1993-03-16

[Stage Direction]
Prayers

Mr. Gilles Bernier (Beauce):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to bring to the attention of the House some comments made by the hon. member for Rosemont in referring to members of the Speakership of the House of Commons.
According to the March 14 edition of Beauport-Ex-press, a weekly newspaper, the hon. member for Rosemont said the following at a public meeting held recently in the town of Beauport, and I quote: "Charles DeBlois, one of the acting Speakers of the House, is a party to collusion to restrict our party's right to speak in Ottawa".
Although these comments were made outside the House, they nevertheless cast doubts on the integrity and impartiality of the Speakership.
All parliamentarians have a profound respect for the Speakership as an institution. Bearing that in mind, Mr. Speaker, I ask you to order the hon. member for Rosemont to withdraw these comments immediately and present his apologies to the members of the Speakership.


Mr. Speaker:: I listened with some concern to what was said by the hon. member for Beauce. Since the hon. member for Rosemont is not here, this morning, in the circumstances it would perhaps be appropriate for the Speaker to meet the hon. member for Rosemont, after which the matter could be pursued in the House.


WITNESS PROTECTION ACT
Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough West) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-413, an act to provide for the relocation and protection of witnesses.


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


Thomas (Tom) William Wappel: Today in Canada there is no legislated program to aid informants and witnesses and their families from reprisal by criminals. What programs there are are secret, arbitrary and unaccountable to the people of Canada who pay the costs.
My bill would create a legislative framework to protect witnesses and their families, including relocation, identity change and financial assistance. It would also spell out the witnesses' responsibilities to the justice system.
This bill would aid in the prosecution of violent crime, organized crime and drug-related crime, while protecting the lives of informants, witnesses and their families all under the mandate and watchful eye of the Parliament of Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Mr. Wappel 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.

March 16, 1993
Routine Proceedings PEACE TRUST FUND ACT


MEASURE TO ENACT
Mr. Ray Funk (Prince Albert -Churchill River) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-414, an act respecting the establishment of a peace trust fund.


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


Raymond John Funk: It gives me pleasure to introduce this bill to the House with the support of the hon. member for Victoria.
This bill would permit individuals who object on conscientious grounds to paying taxes that might be used for military purposes to direct that the amount equivalent to a prescribed percentage of the income tax they pay for military purposes in a particular year be diverted to a peace trust fund established by this bill.
line principle of conscientious objection has a long and honourable history dating back to the reformation. However, in this era of high-tech warfare many conscientious objectors, many of them members of the historic peace churches such as Quakers, Mennonites and others, believe that their tax dollars serve as surrogates for physical participation in military activities. They are thus seeking a legal avenue to contribute their tax dollars to other means of seeking peace in the world.
I believe this is a timely piece of legislation because even those who do not personally accept a conscientious objection position are becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of military solutions to problems like those in Bosnia and Somalia.
This legislation would end the present unacceptable situation where otherwise law-abiding citizens are running afoul of Revenue Canada with serious consequences for themselves and their families merely for exercising their profoundest beliefs with regard to participation in war and military activities.


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


PETITIONS
Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, my first petition is from petitioners who are anxious to make sure that Parliament scrutinizes very closely the language used on both radio and television. They are also concerned about acts of violence on television, particularly in a society such as ours where it would appear as if violent acts are becoming increasingly frequent.
The petitioners point out that what occurs in the media, that is on radio and television, with respect to inappropriate language and violence does in fact counter some of the efforts being made in the family. They also underline that it is not necessary to use inappropriate language or acts of violence to entertain or to inform.


Ron J. Duhamel: Mr. Speaker, the other petition is from the Canadian Federation of Students from Saskatchewan.
Their sentiments I believe are shared by students all across the country. They denounce the government's policies with respect to education, the 3 per cent tax on student loans and the additional six months' interest. They want a fair system of student aid. They are really quite concerned about the current program that the government has advanced, particularly with respect to sharing the risk with the banks.
The petitioners want to know who is going to be eligible. Who is going to set up the eligibility requirements and what role will the banks have in this particular process?


Mrs. Christine Stewart (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the honour today to present a petition concerning the Three Gorges dam project in China.
Because of the serious environmental impact of such a project and the fact that such a project would displace over one million people, the petitioners call upon the government to pass necessary legislation to prevent any further involvement by the Government of Canada in the Three Gorges dam project. They also ask that the government refuse to participate in or provide technical assistance, loans, grants, guarantees or subsidies in any


March 16, 1993

form for any aspect of the Three Gorges dam project from this day forward.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a petition from residents of Dubuisson, Val-d'Or, Malartic, Senneterre, Vassan, Val-Senneville, Sullivan and La Motte in the riding of Abitibi who say that films depicting violence on television are dangerous and therefore unacceptable because they act as a stimulus for violent behaviour.
The petition also says that all toys that incite children to play violent games are unacceptable and their manufacture should be banned. It is also pointed out that when acts of violence are reported, the freedom of the press should be restricted, and that the repeated broadcasting of news about acts of violence on television on all channels and on radio may act as a stimulus for further identical violent behaviour.
Therefore, your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to pass the appropriate legislation in order to eliminate violence in our society and thus protect our children and give all citizens a better quality of life.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition on behalf of a number of residents of British Columbia. They indicate their opposition to a plan by Multinational Resources Inc. which has the support of a number of American companies. The intention is to divert up to one million acre-feet of water from the North Thompson River, which is a tributary of the Fraser River, into the Columbia River basin and through a number of different basins until it gets into the Sacramento River basin on its way to southern California.
The petitioners figure this would generate profits in the range of $300 million annually to the firm. However because of the ecological consequences and the general concern that people have in terms of river diversion, the petitioners are asking that the Parliament of Canada take whatever steps are needed to ensure that this type of diversion would never occur.
Routine Proceedings BILL C-268


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition on a different matter which is signed by a number of residents from Alberta. They are asking us to recognize the point made in Bill C-268 entitled an act respecting a national solidarity day for the First Nations of Canada. They are asking that Parliament support this particular bill and this initiative to show solidarity and support for aboriginal people of Canada.


Thomas (Tom) William Wappel: Mr. Speaker, I have 29 petitions I would like to present today, all on the same subject.
The petitions contain signatures of literally thousands of Canadians from all areas of the country on the subject of the fact that witness protection programs are a matter of policy only at the discretion of each individual police force. They also point out that because of that there is no unity or national consensus on this matter.
They therefore request that Parliament enact legislation to provide for an act to protect witnesses. In one respect this was the reason I brought forward my private member's bill earlier today.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. Murray Cardiff (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the following question will be answered today: No. 367.


Mr. Belsher: Have any public servants who have been offered early retirement
and or a severance package been subsequently rehired on contract
and, if so, (a) how many (b) at what cost (c) what is the estimated
cost had these individuals been retained?


Mr. Charles A. Langlois (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: For fiscal year 1991-92, for
yes, (a) 93 (b) $1,577,103 (c) $3,041,456 approximately (excludes employee-paid benefits).

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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary has been answered.


Murray Cardiff: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Boudria:: Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary, or at least his colleague, will know that I have privately been asking for approximately the last two months to have three questions in my name answered. Some of them are over six months old and they are all pursuant to the 45-day provision which governs us as members.
I would like to be able to count on the assistance of the Chair if the government continues to refuse to answer the questions in the manner prescribed by the rules of this House.
It seems to me that after six months of waiting for a 45-day answer that there should be some redress available to some of us. The questions I asked are in no way complicated. One of them concerns the cost of an airline ticket for the Prime Minister. That information would take all of about 30 seconds for the government to research.
It is my hope that all three questions that are waiting will be answered shortly. I received a commitment from the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader some weeks ago that in fact he was doing some research and he was led to believe that pursuant to briefing notes provided to him by the Privy Council Office the answers would be forthcoming.
Every day he tells me they are forthcoming but they never get here.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I will look into the matter for the hon. member and get back to him as soon as possible.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-95, an act to continue the Farm Credit Corporation and to repeal certain acts in consequence thereof, as reported (with an amendment) by a legislative committee.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: There are 13 motions in amendment on the Notice Paper for report stage of Bill C-95, an act to continue the Farm Credit Corporation and to repeal certain acts in consequence thereof.
Motions Nos. 1, 6 and 11, standing in the name of the hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre, are identical to Motions Nos. 3, 7 and 12. After consultation, Motions Nos. 1, 6 and 11 will not be selected.

Motion No. 2, standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma, will be debated and voted on separately.
Motion No. 3, standing in the name of the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River, is identical to an amendment moved and rejected in committee. Consequently, Motion No. 3 will not be selected.

Motions Nos. 4 and 10, standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma, and Motion No. 12, standing in the name of the hon. member for Prince Albert- Churchill River, will be grouped for debate and voted on as follows:

Motion No. 4 will be voted on separately.
An affirmative vote on Motion No. 10 obviates the need for a vote on Motion No. 12. A negative vote on Motion No. 10 requires a vote on Motion No. 12.
March 16, 1993



Although the wording of Motion No. 5, standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma, and Motion No. 7, standing in the name of the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River, is different the intent is the same, and that is to ensure that the membership of the board shall at all times include a majority of farmers. Therefore, I shall not select Motion No. 7. Motion No. 5 will be debated and voted on separately.

Motions Nos. 8, 9 and 13, standing in the name of the Minister of Agriculture, are motions of a technical nature that affect one version only. They will therefore be grouped for debate, and the vote on Motion No. 8 will apply to Motions Nos. 9 and 13.


MEASURE TO AMEND
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma) moved:: Molion No. 2
That Bill C-95 be amended in Clause 4 by striking out lines 13
and 14 at page 2 and substituting the following therefor:
"farming operations, including family farms, and to those businesses in rural Canada, including small or medium-sized businesses, that are related to farming."
He said: Mr. Speaker, the amendment which I am putting today, Motion No. 2, really identifies that loans made and that this bill really applies to family farms and medium and small-sized businesses in rural areas relating to farming. The original clause did not specify that. It simply talked about farming and businesses engaged in farming in rural areas.
One of the most attractive parts of Bill C-95, the Farm Credit Corporation Act amendments, deals with the further processing of agriculture commodities in this country and extends the authority of the Farm Credit Corporation to make loans relating to the food processing industry and further processing of agriculture commodities.
This has clearly been one of the greatest failures of this government. Since 1989 when the free trade deal was signed, we have seen a massive depopulation of the food processing industries. Over a hundred plants across the country have closed and some 34,000 jobs have been
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lost. I guess it is better late than never, and so we are glad to see the government bringing forward these amendments to the Farm Credit Corporation Act but this is clearly a major failure. This is an area where a new government will have to take immediate steps to salvage the further processing industry in this country, because if we do not have further processing we do not have the markets.
This amendment is designed to indicate that loans made are for family farms and for small and mediumsized businesses.
The section in the act now reads:
The purpose of the corporation is to enhance rural Canada by
providing specialized and personalized financial services to farming
operations and to those businesses in rural Canada that are related to
farming.
This amendment just adds family farms and small and medium-sized businesses because that is the sector where we think there is the most opportunity not only for further processing of agriculture commodities but also the creation of jobs in rural Canada.
We have seen some 13,000 farmers leave rural Canada in the last four or five years. With them leaving, the infrastructure of rural Canada is likewise diminished. This amendment is designed to strengthen that aspect, the idea of family farm operations and small and medium sized businesses.
Right across the country today there is grave concern as to whether this bill will make any difference. The bill is generally a good bill. It provides for a much more flexible Farm Credit Corporation. It removes limits on expenditures and allows for flexible arrangements with regard to agreements.
The basic question that Canadian farmers are asking is: Will it make any difference? Will there be any more money? If we look at the estimates that were presented a couple of weeks ago we can see that over $600 million has been reduced in the estimates. Regardless of how good a structure the FCC is, if the government's political will is not there to support rural Canada and support rural industry then it will not make any difference.
We see estimates that the net farm income across the country will be reduced by some $1 billion in this coming year and the estimates are being chopped by over $600 million in this year. That leads one to believe that things

March 16, 1993
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in rural Canada are not going to get better, they are only going to get worse.
That is the concern right across rural Canada. Regardless of how good a bill we fashion or put in place, the question is: Will the government provide the funding, the finances to make this legislation, Bill C-95, work? Without additional funding it will not be any better than the existing Farm Credit Corporation even though the mechanics and the facilities will be in place to improve it.
There is some concern in some groups. Some of the prairie wheat pool groups have expressed their concern that if an additional amount of money is going to be provided through this legislation for further processing and activities beyond the farm gate, will that mean there will be less funding for farm loans for the primary producers? Those questions when put to the parliamentary secretary or the officials of the Farm Credit Corporation really get no response. We have no idea whether or not there will actually be any additional funding for those further processing plants beyond the farm gate.
This amendment further defines that we are interested in funding and supporting the family farm and that we are primarily concerned with small and medium sized businesses. We are not concerned with bankrolling or even having the massive kind of vertical integration that has happened in the United States.
Last night I had an opportunity to again review the CBC program concerning the poultry industry in the United States. In the United States there are big companies like the Tyson company, which produces 25 per cent of all the poultry meat in the United States. We clearly do not want to see that kind of activity enhanced in this country, whether it is coming from the U.S. or it is being designed here.
We want to see efficient medium sized industries that live in the community and do not treat primary producers and farmers as serfs living on their land, but are independent farmers contributing to their community, producing quality, producing efficiently, and making not only a contribution to the world food supply but within their community.
The kind of vertical integration that we have seen in the U.S. and some other countries is clearly not the model that we have had in this country. If we have had any genius in this country it has been the system of supply management and the system of orderly marketing, such as the Canadian Wheat Board, in which the farmer, the primary producer, who is the most important link in the whole food production chain, is given power. He is given power through the Canadian Wheat Board to amalgamate with the several hundred thousand prairie agriculture producers to be able to market on a world scale with one of the best marketing organizations in the world. Likewise in our supply management, producers are able to bargain and have power in the marketplace to deal with the large dairy, poultry or whatever sector it is. This amendment is really designed to ensure that these funds are made available for the family farm, for small and medium sized farm businesses relating to primary production.
I hope the government will accept this motion. We had a similar one in its committee and the government voted it down in, its usual inimitable style of voting down every amendment that comes forward from the opposition. I hope it will accept this one.


