1993-03-17

[Stage Direction]
[Translation)

Mr. Yvon Cote (Richmond-Wolfe):: Mr. Speaker, we saw something quite sensational in the headlines this morning, a stroke of genius on the part of the Leader of the Opposition, who has found another candidate to help with this country's renewal. His name is Elijah Harper, well-known for his unfortunate tactics and formerly a member of another party.
One may well wonder about all this, especially since on the weekend, speaking to party members who were tired, anxious and starting to have their doubts, he had the following comment on the Progressive Conservative Party's leadership campaign: that we still had the same substance but were only changing the labels.
I wonder how seriously we should take the Leader of the Opposition, who wants to change the labels while resurrecting yesterday's men. I am thinking of people like Messrs. Munro, Johnston and Samson, who according to the Leader of the Opposition are some of his best candidates.
I wonder why the Leader of the Opposition is so prompt to criticize the government and the Progressive Conservative Party right in the middle of its leadership campaign, considering that some of his decisions have had a questionable impact on the renewal of this country.
[English}


GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURES
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, the federal government's estimates of a few days ago attacked literacy programs, seniors, aboriginal programs and official languages. This week the Progressive Conservative Government of Manitoba has decided to do away with over 50 organizations, among them the Manitoba Anti-Poverty Organization, organizations that deal with the physically handicapped, child care, native friendship centres, and 1Association canadienne d'education de langue frangaise.
All of these organizations, including the Manitoba Anti-Poverty Organization, render services to the poor, to those who have less, to the handicapped and to those who need more in order to be able to fully contribute to society.
It is totally unacceptable, it is insensitive and it is deplorable that governments would try to cut back on the backs of the poor, the defenceless and those who do not have political power. I abhor that practice.


TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, I have received a significant number of complaints from constituents regarding unsolicited facsimile advertising and automatic telephone solicitations. Businesses and consumers are extremely annoyed at the waste of time and the expense and nuisance to which they are subjected. In the case of faxes, expensive paper is wasted and their machines cannot receive or send important business communications. Telephone advertising ties up staff, telephone lines and answering machines which sometimes must be played back long distance at a cost.
I advise all constituents who contact my office to register with the Canadian Direct Marketing Association to have their names removed from lists. However, companies owned by one particular individual are not members of the CDMA and are the worst offenders.

March 17, 1993
Bill C-62 is currently pending. It will give the CRTC greater authority to deal with this problem. I urge that this bill be expedited and that the CRTC and Bell Canada act promptly to tackle this irritating and expensive problem.


SENIOR CITIZENS
Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians finally have a commitment from the Minister of Finance that there will be a budget this year.
What Canadians, particularly seniors, now want is a commitment from the minister that the programs they rely on will not be destroyed in the name of deficit reduction.
Canadian seniors have suffered more than their fair share from this government's economic mismanagement. Cuts to medicare hit hardest among those who need health care the most. Cuts to independence and research programs jeopardize the future health and well-being of older Canadians.
The time has come for the Conservatives to stop blaming others for the mess they have created and start taking steps to help Canada's three million seniors.


HON. JEAN CHAREST
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, speaking before an audience of more than 1,500 supporters last night in Sherbrooke, Jean Charest said, when he announced he would be a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party: "It is wrong to say that a leader is being selected without a single idea having been expressed."
He went on to say: "Democracy claims its rights. This race must be a debate on ideas. A debate on organization is no substitute. The grass roots of the party will decide, and no one else. When I say new generation, I am not refering to age. No generation is right or wrong because of its age."
"The Conservatives are looking for a leader who will introduce a different style and new ideas", he pointed out.
He also said: "The Government of Canada must continue to support restructuring of the economy. Once we have changed the structure of our economy, we must review the Canadian social contract to which this economy is linked. It is wrong to say that Canadian society must accept poverty or high unemployment."


CANADA PENSION PLAN
Mr. Neil Young (Beaches-Woodbine):: Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga South has sent a questionnaire to his constituents. He wants to know whether the Government of Canada should eliminate or keep the old age pension.
This same member is the one who forewarned us that the GST would be a cash cow for the government, and he was right. He was also the one who told us that the universality of social programs would be ended, and he was right again.
The member for Mississauga South obviously has inside knowledge of government thinking. By asking the question now, is he warning us that the elimination of the old age pension is being considered by this government? Is he testing the water to determine what the public reaction would be if the government were to go ahead and do that?
Canada's seniors are entitled to have this information. Canadians and we in this House want to know, not after the next election but now. We want this government to assure us today that the implications of that member's question are being repudiated by this government.

GROSSE iLE


Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, today is St. Patrick's Day, a day when the whole world is Irish and our thoughts turn to shamrocks, leprechauns and the wearing of the green. But the thoughts of Canadians of Irish origin will also turn to Grosse fie, an island in the St. Lawrence River just east of Quebec City that served as a quarantine station for European immigrants who came to Canada between 1832 and 1860.
March 17, 1993

More than 15,000 Irish immigrants, the victims of famine and disease, are buried on the island. For Canadians of Irish origin this is indeed a sacred and hallowed ground.
Parks Canada intends to develop Grosse lie as a national historic park, not to commemorate death and disease but rather as a welcoming place for the celebration of the human spirit. Hopefully, the development will also be sensitive and respectful to the mass graves, to the memories of those who died and to those who cared for the dying, while at the same time recognizing the contributions that Canadians of Irish descent have made to our country.


PHARMACEUTICALS INDUSTRY
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, two days ago the government member for Don Valley East ridiculed the opening of a new $200 million facility by Apotex Inc., Canada's leading generic drug manufacturer.
This member not only showed his profound ignorance, but clearly demonstrated the disdain which his government has for Canada's generic drug industry, an industry which is vibrant and indispensable to our national economy and employs over 3,000 Canadians with more than $430 million in sales.
Moreover, last year alone, lower priced generic prescription drugs saved Canadian consumers and provincial governments an estimated $1 billion.
If the Tory legislation extending protection to the more expensive multinational brand-name manufacturers is allowed to remain on the books then Canada's compulsory drug licensing system will be destroyed forever.
Rather than ridiculing Apotex for opening a new facility and creating much needed jobs the government should be congratulating Apotex, Novopharm Ltd. and the others. Regardless of who its leader is going to be it will lose the next election, and one of the reasons is because-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, British Columbia residents are rightfully alarmed over recent reports of a large influx of Asian criminals moving into Canada.
RCMP inspector Doug Ewing is quoted as having said: "Many of the world's most ruthless, vicious criminals have already set up power bases in Canada". Criminal Intelligence Service Canada said that Triad members already in the country are involved in drug trafficking, gambling, extortion, prostitution, money laundering, armed robbery, alien smuggling and counterfeiting of credit cards.
I call on the government to ensure that immigration officials, Revenue Canada, the RCMP, co-ordinated law enforcement units and local police will get full support in their efforts to stop the immigration of criminals into the country and to deal firmly and quickly with any immigrants or visitors who flaunt the justice system of this country to the detriment of all Canadians, especially other honest and law-abiding immigrants and fellow citizens.


CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, Boyer in, MacDougall out, Valcourt out, Beatty out, Wilson out, Maz out then in and then out again. Garth, Garth who? Campbell, you bet. Charest in then maybe out, but then enter the puppet master who has pitted his apprentices one against the other.
From his lair at 24 Sussex Drive the PM explains to the environment minister that he must enter the leadership contest to at the very least give the illusion that there is a race for first place.
The poor member for Sherbrooke was first told by Tory strategists, now there is an oxymoron, to wait until the new Tory leadership race to be held after the defeat of the party in the next election but the PM tells him: "Faith and begorra Jean, we can't be having a coronation".

March 17, 1993
It is a cruel hoax on the Minister of the Environment. Canadians have seen through this charade, this phoney debate. As the poet William Makepeace Thackeray said: "All is vanitas vanitatum". Let him shut up the box of puppets, for his play has been played out.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Mr. Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, last week, when he appeared before the CRTC, the president of the CBC said that the corporation would now give high priority to implementing a French allnews service as a counterpart to Newsworld. "Our French audience is entitled to a good news service," Mr. Veilleux is reported to have said. He compared the lack of a French Newsworld to a regional disparity.
For nearly four years, anglophones have had a news channel in their language. Although the Broadcasting Act states that the corporation should seek to offer equivalent programming in French and English, we francophones have had only poor proposals that were either rejected by the CRTC or abandoned.
Allow me to wish the president of the CBC and his whole team better success this time, before the situation becomes awkward.


DISABLED WOMEN'S NETWORK CANADA
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, this government has killed the only national organization that represents and works for women with disabilities across Canada.
DAWN, the Disabled Women's Network Canada, will be forced to close its doors by the end of this month. Since 1985 DAWN Canada has worked hard to put disabled women's issues on the federal agenda, including their special concerns about violence, employment, parenting, self-image and new reproductive technology. Canadian women with disabilities depend on this important organization for information, networking, research and support.
I urge the Secretary of State to provide adequate funding to DAWN Canada so that it may continue its important work on behalf of women with disabilities.


THE GOLD BOND CONVEYOR
Mr. Howard Crosby (Halifax West):: Mr. Speaker, I know all members of Parliament will want to record their sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives in the tragedy that befell the Gold Bond Conveyor.
The 32 crew members who perished in the cruel seas of the North Atlantic, though not Canadians, represent all the men and women of the world who go down in the sea in ships. The oceans are a cruel grave and a constant reminder of the power of the Almighty.
All we can do is extend sympathy to the families of the deceased seafarers and pray there are no further tragedies yet knowing there will be.


STATUS OF WOMEN
Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, every day women are victimized by circumstances, misconceptions of their place in Canadian society, targets and victims of violence. Each year we set aside a few days to focus on women's issues but as long as women experience injustice, inequality and inferior status in Canadian and international society we must struggle daily, not once a year, to correct wrongs.
Unequal pay for work of equal value, abuse in the work place and responses which further victimize the female victims, media and commercial depictions of women which are demeaning and violent, these and other injustices against women must be corrected.
Today 60 per cent of women are employed in the work force. However, we must compare the opportunities available to women to those of their male counterparts and recognize women are as capable and productive in the work force when given the opportunity.
Child care and training opportunities must be more available to women. Mothers who wish to raise their own children at home should have adequate recognized training to provide care for their own children and others in their home if so desired.
March 17, 1993

We do not need a few superwomen. We need a society where all women are guaranteed equality and are assured justice and dignity.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Dan Heap (Trinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, the government is heavily chopping back the immigration service for which Canadians pay fat fees in addition to taxes.
For a year the new mail-in application system in Toronto has been failing. Since April 1992 over half of the mailed in application questionnaires have been returned to senders for corrections. This is because applicants can no longer get help from immigration staff.
MPs' inquiries often go unanswered for over a month. Local immigration staff often admit there is no immigration officer to work on the constituent's case.
Now the government has announced that in order to centralize mail-in service for all Canada at Vegreville next year, it will terminate more than 900 permanent and temporary staff. It will close 11 Canada Immigration Centres and replace 13 more with a single officer in the Canada Employment Centre.
This means massive work backlogs and delays so that only Canadians rich enough to hire a lawyer can get good service and the rest of Canadians must suffer third-class service.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the environment minister, I would like to ask the Minister for International Trade a question.
Yesterday, concerning the discussions now underway on the environment commission under the North American free trade agreement, I would like to know from the minister, or even better, from the environment minister,
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whether the environment minister agrees that the commission has no power to compel both the Americans and the Mexicans to have environmental standards that are as high as Canadians' standards.


Hon. Jean J. Charest (Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Jean J. Charest: I have nothing else to add, Mr. Speaker.
Seriously, to put this issue of creating a North American environment commission in context, the decision was made with the previous American administration in September to create this North American environment commission. At that time, the three ministers concerned held a trilateral meeting in Washington.
At the time we mandated our respective officials to define for us what its mandate would be or at the very least to provide us with options, which they started to do, except that since then, there was an election in the United States. The new American administration asked us of course to take the time to study this issue and to come back. We are still waiting for the American administration to respond.
Now, as for the specific question raised by the hon. Leader of the Opposition, issues of sovereignty overlap some regulatory issues. We must take all that into consideration. The negotiations in the coming days will show us where the parties want to go on this.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, if it is the intention of this government to have a commission that will have some real power, then it has to be a watch-dog which has some teeth, not a lap-dog that is there to serve the interests of the big industries that want to pollute the environment and use it to make the Canadian situation more difficult. Will the minister talk to his other colleagues?
I also want to congratulate him on showing more guts than all those other people who have run for cover, because it is never over until it is over. My good friend the Irishman, Yogi Berra, said that some years ago.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.

March 17, 1993
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Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Will this government have one clear policy on this matter? We need international standards that are strong, not just a committee that will help the big industries to keep polluting and using it as an advantage against countries which respect the environment.


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I heard that Yogi Berra was a Liberal.
What we are seeking through these negotiations is an opportunity to strengthen environmental co-operation among the three countries from a continental point of view. We must keep in mind-and the hon. Leader of the Opposition should know this-that when the Americans have talked about environmental agreements between the countries they have mostly focused on border issues between Mexico and the United States.
I have found in my discussions with our American counterparts that in 90 per cent of the cases those are the types of issues they are focusing on. Canada has insisted that if there are going to be these types of negotiations and we enter into these negotiations then we want a continental perspective given to them.
We have looked for strengthening of environmental co-operation, better enforcement as one of the key elements in so far as Mexico is concerned. We have even co-operated bilaterally with the Mexicans in this regard.
Of course we want the promotion of sustainable development and a trinational body. What we want to do, and I think it will be part of the discussions, is to explore the relationship between the trade commission and this environmental commission. We look forward to hearing what our American counterparts have to say on this.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his answer, but does he not believe that it would be better now, when we have a golden opportunity to ensure adequate environmental standards in all three countries, if the Minister for International Trade did not proceed immediately with the legislation, so that our partners know that we are very serious about our environmental demands? If we wait, they will know that we are serious, but if we pass the legislation now, they will not take us seriously, of course.


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, I took an active part in the preparatory
discussions for this North American free trade agreement. My colleague, the trade minister, considered the representations made. He even became an environmentalist for this purpose and the end result is a very green trade agreement that contains unprecedented environmental provisions.
The trade agreement itself, I think, deserves the approval of this Parliament, and I am telling you that as Minister of the Environment.
Furthermore, we were able to use the trade negotiations as a lever to create a North American environment commission. We will negotiate with the two other countries to give it a clear mandate which will serve the cause of sustainable development. In the coming days, we look forward to finding out the position of our American counterparts so that we know exactly where they want to go with this.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of the Environment has just said he is waiting to see what the U.S. position is. The minister of trade knows very well that the U.S. position is tough. The United States trade representative has said the Americans will walk away from NAFTA unless they get three tough side accords on the environment, on labour and on import surges.
Yet the minister of trade for his part has said that he will not agree to any side accord if it infringes on Canadian sovereignty. The minister must know that any international agreement necessarily involves some derogation and limitation of sovereignty.
Can the minister say how the United States' tough accords, which he presumably rejects, will not in effect limit the sovereignty of all three countries? Or is he saying that Canada will now walk away from NAFTA if the United States demands these tough accords?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend and his leader talk about sovereignty. I have said that we do not accept an invasion of our sovereignty through the ability of the United States to apply sanctions against Canada. I am sure Mexico would take that same position.
March 17, 1993

I would be interested to know whether that would be the position of the Liberal Party of Canada. Is the Liberal Party of Canada prepared to accept the United States telling us how to run our environmental matters?
Is it prepared to accept the United States telling us how to administer our labour laws? I would be very interested in hearing what the position of the Liberal Party is, if in fact it does have such a position.


Roy MacLaren: Mr. Speaker, the position of the Official Opposition has long been that we need stronger environmental and labour standards in the NAFTA.
The minister speaks of sovereignty. The fact is he has said that he is happy with the present agreement. No change, no additions. He will take it exactly as it is. The United States has now said it wants more.
Why is it that Canada does not want more? Why is it that the minister will accept that the United States can say: "Yes, we want more on environment and we want more on labour standards", but Canada says: "We do not even want to raise the central question of subsidies. We do not even want to raise that because that changes the agreement itself".
How can we have parallel accords on the environment and labour and at the same time not seek a parallel accord on subsidies?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to say this but either my hon. friend is showing his lack of understanding of the NAFTA agreement or he is playing a little political game which in view of his intelligence I believe that is precisely his objective.
We have made it clear. The United States and Mexico have made it clear that there will be no reopening of the agreement. My hon. friend is quite aware of the fact that if there are changes to the subsidy code, which he wants and which we would like to have too, it is not possible without a reopening of the agreement.
There are objectives of the side agreements on the environment and labour. On the environment there is the creation of the North American commission,
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strengthening environmental co-operation, pushing for better enforcement of environmental rules and promoting sustainable development. All of these things we have been seeking for the last year. We are pleased that the Americans have taken it upon themselves to reopen and seek those same things.
We are working on something that has been part of the Canadian agenda for one full year, but it does not need a reopening of the agreement.
What my hon. friend wants is a reopening of the agreement and if he is seeking that, he had better be prepared to put some other things on the table and that I have not heard from the Liberal Party as yet.


Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, this is a proud day for all of us who have Irish ancestry.
I too have some questions for the Minister for International Trade. My focus is directly on the involvement of the American people and the House of Representatives and the Senate in an ongoing public debate through extended legislative committee hearings in Washington on this issue.
While the United States has dramatically altered what is on the table through the parallel accords and while there is massive input by American citizens in this altered negotiating position, the Canadian government has refused to allow its own standing committee to travel coast to coast, to Mexico and to Washington so that we can show the American and Mexican people exactly what the problems are and vice versa.
Why is the Minister for International Trade curtailing access to these debates by Canadians by not allowing the committee to travel to Mexico and the United States? What has he got to hide? What is he hiding?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, we have been quite open in seeking public debate, but my hon. friend should speak to his House leader. His House leader will not let us put this matter to a committee.

March 17, 1993
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We had committee hearings in November, December and February and now when we want to send the matter back to committee his House leader will not let it move forward.
My hon. friend talks about sovereignty and here he is going down to the United States, cap in hand, seeking support from the Americans, saying: "Please, please Americans help us out with our problems in Canada". That is the New Democratic Party in their strong Canada-first stance.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, it embarrasses me to inform the minister who has just responded to my question that the request he has outlined has already been denied in writing by the House leader of the government.
The House leader of the government has said no trip to Mexico, no trip to Washington, no extensive televised conferences and no hearings. We may go to Saskatchewan and that is it.
If the minister is concerned about the Canadian people getting access, if the minister is concerned about this information being made public, then I say, why is the minister not giving the same answers that the government House leader is? They are out to hide these hearings and this evidence proves it.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I can understand why in the middle of a heavy snowstorm my hon. friend would like to go to Mexico, but Saskatchewan is open for him, New Brunswick is open for him, Newfoundland is open for him. He can travel anywhere in Canada.
I would have thought that with the Canada-first stance of the New Democratic Party the member would be seeking the advice of Canadians, not Mexicans and not Americans.


David Barrett: Mr. Speaker, indeed I have taken the advice of Canadians. One piece of advice I have taken is from the former negotiator for the Conservative government on the free trade agreement, Mr. Gordon Ritchie. This is his advice, and I quote: "Gordon Ritchie, former deputy chief negotiator for the Canada-U.S. pact said that Canada's position on the side deals is a negotiating blunder".
If the former chief negotiator for the government says it is a blunder, how can the minister possibly accuse Mr. Ritchie of not having Canadian interests? How can he accuse Mr. Ritchie of not consulting with Canadians? Frankly, this government is still keeping the information secret.
I ask this minister whether or not he agrees with Mr. Ritchie's statement. Yes or no? Is Mr. Ritchie right in this statement?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I believe my hon. friend was in Mexico when the hearings started in November. If he had been here lor all of the hearings he would have a better understanding of the range of positions that people have been taking.
If my hon. friend would like to debate the side issues, let the matter go to committee so that the issues of the environment and labour matters which is a continuation of the agenda that Canada started in February 1992 can be negotiated. If he wants to have input on these issues he should tell his House leader to forget about the boondoggles and going down to Acapulco in the middle of winter and come up to Canada and debate the issue.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, today Max Yalden told us the reports of sexual harassment in the military increased dramatically in 1992. Yesterday the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women told us that there were policies and programs in place that could ensure women are able to serve free of harassment.
My question, therefore, is for the Prime Minister. Why are these famous policies not working?


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to read to' the House the order of the Canadian forces harassment policy. I am happy to table it. It indicates very clearly that the subject of harassment was recently discussed at Armed Forces Council.
March 17, 1993

"Members of Council reaffirmed that harassment in any form, personal, sexual or abuse of power is unacceptable conduct and will not be condoned in the Canadian forces in any way at any rank level". I am very happy to table this.
I think it is very important to underline two things. First of all, we have begun a review in the Canadian Armed Forces as to the actual policy of dealing with sexual harassment. We are dealing with the complaints process, systemic problems, problems in reporting and investigating and responding to allegations of harassment. That report will be in my hands in April and I will be very happy to make it available to the House of Commons as soon as I have it.
In addition, we have been doing a survey of 5,600 members of the Canadian Armed Forces because questions have been raised about the ease with which members of the forces feel they can raise questions of sexual harassment. We have been doing this confidential survey of 5,600 members of the forces to see whether we are getting the appropriate level of reporting because the numbers that I have seen, in my view, are low. My guess is that the reality is higher than that.
That report will be available in April and I will be pleased to make it available to the House of Commons. We are doing everything possible to ensure that we know the reality of what is happening and to ensure that the policy of the Canadian forces, which is zero tolerance for sexual harassment, is applied in the forces.


Mary Catherine Clancy: If only zero tolerance was the case, Mr. Speaker.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said that the minister of defence was working on this plan. Today the minister has told us of this plan. Policies are in place in many departments, including DND. The Minister Responsible for the Status of Women told us so yesterday. Policies are in place in departments of government. What is not in place is enforcement.
Consequently my question is for the Prime Minister who spoke very eloquently on this subject yesterday. I say to him today, will he direct all his ministers to enforce the policies that are in place and deal seriously with sexual harassment now?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I do not have to direct my ministers in that
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regard because they all feel very strongly and have already acted upon the notion that there should be zero tolerance of sexual harassment at any time and in any circumstances.
My hon. friend quite properly points out that notwithstanding this rule and its vigorous enforcement, it is not always successful. We will be exerting further vigilance and further effectiveness to ensure, not only throughout the Public Service but in Canada, we can arrive at the creation of a climate wherein it is accepted by all citizens that sexual harassment of any kind is profoundly unacceptable and as a society we must rid ourselves of it.


VETERANS AFFAIRS
Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Veterans Affairs, a minister who is not devoting very much time to the concerns of veterans.
What I am asking about, what the veterans of Canada are asking about, is the massive increase in costs which have been forced on veterans who receive care in nursing homes and hospitals. Currently they are faced with a 29 per cent increase this April.
Will the minister look at this with the view of providing relief to these people on fixed incomes?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, first I want to say to the hon. member that I take my role as Minister of Veterans Affairs very seriously. One of the things I will not do, unlike the hon. member, is raise unwarranted fears among veterans or among the employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs about the level of staffing in the programs we provide.
I have just seen a press release issued by the hon. member suggesting that according to the estimates we are cutting back the Department of Veterans Affairs. He is accusing the department of budgeting $38 million for professional services which he suggests will be handed out to friends of the government. These are, in fact, medical services, to doctors and rehabilitation workers, the professionals being chosen by the veterans themselves.

March 17, 1993
Oral Questions
In other words, the hon. member has quite wantonly sown seeds of disquiet, doubt and insecurity among the employees of this department in a way that I think is quite inexcusable.
With respect to the issue he raised, he knows well those changes were made some time ago in full consultation with veterans organizations. They are well understood and they bring the costs that are charged to veterans in line with the lowest level charged by provinces for similar services.


George Albert Proud: Mr. Speaker, regarding the other matters the minister has raised, I believe the truth is now coming home on the issues I raised previously.
My supplementary question for the minister is this: Will she dedicate her department to reducing the selfpay portions that veterans are now forced to pay and will she set a new course that will return fairness and generosity to the veterans of this country?


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, the veterans of this country I think care as much or more than anyone about our ability to sustain the things we think are important to us as a society, and that includes our social services and other benefits.
Therefore, the veterans themselves and their associations have been very helpful and supportive in setting benchmarks for the kinds of charges that are levied on the services of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the level of support that is provided.
There is no abstract way of determining what is an appropriate level of charge. Therefore we have sought to find some kind of solid benchmark against which to measure the charges that we impose for our services. The benchmark we have chosen is the lowest fee for this service among the provinces in Canada, because the provinces have the main constitutional responsibility for providing services of this sort. Veterans in Canada will pay no more than the lowest fee charged by a provincial government for these services. That, Mr. Speaker, I think is eminently fair.


Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich -Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.
In Washington in the past two days the U.S. trade representative's office said it was this government, the
Canadian government, that seriously hampered environmental provisions in the NAFTA, such as section 104 regarding the Basel Convention on Hazardous Waste. We also heard over and over in Washington that the Canadian government has now abdicated any sort of position that might improve environmental co-operation with our trading partners.
Why is Canada dragging its heels on the environment? Why is the minister committing such gross negotiating blunders?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the hon. member is getting her information. I can assure her that I went so far as calling my new vis-a-vis in the United States, Carol Browner, and inquiring about how her position was evolving at that time. That was not too long ago, just a few weeks ago. They were still defining-which is acceptable, we can understand that-the positions they would be bringing to the table.
The hon. member seems to be making a leap from that situation of fact to an assumption that our government on environmental issues has not been assuming its responsibilities, when it is quite the contrary, Mr. Speaker. If anything, this government of all the modern governments in the world's industrialized countries has been one that has offered leadership through all the major forums, including the G-7.
If the member does not believe that, maybe she would like to re-read the words of President Bill Clinton when he met with the Prime Minister of Canada.


Lynn Hunter: Mr. Speaker, the U.S. trade representative's office in the person of Brian Samuels quoted that Canada is seriously hampering negotiations on the environmental provisions because Canada wants to protect its waste industry.
What are we doing here, creating jobs for hamburger flippers and waste management experts? Is that the Tory way?


Jean J. Charest: Mr. Speaker, Canada and our government, I think it was in November, signed and ratified the Basel convention, which is an international convention. Furthermore, we have bilateral agreements with the United States on the issue of transboundary transportation of waste, both hazardous and non-hazardous. We are now looking at a system by which we will have a notification for even non-hazardous waste between both countries.
March 17, 1993

That is the type of work that has been done in this area over the last few years.
Obviously the hon. member wants to believe that some position or some point of view in the United States administration coming from I do not know where on some environmental issue is not favourable to Canada.
If that is her position, let me read to her specifically what President Clinton said at a press conference in the presence of the Prime Minister. He said: "And I may add that the Prime Minister's administration in Canada has had a strong record on the environment, something we want to try to beef up in a supplemental agreement".
We agree with that, Mr. Speaker.


POVERTY
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, while the Conservative government is trying to alter the definition of poverty and the employment minister calls the jobless free-loaders, the number of hungry in Montreal has increased dramatically-300,000 being served food in the month of November.
The number of single parents seeking food is up by 71 per cent, children more than 180 per cent. This is cause for concern and cause for alarm. Hungry children cannot concentrate and hungry children cannot learn to read and write when their tummies are empty.
My question for the Prime Minister is why can the government not afford to help these needy people and avoid another generation moving into the poverty cycle?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I think every member in this House will acknowledge that as long as there are children in this country who do not get a square meal, we cannot afford to be complacent.
We cannot but acknowledge that the situation exists and in fact, last year, this government invested $3 billion for the children of Canada and Quebec, which will be used to help needy families. We are also considering
Oral Questions
various programs with the Government of Quebec to help give children a better quality of life.
There is a fundamental aspect to this question. The present government is trying to develop and has, in fact, developed policies to help these people get decent jobs. At a time when we are going in that direction, I trust I can count on the hon. member's support so that we can tell Canadians that all concerned, including those of the government, must focus on providing decent jobs so that poor Canadians will be given a chance to support themselves. And I am sure they will succeed, Mr. Speaker.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, that response is certainly not going to fill the empty stomachs of the people we have been referring to, hundreds of thousands of people in Montreal.

Mr. Speaker, Montreal is hungry. Mothers and children and young people in Montreal are so hungry that in November alone, more than 800,000 pounds of food, which is 20 tonnes a day, were distributed. This is Montreal, not Somalia. This is so distressing that I want to appeal directly to the Prime Minister and ask him what he is going to do to alleviate the misery at the foot of the very mountain where he will soon be living.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, I will certainly avoid giving a political answer to a political question.
I would again ask my colleague to try and understand the policies of all governments in this country, particularly this one which decided last year, even with all the pressures, to make $3 billion available to the children of Canada and to try and develop a good economy where people have work. That was exactly our purpose and the purpose of all governments. Canadians should be told that all efforts should be in that direction.

March 17, 1993
Oral Questions CRIME PREVENTION


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale -High Park):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
Last week the government sponsored a three-day national symposium in Toronto on crime prevention and community safety. Over the course of the symposium I listened carefully to four different senior ministers, all of whom agreed that the root causes of criminal behaviour are poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and the lack of adequate housing.
If four cabinet ministers believe that these are the real causes of many crimes, what is the government doing about it and why is this government paying more attention to leadership conventions rather than crime prevention?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for raising the fact that this symposium was a success. We gathered together everybody that is involved in crime prevention: police officers, provincial, municipal and federal governments. The justice committee, chaired by the hon. member from Mississauga West, which was very active the week before, was helpful.
At the end of the symposium we decided to have a national strategy on crime prevention. I do not know if the hon. member was present or not, but I announced that we would have 20 to 25 people in Toronto help me and my colleague, the Solicitor General, in order to have the major elements of the strategy by May. I think it was a tremendous success and we should follow the route we are taking.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the same minister.
I would like to believe in what the minister is saying but I refer him to a letter that I sent to the former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, now Minister of National Defence, which appeals for federal resources to fight the rampant drug and sex trade on the streets of my Toronto riding.
This letter, a copy of which went to the Solicitor General, was signed by representatives of four levels of
government, including myself. Almost three months later there is still no reply, not even the courtesy of an acknowledgement. When is this government going to cease deluding Canadians and address the crisis on our streets?


An hon. member:: The people in his riding are fighting it personally.


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned at the symposium, Canadian taxpayers are already spending $8 billion. That money is already in the system. That is a lot of money.
Everybody recognizes that we have a lot of money in the system. The cost of crime involves an additional $6 billion. That means $500 for every Canadian in this country. I think there is a lot of money in the system.
We want to spend this money in a smarter way and the way to do that is to work together. This is the way this government is working and I am sure it will succeed.


IMMIGRATION
Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. The immigration mail-in application system has been failing in Toronto for a year. The majority of mailed in applications are returned to sender for correction. MP's inquiries often go unanswered for more than a month and too often the answer when it comes is there has been no officer working on that file for these months.
Now the minister plans to extend that failed system to all of Canada by centralizing it at Vegreville; mailed in for the whole country.
Does the minister intend to force Canadians to go to expensive lawyers to get good service or to use MPs and underfunded local community organizations for free substitute help, or is he telling Canadians to give up hope of any decent service from the immigration department?
March 17, 1993


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Not at all, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, in the press release that the government provided indicating the closure of offices in places like Kamloops and Whitehorse, the minister's backgrounder says: "As a result of the lack of in-person interviews, fraud and misrepresentation will easily pass undetected". This was a major concern by this move to Vegreville.
My question to the minister is this. If he is already admitting that this move will increase the possibility of fraud in terms of an unfair immigration system and misrepresentation, why would he proceed with this? Why not go back to the drawing-board and say that these centres will remain open?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, if he did that obviously we would not do that.


POLICE SAFETY
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.
At present the use of personal defence sprays are classified as prohibited weapons. However the use of these sprays can save lives and facilitate the work of the police. Instead of risking injury or loss of life, police should have these personal defence sprays such as pepper spray devices for their use.
The trauma to police officers as a result of using their firearms in the line of duty could be diminished by the use of these devices.
Can the Minister of Justice say if a decision will be made permitting the use of these devices by police forces, a decision that could save lives?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I share the concerns of my hon. friend. He should know that we have pilot projects in different parts of the country where police forces are using that kind of a device.
I think we should be very cautious in the way we look at the use of those devices. My department along with others and at the provincial level as well that are responsible for the application of laws are closely following those pilot projects and will make a decision.
Oral Questions
We really do not have to make a decision to amend legislation for that, but it will be looked at very closely. This is what we are doing.


CANADIAN FORCES BASES
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence.
The minister will know that there are more Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada than are necessary, far more than are necessary. I wonder if the minister could tell this House what she is doing to eliminate some of these bases and cut down the costs of these bases as an economy measure.


A. Kim Campbell: Mr. Speaker, the rationalization of defence infrastructure is one of the government's highest priorities, but it is something that has to be carried out with considerable care for two reasons. If we are to divest ourselves of infrastructure, we want to make sure that we are thinking long term in terms of the needs of our Canadian Armed Forces and also because decisions to decommission infrastructure across the country impact on communities.
The Minister of National Defence had commissioned a minister's advisory group on defence infrastructure to create a process for doing this. That process has been reviewed by the standing committee and we hope to put it into place soon to ensure that we will be able to deal with the question that the hon. member raises in a rational and fair way that is in the interest of Canadian communities and the Canadian Armed Forces.


ATLANTIC FISHERY
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of fisheries who I think should throw his hat in the ring too.
For months the minister has promised assistance to Atlantic fishermen and fish plant workers across Atlantic Canada in communities that have been literally shut down by the quotas he announced last December. Yet, with the exception of the northern cod recovery program which is destined to a particular area in Newfoundland, the very programs that are in place to provide this assistance have been slashed in his government's recent spending estimates.
[Stage Direction]
March 17, 1993
Privilege
For example, the Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program has been cut by 45 per cent and the Plant Workers' Adjustment Program has been cut by 89 per cent. Why is the minister reneging on his commitment to Atlantic fishing communities?
Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Bonjour monsieur. Monsieur le president-


Some hon. members:: Elear, hear.


John Carnell Crosbie: That suggestion had not come to my mind.
I might just deal with the hon. member's question. As a matter of fact, I have just written the hon. member pointing out to him that he had made very bad mistakes in similar statements he had made in Nova Scotia on what was being spent in these programs.
There are no such spending cuts. The Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program will be spending $584 million. The northern cod program will be spending something like $780 million to $800 million.
We are now looking carefully at the situation in the Atlantic provinces outside the northern cod area. This is to see whether anything further needs to be done to assist those fishermen and plant workers who will be affected by the cuts to the TACs this year.
There has been a huge increase in spending in fishery matters in the last two years. That will continue and has to continue.
Mr. Francis G. LeBIanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to ask the minister further questions about that in the committee studying the estimates.
When will the minister announce for the rest of Atlantic Canada a program comparable to his northern cod recovery program to assist those fishing communities elsewhere that are going through the worst resource crisis in their history? This crisis in large measure is due to his government's mismanagement of the fishery.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I hate to see excess of partisanship in the House.
The crisis in the fishery has a lot of causes that go back many years. The main cause is an extremely unusual environmental cause having to do with the temperature of the water.
In ending my answer, I might just quote from an editorial that I just came across. It says: "John Crosbie is a straight-talking, no-nonsense intelligent guy who refuses to buckle under to loud-mouthed pressure groups". So you can forget him right off the bat.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker:: My obligation is to bring a ruling to the House.
Yesterday, March 16, 1993, the hon. member for Timmins-Chapleau raised a second question of privilege, following my first ruling concerning the proceedings of the legislative committee on Bill C-113.
The basis of the member's point, as he stated it, is that the committee, or a majority of its members, had shown contempt for the Speaker in proceeding to study Bill C-113 clause by clause before hearing the ruling of the Chair on the hon. member's first point relating to the expunging of testimony.
I thank the hon. member for his defence of the Chair for which he has demonstrated a sincere regard. It is very clear, however, that decisions relating strictly to the proceedings of a committee, such as the choice of witnesses to be called and the scheduling of clause-byclause study, are the committee's decisions to make.
It does not seem to me that in this case there is any reason the Speaker should intervene in the committee's proceedings.
I must therefore conclude that the hon. member's point is not a question of privilege.
March 17, 1993



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, if I may, I would like to table a document to which I made reference in the House during Question Period. That is the Canadian Forces harassment policy.
This is being tabled for members of the House under the appropriate Standing Order.


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and 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 51 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings ]


Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the legislative committee on Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, without amendment.
While I have the floor, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the committee to commend the committee staff for the competent and professional manner in which they handled their duties, especially our counsel, Djenane Boulad, and our researchers, Eric Adams and Kevin Kerr, who actually worked in shifts to provide us with timely information. We had outstanding assistance from our clerk, Robert Normand. All of the
Routine Proceedings
staff worked long days and provided excellent support. Their efforts were appreciated by all members of the committee.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



CANADIAN CHARTER OF RESPONSIBILITIES ACT


Alan Redway: for leave to introduce Bill C-415, an act to establish a Canadian charter of responsibilities.


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


Alan Redway: Madam Speaker, as you have indicated, the purpose of this bill is to establish a Canadian charter of responsibilities which would be a companion to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The vast majority of Canadians strongly support the principles set out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, there are a great many Canadians at the same time who also believe that we have laid too much stress on our individual rights and not enough on our responsibilities to one another. This bill represents a first attempt at what I hope will become a great national effort to define and to establish a legal and constitutional basis for those responsibilities which bind Canadians together. They make us one nation rather than only a collection of individuals and diverse and regional interests.


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



INCOME TAX ACT


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-416, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (tax credit for mental or physical impairment).

March 17, 1993
Routine Proceedings


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


Mac Harb: Madam Speaker, this bill provides that a taxpayer with a physical or mental impairment that prevents the individual from doing household tasks in the home is entitled to a tax credit, under section 118.2 of the Income Tax Act, for part of the amount paid to another person in return for carrying out these household tasks. The new tax credit will apply to the elderly if they can prove, on the basis of a medical certificate, that they are unable to carry out household tasks.
Irrespective of the amounts paid to another person for doing these household tasks, the taxpayer will also be entitled to a tax credit for mental or physical impairment under section 118.3 of the act.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Mr. Harb moves that the bill be now read the first time and printed.
Pursuant to Standing Order 69(1), the motion is deemed adopted.
Bill read the first time and printed.
* 5k 5jc



NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade):: Madam Speaker, there have been some discussions. The government is anxious to provide Canadians the opportunity for a thorough examination of the NAFTA implementation bill. Therefore the government has proposed that a special committee be struck with all powers of a standing committee to pre-study the bill.
Accordingly, there have been discussions among the parties and I would like to seek the consent of the House to put the following motion:
That a special committee of the House of Commons be appointed
to consider and report upon the subject matter of Bill C-115, an act
to implement the North American free trade agreement;
That the Standing Committee on House Management appoint the membership of the special committee and present its report which shall be deemed concurred in upon presentation to the House of Commons no later than five sitting days after the adoption of the motion;
That the special committee be composed of eight members;
That the changes in membership of the said special committee be effective immediately after notification signed by the member acting as the chief Whip of any recognized party has been filed with the clerk of the committee;
That the committee have all the powers of a standing committee of the House of Commons, pursuant to Standing Orders 108(1), 120 and 121;
That the committee have the power to adjourn from place to place in Canada, along with the necessary staff;
That the committee have the power to engage one expert staff person to be attached to each recognized party represented on the committee;
That the order for the second reading of Bill C-115 be amended to refer the said bill to the special committee for the committee stage consideration of Bill C-115;
That the special committee's report on Bill C-115 to the House shall be the committee's final report.


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


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, because of the importance of this request, in the proper precedence, I would defer to my hon. colleagues in the Official Opposition to indicate their position on this first.


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Then, Madam Speaker, the Official Opposition having agreed to it, I must say that listening carefully to the words of my hon. friend and recognizing that the document that we have to consider is obviously going to take some time, as a matter of fact it is going to require a good deal of travel and consultation with Canadians. For that reason, I think there has to be more negotiation. This is to ensure that the government is serious that Canadians will have a real opportunity to respond to the size of this document.
Therefore, at the moment, I have to say no. That is because I have no assurance that Canadians will have meaningful input into this process.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Just to further explain, Madam Speaker, the letter we received-
March 17, 1993


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I just asked the House if the hon. parliamentary secretary had unanimous consent to present the motion. Obviously, there is no consent. So we do not have to go on with debate on this subject. Are there other motions?



FORESTRY AND FISHERIES


Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, I have two motions. First I move:
That the chairman and a staff member of the Standing Committee on Forestry and Fisheries be authorized to travel to Quebec on March 23 and 24, 1993, to attend a conference on the Federal Program for Quebec Fisheries Development.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

['Agreed.\nMarch 17, 1993']
Charles A. Langlois: That five members and two staff persons of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology be authorized to travel to Vancouver and Calgary from March 21 to 23, 1993 in relation to the study of the networks of Centres of Excellence.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. George S. Rideout (Moncton):: Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present pursuant to Standing Order 36, both on the same topic. The petitioners request that the Criminal Code of Canada be amended to prevent the sale and distribution of serial killer board games and killer cards.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, I have a long petition which I will try to
Routine Proceedings
summarize from many Canadians of Chinese origin. It is concerned with our very racist history, which must be redressed.
In 1885 Canadians who were of Chinese origin had to pay a unique racist head tax. That was followed in 1923 by the Chinese Exclusion Act. This kept families separated for years, and to this day families have suffered from this action.
The many petitioners say that there must be action by this government because it is long overdue. They call for an all-party parliamentary resolution to acknowledge this injustice which is in our history, to recognize the suffering that individual Chinese Canadians and their families have undergone, to have a letter of acknowledgement that would go out to people who have these certificates, many of them are very elderly now, and to provide symbolic financial redress.
They want symbolic financial redress in the form of $10,000 per head tax certificate and community financial redress. They also want plaques of elderly pioneers who built this country to go to organizations.
That is their request of this Parliament.


Mac Harb: Madam Speaker, this petition is signed by many seniors in my riding of Ottawa Centre. They are calling on this House to urge the government to ensure that the Old Age Security pensions are sufficient to meet the basic needs of Canadian seniors.
The petitioners indicate that over 80 per cent of single women over the age of 65 actually live below the poverty line, and they also point out that last year's budget only allowed them an increase of 37 cents.
These seniors are calling on this House to take the necessary action to urge the government to deal with this question as soon as possible.


Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, these petitioners believe that the medicare system is threatened. They ask government and all political parties to preserve our system of health. They want reform of health care. They want a commitment on the part of governments and all political parties to a comprehensive health care system and a renewed commitment to the Canada Health Act.

March 17, 1993
Routine Proceedings
The petitioners would like the withdrawal of Bill C-91, which gives brand-name drugs a 20-year market monopoly, and they want provisions for the production of low-priced generic substitutions of brand-name pharmaceuticals.
Finally, the petitioners want a reaffirmation of the major federal responsibility for health protection and promotion, disease prevention, and medical research, for a national health care system for all Canadians, a universal system.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present this afternoon.
The first petition points out that two Canadians, Christine Lamont and David Spencer, who have seen sentenced to 28 years each in a Brazilian prison have suffered miscarriages of justice, cruel and unusual treatment in Brazilian prisons, and discrimination in sentencing and parole.
The petitioners note that the cumulative effect of these irregularities provides ample ground for the Government of Canada to seek a remedy on their behalf. The only effective remedy is expulsion in accordance with Brazilian law. Therefore they call upon Parliament to urge the Secretary of State for External Affairs to request the Government of Brazil to expel Christine Lamont and David Spencer and return them to Canada.


YUGOSLAVIA
Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, I have another set of petitions which are signed by hundreds of residents of British Columbia, including residents of my own constituency of Burnaby-Kingsway. In the petitioners' view the embargo against Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) regarding information and humanitarian aid should be lifted. They point out that the United Nations Security Council resolution 757 does not include mail, personal parcels, newspapers, or, in particular, humanitarian aid.
The petitioners suggest that the embargo denies Canadian residents the ability to provide humanitarian aid and financial support to dependents and others in need and they raise concerns about the prohibiting of mail and the denial of access to information through newspapers.
Therefore the petitioners urge Parliament to amend the embargo against Yugoslavia, which discriminates against all residents of Canada of Yugoslavian origin, as soon as possible.


SERIAL KILLER BOARD GAME
Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, I have a petition which has been signed by a number of residents of my constituency of Burnaby- Kingsway. It notes that many studies have shown a link between violence in entertainment and desensitization to violence in our society. Part of this culture of violence is the Serial Killer board game, a game which comes with a bag of 25 babies. The point is to murder as many defenceless children and adults as possible.
The laws of Canada do not deal with materials portraying torture, rape and murder as fun, including the Serial Killer board game. Therefore, the petitioners request Parliament consider amending the Criminal Code of Canada so that violent and degrading material such as the Serial Killer board game can be kept from being distributed in Canada.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Svend Johannes Robinson: Finally, Madam Speaker, I have the honour of presenting a petition which is signed by hundreds of residents, not only of British Columbia but other provinces as well and a number of residents of my own constituency of Burnaby-Kingsway, on the subject of the Chinese head tax.
The petitioners note that Chinese immigrants to Canada had to pay a head tax in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This had a profoundly negative impact on Canadians of Chinese ancestry. It is important we acknowledge this injustice and reaffirm the principles of justice and equality.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to take a number of steps, including redress, plaques and pledges to ensure that this will never happen again and that the Constitution be amended to ensure that it never happens again.
March 17, 1993


WATER DIVERSION
Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to present two petitions.
The first is from petitioners of central British Columbia and northern Alberta. They point out their opposition to the plan to divert part of the North Thompson River in order to sell the diverted water to the southern California area. They ask the federal government to take whatever steps necessary to ensure that water is considered exempt from NAFTA.


BILL C-268
Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, on another matter, the petitioners from a number of Indian reserves in Ontario ask that Parliament enact Bill C-268 which is an act respecting a national solidarity day for the aboriginal people of Canada.


SERIAL KILLER BOARD GAME
Mr. Jack Whittaker (Okanagan -Similkameen -Merritt):: Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to rise on behalf of a number of constituents in the municipality of Kaleden, including, Madam Speaker, for your interest, the former member of Okanagan-Similkameen, Mr. Fred King.
These people are upset about the increasing amount of violence shown on television and as part of our ordinary lives. They are particularly upset about the violence depicted in the Serial Killer board game.
The petitioners ask that Parliament consider amending the Criminal Code of Canada so that violent and degrading material such as the Serial Killer board game can be kept from being distributed in Canada.


Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, the petition I am presenting is certified as correct.
"We, the undersigned residents of Canada draw to the attention of the House the following: That many studies have shown a link between violence in entertainment and desensitization to violence in our society and that the laws of Canada do not deal with materials pertaining to torture, rape and murder as fun, including serial killer board games."
Therefore my petitioners from Boswell, Creston, Kootenay Bay and Gray Creek in the riding of Kootenay East call on Parliament to consider amending the Criminal Code of Canada so that violence and degrading materials such serial killer board games can be kept from being distributed in Canada.
Routine Proceedings TAXATION


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition from several hundred teachers across the province of British Columbia, including Kamloops, Prince George, Terrace, Nanaimo, Courtenay and many other communities.
The petitioners note that the Income Tax Act allows self-employed professionals and business people deductions for operating expenses and improving their offices and businesses, but unfairly refuses to allow teachers deductions for the expenses which they incur to better their teaching abilities and to provide materials for their students.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to request that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Revenue take action to amend the present Income Tax Act to allow teachers in the educational institutions in Canada deductions for professional expenses made in the course of their employment.


NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present today a petition signed by a number of citizens of Alberta, including people in Boyle, Edmonton, Calgary, Lac La Biche, Onoway, Stony Plain, Waskatenau and elsewhere, all of whom have the following points in common.
The petitioners are of the opinion that the proposed North American free trade agreement has resulted in even greater trade concessions being demanded of Canada, that it will cause Canadians to lose more good jobs, that it cannot be remedied through renegotiation. As the Constitution requires a general federal election before January 1 of next year, the date on which the North American free trade agreement comes into effect, they call upon the House to reject the proposed NAFTA and to recommend to the government that it use the termination clause to end the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.
I would just note in concluding that this bears directly on the debate we will be having this afternoon.


Neil Young: Madam Speaker, I too have the privilege of presenting a petition signed by many people in Toronto, including my own constituency, who state that the proposed North American free trade agreement has resulted in even greater trade concessions being demanded of Canada and that this agreement will cause Canadians to lose more jobs. Also Canada's Constitution requires a general federal election before January 1, 1994, the date on which the

March 17, 1993
Routine Proceedings
North American free trade agreement is scheduled to come into force.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon this House to reject the proposed North American free trade agreement and to recommend to the government that it use the termination clause to end the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, I would like to designate tomorrow, March 18, an allotted day.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, Question No. 413 will be answered today.


