eligible for the program, which as it exists now is designed to identify those people who will not be able to qualify for unemployment insurance because they will not be able to get enough weeks of work in. It is targeted at providing those people with the extra time they need so they can qualify for unemployment insurance. However there are some difficulties with the program in that it will only apply to a certain number of people in Atlantic Canada and that the terms of reference for eligibility are rather narrow. I think improvements need to be made.
At the same time, in the fishing industry, in particular in Atlantic Canada, we are going to have to recognize that as we go through a transitional period while it is important to provide bridging support to individuals and families as they face what for them will perhaps be the most serious crisis of their lives we are also going to have to do some restructuring in the fishery. That restructuring can be done on the basis of telling certain groups they

May 31, 1993
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are no longer welcome to participate in the fishery but that is, frankly, an unacceptable approach.
We cannot simply holus-bolus say there is no longer a place for part-time fishermen. We cannot say to the fishermen who have concentrated on mackerel, herring, pelagic fishing and lobster but have not done groundfishing for the last couple of years that, whoosh with the stroke of the pen, they are out of the fishery. This is not acceptable.
The people who are going to leave the fishery should be the people who choose to leave the fishery and on no other basis. We should not take away people's fishing licences without some form of compensation. That in my judgment constituents expropriation without compensation, a practice that I for one would consider to be unacceptable.
I think we have to dig a little further into the resources of the government. Even though we are faced with a difficult financial situation people must come first in this circumstance. We have to set up an early retirement incentive program for fishermen and we have to provide some sort of licence buy-back scheme, financed in part if necessary by the industry, that will provide an opportunity for those people who wish to leave the industry to do so in order to achieve the downsizing. This must be done in a fair, just and humane way as opposed to simply coming in, identifying groups and saying they no longer have a right to be there.
I would argue there is a role for government in dealing with short-term crisis situations. There is a role for government to participate and provide assistance to people. The government has demonstrated that it recognizes that responsibility, both with respect to these fisheries aid packages and the principle introduced by this government with respect to unemployment insurance.
The object of these programs is not only to provide transitional funding to individuals but to see that they make the most of that time in terms of preparing themselves for alternative employment opportunities or in the case of the fishery simply to upgrade their own skills so that when they do return to the fishing industry they do so with a higher level of qualification than they had before.
The third point I want to make, which I think is very germane to any discussion of unemployment, training, youth and so on, concerns the problem we have today with respect to the constitutional dichotomy between federal and provincial areas of jurisdiction. We seem to have increasing demand for the federal government to intrude into the field of education, only when it is the federal government we do not call it education but call it training or skill development or use various euphemisms so we do not have to use the word education.
The bottom line is that we see increasing demand for the federal government to get involved in education. If this is what the needs of the Canadian economy are, and of Canadian society, then so be it. In principle I do not have a problem with that. However I do ask myself, as one who spent 17 years in the field of education, what are our secondary and tertiary education systems doing?
What is this great infrastructure in schools, universities and colleges that spend 12 hours a day closed and locked? Where are all these resources if at the same time we are finding increasing demand for the federal government be it through the Department of Employment and Immigration or anywhere else in the process of funding alternate systems of education and little private schools?
I know there are some excellent training programs in my own constituency that are being funded through CEIC programs. These programs are very effective. They are helping individuals and so on. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that but why are we setting up through federal funding almost an alternate educational system as opposed to having the federal government and the provinces come together? I know the federal government would be delighted to work with the provinces to make these things happen.
It seems to me we are missing the mark when we have this tremendous outlay of money in the public school system. By public school I mean those that are state sponsored and not elementary. I think in Ontario public schools are called elementary schools. We have this tremendous infrastructure of schools and a tremendous system for education yet there remains outside of that multibillion dollar system demands for more and more
May 31, 1993

education to be provided through the federal government.
Clearly there is some sort of problem there. I guess we have to have more discussion about jurisdictions and who would provide what. Possibly my friend from St. Boniface, who I know is an expert in this field, might speak on this subject before the debate has concluded today.
It seems the function of the provinces is to educate the young people and increasingly we are looking to the federal government to provide educational opportunities for adults. If that is where we are supposed to go in Canada then that is fine. However my recollection as an educator is that there is absolutely no reason why the schools cannot be made available to all citizens. It is a matter of offering programs that meet the demands and needs of the potential students and providing the courses when the students can take them. There is a need for much greater flexibility in how we use those resources.
In concluding, it is an important subject that is before us today. There are different approaches to how it could be done. There is no limit to the amount of money that can be spent beneficially but let us not forget that this government has put well over $3 billion on the line this year in responding to these kinds of problems.
In the final analysis the solution to unemployment, as seems to be implied by some of my friends opposite, does not lie simply in having the Government of Canada put people on the payroll through one program or another. Ultimately the solution to the unemployment problem in Canada is to structure the Canadian economy, as this government has done, so there is economic growth and development and so we foster exports in trade which are the basis for job creation in Canada.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for South Shore for coming full circle in his comments. He started by criticizing those who see a role for government in the reduction of unemployment. He gradually admitted there is a role for government in the long term and then that there is even a role for the government in the short term. That is quite a conversion on the road to Damascus.
The member for South Shore was quite clever for bringing in the fisheries and the drama that has fallen on
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the communities where he comes from for which I have an enormous amount of sympathy.
I would like to ask the member how he can possibly say that the Liberal Party and our critic from York North have no specific recommendations to make. Has he perhaps missed the initial speech today by the member for York North? During that speech our critic specified step by step a very comprehensive plan which may not be approved by the hon. member for South Shore. Our critic on behalf of the Official Opposition put forward a specific, very precise plan amounting to a substantial amount. Nevertheless it is well thought out. The member for South Shore cannot accuse the critic and the Liberal Party that it is very easy to speak for the opposition when one is in the opposition and that he "has not heard any recommendations from the Liberal Party of Canada".
How can he make such a statement?


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. friend's concern for the problems we have in the fishery in Atlantic Canada, which I know is genuine. The lack of specificity that I was looking for in the proposal of the hon. member for York North had to do with the lack of costing.
The member rose in this House and said the government should establish a national youth service program or a national apprenticeship program. It is great that my hon. friend for York North set forth his ideas and so on.
The question I said was not answered was asked in a very specific way by the Minister of State for Finance. What is the cost of such a program and where does the hon. member propose those funds should come from? Should they be added to the deficit? Should there be some sort of tax regime or is he proposing that something else should be cut from the budget and the funds obtained there?
That was the specificity I was looking for. It is clear the hon. member for York North did not know the answers to those questions. Possibly my hon. friend conceptualized the program without regard to the cost implications of it. Possibly my hon. friend from Davenport can tell us exactly what the cost of that program would be and

May 31, 1993
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where the Liberal Party proposes to generate those funds.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, the first response as to where one would get the money is that it would be found within the $5.8 billion that is going to be spent on helicopters. A lot could be found by reducing the travel that is not always necessary such as the Prime Minister's last trip. However I will try to deal with the substance here and not be drawn into that kind of debate.
I want to correct an impression that my colleague somewhat mischievously played up suggesting we want everyone on payroll. Of course that is nonsense and my colleague knows that. He should not be making that kind of statement. He is much too fine a parliamentarian to stoop to that kind of thing.
What we are really asking today is whether the government's policies are wrong when one looks at the situation that 1.6 million Canadians are unemployed. Some people say it is closer to 3 million because some people have given up hope and are no longer looking for work. Some people have been forced into retirement because there is nothing else.
Within that 1.6 million who are officially unemployed,
421.000	are young men and women. That is a growing statistic. Even with 1.6 million people unemployed,
300.000	jobs are going unfilled according to recent statistics. Are government policies not wrong when there are almost 5 million people in Canada today either at or below the level of poverty? Most of them are women and over 1 million are young people.
We ask the same basic substantive question about government policies when 2.7 million Canadian people are receiving social assistance and 2.2 million people will be fed by food banks. We are not questioning whether or not the government has tried or whether or not the government has spent money. Of course it has.
The question we are raising is whether it is time for the government to admit that the policies it has put forward are failures when I cite statistics such as the ones I just shared. That is the basic fundamental question of importance to me, my colleagues and Canadians generally.


Peter L. McCreath: Mr. Speaker, the one thing about the economic policies of this government is that the people of Canada know what they are.
I am not sure the people of Canada know exactly what the Liberal Party's trade policy is. We do not know, should it have the opportunity to form a government some time in the future, what its position is with respect to the NAFTA. It says it would renegotiate it but of course it gives no indication what the implications of that renegotiation would be. Would it accept it or not?
It is the same with the GST. We have never seen such waffling as we saw from the Leader of the Opposition on the GST. First he was going to scrap it, then he was going to keep it, then he was going to modify it. The latest position of the Liberal Party as I understand it is to get elected and then set up a committee to figure out what to do.
Let us talk in a realistic manner. Any party that wishes to replace this government should at least tell the Canadian people what it would do.
My hon. friend was playing with figures and I just jotted down a couple of the things he said. He talks about the recent tour of the Prime Minister which has been puffed up by the media in this country as costing $1 million. That shows the limited research that is done. If anybody looked into it or used access to information to find out, he or she would realize that the cost of that tour was borne by the countries that hosted the Prime Minister. That is how tours by heads of government are funded. This was no million dollar tour. Unfortunately, there are no million dollars to save because there were no million dollars spent.


Shirley Maheu: How much was spent.


Peter L. McCreath: My hon. friend brings up the old chestnut of the helicopters. It is going to solve all the problems. First of all I would remind him it is a $4.4 billion and not a $5.8 billion expenditure spread over 13 years. The savings that would be accrued if we scrapped that contract would be 1 per cent of the deficit per year. We would have to add the cost of refurbishing the Labradors and the various helicopters that are there now, which in the short term would cost the Canadian taxpayers just as much. Then five or 10 years down the
May 31, 1993

road they would have to replaced by the same kind of contract my hon. friends are now proposing we get rid of.
I want to say one last thing about those helicopters as somebody who represents 4,500 fishermen. The lives of those fishermen, as far as I am concerned, are a priority of the Government of Canada. We must have the proper equipment available to rescue those people when they are at sea. That is a big part of what that helicopter contract is all about. I will not apologize to anybody for standing up and defending a helicopter contract that will ensure we have the best search and rescue equipment available to secure and save the lives of our fishermen when they go to sea.
I do not know if any of my hon. friends have been out on the Atlantic Ocean in the winter. It is a pretty tough place to be. Even in the spring it can be a pretty tough place to be. It is a worth-while expenditure of Canadian dollars to have the best equipment available to safeguard the lives of Canadian fishermen and seamen.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, on point of order. If there is unanimous consent, we could go beyond the 10 minutes. That would give me an opportunity to respond to my friend's concerns with respect to our position on NAFTA and the GST.