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to participate in this debate, especially in the discussion of Motion No. 2 which would amend clause 4 to designate that the purpose of the bill is to provide money for farming operations, including family farms and those businesses in rural Canada including small or medium sized businesses that are related to farming.
I note that both the hon. member from Moose Jaw and myself have very similar motions standing in our names. Thus it is quite obvious that we support the gist of Motion No. 2.
I might also note that the bill as it stands now merely makes reference to farming operations and those businesses in rural Canada that are related to farming. The critical difference between what is in the bill as proposed by the government and this motion is that we are talking about family farms and small and medium sized businesses.
It is a very critical distinction, given the stage of development of agriculture today. We are at a watershed in the agriculture community, in the rural community, with respect to whether the production of food will continue to be based on a rural model, on a family farm model or whether the production of food will gravitate toward production by large corporations which are alien-
March 16, 1993

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ated from the family farm structure and the rural communities as we have traditionally known them.
In general this is an acceptable bill, a useful bill. It provides more flexibility for the Farm Credit Corporation. It provides new ways of doing things for the corporation which could in fact be very useful.
Two questions have to be answered, one concerning resources and the second concerning the philosophy of the corporation. The previous speaker indicated that the estimates outline a spending regime where there will be $600 million less available for agricultural purposes in the upcoming year. Therefore it becomes very critical where the government will allocate these scarce resources.
The government has a choice of allocating these resources to the maintenance of the family farm and the small businesses that support our rural communities, investing its money to enhance the secondary processing, the value added activities in those communities based on a local community model, or choosing to proceed with financing all sorts of agribusiness concerns, such as large corporations which could supplant and replace the family farming model.
Certainly there are enough examples in North America today of the scale and scope to which some of these corporations can grow. In my own province we have seen an example in the Kindersley area where one organization, something of a phantom organization in that it was never clearly identified who it was, proposed to buy over 100 sections of land in one community.
As this bill reads now it is entirely conceivable that the Farm Credit Corporation could get involved in lending to organizations of that scale.
As well under the free trade agreement and the upcoming NAFTA agreement there is tremendous pressure on processors to adopt economies of scale that are far beyond anything that has ever been envisaged in this country before.
It is also possible under this legislation for the Farm Credit Corporation to be involved in financing those kinds of operations which would in fact create a very fundamental change in how we process food in this country.
Therefore I think this is a motion that is worth adopting. In fact it should be adopted to make it very clear that the intent of this Parliament and the people of Canada is to perpetuate the family farm model, the rural development model and the small community model that we have traditionally known. It is not the intent of this Parliament and the people of Canada to finance a massive takeover of the family farm and the infrastructure that supports it by large multinational corporations.
Also, this motion gives a clear indication of the philosophy which the government intends to pursue. I believe, and my party believes, the model that includes the family farm, organizations like co-operatives, rural development corporations and rural development authorities are the appropriate models to use to build on our past successes. We have done a good job, both of producing quality food at a reasonable price and in organizing that production in such a way as to have maximum benefit for rural communities and to maintain a maximum number of family farm units.
Flowever, it is very questionable whether this will continue into the future. It is not guaranteed that the family farm model and the rural development model will continue into the future because the pressures being brought to bear on that community are very strong indeed. It is going to be very much a matter of whether the government commits its resources to one course of action or the other that will determine how agriculture evolves in this country.
My party has proposed, with respect to the Farm Credit Corporation, that it should do a number of things differently than it has done them in the past.
First, it should provide low interest loans to farmers at fixed rates over long periods of time. Second, it should provide leasing options to individual farmers to permit the leasing of farmland over an extended period of time to guarantee tenure to farmers without needing to borrow money every generation in order to maintain a family farm unit within a particular family. Third, I believe that the Farm Credit Corporation should be proactive in developing new forms of farm tenure like community land trusts in order to create new options for beginning farmers and farmers trying to maintain their operations.

March 16, 1993
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At the present time, the Farm Credit Corporation is actively disposing of land all over this country, normally to the highest bidder. In many cases it is a destructive force in a rural community. At the present time, the Farm Credit Corporation within its mandate really does not have much of an option as to how to proceed.
However, the co-operatives in this country, particularly the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, organizations like the Christian Farmers and others have proposed that we badly need a new form of land tenure, known as community land trusts. An organization, a group of farmers or members would hold land in trust in perpetuity and make their own decisions as to who should continue to farm that land. In other words, the control of who is farming land in a particular community would continue to reside within that community.
It is my belief and that of my party that the Farm Credit Corporation should be in a position to work with provincial governments and other organizations to perpetuate the kind of farm tenure and to make it not only possible but desirable to proceed in that kind of a way.
In summation, it is important we adopt this motion, both to provide direction as to how the scarce resources that the Farm Credit Corporation has will be allocated and also to give a clear signal that the people of Canada wish to perpetuate the family farm model, the co-operative model and the locally based community development model in organizing its food production for generations to come.


Mr. Vic Althouse (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to spend just a moment speaking on the amendment to Bill C-95 which is listed as Motion No. 2.
Essentially the motion is attempting to make some minor changes to the purpose of the bill which currently states that the purpose of the corporation is to enhance rural Canada by providing specialized and personalized financial services to farming operations and to those businesses in rural Canada that are related to farming.
The amendment that has been proposed in Motion No. 2 would clarify what sorts of businesses are being focused on by this newly mandated corporation. It says
that these farming operations would include family farms and those businesses in rural Canada, including small or medium sized businesses that are related to farming.
This is an excellent amendment. The corporation has to be focused on the small and medium sized businesses in rural communities. They are virtually 100 per cent of the businesses in rural communities in Canada today. We know by looking at the statistics of job creation across the land that over 90 per cent of the jobs that were created in the past number of years were created by those very small and medium sized businesses. So I think there is some advantage in terms of job creation and keeping communities viable to have as a mandate for the Farm Credit Corporation the focus of small business and medium sized businesses as well as the family farm.
However, when I look at the kind of rural communities that I know, and particularly in my home province, but as I go across rural communities right across the country, and I get to quite a few of them, I note that a great many of those communities depend in part for their business expertise and the methodology of doing business on the co-operative movement. It seems to me that a new and vibrant Farm Credit Corporation cannot be restricted in the nature of the small and medium sized business loans that it indulges in and that its purpose should also include the co-operatives.
Therefore I would like to include the words "and co-operatives" in Motion No. 2. I move:
That Motion No. 2 be amended by adding in line 3, following the words "medium sized business" the words "and co-operatives" in the English text, and in the French text in line 5 of Motion No. 2 following the word "entreprise" the words "et les cooperatives".


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the amendment in order.


Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward -Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand today to make a few comments on Bill C-95, and in particular on the amendment of my colleague from Algoma that is being amended to a further extent.
March 16, 1993

I would like to say from the start that for the most part the bill before us will be beneficial or has the potential of being beneficial to the agricultural community. However it is very important that the amendment before us gets passed. I am not so sure about the amendment to the amendment, but I am about the original amendment and its intent.
With the changes this bill makes to the board of directors of the Farm Credit Corporation we suffer the possibility of a lack of direct connection with the industry and the direction in which the Canadian agricultural industry and the government may want the Farm Credit Corporation to go.
This amendment states very clearly that the purpose of the corporation is to enhance rural Canada by providing specific and personalized financial services to farming operations including family farms and to those businesses in rural Canada including small or medium sized businesses, et cetera. It gives definite direction.
As has been stated before many times, 97 per cent of Canadian farms are family owned and operated. The danger we have if we do not give more specific direction to the Farm Credit Corporation is that we could very easily fall into a situation that is so evident in the actions and sometimes unspoken word of the present government. The definite direction is that the emphasis falls on the bigger companies and its support falls to the bigger companies. I do not think that is the intention of the farm credit legislation but there is that danger.
We know that over 80 per cent of jobs in Canada in the last number of years have been created by small businesses and medium sized businesses including farms. We need to state that emphasis.
If ever there was a time when rural Canada needed some development in the short term so that it could continue to be strong in the long term, now is that time. Now is also the time when agencies such as the Farm Credit Corporation should be there to support structures and facilities within rural Canada, whether they be farmer owned, local owned, co-ops, or a group of farmers or local business people going together to establish a facility for value added products. Now is the time.
We can give specific direction to the Farm Credit Corporation that this is the area we want it to concentrate on. We can make that message very clear. Whether
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it is Farm Credit Corporation or whatever it is, we do not any longer have an unlimited supply of funds. We must make sure those funds are priorized in the proper way and properly directed and that the emphasis of that expenditure is put there.
In order to have a strong agrifood industry I hope there is no question in anyone's mind that we must have strong, economically viable family farm units because that is the backbone of the industry.
However with the difficulty today of getting more money out of the world price for those raw products, a direction I find refreshing coming from the rural community is that those primary producers are realizing they have to get involved at some of the next stages with what happens to their natural resources or raw products. That realization is there. That support therefore must come from government in order to help them to attain that and it must come from the Farm Credit Corporation in order to help them put those instruments of value adding in place. If we cannot get any more from the world price, let us say for grain, probably one of the ways to go is to develop that into ethanol or in the case of canola, for example, there is some great work being done now to make diesel fuel using canola oil as a base.
This is where rural development can take place in order to allow rural communities to get more money out of the final marketplace and in order for this development to stay in those communities. By doing so, we will create jobs, we will keep our communities together, we will keep that social fabric and fibre together throughout rural Canada and we will have a better blend of rural and urban people.
We know that in many rural areas now there is not that distinct line between a farm community and an urban community. We are getting a mixture of the two in what we refer to as a rural-urban community. They need to and they can get along together, but there has to be interests and gains there for both.
I hope that the government will see fit to accept this amendment so that it makes it very clear to rural Canada, to rural-urban Canada and to the Farm Credit Corporation the direction in which we feel their expenditures should concentrate. It certainly does not prohibit the other, but it makes it clear that this is really where we want the effort to be made.