Mr. Caccia: Is the National Transportation Agency monitoring air quality in cabins of aeroplanes so as to protect the health of the flying public and if so, what are acceptable standards for breathable (a) suspended particles (b) nicotine (c) carbon monoxide (d) carbon dioxide (e) humidity and are they presently being enforced?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: The National Transportation Agency does not have a mandate to monitor air quality in aeroplanes.
Air quality in aircraft cabins is regulated by Transport Canada both through aircraft airworthiness certification under the Aeronautics Act and pursuant to the Aviation Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Regulations made under the Canada Labour Code, Part II.
Airworthiness standards define maximum cabin concentrations for carbon monoxide (50 ppm) and carbon dioxide (3 per cent by volume, sea volume equivalent). These standards are enforced through the aircraft certification process. No limitations are defined for suspended particles, nicotine or humidity.
Aviation OSH limitations are dependent on the frequency and duration of exposure to particular chemical agents. OSH limitations exist for carbon monoxide (50-400 ppm), carbon dioxide (5,000-30,000 ppm), nicotine (.5 mg per cubic metre), although this involves cutaneous absorption as well as respiratory absorption, and respirable nuisance particulates (5 mg per cubic metre). No limitations are defined for humidity.
Compliance with the cabin air quality standards set out in the Aviation OSH Regulations is achieved primarily through the complaint and resolution procedures prescribed under the Canada Labour Code, Part II, involving company safety and health committees. Transport Canada becomes involved in such issues only when these procedures do not result in resolution of the issue.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The question enumerated by the parliamentary secretary has been answered.


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


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall all notices of motions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.
March 17, 1993



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
[English)

Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources) moved: that Bill C-106, an act to amend certain petroleum-related acts in respect of Canadian ownership requirements and to confirm the validity of a certain regulation, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Natural Resources envelope.
He said: Madam Speaker, I look forward to entering the debate on second reading of Bill C-106, the Canadian ownership requirements repeal bill.
At the outset, I express my appreciation to the critics from both the Official Opposition and the New Democratic Party for limiting our time and proceeding with this bill into legislative committee as quickly as possible. It is very much appreciated.
This bill is very much in the line of the government's agenda for strengthening the Canadian economy and the petroleum industry. Bill C-106 is being introduced at a time when international competition has never been greater, both in the petroleum sector and other sectors of the economy. I would like to take a few moments to review the policy context within which this decision was made.
Canada's economic security and future prosperity depend on the willingness to face up to economic realities. Since 1984 the agenda of this government has been to empower participants in the Canadian economy to employ the skills and initiatives that they have to allow them to build a more competitive Canada. The nations around the globe have been encouraged to adjust and adapt to an increasingly competitive environment.
As we look at this important sector and recognize that the energy policy is just one element of the government's economic policy, it does reflect the confidence of the market. It is consistent with this philosophy. The main thrust of the energy policy since 1984 has been to deregulate, eliminate interventionist programs, privatize
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Crown corporations in the energy business and to improve access for Canadian energy products world-wide.
At the beginning of our first mandate we made a commitment to Canadians concerning future oil and gas policies. These commitments materialized in a new policy framework based on market forces and not government intervention. Just to recall, in 1985 we signed the western accord. That involved the deregulation of oil prices and the elimination of oil export charges. Federal energy taxes such as the PGRT were removed at that time.
In the same year, the government introduced the deregulation of natural gas markets which has led to a threefold increase in exports of natural gas. Later in 1985, the government announced its frontier energy policy that set out the framework for the industry to operate on frontier lands.
The government also addressed the issue of jurisdiction over offshore oil and gas resources which led to the signing of the joint management accords with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
As we negotiated free trade agreements with the United States in 1988, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and with the United States and Mexico in 1992, we continue to commit to the breakdown of barriers both within Canada and external barriers with our trading partners so that we can have the prosperity and the ability to build upon a global market which we depend upon for our prosperity.
Last year the government announced the changes to the treatment of foreign investment in the petroleum industry which has led to the drafting of Bill C-106. Taken together with the measures announced in March, these constitute a very reasoned and sound response to a changing industry.
Canadians need a strong and resilient oil and gas industry if we are going to develop our domestic energy resources. The industry provides Canadians with the opportunities for high-quality job opportunity employment. It also produces Canada's most advanced and successful technological advances.
In the development of our own frontier resources we will permit those benefits that this industry provides in regions of Canada to be spread more equitably across Canada.

March 17, 1993
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I am very sure that colleagues in the House will agree that we must develop our frontier oil and gas resources. If one looks at the frontier on Hibernia, it does require enormous investments.
We need to attract additional investment dollars and sources of capital so we can foster exploration and development so that we are able to secure our energy future in Canada and to ensure the health of the petroleum industry and the economy of our country to make Canada more competitive and to maintain the prosperity that Canadians enjoy.
The removal of the Canadian ownership requirement is an important step toward achieving these goals.
The National Energy Program was interventionist and it impeded the growth of the industry. We have changed that. Bill C-106 reflects the government's willingness to adjust to changing positions. As we look at international oil markets which have become more competitive, the market for oil and gas investment has also become much more competitive.
We introduced market forces into energy policy for the most effective and efficient development of our resources. As we go forward to repeal the Canadian requirements for ownership we will be removing a self-imposed restriction on the ability of private investors to take risks and uncertainty associated with the development of Canada's most challenging petroleum resource projects.
There is intense international competition for investment financing whether it happens to be in the petroleum industry or other industries that are requiring large injections of capital and that self-imposed restriction that we have in Canada is unacceptable and costs Canada. The members of the Canadian industry who are involved in bringing these projects forward have reinforced this message.
As we look at the change in economic environment and in the way that capital resources now can be moved around anywhere in the world seeking the best return on investment, it means that there is no differential between the ability to invest in oil and gas projects as compared with any other projects. Until the announcement in March 1992, there was that barrier.
If we had continued the Canadian ownership requirement we would have frustrated willing investors who would wish to participate in Canada's frontier petroleum projects. We recognize that one cannot isolate Canada. We cannot isolate ourselves from the operation of open-capital markets and more importantly we recognize that it is not in the interest of Canadians to do so.
When we look at the development of large-scale oil and gas projects, we will look for those people who are prepared to invest and prepared to take the risk and not at the country of origin of those investors. Investors will be able to be attracted to projects in Canada as they are in other areas of the world. They will be able to make their own judgment. They will be able to accept the risk or reject the risk without the government imposing restrictions which disqualify certain investors who would otherwise be willing to participate. We will be able to improve the investment environment in the frontier areas in particular.
Canada cannot afford to have obstacles in the way of ventures which require a large injection of capital. We believe that there is enough difficulty in attracting investors because of the risk that is inherent without having an arbitrary level of Canadian investment in these high-risk projects which would result in the underdevelopment of these resources for Canadians.
I want to point something out before I take my place. From the statements that were made during the presentation of petitions, my colleague the energy critic from the New Democratic Party attempted to suggest that this bill would have something to do with NAFTA.
I call his attention to this. The announcement of the government's policy was made in March 1992. He would know when we made that announcement that if we were negotiating an agreement we could not prejudge what Parliament would do. At the same time, why would anyone want to discourage the development of Canadian resources by putting a requirement that penalizes Canada while allowing the United States and Mexico to proceed with their energy projects?
Who would benefit from that? Surely the people in Mexico and the United States would benefit if Canada was not able to proceed with their energy projects. It would penalize the people of Canada.
March 17, 1993

We made the announcement in March 1992 that we would be making these changes. They are not inconsistent with this government's policies since 1984. I believe that it is the right policy and it will allow for an important resource to be developed in Canada by those investors who wish to take the risk and wish to invest. It would not be not dependent upon the country of origin which then would penalize Canada. We cannot afford that as a nation.


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast):: Madam Speaker, on Bill C-106, which deals with Canadian ownership of certain petroleum assets-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: On a point of order, the hon. member for Edmonton East.


Ross Harvey: Forgive me, if it was stated then I missed it. Is the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast rising on question and comment or on debate?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member is rising on debate. The hon. member for Edmonton East should know that when we start second reading of a bill, unless there is unanimous consent and members do ask for questions or comments, the first two speakers are allowed up to 40 minutes and that period is not followed by a period of questions or comments.
We are resuming debate. The hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.


David Kilgour: Madam Speaker, since the 1950s and earlier controversy has surrounded the issue of non-Canadian ownership of our economy. While political and economic realities have dramatically changed around the world since, the issue of foreign investment and ownership of Canadian assets still vexes many thoughtful Canadians.
Almost weekly more of Canada's economy is being opened up to foreign investors, mostly but not always from our neighbour to the south. Miller Brewing in the U.S. is buying 20 per cent of Molson Breweries. AT&T is acquiring 20 per cent of Canada's new long distance phone company, Unitel. American Airlines is seeking 33 per cent of Canadian International Airlines. Three American companies, Mobil, Chevron and Murphy, will end up owning two-thirds of the giant Hibernia oil field.
Increasingly the development of the Alberta oil sands, which constitute a veritable Saudi Arabia within Canada
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in terms of oil reserves potential, is being done by investors from the U.S. and more recently from Japan.
Since the establishment of Investment Canada in 1985 there has not been a single turn-down, not one. It has approved the foreign takeover of 739 Canadian-controlled companies worth an estimated $69.5 billion. Another 2,882 Canadian companies, worth about $7.4 billion, were also sold to foreign investors during the period but were considered too small to require Investment Canada review.
Many economists look favourably on foreign investment because they think it results in increased economic activity and jobs within the host country. They say that foreign investment spurs more competition in the host country, results in the introduction of newer technologies and new trade opportunities in other international markets, because trade and investment are now so closely linked around this increasingly shrunken planet.
Many Canadian owners do not want to sell their enterprises to non-Canadians. However for many, after a fruitless search for capital or bank credit in Canada, and some of our major financial institutions are doing a very poor job in helping small and medium-sized businesses which until 1990 were creating most of the new jobs across Canada, the sale to a foreign corporation often becomes the only or best way to survive. For instance, Connaught BioScience, Canada's leading vaccine company, and Lumonics, our leading laser company, were both sold abroad after spending one year or so looking for Canadian funding.
After Gulf Canada walked away from its 25 per cent stake in the Hibernia project that project became another example of how futile the search for home-grown money often is. It was obvious that Ottawa's finances, with a federal debt-GDP ratio looking over an abyss, could simply not afford the cost. The only option, if the project was to survive, was to look for a foreign partner with clout.
According to a 1992 study, in B.C. foreign-owned companies operating in that province had invested almost $2 billion and employed more than 14,000 British Columbians. One hundred and eleven of the companies with operations in other provinces employed a total of 42,419 people nation-wide. Canada has very high unemployment. Only Spain has a worse unemployment rate than we do among the 13 nations that the Economist magazine tracks weekly in its statistics.

March 17, 1993
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This level of activity is a boon to our economy, because unless an economy first creates wealth there can be no compassionate social problems maintained or enhanced over the longer term. It would appear that foreign ownership has become less of an issue, except for our friends on the far left, the New Democratic Party and the National Party which it has spawned from the city that the critic from the NDP and I come from, Edmonton. Foreign ownership has become less of an issue in era of economic globalization and freer and freer capital flow among most countries.
For example, direct foreign investment by residents of the G-7 nations has increased eightfold since 1967 alone. In contrast to the 1970s, a good deal of the popular opposition to foreign ownership of energy assets appears to have melted away in Canada and in many other nations, from the former Soviet Union to Venezuela. With multinational oil companies being wooed around the world for their capital, technology and management skills, there is a real fear that Canadians might be left behind.
In September 1984 the then new Prime Minister of this country declared: "You have been talking about economic nationalism. I am speaking of 1.5 million unemployed"-by the way it is almost exactly about the same number we have today-"who are not concerned with where investment comes from. They are concerned with attracting investment to Canada so that they can have jobs". It is thus a puzzle why our Department of Energy, Mines and Resources needed more than eight years to figure out what the then Prime Minister was talking about.
When one scans this government's mostly destructive economic policies since 1984 it is clear that politics, and not jobs, was all that mattered. Energy politics, next to the constitutional struggle, has been the most prominent feature of federal-provincial conflict and collaboration since about 1973.
Creating an open market for Canadian energy assets as late as 1992 was a reversal by the former energy minister, a western Canadian, who for years ignored energy industry pleas for looser foreign investment rules, fretting about a nationalist backlash.
Even those who agree with the Tories' now mostly discredited trickle-down economics must question the timing of this policy change. It is a scarcely concealed pitch to voters who have defected to the Reform Party, which scorns nationalists and promises looser oil takeover rules.
Recently some desperate Ottawa Tories attempted to counter Alberta's oil patch flirtation with the Reform Party by moving the National Energy Board headquarters to Calgary; quite properly because it should have been there in the first place. They have also gone forward with a partial privatization of Petro-Canada, which author Peter Foster says has devoured about $10 billion of federal taxpayer money since the 1970s.
The ultimate irony is that few people seem greatly interested in investing in energy firms these days. Why would any intelligent foreigner invest in an energy economy which has seen such an incompetent federal government? Is there a more incompetent economic policy anywhere in the advanced industrialized world?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Yes, back in the early 1980s with the National Energy Board. Remember where you came from if you can.


David Kilgour: We are now living in the 1990s. Perhaps the minister should remember what decade we are now in. This is a government that knows so little about basic economics. Is there a government that knows less about creating jobs and keeping them? Such questions suggest that there is much opportunism in the proposed policy change.
I am glad the former finance minister is here since much of this is his fault. In our country the yearly budget deficit for all levels of government for 1992 was 8.5 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product. The accumulated all-government debt, approximately $650 billion, was 90 per cent of our GDP. Our net foreign debt, approximately $300 billion, was 44 per cent of our GDP. Does anyone in this House disagree? Do we really think as members of Parliament that the IMF is very far from Canada's financial door?
Does anyone think that our country is going to avoid the New Zealand wringer if we continue to spend and borrow, an addiction of the present government and in fairness some early Liberal ones as well?
March 17. 1993

I ask the Minister of Finance how any MP, or MLA for that matter, can look any young Canadian in the eye today? Canadian politicians have the responsibility to avoid putting the standard of living of our children and grandchildren at risk. If they knew what our collective profligacy had done to their futures then I think they would want to run us out of every capital city across the land.
Premier Wells made this point very well the other day. He pointed out that in 1975 each Canadian family's share of the national mortgage was about $50,000. Today, after nine years of the Tories, it is about $665,000 per family.
I am proud of my leader for saying no to the purchase of 50 submarine-chasing helicopters, the price of which has already jumped from $4.4 billion to $5.8 billion. Why would any company foreign or domestic-


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Why did he call it $8 billion yesterday?


David Kilgour: I do not mind, Madam Speaker, if you want to let the minister heckle. It does not bother me. I assure you that I am used to being heckled in court by people with a lot more intelligence than the minister.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: When there is that type of exchange in the House, the Speaker normally will intervene only if the conversation seems to be a problem for the person who has the floor.
The hon. member first tells me that it does not bother him and then starts to throw insults across the floor. I think it might be easier to get on with discussing this bill. It is a very serious bill. I will give the floor back to the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.


David Kilgour: Why would any company, foreign or domestic, invest now in our energy sector which suffers from a high Canadian dollar, high real interest rates until very recently, high operating costs and high taxes in a period of low profitability? Why would anyone invest in an industry with an average rate of return of 5 per cent when the "rate of return means the same thing in every language to every investor".
Across western Canada, upstream oil and gas industry employment is most regrettably down by about 35,000 jobs since 1985. Even if an optimistic forecast of gradual
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price recoveries comes true, sector employment is still expected to shrink by about 11,700 jobs, 18 per cent, to leave this key Canadian industry, one based in western Canada, with only 51,900 jobs by 1995.
There was widespread consensus among oil and gas experts that 1993 would be almost as tough for the industry as 1992. Predictions about the near future of the sector do not vary widely now either.
Except for gas, the industry could remain unhealthy through the mid-1990s. More losses and lay-offs will occur, the petroleum reserve will keep depleting and operating costs will continue to escalate unless things change in Ottawa.
There is probably about $55 billion currently invested in Canada's energy sector. Over all, the industry did not make a profit last year. To be sure some younger companies did make a profit.
Quite understandably, oil people have been lobbying governments for a new fiscal regime to increase their cash flow and prevent the departure of activity to other resource-rich countries with less onerous tax and regulatory regimes.
Our companies cannot do much more to rationalize themselves. Most of them have already taken Draconian steps to reduce costs including downsizing and shutdowns. Returning the sector to financial health over all is not happening.
Many companies are still short of up-front cash for drilling and exploration and the important service sector, at least until very recently, remains in severe disarray.
The recent changes to the Alberta royalty structure was music to the ears of a battered industry. Provincial politicians had finally managed to stop squeezing the geese that laid Alberta's golden eggs with a new policy that seemed to satisfy the industry.
Virtually everybody in the industry said that a royalty system designed in the booming 1970s in anticipation of high oil and gas prices was no longer realistic in today's world of higher production costs and lower commodity prices. Yet it took more than five years for the industry to persuade Alberta politicians that a revision of the existing royalty regime was critical to Alberta's economic well-being.

March 17, 1993
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A more profitable energy sector could lead to larger government revenues as the industry already accounts directly for 25 per cent of the Alberta government's revenue. Considering that the Edmonton government's accumulated debt totals $14 billion and is now growing at $13 billion a year, turning a blind eye to the plight of a vital petroleum industry amounts to extreme political myopia.
Suffice it to say that the average annual royalty revenue from 1980 to 1986 was $4.4 billion in Alberta. For the current year it will probably reach only about $2 billion.
Although the new royalty system represents the most profound change the industry has seen in two decades, words of caution are needed. The 1991 royalty holiday for new oil wells intended to revive sluggish drilling activity was a well-recognized failure, unfortunately.
Since the program was announced, drilling activities continue to decline. One industry insider put it aptly: "If you don't have hard cash you can't drill wells, royalty holiday or no royalty holiday".
Only 132 out of an available 432 rigs were working in the winter of 1991. Canada's largest oil and gas company, Esso Resources Canada, drilled only 22 wells in the first nine months of last year.
Since the new provincial royalty measures were announced most industry analysts have applauded predicting that lower royalties will generate more activity and save jobs, royalty relief on new wells will particularly help exploration and the new system will encourage long-term stability in the sector.
According to the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors the new Alberta royalty regime will mean an average of 16 more rigs working than last year, creating 1,200 jobs on rig sites.
Some experts warn that the reformed royalty structure does not guarantee increased oil patch activity. There is no industry assurance that extra revenues will be invested in western Canada. Indeed it might result in the exploration for new reserves in more attractive geological locations.
The new royalty structure will reduce the Alberta government's take by almost $500 million over the next
three years while there is no comprehensive data on the corresponding gains from increased activity.
Are the royalty reforms more than slightly attractive to major multinational oil and gas producers? Even if their returns on investment were healthy, many major companies seem reluctant to explore a sedimentary basin where they think mainly small oil pools remain.
Alberta's best known pools of conventional oil are almost two-thirds depleted and not enough people expect major new discoveries. My own province's conventional oil reserves shrank 8 per cent or 264 million barrels during 1991 alone.
The situation is further aggravated by our present wasteful practices. More than half the oil wells in Canada are abandoned before more than a small part, often as little as 10 per cent, of the oil in place is recovered. Without new initiatives, Canada will face the prospect of importing oil at an annual cost of $10 billion by the year 2004.
Oil sands development probably offers Canadians the best hope for a reasonable level of oil sufficiency over the longer term. The oil sands resources in Alberta alone, as I indicated before, are greater than the proven oil reserves in the entire Middle East. The total amount of oil trapped in the sand may be as much as 1.7 trillion barrels. That is a lot of oil. It is enough to supply Canada for 4,000 years or the U.S. and Canada until 2400. By that time of course our energy will probably come from sunlight or hydrogen.
In the meantime the sheer size of oil sands deposits is reason enough to encourage some shifts in our exploration focus to the heavy, non-conventional and frontier oil resources. More technological support is required to assist in developing and extracting the resources at minimum cost with the lowest possible environmental impact. The Athabasca oil sands continue to produce 16 per cent of Canada's oil and could produce far more.
Suncor and Syncrude, the two Canadian pioneers in the field, continue to increase production and to cut costs. We must only salute these companies. Both are in the process of becoming even more efficient and cost competitive thanks to a number of factors including new technologies. Their production costs per barrel are down to a very impressive $15 range.
March 17, 1993

Syncrude has already produced more than 600 million barrels of oil, which is more than the estimated recoverable oil in the Hibernia field. It has spent more than $4 billion in developing and expanding its two oil sands leases. The company is one of Alberta's biggest employers with 4,000 people on the payroll and about 1,200 contractors. It has already paid $1.3 billion in royalties to the Alberta government and millions of dollars in federal taxes. It has given its owners a positive cash flow for 12 out of its 14 years of existence.
Not surprisingly, the Mitsubishi Oil Company obtained a 5 per cent stake in Syncrude once it was allowed to. Speaking personally, I very much hope that more oil sands investments will be made by Japanese investors in the near future. Why should there not be investors from Taiwan, South Korea and other Pacific rim nations as well?
"If no major oil sands development is announced in the next five years we will have made a tragic error in this country", says Syncrude's current president Eric Newell. However, few oil companies these days have the finances to cover the enormous capital requirements. Suncor and Syncrude can make money because they have paid for their plants. The infrastructure has been there for years but it is still too expensive to get new players. This is a fact that was demonstrated when OSLO shelved its project.
Other projects like the Lloydminster upgrader, the Vancouver pipeline and most recently Hibernia, have been delayed because of the enormous capital burden on consortium partners.
It is my view that if access to foreign capital was made available, more of these frontier projects would be able to proceed creating desperately needed jobs in our north and our other frontier areas.
Some foreigners are interested in our oil sands. Last year a Chinese oil company, the China National Petroleum Corporation, became the first foreign investor in the oil sands research facility at Fort McMurray, Alberta. The Chinese will invest $6.5 million over the next two years in AOSTRA which operates an underground test facility. Another company, a Japanese-based oil firm,
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has also committed itself to invest several millions of dollars in AOSTRA.
Both initiatives have encouraged optimism that oil sands bitumen may be commercially recoverable with the cost of a barrel reduced to as little as $7.
One reason there is no immediate sign of further oil sands development is that private sector moves money into more tempting conventional foreign fields.
One would be amazed at the opportunities available to Canadian exploration companies in foreign countries. It should be emphasized that most of them have introduced dramatic changes in their foreign investment policy, something this government has been incapable of understanding since 1984.
There are a number of Alberta companies that are going to cash in on oil and gas reserves in Asiatic Russia which might outstrip even that of the Middle East. For the long-term the Russian federation has indicated it is considering the issue of large exploration concessions and possibly privatizing existing fields which would allow for direct foreign ownership of reserves.
Many Alberta companies are looking at southeast Asia, especially Malaysia, with its positive investment climate. Southeast Asian governments have expressed interest in Canadian skills and oil field technology, which are some of the best in the world.
Struggling Alberta oil companies are also being lured, for example, even to Pakistan with promises of big finds, healthy prices, low taxes and consumers ready to buy all they can produce. The rules and regulations regarding foreign investment were overhauled in 1991 in Pakistan which is looking for as much foreign commercial participation as possible.
In South America, Argentina gets everybody's attention as the top country in which to look for oil. It is perhaps the most stable political and economic system on that continent and has an excellent oil and gas infrastructure.
In addition, it is possible for a single company now to acquire exploration rights to vast areas in South America. Canadian Occidental or Canadian Occi as it is called and its parent, Occidental, have 100 per cent of a 197,600 hectare block in Ecuador. Nobody dreams of having access to that sort of acreage in western Canada.