Peter L. McCreath: Only if I get to respond to him.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate. The hon. member for Haldimand-Norfolk for 10 minutes.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, let me respond to my hon. friend. The fact of the matter is that we will be scrapping the GST. Our leader is probably the only leader in this country who has made commitments. Throughout his long service to this country he has been known as a person to keep his word and his commitments.
In terms of the NAFTA this party will guarantee this country that we not sign a deal that will sell out the country as the Conservative government did. We will also make commitments that if we are going to have free trade we will have access to the American market, unlike this present deal.
It is a pleasure for me to speak today on this opposition motion. This is our second opposition motion in the past
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few months. On March 18 we dedicated another supply day to the same issue because we in the Liberal Party believe that youth and the future of our youth depend on this government and all governments to address the economic problems faced by today's youth and create jobs for these people.
A motion at that time condemned the government for policies regarding job creation for youth, post-secondary education and job training, which we stressed at the time had robbed a whole generation of Canadian youth of any opportunity and had given them no hope for the future.
I am proud to represent our party which speaks out on behalf of youth. I am proud to say that in the last three months this party has moved in other ways to help youth in our country.
This party had a youth task force which travelled across the country. It acknowledged the problems facing youth and actually discussed the problems of youth with young people themselves in trying to come to terms with the problems faced by youth.
We heard from all across the country that the main problem facing youth today was unemployment. In fact if we look at the rates across the country right now, youth unemployment is in the neighbourhood of 18 per cent. There are hundreds of thousands of young people with no hope of a job and no opportunity to get the education they need to get that job.
Young people also have other overwhelming concerns. Although as I said they have fears about job security and the change in labour force requirements, there have also been drastic cuts to education. There have been inadequate skills given to cope with this changing global economy. Of greater consequence is that they are now faced with a government which does not seem to recognize or does not seem to come forward with any proposals to deal with these problems.
Chronic youth unemployment and underemployment, as I have said, have demoralized Canadian youth. They call it generation x. In fact I would bring that number down because if we follow the book generation x essentially deals with youth from age 25 to 35. There are a number of drop-outs in secondary school, in the neigh-

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bourhood of 30 per cent. A lot of those kids get out of school without the opportunity for a job.
What we have seen over the last little while, and the minister of youth recognized it before the committee today, is the problem of student drop-out. The fact of the matter is that a lot of money is being thrown into these programs directed toward keeping these young people in school, but it just does not seem to be working.
It is ironic that this government continues to ignore this problem. It has been covered in the papers the last little while. It is getting a lot more national attention because of the problems experienced by students in getting summer employment.
Looking at the figures from the SEED program funding over the last 10 years we see that in 1985 the government committed $140 million to SEED funding. SEED funding is student employment in the summertime. It gives students an opportunity to get a summer job in order to continue their education and to help them go back to school. It also gives them some sort of experience when they leave school. They can say that they have had some experience when they apply for a full-time job after leaving post-secondary education.
As I said the funding was $149.3 million in 1985. Today it is some $88 million. It has been cut drastically. In 1985 the number of jobs created was 94,115. Less than 53,000 jobs are being created this year by SEED funding. This is at a time when the full-time post-secondary enrolment has gone from 789,000 in 1985 to over 921,000 young people. These young people are looking for summer jobs and this has been one of the worst summers for them to do that.
That is why, as I said, the Liberal Party set up a task force. It travelled across the country. It put forward an agenda for youth policy paper in order to send it around to different youth groups and people concerned with the problems of youth to get their ideas on it.
I have had many opportunities during Question Period to question the minister on his spending priorities. As I said earlier, I had the opportunity to listen to him speak in committee today on his programs.
The minister told the committee about his stay-inschool initiative, the area on which this government has put most of its emphasis. He mentioned that no evaluation had yet been done as to its success but the figures still remain high, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 per cent for drop-out rates. He spoke about the Challenge program the main component of which is the Summer Employment and Experience Development Program.
What he did not tell this House and what he failed to say at committee today was that not only has SEED funding gone down but there has also been almost $205 million in cuts from 1985 to 1993 in those areas dealing with youth employment opportunities.
I am very concerned about this disturbing trend of youth unemployment. We are finding that over the past few years the number of young people who have never held a first-time job is dramatically increasing. That means young people do not have the opportunity of getting some sort of apprenticeship program in a company. They are not going in at that lower level.
This disturbing trend seems to suggest that the ages keep going up for these young people. We are finding that it is not just young people in the 19 to 21-year age group who have not had an opportunity for a first-time job. What is happening is that 28 and 29-year olds have not had that opportunity either.
The government suggests there are more people working in the past couple of years since the recession, depression, or whatever one wants to call it. Even though there is a small improvement in the labour market as the government suggests, that trend is not being seen with our youth.
In fact youth unemployment is still rising. Looking at the statistics from this time last year, employment among youth has fallen some 64,000. That means young people who had those jobs are losing them. In fact in one year
64,000	fewer young people have jobs.
What we are seeing is that during the recession and the downturn the people who lost the jobs were young people. Those who actually had the jobs were young people. I say again that I do not believe this government is doing enough to help young Canadians get back to work and the statistics bear this out.
The five-year trend for chronic youth unemployment can no longer be ignored. It seems that this government has given up all hope and is just leaving it to market conditions and to the employers to get it out of this mess.
My colleague said earlier that the government cannot create jobs, that it is not really a government's job to do it and I agree. However, it is the government's job to make sure that there is an environment out there for young people to be able to get their first-time jobs.
May 31, 1993

Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Haldimand-Norfolk on his very good speech and on the very good work he is doing as the youth critic for our party. He gave this House a very good overview of the unemployment situation that faces young people today.
What he has said with respect to his constituency of Haldimand-Norfolk and the province of Ontario I can only echo and amplify with respect to the part of the country that I come from, which is eastern Nova Scotia. Students there are coming out of high school and university with very dim prospects for jobs.
In many of the cases it is the federal government that is most to blame. However, the support programs of the federal and provincial governments are not enabling young people to orient themselves toward a productive career in the labour market, or even to get to first base when it comes to a job leading to a career down the road.
I would like to invite my colleague as youth critic to amplify on his remarks, particularly those he was making at the close of his speech. I would like him to give this House an indication of some of the ideas he thinks would be most important in a progressive strategy for support and for creating the kind of climate that would enable young people to get a toe-hold in the job market, to get that first job to begin a career path that has real potential.
Perhaps my colleague would like to embellish on those remarks that he just touched on.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question. First and foremost what we are saying is that we need a minister of youth and a ministry of youth that has the resources available to actually deal with the problem of youth unemployment.
As I said, the minister was at committee today. What we see is a ministry that deals with the problem of school drop-outs. There is a good amount of money in that budget for him to deal with the stay-in-school program
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and movements are being made in that direction. That is a very important role and we agree with the government in that area.
On the other side however, the one dealing specifically with giving young Canadians an opportunity for a job, the youth programs are mixed in with all the other Canada employment programs. There is no specific envelope for the government to take charge and to be able to create an environment for young people which is different from the one for the general mass of Canadians. First and foremost that would be an approach, to make sure there is a youth minister with the necessary resources whose group has specifically targeted youth unemployment.
As my hon. colleague knows, when we travelled across the country programs such as apprenticeship programs were first and foremost in young people's minds. They had heard about the apprenticeship programs in Japan, Sweden and Germany. These countries have apprenticeship programs. They use half of the resources that we do in terms of apprenticeship programs yet provide many more apprenticeship spaces and much more opportunity for young people to get into apprenticeship programs. Young Canadians were saying: "Look, an apprenticeship program will give me an opportunity in these difficult times to be able to get an education and work at the same time".
That goes also for the co-op program. I asked the minister this morning about the co-op program because the government did make a commitment in 1989 to quadruple the amount of resources going into co-operative education. He admitted at that time that the government had not come near that. That was another idea that Canadians and I felt could really go a long way in both giving young Canadians an opportunity-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry but the time for questions or comments has now expired.
[Translation)


Shirley Maheu: Mr. Speaker, we often hear people say that youth is the future of this country. However to have a future our young people must have the tools they need to face the

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challenges of the 21st century. If we look at the statistics, far too many young people, in fact 52 per cent between the ages of 15 and 24 and these are the figures for Quebec have a first-hand knowledge of poverty. In the same group 56 per cent are unemployed. This is no way to prepare for the future.

We must face the fact that we do have a crisis. As a nation we cannot afford a 30 per cent high school drop-out rate. It is not logical to have 400,000 young people unemployed while 300,000 jobs stay unfilled. It is high time governments, labour and the educational sector together with individual Canadians start working together to build a comprehensive national apprenticeship program.
It is not a simple task but it is the first step toward guaranteeing a future for the youth of today.

It is high time the government faced up to its responsibilities and took the initiative. It must play its role as policymaker and establish a Canadian perspective on economic growth. It must create networks and partnerships for obtaining knowledge, information and skills. It must put in place the infrastructures that are needed, so that our young people will have a future.
So far we cannot congratulate the government on its record. Young people have never been so handicapped in their attempts to enter the labour market. It is an inconscionable waste of talent, and it is high time we got the situation under control before we reach the point of no return.
Summer will soon be with us-though it may not look like it, especially today-and I am sure that like me, members have probably received many CVs in the past few weeks. The rush is on for summer jobs, to pay the cost of tuition in September. Too many young people will be disappointed. There will be no jobs for them. Government cutbacks at all levels mean that jobs are disappearing at a terrifying rate, and there seems to be no hope on the horizon.

Young Canadians are caught in a system that does not seem to offer any hope. They must daily face rising
unemployment and feelings of alienation. They are more and more frustrated with an education system that cannot help those 100,000 high school students who finally give up and drop out. What is scary is that this has become a yearly statistic. What has happened to this country in the last few years? Where are we going?
Young people worry about not having the skills to find jobs in tomorrow's knowledge-based economy. They do not understand why the federal government will not provide them opportunities.

Young Canadians are desperately seeking a new vision of this country, a vision that will give them confidence and hope in the future. These young people are not afraid to get involved. They are ready to work, but they also have to know there is light at the end of the tunnel. These young people believe in themselves and their potential, and they are eager to use their talents to help make this country as economically strong and competitive at the international level as it used to be. They are ready to come on board.

I would like to quote from an article in The Toronto Star of May 8:
The issue of youth unemployment is not just automatic. It cuts to our social fabric, as the Yonge Street riots showed us a year ago. Young people are frustrated.
Karen Mock, who heads the B'nai Brith League for Human Rights, reports that there is a growing effort toward recruitment of young people by the Heritage Front, and other racist groups, at high schools and college campuses with other young people acting as recruiters.
When there is an economic downturn, people look for someone to blame. Disenfranchised youth who cannot find jobs and fear that they will not be able to find them become easy prey for recruitment into hate groups that attack minorities.
This weekend's full-blown race riot on Parliament Hill is a symptom of the Tories' inability to deal with youth unemployment and hate crime.
May 31, 1993



It is now up to this government, business and industry and our schools, to get together and agree on what must be done to guarantee that our young people will have a future. It is high time we had a federal government that listens to our young people and, especially, a government that is proactive. It is high time we had a more liberal government.

We, the Liberal team, are determined to restore hope and offer a future to Canada's youth. We will get the economy moving again, rebuild Canada's economic leadership, create jobs and reclaim the future of our children and our grandchildren. Young people are very important and are an integral part of our vision of the future.
As the Liberal Party believes in the potential of Canada's youth it is committed to establishing a national apprenticeship program and to creating a Canadian youth service dedicated to environmental protection and responding to the social needs of our communities.

We have our work cut out for us. Young people realize this, but they are not afraid to meet the challenge. The Liberal Party is aware of this, and we are ready to work twice as hard. The federal government has a moral responsibility to provide opportunities for young people, who in turn have a responsibility to use these opportunities constructively. That is how this country will grow. Co-operation, teamwork and a vision of the future will ensure that today's young people will get the training and the tools they need to lead this country in the 21st century.
We adults have that responsibility today. It is up to us to ensure that this happens. The Liberal Party will be able to show them the way. Young people are our strength and hope, and we are not afraid to invest in giving them the means and the skills they need to take over. Several years from now, we will be proud and happy to say: It is your turn now. The crucial moment is now. It is now or never for thousands of young people. Their future is a priority, for us and for Canada as a whole.
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Adequate training and job creation are the keys to the future of our young people. Our Liberal team knows that and intends to invest in those areas. Young Canadians are willing to work, and we are willing to give them a hand.