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Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton -Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on report stage of Bill C-95 which is an act to repeal the Farm Credit Act and replace it with the Farm Credit Corporation Act.
This bill will expand the financial services to farm businesses diversifying beyond the farm gate. It is really permissive legislation since it sets out the rules under which the Farm Credit Corporation must operate.
There are several areas which are quite different as we compare this bill with the act that it will replace. There are two areas of concern to me. One of those is addressed in the amendment submitted in the name of the member for Algoma. While the financing alone must be for operations in Canada, I also note that the new legislation does not require that the applicants be Canadian citizens.
The new legislation will permit FCC to provide a loan to a business located off the farm within the rural sector as long as the inputs and outputs of the diversified operation are clearly identifiable. It could be for anything.
The amendment put forward for farming operations includes family farms and businesses in rural Canada, including small and medium sized businesses related to farming. The subamendment put forward by the member for Mackenzie to include co-operatives is also a very positive step.
This legislation puts the corporation in competition with chartered banks and the new provisions under the Small Businesses Loans Act which charges an interest rate of 1.5 per cent over prime and has a ceiling of $250,000. As we look at this new legislation we wonder if this is the first step toward privatization of the Farm Credit Corporation.
We admit that there are some aspects of the legislation that require special consideration that would cover for example a farm owned and operated seed cleaning plant or processing plant for livestock and poultry slaughter and processing or a small farm scale ethanol plant to supplement a feedlot operation. In some areas of this country such operations would certainly be of benefit to those respective communities.
I must caution however that such endeavours are not always a success. A local poultry operation in southwestern Ontario set up a state of the art poultry processing plant a few years ago at a cost of $500,000. They discovered to their dismay that they could not penetrate the market except for individual private sales prior to the holiday season. They suffered huge losses. The plant now operates only a few weeks out of the year.
The government seems to want to continue tinkering with the massive problems facing Canadian agriculture today. In fact, the new president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said: "This government refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem".
The president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture stated at a rally in Lucknow, Ontario: "Farmers are upset, farmers are worried and Canadian farmers are indeed very angry".
Just recently the chairman of the Ontario Farm Debt Review Board said he fears he is going to be "a very busy man this spring". A well-known farm consultant stated that the Farm Debt Review Board has simply become a very sophisticated collection agency.
The February 1993 brief submitted by the Roman Catholic Agriculture Co-Ordinating Committee established by the Catholic bishops of Saskatchewan stated: "What is happening globally is that basic food production is no longer the principal goal of the agricultural system. It is increasingly geared to support agribusiness processors, retailers and intermediaries, whether at the international or at the national level".
I note that this legislation has no upper limit as to the size of loans that can be received. I hope that we will be looking at this amendment in a positive light. We will be looking at this amendment to ensure that the focus of this government is redirected back to the family farm operations which have made this country one of the best in terms of agriculture production, of efficiency and the quality and supply of food that is available to our people at a very reasonable price.
I do not believe that the whole bill is going to address the problem of what is happening in Canadian agriculture today. While aspects of the bill are quite positive, as I indicated, I should point out that it does not address the basic problem of income for individual farmers, income that is so sorely needed in the grains and other sectors of
March 16, 1993

agriculture that do not have their systems of supply management or systems of planned production in place.
If he is going to survive, the farmer too has to have a return on investment, management, labour and risk. Therefore I submit that we should support this amendment. We trust the government will ensure that it is passed. We hope that it will ensure that the subamendment is also supported. I believe it will be the small community-based co-operatives that will have to build these small processing plants in order to add the value added products that will be required, whether in processing or new development or, if we have to diversify in parts of Canada, in the direction of specialized species of woodlands and provide the funding to the sawmills and the processing plants that go with them.
I believe that we have to get on with the bill. I call on the government to support the amendment and the subamendment so that we can put this in place and get on with issues in this House that are going to improve the income of Canadian farmers and enable them to pay back and service the loans provided to them by this institution, the Farm Credit Corporation, as well as the other lending institutions across Canada.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise and make a very few short comments on Bill C-95 in response to some of the concerns raised by my colleagues when speaking about this legislation.
It is unfortunate that some feel that this is not positive legislation. From the information that I have from feedback from constituents in my riding as well as right across Canada, it is viewed as positive legislation, as it is viewed by the officials of the Farm Credit Corporation because it provides them with new tools to hopefully better fulfil their mandate and make their work that much easier. Agriculture sectors have come forward on a positive note as well, looking at it as something new to help them meet the challenges that we are facing in this current year, the nineties, and to the year 2000 to help us better prepare for the future.
This is positive legislation that is being awaited. The farmers are waiting in anticipation of speedy passage of the legislation with the hope that this legislation will be in place for this current year, this spring planting season, in order for them to do their proper planning.
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One speaker raised the concern of inadequate funding. I have to point out that since we formed the government, the FCC has been provided with adequate funding to meet the lending requirements in that period of time.
Before I came to the House of Commons there were times when the FCC did run short of funding and could not fulfil its mandate or the requests for the period of its fiscal year. It is certainly our intention to allow the FCC the funding that is necessary. It can go to the market to borrow its requirements and be very prudent while doing that. As well it should try to get the best deal in order to provide the corporation with the lowest cost money possible.
Some say that the legislation does not really address all the needs. I do not believe the FCC legislation is to address all of the problems that agriculture is finding at these times. There are external incidents that are making it more difficult for farming such as the lack of a GATT agreement and what other countries are doing with the prices of grains and oilseeds. That is why we brought in GRIP, NISA and crop insurance. We have tried to give the farmers, industries, the lending institutions, all of those, the security that is necessary for proper planning.
We believe that a GATT agreement would be one of the most positive things that would help in the long term, but in the short term as we have said before we have put safety nets in place to help meet those obligations.
There is no question that this new legislation allows the corporation the flexibility to lend to larger operations. I also want to point out that the FCC will continue to serve the needs of the family farm. In fact, the removal of the principal occupation stipulation will make it easier to lend to smaller farmers whose income is not primarily derived from the farm. We do have a commitment to the family farm and I just want to make it very clear that there is no change there.
I want to speak very briefly about the amendment to the motion which would add co-operatives to the motion. The terminology "small and medium sized businesses" and "businesses related to farming" already include the co-operatives in the purpose clause of the bill. For that reason we could not accept the amendment to the motion.

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Going to the amendment, we feel it does make some clarification. The proposed amendment does not change the basic purpose of the bill. The government is willing to accept the amendment. I think those are all the comments I will make at this time.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Murray Cardiff: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. It was not clear. Are we calling the question on the amendment or on the amendment to the amendment?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The debate is on Motion No. 2 in the name of the hon. member for Algoma, but the vote is on the amendment to Motion No. 2 in the name of the hon. member for Mackenzie. It is on the amendment. Is it clear?
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it. I declare the amendment lost.
Amendment negatived.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 2 standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the motion carried.
Motion No. 2 agreed to.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Motion No. 4.
That Bill C-95 be amended in Clause 4 by striking out line 18 at page 2 and substituting the following therefor:
"persons resident in Canada within the meaning of the Income Tax Act, Canadian citizens, or bodies, for the following pur-".
Motion No. 10.
That Bill C-95 be amended in Clause 8 by striking out line 23 at page 5 and substituting the following therefor:
"committee, a committee to review any decision made by the Corporation under paragraph 4(2)(a), or any other committees that the".


Raymond John Funk: Motion No. 12.
That Bill C-95 be amended in Clause 8 by adding immediately after line 30 at page 5 the following:
"(3) The Board shall establish an advisory committee to review, at the request of any interested person, any decision made by the Corporation under paragraph 4(2)(a).
(4) For greater certainty, a decision made by the advisory committee established under subsection (3) shall not be binding on the Board or have the effect of altering or annulling any decision of the Board."


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the parliamentary secretary and the government accepting the first amendment. It was one strongly recommended by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture who appeared before the legislative committee.
With regard to Motion No. 4, this motion simply says that when the government can make loans they should be made to Canadian citizens or Canadian residents. It does not preclude it from making loans to people who are not citizens of the country provided they are residents of the country. Some new Canadians who have not achieved citizenship are farming and this motion simply provides for that.
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Looking at the amount of funds available, the parliamentary secretary was talking about how the government has always made money available to the FCC. The question is as to what interest rates are charged. If we look closely at what has happened to the FCC even since 1987, it is pretty dramatic. The number of loans out there has dropped from 72,000 to 59,000. That just about parallels exactly the number of farmers we have lost during that period which is some 13,000.
I suggest that the government's tight-fisted approach to FCC, especially coming through farm debt review boards, really results from that tight-fisted, hard-nosed approach this government has taken with literally thousands and thousands of producers.
The parliamentary secretary says that the government has made funds available. In fact, if we just look at that period from 1987 to 1992 the amount of loans this government has with Canadian farmers has decreased from $4.7 billion to $3.5 billion. That is $1.2 billion taken out of the farm financial situation across the country.
During that same period of time the amount of loans, the amount of farm debt, has increased from some $22 billion to, I believe, almost $24 billion. The amount of money the government is making available for farm loans is certainly not increasing. It is in fact decreasing.
The only thing that is increasing is the number of properties which the government has seized. In 1987 it held 911 properties across the country. At the end of fiscal year 1991-92 which is almost a year ago, it owned 2,609 properties. There are hundreds of thousands, millions of acres of land which the government has seized.
The parliamentary secretary suggests there are lots of funds available but the amount of funds is rapidly decreasing. The parliamentary secretary suggested that the Farm Credit Corporation would be able to go to the market any time to secure additional funding. That is true, but every acquisition of funding has to be approved by the Minister of Finance. Therefore, the funding is only available if the Minister of Finance approves it.
It seems to me that this amendment to clause 4, suggesting that persons resident in Canada within the meaning of the Income Tax Act or Canadian citizens or bodies would be eligible for the funding is a good
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amendment. If there are limited funds available, surely we want to reserve them for Canadian citizens. That, of course, does not preclude groups putting together funding from other sources that are outside the country, but certainly we should have an approach to provide funding for Canadian farmers whenever that is possible.
We have three motions grouped for debate. This debate also includes Motion No. 10, standing in my name. This amendment of clause 8, by striking out line 23 on page 5 and substituting therefor "committee", gives the board of directors the powers to establish committees. They talk about the executive committee, the audit committee. We are proposing that there would be a committee to review any decision made by the corporation under paragraph 4(2)(a), or any other committees involved.
Essentially what we are trying to put in place is a review procedure, an appeal body. I put a similar motion before the legislative committee because I think it is important that in legislation there be a provision for an appeal procedure. The Tories, of course, voted that amendment down.
Fortunately we have been able to bring forward a new amendment before the House. However, I do not know why legislators want to remove the right for an appeal. I appealed to the members on the government side at the committee that the basic right with any government body or corporation such as this is that there be an appeal procedure.
We are talking about a very serious thing here. We are talking about farmers who have applied for a loan from an agency of the Crown. The loan should be available to them. If there is an official at the headquarters in Guelph, Regina or wherever it is across the country who dislikes that farmer for whatever personal reasons or incidents which have occurred during the negotiations and that request is being turned down, there should be the basic right to appeal.
An appeal procedure has been put in place by regulation or under this new arrangement it will be by a by-law. However, it seems to me that it should be right in the statute. Therefore, regardless of who the chairman of the Farm Credit Corporation is or who the chief executive officer is or who are the board of directors, it is in the legislation that there will be an appeal procedure.

March 16, 1993
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Therefore, when farmers get turned down especially in these hard times when we have seen 13,000 go out of business in the last four years, there is an appeal procedure.
I hope the parliamentary secretary will not think of himself as being the tool of a government that wants to have a bill so short and so broad that all powers are assumed by that agency and its board of directors. I hope he will think back to when he farmed and he saw his neighbours lose their right for a loan. How good it would be to be sure there was an appeal procedure so that those individual farmers could go to the Farm Credit Corporation appeal body.
Whenever legislation is written, the idea is that we put in checks and balances, that we put in the right for the individual producer.
Now this may be all part of the over-all scheme to privatize the FCC and sell off its loan portfolio to some big American corporation or whatever. If that is the reason then we will know why the government is not accepting it. Today this is a Crown corporation.
These individual producers should have the right to appeal to a review panel, in this case a review committee, established by the Farm Credit Corporation so that injustices will not be done. Clearly thousands of farmers feel that the FCC has been unjust and unfair.
If we put it in the statute then they will know that we are doing our jobs as legislators. Whether the government operates in a fair and equitable way is something we have to pursue in the estimates committee or elsewhere. However, at least we will be doing our jobs as legislators in putting in the provision for an appeal procedure for farmers who are turned down for a loan by the Farm Credit Corporation.


Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, at the present moment there are a number of motions before us. Motion No. 4 would add a section to this bill requiring that loan guarantees be made to persons resident in Canada within the meaning of the Income Tax Act, Canadian citizens or bodies for the purpose of the various kinds of lending activities which the corporation could enter into.
As the legislation now stands it merely says: "make loans or guarantee loans made to persons or bodies for the following purpose". In other words, Motion No. 4 would introduce a Canadian residence requirement for citizens or bodies who would be applying for a loan under the act.
Certainly it would seem only appropriate that moneys that are voted by this Parliament, moneys that are paid for by the taxpayers of Canada, should be designated to people and organizations resident in this country. What purpose could there be for using scarce resources to finance the activities of others who would come into our country and take over either farms or agricultural businesses within this country? Certainly there are reasons why that might happen, but what possible reason is there that the taxpayers of Canada should, in times of economic scarcity and fiscal restraint, be involved in providing taxpayers' money for those purposes?
The real reason that the government is reluctant to accept this particular motion is that it flies in the face of what is in the free trade agreement with the United States and the proposed NAFTA agreement with Canada, the United States and Mexico. Those agreements create a regime in which national boundaries mean very little and the decisions of individual legislatures in particular countries mean very little.
The farmers of Canada, and all the people of Canada, should be aware that one of the implications of adopting those kinds of trade agreements is precisely what we see here, which is that this Parliament can no longer restrict the spending of taxpayers' money to Canadian citizens and Canadian residents. It is really quite alarming that perhaps in perpetuity we are now going to be in a situation in which this Parliament cannot direct the spending of Canadian taxpayers' money for the purposes of helping Canadians and Canadian residents and restricting expenditures of money to that purpose.
The second set of motions, Motion No. 10 in the name of the member for Algoma and Motion No. 12 which stands in my name, would create an appeal body which would be available to farmers and others that come before the board and are turned down or are otherwise
March 16, 1993