March 17, 1993
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However, all that glitters is not the material we use in rings. Although cheap exploration opportunities outside Canada are proving a bargain for petroleum companies, with dwindling budgets such ventures are very harmful for drilling and service firms left behind.
Our drilling industry in the west of Canada is already at its lowest point in almost 20 years. Therefore, a new government in Canada must move to keep companies in Canada while making investment more attractive to foreign sources of capital.
Gerry Protti, the director of the former association IPAC, said in March 1992: "The foreign ownership restriction is discriminating against the oil and gas industry. Treating the oil and gas industry differently from other industrial sectors is not going to benefit developing resources or creating jobs". In his view the investment restrictions keep small and medium-sized companies from much needed capital from both foreign and domestic investors.
Between 1985 and 1990 Canadian-controlled petroleum firms reinvested at an average of 99 per cent of their annual cash flow and domestic activities. Foreign-controlled firms reinvested an average of 77 per cent. While the reinvestment rate is not as high for foreign firms, the commitment to Canadian projects remains noteworthy because resources developed through foreign financing are almost always under Canadian management.
Foreign reinvestment rates were much higher in the years when our exchange and interest rates were more competitive in real terms. Canadian-owned shares of our petroleum firms grew from 26 per cent in 1981 to 45 per cent in 1990. Relaxation of foreign investment rules will probably reduce that figure but no independent analysis to my knowledge has shown unequivocally why this would be a bad thing. Much of our domestic oil and gas industry, particularly that in my own province of Alberta, has been achieved through foreign investments. Given that our western-based petroleum industry has been forced to accept a bad economic environment since late 1985, the Government of Canada has an obligation to improve access to pools of offshore capital.
Selective tax concessions have proven to be ineffective in creating a profitable climate, not to mention the dangerous patchwork effect they have in the marketplace.
Foreign investment and ownership rules are only one tool that the minister has to make the petroleum sector more profitable.
The measures to be announced by the minister are likely to be short-term solutions which will not likely fully satisfy the demands of an industry in great difficulty-
Some means of stimulating more activity is urgently needed for our entire resource sector.
The mining industry, for example, which now accounts for about 4.4 per cent of Canada's Gross National Product and supports about 330,000 direct and indirect jobs, faces serious difficulties because of the existing federal-provincial tax policies, environmental assessment and regulations, problems of land access and security of tenure, all of which create investment uncertainty, particularly for people like the Japanese. They are not used to dealing with various levels of government in order to have a project go ahead.
Mining exploration, for instance, is at its lowest in a decade. In 1991, it fell to $656 million in spending from $751 million in 1990 and $1.3 billion in 1988. Reserves of many of Canada's metals have dropped significantly since the early eighties. For instance, proven and probable reserves of copper, nickel and zinc were almost two-thirds of those reported in 1981, while lead was down 60 per cent of its 1981 level.
For the first time in recent history, mineral production is exceeding reserve additions and opportunities for mineral exploration and development continue to be squeezed. Mining exploration is of course high risk and a high dollar cost is attached. It is crucial that mineral exploration in Canada be returned to high levels to replace depleting reserves. This is only possible if sufficient incentives are provided to attract investment from around the world to the high risks of mineral exploration.
It should be emphasized that only our domestic mining industry is hurting. There is a wide perception abroad that the legislative and policy changes introduced in a number of mineral-rich countries, particularly in Latin America, have had a significant impact on investment flows in the mining industry. By relaxing previous restrictions on foreign investment and resource development, such countries have unleashed a pent-up demand for unusually high quality mine development opportunities.
March 17, 1993

In many countries foreign investment laws have been liberalized to reduce or eliminate restrictions on foreign ownership, to place foreign investment on a more equal footing with local investors. Some governments have also introduced legislation aimed at reducing taxes on foreign remittances or on foreigners reinvesting profits in the local economy.
For example, to attract foreign mineral investment, laws have been revised and mining tax rates, import tariffs, freight rates, export duties and price controls have been reduced or simplified to promote mining activity.
Areas of land formerly off limits are being opened for mineral exploration and development by foreign mining companies. About 40 Canadian mining companies are active in Chile, helping to make Canada the fourth largest foreign investor in Chile after the U.S., Japan and Finland.
This trend toward Latin America also raises serious concerns about Canada's ability to maintain its position as the world's largest producer of zinc and fourth largest miner of copper.
In closing, the current levels of Canadian ownership in the oil and gas industry are not so dangerously low as to imperil the domestic control of our resources. Improved access to foreign capital can improve our access to new technology enabling firms to enhance what is already a competitive advantage compared to other oil-producing nations.
Improvements in market conditions in Canada that would occur through greater access to capital would be likely to entice our own oil companies to explore our domestic frontier as well as in other countries.
Most economists would agree that measures which inhibit foreign direct investment tend to reduce aggregate economic growth and income levels.
It should be emphasized, however, that the proposed bill first and foremost will affect our aboriginal peoples who live on the frontier lands north of 60. My colleague from the Western Arctic will speak to that issue soon.
The bill's impact on aboriginal land and whether or not aboriginal nations will support such an initiative will depend to some extent on their ability to profit from new
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projects in terms of jobs, royalties and the extent to which energy-selected ventures will affect wildlife and environment.
Producing oil and gas from the north's vast energy reserves was part of the national dream just a decade ago. The area was seen as a source of our national energy self-sufficiency. It would be imprudent for the Official Opposition to oppose any reasonable relaxation in foreign ownership in that industry on the grounds of economic nationalism.
What seems to be required though are conditions such as promoting exports or using Canadian suppliers or making shares in the Canadian enterprise available to Canadians, to recover resource sector jobs so desperately needed across Canada particularly across our frontier lands.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, at the outset I would like to place an unusual request before the House. I would like to seek the unanimous consent of the House to be granted the same time allotment as previously was granted to the critic for the Liberal Party and the minister in addressing this bill.
I make this request because the circumstances of the genesis of the bill and its impact require an analysis more thorough than I can manage in 20 minutes. I put myself in the hands of the House. I do however seek that unanimous consent.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon. member to have 40 minutes?


Some hon. members:: No.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Consent is not given.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, that being the case I will move as far through my remarks as I am able in the time allotted. They will then be resumed on my behalf later in the afternoon, I believe by the hon. member for Essex-Windsor.
In any event let me begin by saying how sad it is to see the once proudly nationalist Liberal Party reduced to yet another supplicant at the temple of international capital. I must say that those who served the party well in its nationalist heyday must be hanging their heads in shame and spinning in their graves at this point.

March 17, 1993
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This is a free trade bill. The Americans wanted it; the Conservatives complied. This bill meets exactly the negotiating objectives of the United States government adopted even before the 1988 passage in Canada of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
The government is abandoning completely the longstanding Canadian policy of maintaining and increasing Canadian ownership and control in our strategic petroleum industry. This is being done through this bill and the government policy announcement of March 25,1992 dumping Canadian ownership requirements outside the Canada lands, and through Bill C-89, the bill that extends to U.S. investors the same review thresholds for oil and gas investments as apply in other sectors of the economy. It is through these three agencies the government is doing this.
The alleged purpose of this bill is to spur significant amounts of constructive new investment in Canada's oil patch. But that is nonsense. Instead, this bill will harm Canada by guaranteeing that in the long term as Canadian petroleum assets recover their value, God willing, the number of American takeovers of Canadian oil and gas companies will increase. In the long term this will result in fewer jobs for Canadians and a greater flow of energy dividends and capital out of Canada.
Finally and most dramatically, if the North American free trade agreement is implemented and thereafter for so long as it remains in place, no government will ever again be allowed to reintroduce foreign ownership restrictions in the Canadian energy industry.
Taking this point by point, what does this bill actually do? Under existing law in Canada, oil and gas licences in areas of federal jurisdiction on the so-called Canada lands are granted only to Canadian citizens, permanent residents or companies, the shares of which are at least 50 per cent Canadian owned. If this bill passes, these restrictions will be scrapped. Canadian citizenship or Canadian ownership would cease to be a consideration in the issuance of licences to extract Canadian oil and gas on these lands.
The only remaining requirement for a non-Canadian company would be a mere formality. That company must file a few papers to ensure that it is incorporated in
Canada. That is it. Obviously the long-standing Canadian policy of attempting to increase Canadian ownership and control in the Canadian petroleum industiy is killed once and for all by this bill.
We must ask ourselves why the government is making this change. The government claims it is giving up this control in our industry to make it easier for petroleum companies operating in Canada to raise investment capital. In what was to be the first of a two-stage change, the then minister of energy announced on March 25, 1992 that the government would "no longer prohibit the sale of Canadian controlled upstream oil and gas companies to foreign investors". He claimed that the longstanding federal policy of 50 per cent Canadian ownership of our upstream oil and gas industry "restricts the free flow of capital into Canada's oil and gas industry" and that the requirements elimination "will enable industry to gain access to additional sources of capital which it sorely needs".
He added: "By lifting restrictions on the sources of investment capital, we expect that it should enhance exploration and development of Canada's oil and gas resources. The ultimate result will be growth in Canadian oil and gas production."
Evidence indicates that the change is unlikely to be much help to the Canadian energy industry. Economist Campbell Watkins, a member of the International Association of Energy Economics, was quoted in the March 25, 1992 Canadian Press article to the effect that allowing increased foreign investment was unlikely to spur investment in the Canadian oil patch. As he put it: "We can free up the rules but don't expect a flood of foreign capital. It's not as if there's a great pent-up supply of foreign capital just waiting to push into Canada".
Even the former minister of energy has admitted publicly that the change was unlikely to have dramatic positive effects for the Canadian industry. On April 1, 1992 he told the Standing Committee on Energy, Mines and Resources that he had been very careful when he announced the new policy. As he put it: "I did not say at any time that I expected there would be a great rush of capital into Canada because of the changed policy".
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One week later, describing the likely impact on investment in the energy industry he told the same committee: "I never said that it would be an instantaneous cure-all or that it would be a cure-all at any time." In fact, not only was the government unable to point to any significant benefit which it anticipated in consequence of the change, it apparently did not even study the likely effects of the change before announcing it.
During a briefing on the change conducted a year ago last March, energy department officials indicated that no assessment of the effects of this policy change had been undertaken in the department prior to the minister's announcement on March 25, 1992. When I asked the then minister about this in the energy standing committee he said: "I cannot tell you, Mr. Harvey, what assessment there will be on new investment."
There is no solid evidence that eliminating restrictions on foreign ownership and control will result in improvements in the financial outlook of Canada's petroleum industry. In fact, a'major report on the profitability of Canada's upstream oil and gas industry, commissioned by the Canadian Petroleum Association, itself dominated by U.S. owned and controlled companies, did not highlight these ownership restrictions. Instead, the Power-west report indicated that the main reasons for upstream industries' poor financial performance were, and I quote from a September 17, 1991 CPA/IPAC news release: "Low oil and gas prices, the maturity of the Canadian western sedimentary basin, rapidly rising costs of production, a provincial royalty system designed for a different era, high interest rates and high exchange rates". You will search their release in vain for the slightest mention of ownership requirements.
Clearly the Conservative suggestion that foreign ownership restrictions significantly hobble the industry are wrong. Other problems, including profitability in this era of deregulated, artificially low prices are much more important. Recent experience in Canada bears this out.
For example, even though the Conservatives are allowing every penny of the money raised in their
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shameful sale of our former public energy company, Petro-Canada, to be diverted from the public coffers back into the company, the second tranche of shares was widely seen to be a flop. Even given the Conservative get back the money you paid guarantee to any investors who would buy these shares, the investors just were not buying.
Similarly, even though no foreign ownership restrictions apply to the Hibernia project, and even though the federal Conservatives are subsidizing the project and thus are subsidizing American companies and consumers by over $3 billion, the government had to kick in another $300 million taxpayers' dollars before it could get another private company to invest in the project.
Foreign ownership restrictions are not hobbling the industry any more than they were hobbling Hibernia. In fact, eliminating these restrictions could simply increase the degree to which foreign controlled petroleum companies are able to cash out or sell their assets to other foreign firms-the name Li Ka Shing hovers gently in the background-and move the operations and the jobs that they provide out of Canada.
This change will increase foreign control. I know of no one who disputes the contention that this bill, together with Bill C-89 and the elimination of the oil and gas ownership policy, will increase the degree of foreign control in Canada's oil and gas industry, mainly through corporate takeovers. There is no other long-term impact that it can possibly have. That is its intent. The anticipated increased foreign control may eventually cost Canada billions of dollars.
Data compiled by Canada's petroleum monitoring agency over the last 12 years indicate that the high degree of foreign control in Canada's petroleum industry has made problems in that industry much worse. These data show that Canadian control in our oil and gas industry builds that Canadian industry; whereas foreign control and ownership in the industry bleeds the Canadian energy industry. Do not take my word for it. Just refer to the data compiled by the PMA.

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Between 1980 and 1991 foreign-controlled oil and gas companies exported over $26.8 billion net from Canada. That is after all the investments, all of the drilling, all of the infrastructure construction and all of the investments of these companies in Canada, they still exported a net $26.8 billion, more than two times the size of Alberta's Heritage Savings Trust Fund. That money extracted from Canada will never again be available to create jobs in Canada. By comparison, during the same period Canadian-owned and controlled companies generated a significant $2.1 billion net inflow; $2.1 billion to create new jobs, to invest in new exploration and development. That is the signal difference between the two: foreign control and ownership cost the country money; domestic control and ownership bring money into the country.
Canadian control also means greater reinvestment which generally means more jobs for Canadians. From 1981 to 1990 Canadian controlled companies reinvested 94 per cent of their $34.8 billion cash flow. By contrast, foreign controlled companies reinvested only 77 per cent of their $49.1 billion cash flow. Ninety-four per cent by the Canadian controlled companies, 77 per cent by the American controlled-I am sorry, Madam Speaker, they are not all American, just principally American-controlled companies.
You do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out the divergence here. The logical conclusion is inescapable: Any government that is interested in maintaining and increasing jobs and development in Canada should do everything in its power to increase Canadian control in the petroleum industry. Attempting to treat problems in the industry by encouraging even more foreign ownership and control, as this bill does, amounts to treating the symptoms with an even bigger dose of the disease.
The late and well-respected New Democrat, Tommy Douglas, said it well in the House of Commons on November 15, 1978, and I quote from that year's Hansard, page 1169:
The choice in this country is whether or not we are going to develop the petroleum resources of Canada for the benefit of the Canadian people, or whether we are going to continue to be the economic colony in which our vital energy resources are owned and controlled by foreign multinational corporations.
Doubtless some members will object. Canadian ownership and control in the Canadian petroleum industry is increasing right now, regardless of the change in the government's policy and regardless of the anticipated
effects of the bill. It is true that Canadian control of the upstream industry has risen from its 1988 nadir of 37.6 per cent of upstream revenues to 42.8 per cent in 1991. Over the same period Canadian ownership of upstream revenues has risen from 42.1 per cent to 45.2 per cent. Both are still down from the mid-1980s highs of 49 per cent control in 1986 and 47.9 per cent ownership in 1985, but the trend is upward.
A similar trend can be seen in combined upstream and downstream revenues, control and ownership which now stand at 38 per cent and 45.5 per cent Canadian respectively. So what's the problem? The problem is ruinously low asset value.
The reason Canadian control and ownership are nudging upward at present is that foreign-controlled, principally American transnationals are literally cashing out their holdings, especially in the western sedimentary basin. They are selling what they can, taking the money and running to the sunnier and more profitable climes of Indonesia, Burma and elsewhere as enumerated by the member for Edmonton Southeast.
As Canadian oil patch workers have discovered, it is hard to compete with slave labour and dictatorial governments that have no interest of their own people whatsoever. However, I suggest that advising the Canadian government to adopt similar policies is hardly what is required.
The reason the transnationals are cashing out their holdings in the western sedimentary basin is because the price for the product is too low. Recent happy talk about a possible doubling of the price of natural gas notwithstanding, the facts are that the California public utilities commission remains in place and active, competition with massive cheap pools of Mexican gas is foreseeable and Canada remains locked into the so-called market price strait-jacket of the free trade agreement. Simply put, transnationals can make more money elsewhere, thank you very much.
Canadian juniors and independents are therefore buying up the assets put up for sale by the transnationals. This has two effects. First, it nudges Canadian ownership and control figures upward. Second, it ensures a further drain of capital from the oil patch and thus from Canada. This will remain the case so long as American dominated commodity prices remain low and asset values thus remain depressed.
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But just let another oil price shock happen or a significant energy commodity shortage develop in North America and prices will rise once again, drawing asset values up with them. Once again Canada will find itself in the position it held before control and ownership policies were brought in in the first place: wide open to opportunistic foreign corporate penetration of our energy industry.
There you have it. Take your pick of two possible Tory futures for the Canadian petroleum industry. You either get increased Canadian ownership and control of depressed value assets or you get renewal of foreign ownership and control of high value assets.
These are the people who style themselves as shrewd businessmen? It would be hilarious if it were not so pathetic.
I had hoped to turn to the question of why this particular bill at this particular time but I suspect, looking at the clock, that I am shortly to run out of time. Let me just say that in his speech on this bill my colleague, the hon. member for Windsor-Essex, will address the substance of the charge that this is a free trade related bill and that it represents a complete capitulation to the demands of the Americans, demands that were made prior to the 1988 FTA and were put into the 1988 American legislation.
What this bill means simply put, encapsulated, is that free trade claims another victim. The government prepares passage of a bill allegedly intended to address a Canadian problem which does not in fact exist. It seeks adoption of a law which can have no long-term effect that is not harmful to the Canadian economy. It does so in the interests of a group of foreign-based, transnational corporations which feel no more loyalty to Canada and the Canadian people than they do to whatever denizens may reside on the fourth moon of Jupiter.
In the happy but ever less likely event that there will continue to be citizens of an independent Canada in the future, they will marvel, incredulous, at the end of term machinations of this pathetic assembly of tin-pot ideologues, quislings, and incompetents.


David Kilgour: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member, because he and I sit on the energy committee together, where does he
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think there is a good foreign control law around the world that would please him?
For example, does the members like the situation in Mexico where under the proposed NAFTA Pemex, the state oil monopoly, would continue to have a monopoly on all risk activities for oil and gas? Is that what he thinks Canada should do? Does he think that kind of a policy would attract foreign investment to our oil sands which, as he knows as an Albertan, represent the best hope for the next 20, 30, 40 years? Would he like to see that kind of a policy, which our limp-wristed negotiators for Canada negotiated with NAFTA, for this country? Does he think that would help his constituents?
The member gets up and tells us that his is the 14th poorest riding in the entire country. Does he think it would create jobs for young people in his riding, oil geologists or people who work on service rigs, if we were to go to the Pemex model which negotiators for Canada and the United States have somehow, for reasons which escape me, agreed to?
What century, what planet does he think he is living in today when Venezuela and the former Soviet Union, the Russian federation, are all opening their doors as fast as they can to compete for scarce capital?
Does he think that his policy will be a way to get the Japanese or the Taiwanese to come and build a new oil sands plant? Does he think his policy, which is out of some distant ideological age and he is the one that mentioned ideology, would bring jobs and prosperity to Canada and would create wealth in Canada?
I would be grateful to have his comments.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, the distant ideological age, which I take as reference for the purpose of these discussions, was the period from 1975 to 1982. As the hon. member will know, at that time Alberta was booming, employment was growing at rates that were causing severe social dislocation, and it was good times from one end of town to the other.
What were the characteristics of that age? What differentiated it from the circumstances we have now? The answers are fairly easily determined. They include regulated pricing and Canadian ownership requirements.

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I would think that having taken the trouble to cross the floor from the government party to the Official Opposition Liberal Party he would know this. The answers include an activist federal government which determined that Canadian energy resources were to be developed in the interest of the Canadian people.
Apparently all of those lessons are to be jettisoned. All of that history is to be ignored in favour of a brave new world of transnational capital that invites us all to the great human foot race to the bottom. It invites every nation there is, every people on the planet and every individual on the planet to line up at the starting line and begin running down into successive basements of wages, regulations, environmental and labour standards, and human degradation that we can find.
I am sorry but I ain't running. My party ain't running. To the degree that we have anything to say about it, the Canadian people ain't running.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I listened to my hon. friend. It is really kind of sad because while there is a lot of ideology spewing out of his mouth there is not a lot of sense. If he would compare the facts to the statements that he has just made he would realize that what he has said is absolute garbage. However, that was not the purpose for which I stood up to speak. I just wanted to make that point because I could not accept the garbage that he just put on the floor of the House right now.
The member called this a free trade bill and said that this bill was designed by the Americans and was subject to the requirements of the Americans that were in the original free trade agreement.
I listened to my hon. friend from the Liberal Party, and while I did not quite hear him say that he is going to support this bill the way he was speaking and addressing my friend from Edmonton from the New Democratic Party indicated to me that he is in favour. I am not sure whether he speaks for his party, but he is in favour of it.
If that is the case, the Liberal Party is against the free trade agreement, it is against the North American free trade agreement and yet it is in favour of this bill. So how can this piece of legislation be a product of the free trade agreement?


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, I must confess that I am indebted to the hon. Minister for International Trade for putting that question. The answer clearly is obvious. He is correct when he says that it is logically impossible to oppose both this bill and the free trade agreement.
We have not had a vote on the free trade agreement in this House yet, but I assume we are going to have a vote on this bill pretty soon. I suspect that the Liberal Party will vote in favour of this bill. At least that is how I interpret the remarks of the hon. member for Edmonton Southeast.
I would suggest that will provide a very fair indication of the Liberal Party's true position with regard to both the North American free trade agreement and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
As for the spewing of ideological garbage, let me tiy to spew a wee bit more ideological garbage: $26.8 billion net exported from the country, $2.1 billion net imported to the country. Those are the respective records of the foreign-owned and controlled companies from 1980 to 1991 and the Canadian-owned and controlled companies 1980 to 1991. If that is ideological garbage then I am pleased to be an ideological garbage collector.


David Kilgour: Madam Speaker, would the member tell us how many people in his constituency work in the oil-servicing industry, the oil industry, or in part of its activities within his constituency? Would he also tell us whether he thinks that if this bill passes it will result in less employment in Edmonton East?
My party has now sold more than 3,000 Liberal memberships in order to nominate a candidate, and I am happy to say that three of the nominees are women, to run against this member.
Does the member think that it will help or hinder his constituency if this measure passes?


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, to answer the hon. member's first question, I am sorry but I cannot report with any accuracy how many residents of Edmonton East work in or are associated with the petroleum industry in its production and exploration guises. My guess is, and it is only a guess, that the number is somewhere around 2,000 to 3,000. I can say that there are fewer, by several times, than there were a decade ago. I would suggest that there are fewer, by several times, than there were even seven years ago.
March 17, 1993

As is the case everywhere else in Alberta, deregulation has slaughtered employment in my riding. For that reason I remain unequivocally opposed to deregulation. The cost in human terms in Alberta has been immense.
As to whether I think this bill will help or harm the people in my riding, I think in the near term it will have no immediate street level effect one way or the other. I see no evidence of there being a pent-up demand by would-be foreign investors in the Canadian oil patch slathering and pounding at the door to get in.
The one major recent example we have had of new foreign investment was Murphy Oil going into Hibernia and it had to be bribed to do it. No, it will have no short-term consequences one way or the other. In the long term, and especially if asset values recover, it will have the effect of causing even greater net capital export from the country. If he thinks that is a good idea then he is by all means welcome to vote with the government in favour of this bill.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I said that I was not sure what the position of the Liberal Party is because my friend from Edmonton did not state whether it was going to support this particular piece of legislation. However, I must say that I listened in absolute amazement to the extraordinary hypocrisy that was spouted by the member from Edmonton. It has not taken him long to change his colours. It took just a short period of time, from when he left this party to the time that he slid in with the Liberal Party, to forget the past totally.
If the member read the piece of work that he just presented to the House he would probably be embarrassed. First of all, he was very critical of the foreign investment policy of this government. He is now supporting a party which introduced the National Energy Program, which he was opposed to when he was on this side of the House. He is now supporting the party that introduced the Foreign Investment Review Agency, which he was opposed to when he was on this side of the House. He is also now supporting a party that voted against the changes to the National Energy Program and
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the changes which transformed the Foreign Investment Review Agency to Investment Canada, which we made. Unfortunately, he has had to leave the House because he cannot stand the truth in his ears right now.
The member then talked about the high levels of debt. Here again he is supporting the party that eight times in the last four years voted against spending control bills that this government has introduced.
The member is supporting a leader who said in a very proud way in a speech a few days ago, which he called a policy speech and that is an oxymoron in itself, that he was Doctor No of the Liberal Party when he was President of the Treasury Board. We checked back to when he was President of the Treasury Board and we have a quote in which he said how proud he was to be the President of the Treasury Board that held back the increase in government spending to only 26 per cent. He is Doctor No. What would we have had if he was an easy spending guy, if he was Doctor Yes?
The member then talked about the high Canadian dollar and the high interest rate policy that he claims this government has been following. Everything that we have introduced to try to bring interest rates down, whether control of inflation, control of spending, deficit control, or all those things that are designed to bring down the level of interest rates which he is opposed to, that party voted against.
The member stood there and flailed away at this government for the policy that we are changing today and that is the same party that introduced the policy that we are changing today.
This man, who was the Judas of the Conservative Party when he went over to the Liberal Party, today stood up with a holier than thou attitude and said: "I am going to protect my constituents, and this government on the other side of the House did not have the courage to protect the oil and gas industry in Canada". He has just flipped right around and changed-


Mary Catherine Clancy: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I take as a personal affront the comment of the hon. minister with regard to the member from Edmonton and the use of the word Judas. I think we are above that kind of thing, or at least some of us in this House are.

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Madam Deputy Speaker:: I do agree that we should keep the level of debate on a higher-


Mary Catherine Clancy: I agree, Madam Speaker.


Ms. Blondin-Andrew:: Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, Michael. It is very unbecoming for a minister.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I think the level of debate on both sides of the House should be a little higher at this point. The hon. minister has the floor.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I have been on the government side of the House for eight and a half years and not once since I have been on this side of the House have I heard a question asked from members opposite as to when we are going to change the policy that is in the bill that is before us today. Yet we hear this man standing and criticizing us for being so slow when he is a member of the party that did everything it could to pillage the oil and gas industry in western Canada that is extremely important to that part of the country. It is unbelievable to listen to the stuff that he is talking about here.
Bill C-89 proposes three amendments that are designed to address some specific problems in the Investment Canada Act that was passed in 1985 by this House. It was opposed for a lot of broad reasons by the party opposite, none of which had anything to do with the-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: On a point of order, the hon. member from Essex-Windsor.