Mr. Rene Soetens (Ontario):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the member. I have a question and a comment. I will make my comment first.
I find it somewhat distasteful that in this House, or in fact anywhere in Canada, we should find a simple excuse of lack of employment opportunities for youth to be the reason or the excuse for the Yonge Street riots. The fact of the matter is that whether it is the Yonge Street riots or the recruitment of young people by the National Heritage Front, the recruitment is going on in high schools where students are, in fact, getting an education. The Yonge Street riot was simply a group of thugs and hoodlums who had nothing better to do and even if they did have something better to do they just simply went on a rampage that is totally unacceptable whether one is unemployed or employed.
I would like to ask the member this. She made a suggestion in her presentation about the Canadian youth service for environmental protection. The program sounds like not a bad idea. I would ask the member if she could please tell me how many youths she would like to put into that program in any one year and just how many dollars she believes ought to be spent on that particular program? Of course, most important, where does she hope the money will come from?


Shirley Maheu: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. Economists all over this country are saying to us that the deficit and the debt are extremely important. Creating jobs is important too. The only way to really reduce the deficit and the debt is to get people working again. People who are not working cost us more money. We do not have that money, the Conservatives say, but we are not ready to do anything to help those who are not working get back on their feet.
The money is there. One does not have to reduce every single dollar in the first year of a mandate as a government. One makes sure that one gets people back to work and that is the promise that we have made and that we are going to keep. First we will start with the

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infrastructures program because municipalities tell us that means jobs tomorrow.
People who are working tomorrow are not claiming unemployment insurance and are no longer on welfare. That is where some of the money will come from. People will be productive, earning and helping to reduce the deficit, and not necessarily costing us more money.


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately I did not really hear the answer to the question. I asked how many students or young people the Liberal Party expected to put in the Canadian youth service. I heard no answer as to whether it was 10, 20, 200 or 2,000. No such answer was forthcoming. Nor was there an answer forthcoming as to how many dollars would be spent. Nor was there an answer forthcoming as to where the money would come from.
To be fair, what the hon. member did say was that the money would come from the government spending more money in other programs. I do not know if I can fully comprehend how the federal government solves the problem by putting an extra $1 billion or $2 billion of borrowed money into infrastructure work, matched by $1 billion or $2 billion of borrowed money from the provinces and matched by $1 billion or $2 billion of borrowed money from the municipalities. I really question how borrowing $6 billion in the coming year solves the problem that the hon. member is talking about.
When we borrow $6 billion we are saying to those people, we have borrowed it on their behalf, that they should realize that all we have done is to defer the taxes that are being spent today for the young people to pay tomorrow.
It is that very tax burden that Canadians are facing today from the spending of the governments of the last 20 to 25 years, federally and provincially, that is in fact causing the problems that young people are facing today. Governments, in the plural, have a limited ability to respond because we at the federal level are having to pay out some $39 billion to $40 billion a year in interest. Think of that interest if we had it to spend. It would be more important for us not to have it because then Canadians would have it. We would not be taxing it away
from them. There would be an awful lot more economic opportunities.
The finance committee of which I am a member is presently doing a study relating to debt and deficits. It is interesting that the witnesses, at least to this point, are talking about the fact that it has been proven, simply by the experience of Canada and for those of us who are members of Parliament from the province of Ontario in particular, that government spending is not the answer.
We have serious economic problems in Ontario. Why do we have them? Certainly if government spending is the answer then we should not have problems. I notice there is a member here from Saskatchewan. Why does Saskatchewan have an economic problem? The government of Saskatchewan

in fairness, not the current government-for the last five years has been spending money like drunken sailors. Why do they have a problem in Saskatchewan?
If spending money is the answer then why do we have economic problems in this country? Obviously that is not the answer. What we have to look at is a more efficient way of doing a lot of the things that we are doing in Canada, not just at the federal level, but also at the provincial level.
I have heard members talk about how we should look at the situation of youth in Canada as though the federal government is taking no initiatives in the way of youth. The hon. member for Haldimand-Norfolk just commented about the drastic cuts to education that the federal government has implemented.
I am not sure what he is talking about when he talks about cuts to education. The federal government, at least in the four and a half years that I have been here, has transferred more money each and every year to provinces than the year before. In fact the increases have generally been in excess of the rate of inflation. They have been in excess of the rate of increase that we have applied to our own programs.
If the hon. member feels that there is not enough money being put into education then I can only suggest that he go back to the province from which he is a member and ask the province what it has done with all this money that the federal government has transferred to it. That is because in my humble opinion it is not going into the education system.
May 31. 1993

That would be a fair representation for the hon. member to make, but did the hon. member make it? No, he just talked about drastic cuts to education. I should point out that when we are talking about the drop-out rate that that is of concern to all Canadians. I notice in some of the comments and in recent articles in the newspaper that in fact the drop-out rate is down considerably from where it has been.
I am happy to report that the drop-out rate today is significantly less than what it was in 1984 under the previous Canadian government. That is not necessarily to the credit of this government. It may be to the credit of the individual students who have learned, whether through the experiences of their parents or their friends or just because the education system is getting better, that they have to stay in school longer.
Why did they learn that? In many parts of Canada there are single industry towns heavily dependent upon the resources of the area that the town is located in or a single industry, such as a large steel plant, that may be experiencing difficulties. The students are discovering with regard to the hard manual labour that may have always guaranteed a them a job in the past-being able to work in a mine, steel plant, or the uranium mines of Saskatchewan 20, 30 or 40 years ago guaranteed people a job for life-that those guarantees are no longer there. Therefore they have made the decision to stay in school, and that is positive for them.
What have we done with regard to that? We have tried to help that process along. We believe that students must have the skills that Canada needs.
There was a comment raised earlier about some 300,000 jobs going unfilled in this country because of a lack of properly skilled people to fill the jobs. That was a very appropriate comment. Those jobs could all be filled by young people.
How do we encourage those young people to get involved? The Government of Canada, this government on this side of the House, established a Canada scholarship program. The members opposite have not talked about that but in the four years that it has been running we have put in some $155 million to encourage young Canadians to take specific courses of study at universities dealing with engineering and the sciences. Why? We have done so because we know that there are skilled jobs
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out there that can be filled by students who take those engineering courses.
More important, we also know that the jobs of the future for young people will be developed by those graduating engineers and engineering technologists who are out working in industry. Instead of having to buy the technology in foreign locations if we develop the work force that can produce that technology then we not only help Canadian manufacturing but we give Canada some expertise and some technology to sell.
That was a program specifically designed for young people. I am happy to report that after four years we are now getting graduates out of the program. More important, we have improved the program. Before it was only available for university studies but now if one wants to take an engineering technologist course in a community college the program has been enlarged to include that, and I believe 750 students a year will be funded. We have helped the universities by establishing centres of excellence programs. These are all funding programs for universities and community colleges and were not there before. I believe that program had some $30 million worth of expenditures.
There is the Quality Management Institute. Very close to my riding we have been working with a community college to establish an institute dealing with quality management techniques and quality management systems. That is a very important step.
Members opposite have talked about the fact that the Government of Canada does not spend enough money dealing with training and they have cited a couple of examples. What surprised me was that they really did not talk too much about the labour force development boards that we have been working on establishing across Canada or the prosperity initiative that the government worked so hard to bring forth.
First, with regard to the labour force development board, we on behalf of the taxpayers of Canada, it is their money, have put in some $1.8 billion in funding, which is about four times what it was four years ago. That funding is designed to work with local industry and local labour force boards to take those people who do not have the skill, who have been laid off and who need skills upgrading, and invariably the examples they use are young people. We have put in place a system through these labour force development boards to encourage that to happen.

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We are not through with these boards because, as members opposite have said they want, we should have a national apprenticeship program. That is a very commendable idea and nobody is going to say that it is not a good idea. We support the idea of apprenticeship programs in Canada and we have asked the labour force development board in conjunction with that other group that the opposition pooh-poohed, the prosperity initiative, to see if we could not bring together the parties involved.
It is not just a matter of the federal government coming down with an iron fist and saying this is how it will be done. First of all, we would not accomplish very much with that approach. Second, to a degree it is outside our jurisdiction.
That approach, apprenticeship programs, would be much more successful if we could convince the provincial governments that they ought to be on board for their share of an apprenticeship program, if we could convince industry that it ought to be on board for its share of an apprenticeship program and if we could convince the labour unions across Canada that they ought to be on board for their share of a program.
We have taken that approach to try to convince all the parties to come together to let us establish this apprenticeship program. No one is debating the merits of the idea. It is an excellent idea. The difference is over how to arrive at the result of having it.
The opposite side believes that the federal government is all powerful and can simply order it to happen. We on this side believe that the way it can happen best is by encouraging all of the participants to actively join together to make this happen. We cannot legislate a result of that magnitude. We need co-operation, and the way we have gone about it is to seek that co-operation.
I have talked about the labour force development board and the $1.8 billion. The other item that we cannot ignore is the almost $2 billion that will be put through the Minister of Employment and Immigration into the whole issue of retraining programs. Training for those who are on social services, those who have lost their jobs and young people is very critical. It is critical to meet the needs of industry that these people have access to
retraining programs. We have established some retraining programs and that means that in total the Government of Canada is spending some $3.8 billion a year on retraining when it is combined with the Labour Force Development Strategy. Is that enough?
I guess we would like to have more but the only way we can have more is by raising taxes or by raising unemployment insurance premiums, neither of which Canadians can afford or want.
We have taken an approach to try to encourage people to hire. In the budget of last month, which the opposition condemned, the minister presented a program that was a continuation of the December announcement in which those companies who want to hire new or additional employees, particularly a small business, would be given a waiver of increased premiums on unemployment insurance. That was a positive step. It is a small sum, about 2 per cent or 2.5 per cent of the cost of hiring a new person, but it was a contribution that the federal government through the Unemployment Insurance Commission made to encourage people to hire additional employees. That was condemned by those opposite but it was a small step to bring some people back to work.
There are a number of other programs that the federal government did deal with. One of the members opposite yelled out: "Cancel the helicopter program and that would solve the problem". The problem that we on this side of the House have been facing for nine years is the method and attitudes of Liberal governments of the past. Unfortunately we face the same problem right now in Ontario because of the policies of the Liberal Government of Ontario in the past. It got on a spending track that made absolutely no sense.
Members opposite say cancel the helicopter program and we will save $4.4 billion. We know that is not correct. We will not save $4.4 billion because we have to do something with the existing fleet of helicopters in order to keep them flying.
In the first year we may save several million dollars by repairing the old or keeping it flying rather than buying new ones. If one spreads that expenditure out over the life expectancy of the helicopter fleet we are talking about, and I believe it is through the year 2010, our
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program will cost $5.8 billion, taking inflation into consideration, and their program will cost $6.8 billion.
That is the problem with the Liberal Party. Yes, we will save a nickel today but we will spend $1 tomorrow, and the tomorrows of the 1970s are here. The Liberals saved their nickels in the 1970s and they blew them in the 1980s and we are having an awful time dealing with them in the 1990s. We have to change the way things are done. We have to look at these capital costs as investments. It is an investment to have new equipment today.
They talk about chasing submarines, and we all know that at least for the foreseeable future they should not be a problem on our coastline. One of the other things these helicopters will be able to do in conjunction with the frigates they will be operating from is put on a tremendous surveillance program.
A lot of the drugs that come into this country come in through aircraft that fly in through the east and west coast and we do not have the technological capability with the aircraft that we have today to deal with that intercession on either coastline.
If we can intercede and simply catch 10 per cent of the drugs that are coming in on either coastline that is a positive step. All of those drugs, or certainly the majority, end up impacting on young people. That drug interdiction might deal with some of those young thugs who were mentioned earlier who marauded on Yonge Street a year ago. It might put some things in their minds that are appropriate.
Another comment that has been raised by members opposite concerns the Challenge program of the Government of Canada. They say we have reduced it by some $65 million. We did reduce the budget of one program but it was transferred into other youth initiatives. They talk about the Challenge budget being reduced, and that did happen, but if they look at the over-all budget of the department they will find that we have spent $750 million on youth initiatives.
When they talk about $65 million being reduced in one budget I am not going to debate that point, but they have to look at the total budget of the Government of Canada on youth.
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They also asked why the government discontinued the work orientation workshops? They were not discontinued but were merged with a new program called START. In that particular program $45.3 million is being allocated this year.
There are a number of other items I could talk about, such as the Canada Employment Centre for students, the Student Business Loan Program, the business drive for jobs, the federal hiring of students and a number of other initiatives. I look forward to some questions so that I might be able to further expand on these points.