not happy with the decision of the Farm Credit Corporation. My motion says that:
"(3) The board shall establish an advisory committee to review, at the request of any interested person, any decision made by the corporation under paragraph 4(2)(a).
-which is the list of purposes to which loans and loan guarantees can be applied. It also says that:
(4) For greater certainty, a decision made by the advisory committee established under subsection (3) shall not be binding on the board or have the effect of altering or annulling any decision of the board."
In other words, this would provide for an appeal process, a review committee to which a person or an organization could appeal a decision of the Farm Credit Corporation. It also makes it very explicit that the decision of that body would not be binding on the corporation but merely would be advisory to it.
It is important to note that the government's seeming rejection of this provision means that it is rejecting something that in fact has been the practice in the past. To my knowledge there is a review procedure, an appeal procedure, within the Farm Credit Corporation at the present time which serves the very function that would be enshrined in Motions Nos. 10 and 12.
Surely it is only right to have such a body available to people doing business with the coqroration. It is an agency of the Crown and thus it acts on behalf of the people of Canada. It is also a very human institution in which individuals make the best judgments according to guidelines that are provided to them. Very often these guidelines are imprecise, have grey areas, and allow a fair bit of individual latitude concerning decision making. There are probably legitimate reasons that a person could argue that the decision of the corporation goes against its own guidelines and policies, or situations in which an individual might dispute the facts that have been made available to the Farm Credit Corporation and its officers.
As members of Parliament, all of us who represent rural constituencies are very much aware of the disputes that occur between farmers and the corporation. It is often very difficult for us to determine who is right and who is wrong. But in very many of these cases we all know that there is a legitimate grievance to be had, a legitimate case to be presented by the person unhappy with a decision.
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Precluding an appeal procedure for those kinds of people means that rather than going to an appeal board the only recourse these people will have is an appeal to the political process or the courts.
As we all know from our attempts to intervene in these cases, members of Parliament, although we would gladly accept the responsibility of following up these cases, often feel we are not the appropriate people to conduct the kind of inquiries and hear all sides of the evidence required to make a fair judgment. As members of Parliament we know those kinds of cases occur. Therefore one avenue of appeal is often not appropriate.
The second avenue of appeal is an appeal to the courts. That is an expensive and time-consuming process, as anybody who has ever been involved with it knows very well. Often people who are in a situation in which they are appealing a decision of the Farm Credit Corporation have stretched their resources to the limit, are going broke and are in a state of personal crisis with respect to themselves and their families. Having to go to court, with all that implies, is another burden they really do not need and it does nothing to enhance either their own well-being or the decision-making process.
Therefore it seems to me that the government should recognize that there is a right in a democracy to appeal decisions that are made on behalf of the Crown and to enshrine in this legislation what has been the practice, which is that people who disagree with the decisions made by the Farm Credit Corporation have a right of appeal internally within the corporation. As I previously noted, this would not be binding but would have an advisory effect and would present an opportunity for both sides of a dispute to be heard.
I appeal to the government to take the common sense and just approach and continue the practice that has been in place in the past by providing an appeal procedure with respect to decisions of the Farm Credit Corporation.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I want to speak briefly on this amendment and at the same time take the opportunity to speak on the bill.

March 16, 1993
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Over recent weeks I have received correspondence from constituents who want this bill to pass. As usual our party has demonstrated its co-operation. I understand that today we will not only be passing this bill at report stage but my colleagues and I will be giving our unanimous consent to go to third reading, thereby demonstrating not only to the government but to all Canadians that we on our side of the House want to do whatever we can to assist the agricultural industry in Canada.
In a perfect world the amendment we are proposing this morning is something that would leave me a little uncomfortable because we are restricting the number of people who could have access to these funds. However, the sad reality is that with the cutbacks this government has imposed on the Farm Credit Corporation and on agriculture generally, funds are very scarce. As funds are very scarce, we must maximize their use.
My colleague from Algoma and others have spoken about how the number of loans continues to decrease. The number of active loans under the portfolio of the Farm Credit Corporation is actually going down. The number of loans in 1987-88 was 72,000; in 1988-89, 67,000; 1989-90, 63,000; 1990-91, 61,000; and 1991-92, 59,845. The number of loans continues to decrease.
What does that tell us? First of all, it tells us that the agricultural economy is doing very poorly. Then it speaks of some of the neglect of this government. It is not only the number of loans that is going down. Some people might be tempted to say those are merely consolidations and each loan may be greater in value, and therefore the agricultural community is getting the same benefit. That is not so.
In terms of the amount of dollars, the total was $4.7 billion in 1987-88 and that figure progressively went down to the present year's total of $3.5 billion. In other words, it went down $1.2 billion, and that is not in inflation adjusted dollars. If we count the inflationary adjustment, resulting from the fact that each dollar is worth less today than it was then, then the loss is even greater than the $1.2 billion figure I just mentioned.
We will be supporting this bill because it has merit. However, let there be no mistake. This bill does not bring salvation. This bill does not make the Conservative administration across the way acceptable to the agricultural community of Canada. The agricultural community
will remember the government across the way for what it has done.
I remember how this government talked about its commitment to supply management in 1984 and I remember a repeat of that commitment in 1988 during the free trade agreement debate.


An hon. member:: What did it do about it?


Don Boudria: What did it do about it? First of all, we lost an awful lot in the free trade agreement. We all know of the loss of the ice cream and yoghurt provisions that we had because the government switched some items from the tariff list to the import control list, or at least it pretended it would. Mysteriously the then Minister of Agriculture resigned only a few days afterward and did not seek to run again in the last election.
To make matters even worse, there are also the cutbacks that have been imposed on the agricultural community since then. There was the decrease of $638 million in the last mini budget. That is how much of a cut there was in the economic statement of last December, which some of us refer to as a mini budget. That figure even includes a $38 million decrease in the dairy subsidy measures which the agricultural community had previously enjoyed.
We all know that this $6.03 per hectolitre amount had been frozen for many years. At one time it represented something like 12 or 13 per cent of the revenue of dairy farmers. As a result of the fact that amount had remained fixed per hectolitre and the cost of production kept going up it eventually represented a smaller proportion, somewhere in the order of 8 per cent. Now there is not just the fact that this amount was frozen but there is an actual decrease of some $38 million in the dairy subsidies.
The last thing the dairy farmers of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell wanted is for this government to renege on its commitment to protect the supply managed sector during the free trade agreement debate in 1988 and to actually start reducing the subsidies.

So farmers in my riding and elsewhere will long remember the Conservative government opposite. Today, of course, we intend to support this bill, because it is good, but we should still keep things straight. This bill does nothing to redeem the Conservatives opposite. The Conservatives have sinned and I assure you, Mr. Speak-
March 16, 1993

er, that voters in my region and elsewhere will say: "Yes, the bill may help us, perhaps, but the damage caused by this government is far greater than the benefits from the bill today".
With that I will end my remarks. It is my pleasure to support the bill and the amendment as offered by my hon. colleague for Algoma and seconded by my colleague for Prince Edward-Hastings, who also represents another fine agricultural constituency in this country and more particularly in the province of Ontario.
I am anxiously awaiting not just the outcome of the vote on this bill. We all know the approval the bill will get, but I am waiting to see other measures that will assist the farming community in Canada, which is living through a very difficult period. It has lost so much of its income and is struggling in spite of the fact it is working so hard to produce the food we all eat.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a few short remarks on this amendment. I want to approach this from the point of view of an urban member of Parliament.
All too often there is a view or feeling in rural Canada that people who live in the cities, or urban members of Parliament are not as supportive as they should be when it comes to agricultural issues.
About three months ago in my riding, we put a display in the window of our constituency office that was designed and prepared by my colleague for Lambton- Middlesex. The display was titled "Compare the Share". This exhibit illustrated to urbanites, people who live in the city, the amount of money received at the farm gate for things like chicken, wheat, cheese and milk. Then we illustrated the amount of money the retailer receives. The dramatic difference shocked urbanites. They had no idea and there was little awareness or sensitivity to the amount the farmer receives.
There is another small store in my community called Hampton Variety store, which is run by a young entrepreneur, Terry McAdorey. As a result of this particular
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exhibit he will not buy products from transnational agricultural organizations. He buys farm products from small family farms. The cheeses, stews, eggs and everything else are all bought from the family farm. He is doing this partly because of his own inner view, his own commitment to the fact that we must become more sensitive to the notion of community versus competitiveness. In my view this is one thing this government has really failed to achieve.
It has been so possessed by this notion of global competitiveness that it has really been following the transnational corporate approach. Nowhere has that transnational corporate approach had more impact than on the values and approach we now have in our agricultural community and in the agribusiness. It is practically a cartel of about five or six companies that are running the agricultural business in Canada. As a result, the few family farms that are left in our country are existing almost in isolation. It is almost like the life of a hermit and this has tremendous impact in terms of the social consequences.
I think we all agree there is a farm crisis in our country today, especially with respect to the family farm. This bill we are putting through today is an instrument of the Farm Credit Corporation to recommit itself to the idea of respect for the family farm. It basically puts community, community values and quality products against this singular drive for competitive prices and globalization, which I think is getting far out of hand.
I was reading an article in the Catholic Register, written by Marie Carter of Dresden, Ontario. The article is on page 7 and is called: "Today's farm crisis is everyone's concern". She made the point that only 3 per cent of the Canadian population makes a living from the land.
More than ever it is incumbent upon all of us as members of Parliament to speak out for those people. Hopefully we can reignite interest and concern in this particular sector of our economy. Maybe we will develop a feeling or an idea that this could be a new vocation or approach as we head into the restructuring of our entire society.


J7044 COMMONS DEBATES
[Stage Direction]
March 16, 1993
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There is a growing mood of defeat and negativity toward farming by farmers that was illustrated in this particular article. I am happy to stand here today as an urban member of Parliament to support my colleagues from Algoma and Prince Edward-Hastings on this motion.
Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, I also want to make just a few brief comments on these motions before the House right now.
The first one is that the Farm Credit Corporation money be made available within the meaning of the Income Tax Act to Canadian citizens or bodies, et cetera.
I share the view of my colleague from Glengarry- Prescott-Russell that it would be nice to be able to have sufficient funding to help finance people who want to get involved in farm businesses, farms or the agrifood community. In reality however, as he stated, we just do not have an endless supply of money.
The Farm Credit Corporation is backed by the Canadian taxpayer and unfortunately in the past has had to be funded to quite an extent by the Canadian taxpayer. I think therelore the moneys it makes available should be made available to Canadian taxpayers, Canadian citizens and landed immigrants as long as they meet the accepted criteria, legal aspects, et cetera.
I know that the intention of this bill and the Farm Credit Corporation is to balance the books so there are no losses. There are lots of us out there in businesses and it has been our intention to balance the books. The government claims it has been its intention to balance the books. It is another subject, but I do not think it has done a very good job of it.
This is probably the fairest distribution of this money and availability of money by the Farm Credit Corporation, to make it available to those who fall within the meaning of the Income Tax Act. I would ask the government to consider that and approve of that amendment.
The other motion before us. Motion No. 10, stipulates that a committee to review any decisions made by the corporation be put in place. At the present time there is an appeal board at the Farm Credit Corporation. Some people may feel they have not had their cases heard properly or for some personal reason they have not been treated as they felt they should have been. Perhaps they
have not been able to explain their situations to representatives ot the Farm Credit Corporation. They can presently have a second group of people take a look at the situation. I think that is very worth while.
With this bill we are changing the make-up of the board of directors at the Farm Credit Corporation. I have no problem with the number. We will discuss the distribution, background or make-up of the board of directors in a later motion.
If the bill continues the way it is at the present time, there is no avenue for an individual applicant to raise the question other than to write to the complete board of directors or the chairman of FCC to say he or she would like the case to be reconsidered.
We must all realize that even though that has not happened a lot in the past, it has happened. In many cases when there has been a request for a review, it has not been passed. The decision is made the same way, but it has given that extra avenue and level of comfort to the applicant that was there for assurance to make sure he or she could be heard.
1 would ask the government as well to consider this. There is nothing wrong with it. It is not asking that someone be placed on a fancy salary or a long-term thing. My understanding is when these have worked before they were on a per diem basis. They can put two or three people in different places in different parts of Canada. If there is a request for a review they can be called together or go to visit the applicant. They can sit down with the applicant in the farm office or in someone else's facility and go over the issue to determine whether the probleme is personality, et cetera. It is a safety valve and I do not think it is too much to ask to give a high level of comfort. Quite frankly I think it would cost very little.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I want to speak on the amendments at report stage of Bill C-95 and particularly to Motions Nos. 4, 10 and 12.
I am going to zero in on Motion No. 4, which is designed to ensure these loans are made to Canadian persons or corporations. In June 1985 we heard a lot from the government opposite about Canada being open for business. In the next few years between 1985 and 1991, approximately 4,100 corporations in Canada were taken over mainly by other interests to the south of us in the United States. Those takeovers were largely fi-
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nanced by loans from Canadian lending institutions. In fact, 85 per cent of the loans came from Canadian lending institutions. In other words, they used our financial institutions to buy us out. I suggest that Motion No. 4 will block such an attempt to use Farm Credit Corporation loans in the future for that purpose. I believe it is a well thought out motion that deserves support.
Let us look at what is happening in Canada with some of the transnationals that were referred to a few moments ago by a previous speaker. To leave the bill as it is without such a motion as Motion No. 4 would play right into the hands of these corporations. They are bleeding dividends and assets out of Canada and are contributing to the huge current account deficit which is going to hit somewhere between $25 billion and $30 billion in this current fiscal year.
This country cannot afford such haemorrhaging of profits and dividends going out of this country to companies that do not belong in Canada but operate here. My colleague from Broadview-Greenwood who spoke just a moment ago about the transnational corporate agenda and its objectives was absolutely right.
In fact, just yesterday a prominent economist stated that: "The doctrine of international competitiveness that government, business and academics have seized upon is misguided and dangerous. The competitiveness doctrine thinks countries compete like companies and end up winners or losers, and it does not exist as a meaninglul concept". That economist was Paul Krugman, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On several occasions I have spoken about the growing concentration in food production and processing by a few huge firms. Some of them are transnationals in the U.S. Some are already in Canada and other countries. Some of them came into Canada and were encouraged by government financing made available to them in terms of low interest rate loans or outright grants. Now we find these same companies branching into Third World coun-
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tries to take advantage of low wages, few environmental regulations and lower sanitation and health standards.
For nearly two years I have been accumulating information and have completed two studies delving into the share of the consumer's food dollar that ends up in the hands of the average Canadian farmer, as mentioned by my colleague from Broadview-Greenwood just a few moments ago. The results are shocking.
However, to bear out the quotes I referred to earlier in these remarks, how can this government have the gall to tinker with legislation such as this when the basic primary producers are forced to take secondary jobs off their farms to earn enough to put food on their own tables and subsidize their own farming operations?
In 1991 the average farm family income which includes income earned from other sources was $39,638. The income from those other sources was $22,522 or about 60 per cent of that total income. Federal and provincial subsidies accounted for $9,927, leaving just $7,181 from the farm operation itself.
The government cannot continue to hide its head in the sand. Any loans made under this legislation, the previous legislation, or any other lending institution have to be repaid. However, the returns are not there to pay off the debt or to pay the interest on that debt, as economics and agriculture are defined today.
The government brought out the GRIP and NISA programs. Already there are signs that these programs are beginning to fall apart. Of course, the question begging to be answered is: How can we survive when a program only covers 80 per cent of the acreage, based on a 15-year moving average of prices, an average that is going down?
It is time that we stood up to be counted as Canadians. It is time we stopped pandering to those interests outside of Canada who want to invest in Canada by using our Canadian lending institutions and our sources, corporations that want to gain control of food production and processing in this country. It is time we said that the buck stops here. That is why I am supporting this motion, to ensure that these loans are made only to Canadian citizens or Canadian corporations.