Mr. Langdon:: Madam Speaker, if the minister would check, I think that we are presently debating Bill C-106 which is not the bill to which he just referred in talking about the various amendments which are being made to the Investment Canada Act. I think he will note that that is the next piece of legislation slated for debate.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member will allow me to listen to what is said and to rule on the relevancy. The hon. minister.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, my understanding is that the legislation that we are debating
now is the Investment Canada Act. Am I correct on that?


David Kilgour: No, you are not.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Then I apologize. I will withhold my brilliant remarks and let my facts stand on what I heard the hon. member from Edmonton saying just previously on the hypocritical position he was taking on policies that this government supports and that the member is supporting on the other side of the House.


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, I have to say first of all that it is a little hard to take the minister's extreme statements with respect to the member from Edmonton seriously when the minister did not even have a sense of what bill it was that we were debating here in the House of Commons.
I did want to ask the minister how he can possibly stand up in this House and say that it makes sense to open up further the foreign ownership restrictions which he himself signed in an exchange of letters with James Baker as part of the free trade arrangement back in 1988. How can it make sense to open up those restrictions further in view of the fact, brought out so forcefully by my colleague the member for Edmonton East, that this country has had a net loss over the past 10 years of something in the order of $26 billion in outflows as a consequence of the foreign ownership that presently exists. At the same time Canadian-controlled corporations are resulting, in the case of oil and gas, in a net inflow of $2.1 billion.
How can a minister who is concerned with our economic position and the access to capital that we have as a country to such capital for jobs for our future and for industrial development for which he is responsible stand up and say that it makes sense to make it easier to have foreign-owned firms when their record is so abysmally worse than the Canadian-controlled companies with respect to keeping capital in this country and creating jobs in this country for the future?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. friend for his question and his earlier interjection.
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The numbers, as I recall, show a reinvestment of 94 per cent and a reinvestment by Canadian-owned companies of 77 per cent.


Steven W. Langdon: Foreign-controlled?
Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) Yes, by foreign-controlled.
Mr. Langdon Of cash flow?
Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) Yes, of cash flow.
My hon. friend I think realizes that when foreign capital comes in it brings with it much more than just cash. It brings with it technology. If that foreign capital had not come to Canada that technology would not have developed to nearly the extent of the industry that we have today. That is whether it is on the conventional side of the industry or in the heavy oil side of the industry.
My friend from Edmonton is shaking his head. I do not know whether there are flies running around him but if he could listen carefully he would understand that the discovery just south of his riding in Leduc was made by a foreign-owned company. That was the start of the Canadian industry in Canada. Now he is nodding his head in approval.
The industry then developed considerably from there principally upon the resources of the foreign-owned companies and the technology that they brought with them. As those companies developed the Canadian industry, Canadian-owned companies were spun off from the U.S. companies and resulted in a very strong Canadian industry today whether it is in the exploration and development industry or the oil-servicing sector.
It is in the oil-servicing sector that we have had a real success story because it is there that those companies are able to go and sell their technology and generate jobs for Canadian companies in other markets.
If we did not have the foreign-owned companies to start all this, then we would have been starting way back and would not have had nearly the development that he enjoys in his city of Edmonton right today.
One does not get that capital for nothing. There has to be a return on that capital and it is this disparity that is in effect in part the return on that capital, but one does not get something for nothing. Maybe the NDP always thinks
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that one can get something and that there is a free lunch, but in fact there is not. I think my hon. friend would believe that if he would be straight with the Elouse.


Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg TVanscona):: Madam Speaker, it is interesting that the hon. member who just spoke talked about free lunches because earlier on he was chastising another member from Edmonton for his failure to support expenditure control legislation that had been introduced in this House.
What I wanted to raise with the minister was the fact that on so many occasions when he was the minister in charge he-and now his successor-refused to do anything in response to the many questions that I placed in this House about free lunches.
There is such a thing as a free lunch or a freer lunch or a cheap lunch if you happen to be a business person and you can take advantage of the business and entertainment tax deduction in this country that costs the Canadian people and the Canadian taxpayers $1 billion a year.
Over the years we raised this and we have always been met with the argument that we could not do anything about this because we had to remain competitive with the United States. I understand that some move may now be in the offing in the United States to change that particular tax deduction there and that excuse will disappear. It will be interesting to see what response the government has to that.
Again, with respect to the member's own remarks about expenditure restraint, I wonder if the minister would care to comment on the article by Mr. Peter Meyers that maintains that the capital gains tax exemption was the biggest budget goof in Canadian history and that the member who just spoke was responsible for this biggest budget goof in Canadian history. The total price tag, this article argues, for this tax break already exceeds $20 billion and says that at least $14 billion of it was totally wasted and squandered randomly to what has amounted to a taxpayer-financed lottery.
I am talking about the $500,000 lifetime capital gains tax exemption which was supposed to stimulate investment, but which covered such a broad range of things that it amounted to a windfall profit for-

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Madam Deputy Speaker:: I imagine the hon. minister will choose to answer, but I must tell the hon. member that we are a long way from Bill C-106 and Bill C-89 for that matter. The hon. minister.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I do not think I will comment on the relevancy question. I will leave that to you and your responsibilities.
On the question of the exemption for entertainment, there are some changes that are being proposed in the United States. If in fact there are changes that affect the competitive position of the Canadian industry then that will provide some flexibility for the Minister of Finance and it will be up to him to decide whether or not he wishes to maintain a competitive advantage for Canadian industry relative to their counterparts in the United States or change that. That is something he might address to the Minister of Finance in anticipation of his budget in a month's time.
The other point that the hon. member has raised is a question of the capital gain exemption. I have not read the article that my hon. friend refers to but the purpose of this proposal was simply to encourage Canadians to invest in the country. It was focused essentially on small businesses and farmers where there is a $500,000 exemption. All the rest is $100,000 exemption. My hon. friend knows that was restricted somewhat by the Minister of Finance in his last budget.
The analysis that my hon. friend neglects is that there were benefits brought about by that incentive by people putting their money into the country, creating jobs, creating new technology and creating exports and in that way increasing economic activity. The economic impact of that is not taken into account by any analysis that my hon. friend would quote. Since he is only giving me a one-sided conclusion, clearly I have to reject that conclusion.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam
Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity today to speak on Bill C-106, the legislation that will eliminate restrictions on the foreign ownership of oil and gas production on frontier lands which are lands north of 60 and offshore areas controlled by the federal government.
I have a personal interest in this bill and I am sure that my constituents who are watching would like this bill and other bills related to the territories to be treated with the seriousness and the concern that they feel about it. I do not think it is a laughing matter or necessarily to be so partisanly imbued.
Having said that I would like to deal with some of the direct issues that pertain to this bill. I think it will have a direct consequence and impact on my riding of Western Arctic and on the Northwest Territories generally.
Bill C-106 will bring further frontier lands into line with conventional lands in Canada, which as of March 25, 1992 are no longer subject to the maintenance of the requirement of the goal of 50 per cent Canadian ownership in the oil and gas sector.
I have to say that with bills I have the opportunity to speak to I have some caution and reservation in approaching various bills because I think it is a very complicated process. I think that to just throw oneself at the foot of any bill in approval is rather silly and irresponsible.
I have reservations about this bill. Particularly, I have reservations about wooing foreign investment. This is due to the lack of real investment by the federal government in its own country and in its own industrial base and in particular, in the companies and corporations that represent Canada.
Bill C-106 is guaranteed to affect a number of regions in the north. I am thinking in particular about the areas which have the most oil and gas activity. For example, there is Norman Wells in my area of the Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories. It is an area that will not only be very much impacted by this but it is also currently struggling with land claims. In the final stages of having its claims ratified, there was one area in which it was particularly interested in obtaining a deal with the government. It was perhaps to have some of the revenues flow from those particular wells in Norman Wells through the claims provision to the people. But that was not meant to be. I would say that there might be some redirection of the government's efforts to make those kinds of accommodations in the future.
In Inuvik, the Mackenzie delta, this area is known for its willing participation in the oil and gas industry. In fact the National Energy Board hearings were held in Inuvik. Many people participated and expressed their concerns as well as their support. This area has been very much involved in the oil and gas industry for a number of years. In the Beaufort region, Tuktoyaktuk and some of the other communities have had in years past much activity and much human and financial investment.
March 17, 1993

Benefits have accrued from those activities to the communities. It has resulted in a number of different activities that the communities have engaged in because of the benefits that have accrued from the oil and gas activities in and around that area.
In the high Arctic we have Panarctic Oils Ltd. which has put a face to its business through the work it has done with the locals as well as with other Canadians who have taken an interest in working under those conditions.
I have a few concerns in relation to these areas and regions which will be highly impacted by Bill C-106.
I would also like to mention in particular that in dealing with any bill in the House, what comes to mind generally is the whole issue of aboriginal land claims. The impact that Bill C-106 will have on aboriginal land claims north of 60 is still not certain at this time.
Any oil and gas project development will require the support and approval of the aboriginal First Nations in the region: the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in, the Dene-Metis, the Sahtu. Also within the area of the Cameron Hills oil development activities we have the treaty eight looking at a land adhesion treaty.
Support for the development projects will depend upon a number of requirements which would have to be met accordingly, one being the ability for aboriginal peoples to profit to some extent from the venture. That bears in mind a very controversial issue.
I look at the whole issue of Lubicon where there are absolutely no provisions made for those revenues to go back to the people of that area. What in fact has been happening is the multinational corporations are extracting over $1 million each day from Lubicon land. The Daishowa paper company has been clear-cutting on Lubicon land since 1990. This development is destroying the environment and has killed the Lubicon traditional economy of hunting and trapping and has forced these people on to welfare.
Maybe in addition to getting approval for this bill, this government could look at some provisions for putting in trust royalties which would force the government back to the table on these particular issues.
It is highly unfair to have the environment of the aboriginal people more or less pillaged and impacted on
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severely. We could say that any new development includes prospects for the creation of directly and indirectly related local employment opportunities as well as education initiatives and job training programs for local residents. This is to prevent an influx of highly skilled foreign workers displacing the opportunities there for local people.
Co-management projects to determine socio-economic and environmental impacts in reviews will have to be undertaken. To what extent future oil and gas development will affect wildlife in the environment in the region will have to be considered.
Environmental assessments and mechanisms thereof have to be in place. For example, the U.S. $12 billion pipeline project to ship Arctic gas from the Mackenzie delta to the gulf of Alaska will have to undergo a full co-management review by the Inuvialuit and the Gwich'in, both of whom have already settled their land claims in the Northwest Territories.
As a member of Parliament I have the responsibility to represent all of my constituents in Western Arctic. Therefore, while there are major proponents that are very pro-development the issue of land claimants and the land titles question as well as the issue of security of supply are still major concerns that cannot be dismissed.
Those must not be dismissed. We can look perhaps to amendments in those areas on future debates in relationship to this bill. They are very serious concerns and they must be dealt with. They must not be dealt with in a casual or cavalier manner. Therefore in taking every precaution to ensure that all parties are fairly represented and benefit by Bill C-106, there should be a mechanism put in place that would provide for consultation and assessment of socio-economic and environmental impacts. An amendment to Bill C-106 would address this concern.
I am confident that in supporting this bill the best interests of northerners will be served. However, I must say that due to the lack of internal investment by this government on the oil and gas industry we must revert to reducing the Canadianization restriction. This is in the hope that multinational companies will support new oil and gas initiatives in the north and the high Arctic that the Canadian government and Canadian companies have not been able to.

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In relationship to that I would not be surprised to see the government go elsewhere to look at foreign investors to build our infrastructure. I think that is clearly an abdication of its responsibility to Canadian citizens living in the far reaches of this country.
I would hope that the long-term benefits for the north as a result of this bill will be great. I hope they will give the north that much needed boost in its regional economy. The north has suffered like other regions of this country due to the length and intensity of the recession.
I am very proud to say that a revitalized oil and gas industry north of 60 would be good for the Arctic and would also be good for the rest of Canada. The longterm effects of northern development would have a positive impact on the industrial base of Canada. It would increase the demand for industrial goods and services. Most important, it would create jobs and the demand for goods and services in the north.
Regionally this means more northern employment. It means more financial independence for the territorial governments' improvements to northern infrastructure and services and means more opportunities, not all but more, because the government has to do its share for native organizations.
However these benefits will not be assured to northerners until outstanding agreements with the federal government on the northern accord and outstanding land claims are resolved.
The treaty land claims in the Deh Cho as well as the Sahtu and Dogrib land claims and outstanding claims in the Yukon must be resolved. In order to resolve these claims, the financial resources must be made available to fund resource management boards. They cannot be boards in name only. They must have the resources to be able to do the job they have been mandated to do.
The northern accord is critical for the transfer of legislative responsibility for managing and regulating on-shore oil and gas resources to the government of the Northwest Territories and for the sharing of oil and gas revenues.
As a result of the delay in transferring this power northern oil and gas development activities and much
needed employment opportunities are being sacrificed and lost.
The provisions of the accord will allow northerners to more effectively control and manage the resources locally rather than by remote agencies in Ottawa.
In conclusion, I believe that Bill C-106 will offer new development opportunities for Canada north of 60. However, for this new development to have encouraging results the government must first carry through on outstanding commitments to aboriginal groups and the Government of the Northwest Territories. In doing so, northern and aboriginal Canadians would be able to reap the full socio-economic benefits resulting from Bill C-106 of the prospect of increased and renewed oil and gas development north of 60 as they are rightly entitled to.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the remarks of the hon. member. I took it from those remarks that it is her intention to support the bill. I very much hope she will correct me if I am wrong in that assumption, but that is at least what I inferred from her remarks.
I must say the two spokespeople thus far who addressed the bill on behalf of the Liberal Party have been wonderfully measured in their remarks, skilfully so I would say.
During the course of the hon. member's remarks she mentioned a number of amendments she would like to see made to the bill, presumably in committee. She mentioned such things as guarantees for benefits, local community development and that sort of thing.
I was wondering if she has taken the step of at least attempting to determine the degree to which the amendments she would like to see to the bill would be deemed to be within the scope of the bill and thus in order. I must admit that given what I understand of the bill, and I have been through it in some detail, virtually everything she mentioned would necessarily be deemed outside the bill's scope. Thus they would not be admissible as amendment either in committee or in the report stage debate on the bill in the House.
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I would very much hope she could say that I am wrong on this point. The proposals she makes are very good ones and certainly ones that will enjoy the support of this caucus. Elowever, again I would greatly appreciate her informing the House whether or not she has been able to determine that such amendments would be within the scope of the bill.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his question. It is a good question and one we are currently seized with. We are working on consulting with the energy critic to examine whether these are components that could be put into amendments. I am not ruling out that possibility. I have not reached the point at which my hon. colleague has information that I have not had, or has an eye for the bill that I do not have.
As far as I am concerned, I will continue to push for amendments which would have this particular impact and would address the issues I have mentioned. I do not see any reason why these would be considered outside the bill. I have not reached that stage. My hon. colleague, the energy critic, and I are currently working and consulting on this.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, as well, during the course of her remarks to the House, the member stated quite rightly that the development of petroleum resources in the north could be of great benefit to the people in the north and to the rest of the country.
I would go further and say that as regards natural gas, for example, if the resource in the north is not developed, we in the south are going to be in very difficult straits two to three decades from now. In fact, it is in the national interest that those resources be developed.
Unfortunately, what I know of the petroleum industry, which some of its proponents would say is next to nothing, it seems that the great barrier to development of petroleum resources in the north is not a matter of who owns or controls a given resource company. In other words, it is not a question of foreign or domestic ownership; rather it is a question of price.
Those players in the field now, the petroleum companies active in Canada, simply are not getting a price for the product they are producing now which is sufficient to support the exploration and development of new resources, especially what we know are very expensive
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frontier resources. I would suggest that in a tree market, the current price will preclude northern development for the foreseeable future.
I am wondering what the hon. member would propose as a remedy to the current price regime which will most certainly prevent any development, favourable or unfavourable.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, I think any foreign investors take their cue from the government of a country. I would say that if the government demonstrated a keener interest, as past governments have, in the Beaufort delta in investment in the oil and gas industries on lands north of 60, surely that would be a clear message to foreign investors. It would make it more attractive.
Clearly, if the government made it less costly by investing in infrastructure, which has been a major request of the people who live on lands north of 60, that would also help to pressure and perhaps alleviate some of the cost concerns that investors have and would in fact make it more attractive in terms of investment in these lands.
In addition to what has been mentioned, what would also make it much easier for investors to come aground on this particular issue would be if outstanding land claims were resolved and all of the impediments were removed. It is not just the cost. There is a myriad of concerns that face foreign investors.
I must conclude that having done all of this is no guarantee if there is not the political will on the part of the government.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, one of the key points that the member just mentioned in response to the last question was government assistance in infrastructure. I must confess that I am not at all certain what she means by infrastructure.
Let me ask very particularly, is the member suggesting that the government itself build the necessary pipeline or pumping facilities or the necessary roads into drilling areas or the necessary ships for the purpose of offshore drilling and the drilling platforms? What is meant by infrastructure that would benefit from government investment sufficient to bring the production costs down to the point where such production would be economic at today's prices?

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Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, the hon. member has given me a wonderful window of opportunity to express my views on something that northerners are very much in favour of and that is the completion of the Mackenzie highway. That would be one part of the infrastructure that would help to reduce the cost of doing business in oil and gas in the north.
Also, in relation to that, there are huge opportunities across Canada with ports and terminals. I would very much like to see for instance the Coast Guard facility for the Northwest Territories, which is headquartered in B.C., relocated to Hay River, Northwest Territories. It would open up the Mackenzie valley corridor through the Mackenzie River. It would create jobs. It would cause a whole flurry of business activity. It would be great for the service industry.
As well, I would like to see a major port in the area of Tuktoyaktuk. They certainly have the expertise and the willingness. I think that would certainly help to reduce the cost of carrying out oil and gas activity in the north.


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, at the start of my comments in this debate let me just remind members and others that what I will be doing is analysing this piece of legislation in what really amounts to the second half of the over-all analysis which was begun by my colleague from Edmonton East.
My colleague outlined very effectively the tremendous outflows of capital which have occurred in the oil and gas industry as a consequence of the excessive foreign control that exists in that industry in this country. He finished with the question: Why, given this excessive haemorrhaging of the country, would a government bring forward a bill such as this?
One reason is that the Conservatives themselves have never apparently fully appreciated the significant harm that foreign domination causes. As a result, they have often taken both sides of the question on this issue of foreign ownership and control of the oil and gas industry. As an example of this, I want to quote from two speeches given by two prominent Conservative MPs in the House of Commons on the same day, June 20, 1978.
The member who now represents Calgary Centre as House leader of the government said this: "I was a founding member of the Committee for an Independent Canada and I believe that far too much of our economy is owned by foreigners", and, he says: "precisely it is because the oil industry is owned primarily by foreigners".


Steven W. Langdon: That was, believe it or not, the House leader of the Conservative Party, who on other occasions has himself taken quite the opposite view.
What was especially remarkable that particular day was that at the very time that he stated that, his seatmate, a few minutes later, the present Minister of Finance, the member for Vegreville, put the case for domestic control. He put it: "We in Canada may not have the luxury of ownership in this very important sector. The important thing in this ongoing debate about our natural resources is not so much a matter of whether we own them, but more important, a matter of whether we have the capability of controlling the manner in which these resources will be developed".
Ownership and control are clearly intimately related and even the Conservatives know it. Yet the Conservatives do not in this bill seem to recognize that when you give up your capacity to control ownership levels, you lose an important ingredient in the recipe to control the industry that is so important to particular parts of this country, such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, the areas north of 60 and in fact parts of British Columbia and actually parts of my own constituency where oil, believe it or not, is produced these days.
We could suggest a second reason why the government would bring forward this bill. That is because the Conservative Party receives significant amounts of money from some of the very foreign-controlled oil and gas companies that stand to benefit from relaxed controls on foreign ownership in Canada.


An hon. member:: Who said that?
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In 1991 for instance the Conservative Party received over $20,000 from Amoco Canada and over $49,000 from Imperial Oil Ltd. Still it seems unlikely that pressure from energy companies alone, no matter how much money they give the Conservative Party, would account for the potentially dramatic changes fostered by the bill before us.
There is in fact a third reason. That is the reason to which my colleague has already made reference, the fact that the United States government was and continues to be keenly and actively interested in relaxing Canada's foreign investment rules. In fact, what we have here is a piece of legislation which is part of the NAFTA agreement brought before this House before the NAFTA agreement itself is brought before the House and before the United States has even come to its final conclusions with respect to NAFTA.
In fact, the United States has been pushing very hard for relaxation of our foreign investment rules with respect to oil and gas and the United States has received what it sought in this bill. It has received it at Canada's expense. Perhaps most significantly, it has received it without any return in the shape of some sort of concession on the U.S. side which might in some small way at least make up for this remarkable concession which we have made.
In the case of energy, Canada gave up substantial control of our oil and gas resources in the free trade agreement in 1988. For example, under the FTA the Canadian government gave up the right to cut back on exports to the U.S. while maintaining domestic consumption in Canada. The FTA also made it the right of our government to make sure that Americans paid prices at least as high for our energy commodities as we pay ourselves.
Initially, however, what the FTA did not do was to extend these concessions in the energy sector to the question of ownership. It did not extend the elements which are in the free trade agreement and which give increased benefits for foreign ownership from the United States to the energy sector. In fact, this exemption is set out in an exchange of letters between industry minister Wilson who spoke previously and James Baker who was at that time Secretary of the Treasury, I believe, in the United States. This appears at the very end of the free trade agreement. In fact, the Conservative government in Alberta used this exemption set out in the free trade agreement to try to mollify people concerned
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about maintaining control of our strategic energy industry. It boasted, for instance, in the tabloid which it produced called Straight Talk on Free Trade. Perhaps it should have been entitled Doublespeak on Free Trade.
The guidelines on investment in the energy industries have not been changed. That was true with respect to ownership requirements. But that was because the free trade agreement, as we can now see, was just step one in the attempt to get greater American control in our oil and gas industry. Even before the Conservatives had rammed the FTA through Parliament, the U.S. government was busily attempting to gain further concessions.
Each year the U.S. trade representative in Washington issues a report that identifies those measures in other countries which the United States considers unwarranted barriers to trade. Each year since the FTA came into effect, that is from 1989 through 1992, this report, entitled National Trade Estimate Report of Foreign Trade Barriers has made specific and pointed objections to Canada's energy investment rules.
There is even more direct evidence of U.S. pressure. U.S. President Reagan transmitted to Congress on July 25, 1988 a document entitled Statement of Administrative Action. This document which I quote from describes "significant administrative actions proposed to implement the FTA". Here is what it says about Canada's energy investment rules. In other words, this is what at the very start of the free trade deal the U.S. government was aiming to get from the free trade agreement's aftermath, and I quote: "The administration is committed to further liberalization in the field of investment. Subsection 304(a) of the implementing bill authorizes the President to negotiate an agreement with Canada on the liberalization of investment rules. Subsection 304(b)(2) sets out the objectives of further negotiation on this subject, including 'extension of the principles of the agreement to energy'."
In other words right at the start the American government was seeking as one of its key goals through further negotiations involving the free trade agreement to get rid of those very restrictions within the free trade agreement which maintained the oil and gas ownership restrictions on the energy sector. In fact, a law putting into effect this U.S. commitment to further changes was in place by September 28, 1988. That was nearly two months before the federal election took place in Canada which ended up approving the free trade agreement.