Mrs. Diane Marleau (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, no matter which side of the House we are on one of the realities that we face when we go back to our ridings, when we look around us, is the fact that we have a generation of young people who are underemployed, unemployed and do not have particularly good prospects.
I had a phone call in my riding office on Friday from some young people. They were explaining to me how a number of their friends, people they had gone to school with, people who had graduated from university, did not have jobs. Those who had anything at all had waitressing jobs and clerical jobs, part-time jobs, but none of the people who had graduated from universities had jobs in the field in which they had studied.
They were very discouraged. One young woman was telling me that it is not just people who are graduating this year who do not have jobs but people who graduated one or two years ago. She had a whole list of people she mentioned to me.
The friends of my children are in the same position as my own children. They are having a great deal of difficulty getting any kind of decent paying employment they can build on for a career.
That is the reality today. We cannot fight over that. We have to say to the Conservatives that as much as they may not always agree with what we say and we may not always agree with what they have done, it is a question of choices.
When we talk about helicopters they may be a good thing but it is perhaps a better thing to consider the lives and futures of our young people and spend those few dollars to help them. We have to remember that we

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represent Canadian people. We are here to represent them in this House and serve.
I have a question for the hon. member across the way. I do not know if he mentioned this but I have heard many times before how there are hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country that remain to be filled because we do not have the properly trained young people.
Every time I hear that statement I want to ask where those jobs are. What are those jobs? If they really exist and if there are so many jobs out there that nobody can fill why are we not letting the people who are in training now know?
It is the law of supply and demand. If the demand exists there is bound to be a host of young people who will go and study in those fields. We have to let them know where they are. Where are those jobs? What are they? Perhaps the best thing we can do if these jobs do exist is let the young people know where they are and what to do next so they can qualify for them.
What employment centre or what school should they go to? I have heard this so many times and nobody has given me an answer. Perhaps the hon. member can answer this question for me and all the young people who are listening today. I know many of them would enrol in these programs right away come September so they can qualify for these jobs.


René John Soetens: Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to respond. I appreciate the intent of the question.
The hon. member talks about young people in her riding who are experiencing difficulty in finding jobs. Yet I understand that the Sudbury region is one of the bright lights in Canada for employment.
We have the problem where Sudbury has seen tremendous economic growth but there is still a very serious unemployment problem. That exists in a number of ridings. It is the same thing in my constituency. We have seen tremendous economic growth but we still have a serious unemployment problem. The member is absolutely right.
How can we divert those who are still in the education system away from the unemployment stream and make sure they acquire the job skills they need? I referred to the Canada Scholarship Program in my speech. We are trying to educate people to move into the engineering and physical sciences fields by literally bribing them to
take those courses with $10,000 scholarship programs. Yet we are not being flooded with applications. The full number of scholarships are given each year but I thought we would have been flooded. We are saying: That is where you ought to be concentrating your efforts. We do not need more social scientists in this country. We need physical scientists because that is where the job prospects are in the future.
Of course another way we can encourage this economic activity is by dealing with the over-all market of Canada.
We have tried to expand the Canadian economy through trade. Trade accounts for 30 per cent of the Canadian economy. All the actions we have taken are to try to encourage Canadians to look at foreign markets because some tremendous opportunities exist in export. We are tiying to do that. That creates jobs in Canada.
Ultimately the question is: Where are these 300,000 jobs? I use that number because it was used by a member of her party who spoke previously. In my riding just last weekend I was looking at some ads in the paper where local companies were advertising for different kinds of job skills related to the computer sciences field. A couple of them were executive purchasing management positions, so there are jobs. Whether it is 300,000 or not I cannot verify, but if that number is correct and there are 1.5 million unemployed there are still 1.2 million we have to deal with. It is important that all the initiatives we are involved in will help reduce the unemployment statistics in Canada.


Hon. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton - Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I want to make a comment about the speech of the member for Ontario. He referred to the study being done now by the finance committee in terms of debt and deficit. He made reference to the fact that the previous Saskatchewan government had been spending like drunken sailors. I think he made a very valid comment.
In 1982 when Conservative Premier Grant Devine came to office the debt in our province was $3.5 billion. Nine years later when he left office it had gone up to some $14 billion putting the present government in a very difficult position. We now have the highest per capita debt of any province including Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the shortsightedness of some govern-
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ments like the one he mentioned that has created a lot of problems in the country.
I want to add a comment about the Peterson Government of Ontario to which he referred. Ontario went through unprecedented good times during the period of the Peterson years in the 1980s. There was a tremendous economic boom. At that time the government locked Ontario into a spending pattern which was unrealistic when the good times ended and the recession hit.
We can debate why the recession hit. One reason was world-wide recession. Another reason, I maintain, was the free trade deal with the United States which gave away too much, particularly for the province of Ontario because of manufacturing, the slowdown of the economy, and the GST. All those things together put the province of Ontario into a very difficult situation which has created many more unemployed in Ontario than there would have been if those policies had not been followed.
In my province of Saskatchewan with its tremendous $15 billion debt, as I said the highest per capita in the country, and fewer than one million people, jobs are being lost right across the province. That is now true right across Canada. As a result of the heavy debt a large part of the expenditure of the taxpayer goes to pay interest on the debt.
I welcome the opportunity provided by the opposition day debate today about our unacceptably high level of unemployment and the fact that government policies have not succeeded in bringing down the unemployment rate. As the motion says it is especially unfortunate for the future of young people in Canada.
We have an unemployment rate of 11.4 per cent. That is only the official unemployment rate. In addition, many more Canadians are working at part-time low income jobs, making a few dollars an hour for only a few hours a week. They are unable to properly feed their families. They are underemployed doing things they are not trained for.
We also have literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians now on welfare in every community across the country. In fact the Catholic bishops said that around
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three million Canadians were either unemployed, on welfare or underemployed. That is a tremendous tragedy in a society that has developed the technology to transplant hearts, in a society that has developed the technology to fly to the moon and put a man or woman on the moon.
With all the resources we have-and we have the most abundant resources in the world-and with all the training, all the skills and all the goodness we have, around a quarter of our work force is either unemployed or living on welfare. That is a tremendous tragedy and a tremendous legacy that has been left to our country by the Conservative government across the way.
We are facing a tremendous crisis in unemployment. We have the second highest unemployment rate of any country in the Organization of Economic Co-Operation and Development. Only Italy has a higher unemployment rate than our country. It is one of the reasons we have a debt problem. It is one of the reasons tremendous strain is being put on our social programs. It is why medicare is under siege. It is why education is under tremendous pressure in terms of funding and financing. It is that many people are unemployed.
When someone is unemployed we have the human cost of the unemployment in terms of the human tragedy for that person and his or her family, kids, spouse and people who live with him or her. Aside from the human cost we have a tremendous economic cost in terms of unemployment insurance funds paid to the unemployed person, welfare costs when the unemployment insurance runs out and other social costs that are run up because someone is unemployed. It is a tremendous cost to our society.
On the other side the unemployed person is not going to be paying taxes, income tax, very much GST, provincial sales taxes or other taxes imposed or levied by the three levels of government. That person is not paying into the country or paying into our society and in turn is taking a lot out of society in terms of unemployment insurance and welfare programs that are cost-shared by the federal and provincial governments.

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That is the tragedy we are facing today. If we look at the unemployment statistics we find the group that is being hit the hardest is young people. A study recently in Ontario showed that young people between the ages of 15 and 24 have been hit the hardest by the recession. Between 1989 and 1992 some 84 per cent of the job losses in Ontario were by people between the ages of 15 and 24. That is amazing. The other 16 per cent were by people aged 25 and over. In other words for about 40 years, from 25 to 65, the job loss total is about 16 per cent of the losses in Ontario while for those people 10 years younger, between 15 and 24, it is 84 per cent. Some 17.8 per cent of our young people in that category are unemployed.
When people are unemployed, not working and psychologically depressed because of their situation we run into all kinds of problems. That is when racism mounts in the country and around the world. When people are in despair, when there is a poverty, when there are food banks and when people are lined up at welfare offices is when racism mounts in a country. We have seen that throughout history.
During bad times people look for scapegoats. During bad times people tend to strike out against minorities: visible minorities, religious minorities and other minorities. That is what has happened throughout the course of human history. We are seeing that in spades in this country. On Saturday night in this city we saw a race riot. Neo-fascists came here to celebrate, raise money and parade through the streets. That is what we are now seeing in the national capital. It is a sad commentary on Canada, the greatest country in the world in terms of our resources, our people, our skills and our know-how, that now about a quarter of our people are on welfare, unemployed or underemployed.
Another thing is education. The member across the way said that fewer people are dropping out of school now than were dropping out in 1984. We still see far too many people dropping out of school. Far too many people are saying: "Why should I bother?" They know an engineer or somebody with a university degree who is driving a taxi or who is unemployed.
I heard about a case today of an engineer who has been unemployed for five years. He was working at odd jobs
and painting houses. If young persons see that particular engineer, a person with a skill, with two or three university degrees or a trade, still being unemployed, it does not motivate them to better themselves, to get an education or try to acquire skills for a job market that is non-existent.
Those are the problems we have. We have to turn all our energies, all our imagination and all our resources toward creating jobs and building a stronger and broader economy for all Canadians. We have to channel the resources of our federal, provincial and municipal governments, of our labour, farm and private sectors toward the task of economic development and creating longterm meaningful jobs for people.
We need more value added. We have to do more things and build more things. We have to be more innovative in terms of technologies, new products and new resources than we have been in the past.
We can learn from other countries around the world, from the Japanese, the Europeans and the Americans, in terms of putting more money into things that would create jobs on a long-term basis. Compared with most countries in the world we spend very little on training and retraining our workers. It is extremely important, particularly for young people, to train workers for the new technologies and the new skills out there.
The member for Ontario said a few minutes ago he picked up a paper and saw companies in his riding advertising for people with all kinds of skills: computer skills, computer knowledge, computer sciences and so on. If those jobs are available it is important we train our workers so they can find and accept those jobs. If we compare ourselves to the Swedes, the Germans, the French and the Japanese, we find in almost every comparison between us and other countries in the western world that we spend a lot less on training our workers for the new technology, the new realities, than do those countries.
We spend a lot less as a country on investing in research and development in Canada. Almost every other European country will spend more than we do in terms of research and development and product innovation. We could build more here. We could add more value to our products. We spend very little compared with most countries around the world.
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If we had the co-operation of all levels of government, the private and public sectors, the trade unions and the farm communities, we could declare a war on unemployment and come up with many ideas about how we can channel our resources. We could end a lot of needless duplication between the provinces and the federal government and come up with programs that create many jobs.
We should also be helping those sectors that create the jobs. Small business, for example, creates most of the jobs in any country around the world. Instead of helping the large companies, with large megaprojects and all kinds of hand-outs they do not need, the money should be spent more wisely on helping the small business sector which really creates jobs.
What we should have in the future is a more locally based economy, a more decentralized economy, a more community-based economy where local people call the shots and local people determine what they can do in their communities. That will be done more and more in the world of the future by small businesses, by small enterprises, by co-operatives, by worker co-ops, by a mix of public and private ownership and by community-based, community-controlled ownership. Those things are working in other countries around the world.
Another area where we could spend more money in terms of creating jobs immediately in a part of the country like mine is by helping farmers more than we do. In terms of farm programs the government for a long time now has promised a third line of defence to help prairie farmers who are going bankrupt in pretty well record numbers. If the federal government were to help the farmers more, they would have money to seed their crops. They would have money to buy new machinery, to repair their machinery, to build storage bins for their grains. They would have money that they would spend. When farmers spend that money, they spend it here in the country, putting Canadians to work in towns and villages right across Canada.
When the farmer is better off in that way, we are all better off in terms of that money being circulated and recirculated in our country, putting Canadians to work in the small towns and villages across Canada.
I believe there are things that we can do. I believe we should be changing our tax system. Why, for example, did the government a few weeks ago bring in a bill to
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protect private trusts whereby wealthy families in this country can set aside large gobs of money that will not be taxed? Why are we only one of two countries in the OECD that does not have a wealth tax? Canada and Australia are the only two countries that do not have a wealth tax. Even the Americans have a wealth tax. The British, even under Margaret Thatcher, a very conservative prime minister, have a wealth tax in their country. Why do we not have one in Canada which would exempt the family home, the farm and the small business, but would be wealth tax on our wealthiest Canadian citizens?
These are some of the things that exist in other parts of the world. If we had more government revenues we could put those revenues into places that create jobs for the Canadian people, investing in people, investing in job creation, investing in trying to build more things and do more things in the country, putting more money into training, retraining, research and development, into education, skills, and a national apprenticeship program. Those are the kinds of things that we need.
Instead we see the federal government cutting back on the rate of increase in transfer payments to the provinces. It is fond of saying that it has not cut back on the money going to the provinces for education, health care and social welfare programs and it has not cut back in absolute numbers. What the government has done is cut back on the rate of increase so that in a province like mine we are now getting $500 million less per year now than we would have if the changes had not been made over the last decade.
Five hundred million dollars a year in a small province with a small budget is a lot of money. Our province has a deficit this year of roughly $250 million. If the transfers had not been cut back in terms of rate of increase, there would not be a deficit. Indeed there would be a surplus of $250 million. That surplus I am sure would have been spent on health care, education and job creation in Saskatchewan. We would have a stronger economy and a better society than we have today.
I know that money for the federal government does not grow on trees. Elowever a fair tax system where the wealthy and the large corporations pay their fair share would give the federal government more flexibility so it would not have to cut back on the rate of increase of transfers. More money could go into social programs or job creation programs. They could be cost-shared, cooperative programs between both levels of government.