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Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: I would like to make a few comments on Motions Nos. 4, 10 and 12. They basically deal with two topics.
One is the question of whether there should be a requirement for users of Farm Credit Corporation loans as established under this Farm Credit Corporation Act to be Canadian citizens or residents of Canada under the Income Tax Act. The other is whether there should in fact be a review committee to review the actions of the Farm Credit Corporation. It would not be able to change the actions but it would have them reviewed and perhaps made a bit more public and would test to see if mistakes had been made.
The first item is the question of requiring the making of loans or guarantees of loans to persons who are residents of Canada within the meaning of the Income Tax Act or Canadian citizens. This amendment to require the people receiving such loans or guarantees to be residents of Canada within the purposes of the Income Tax Act and/or Canadian citizens is a good one.
I know that flies in the face of some of the clauses the government has negotiated in the North American free trade agreement. I know it has a clause which says that future legislation does not permit this kind of thing and there is a commitment by the signatories to live by that. However we have not approved that agreement yet.
It is crucial to discuss why it is that this kind of commitment is required for loans being made to people living in rural Canada. It is particularly crucial because the purpose of the bill as stated says that these loans and linancial services are for those businesses in rural Canada. It does not say international business; it does not say multinational business. It says business that will be in rural Canada, a business that has a commitment to staying there.
It is a very ancient, honourable and effective development tool which has been used for centuries to maintain rural communities. The assistance and loans and ownership of those developments would be by people who are citizens of the country and/or seeking to become citizens of that community. To set up a development model that is anything else does not live by the purpose of the bill which seems to be to develop businesses in rural communities.
We have had some wavering from the commitment to ownership in the community by the community in Canada's history even though our history is relatively short. In Prince Edward Island in the middle 1800s most of the island lands and farms were owned by non-resident landlords. People in England and Ireland owned most of that territory. There was what could only be described as a near revolt on the part of the resident farmers. They had found themselves shipping more and more of their income offshore and finally simply refused to do that. To this day on Prince Edward Island there are resident requirements and limits to the size of farms that can be owned by corporations simply because of that historic event more than 100 years ago.
In the development of my region, western Canada, it was required that an application for resident status must have been made before one could own a homestead. My ancestors came from Europe and the United States. They had to sign and swear that they were going to remain residents of Canada and had the intention of becoming Canadian citizens before they were granted the right to purchase this land.
This country has a long and honourable method of doing business in rural Canada. For the government to dodge the issue by not including a clause that was in the old act in this new bill means that there is in fact an intention on its part to change the rules as to what sort of development we have in rural communities.
I have seen the clause in the North American free trade agreement that says there will not be a requirement that investors be citizens any more. That might be fine for very large investors. However, as a result of the amendments that have occurred already this morning, this bill is aimed at the small and medium sized businesses.
We do not need international people coming in to pick and choose, to pick off assets they might be able to turn a fast dollar on just because Farm Credit Corporation might be able to lend them some money under this proposal. This becomes important because it is not just loans but it is also guarantees of loans.
The question of review of the loan decisions also ties in with this. In making financial decisions it is important to have a place to go to for a second opinion. The old Farm Credit Corporation Act had a review body. There is no mention of that here. Parliament would like to see a review body included in the act. A future board of
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directors might decide to set up such a body, but I think Parliament has the right and a proper expectation to have that spelled out in the legislation. That is what these amendments are about.
The reasons there should be such a review body are quite clear when we look at past experience. Financial viability is a little bit like the poet looking for beauty: It is basically in the eye of the beholder.
While there are numbers on balance sheets, the gut feeling of the person looking at those balance sheets is what ends up determining the decision that is made too often. If it is thought that is going too far, if you are from the accounting school and think that there is only one way to go when looking at a balance sheet, I urge you to look at the banking decisions made in the case of Campeau Corporation. There was a host and string of bad banking decisions made in the rise and fall of that corporation.
Look at the Bronfman empire. Look at the loans that are running into difficulty there that were based on reputation rather than balance sheets and assets given, estimates of asset values that had no relevance on the actual market of the day. Look at Olympia and York and the Reichmanns and the difficulties that those assets and evaluations have run into. It will be seen why it is necessary to have a second opinion sometimes.
I have had individuals raise situations with me. They have applied to Farm Credit Corporation and were turned down with no explanation. Sometimes it was a fight over evaluation. At one point the Farm Credit evaluator was attempting to extract for the same classification of land three times the value that an identical parcel next door to it had sold for just within six months. However, they were insisting on selling back to the owner or valuing it for the owner to renegotiate a price at a value that was three times what was, in fact, the market value. Without appeal to a review board and another assessment, that treatment would have been very unfair.
A feedlot operator in Alberta went to FCC, applied for a loan and was turned down. The Farm Credit assessor had made a terrible mistake in estimating the productivity of his feedlot, an estimate that showed the
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per day increase in production from his feedlot was one-half a pound per day instead of the three pounds per day which it actually was. Ever after, because of that mistake, even though his balance sheet was very good, that man was unable to get a loan. Not only was he unable to get a loan from Farm Credit Corporation, but from all other institutions as well. That is because the information is shared. He had no place to go.
For those reasons, it only makes sense that Parliament insist there be a place for a review committee in the legislation itself.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak briefly to Motions Nos. 4, 10 and 12. I will deal with Motion No. 4 first.
Although the legislation is for the benefit of Canadian farm operations, there are circumstances where business alliances could be developed with farm businesses in the United States that would be beneficial to Canadian farmers and rural communities. For example, there may be a member of a farm operation where one family member is a non- resident for a period of time. This may needlessly limit that farm's operation and its ability to obtain credit from the Farm Credit Corporation.
The term resident is not defined in the Income Tax Act. The courts have held that an individual is resident in Canada for tax purposes if Canada is the place where he, in the subtle routine of his life, regularly, normally or customarily lives. In making this determination all relevant facts in each case must be considered. As a result, eligibility tends to be confusing. We certainly do not want any more confusion with legislation than what sometimes develops.
With respect to Motion No. 10, the FCC currently has an appeal board to review loan decisions. It will also have the authority in clause 8 of this bill to establish such a committee. Therefore we feel this is also unacceptable.
The proposed legislation in clause 8 allows the FCC board to establish an appeal process or any other such committee that will assist in doing its business. Legislating an appeal process would create a process that may not be sufficiently flexible to meet future clients' needs.

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For these reasons, we feel Motion No. 12 is not acceptable.
I want to point out there have been about 32 appeals in Canada in the last 18 months, which is not a great amount. We also know, as rural members of Parliament, if someone has difficulty with a field or staff worker from the Farm Credit Corporation or any problem with the application or loan per se, how often we get phone calls asking us to help someone through the process. Applicants also have the right to appeal to the chairman or vice-chairman of the Farm Credit Corporation. Of course we also know that many of them have appealed to the Ministers of Agriculture over the last number of years as well.
The government believes this legislation adequately addresses those concerns and therefore we have to reject Motions Nos. 4, 10 and 12.
Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. 4 standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Motion No. 4 negatived on division.
Motion negatived.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 10 standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


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


Some hon. members:: On division.
Motion negatived.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 12. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
Motion negatived.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Motion No. 5.
That Bill C-95 be amended in Clause 5 by adding immediately
after line 12 at page 4 the following:
"(3) Tlie membership of the Board shall at all times include a majority of farmers."
He said: Motion No. 5 standing in my name essentially amends clause 5, page 4, by requiring that the board of directors have a majority of farmers appointed to it.
The existing legislation does not provide for this arrangement as I understand it. In this bill, the board of directors is vastly expanded and the advisory committee is eliminated. We currently have an advisory committee ot about 12 representatives from across the country in the Farm Credit Corporation and they are all primary producers. They are all farmers, to my understanding, or have been in the past.
The board of directors is being expanded to 10 directors plus the chairman and the president. It seems to me that if we are going to do away with the advisory board to the FCC which is all producers, and expand the board to 12 people, it is not unreasonable that six or seven of those people be primary producers. It is simply a matter ol trying to have a board of directors that is sympathetic to agriculture and understands agriculture.
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The way the legislation is written, we will end up with a bunch of retired Tory bankers, bagmen, bogey men and not a group composed of primary producers. I think it is not unreasonable to suggest, and this was strongly recommended in the Canadian Federation of Agriculture brief to the legislative committee, that there be a majority of primary producers.
The parliamentary secretary has suggested that a primary producer while serving on the board may sell his farm and no longer be a farmer and that would change the balance on the board. It seems to me there is enough latitude in this amendment to suggest that as long as the person is a primary producer, a farmer, at the time of appointment this will be acceptable.
I am sure amendments could be made.
To have the Farm Credit Corporation filled by a group of former bankers when agriculture in Canada is perhaps in the most unstable and uncertain period in its history is just unbelievable. It is simply unbelievable that any government would propose that to the House. We want a majority of the board of directors to be primary producers who understand the industry and its concerns. They understand what is happening out there with the uncertainty of the GATT negotiations and the free trade agreement. There is uncertainty about the value of the Canadian dollar and whether our wheat exports are going to be at an adequate price to provide a reasonable living for Canadian producers.
It is a very simple request and is recommended by the largest farm organization in the country. It is unbelievable that the government is proposing to do away with the advisory committee that was 100 per cent producers and incorporate it into a much larger board of directors and would not want to see a majority of those producers be farmers instead of people who are more concerned about the banking industry or other issues.
Clearly there is a space on any board of directors for representatives from the other sectors. When we are putting forward legislation which would provide funding for the processing, that would be wise. But regardless how you cut it, the legislation is directed to the primary producer, so the majority of the directors on the new corporation should be farmers or primary producers.
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Raymond John Funk: Mr. Speaker, the motion presently before us is Motion No. 5, which would call for:
The membership of the board shall at all times include a majority of farmers.
It is very similar in intent although somewhat different in the wording to a motion I submitted under my name which said:
That the minister shall ensure that as far as possible, the membership of the board includes at all times a majority of farmers.
I do not want to go on at length about this but I think it is really regrettable that the government or the Farm Credit Corporation was not able to accept this particular motion.
In this legislation we are increasing the size of the board of the Farm Credit Corporation from seven to twelve. With only seven people on the board it might have been argued that there was a certain range of expertise required to facilitate the functions of the board that rank and file farmers did not have available to them.
For example, there might have been legal or banking experience required for the functioning of the board. With the seven member board, a majority of farmers would require that only three outside directors not be farmers.
However, with 12 members on the board, five or six people from outside the farming community could sit on the board. That certainly would represent enough bodies on the board to cover the range of expertise that might be needed by the board. It is also regrettable that this motion is not being accepted when one considers the fact that the government has also turned down the motion which called for an advisory committee to the board to review the board's decisions.
The effect of turning down both these motions will continue the present situation where there is no institutionalized way by which farmers can be guaranteed that within the organization there will be a body at either the board level or a review committee level that explicitly represents the interest of the farm community.
Surely in an era where we are in some ways being swamped with legalese, expertise and a decision-making environment that is far removed from the realities of life, in this case farming, it is regrettable that we cannot

March 16, 1993
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make this small move in order to ensure that the primary beneficiaries of this legislation are represented in a majority position or on an appeal committee.
I do not want to go on at length. I think it is regrettable that the government has not seen fit to approve a motion which would permit a majority of farmers to be the decision makers when it comes to the very important decisions this board will make, decisions that in large part will determine the land holding and therefore the future pattern of agricultural development in this country.


Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, I too want to make some very brief comments. I made mention earlier today in remarks to this House about the changes that the bill puts forward regarding the number of people on the board of directors of the Farm Credit Corporation. It increases that number. It does not enable the appointment of a review committee or an appeal committee or whatever you might want to call it.
As that is the case, it is imperative that there be some stipulation as to the make-up of the 10 board members- there will be 12 in total with the chairman and the president-of the Farm Credit Corporation.
In order to give all the comfort that we possibly can to those people in the farm community and in the independent and small and medium sized agrifood business community, it is imperative that there be an absolute assurance that the right type of people will be on the board of directors.
I do not think it is too much to ask that the membership of the board shall at all times include a majority of larmers. That is what the Farm Credit Corporation is there for. The government recognized by accepting an amendment to the bill earlier this morning emphasizing that the bill is to deal with and assist family farms and small and medium sized rural businesses. It has recognized that. This is only a follow-up to that in order to finish the bill off properly so that it gives a proper direction.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I support this motion before us, Motion No. 5, at report stage of Bill C-95 because I think it is critical that there be a new level of understanding by the board
of directors of the Farm Credit Corporation and a new look and better understanding of the needs of the borrowers as well as a need for accountability of the corporation itself.
I wish to put on record here in this House that the corporate plan of FCC of July 1988 was not tabled in this House as required by law or regulation within 15 days of the next sitting of the House as it was supposed to be. We tried on several occasions to get hold of that corporate plan and we were unable to do so until finally it was sent to us a couple of years later.
This amendment to have a majority of farmers on that board of directors would hold them accountable, not only to this House but to the borrowers of Canada.
I can well understand how they really did not want to table this because of what was in that corporate plan, and how they really wanted to convert the debt to equity. That can only be done one way, and that is by foreclosing on the farms so that rather than having a debt owing to the Farm Credit Corporation it shows up as an asset.
This is a very positive motion. We should look at it because so far we have seen a lot of programs that are supposed to help the farm sector out of its terrible, distressed economy over the last several years but they have only been band-aids.
While the industry is really dying a death of a thousand cuts, cuts inflicted by this government in the name of so-called globalization of trade and global competitiveness, the self-styled professionals, whether they are economists or agronomists, continue to dream in Technicolor. Today we are seeing some band-aids that will still keep the farmers off to one side of the decision-making process, not having a say in how their own lending institution, being financed by moneys from Treasury Board, will continue to operate.
Will these people continue to support globalization rather than support our own highly successful marketing boards, agencies and commissions? Those are the only sectors that are really showing a return in investment, management, labour and risk. They are ignoring the cost of the need for environmentally sustainable agriculture that must be implemented, with the costs shared by farmers and society as a whole.
March 16, 1993

We must have people on that board of directors who understand the hardships that are taking place out there rather than people sitting back ruling with the cold, hard heart of the bankers or economists who do not have to worry about their income but only about their own positions.
I support this resolution because it is badly needed. I hope the government will reconsider its opposition to this motion and the common sense it makes.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to speak briefly to Motion No. 5. Administratively there is difficulty in maintaining a majority of farmers at all times, but experience has demonstrated that the board has always had strong producer representation. As well, there could be difficulty in defining who was a farmer for board membership purposes.
I will give another example. We might have some excellent farmer representatives on that board but if they cease to be a farmer they would then have to resign from the board. We have to provide that board with continuity for proper decision making, et cetera, and it could put us into a position in which we would lose some very good directors and members of that board.
For that reason we feel this amendment is not acceptable.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The question is on Motion No. 5 standing in the name of the hon. member for Algoma. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


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


Some hon. members:: On division.
Motion negatived.


Hon. Monique Vezina (for the Minister of Agriculture) moved:: Motion No. 8.
That Bill C-95 be amended in the English version of Clause 7 by striking out line 36 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
"7. (1) The Governor in Council shall ap-".
Motion No. 9.
That Bill C-95 be amended in the English version of Clause 7 by striking out line 40 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
"ate, and shall designate one of them as the".

Motion No. 13.
That Bill C-95 be amended in the French version of Clause 15 by striking out line 22 at page 7 and substituting the following therefor:
"15. Par derogation a Particle 121".


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, these amendments are very technical in nature and really do not change very much.
Motion No. 8 is proposed to make the English version of clause 7(1) consistent with the French version of the bill and with the Financial Administration Act. This amendment changes the word "may" to "shall".
Motion No. 9 also amends clause 7(1) to make it consistent with the French version of this bill and the Financial Administration Act. Like the previous motion this amendment changes the word "may" to "shall".
Motion No. 13 changes the French in clause 15 of the bill to make it consistent with the English version. The English version referred to section 121 of the Financial Administration Act while the French version referred to section 121(1) of the FAA. The English version is correct.

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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The vote is on Motion No. S. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the motion carried.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The result of the vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 9 and 13.


Monique Vézina: that the bill as amended be concurred in at the report stage with further amendments.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I declare the motion carried.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: When shall the bill be read the third time? With leave of the House, now?


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, I believe you will find consent to move directly to third reading on Bill C-95 now that we have completed report stage.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, we on this side agree to move to third reading now.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent to move the motion for third reading of the bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Monique Vézina: that the bill be read the third time and passed.


Murray Cardiff: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that
I present Bill C-95, the Farm Credit Corporation Act, for third reading.
Throughout the legislative process we have received outstanding support and co-operation from the agricultural and financial industries as well as from elected representatives from all parties at both the federal and provincial levels.
I would like to thank all of our colleagues for their help in preparing this final version of the new legislation for the Farm Credit Corporation. I believe the result is something of which we can all be proud.
Since this bill was first presented to the House of Commons on November 26 it has received broad support from farm groups across the country. Members of Parliament from all political parties have agreed that this important piece of legislation will be of great importance to the rural community in years to come.
Following second reading, a number of our colleagues spoke favourably about the general thrust of the bill. Most of the hon. members who spoke to the bill remarked that it filled a clearly expressed need of Canadian agriculture producers and therefore it should be passed quickly.
One amendment was accepted, which is the removal of clause 4(5). At issue was the federal government's right to dispose of or hold its property. The matter was considered by the Queen's Bench of Saskatchewan and the decision was handed down last week supporting FCC's position that as a Crown agency it has the right to dispose of or hold its own land regardless of provincial legislation.
The legislative committee reviewing Bill C-95 met on Wednesday, February 24 and I am extremely happy to see that we have resolved these questions.
As stated in Bill C-95 as amended at report stage, the purpose of the Farm Credit Corporation is to enhance rural Canada by providing specialized and personalized financial services to farming operations, including family farms, and to those businesses, including small and medium sized businesses, in rural Canada that are related to farming.
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Bill C-95 will increase FCC's operating flexibility to respond quickly to changing market signals and to develop new financial products as they are required so that Canadian farmers will have the tools they need in adapting to the new economic realities of the 1990s and beyond.
I should also say that this legislation follows through on the Growing Together paper begun by the then Minister of Agriculture, the present Minister of Finance. It is good to see that what we started then is still playing a role in the development of agriculture policy.
This broadened purpose allows the Farm Credit Corporation to support initiatives by people in rural areas to create employment and provide services in their communities. Even if these projects are not specifically related to commodity production, the FCC will now be able to finance a group of farmers getting together to build a facility to clean, grade and package specialty farm products for market. That is one example.
As soon as Bill C-95 becomes law the Farm Credit Corporation's board of directors will be empowered to establish the coqwration's interest rates in response to changing costs of funds and market requirements. Instead of waiting up to 10 days for an Order in Council this increased flexibility will make FCC's interest rates more competitive, and we are certainly concerned about those things today and need all the help we can get in keeping interest rates as low as possible and providing farmers with low interest rates.
In addition to FCC's present ability to make loans, Bill C-95 enables FCC to guarantee loans, opening the doors to new possibilities in the area of the intergenerational transfer of farm land within farm families. This bill will enable FCC to change with the times and make loans to farmers with off-farm income, a new reality that has become an integral part of the operations of over 35 per cent of Canadian farmers. Some require off-farm income in order to diversify their sources of income and others wish to expand their personal and professional horizons by learning and practising new skills.
The Farm Credit Corporation will now be able to hold land for periods longer than five years. This will allow the FCC to assist farmers in the start-up phase, when it is often preferable to rent land until the business is profitable enough to sustain the capital cost of purchas-
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ing. Today even well-established farmers often prefer to rent because renting gives them a greater flexibility to increase or decrease cultivated acreage without tying up large amounts of capital.
Until now the Farm Credit Corporation has been a land mortgage lender requiring real estate security on all loans under the Farm Credit Act regardless of the purpose of a particular loan. This type of security arrangement is suitable for land-based enterprises such as grain farmers. Other types of security work better for businesses such as poultry or dairy farms, where other factors such as the quality of the facilities, the health of the livestock or the amount of quota owned have a greater impact on the farm's success than the amount of land owned.
The new legislation will permit the Farm Credit Corporation to accept all types of security, including real estate, farm equipment, portable buildings, debentures in negotiable securities and whatever suits the combined needs of the corporation and its clientele.
The Farm Credit Corporation will be given the power to enter into agreements with any department or agency of the Government of Canada or of a province, or with any other person or institution. This will permit sharing of expertise and the efficient use of government resources to the benefit of farmers.
The discussions to date have focused on what will be new at FCC after passage of the Farm Credit Corporation Act. I would like to take this opportunity to stress that the Farm Credit Corporation will continue to provide financing for its traditional clientele: the primary producer and family farms.
There is no doubt that the success of processing and value added diversification depend on the continued ability of our excellent Canadian farmers to produce high quality grains, vegetables, fruits and meats. In the years to come we expect that primary producers will still account for more than 80 per cent of the Farm Credit Corporation business.
What this bill does is remove the restrictions which have prevented FCC from serving the increasingly important value added aspect of farming. It allows the corporation to explore new business opportunities while

March 16, 1993
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giving it more flexibility to improve service to its existing customer base.
A great amount of careful thought and diligent effort has gone into the creation of Bill C-95. The version I am presenting today represents the consensus of the agricultural industry and those who are interested in its welfare that the Farm Credit Corporation legislation should be modernized and its role clarified.
Over the course of the consultations we have had a strong sense that this bill reflects the will of the industry. In the weeks since this bill was first tabled there have been many calls to our offices and to Farm Credit Corporation offices from farmers who welcome the new legislation. They want to know when it will be passed and when new programs will be available.
The publicity surrounding the work of the task force on farm finance and the tabling of the legislation has raised expectations in the farm community. Discussions that we have had with farmers and others interested in rural development indicate a sense of excitement and anticipation. Farmers have repeatedly told me that they are very happy with the new legislation and hope that it will pass soon.
There is some urgency to the matter as the cropping season approaches and farmers make plans for the coming year. We have to remember that cropping season is at different times across Canada. We know they will be into their fields very shortly on the west coast.
I think we can all agree that this legislation is needed. The staff of the Farm Credit Corporation is waiting for us to put a firm legislative framework in place in which to construct new financing programs to meet its clients' needs. Farmers and rural people are waiting for this bill to pass so they can firm up their business plans.
The time for reflection, consultation and discussion has been fruitfully spent. We now have a piece of legislation that the industry endorses. Farmers across the country are watching us as we speak, waiting for us to pass this bill into law.
I am confident that our decision to pass Bill C-95 quickly will greatly be appreciated by the rural community. I believe this piece of legislation is positive. The agricultural sector is looking for it. I know it is expecting
us to be diligent and fulfil what we have been sent here to do in providing legislation that is going help the agricultural sector and our rural communities.
It is more than the farm gate we are helping. Many of our small communities depend on farmers and the farm income sector. The income farmers generate is shared in those communities. It is very important that we have a viable food producing industry.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have a chance to say a few words on the passage of Bill C-95, the Farm Credit Corporation Act.
Clearly this bill will provide a new structure for the Farm Credit Corporation which will be very much appreciated by farmers across the country. It will provide a certain amount of flexibility that is not there in the operation of the FCC itself.
It does not necessarily mean the government's attitude or policy with regard to the over-all arrangements for the funding of agriculture has really changed. The parliamentary secretary has talked about the urgency of putting this in place because of the start of the cropping season.
With the FCC legislation generally we are talking about long-term financing of farm operations and mortgages on property. This bill expands it to cover processing plants whether it is a grain seed cleaning plant, a killing plant, or whatever the further processing may be.
Agricultural producers really want to know what the government is going to do about the farm financial crisis which faces the country this year because of the global trade wars between the European Economic Community and the United States on the price of grain.
If we look at the report which came out a few weeks ago from the WEFA corporation, it talks about a crash in 1993 in net farm income. It indicates that realized net farm income is expected to plummet to $3.2 billion, forcing a renewed round of financial belt tightening in the agricultural community. It also talks about net farm income in this country dropping by $1 billion.
I want to refer to one of the main reasons it is dropping by $1 billion this year, apart from the climatic problems which faced eastern Canada and western Canada. Be-
March 16, 1993