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Section 304 of that law passed in 1988 states: "The President is authorized to enter into negotiations with the Government of Canada for the purpose of concluding an agreement to liberalize investment rules". It goes on to indicate that liberalization of investment rules should include "the extension of the principles of the agreement to energy to the extent such industries are not currently covered by the agreement".
There you have it. The U.S. government stated very clearly that one of its ongoing negotiating objectives on investment was the extension of the principles of the free trade agreement into other fields to the energy sector.
Despite the exchange of letters which our Minister of Finance at that time, the Minister for International Trade and the treasuiy minister in the United States, Mr. Baker, had appended to the free trade agreement, clearly a con game for the Canadian people was taking place, a con game which suggested to those of us in Canada that the energy industry was going to be exempt and this could be carried forward into the free trade election. People in Alberta could be told, people across the country could be told, energy has been safeguarded. Yet at that very same time the American government had already made clear in law that it intended to seek the elimination of those safeguards for our energy industry. The Americans were successful. The Conservative government abandoned our foreign ownership provisions and that is what this bill is about.
It is what is in this bill. It is also in the bill that the Conservatives have before the House, Bill C-89, which we will be debating later, to amend the Investment Canada Act.
This abandonment coincides exactly with the objectives that the United States had. Many Canadians are going to be shocked to learn that not only was this something which was taking place under U.S. law but in fact this was not an isolated example.
There have been all sorts of other areas in which the United States had set out its objectives for what it
wanted to get further under the free trade agreement and which this government and Canada has subsequently put into affect.
The con game operated not just with respect to those supposed exemptions for energy appended to the free trade agreement on which Canadians when they voted in 1988 felt were somehow real. They were not real. Various other commitments which Canadians felt were there in the free trade agreement on the part of Canada were not really commitments to which this government had any real respect, any real commitment to honour.
For example, section 304(a)(2) of the United States bill pressed for changes to the eastern Canadian transportation rates, and the Conservatives acquiesced to this through Bill C-ll, an act to amend the Railway Act. It received Royal Assent November 26, 1991.
The Conservatives have gone further. They announced they will soon make other changes that the Americans want, this time to the Western Grain Transportation Act.
Similarly, section 304(c)(1) of the U.S. legislation calls for negotiations with Canada to increase the minimum North American content limits on automotive products from 50 per cent to at least 60 per cent. Canada's chief NAFTA negotiator announced in August 1992 that Canada had acquiesced to that demand as well and the new limit is 62.5 per cent.
Section 304(b)(3) of the U.S. law calls for improved protection of so-called intellectual property rights. The Conservatives again have acquiesced by ramming through this Parliament Bill C-91, an act to amend the Patent Act, forcing Canadians to pay more for prescription drugs, which are costing them hundreds of millions of dollars each year in higher health costs.
All of these policies, which sometimes we have called the corporate agenda in Canada, represented not just the corporate agenda in Canada but specifically and laid out in detail the United States government's agenda in Canada.
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We have had a government which, not just once but in bill after bill has marched these various demands that the United States wanted through our Parliament. It has marched them through, over our strong-felt, hard fought opposition, without any return whatsoever to Canada as a quid pro quo for these giveaways to the United States.
What we have here is a case of total capitulation which stands out as even more dramatic, given the fact that Mexico's energy industry has been permitted to escape from any similar attack in the NAFTA legislation which the three countries have agreed on.
I would make this last comment. This legislation shows how far our government has capitulated to American interests. The NAFTA legislation which will come before this House in the veiy near future shows even more fully this capitulation to American and corporate interests. That is why we oppose it. That is why we oppose this legislation as strongly as we do.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, I must say that the remarks of the member for Essex- Windsor are particularly instructive and describe the genesis of the bill we have before us today particularly aptly. I cannot help but think that, just as occurred to me, the hon. member found his time expired long before his argument was completed.
I was wondering if I might put to him the following question. Had he unlimited time, what further points would he like to make to the House today?


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for what is for me a particularly welcome comment. I will not take it that I have unlimited time, but there were some final points I had hoped to make with respect to what passage of NAFTA would mean. I would like to put those points before the House if I could.
It is very important to recognize that not only is NAFTA a sign of the same kind of capitulation which this bill represents, but if NAFTA were passed as it presently stands, it would mean that new ownership restrictions would never be allowed in the future in the oil and gas industry.
Careful readers of the North American free trade agreement will note in annex I to NAFTA that a part specifically allows the retention of Canada's existing
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foreign ownership restrictions with respect to energy. One is driven, if one simply looks at that, to the bizarre conclusion that the government protected this particular part of Canada's sovereignty only to abandon it unilaterally with this bill. The truth, however, is somewhat more depressing. This exemption from the otherwise applicable provisions of NAFTA is almost certainly merely a formality.
In fact, during a February 9 briefing, departmental officials indicated that Canada listed this exemption in the NAFTA agreement because existing foreign ownership restrictions, i.e., those that are still in place until this bill is passed, violated NAFTA and would continue to do so until changed through legislation. Since legislation to achieve conformity with NAFTA could not be passed before the agreement was signed last December 17, that small identifying entry was needed. To our point of view, that rather crucial NAFTA exemption, and it is possible some others that are included in the NAFTA annexes, is merely temporary.
Conservatives in our view have already bargained away this important aspect of Canadian sovereignty. This bill is in front of us because it is an integral part of what this country has really agreed to as part of the NAFTA accord.
In any event, passage of the bill now before us will undermine the perceived need for the NAFTA exemption so we expect the exemption will be withdrawn from the legislation when it finally does come in its final form before the House.
What we have is a set of changes which I have traced, all of them tied to the free trade agreement, all of them tied to the Conservative project of making us a mere continental annex to the United States economy. I have to say this as someone who has studied the past and who believes strongly in the future of this country. But for us to so abjectly follow a series of government priorities set out not by ourselves but by the United States in its own free trade legislation is a sorry commentary on the honesty and forthrightness of this government.
To a significant extent this government has been following a course of action set down for it by President Reagan rather than a course of action dictated by the interests of this country.

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We are in a pre-election period. There is much discussion about new leadership and a new generation taking power in the Conservative Party. If this new generation when it takes power in the Conservative Party does not jettison the abject sell-outs this government has presented to the United States over the past four and a half years since the free trade agreement came into effect then we will not have seen the regeneration of the Conservative Party. We will simply have seen a mock charade presented to the people of Canada.
I do not think this House should accept this bill. I hope that some of the leadership candidates in the Conservative caucus will get up and say the same thing because if there is to be any change from what this government has represented in the past, which is capitulation to the United States, then surely it will have to be reflected in a change in the approach that is selling out this important provision which has represented a major step forward in getting more Canadian control and ownership of the oil and gas industry in this country.


Ross Harvey: Madam Speaker, one more question for the hon. member if I may. He remarked at some length on the fact that the exemption the Canadian government entered into the NAFTA treaty in annex one, which allows us now to maintain ownership requirements in the energy industry, will in effect be a nullity after the passage of this bill. It is expected that the exemption thereafter will simply be withdrawn and that annex will be cleansed of that particular exemption.
It is my understanding that once that is the case then never again, so long as the NAFTA is in effect, will Canada be able to restore any level of ownership restriction on energy commodities or indeed on any other form of industrial production.
I would like to ask the hon. member if that is his understanding as well?


Steven W. Langdon: Madam Speaker, this simply represents, as my colleague has so aptly stressed to the House, one more means by which the NAFTA and the free trade agreement in effect ties the hands of future Canadian governments. That is one of the reasons that we think it is absolutely crucial that the free trade agreement and the NAFTA become things from which we free ourselves.
We think it is very important, for the freedom of Canadian governments to do what is needed in the
future to revive our economy and give us a new sense of direction and dynamism, for us to withdraw from the free trade agreement and not proceed with the NAFTA.
Of course if we do proceed with the NAFTA on January 1, 1994 it will then not be possible under the NAFTA to put new restrictions into place with respect to foreign ownership in any industry in which those restrictions do not at the present time exist. What we would have to do in that case would be to withdraw from the NAFTA itself.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, I think it is fortuitous that we are having this kind of debate on March 17, as it is St. Patrick's Day which is a wonderful day not just for the Irish but for all those who wish they were. Nevertheless, as a result of certain events in Canadian political life St. Patrick's Day has unfortunately come to be associated with the relationship that developed between a prominent Irish Canadian and a prominent Irish American, namely, the current and now retiring Prime Minister of Canada and the former President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan.
All those of us with a certain amount of Irish blood, and I count myself among those, are not able to sing When Irish Eyes are Smiling with quite the same gusto and uncritical enthusiasm with which we used to before the days of the shamrock summit and the spectacle of the Prime Minister and Ronald Reagan singing that wonderful song together.
It is the consequences of that unequal, subordinate relationship that we are debating here today. Either through naivety or evil, or however it came to be, one Prime Minister of this country set out to dismantle and Americanize what had developed into an independent country, not fully but nevertheless much more independent than it had ever been. It was developing into an independent country.
The fact that one Prime Minister could set out to dismantle and Americanize this country will go down in Canadian history, if 100 years from now there is anything called Canadian history and it is not just a sub-chapter in American history, as one of the most heinous political and economic crimes of the age from the point of view of those people who value what has been built up in Canada over the last 125 years.
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We have a bill before us which was an open objective of President Reagan at one time, which was an open objective of the Americans for a long time. No other government, no matter how much it might have bent, wove or submitted in some way or another to American will and American power, ever dared to just openly say that whatever it is they want we will give it to them and give it openly, we will give it to them without ambiguity, as a free gift.
That is what we have here in terms of one of the final acts in the complete abandonment of any notion that Canada as a country and as a community should maintain any kind of control over who owns its energy resources.
It is amazing just how much can happen in 10 years. Never let it be said that politics is a long, drawn-out process, that it takes decades to do things.
.(1755 )
It may take decades to do good things but it has taken less than a decade to do the very bad thing that has been done to the admirable ideal and the partially realized reality of a Canadian-owned energy industry. Ten years ago it was not treated as if it was some sort of romantic notion but as a partially realized reality, and many people hoped that it might even become more so.


Ross Harvey: It was an element of government policy.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: It was an element of government policy.
It is hard to believe just how quickly some of the things that seemed plausible in 1983, which we might want to have improved upon because they had only been taken in half measure, now seem to be completely beyond the pale-to use an expression that I am told has its origins in Dublin and therefore is appropriate for today.
Why is this? We all remember the story, and again it is apropos for today, that when the colonel who owned the factory or the plant in Baie Comeau came to Baie Comeau once or twice a year there was the young lad from Baie Comeau, young Brian, who was always willing and able to sit on the colonel's knee, almost like David for Saul, and sing for the colonel.
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The fact is that young lad who sang for the colonel over time developed a choir called the federal Conservative caucus, which has been singing for the colonel. Who is the colonel? The colonel is the symbol of that absentee American landlord. He is the symbol of the Canadian future that has been visited on us in the last eight or nine years and is about to be visited on us even more, thanks to the North American free trade agreement.
The Prime Minister has been singing for the colonel all his life and he developed a choir around him called the Conservative caucus, which has been singing for the colonel these last nine years.
I have always thought that there are two very different views of Canada. That is the difference between the Prime Minister's hometown and mine. I also come from a company town. It is called Transcona. The company there is the CNR, which is a publicly-owned company, a Crown corporation.
I have felt ever since the day that the current Prime Minister was elected Prime Minister of this country that my kind of town, my kind of Canada, has been on the endangered species list. In my kind of Canada we were not ashamed to work for a publicly-owned company and we were proud of the work that all of us-uncles, aunts, nephews, cousins, and grandfathers-who worked for the CNR did.
We did not know we were part of what was wrong with Canada. We did not know that we deserved, during nine years of Conservative government, to be hunted down like animals and made extinct. That is what this government has done to that kind of Canada through deregulation, free trade agreements, privatization, contracting out and all the other ways they have said to the hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of Canadians who have worked in the public sector over decades that their way of living was what was wrong with Canada, that that is something that has to be eliminated, that an army of people with masters of business administration have to be hired to eliminate these people who have worked for CN, Air Canada and the public sector in general. Part of what was wrong with Canada was these institutions, which the Tories have so diligently set out to get rid of and destroy.

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Two different views of Canada, Mr. Speaker: The view from Baie Comeau where everyone pays homage to the absentee American landlord and the view from Transco-na where we worked for the people of Canada through a company that was owned by the people of Canada, and we never had to sing for anybody, and we still do not sing for anybody that we do not choose to.
The Prime Minister may be retiring but the Canada that he leaves behind is a model of that town and that context that he grew up in. I say this with apologies to the people of Baie Comeau, but it is true nevertheless.
We in Transcona and other places like it will not forget the Prime Minister. We will also not forget who was part of his hunting party, who tried to run us down, who tried to find those people who worked in those kinds of places, wherever they might be, and eliminate their jobs and give them to so-called superior people and superior institutions in the private sector or, worse still, to private sector institutions or companies or multinational corporations in the United States of America and now Mexico.
That is what is wrong, as far as I am concerned, with what I have seen over the last nine years of this Conservative government.
This bill, as has been said by my colleagues more ably than I can say it and certainly in greater detail, is part of the whole Canada-U.S. FTA-North American free trade agreement agenda. The shame of it is that it is part of what the government is willing to do in some ways outside the agreement. It is like the changes to the laws affecting the production of generic drugs in Canada. It is part of the agreement but it is not part of the agreement; it is not in the agreement because the government does not want to own up to the fact that it is part of the agreement.
The government give the illusion of sovereignty here. It says no, it has not been forced to do this to itself, it freely does this to itself. It is like someone who does something because, although nobody has a gun to their head, there is a guy in the next room with a gun to their head who has promised them that if they do not do it he will come into their room. It is shameful.
It is misguided. Just take it on the economic logic alone, that foreign investment is needed, foreign investment creates jobs. I listened carefully to the Minister for International Trade earlier, the former Minister of Finance, when he said "yes, foreign-owned companies
do not have the same record of keeping capital in the country as Canadian owned companies, but that is the price you have to pay for their investing in Canada in the first place".
The question has to be asked, as it should be with other policies that have been introduced by the same minister: Did the policy work? Do these kinds of policies work? Do they actually have the effect that the government intends, regardless of questions of sovereignty or of Canadian control or ideological and moral concerns?
Do they actually work? Is it even an internally coherent argument economically? Often it is not. Often if you look at the performance of these particular measures, they do not deliver. It does not happen.
The analogy that I would like to use on that is something about which I had an earlier exchange in the House with the Minister for International Trade, a policy that he brought in when he was the Minister of Finance, the capital gains tax exemption. There is an example of a policy that was designed to do a certain thing. It was designed, as the minister said earlier in the House, to stimulate small business, stimulate investment and create jobs, but did it do that?
Some people have had a good look at that policy. One person in particular has written an article called "The Wilson Legacy", a man by the name of Peter Myers. He calls that capital gains tax exemption the biggest budget goof in Canadian history. He says that only $6 billion out of the $20 billion that was forfeited in terms of public revenues ever went for the purpose that the minister had in mind when he created that capital gains tax exemption.
I am not even sure that he should have created it in the first place, even if it would have worked, but let us just take the minister in terms of his own goals. In order to stimulate $6 billion worth of investment, theoretically speaking, he forfeited another $14 billion in the form of tax exemptions to people who were very quick to realize that this was a real giveaway because it did not just apply to new investment in business. It applied to the investments that they already had made. They would be able to sell those shares or whatever capital gain they realized on those shares that they had bought prior to the budget of 1985. They claimed that capital gains tax exemption after the budget of 1985 and made a killing. No new jobs created there, no new investment.
March 17, 1993

The same with real estate speculation, all kinds of people taking advantage of that lifetime capital gains tax exemption of half a million dollars to roll over properties, to flip properties, to buy properties, for the specific purpose of selling them again after their value had increased to take advantage of speculation, as it is called. It does not create any new jobs, except maybe for the odd real estate agent.
I raise this as an example, albeit not one in the energy sector, of the way in which this government has so badly mismanaged the economy, even in terms of its own goals.
I think that is true with respect to what the government has done in the energy sector. I think it is true with respect to what has happened as a result of the free trade agreements. What you cannot get anybody to do is to admit that they were wrong, to admit that it has not worked out.
They are more content to kind of look at what has happened to the economy of Ontario and say: "Well, it is either a recession or it is the NDP government". It cannot be the free trade agreement. It cannot have anything to do with the most significant economic policy decision we have made in this century. It could not have anything to do with that.
Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom tends to accept that kind of language. We talk about the recession. We talk about the economic downturn. This is not a recession. This is a complete restructuring of the North American economy. Every time anybody uses the word recession, they are using language which does more to conceal than to reveal what is actually going on in the Canadian economy and in the North American economy.
That is one of the things to which I think everyone should give some thought. The minister of trade said to the hon. member for Edmonton East, which I thought was a kind of History 101: "Well, if it had not been for foreign investment in Leduc in 1947 there would be no oil industry". All right, fair enough. It may not be entirely accurate but certainly that is the myth in Alberta. I have heard many Alberta MPs, particularly Gordon Taylor, and if I heard him once I heard him 100 times say: "When we wanted Canadian capital there was no Canadian capital. Nobody would invest in Alberta.
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The Americans came and invested in Alberta and that is why we have an energy industry today". Fair enough.
However, over time many Canadians in all parties came to see that the degree of foreign ownership of an already established energy industry was something that was of concern. Over time-


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


Ross Harvey: Mr. Speaker, I too deeply regret that the hon. member's time has expired. I think it is a terrible shame. Therefore, I would pose to this hon. member the same question I posed earlier to the member for Essex-Windsor which, in a nutshell, is: Had the member unlimited time in this House to speak how would he carry on his remarks at this point?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, if I had unlimited time I would say the following. I would pick up just where I left off, talking about Leduc and the fact that it is illegitimate to use the historical fact that American investment was needed in order to get our energy industry off the ground in Alberta because of a lack of Canadian capital to justify the wholesale abandonment now of an industry that had the potential not so many years ago of being significantly Canadian owned.
That goal has been systematically abandoned through a variety of measures; through the privatization of Petro-Canada for instance which has to do not only with Canadian ownership per se but the form of Canadian ownership, whether there was to be a significant element of public ownership or not, and also through all the other measures that we have had before us including this bill that we have before us today.


Ross Harvey: Mr. Speaker, one of the things that the hon. member mentioned during the course of his remarks was his contention that this bill was in fact free trade implementing legislation, that this bill was in some senses one of that array of bills that has been already placed, is being placed and will continue to be placed before this House, all of which have as their intent the implementation of various parts of the North American free trade agreement and indeed some residual parts of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

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I think, for example, of such things as the act to amend the Railway Act, Bill C-ll, which received Royal Assent on November 26, 1991 having previously passed this House. That bill came before this House as a direct consequence of U.S. lobbying that was authorized in its original free trade implementation legislation in the United States in 1988 which in its section 304(a)(2) called upon the American President to press for changes to the eastern Canadian transportation rates.
The President, being a good American, apparently pressed for those changes and son of a gun if he did not get them in Bill C-ll, the act to amend the Railway Act. The Conservatives have actually gone further by announcing that they will soon make other changes that the Americans want in these regards, this time to the Western Grain Transportation Act, but that is another story.
Similarly, that same American law of 1988, the American law that implemented their part of the free trade agreement, in its section 304(c)(1) called for negotiating with Canada to increase the minimum North American content limits on automotive products, and I quote that American law: "from 50 per cent to at least 60 per cent". Son of a gun, if Canada's chief NAFTA negotiator, John Weekes, did not announce in August of 1992 that Canada had acquiesced to this demand as well. In fact, Weekes ceded it. The American legislation called for an increase of 50 per cent to 60 per cent. Hell, we are good folks. We will give them 62.5 per cent.
I am not at all certain that it will come as a surprise to Canadians to learn that the bill before us today achieves in legislation precisely what the American Congress directed the American President to achieve in Article 304(b)(2) of that same 1988 American act in which the American President was directed to get the Canadians to get rid of their ownership restrictions on petroleum, oil and gas. He has achieved it. Ronald Reagan lives in the Canadian House of Commons. How about that.
I would just like, if I may, to put to my hon. colleague this question. Is there anything that an American President could request of this government and its array of Mulroney choristers that it would not sing? Is there any tune so base, any melody so disharmonious or any
accompaniment so vile that it would be deemed past him?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question.
The fact is that many times I hoped that I had seen the limit of how far this government would go to meet the multinational corporate agenda which so often coincides with the American agenda. It always continues to surprise me in a most unfortunate way.
I must say that I am glad to see that some members of the government have come back into the Chamber. I thought for a minute perhaps that the government had resigned or that it was serving dinner in the lobby. Actually for a significant amount of time there were no government members present.


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


Mr. Mike Breaugh (Oshawa):: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to participate in the debate, though I must say that part of what concerns me about this bill is that it typifies the way in which this Parliament functions or does not function.
As I read through the bill, there appeared to be fairly insignificant changes because the printed bill makes reference to removing a few sections of some acts and altering some definitions which on the first reading do not appear to be of much significance at all. The bill, as it is printed, does not really tell you very much about what it does.
If one was in the Chamber this afternoon anticipating the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources to lead a spirited debate on this bill, one would have been disappointed. If one was expecting that same minister to be present during the debate on the bill and to answer questions from members on all sides or that the government would have appointed an official minister for the day to carry the bill, then one would be hard pressed to find out who that is. It kind of typifies the parliamentary process and where we are. Here is a bill printed which in essence does not appear to do very much. One really has to dig into the reasons behind why the government would introduce this bill to get much of a sense of what it is trying to do with it.
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I was watching earlier in the afternoon. I take it the Minister for International Trade was here for a little while. He made some reference to what I thought was a rather good speech by the member for Edmonton East who at least gave our perspective on legislation of this nature. He stood up and said these words, I believe: "ideological garbage". There was not a member standing in this place saying: "I disagree with your point of view". There was not a member standing in this place giving his reasons why he might disagree with an opposition member. It was a senior minister of the Crown whose eloquence extended to the use of the term "ideological garbage".
Maybe that is one of the reasons why people across Canada say: "If that is the very best argument that can be mustered by a senior minister of the Crown why do we not toss them out and go to the local beer hall where we can at least get some energy behind that kind of language?"
I was interested to note that a little later on in the debate the same minister of the Crown was interrupted.
I could be wrong, but it did appear to me as I watched that little interjection transpire that this same senior minister of the Crown was not really aware of what bill was before the House this afternoon and had to be corrected. That's rather unusual.
I think it says a little bit about the parliamentary process as this Parliament grinds to a halt. As well, it says a whole lot about ideology because as one reads through this bill and one understands where it fits in this whole free-trading process one really has to understand that if one examines the numbers there is no great crying financial reason to do this. There is an ideological reason to do this. There is a belief in free trade, almost a blind belief in free trade, that would drive a government to do this.
There are commitments that are perhaps not written on paper, perhaps done behind closed doors and perhaps done during the course of negotiations on things like free trade agreements with the United States that begin to appear in this type of legislation. On the surface it does not make sense. More money went out in the last decade than came in for investment purposes.
We seem to be levelling off in fact and perhaps changing just a little bit in terms of who owns the petroleum industries in Canada.
I admit to being not very ideological but I would say this as an absolute statement. I believe that the re-
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sources of this country do not belong to any private or public corporation. However old-fashioned a notion this might be, those resources in the ground, on top of the ground or in the sea, belong to this nation. It is true. We have always developed them and brought them into use through some myriad of schemes of private development and public development. We have tried almost every kind of joint venture that one could think of.
However, let us get to the basis of all that. The reason why this law is before the Parliament of Canada is that in a legal sense the resources and the extraction of those resources belong to the people of Canada.
Let me introduce an element that has not been talked about very much in this Chamber this afternoon. If one came in through my industrial riding of Oshawa and asked people whether they were getting good value for their dollar in the petroleum sector and whether their government was doing something good for them, then one really could not muster much of an argument about price for the consumer goods that my citizens use. In order to do that, oddly enough, one would have to go to the United States and talk about natural gas in California.
Most of the people who I represent are thoroughly confused about how American companies can come into Canada, extract resources from distant points in our land, transfer them way down into the United States and sell them cheaper there than they can sell them here in Canada. That befuddles a lot of us. I pretend no insider knowledge. I pretend no understanding of it all. I simply say that it confuses the hell out of me too.
I do not understand that. Is there a government in place to protect both our resources in the first instance and to serve the best interests of our Canadian consumers? Second, does it provide good, strong economic growth machinery? If those were the concerns of the Government of Canada, they are surely not represented in this bill.
This bill it seems to me represents an ideology at work that says flatly that only the private sector can do anything and the best thing a government can do is get out of the way. It says that when one engages into large, multinational free trade agreements, such as is now being proposed between Canada, the United States and Mexico, the best law is no law at all. Governments should just get out of the way. In some magical way the private sector will do what no one else in the world can do.