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That alone would go a long way toward putting more people to work in this country.
I conclude by saying that it is very important in the next few years that we have federal-provincial co-operation in declaring a war on unemployment in this country. With federal-provincial co-operation we could put the best minds that this country has together to come up with plans, ideas, ways and means of creating jobs in this country. Trade unions, the private sector, the farm sector, municipalities and people must work together to try to create national, provincial and local programs to put Canadian people to work.
With a fair tax system, by getting rid of the GST, by abrogating the trade deal and not going ahead with NAFTA, I think we in this country in the next 10 or 20 years can achieve that goal of full employment for all Canadians.


Mrs. Monique B. Tardif (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General of Canada):: Mr. Speaker, in his latest remarks, my colleague spoke about the importance of involving the federal and provincial governments, unions and indeed all partners who could help solve the problems which are really everyone's problems, namely underemployment in this country. I think that is exactly what the federal government has done by creating a working group which province by province and region by region calls on people to develop this kind of co-operation. I think that it is yielding results.
I must admit that I fully agree with my colleague that it is one way to solve the problem. Certainly, government, be it federal, provincial or municipal, cannot solve the employment problem. Government are there to provide a framework in which jobs can be created. They are not there to create jobs directly; jobs are created by the joint effort of those concerned.
I would also like to point out that in his speech, especially at the end, he talked about the cut in the percentage increase of transfer payments to the provinces. The question I would like to ask him, since he spoke about the deficit of his province, Saskatchewan, in
particular, is whether the percentage increase for these transfer payments should not be on some rational basis. It is said that the percentage increase will go down, but it is still more than the increase in the cost of living and we have never been able to justify these percentages.
I understand that it was part of federal-provincial agreements reached at a time when inflation was high and one could expect that such a percentage increase would be necessary. However that is not true today and as there is no rational basis for the percentage increases which had been forecast I think it is normal to lower these percentage increases. I wonder if in the future we should not have a more rational basis to ensure that the percentage increases reflect the increase in the value of Canadians' labour.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the parliamentary secretary opposite that we have a problem with the Canadian tax system. However if I remember correctly, in the past the federal government unilaterally made some changes in the federal-provincial tax system. The federal and provincial governments should negotiate the fiscal arrangements.

In the past, it seems to me that a lot of these changes have been made unilaterally by the federal government. Sometimes these were announced in budgets by the federal government. An example of that is the cap on CAP, the Canada Assistance Plan, for Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. It was announced in the federal budget without any prior negotiation.
I know from having spoken to a couple of ministers of finance at the provincial level, that there is a great deal of concern that these changes are made unilaterally by the federal government in terms of fiscal arrangements. There are no negotiations between Ottawa and the provinces. All of a sudden the minister got up in the House of Commons, read the budget speech and made certain changes affecting the provinces' finances.
Maybe the federal government has to act. I am not saying that the federal government does not have to act in certain cases. However surely in a federal state we should have co-operation between both orders of government in terms of responsibilities for both.
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If the federal government has to cut back in certain cases, maybe the provinces have a very strong argument for more tax points and more flexibility in terms of taxation to meet their increased obligations in order to finance hospitals, schools and social programs. That is a concern that some of the provinces have.
A suggestion that I made in a private member's motion, and this is relevant to our discussion, is that it would be wise to have a fixed budget date in Canada so that the budget would be brought down the first half of February every year or on whatever date could be agreed upon so that the provinces would know what the federal government is planning on a regular basis. Now we have a system where they never know when there is going to be a federal budget. That makes it more difficult to plan. If the provinces do not know when there is going to be a federal budget it makes it very difficult for them to plan in terms of their school boards, hospital boards and municipalities.
I think we could bring some order into the system by a fixed budget date and also bring more order into the system by federal negotiations with the provinces to determine the proper fiscal arrangements.


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Mr. Speaker, naturally I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate today because I believe it is important to say that the government is giving young Canadians an advantage by recognizing the priorities of the Canadian people.
One of the main priorities is to put in place a skill acquisition system that would be available to them throughout their lives. The message we hear from employers and communities is clear. People are going to need to continuously update their skills. The challenge will be to develop an education system capable of sustaining long-term training. Our young people deserve to be able to get an education that will set them on the course of continuous skill development. It is important for the provinces and territories and there is no doubt that it is a concern for youth. The federal government also has a major role to play.
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The government has an impressive number of youth initiatives that it is pursuing with individuals, institutions and communities all across the country. At present, the government is dealing with youth unemployment and such major problems as the high drop-out rate we have in this country.
On several occasions this afternoon, speakers have mentioned that 30 per cent of our high school students quit before graduating. Of course, like any statistic, this figure covers a wide range of situations. Upon examination we can readily see that students from very remote areas and from low-income families are less likely to graduate from high school than others.
It is interesting to note that, in a study published last year, the Conference Board of Canada examined the effects of dropping out, taking those who quit school in 1989 as an example. Based on its economic models and reasonable premises the board calculated the personal and social costs of such a decision over the working life of the former students.
Pay is one of the aspects covered by the study. In their working lives drop-outs can expect to earn $129,000 less each, in current dollars, than a high school graduate. For women, probably because their salaries are somewhat lower, it is a little less. The report says $107,000.
As for the impact on the Canadian economy, the study estimates the cost of supporting the 1989 drop-outs for the rest of their lives at $4 billion. The reality, according to the Conference Board report, is that the problems presently facing the education system threaten our standard of living, undermine our social safety nets and increase the burden on taxpayers. Neither our society nor the people concerned can afford such a loss.
This reality provides the basis for the federal stay-inschool initiative introduced in 1989-90, with a five-year budget of $296.4 million. Progress has been made over the past four years, and we will maintain the initial funding of the project for the last year.
Across Canada, communities have made good use of this initiative. The remarkable thing about stay-inschool is that it enjoys non-partisan support. The last time the Minister of Employment and Immigration appeared before the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, the hon. member for