Government Orders
cause of the damp, cold fall season we still have thousands of acres of corn in the fields in Ontario and wheat that has not been threshed in western Canada. The government's support programs all came due to be paid in 1992. The financial support in 1992 was dropping dramatically. It was supposed to be an election year, but it did not really happen. There was only a referendum.
The parliamentary secretary says that this legislation is waiting to be passed. It is waiting to be passed and to be implemented in the agricultural community. It probably is going to have no impact whatsoever on the farm financial crisis. If we look at Saskatchewan, for example, the net farm income was some $640 million in 1992. It is estimated to be $238 million in 1993, which is about a quarter of what it was three or four years ago.
Agricultural producers want to know what the government is going to do about the farm financial crisis. The election was supposed to be in 1992 so the government had all of its support programs geared, whether it was GRIP, NISA or FSAM, the federal smoke and mirrors program. Those pay-outs were supposed to all take place in 1992 and they did, but even at that because of the climatic problems the support or net farm income was not very satisfactory in 1992.
We waited with great anticipation to see the estimates for 1993-94. We thought that when the government's spending estimates came out we would know what the government was going to do about the $1 billion reduction in net farm income.
Sure enough the estimates came out and the budget of the Department of Agriculture was decreased by $638.8 million. At a time when farmers were facing a $1 billion reduction in net farm income, the government chopped its Department of Agriculture spending estimates by $638 million. Some of that was included in the assistance available through the Canadian Dairy Commission. There was a cut of $38 million there; similarly in the Western Grain Transportation Act, another $70 million. That is going to cost every producer shipping grain to the east coast or to the west coast some $2 a tonne.
The Farm Credit Corporation bill is useful. I believe with its flexibilities and the provisions for further processing it will be helpful.
The crisis this year is really with regard to net farm income, to the financial crisis for Canadian farmers.
It is interesting to note that the parliamentary secretary was thanking members on this side of the House, both here and in the standing committee, for their co-operation. We would have been more impressed with that thank you if the government had been willing to adopt some of the recommendations, not only those we made as opposition members whether they were from the NDP or the Liberals, but also those that came from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. It represents the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, SaskPools, the Prairie Pools Inc., UPA, the Atlantic producers and all those types of organizations.
None of those recommendations were accepted which said to make the money available to Canadian citizens and to residents of Canada as long as they are not non-resident farming groups. But no, that was not acceptable to the government.
We were saying that the majority on the board of directors should be farmers. The government only accepted one small amendment. It had been rejected in the standing committee. However, the government accepted it this morning after being hammered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture a couple of weeks ago.
The government would not accept the idea that there be an appeal board. I guess there is a lot of partisan politics in this place but it seems to me that the bottom line should be that legislators should not give up their rights easily.
One of the rights we have is to put in appeal procedures to guarantee the rights of the individual agriculture producer from an all-powerful board of directors which to many producers is far away from them. They have no contact. They do not know them. At the present time there are only half a dozen. Under this legislation there will be 12.
Instead of protecting those producers and saying that we are the legislators, we are the people that are sent here by the people of Canada and we want to write legislation to protect those producers by providing an appeal procedure, the government gives it away. It throws it away.

March 16, 1993
Government members get their directives on voting from the Whip and they vote by rote. We seldom ever pul an important amendment in committee because it is always voted down. At least it has a public airing in here. It is on television. People can see that this government loves to talk about parliamentary reform, but it is really a bunch of hogwash.
When those members go into the agriculture committee they vote en bloc against anything that is ever put by members on this side. At least we have the satisfaction when legislation comes before the House it is aired for the public to see, for agriculture producers to see. They see government members vote down practically every amendment that is ever offered by agriculture groups across the country, whether it is the CFA, UPA or whatever group.
We want to have a majority of producers on the board of directors of the Farm Credit Corporation. That is because we think they know more about it. They are more personally involved. They are very considerate.
Some accountant may be brought in from a big accounting firm in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal or Vancouver who may be very wise about those things. But what does he know about the problems in Lambton- Middlesex, Prince Edward

Hastings, Algoma, Man-itoulin or the other farming areas?
We wanted to see a majority but of course, the orders came down. We know where the orders come from. Of course those things are always voted down.
I would have been more impressed by the parliamentary secretary's third reading speech if I had seen that kind of co-operation and consideration in the actual drafting of the legislation.
I am always amazed at how much talk there is on the government side about parliamentary reform. I am not very impressed with the way it operates, at least not in the agriculture committee. That is because it does not operate. Regardless of how good the amendment is, if it is not offered by the government, it is usually voted down by rote.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry, but it being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon, pursuant to Standing Order 24(2).
The House took recess at 1 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, Canada has military bases that are sufficient for a defence establishment of 250,000 men and women. Canada has a defence establishment of no more than
80,000	men and women.
I call on the government to significantly reduce the number of military bases that exist in the country and so eliminate the cost associated with the maintenance of these bases.
I call on the Minister of National Defence to declare the bases surplus and sell them or turn them over to some other worth-while purpose. There is no room in our defence expenditures to continue to maintain redundant military bases.


SHOAL LAKE
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg-St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to again raise the issue of the proposed KMP mine at Shoal Lake, Ontario.
Shoal Lake is the sole source of Winnipeg's drinking water and the proposed mining operation raises several environmental questions. The best way to answer these questions is for the federal government to conduct a full-blown review of all activities, not just mining, in the Shoal Lake watershed. That is the position of the province of Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg.
With Ontario and Manitoba on opposite sides of the issue, it is important that the federal government step in and provide leadership.
In a letter I received recently the federal transport minister said he has no authority to initiate a federal review under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. That may be so, but if this federal government does not want another Rafferty-Alameda problem on its hands it will find a way to hold a review. It takes political will, starting
March 16, 1993

with Tory MPs from Manitoba who are not doing their jobs on this important issue.


MINING EXPLORATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, if it is to contribute to the Canadian economic recovery, the mining industry in Abitibi must first ensure the recovery of exploration, which provides its source of raw materials.
To make the exploration expenses financed by flowthrough shares more effective, the Quebec Prospectors' Association is asking the Minister of Finance to allow the exploration work to be spread over a whole year following the year in which the funds were raised. Exploration companies would thus no longer have to rush to complete their work by February 28.
Other measures must be obtained, such as a 125 per cent tax deduction for underground exploration and 175 per cent for surface exploration, the exclusion of flowthrough shares from cumulative net investment losses, the creation of a Canada exploration expenses account that would make the adjusted cost base the purchase price for investors no longer eligible for the $100,000 lifetime capital gains exemption.
sk ^


FREE TRADE
Mr. Ross Harvey (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, it has now been four years since free trade became a reality, long enough for Canadians to judge it a success or a failure.
Last month I included a mail-back ballot in my regular householder. It asked two straightforward questions. The first was: Should Canada use its right to give six months' notice and get out of the Canada-U.S. free trade deal? Eighty-nine per cent said yes. The second question was: Should Canada stay out of any extension of the free trade deal which includes Mexico, and soon other Latin American countries? Ninety per cent said yes.
The verdict is in. These people in Edmonton East, and I suspect elsewhere in Canada as well, want out of free trade. The New Democrats, and only the New Democrats, are listening. We will release Canada from the free trade strait-jacket.


NATIONAL EPILEPSY MONTH
Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland -Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, the month of March is National Epilepsy Month. Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder in Canada and it is estimated that 1.5 per cent of the population have had or will have some form of epilepsy in their lifetime.
During March, Epilepsy Canada and its member associations across the country will be sponsoring a variety of public education activities to promote the health and social well-being of Canadians. I am really pleased that this government has been supporting the ongoing efforts of this organization. As well, this nonprofit volunteer organization has shown excellent leadership in the development of successful partnerships with the corporate sector.
Epilepsy Canada continues to promote ongoing medical research and public understanding in order to achieve a better quality of life for people with epilepsy. This organization is to be strongly applauded for its tireless and invaluable work in this area.


NATIONAL PHYSIOTHERAPY WEEK
Ms. Barbara Greene (Don Valley North):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to inform the members of the House that the week of March 14 to 20 is National Physiotherapy Week.
Physiotherapists play a vital role in Canada's health care system. The theme for National Physiotherapy Week, "Physiotherapy: Teaming up for good health", emphasizes this role. It also highlights the increasing emphasis of the profession on illness and injury prevention.
The Canadian Physiotherapy Association, which provides leadership and direction to its nearly 8,000 members across Canada, will be sponsoring this campaign to increase awareness of physiotherapy. To celebrate the week special events will be held in the many places in which physiotherapists can be found.

March 16, 1993
I am sure the House will join with me in wishing members of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association the best of luck during National Physiotherapy Week.


THE LUBICON
Ms. Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, after more than 50 years the human rights of the Lubicon people remain at stake and continue to be abused. Negotiations between the Lubicon people and the federal government have not taken place since 1989. This government has clearly reneged on its fiduciary responsibility.
The actions taken by this government on the Lubicon land claim reinforces this government's well-used technique of pitting one group of aboriginal people against another.
In the case of the Lubicon, the federal government funded splinter groups to undermine Lubicon progress and diminish band membership. It is the same story on the issue of extinguishment. This government's policies have split ties of friendship and the relationships of aboriginal families and their communities. There have been enough reports, studies, and bureaucracy, and enough take it or leave it tactics have been put forward by this government.
The Lubicon issue has now become a human rights issue. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated that the Canadian government's treatment of the Lubicon threatens their way of life and culture and constitutes a violation of article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.


Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, one of the main continuing sources of public cynicism about members of Parliament arises from a lack of public confidence in the over-all compensation programs which pertain to those who serve in this House.
This comes not only from a perception that pension plans are too generous but also from a misunderstanding of salary and expense provisions.
Simply put, the Canadian public has not been well informed or consulted over Parliament's long history about the fundamental compensation structure by which members of this Parliament are rewarded and reimbursed for their work here.
The time is long overdue for a comprehensive review of all aspects of that program. It should be conducted on an independent professional basis by one or more of the most qualified consultants in the country. It should start with the recognition of the qualifications and capabilities that are required to be an effective MP and should include analysis and comparison with respect to equivalent job descriptions in industry and other professions.
Its recommendations should be based on the standards of professionalism that Canadians would always want at work in this Chamber.
With a general election and a new Parliament now clearly in sight, this is an ideal time to commission such a total compensation review.


THE MEMBER FOR HALTON-PEEL
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, the member for Halton-Peel was elected chairman of the official languages committee on February 20, 1992. Two meetings were called that year, both at my request and insistence.
Under former chairpersons between May 2, 1990 and May 2, 1991 the committee met 26 times, some 13 times more than under the present standing committee chairmanship of the member for Halton-Peel.
Given his poor record of duty as chairperson it is no wonder that he found time to write in his latest book that half of the current parliamentary committees should be scrapped. His book, Garth! Just what the hell is going on in Ottawa', is his testimony to inefficiency and a complete lack of interest.
Maybe the member for Halton-Peel should take time out from his leadership campaign and do the job he was sent here to do by his constituents in the first place.
In this country official languages are no laughing matter. The Prime Minister should fire this uninterested member and reinstate a working standing committee with government members interested in the subject.
March 16, 1993


IRANIAN NEW YEAR
Mr. Bill Attewell (Markham - Whitchurch - Stouff-ville):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all Iranian Canadians a happy Nowruz.
This occasion, the Iranian new year, is celebrated on the first day of spring and marks the start of the Persian calendar.
I am proud to honour this special day and the 150,000 Iranian Canadians who will join in the celebrations. This day officially recognizes their significant contribution to Canada's unique cultural mosaic.
I know this is an important day for the Iranian community of Canada, and Dr. Sy Kazemi of Markham will be leading the Nowruz celebrations.