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I do not believe that for a moment. I think that is the height of stupidity. All across the section of Canada where I live lie all of the ruins of that kind of political stupidity, all of the closed factories, all of the small businesses bearing that hardship, all of the local economies that suffer because somebody somewhere else in the world has made an economic decision which destroyed their local community. I choose my words carefully here because there are many small towns in southern Ontario whose local economy has been destroyed by ideology, by free trade and by this kind of legislation.
I am sure that before there is another election this current government will be back into those small towns announcing a grant for this and a cheque for that and a subsidy for something else. Would it not have made more sense not to destroy the economy of small towns? However, one does that when one enters into a free trade agreement which in theory does somebody some good but in practice ruins the economy of a local community. In a small town, closing down the one furniture factory, the one auto parts supplier and the plant ruins that local economy.
It is not just the people in that plant who suffer. It is everybody else in that community. Every person who contributes to the support of public education in that community gets hurt. Everybody who contributes to policing in that community gets hurt. Everybody who supports the comer store gets hurt. One has damaged irreparably the local economy.
Each small town from all across Canada has its own little stmcture. It has its own little economic pattern and growth. When one intrudes on that in a negative way, such as what this government did with its free trade agreement, one intrudes into every single household there. You invade every single pocketbook.
Perhaps it is true that the only damage one can see is a factory that has closed and gone to Georgia, Alabama or, if this government has its way, a little farther south into Mexico. Maybe that is all one can see with a first look, but if one stops to listen and to look around at the faces of the people in those small communities, one soon understands that one has damaged every single one of them.
It is part of this kind of legislation I suppose that somebody somewhere fervently believes that a big sector
of our economy like the petroleum industry in western Canada really has to have massive investment from outside our own shores. Setting aside for a moment whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, is this bill going to do that?
In my view, it would be absolutely and totally nonsensical to believe for a single moment that this legislation is going to bring in droves of investment from offshore. That is not going to happen.
A former minister of energy of this same government sat before a parliamentary committee and said so. So what is this bill about then? It is about ideology. It is about somebody's political sense and upbringing over their common sense. It just kind of squashes common sense.
As I heard a couple of other members say, it is not at all unlike the reference that was made to a little place called Schefferville in Quebec where the current Prime Minister rose in his own magnificent way to become the Canadian head of that company. He sought at one point in time to virtually close the entire community because the American company, Iron Ore of Canada that had its Canadian subsidiary, decided that operations should cease there.
In a blink of an eye they ceased without question, without any malice or without anybody being mean or nasty. That is just the way that free enterprise operates. That is just the way that business decisions are made.
Who then picks up all of the ramifications of that? In some small case I suppose the private sector pays its price. The private sector in my community and in many communities now is downsizing. That is the polite word to use. It is not necessarily that those production facilities are not useful any more. It is not necessarily that they are not profit-making any more. It is just that there is no real reason to have them.
If General Motors of Canada has production capacity in New York State or in Michigan and we have the same kind of capacity in my home town of Oshawa, there is no reason to have it stay in Oshawa any more. Move it. If the capacity is somewhere else, take it there. If you have an axle plant in St. Catharines that makes a good product which makes a profit

which General Motors itself says it will continue to buy, source its part from that exact same plant-will shut it down because it is in the process of doing something else.
March 17, 1993

I know some members will never grasp this notion but sometimes the work of the private sector runs against the better public interest. That is kind of an outlandish statement and I do not really mean to upset anybody, but not all the time does the very best interests of the private sector run smoothly along with the best interests of everybody else. In my view that is where a government is supposed to step in.
It is fine for all of us in all political parties to have some kind of basic ideology and political belief, there is absolutely nothing that anyone here in this Chamber would want to do to alter that. But when that ideology gets in front of all other common sense, surely then the ideology should step aside.
This bill in many ways represents what is wrong with government in Canada for me. I would expect, as somebody who has been in politics for 20 years, that I should be able to read a bill and tell everyone, just by reading the bill, what the bill is about. I do not believe it can be done with this bill. You should not have to run off and research all the background of free trade agreements and of the existing state of the petroleum industry to make any sense out of printed legislation. I do not believe that is a reasonable thing to do.
If the government wants this bill, it should have the minister front and centre every single moment that the legislation is before the House of Commons. That is not true here either. I do not want to get carried away with this for a moment and all of us do understand there are pressures for members of this House to be in 19 different places all day today. All of us share that pressure. I do.
But if a government feels that this type of legislation is important it ought to have its members here. It surely should. It ought to have ministers of the Crown here who at least know what bill is before the House at any given moment. That is my version of how a Parliament is supposed to work; a minister responsible for a piece of legislation carries it in the Chamber.
All of us understand that there are times when the minister cannot possibly be in the Chamber. To me that would say to not proceed with the legislation at that moment. If the minister wants it, it is his or her
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obligation to be here to carry it through, to explain to all the other members why the government thinks this is an important initiative.
We are going to have some more of these arguments because I believe more of what will happen in the next little while in this Parliament, if it stays in business much longer, is going to be brought out directly to the free trade agreement. I believe that free trade in its many forms-with the United States, with Mexico, with whomever you want-is going to dominate our discussions here for a little while. It ought to. It is the substantive issue that has robbed us of jobs in communities that I visit almost every month as I go around my part of Canada. It has hurt us. This kind of legislation has hurt us.
If there is an argument which says that this bill is going to do something good for Canada, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I have watched the entire debate in this Chamber this afternoon and I have not seen a government member stand up and do that. I have seen government ministers get up and insult somebody on this side. I am not too meek and mild about this, he can get up and insult me all he wants, but it has to be understood that when he does that I will give him back in kind whatever he has to say. However, that is not the relevant point; the relevant point should be that if the government believes in this law, get the minister here, marshal the arguments and make them.
I heard the minister of trade ridiculing, I believe it was the Liberal critic, for being on both sides of the issue. The minister of trade obviously does not understand the Liberal Party of Canada. That is their forte. That is what has made them strong. What has kept them going for so many years is the magnificent ability to say: We believe in the left and we believe in the right and if you don't like this policy we have got another policy over here. They change magnificently. Now they await the coronation, not of Kim Campbell as the leader of the Tory party but the return of their rightful place in Canadian history. I guess when the Tories have really loused it up very bad, people should by nature appoint the Liberals as the next government. We may be in for a treat. We may well see that age old process in Canadian politics about to get changed.

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I believe that members on all sides have an obligation to do things which perhaps it is not fair to ask the Canadian people to do. When we see a bill like this which on the surface does not appear to do very much, it is our job to find out exactly what does all that fine print mean, exactly how does that translate in my own constituency in the part of Canada that I represent and in fact to the whole of Canada's economy?
I believe this bill does some damage. The free trade agreement which is the instigation of this kind of legislation has done us more damage. The government that has brought us to this stage in our parliamentary process has done us even more damage. A curse on all of them.


Ross Harvey: Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by welcoming the minister back to the House. We missed ya Bill, we missed you somethin' fierce.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Unfortunately I was able to watch it all.


Ross Harvey: I would like to pick up on some remarks that the hon. member for Oshawa made concerning the Liberal Party as he was concluding his address. I must admit there is very little that has surprised me in the debate this afternoon.
I have been following this bill for long enough now that I figured I had pretty much everybody's position pegged, but when the two-and there have only been two-speakers for the Liberal Party spoke this afternoon and both, not without a bit of hemming and hawing, a bit of tacking to the right and tacking to the left, finally came out and said they are going to support this bill, I was surprised. I was shocked.
I have been listening to various members of the Liberal Party for a long time now saying: "Oh no, no, we are opposed to free trade. We are opposed to the NAFTA. We are opposed to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and by God you just give us the chance and we are going to renegotiate it and make it swell".
Today I hear again the only two spokespersons for the Liberal Party saying: "No, no, this bill is okay. This integral element in free trade is fine by us. Hey, just let her whistle through there folks". I must admit I have difficulty squaring this.
I was going to ask the hon. member for Oshawa, who as a parliamentarian is much my senior and whose experience of the Liberal Party which of course is in Ontario to be found in its essence far exceeds any such experience I might enjoy, if perhaps he could speculate on the meaning of the apparent decision of the Liberal Party to support this odious little piece of legislation.


Michael James Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to have some words with my hon. colleague when he refers to me as being that much older than him. We will have that outside.


Ross Harvey: Senior in parliamentary experience.


Michael James Breaugh: Senior in parliamentary experience. He is trying to weasel out of it now.
I want to note that I believe we have flushed the minister in the Chamber, as the saying goes-it is a parliamentary term-and that is not bad. We are going to flush him just a bit further.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: If it bothers you I can do without this.


Michael James Breaugh: Okay. The hon. member asked me to try and explain some of the comments that were made by Liberal members somewhat earlier. I guess the little parallel which I could offer him as being the essence of the Liberal Party is that a Liberal is one who feels quite comfortable with the notion, as did David Peterson did when he ran as premier of Ontario, that he would be violently opposed to free trade with the United States. Shortly after the election he became very comfortable with free trade with the United States.
In order to understand how the Liberal Party functions one has to understand raw political desire for power and it really translates to this in very simple terms.


An hon. member:: Is that Bob Rae's problem?
March 17, 1993


Michael James Breaugh: Whatever needs to be done before an election is done. If it is necessary to say they are for free trade, they will say that. Whatever is expeditious after the election is also done. It is their ability to separate those two things. Where you think there is a right and left, they see neither. Where you search for consistency, they are never hampered by that niggling little concept that one should think through a position and stick with it. If there is some cause however fleet, however minute, which bumps them off a position, they are happily bumped.
If the hon. member is somewhat confused, as I noticed the Minister for International Trade was, he has certainly been in this Chamber a lot longer than I have. He could not figure out how the Liberal Party could be in favour of this legislation and against free trade. The problem is that he might just as well have said: "I cannot figure out why the Liberal Party is against free trade and against this or for it and against this".
These words being for something or believing in something are totally alien to the whole cause of Liberalism in Canada. They have one single-minded goal. Whatever is necessary, whatever has to be done to get them in their rightful place, they will do.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I was undecided whether to take part in this debate. Although it is an important one, it is a debate over Bill C-106 by which the government undertakes to abandon completely the goal that the Canadian people, and at one time the Canadian government, have had for some time of maintaining and increasing our control over the petroleum industry and for that matter, over other industries as well.
When I listened to the debate, and I have heard practically all of it, I felt that what was said by my colleagues from Edmonton East, Essex-Windsor, Winnipeg Transcona, and now from Oshawa, was excellently said. Their command of the subject and of the rhetoric was far beyond mine. However I realized there was at least one point that could be added in our opposition to this bill. I wish to deal with that one point now.
This is a point of moral teaching. It was well made about one decade ago by the Roman Catholic bishops of Canada. I will quote very few words from them. It is in their document The Ethical Reflections on the Economic
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Crisis of 1982 in which they said that economic recovery would have to have three goals. "The needs of the poor must take priority over the wants of the rich. Secondly, the workers' rights must come ahead of the maximization of profits. Thirdly, the participation of marginalized groups must take precedence over the preservation of the system which excludes them". That is a very important point stated three times.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Order, please. The hon. member for Willowdale, I would like to see the speaker if you do not mind.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Thank you for your judgment in the matter. This point which is the same point stated three times over for clarification by the bishops is a point which applies very specially to the indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere, the ones who were conquered by Europeans starting five centuries ago and are still held in subjection in practically every country if not every country of the western hemisphere, except in the Caribbean where they were exterminated to the last man, woman and child. They are not in subjection there. They have been replaced by their killers.
Those people are still here in many parts of North America, including Canada. The Pope visited here in the last decade. When he went to the north, to places like northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories, he made a point of speaking particularly to these people and reminding them and us of their rights as human beings created by God.
It is not the point made only by the Roman Catholic church. At this time of year there is a program mounted by several of the church bodies in Canada called Ten Days for World Development. There is the Anglican church, the Evangelical Lutheran church, the Presbyterian church, the United church and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. For good measure they are also associated with CIDA, the development arm of the Canadian government.
During these 10 days for world development presently and at this time in other years for 20 years now, they have pressed the point that development and economic recovery and economic health must rest on respect for the people at the bottom of the ladder rather than higher respect for the people at the top of the ladder.

March 17, 1993
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This has been developed this year into three restatements of the principle. One is that sustaining people's lives and cultures within their communities, that is small-scale operations, regional self-reliance, local ownership and control, must take priority over supporting the profit objectives of transnational corporations. This speaks directly against Bill C-106.
Yes, there is oil as there are many other valuable resources in our country. Yes, it can be developed. But to say it can only be developed by the most powerful corporations in the world which are mainly centred in the United States is simply not true. We can do things in a more co-operative way. If we do not do things in a more co-operative way then we suffer. It is not just the people at the bottom who suffer such as the native peoples and the poor people of Canada, but the whole of our society suffers. We all suffer if we neglect the people at the bottom of the ladder, if we neglect local control, regional self-reliance and instead in a lazy or a defeated sense hand over control to someone somewhere else in the world.
The second principle concerns conserving renewable resources, that is plants, water and forests, and also non-renewable resources, such as agricultural soils, oil and gas. Conserving them for future generations must take priority over selling them for short-term profits.
One of the remarkable statements that sticks in my mind is that of the former Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Hon. Pierre Trudeau. He was in a rush to sign some earlier agreement with the United States about control of oil and said that we had better sell it to them. He thought we had oil for hundreds of years ahead. Somebody had sold him a story that we had so much oil we could not possibly use it up in a century. He said we had better sell it to the Americans while they were still in the market to buy it. As though some day nobody would want to buy our oil. Within a very short couple of years, it was found that we did not by any means have such unlimited supplies of oil.
We are now in the business of using up the easily available supplies and moving to places like Hibernia. There we have to put in billions of dollars to get
somebody else to invest money to take the oil out of the ocean and take it to the United States. We will not get the oil. We just subsidize the foreign investor who is going to get it.
I believe that the teaching of the churches based on the teachings of the Christian and Jewish tradition is that we should have some regard for our children and our grandchildren. They are going to need some of that oil. We should not be in such a hurry to sell it all off as fast as it can be extracted.
The third principle is that all citizens should participate in setting their country's social and economic priorities and in deciding how trading agreements can complement these. Economic or social agreements must not limit future decisions for the common good.
It has been pointed out by several of my colleagues that this bill is essentially a part of the same action as the North American free trade agreement. If this bill is passed and if the North American free trade agreement is passed, governments of Canada will be prevented from responding to the citizens of Canada if Canadians ask for greater control to be restored over the oil industry.
The Government of Canada will not belong to the citizens of Canada. It will be an instrument of the oil companies in the United States or somewhere else if the United States should lose control of its multinational corporations.
What I am saying is that the teaching of our major churches in Canada and the 3,000 years of religious tradition behind them warns against giving away control of our oil industry for nothing.
I hear somebody snorting as though he did not think it was for nothing. In fact we have not seen in the history of the past 10 years the benefit of having these oil rights and control sold off to other countries.
What we have seen, certainly in a comparable case in Ontario is the disaster of having foreign companies own so many of our manufacturing industries. Once the tariffs were said to be taken off or in the process of being taken off, we lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing industries because we had not had the good sense to establish our own control over our own jobs.
March 17, 1993

Canadian citizens should be able now and in the future to make the decisions about our oil industry, about our forestry industry, about our agricultural industry, about our manufacturing industry, about our transportation industry, about our communications industry. We should not sign away our birthright, even if somebody is willing to pay us money for it at the time. The money loses its value much faster than the resources and the infrastructure of our country.
It was about 2,800 years ago in Israel that a person stood up in the marketplace in Samaria, and said: "Do not sell the poor for silver; do not sell the needy, the desperate people, for a pair of shoes". This was the prophet Amos. The rich people of his time did not pay any attention to him. Their country has long since disappeared. Others are replacing it.
Others still have to learn the same lesson: If we desert the poor and if we sell off the birthright and the patrimony of our country, then the whole nation will suffer along with the poor. Therefore, I urge that this bill be defeated.


David Kilgour: Mr. Speaker, I was listening with interest to what the member for Trinity-Spadina said. One of the churches he named is the one I belong to. Many members in this House belong to many of the churches he named. Is he suggesting that the churches of Canada are opposed to this bill?
Is he suggesting that the member for Western Arctic, who stood up and supported this bill, was somehow misrepresenting the views of her constituents? They desperately need jobs in oil and gas exploration, jobs in oil and gas servicing, jobs in mines, all kinds of jobs.
Is he suggesting that the churches of Canada want people to live on welfare or social assistance?
As the hon. member is an ordained minister, I hope he will speak carefully in reply to those questions. I hope he will not suggest that the churches of Canada are somehow lining up outside the Parliament Buildings in opposition to this bill. As a member of one of those churches I think that the churches of Canada believe overwhelmingly in the importance of each individual person, each individual soul if you like. They want to see people work. They want to see people be able to have dignity which comes from honest labour. They want to see all kinds of things.
Government Orders
I am not sure whether I understood the hon. member correctly, but I hope I did not. However, for the member to suggest that anybody belonging to a church, as many of us do here, should somehow be against this bill, I respectfully suggest is not honestly representing the views of any of the churches he was trying to represent in his arguments.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very direct question. He expressed a hope that I was not saying what he thought I was saying. I will do my best to make him happy by explaining again what I did say.
What I said was that the principles published by the authority of the church I belong to, the Anglican church, and the other ones I mentioned, do not mention Bill C-106 and do not specifically mention any oil companies. They do speak against giving the priority and the power to the transnational corporations in preference to the local people, whether it be the local people of Canada, the local people of northern Alberta, the local people of the Northwest Territories or whatever region.
The unwarranted leap is being made by the hon. member when he suggested that the only way the people in the north can have jobs is by selling our birthright to the transnational corporations. The hon. member is making a completely unwarranted leap.
There would be jobs if this government followed a different policy. Instead of funding the transnational corporations with multimillion dollar tax breaks, it should fund small business and not by taking the money from the unemployment insurance or from the unemployed. The money should be redirected from the transnationals to the small business people, not to the land speculators as was done by the former Minister of Finance with his tax exemption for capital gains. It should be done by much more carefully studied and publicly supported programs of aid to small business. If this government followed that policy then those people would have the jobs the transnational corporations have not and will not give them.
I ask the hon. member to consider the basic principles which I quoted from the document published by Ten Days for World Development. I ask him to consider those principles and see how they bear on this bill. The churches have not undertaken to lobby against any particular legislation in this matter, but they have given us some clear, moral guidance.

Private Members' Business


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The hon. member for Beaches-Woodbine will be the first one to be recognized when this bill comes up again.
It being seven o'clock p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 30(6), the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, February 11, consideration of the motion of Mr. Mifflin:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take immediate action to extend custodial jurisdiction for northern cod over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion of my colleague from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception. I just want to make sure that everyone is aware that on February 11, 1993 my colleague put a motion before this House that reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take immediate action to extend custodial jurisdiction for northern cod over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.
This is a very commendable motion. It shows the guts that the Liberal Party has in pursuing the extension of our functional jurisdiction over the fish that are on what we call the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.
One has to remember that in 1977 a Liberal government extended the 200-mile fishing jurisdiction over our coastal waters. This was not done easily, but our government took an initiative and it went after that. At the same time, it did say to the countries: "You can participate in the stocks that are excess to our Canadians needs". One of my big disappointments has been that the provincial government of Nova Scotia and the other provincial governments have not gone out to try and market the fish caught by foreigners within our 200-mile limit and outside.
That fish does not go to the U.S. It goes to places like Cuba, Japan and eastern Europe. We have not made a consistent, hard effort to develop the markets so that our companies process the fish or that our boats catch that excess fish. We have not since 1977 made much more than a nominal attempt.
It is one of the faults of the Government of Nova Scotia that it has not taken this upon itself because it is responsible for marketing. We have empty plants. At the same time that we declared our 200-mile exclusive fishing jurisdiction in 1977, we agreed that the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization would be set up. That was to manage the stocks of the Atlantic beyond our 200 miles.
What has happened in the interim is that as of 1986, which is a sad state of affairs, the European Community and others have overfished the nose and tail of the Grand Banks. We in Canada are in a unique situation. It is our continental shelf. We have control of it as our continental shelf, but we do not have control of the waters above that continental shelf. We cannot exercise that jurisdiction, even though it is the same stocks that we fish on the other side of the 200-mile limit, within our 200-mile limit.
We see countries overfish the quotas set by NAFO, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. We see them overfish. Our own fishery is in trouble with the same stocks, in so much trouble that the minister of fisheries declared last July that there would be a moratorium for at least two years, if I am not mistaken, for the spawning biomass of northern cod stock to recover quickly to long term average levels. This has been devastating for our community and particularly in Newfoundland where communities are so dependent on those stocks, whether inshore or offshore. Yet they have sat back and watched members of some of the European communities in defiance of NAFO quotas continue to fish and overfish the stock on which there is a moratorium.
The minister of fisheries whom we have heard in this debate is now making arrangements with the European Community for them to abide by our moratorium or to abide by whatever the governing body, whichever it is, is going to say.
March 17, 1993

There are no fish. When the fish come back, are the people who are taking the stock going to come back and take to the extent they have taken in the past? We expect the stocks to rejuvenate. We in the Liberal Party want a government that is going to extend our custodial jurisdiction over the fish that come from within our continental shelf so that we can protect that stock for future generations.
Many of my colleagues have gone to Europe many, many times to speak to the Europeans. It did not help. The only thing that has stopped them is that there is no fish. I think that before the fish come back we here in Canada had better take the same effective measure we took in 1977 when we declared our 200-mile fishing zone. We have to go beyond that and extend it to the rest of our continental shelf that is outside our 200-mile fishing zone. That can only be done with a concerted effort by negotiations, by telling people that we are going to exclude them, and taking active measures to exclude them.
That may sound difficult in this day and age but abuse has been going on first in defiance of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, second in defiance of the weak approach this government has taken since 1986 to deal with the nose and tail, and third the idea that we as the country that is closest to the stock should have a management plan for all the stocks within our area. If they do not have the right stuff over there to show that to the world, then I think it is time they allow someone else to get into the discussion and try to achieve what we want on the nose and tail.
I commend my colleagues from Newfoundland. I think they see it closer at hand. They see their stocks being depleted. They see their communities like ours as well not being able to fish. Yet they have continued to see the foreigners come in and take that fish even though there is a moratorium on the northern cod.
It has been a very weak effort by the government to exert control and custodial rights over that fish. My colleague from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception is to be commended for bringing this and for having done it consistently since he has been a member of Parliament, coming into the House and making it a priority that he wants to see the Government of Canada take effective control. It is only an extension. The continental shelf is there. It is just extending our rights to the waters above the continental shelf.
We have not in four years and through three ministers of fisheries seen that effectiveness to do away with that
Private Members' Business
overfishing by the European Community. It has been going on since 1986. It did not just start. The Europeans may not be there today, but that is because there is no fish, and that is the only reason they are not there. If there were to be fish there tomorrow or in two years, are we going to allow them to come right back and do the same thing?
Mr. Speaker, in two years there will be a new government and we will exert our control over that nose and tail.


Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I certainly commend the attitude and the thinking of the hon. member from Nova Scotia who has expressed her concerns on what we might like to do as Canadians. But the fact is that what we are talking about doing here in this private member's bill is neither practical nor realistic under international law.
I would like to deal with a few of these points as we talk about extending our jurisdiction. In fact, international law does not allow us to do what we would like to do. For example, I am told that in Newfoundland today there are people who are subsisting on fishing through the ice and there are more cod fillets available as I speak than there were three or four months ago.
The problem is that we have difficulty dealing with an issue that becomes far more transparent from the perspective of what it is we should do as a responsible fishing community, whether it be Koreans, whether it be Japanese, whether it be Canadians and Americans, or whomever. We have a very distinct responsibility as an international community.
As Canadians we have extended our jurisdiction out to 200 miles. Unfortunately, that does not include the nose nor the tail of the bank of Newfoundland which significantly contributes to the welfare of our cod stocks. That is what this government has been attempting to address over the last number of months. The history of that fishery is well known to everybody who is familiar with it.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency has risen in this House on more than one occasion to describe what would happen if Canada unilaterally extended custodial jurisdiction for cod or any other species beyond our 200-mile limit. Let us face it, we do not have that jurisdiction in international law. We are not permitted under international law, the Helsinki convention or any other convention, to establish ourselves beyond that. We have got to work with other communities.

March 17, 1993
Private Members' Business
It is inherently important that we recognize that South Korea, for example, recently agreed with us that indeed it will withdraw from that particular fishery. We must show an example through responsible fishing practices ourselves which we have undertaken at great political expense, no question about it, great political expense. The minister of fisheries would agree to that. There is no question about it, we have exerted a significant amount of responsibility regarding our fishery in this jurisdiction. We cannot unilaterally extend our borders beyond the 200-mile fishing limit, despite how much we might like to be able to be in a position to do that. I think that my colleagues from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would agree with that.
I am pleased to be able to inform the members of this House that the latest development in our efforts to obtain international co-operation and support has been officially confirmed by the Government of South Korea. That is important because the South Koreans are big players in the international fishing community all around the world. Whether it be in eels, cod or whatever, they are big fishers in our world-wide oceans. They have confirmed that they will cease all fishing activity in the NAFO area outside Canada's 200-mile limit as of the end of April this year. That is terribly important to us as a fishing nation.
This is of major importance because in 1992 there were seven Korean vessels: four were flagged in Korea and crewed by Koreans and three were crewed by Koreans but flagged in Panama and other countries. These particular people were fishing in our waters, from which they have already confirmed that they have taken substantial numbers of fish in the last few years.
I would simply conclude by saying that Canada is not alone. The 50 states of America are with us in delivering a powerful message against high seas overfishing. It has been a long and bitter fight against foreign overfishing. I have spoken in this House of Commons against it and have taken different opportunities to do so even when I was not on the fisheries committee, but before that, and even though my constituency does not have a big fishing
community. But there are people in my constituency who are interested in fishing and who are deeply dependent on it, through fish processing plants and other spin-off effects.
Mr. Speaker, you would understand that, even coming from the constituency that you come from, which I know is interested. I have seen you in the House of Commons and in the parliamentary restaurant. You eat tuna fish sandwiches. You enjoy all of these things that our oceans allow us to enjoy. Why would you not be interested in this sort of thing? Of course you are.
Mr. Speaker, I applaud you for your tolerance in this debate and for your interest in ensuring that we will have an opportunity to present the position of fishermen in our society and what is important to them.
I just want to end with this particular point. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for listening and I implore you to ensure that it is well understood by the public, by the Canadian electorate and by the fishermen of our community that we, as much as we would like to do, are not in the position to extend our borders beyond that 200-mile limit which we have already established. It has served our fishermen well over the years, particularly in the last weeks and months when we have taken definitive decisions in Newfoundland where fishermen are now the beneficiaries of great programs that have led their families to greater prosperity than some of them have ever known. That has been an initiative of a very caring and compassionate government.
I am sure that will continue to be the case in the days and months to come, particularly as we deal with bills of this nature for which I commend the hon. member but it is not a practical solution to our difficulties or problems.


Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, today, as has been duly noted in the House, is St. Patrick's Day. It may not be well known across Canada but St. Patrick's Day is a statutory holiday in Newfoundland, as is Orangemen's Day. They may be enjoying themselves today or over the weekend but in the back of their minds I am sure there is a great concern about the whole future of their province.
March 17, 1993

The sad story is that it is now too late to really save the fish stocks off our youngest province, and Britain's oldest Dominion as we learned in our history not too many years ago.
Action should have been taken 10 years ago but the policy of greed and overexploitation overruled good sense and good fish stock management.
This action of benign negligence and oversight has resulted in a state of near financial insolvency for the seafaring people of the province of Newfoundland. It has also placed the workers on the shore in a state of prolonged welfare assistance. It is a sad story that should never have been told.
A proud and hardworking people are fighting for their very survival. Newfoundland's history is unlike that of any other province in Canada.
It is too late now to do things right or to do them differently. Now we have to face the situation as it exists today. The motion moved by the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception is the first step in the long-term solution to our fish problems.
The member's reasons for proposing this motion are well documented in Hansard of February 11 of this year. The chronology of events and the results of those events and decisions are in Hansard for all of us to read.
The bottom line for his province of Newfoundland is not a pretty one. Blame is properly shared in the hon. member's speech of that day.
The truth is that this government must bear the majority of the blame because it turned a blind eye to the havoc that was being wrought in the gulf and off the Grand Banks. This government turned a blind eye to foreign overfishing. It turned a blind eye to the technology that was cleaning out everything that swam in the water. It turned a blind eye to the evidence that stocks were quickly being depleted because of the overfishing and the technology being used. It turned a blind eye to everything but political expediency.
Now hard decisions have to be made, and this present minister knows he has to make them. That is why he put in place the two-year moratorium on northern cod and the drastic reduction in the gulf stocks for groundfish.
Private Members' Business
However, we still see foreign vessels inside our 200-mile limit and in many cases within sight of our shoreline.
One would think the national good would take precedence over international agreements in this case, but no, this government is more concerned about the restaurants in France than about the dinner tables of Canadians, especially Newfoundlanders.
This government is able to create problems where none existed. The lobster industry in Prince Edward Island is a prime example. Once upon a time there was one size of canner lobsters caught in the waters off Prince Edward Island. Everyone seemed to be happy with that. They had only the fluctuations in price and the variations in fish catches to deal with, which is normal in the fishing occupation.
But peace and happiness is not a state that Tories can long tolerate. They had to change that state and today three different sizes of canner lobsters are caught off the shores of Prince Edward Island.
They now have fishermen fighting fishermen because everyone now wants the other to agree on their particular lobster size. They now have fishermen's associations splintering along the lines of their particular lobster size thereby threatening the united voice of the fishermen in Prince Edward Island. All this has been done in the name of conservation.
The most conservation-minded fishermen in Atlantic Canada are lobster fishermen. First of all they not only have a limited entry fishing but they have a closed entry fishing. There can no longer be new lobster licences granted.
There are two two-month fishing seasons in Prince Edward Island, very short fishing seasons. They also have strictly enforced trap limits during these two-month fishing seasons. This fishery has been stable over the past 20 years. Yet we have this present situation where the government has hired a consultant to recommend what it should do to get itself out of this jam which it created.
This particular consultant report has to be digested and agreed to by fishermen within weeks, something which is almost impossible to do.

March 17, 1993
Private Members' Business
To return to the motion at hand, I believe with the proposer of this motion that Canada must once again take unilateral action to protect its resources. It must take custodial jurisdiction over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, something which members from Newfoundland have been saying in this House since I came here in 1988.
This motion is not extending the Canadian territory over those particular areas. It is merely exerting custodial jurisdiction to manage the breeding grounds which are used by our fish stocks.
Canada must do what was done in 1964. If I may refer to the decision made in 1964, Canada passed fishing zone legislation to attach a nine-mile exclusive fishing zone to the three-mile territorial sea. Canada felt it was time to act on a unilateral basis.
In 1977 Canada decided to take unilateral action to create a 200-mile zone of jurisdiction. The precedents are being set whereby Canada has taken control over its fisheries and the jurisdiction within those fisheries as to who can fish there and in what quantities.
I urge this House to adopt the hon. member's motion.


Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton - Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, as you know, many of us in the House have used our notes extensively tonight because some of the material is very complicated, somewhat scientific and very statistical. I hope you will take that into consideration this evening.
Under the agreement with the European Community on fishing in the northwest Atlantic Ocean outside Canada's 200-mile limit which is awaiting ratification, the EC, the European Community, agrees to work with Canada to end overfishing by fleets from states that are not members of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization.
What I would like to do is outline to the members of the House this evening some of the steps this government has been taking to end this problem and some of the successes that we have achieved in this area.
Since 1986 vessels under the flags of countries that are not members of NAFO, mostly Panamanian and Korean flag vessels, have taken more than 165,000 tonnes of fish contrary to NAFO conservation measures. In 1992 countries that are not members of NAFO are estimated to have caught 32,425 tonnes of fish in the area regulated by
NAFO in the northwest Atlantic Ocean outside Canada's 200-mile limit. This total includes 6,025 tonnes of cod including 1,200 tonnes of 2J-3KL cod-just identifying a geographic area there-and 17,225 tonnes of red fish, mostly from NAFO divisions in 3LMN. In division 3L alone, non-NAFO members caught an estimated 1,200 tonnes of northern cod in the NAFO regulatory area outside Canada's 200-mile limit. Korean catches are estimated at 14,825 tonnes of redfish and flatfish. Thirty-two different non-member vessels fished in the NAFO area in 1992 alone.
In April 1992 the minister of fisheries travelled to Panama to seek co-operation in ending fishing in the NAFO regulatory area by vessels registered in Panama which are primarily former Spanish and Portuguese vessels. The Panamanians again agreed to penalize vessels registered in Panama that fish contrary to NAFO conservation decisions and to allow new registrations only on condition that the vessels refrain from fishing in the NAFO area.
Subsequently, based on photographic evidence provided by Canada, Panamanian officials have fined several Panamanian registered vessels for fishing in the NAFO area and several more have been deregistered. Packages of evidentiary material on Panamanian vessels that continue to fish in the NAFO area are being sent to Panamanian authorities at regular intervals.
As a result of Canadian representations, two other non-NAFO members, Honduras and Venezuela, have also said that they will take measures to prevent vessels operating under their flags from fishing in the NAFO regulatory area.
Among the non-NAFO members, South Korea has been the worst offender. South Korea is not a member of NAFO and has no quotas to fish in the NAFO regulatory area. In 1992 Korean-flagged or Korean-crewed vessels numbered 6 of the 32 non-NAFO vessels in the NAFO area. The remainder were mostly Spanish and Portuguese vessels reflagged to Panama. Korean vessels target redfish and flatfish. Over the last five years they have taken 73,000 tonnes of redfish which represents 20 per cent of all the redfish caught, and 10,000 tonnes of yellowtail flounder which represents 23 per cent of all yellowtail founder caught.
March 17, 1993

Canada has been calling for the complete withdrawal of all Korean vessels since 1992. The Prime Minister raised the issue directly with the Prime Minister of South Korea in June 1992. As a result of this and a meeting held in February between the minister of fisheries and a South Korean delegation, South Korea has recently announced that it will withdraw its vessels in the northwest Atlantic at the end of 1993. South Korea has also indicated that Korean crews will no longer be licensed after March 1993 for use on third country vessels.
These moves, coupled with the comprehensive agreement with the European Community which was reached in December 1992, have the potential to go a long way toward ending the problem of overfishing outside 200 miles.
Our agreement with the European Community, once it is ratified, has the potential to make the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization once more, as it was in the years following the extension of jurisdiction in 1977, an effective means to conserve and manage fisheries for straddling stocks in international waters.
Central to this is that the EC will now, as it did until 1986, accept and comply with NAFO quotas and other conservation and management decisions. This is fundamental. The agreement can stay in place only if the EC complies with NAFO quotas. Canada has always accepted NAFO quotas.
The EC will ensure that catches by its fleets do not exceed NAFO quotas. Canada and the EC will maintain patrol vessels outside 200 miles and Canadian patrol vessels will carry EC as well as Canadian fisheries inspectors. When an EC patrol vessel cannot be present, EC and Canadian officials will co-ordinate inspection activities and regularly review catch data for all fleets to ensure fisheries are closed when quotas are caught.
Beginning in 1994 there will be additional EC control measures as part of the EC's reform of its fisheries. In the interim, the EC will apply the same control measures as in 1992 which were successful in closing fisheries to EC vessels when quotas were caught.
Canada and the EC will work together to end fishing by non-NAFO fleets. Measures to work on include:
Private Members' Business
preventing reflagging of vessels for this purpose, preventing Canadian or EC nationals from crewing non-NAFO vessels and, as necessary, preventing imports of fish caught by non-NAFO fleets. These fleets, largely comprising of Korean and reflagged EC vessels, are becoming an increasingly serious threat for resources outside 200 miles.
Canada will work with the EC to revitalize NAFO through joint proposals and to add a dispute settlement mechanism to avoid abuse of the objection procedure.
Canada will set a total allowable catch or a TAC for northern cod in 2J-3KL, another geographic jurisdiction, once the present moratorium ends, based on advice from Canadian international scientists. Scientific advice indicates that on average 5 per cent of the biomass is outside the 200-mile zone. Five per cent of the TAC will be distributed by NAFO and Canada will retain 95 per cent of the TAC.
The EC has agreed to support NAFO management decisions outside the 200 miles that are consistent with Canadian management decisions outside the 200 miles.
Because the EC will be co-operating with Canada in conservation of fisheries resources outside 200 miles, as soon as both parties have given formal approval, Canada will provide access to ports and surplus allocations and permit commercial arrangements.
If problems arise with the agreement, there will be consultations to seek to resolve them. Either Canada or the EC can terminate the agreement on 60 days' notice. This agreement, once ratified, will reflect the commitment of the EC to rational management conservation and sustainable development of the northwest Atlantic fishery.
It reflects the EC's new approaches to surveillance, control and effort limitation, so the catches do not exceed quotas. It also reflects the EC's commitment to measures against reflagging and fishing by non-NAFO fleets.
Finally, it reflects the political will of the EC to work together with Canada, bilaterally and within NAFO, in a common cause to help renew depleted fish stocks and to conduct fishing in compliance with NAFO decisions.

March 17, 1993
Private Members' Business
Many important elements of this agreement call for Canada and the EC to work together to achieve common goals, like effective control of fleets, an end to non-NAFO fishing and reforms to prevent abuse of the objection procedure.
Good faith and a spirit of common purpose are therefore needed by Canada and the EC. If we bring these to the operation and implementation of the agreement, then we will have taken a critically important step toward rebuilding straddling stocks and achieving sustainable high seas fisheries for the future.
We are pleased that the EC is now ready to join Canada and other NAFO contacting parties in seeking to end fishing by non-member vessels in the NAFO area and to prevent reflagging of vessels that are owned or controlled in the NAFO member countries.
Canada alone cannot save and rebuild straddling stocks off her east coast. Co-operation of all maritime and fishing nations is essential. Throughout the period since 1989, Canada has made a tremendous effort to achieve that co-operation and to have the principle of sustainable development given an effect in high seas fisheries in the northwest Atlantic.
We also have reason for optimism about the future. Canada hosted a three-day meeting on high seas fisheries of 48 states from around the world which opened in St. John's on January 22 of this year. The meeting brought together like-minded states in preparation for the United Nations Conference on High Seas fishing that will begin in April. At the St. John's meeting, coastal states shared their experiences, considered common approaches and committed themselves to a common course of action going into the coming conference.
At that St. John's meeting there was wide acceptance of the proposals contained in the discussion documents prepared by Canada regarding management principles, remedies, surveillance, control and enforcement, as well as a discussion document prepared by New Zealand on problems of developing states.
Five key matters were dealt with in that discussion paper. I will touch on those: the special interest of coastal states in straddling stocks and highly migratory species outside the 200 miles; the principle of consistency between conservation and management measures outside 200 miles and those taken by coastal states inside 200 miles; the no adverse effect principle, that is fisheries outside 200 miles should have no adverse impact on resources inside 200 miles; the need for effective enforcement outside 200 miles; and binding dispute settlement to ensure effective conservation and management.
Like-minded states are ready to do what needs to be done to persuade the rest of the world to take those concrete measures that we as coastal states believe are needed to end high seas overfishing.
The United Nations Conference on High Seas Fishing will provide for the first time a forum to develop rules for the management of high seas fisheries in accordance with the conservation and sustainable development principles within the framework for international co-operation established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It will also continue to focus international attention on current overfishing on the high seas, increasing the pressure to stop this practice.
In conclusion, we have more reason than ever before to be optimistic about the future when we consider among other recent developments our agreement with the European Community, the solidarity of like-minded states and the progress we are making in our discussions with the non-NAFO members.


George Albert Proud: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise tonight to participate in this debate on the private member's motion put forward by the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception.
It is a very important debate, important in order to prevent further ecological disaster through the pillaging of transboundaiy fish stocks off Canada's east coast. In order to save an essential national industry and a valued way of life for many rural citizens, Canada should take immediate steps to extend its functional jurisdiction to the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.
March 17, 1993

I also wish to talk about the sorry state of the Atlantic economy and the continued disregard the current government displays toward the people of that area. There exists many examples, too numerous to mention in the time allotted to me tonight, of the lack of caring and understanding on the part of the Government of Canada toward the every day concerns of Atlantic Canadians in particular and Canadians in general face.
The closing of the Summerside military base, the free trade agreement and the GST are simply three examples which prove that the government implements policies contrary to the wishes of the people. After implementation, it is the people, not the government of the day, which must bear the brunt and the pain of undesirable economic policies.
Increasing unemployment, especially in Atlantic Canada, is proof enough that these policies are not working. However, the government continues pursuing its agenda of destroying the economic and social fabric of this country regardless of what people want and need. The latest and most unfortunate example of the government's disregard for Atlantic Canadians and their unique way of life is the current issue of foreign overfishing. It clearly puts into focus the government's goals of satisfying the needs of foreigners while forgetting the people that count most: Canadians, and in this case Atlantic Canadians.
There is one reason why the vital cod stock and the flatfish supplies are dwindling: foreign overfishing by Portuguese and Spanish trawlers. This fact cannot be contested.
What is the government's response to this attack on Canadian sovereignty and Atlantic Canadians way of life? Diplomatic delegations are sent to Europe and the government publicly states that the issue is complex and there are international dimensions to it.
The result of this response is no concrete promise of employment for fishermen and plant processors and a continual increase in the amount of fish caught by these foreigners.
The facts cannot be disputed. The European Community had a northern cod quota of 9,500 tonnes in 1986 and 1987. It has not been allocated any extra quota since that time. However, the EC's catch of northern cod over the six-year period 1986-1991 approaches 250,000 tonnes. In 1986 the European Community fleets caught 62,000
Private Members' Business
tonnes of northern cod. This amount was almost 30 per cent of the amount caught by Canadians.
More foreign overfishing of Canadian resources simply leads to one inevitable result: The amount of the resource available for Canadians decreases. While the economic costs of this are easy to measure, the human cost is more difficult to quantify.
Atlantic Canadians have always enjoyed a unique culture, a unique outlook and a unique way of life. This has been shaped over time by geography and the type of employment available in the area. As with previous policies however, the government has ignored the special concerns of Atlantic Canadians during the current crisis in the Atlantic fishery by refusing to stand up to foreigners and protecting and promoting the economic and cultural interests of Canadians.
The government always talks about the best social policy available is having a job. When one has a job, one has dignity. People cannot become dependent on government hand-outs at this time of savage budget cuts.
This is probably the one thing the government has stated that makes sense. However when given the opportunity to act on these grand and noble statements such as right now, these actions fall wide of the mark. The government must understand that saying and doing are two entirely different things.
People want action now. However this government is not acting at all in the best interests of the fishermen. Livelihoods are disappearing daily. Canadian sovereignty has blatantly been violated and the government does nothing concrete to secure for Atlantic Canadians that dignity of having that job.
The problem of current foreign overfishing is not simply a localized problem. It cuts to the core of how Canadians view their country and view themselves. The Atlantic fishery plays a vital role in this self-perception. Indeed, the fishery is a national industry. The government appears to forget this every time it allows foreign trawlers to take away jobs in the region.
We usually think of the auto industry of central Canada to be a national industry and therefore worthy of national attention. For example, the auto industry currently employs, or did employ approximately 117,000 people. That is almost precisely the same number of jobs as in the Atlantic fishery in terms of men and women in boats and in plants in the four Atlantic provinces.

March 17, 1993
Private Members' Business
This government ignores this fact, as it has forgotten about the region on numerous other occasions. I fear that the destruction of the Atlantic fishery is consistent with the destruction of other so-called sacred trusts, such as universal family allowance. The two are unfortunately part of the government's secret agenda of ruining what it means to be a Canadian.
Today I call upon the Government of Canada to take the interests and the concerns of Atlantic Canadians seriously and finally do what is right. What is right is to give Atlantic Canadians dignity through employment. The only way this can be done is to take strong concrete actions against this foreign overfishing.
In order to achieve this the government should adopt appropriate conservation policies which give Canadians, not foreigners, the ability to get the most access to the vital fish stocks.
The time has come once again for the government to stand up to the foreigners and to help Canadians. The means are readily available. Unilaterally extending Canadian jurisdiction beyond the 200-mile economic zone is one example which would preserve the spirit of the Law of the Sea and come to the aid of Atlantic Canadians.
The issue, therefore, is political will. While the government has previously not had the political will to do what is right for the country, I hope members on the government side can finally convince the government to do what is right this time. Atlantic Canadians unfortunately are running out of time with this government's indifference to the concerns of the people.


Mr. David Bjornson (Selkirk-Red River):: Mr. Speaker, I would imagine you and hon. members of the House are curious as to why someone from the middle of the prairies is entering into this specific debate. There are a number of reasons I have something to give to this debate.
The first is the fact that as early as yesterday afternoon our Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology was hearing evidence from the networks of centres of excellence.
A profound presentation was put forward by what is called the open group. It is working out of Dalhousie University studying the problems with the northern cod stocks. It was very interesting. It was enlightening for someone such as myself who comes from the prairies. We looked at how that group is doing a significant amount of work in tracking the small larvae of cod in an ocean. The larvae apparently are only three centimetres long. It is beyond me to figure out how larvae that small can be dissected and through the research programs tell of things that are being done.
The other reason is that I come from Selkirk, Manitoba. I grew up in a fishing community on Lake Winnipeg, which is a big freshwater fish stock. Lake Winnipeg has also had problems with overfishing, lack of fish and an over-demand on the stocks. We too in Manitoba have had a significant problem in trying to restock Lake Winnipeg in particular. We also had a significant fish processing industry.
The difference between the concerns of the members opposite with their fish processing industry and that of my home community, is that ours was taken away because of political will. It was the political will of the Liberal Party. It decided it was more convenient to have the fish processing industry in the city of Winnipeg in a Liberal constituency than it was to have the fish processing industry close to the source of supply in Selkirk, right along the Red River where the fish freighters could bring their catch to processing. But that is history.
I would like to get more significantly into today's debate. Like other of my colleagues, I have some very significant well-detailed presentations. On the strength of these prepared presentations I will carry on. I would like to thank those who took the time to help me put this presentation together.
We know that the hon. member's motion is wellmeaning. He is concerned about the state of the northern cod stocks and so are we. He is concerned with foreign overfishing and so are we. We are also very concerned about those affected by the serious problems with the northern cod stocks. As a matter of fact, this government has moved forward with major initiatives on all of these issues.
March 17, 1993

Before I describe how this government has responded to the northern cod situation, I will say a few words on the issue of jurisdiction. Whether the hon. member talks about custodial jurisdiction for northern cod only, or whether he talks about the full jurisdiction over everything that moves on the continental shelf, at this point in time what he is proposing would be a unilateral action that would not fly in the international community.
Whether or not the hon. member wishes to acknowledge it, Canada is a full-fledged, respectable and respected charter member of this community. Canadians are peacekeepers and we are peacemakers. We are not price-takers. We are committed members of the United Nations, which is a body that has increased its credibility and effectiveness in recent years and continues to do so. Why is this? It is because the nations of the world have decided, as never before, to act together in their common best interests. Canada is working with many countries in the global community to effect the kind of change that the hon. member and all of us would like to see, but it must be done properly. It must be done in such a way as to have the support and concurrence of other nations. Then it can be effective and respective.
We are taking the initiative. We are spearheading a drive to effect the appropriate changes. I hope we can count on the support of the hon. member and his colleagues in order to show the world that Canada is serious and should be supported. That is all I will say for the moment regarding the international initiative.
If I may, however, I will address another side of this very important issue and that is the measures this government has taken to deal with the northern cod situation. On July 2, 1992, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced a two-year moratorium on the northern cod fishery. This was an unprecedented but necessary decision. It may be unprecedented on the northern cod situation but I know that we have had a very similar moratorium in Manitoba with our freshwater fish. The minister arrived at this conclusion only after careful and lengthy deliberation and consultation. It was based on the scientific advice he had received on the disastrous state of the northern cod stock.
Private Members' Business
All our hon. colleagues and indeed everyone in the country knows that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is a compassionate man. Everyone knows he is forward thinking, pragmatic and fair and I can say on occasion that I think he is rather humorous. It is with no surprise that on July 17 the minister announced a comprehensive program called the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Program, better known as NCARP. This addresses the needs of the people affected by the moratorium and the need for a sustainable resource and economically viable fishery.
The first measure under NCARP was to provide income support payments of up to $406 per week for eligible fishermen and plant workers who were not in receipt of unemployment insurance benefits. This payment is based on the individual average unemployment insurance benefit for each fisherman and plant worker over the last three years. It does not make work nor is it intended to qualify people for unemployment insurance. It is a direct payment by the government completely outside the UI system to provide replacement income during the whole of the two-year moratorium.
The amount of $225 per week is the minimum income support payment for those eligible. There are now some
16,000	people receiving income support under this program. The remaining 8,000 to 9,000 people who qualify for NCARP are for the most part either working or drawing other unemployment insurance benefits.
It has become clear to all the stakeholders in the northern cod fishery that capacity in harvesting and processing far exceeds the limits of the resource. All stakeholders, whether it is the union, the provincial government, the fishermen or plant workers realize that changes must be made. This is important to provide those who. remain in the fishery with the opportunity to make adequate incomes in the future while those who leave are provided for.
Fishermen and plant workers who have qualified for NCARP assistance have had five measures to consider. These measures include early retirement for persons 55 years of age and older, license retirement, training outside the fishery and professionalization within the fishery involving training toward certification.

March 17, 1993
Private Members' Business
The deadline for these decisions was March 1, 1993. The vast majority of fishermen and plant workers have mailed their option forms back to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The preliminary results indicate that some 20 per cent have chosen training outside the fishery or early retirement. If an eligible fisherman or plant worker chose early retirement, benefits will continue until age 65. If an eligible fisherman or plant worker takes training outside the fishery, benefits may continue beyond the moratorium, depending on the length of the training. If an eligible fisherman or plant worker pursues training inside the fishery or for those qualified for fishing experience exemption, then the
support payments of up to $406 per week will be maintained for the duration of the moratorium.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the order is dropped to the bottom of the list of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.
Before I call it eight o'clock, top o' the evening to you all and Erin go Braugh from O'Proski.
It being eight o'clock p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at ten o'clock a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 8 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Thursday, March 18,1993