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Timmins-Chapleau stressed that the initiative had a positive impact in his riding, and he was very congratulatory in his remarks to the minister.
Stay-in-school has three main components: public awareness, which is very important; mobilizing the partners interested in the issues; and a set of programs and services. The results obtained so far have been encouraging. We have managed to make people realize the extent of the problem. Many people have been persuaded to take part in the program, and communities have been given effective means and tools to help them become actively involved. This has included, for instance, organizing and funding an awareness campaign for aboriginal youth. Everyone knows that education is important for young people.
In native communities education is even more important. We know that the future of a community depends on its ability to function in society. This aboriginal youth awareness campaign was supported by all major national aboriginal organizations. These organizations realize that dropping out of school is a major waste of our youth resource, and they agreed to join the government in fighting this problem.
In fact, awareness campaigns help prepare the ground for future action. This initiative has helped to finance ways to get people together so they can learn more about the issues and what can be done. A national stay-inschool conference, called Passport 10/10, was held in Edmonton from May 14 to May 16 this year. I think the point was well made, since the title of the conference means we hope that soon in all schools 10 out of 10 will finish high school.
Mr. Speaker, do you know how many people attended this conference? One thousand two hundred people Irom 300 schools across Canada. Participants included leaders of student movements as well as potential drop-outs, who sat down together to look for ways to deal with the problem.
Student organizations have met the challenge in various ways. In one instance, Cameron Heights High School in Kitchener gave students who may be potential drop-outs a very special task: helping elementary school students who are having trouble in school. As a result, younger students get the additional help they need and the older students gain confidence in their potential, which encourages them to finish high school. I think we
all have to feel we are needed, and school is as good a place as any to have that experience.
Involvement is certainly not limited to interveners from the world of education. Service clubs and community organizations, including the Y, the Rotary Club, Kinsmen and many others have espoused the cause of youth. These partnerships are continuing in the form of programs and services for youth.
I think most members know of the START option which is the most important program being offered today. In 1993-94, the budget will be $45 million for START option projects across Canada. Through this program, local organizations propose solutions to the problem of students who drop out of school. More than half of these initiatives will come from school boards. The rest will be sponsored by community groups, the private sector and aboriginal organizations. This is an extremely important initiative. It is believed to be what will probably make the difference for a good number of young people, in terms of staying in school and taking charge of their own destiny.
These initiatives are primarily based on partnership. Federal officials have co-operated with provinces, school boards, community groups and organizations, businesses and unions. I was listening earlier to my colleague from Saskatoon and I must say that we all ask for this consultation, this co-operation, because it is the only way to find solutions.
I believe that these expenditures are an investment in the growth of our country. Making young people aware of the importance of staying in school is a concrete example. The government will have to continue to support other initiatives aimed at our youth. As members of Parliament we just finished reviewing the Challenge projects for the summer. I think this is an extremely important program for all young people, as well as one which generates positive reactions in every community.
Personally, I know that each time I review Challenge programs in the riding of Charlesbourg where there are nine municipalities, including one aboriginal village, the important thing is to make sure that, through those projects, young people from every background can find a meaningful job in their milieu. I think that every member in this House is pleased to make this connection between the work place and the young people who want a better
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future and who want jobs. This is our role and our responsibility, but it is also a pleasure to do so.
What we want is for our young people to gain some work experience during the summer. The government spends money to that end. This year the budget was increased by $5.4 million over last year. The better part of this increase was targeted at the main option, which is the work experience. This summer through its programs the government will provide $88 million in salary subsidies to employers. This is one way of acknowledging the needs of young people.
We must also look after other needs. We are very aware of the fact that in our cities, young people are very concerned about illiteracy, drug abuse, alcohol, AIDS, the environment and crime. Those are important issues. They are important to young people, to communities, and it may also be important to give them some priority when we review projects.
There is among our youth a group which prefers to be self-employed. Indeed, one can already be an entrepreneur at that early age. Consequently, there is a government program called the student venture program. It is intended to help those who want to fly on their own. It is one area where there has been an increase. This year the budget will be $1.14 million.
Since 1985, when that part of the program was created, the number of projects submitted has increased from 101 to 995. The number of jobs created has increased 1,000 per cent, so to speak, even if it may seem overstated, from approximately 100 to over 2,000. I think it is important to realize that, in many cases, young people like being their own employers and that there is a growing interest for such a program.
Arrangements for youth development were also made with some Canadian provinces. I have a list here of agreements entered into with New Brunswick and Newfoundland as part of the youth strategies calling for concerted measures to meet the needs of youth in both provinces. Under these agreements, the federal government will provide over $27 million to meet its commitments to the provinces. The projects arising from these
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agreements for the fiscal year 1988-89 are models of co-operation.
In New Brunswick the access centres established throughout the province have served more than 17,000 young people. In Newfoundland the federal government has worked together with the provincial government to sponsor projects. These projects called upon the ideas and expertise of community groups, employers and teachers. In Newfoundland 9,000 young men and women were directly involved in these projects, while 50,000 others benefited from the programs and services sponsored under the federal-provincial agreement.
There are many more programs I could mention in support of the government's continuing commitment to meeting the needs of young Canadians. Other components of Challenge '93 come to mind, such as the assistance provided to the co-operative education program or to the many Canadian Jobs Strategy events.
All these initiatives are designed to make it easier for young people to enter the Canadian labour force, which is changing greatly and will continue to change in this decade and into the next century. The basic objective of all youth initiatives is to help young Canadians make a successful transition from school to the working world.
By using a strategy based on partnership the government will make optimal use of public funds. Surely the people of Canada would settle for nothing less. We must ensure that governments' commitment to young Canadians will be lasting. We must ensure that commitment is met in collaboration with the provinces, labour and the working world, so that everything done to help young people succeed will be as effective as possible.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague for her excellent review of those programs that her government has implemented over the last several years in order to correct a problem that we are facing today. I do not think this country has faced since 1958, 1959 and the early 1960s the tremendous unemployment with our young people in the work force today.

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I compliment my friend for going through a lengthy review with respect to all of the programs that her government has implemented in trying to correct this terrible situation.
Let me say at the outset to my colleague that I do believe that she and I and the members on her side of the House and the members on this side of the House are of one mind when we say we are all trying to come together to correct this terrible dilemma we find ourselves in today. Regardless of what we have seen happen in the last eight or nine years today there are more young people in our society looking for work than there ever have been in the history of our country.
I respect the statistics that were just read out, but one-third of all students in Canada who enter grade nine in our school system fail to graduate out of our high school system with any kind of a diploma or certificate of confidence and are known as drop-outs. I know that number, as my colleague has said, can be taken down or up, depending on how one looks at statistics. The fact is we have more drop-outs today in our school systems in this country than ever before in our history. Yet my friend realizes that Canada spends more of its gross domestic product on education than any other country in the world with the exception of one other country.
What are we failing to accomplish? The reality is we have failed in developing a national purpose. We know we have a constitutional problem because education is primarily the responsibility of all the provinces. Yet the federal government's responsibility is to take the lead in establishing national excellence and achievement goals lor all our students, whether they live in Victoria, British Columbia or Newfoundland, to strive for and achieve.
I was on a board of education during the years this country faced that dilemma. Prime Minister Diefenbaker decided at that time we needed to provide some incentive to take away the stigma from vocational training. Students who did not have the academic excellence to go to university and get post-graduate degrees could develop skills in vocational areas and qualify for those jobs where we need skilled workers so badly in Canada today.
What has this government done as a previous Conservative Prime Minister did in the late 1950s to promote this vocational achievement that I think is lacking within our country?


Monique Bernatchez Tardif: Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell my hon. colleague that, earlier in the debate, we discussed at length the initiatives taken by the government, including the centres for excellence and the Canada Scholarship Program, which was originally targeted at students graduating from colleges and which now provides scholarships to high school graduates who are entering the field of techniques of the future or faculties which will enable us to create jobs, thanks to the new technologies.
I believe that this government has recognized that it was extremely important to prepare the future and to try to direct young people in fields such as engineering and the new sciences.
This is one aspect. It is for young successful people. It is extremely important because this is where jobs will be created. As I was saying earlier, the fact that one-third of high school students drop out is very costly, first for those young people, in terms of salary in future years, and also for Canadian taxpayers, in terms of the support which they will have to provide to those who will not have gone to school long enough to get the better jobs. If we look at what is going on in our society, we find that there is a large number of available positions for which Canadians are not qualified.
We must first develop the knowledge and skills and the will to learn in our young people, so that they can get the jobs. We must urge our good students to persevere, and we must ensure, as adults and as a government, that we recognize the importance of succeeding and having this quest for excellence, which may guarantee that tomorrow we will all be better off in an economic activity which will enable Canadians to live even better, and which will provide a job for every one of them.
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[English \


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I rose a little earlier in the debate today to compliment my colleague from North York who saw fit to bring this motion to the floor of the House today.
As was indicated by another one of my colleagues, this is the second time the Liberal Party has put a motion dealing with this government's lack of any idea of what to do about the unemployment problem and in particular the plight of unemployed youth in Canada. We only get so many allotted days to decide what the subject matter that is debated on the floor of this House will be.
Truly the situation in Canada today is extremely tragic. Most would say this is one of the most blessed countries in the world from the perspective of its geography, natural beauty and abundance of natural resources. We are probably unequalled anywhere in the world.
We look at the world and the global markets evolving and say that Canada should be poised to take advantage of this expansion in world markets. We should have a skilled and ready labour force that will be able to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in both the North American and global contexts.
After nine years of Conservative government we have seen the greatness of Canada almost frittered away. Whole classes of people, based on where they live in the regions, have literally been cut adrift.
We have seen this government pursue policies that are insane. We have watched as the Tories decided to battle inflation but had no strategy for growth. They determined up front that an acceptable price to pay for lower inflation was a system ically high unemployment rate. That is what they have done.
In the five years since I was elected to this place they have continued their scorched earth policy when it comes to the regions of this country, the dispossessed and the unemployed.
The only thing they have done for the unemployed since they were re-elected by a fluke in 1988 was add many to their numbers so at least they would not be lonely. They did the same thing to food bank lines as well. Rather than solving the problem of the increasing growth of the poor and dispossessed in Canadian society and rather than dealing with the fundamental problems
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that were causing that, all they did was to add to their numbers. I guess, according to the Tories, misery loves company.
We had the spectacle only a week ago of the member from Don Valley who had a staff member show up at a food bank so that she could just show that anybody, even if they did not need to, could go in and get food at a food bank. She was trying to convey some perverse idea that food banks were unnecessary or were being abused. That is absolutely insane.
Can one just imagine it? Rather than tackling the problem of unemployment this government has constantly attacked the the unemployed budget after budget after budget. That is what it has done.
In the last year when Canadians were facing despair in record numbers because of Tory economic policies, we did not see it come back after the referendum and say: "We have listened to Canadians. They are fed up with the way that we govern. They are not prepared to support any initiative on the Constitution no matter how worthy because Canadians are fed up because we are not dealing with the fundamental issues for Canadians and they are economic issues".
It did not come back in with a public works program like the Japanese and the Europeans have to give people back their dignity and to make them taxpayers instead of tax takers. It did not do that. It came in and passed a bill and rammed it through with their majority. It was not to solve the problem of unemployment but to make those poor, unemployed Canadians whose numbers are increasing more miserable while they were getting their unemployment insurance. It cut back on the amount of money that one could get and increased the length of time one had to work to get it. It decreased the length of time that one could get it. Rather than deal with the fundamental Tory problems that have caused an economic collapse across this country it attacked the unemployed.
I listened to some of the ministers opposite here in their feeble attempt in their dying days as a government. Canadians will not forget the turmoil that this bunch opposite have put them through over the last nine years. There are over 2 million people who are on unemployment insurance or on welfare or lined up at food banks.

May 31, 1993
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There are 500,000 children who live in poverty. The record will not be forgotten.
Ministers opposite in this debate today get up and say: "I will tell you how much money we spent on this program and how much we spent on that. We have training dollars going here". I hate to tell those ministers but whatever they have done has not been enough. Whatever they have done has not contributed to alleviating the problem. It has contributed to making the problem worse.
We talk about programs for the youth of this country. My goodness, anybody that knows history knows that a country that has not invested in the youth of its nation does not have a future. It is as simple as that. In these very quickly changing times with the emerging global markets any nation that is not investing a substantial amount of resources into training its young people, putting it into the university system, putting it into apprenticeship training programs and putting it into that whole host of first-time job opportunities for our youth is a nation that does not have a future.
Yet the Tory bunch opposite is insistent every time it gets up in the House to tell people that they have never had it so good. I have the dubious distinction in the opposition of being the critic for bankruptcies of all things. At least one thing that I know is that I will be on the national news once a month when I have to get up and comment on yet another record month of bankruptcies in this country.
In 1992 this government presided over the largest number of personal and business bankruptcies in the history of the country. Yet each and every time opposition members get up and question the government's policies that have caused this, the ministers on the front bench, or God forbid the Prime Minister himself, pop up and say: "Things are going to get better. If we just pursue these policies we will have some equality across the country". It is not going to be equality of opportunity. It will be equality of despair from coast to coast to coast in this country.
Today in the dying days of this Parliament we are debating a motion that condemns the government on
behalf of the millions of individuals who have been forced into despair because of its policies.
Tike a province like Nova Scotia. I do not care what the bunch opposite says. Down in Cape Breton Island one finds that the Statistics Canada unemployment rate is at 28.5 per cent. I am a Cape Bretoner and we are a pretty strong and proud people but after nine years of having the Tory government dish out its brand of economic renewal it has damned near broken the spirit of Cape Bretoners.
There will be hope for people in Cape Breton, Montreal, the north and my riding of Dartmouth because in a very few weeks-not months-the people of Canada will have an opportunity to pass judgment on this government's job creation effort and opportunities for the unemployed and for the young people of this country.
There is no question in my mind that the people of Canada when given the opportunity will judge the federal Tory party the way we have recently-last Tuesday-judged the provincial Tory party in Nova Scotia. We will kick butt and there will not be very many Tories left nationally. In the province of Nova Scotia the Donald Cameron record of Toryism was patterned after the Brian Mulroney brand of Toryism. I think there are 7 or 8 of them left out of 52 and those guys got in by the skin of their teeth.
There is hope for Canadians. Hope is around the corner. It is called the federal election. The Liberal Party will put forward a prescription for renewed optimism for the people of Canada. It will be a prescription based on people first. It is a prescription the Tories opposite simply do not understand.


Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague, the member for Dartmouth who has made such an impressive and convincing intervention, whether he would care to comment for a moment about the jobs strategy which we have seen evolving in the last two years in this country. I wonder whether the jobs strategy is on target with the changing requirements of employers and whether the jobs strategy takes into account the changes for Canada in terms of the production of goods and services which would be exported. In other words, is the jobs strategy one that he would subscribe to or would he conclude, as I unfortu-
May 31, 1993

nately have to conclude, that it has been an abysmal failure?


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Davenport for asking that particular question. Here is what we have seen most recently in the budget. The government came in and mismanaged the economy into a record series of deficits. We had the Minister of Finance only last year indicate that the federal deficit would be in the order of about $28 billion for this current fiscal year. He is off by a little bit. He is only off by $8 billion. He says: "Trust me in all the other figures I am going to give about all the jobs we will create if you allow us to come back in again to give you another dose of Tory economics".
Quite clearly the budget that we saw was a strategy for cutting. When one does not know what else to do then one just cuts indiscriminately. There was nothing there. I say to my colleague from Davenport that it was clear in the last budget that this government has no strategy for growth, none at all. There was nothing in the budget for the unemployed. Indeed the economic policies we have seen over the last number of years had contributed and are probably solely responsible for the high level of unemployment in every age group and in every sector.
We have had the government tell us in 1988 that free trade was going to be a bonanza and that we would see expansion in markets and in employment opportunities unlike anything we had seen before. The member is from Ontario and knows full well that as a result of this government's free trade initiative, this crazy deal that it entered into with the Americans, there have been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the manufacturing sector in Ontario alone.
Quite clearly if I have to comment about this government's strategy for creation of jobs and growth, it simply does not have one. The only strategy it has is a strategy to try to hold on to the power. That one has proven bankrupt or will prove bankrupt as soon as the election is called.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, I have just a short question because I know our time is limited.
My colleague was in the House when I asked the previous speaker a question about skills development
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and the absence in our educational system of training for our young people in skills development.
My colleague is involved and very knowledgeable in that area. I would like him to comment on the process in the last 10 years of not training our young people with the skills to acquire the jobs that are needed and thereby correct the problem, of not taking the initiative to bring that forward.


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, clearly one of the problems we have had is that the federal government continuously passes the buck on its own responsibilities. As a national government the federal Government of Canada through the Parliament of Canada has the responsibility to look after things like labour market development. As a result it has a responsibility to come in with programs which are cost-shared and administered by the provinces to ensure that Canada has a strategy to face the changing labour market and, most of all, that there is a national plan co-ordinated by the federal government.
I heard on the floor of the House today some Conservatives who agree with the Liberal strategy for having a national apprenticeship training program. They say they agree with the principle but it will never happen because we simply cannot get the provinces to agree. One of the problems we have is not whether the provinces agree. It is not whether there is a need. It is whether this government has the moral authority, legitimacy or credibility with provincial governments to put any national program in place.
Clearly after nine years of despair, nine years of cutbacks in transfers to the provinces for things like post-secondary education, the provinces will not play ball with the government. In Nova Scotia alone in 1992 we saw the federal government, the one that says it is so interested in youth, in training and in preparing our youth for the jobs that will be available now and in the future, renege on its constitutional requirement to ensure similar levels of post-secondary education are available across the country.
In 1992 in my own province of Nova Scotia $46 million was cut from the transfers to the Established Programs Financing for post-secondary education. Clearly that makes sure that in Nova Scotia like the rest of the country tuitions have gone through the roof. At the same point in time as there is more student unemployment, 24 per cent student unemployment in Nova Scotia, it has cut back on grants to the provinces for post-secondary

May 31, 1993
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education which has increased tuition. Under this Tory administration for a number of years we are now seeing post-secondary education being-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry, but the time for questions and comments has now expired.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to follow my colleague, the hon. member for Dartmouth. I can assure the House that we are two minds but with a single thought on this issue.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Three minds.


Mary Catherine Clancy: Yes, three minds including the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon, three minds with a single thought. That is the last bit of levity that I expect to inject into this debate. This is not a matter for levity. It is not a matter for joking. It is not a matter to smile about. It is a matter, in the words of my colleague, the hon. member for North York, that we can only call a tragedy. He calls it the tragedy of unemployment, especially among the young and particularly with regard to education, job training and retraining.
I live in Halifax. I live one block from Dalhousie University. I live four blocks from Saint Maiy's University, four blocks from Queen Elizabeth High School, four blocks from the Vocational School Halifax, four blocks from St. Patrick's High School, two blocks from Sacred Heart School, and six blocks from Halifax Grammar School. Every day hundreds of young people pass by my office door, my house door. Every day I see young people who no longer have hope.
Twenty-five years ago when I was in university we had hope. We had to work hard and we had to scrape and save, although we had a better student loan program in those days, better access to summer jobs and better bursaries in the provinces. We had to work hard but we had hope.
I remember in the early seventies facing graduation not for an instant thinking that there would not be a job. Of course there would be a job. We were the sixties generation. We were the best educated, the most aware, the most ready generation that this country had ever
seen. We came out, we got jobs and we did well. Some of us even ended up in Parliament.
However, what have we collectively as a Parliament been able to do for the people that have come after us, for this next generation, for those kids born in the seventies and coming into the work force in the nineties?
We have disappointed them and we have betrayed them because this is Canada. It is a country of magnificent opportunity. It is a country of incredible resource. It is a country that should be able to support not just the population that we have, a scant 28 million over the immense and fabulous land mass that is this country, but 10 times that number, if we had a government that planned for the future, that anticipated to some degree the way the world was going to develop and if it took seriously-and I hesitate to use the words because they have become base coin-the sacred trust that we all should hold to ensure that the children of this country can wake up in the morning with hope in their hearts. That does not happen, not in this country, not today.
At 9.30 this morning I was on Spring Garden Road, one of the major thoroughfares in Halifax. I had come out of a meeting and in front of one of the shopping centres there must have been 25 young people, all of them I would say between the ages of 18 and 22.1 do not know whether they were recent high school graduates or university students. I do not know what their specific situation was, but I do know generally at 9.30 on a Monday morning if one has a job one is at work. This crowd of young people did not have jobs and were not at work and indeed had probably come from the student employment office where they had again been told there was nothing available, nothing for them.
If they happen to be students who hope to go back to university in the fall they are being faced with incredible rises in tuition because of the cutbacks in established programs funding that have eviscerated the maritime universities and universities across the country.
If they are young people who have finished their education or think they have finished their education, they are learning tragically that education has not prepared them to be productive members of this new and changing society.
May 31, 1993

It is absolutely unfathomable to me that this government which has been in power for nine long arduous years has not in the nine long arduous years come up with a response because it had already started in 1984. It had well started in 1984.
We, the previous government, indeed the previous minister of employment, the member for Winnipeg South Centre, had a most ambitious training program he was bringing forward. It was a skills training program. What has happened to it? Gone. Cut. Not there any more.
This country of ours, one of the most amazing countries in the world, is the least served by its work force in highly skilled training. We do not have it. We have the people, but no one has trained them in any numbers to do the jobs that are available.
I can remember sitting in this House-I do not remember how many years ago, I know my colleague from Dartmouth remembers it too-when the fish plant in Shelburne was closing and the fish plant in Canso was closing. I remember being told by the then Minister of Employment and Immigration that retraining was going to take care of it all. We laughed, not because it was amusing but because it was tragic. We laughed.
We are not laughing today, because the tragedy that we were laughing at that day has come to pass. There has been no retraining in Shelburne county. There has been no retraining in Canso. Why retrain people if there are no jobs? Why not create the jobs and do the training? The government does not do that.
What do we have in Atlantic Canada? We have supercomputers in Cape Breton. Supercomputers. Terrific. Just what we need. We have an industrial policy, a non-existent industrial policy I should say, in a province that has always been a proud province. It is a province that has had a work force second to none. It is a province where its men and women would take on any job, any time, to ensure they could feed their families, pay their mortgages and be productive members of society.
Now those people who have worked hard all their lives are seeing their children, young men and young women, on the unemployment lines. These people are not statistics. They are human beings. Every one of us goes
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back to our ridings. We see these young people desperate for work, desperate for hope, desperate for any kind of encouragement that will tell them life will get better. Maybe it will not be next week or next month, but surely next year, surely in six months, surely some time. However it is not and this government is not giving them any reason to think any better of it.
That is why I say this motion brought forward by the member for North York deserves support. Government members opposite should pick up this motion, wave it in front of their cabinet colleagues and say: "If we do nothing else before we leave this place"-most of them never to return-"we should do something for the young people of Canada".


Ronald MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Halifax, coming from a province which has for far too long suffered disproportionately the downturns in the economy, knows what happens to people, particularly young people, who do not have the opportunity to grow and gain self-confidence and some integrity through employment.
In her riding of Halifax there is a place called Hope Cottage. Individuals who are down on their luck, who are living on the street, who do not have a job, who have basically no hope left through circumstances which most times are beyond their control go there to at least get a hot meal from somebody who does not question why they are there.
One of the things in Halifax-Dartmouth that concerns me is that when I pass by Hope Cottage there are more and more people lined up. I go down to the churches in Dartmouth. I see Reverend Chang and I find out that they cannot keep up with the numbers of people who come, people looking at their shoes because they have lost their dignity, looking for just enough food to feed their families.
As an individual who has been active and has been the social conscience in many cases of segments of Halifax society, I want to ask her what has happened in a place like Halifax, the centre, the economic hub of Atlantic Canada, because of this government's economic policies. What has happened as far as the increasing numbers of people lined up at food banks as a result of those policies?

May 31, 1993
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Mary Catherine Clancy: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Dartmouth for the question.
Hope Cottage is two blocks from my riding office. I am very familiar with it. I too have noticed not only longer lines at Hope Cottage and longer lines at the food banks in the Halifax and Dartmouth area but younger people going there as well.
It used to be that the people who took advantage of Hope Cottage, the soup kitchen at St. Mary's Basilica and the services of Reverend Chang in Dartmouth were a segment of society which through no fault of its own, but for a variety of reasons had an inability to survive without these particular social services.
That group has been augmented by young, able-bodied men who try every morning at the unemployment office, at every possible outlet in the city of Halifax, in the city of Dartmouth, in the county of Halifax to find gainful employment. I know this because I have frequently called upon the services of young men to shovel snow or to clean my basement or my attic or something like that. I know how desperately they are looking for employment that just is not there.
They are not people who do not want a job. These are not people who would like to live what some bizarre and unusual people think is the life of Riley on social assistance. Tiiese are people who know, as every one of us in this House knows, that the greatest social service we can give anyone is the dignity of a job. However the dignity of a job is something that is lacking for too large a number of young people in my city, in my province and, God help us, in my country.


Gregory Francis Thompson: Mr. Speaker, I look forward to this important debate. We are addressing and debating a very important issue when we speak of the youth of this country and some of the difficulties they face.
I do not think that we can isolate the situation of the youth in this country from the mainstream of the economy. I will point to some of the programs we have in existence now to address some of those problems specifically. What is lacking in the debate from the other side of the House is focusing on the wider picture and putting in context that greater economy all Canadians share. That is where the answer really lies.
The fact is that the Canadian economy is not in nearly as bad shape as the opposition likes to pretend. It is not as good as I would like to see it, or as good as you would like to see it, Mr. Speaker, but we are making progress. I want to emphasize some of the progress that we are making.
What I want to point out, as the member for Halifax did deal with the unemployment statistics and some of the numbers that she is seeing in her native province of Nova Scotia, is that as the Canadian economy continues to grow and as more Canadians are going back to work it does have a residual effect upon the prospects of those younger Canadians, including students, who are seeking work.
I will provide some of the statistics that give me pleasure and encouragement. When we mention those statistics we have to measure where we are in relation to where the opposition was back in 1981 when it was the government.
Today in Canada we have an inflation rate of less than 2 per cent. In fact it is 1.8 per cent. We have prime interest rates of less than 6 per cent and we have unemployment in my home province of New Brunswick of 11 per cent.
Compare that to 1981 when we had inflation at 12 per cent, interest at 22 per cent and unemployment over 17 per cent in my home province. There is no comparison. What it really means is that we have more jobs back home now, including in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. That is helping the youth.
No matter what city one is in or what street one is on one is always going to see unemployment. It is always going to be too much. However the economy is moving along well. The Canadian economy is positioned to out-perform all economies in the western world this year. It has so far.
That is good and it is good for our youth. Specifically some of the programs that we have for our youth would give them some cause for hope as well. For example we invested $3.8 billion in 1993 in training and adjustment packages for workers. That has an effect on young workers as well. It has a big impact on young workers.
May 31. 1993

We are going to be spending $250 million in the next live years to create skills councils. This year specifically l'or students our Challenge program will be budgeted to the tune of $110 million. It will be $110 million for youth in each and every one of the regions of Canada.
A common theme throughout the debate on the opposition side today is to simply ignore many of these figures. They ignore some of the things that we are doing. I think it has to be put on the record.
For example in 1993 we are going to be spending $2.21 billion to upgrade the skills of workers. The interesting thing to note is that it totally contradicts what the opposition is debating today. Those members voted against that in Bill C-21.
They fought and raged against Bill C-21. What they are really doing is fighting and waging war against the very program that is providing over $2 billion in training funds for our youth. Another statistic which is worth mentioning is the $296 million that we announced in February 1990 in what we call our stay-in-school initiative. There is $296 million.
The province of New Brunswick has used those funds rather well. We have a significant decrease in the drop-out rate in New Brunswick because of that program. It is a federal program. Many of the provinces bought into it and have had very good success with it.
One of the things that always amazes me about the opposition is its lack of a sense of history. The EPF, Established Programs Financing, payments go back to the provinces to help them provide for higher education. I remind the opposition that it was in 1977 when those members allowed and voted for the bill that would allow EPF payments to be used for something other than education.
That was wrong back then. When those moneys, which are given through the generosity of the Canadian taxpayer through the federal government, go back to the provinces some of the provinces are not using those funds for what they were intended.
The member for Dartmouth was not here in 1977 so I cannot blame him. However his party stood up here as the government at the time and allowed the provinces to
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do that. I think when it is examining its position in relation to what is happening out there today it has to take a very close look at the history of this country and what it did.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. I am sorry but it being six o'clock p.m. it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 81(17), proceedings on the motion have expired.


ALLOTTED DAY, S. O. 81-WATER
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Friday, May 28, consideration of the motion of Mr. Gardiner:
That this House condemn the government for its failure to protect Canadian interests regarding the inter-basin transfer of water as exemplified by the Kemano project, the North Thompson River, and both the Columbia River Treaty and the North American free trade agreement.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 45(6), the House will now proceed to the deferred division on the motion of Mr. Gardiner, on the supply proceedings.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.

[Stage Direction]
Members
Anderson
Atkinson
Belsher
Bjornson
Blais
Bosley
Cadieux
Chadwick
Cole
Cooper
Couture
Darling
de Cot ret
Desjardins
Dorin
Fee
Ferland
Fretz
Gibeau
Greene
Harvey (Chicoutimi)
Hicks
Holtmann
Horning
Hughes
Johnson
Jourdenais
Koury
Larrivee
Littlechild
MacDonald (Rosedale)
MacKay
Masse
McDermid
McLean
Moore
Oberle
Paproski
Pronovost
Reid
Ricard
Robitaille
Saint-Julien
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Thacker
Thorkelson
Tremblay (Loibiniere)
Van De Walle V6zina Vincent Wilbee
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek Wilson (Etobicoke Centre)
Andre
Attewell
Bertrand
Blackburn (Jonquiere)
Blenkarn
Browes
Casey
Clark (Brandon-Souris)
Collins
Corbeil
Danis
DeBlois
Della Noce
Domm
Duplessis
Felt ham
Fontaine
Friesen
Gray (Bonaventure - Iles-de-la-Madeleine)
Guilbault
Hawkes
Hockin
Horner
Hudon
Jacques
Joncas
Kempling
Langlois
Lewis
Lopez
MacDougall (Timiskaming - French River)
Marin
McCreath
McKnight
Monteith
Nicholson
O'Kurley
Plourde
Redway
Reimer
Richardson
Roy-Arcelin
Schneider
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Valcourt
Vankoughnet
Vien
Weiner
-Assiniboia)
Worthy-107

[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.


TRANSPORTATION
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Friday, May 28, consideration of the motion of Mr. Benjamin (p. 18921) and of the amendment moved by Mr. Angus (p. 18926).
Madam Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to order made Friday, May 28, 1993, the House will now proceed to the deferred division on the amendment to Motion No. 282 under Private Members' Business and on any question required to dispose of the main motion.

Following the adoption of the 24th report of the Standing Committee on House Management on Wednesday, April 29, 1992 the division will be taken row by row starting with the mover and then proceeding with those in favour of the amendment sitting on the same side of the House as the mover. Then those in favour of the amendment sitting on the other side of the House will be called.
Those opposed to the amendment will be called in the same order.
(Division No. 502)

Members
Bellemare
Bevilacqua
Boudria
Brewin
Caccia
Clancy
Ferguson
Fisher
Foster
Gauthier
Heap
Hunter
Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast) Langan (Mission-Coquitlam)
Lee
MacLellan
Maheu
McCurdy
Milliken
Nault
Pagtakhan
Proud
Skelly (North Island -Powell River)
Stewart
Waddell
Benjamin
Blaikie
Breaugh
Butland
Catterall
Domm
Finestone
Fontana
Gardiner
Gray (Windsor West)
Hovdebo
Keyes
Kristiansen
LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-Canso) MacDonald (Dartmouth)
MacWilliam
Marleau
McGuire
Moore
Nystrom
Pickard
Riis
Speller
Vanclief
Young (Acadie -Bathurst)-50
May 31, 1993

Private Members' Business
++NAYS
Members


Madam Deputy Speaker:: That is an observation, it is not a point of order. It is a question which I am not entitled to answer.
Anderson
Attewell
Bjornson
Blais
Bosley
Cadieux
Chadwick
Cole
Cooper
Couture
Darling
de Cot ret
Desjardins
Duplessis
Feltham
Fontaine
Fnesen
Greene
Guilbault
Hawkes
Holtmann
Horning
Hughes
Johnson
Jourdenais
Koury
Larrivee
Littlechild
MacDonald (Rosedale)
Mac Kay
Masse
McDermid
Monteith
Oberle
Paproski
Pronovost
Reid
Ricard
Robitaille
Saint-Julien
Andre
Bertrand
Blackburn (Jonquiere)
Blenkarn
Browes
Casey
Clark (Brandon-Souris)
Collins
Corbeil
Danis
DeBlois
Della Noce
Dorin
Fee
Ferland
Fretz
Gibeau
Grey (Beaver River)
Harvey (Chicoutimi)
Hockin
Horner
Hudon
Jacques
Joncas
Kempling
Langlois
Lewis
Lopez
MacDougall (Timiskaming-French River)
Marin
McCreath
McLean
Nicholson
O'Kurley
Plourde
Redway
Reimer
Richardson
Roy-Arcelin
Schneider
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Thacker
Thorkelson
Tremblay (Lotbiniere)
Van De Walle
V6zina
Vincent
Wilbee
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Valcourt
Vankoughnet
Vien
Weiner
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia) Worthy-101
The next question is on the main motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.


PAIRED MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the amendment lost.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Madam Speaker, on a point of order, a question. Would the record show that the government member who seconded the amendment abstained from voting?
Bellemare
Bevilacqua
Boudria
Brew in
Caccia
Clancy
Ferguson
Fisher
Foster
Gauthier
Heap
Hovdebo
Keyes
Kristiansen
LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands-Canso) MacDonald (Dartmouth)
Mac William
Marleau
McGuire
Nault
Pagtakhan
Proud
Skelly (North Island -Powell River)
Stewart
Waddell
Benjamin
Blaikie
Breaugh
Butland
Catterall
Domm
Finestone
Fontana
Gardiner
Gray (Windsor West)
Hicks
Hunter
Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast) Langan (Mission-Coquitlam) Lee
MacLellan
Maheu
McCurdy
Milliken
Ny strom
Pickard
Riis
Speller
Vanclief
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)-50.

May 31, 1993
Private Members' Business
++NAYS
Anderson	Andre
Attewell	Belsher
Bertrand	Bjornson
Blackburn (Jonquiere)	Blais
Blenkarn	Cadieux
Casey	Chadwick
Cole	Collins
Cooper	Corbeil
Couture	Danis
Darling	DeBlois
de Cot ret	Della Noce
Desjardins	Dorin
Duplessis	Fee
Felt ham	Ferland
Fontaine	Fretz
Friesen	Gibeau
Greene	Grey (Beaver River)
Guilbault	Harvey (Chicoutimi)
Hawkes	Hockin
Holtmann	Horner
Horning	Hudon
Hughes	Jacques
Johnson	Joncas
Jourdenais	Kempiing
Koury	Langlois
Larrivee	Lewis
Littlechild	Lopez
MacDonald (Rosedale)	MacDougall (Timiskaming
MacKay	Marin
Masse	McCreath
McDermid	McKnight
McLean	Monteith
Moore	Nicholson
Oberle	O'Kurley
Paproski	Plourde
Pronovost	Redway
Reid	Ricard
Richardson	Robitaille
Rov-Arcelin	Saint-Julien
Schneider	Siddon
Sobeski	Soetens
Sparrow	Stevenson
Tardif	Thacker
Thompson	Thorkelson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)	Tremblay (Lotbiniere)
Valcourt	Van De Walle
Vankoughnet	Vezina
Vien	Vincent
Weiner	Wilbee
Wilson (Swift Current -Maple CreekWorthy -100	-Assiniboia)



[Stage Direction]

Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare the motion lost. [English]


Mr. Riis:: Madam Speaker, on a short point of order. The motion we just voted on was put forward in the name of the hon. member for Regina-Lumsden. In a few more days he will have served 25 years in the House. This is probably the last motion he will put before the House of Commons. I thought the members would want to give him a hand for his many years of service.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Regina-Lumsden has been a long-standing member of our House. This may be his last motion but we will miss him.


Mr. Les Benjamin (Regina-Lumsden):: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the thoughtfulness of my House leader, my colleague, and I appreciate those who supported me on this matter.
I am so saddened by the fact that my motion encompassed the things the government members spoke in favour of when they were the opposition and VIA Rail was ruined. I deliberately incorporated their wording.
I am sorry to say this but I cannot stand those who go back on their own word.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: It being 6.45 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.45 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
nil/aucun
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday, June 1,1993