POVERTY
Christine Susan Stewart: Mr. Speaker, children are our nation's future. Despite repeated highlighting of the pathetic circumstances of over one million Canadian children who are living in poverty in this country we continue to witness government policies which aggravate the problem. We see a growing number of poor children become poor youth, who are not only unemployed and despairing but are highly costly to our Canadian society.
Instead of providing basic necessities to poor children and providing productive employment opportunities to our abandoned youth we have instead an abundance of expensive government programs to study the problems, words rather than action, and cuts, cuts and more cuts. Social and health agencies in Northumberland are being forced to decrease jobs and thus services to our most needy.
When will the government change its priorities and put people first? When will the government recognize that this country and its future belong to our children and youth? Federal government cuts to social program transfers are resulting in long-term, unsustainable social and health costs.
Canadians care. Why does this government not care?
He *	*


AMEUBLEMENT TANGUAY
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, Ameublement Tanguay opened a $7 million distribution centre in my riding on February 24.
The president of this furniture company, Maurice Tanguay, has risen to the challenge in a very dynamic way and this venture will provide economic benefits which the Quebec City region needs.
For the Conservative government, the growth of small and medium-sized businesses is very important. This distribution centre is another example of the ability of entrepreneurship to develop Quebec and Canada.
I thank the shareholders and employees of Ameublement Tanguay and welcome them to Quebec-Est.


PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY
Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my concern about the glaring lack of competition for the Tory leadership race.
After much deliberation, after consultation with my handlers, after discussion with my family and friends and after considering the odds, I have decided to enter my horse, Slip Chaser. I am convinced that he will make an ideal candidate. He has no political experience and is in no way connected to the Tory government's policies. At age three, he is youthful. He was bom and raised in western Canada. He has a winning record when it comes to constitutional matters. Just last year he won the Halton-Peel Conservative Association's own Constitution Pace. Moreover, he recognizes the importance of grass roots.
He can truly put a new face on the Tory party and nobody can deny that he truly represents change. I am confident that my Slip Chaser is the dark horse who can win the triple crown, which the present Prime Minister failed to do.


JACQUES PARIZEAU
[Stage Direction]
March 16, 1993
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina -Wascana):: Mr. Speaker, in an article in the Montreal Gazette, it states that during a trip to Paris last week Parti Quebecois leader Jacques Parizeau told a group of students that a sovereign Quebec would rely upon France even more than it has in the past.
Does this mean that Monsieur Parizeau welcomes the prospect of Quebec becoming a puppet state of France?

Even more important, is Mr. Parizeau saying one thing to the people of France and another to the people of Quebec?
^ ^


THE CANADA COUNCIL
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, Canada's cultural talents have been nurtured by the Canada Council, which can be justly proud of the achievements realized by our artists through its support. They are winners of Geminis, Genies, Junos and literary awards, and many have also captured world-wide attention by winning the Booker Prize, Prix Gaumont, Oscars, Emmys and architectural awards.
This government's ongoing starvation and latest bent on deficit reduction means a significant loss of the next generation of new and aspiring artistic greats; less "mentoring" of creative writers, dancers, composers, and builders; and less exposure to Canadian creative talent and support, as support is now decimated for touring by dance, music and theatre companies. This degenerative process cuts growth, appreciation and development outside of major Canadian cities, leaving our country culturally destitute and divided, its needs filled by foreigners.
Canadians need a strong cultural defence. I call upon the culture minister to have a talk with his leadership choice and ask her to give up one of her choppers to save Canada's cultural legacy from the chopping block.


WINDSOR, ONTARIO
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, my constituency in the Windsor area has been hit hard by the Tory recession, the Tory FTA, the Tory high dollar and the Tory GST. This, our fifth most important industrial city, has among the highest unemployment rates in the country at 13 per cent.
In contrast to the Tories, for this city in need a friend indeed has been the Rae government. Over 30 provincial government initiatives had already led to hundreds of millions in new infrastructure, industrial expansion and hundreds of new jobs when last week it confirmed the casino project with its 8,000 new jobs.
Today Chrysler Corporation will announce new investment worth $500,000 in Windsor. Not only is that an expression of confidence in Windsor and its workers but as well in a government willing to contribute $40 million to help create jobs.
The federal government contributed just enough, $7 million to buy a ticket to the festivities for its minister of state for science. We know whom Chrysler, its workers and the community will thank the most. The government that cares enough to do its very best, the Government of Ontario.


CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, last night deep in the bowels of the Prime Minister's mansion, not the one in Westmount but the one at 24 Sussex in Ottawa, we heard the puppet master was pulling strings once again.
The PM, and that stands for puppet master, was meeting with the Minister of the Environment. Were they talking about improving the economy or cleaning up the environment? No. They were talking about improving the chances of the Minister of National Defence to win the Tory leadership race.
Temporary jobs do not attract very many candidates or much attention. Tory MPs, like other unemployed Canadians, want full-time, permanent jobs. What the PM, and that means puppet master, does not appreciate is that Canadians do not want a change of Tory; they want a change of government.
March 16, 1993

Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Minister of Finance.
Last week the government was talking about a nonbudget and a leadership convention. This week we heard that there may be a budget and a non-convention.
Will the Minister of Finance introduce soon a budget that will meet the economic needs of Canadians, or is he waiting to have a budget that will meet the needs of the Tory party?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Leader of the Opposition will get both and he should be worried about both of them as well.
As the Prime Minister indicated last Friday, I was involved in my pre-budget consultation process. That process is well advanced. I have now had a chance to discuss the budget with my cabinet colleagues and I can advise my hon. friend that I will be bringing down a budget shortly after the House returns from the Easter break.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, we are glad to hear that, because the country needs a budget right now. And incidentally, there are a number of developments that will interest the Minister of Finance.
Of course we are very disappointed that the Minister decided not to run for the leadership of his party. He has always been well-liked, but unfortunately, his neighbour to the left decided otherwise. It is really too bad.
I would like to ask the Minister of Finance whether he intends to take the advice of the hon. member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore who said this morning that it was very important that the Canadian government not proceed with the helicopter program.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what the hon. member is referring to, whether he is referring to the fact that social payments should be cut or payments to provinces. Which part of that statement was he referring to? He may want to clarify that.
The fact of the matter is we will be building on the policies that are starting to demonstrate very clearly they are serving Canadians very well.


Nelson Andrew Riis: No, no.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: If I may, Mr. Speaker, last week Statistics Canada released a review of the leading economic indicators. This is what it said: The unemployment rate, down; help wanted index, up; department store sales, up; Bank of Canada and prime rate, down; housing prices, down; aggregate wages and salaries, up; planned construction activity, up; industrial capacity utilization rate, up.
Those are the kinds of policies we will follow.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, there is one thing the Canadian people know is going down. It is the government and the Conservative Party. There is no doubt about it.
I just want to know from the Minister of Finance if he has any intention of looking at other propositions that have been accepted by Canadians all across the nation today. One good way to put some of the unemployed back to work is to have in the next budget a program for infrastructure: one-third, one-third and one-third. In travelling across Canada the mayors are asking for that all the time.
When will this minister start listening to the Canadian people by reflecting the needs of the Canadian people right away and putting them back to work as they want?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, we will continue to build upon the December economic statement and the budget I brought down last February, both of which are serving Canadians very well.

March 16, 1993
Oral Questions
The hon. member knows we have been going through a very difficult process of coming out of a recession and a difficult process of restructuring, but I can assure my hon. friend that our policies are the right ones.
As a matter of fact if the hon. member would cast his attention to an article in The Financial Post of a couple of weeks ago, the headlines said: "Clintonomics borrows heavily from Mazankowski". That is a pretty clear indication. The hon. member just a few weeks ago was advocating that the Clinton proposals were the right things. Well, here we are. Just like Panasonic, this government is slightly ahead of its time.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Finance. He boasts about the Tory record, but I see that he is just another Conservative minister who does not want to carry the can for that record as a Conservative leadership candidate.
The Minister of Finance says that he is building on the policies of the Conservative government which have brought us nothing more than 1.5 million people unemployed.
I want to ask the minister: In his budget is he going to do something to finally bring these unemployed Canadians some real hope and confidence for the future, or is it going to be just another one of those Conservative budgets that did nothing more than create 1.5 million people out of work?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, when is the hon. member across the way going to talk about some good news that is happening in his own backyard: a $500 million expansion for the Windsor plant? If we were to listen to Bob White he would have suggested that plant would have been built in Mexico.
The Toronto Star this morning says: "Autos help swell Ontario job ranks. The real growth is in automotive products. The big winner is machinery and equipment". That is positive news.
I have more positive news: Employment increased for the sixth consecutive month in Ontario by 6,000, resulting in an accumulative gain of 91,000 since August.
There is some good news occurring. Why does the hon. member not get on the band wagon and join with some optimism?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the expansion which we welcome came about because the previous Liberal government stepped in-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Harvard: Way to go, Herb.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the previous Liberal government stepped in to support that plant with loan guarantees which the Conservatives opposed. That is the history. That is the record. That is the truth, and the Minister of Finance is shaking his head in agreement.
I want to ask the Minister of Finance whether he will tell us that in his budget, which he now says he is going to bring down after Easter, he will announce the cancellation of the $8 billion helicopter program which Canadians do not want and instead bring forward a national infrastructure program that will create jobs in towns and cities right across this country. Will he make that commitment today?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: No, Mr. Speaker, I was not nodding my head in agreement. I was nodding my head in amazement. Amazing Gray is suggesting I follow the Liberal policies that gave us 22 per cent interest rates, 13 per cent inflation and 12 per cent unemployment. He wants us to go out and borrow or tax some Canadians to generate a $15 billion slush fund.
Where would he suggest that I get the money from? Whom would he suggest that I tax, or whom would he suggest we borrow it from?


Mr. Peterson:: You gave us the great recession of the 1930s.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: As I have said in this House so often there is only one taxpayer, not a federal taxpayer, not a provincial taxpayer, not a municipal taxpayer, but one Canadian taxpayer. It will all come out of the Canadian taxpayers' pockets.
March 16, 1993


TRANSFER PAYMENTS
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is correct. He is continuing to follow the Liberal policy of trashing transfer payments to the provinces.
Yesterday the Conservative Government of Manitoba added to its previously announced cuts to school-boards, hospitals, child care and other services by cutting off completely funding for friendship centres, crisis centres, aboriginal groups and representatives of the poor and the disabled.
Other provinces are contemplating crippling cuts to other social programs. What will the Minister of Finance do to restore services for those who are victims of these very hurtful economic policies?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, since this government has been in office our major transfer payments to the provinces have grown at an annual rate of 5.2 per cent per year, or 60 per cent over the period of time we have been in office, from $25.6 billion to $40.5 billion.
In his own home province the transfers to Manitoba will grow at an annual average of 6 per cent between 1984-85 through to 1993-94, expected to exceed $1.9 billion in 1993-94, and it accounts for just under 40 per cent of Manitoba's revenues. That works out to more than $1,700 per person.
The hon. member has got it all wrong. Transfer payments have not been cut; they have been going up. They have gone up by 60 per cent since we have been in office.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that had he and Allan J. MacEachen not changed and changed again the formula, Manitoba would have received $280 million more this year.
Before the April budget will the minister meet with his provincial counterparts and discuss what they will do about the financial crisis and what will they do to preserve and create jobs in this country?
Hon. Don Ma/.ankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, if we had followed that kind of logic, today we would have had an $82.5
Oral Questions
billion deficit rather than a $34 billion deficit. That is what this government has had to do.
I ask the hon. member to consider what is happening in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
They too are faced with the realism of fiscal restraint and they too have to structure their payments with discipline. That is precisely what we are doing because when there is a shortfall of $8 billion or $10 billion in revenue, governments must act, federally and provincially, and indeed municipally. When is the hon. member going to accept that responsibility? It is high time.


Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, the government is fond of saying that there is only one taxpayer. Certainly the Minister of Finance is fond of saying that. This is folly to the students in my riding, particularly those who attend schools in the Transcona Springfield school division, whose quality of education will suffer because of education cutbacks that are directly related to years of unilateral federal cutbacks in the rate of increase in transfer payments to the provinces. These cutbacks began in 1981 under the Liberals, something they do not always admit.
What advice does the minister have for the people in my riding who, because they already have a small tax base, cannot possibly make up the difference in the way that some people in the wealthier parts of Winnipeg might be able to? What advice does he have for them? There may be only one taxpayer, but not all taxpayers are equal and this government's cutbacks and the Manitoba government's cutbacks are hurting people who can least afford it.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I wish I could provide the hon. member with a quick, simple and easy solution. Unfortunately there are not any quick, easy or simple solutions. The fact of the matter is that we have had to constrain our federal spending in a manner consistent with the revenues. That is a responsible approach. That is what provincial governments are faced with and that is what the federal government is faced with.

March 16, 1993
Oral Questions
Notwithstanding that, as I indicated, our transfer payments to the provinces have been increased at an annual rate of 5.2 per cent per year since we have been in office or 60 per cent over that period of time.
In terms of transfer payments under the Canada Assistance Plan, those transfer payments have grown at a rate of 8 per cent per year. In the meantime, our over-all federal government expenditures have been sustained at a rate of about 4 per cent.
Clearly we are not fighting the deficit on the backs of the provinces or the municipalities. As a matter of fact, they are getting better treatment than other groups which rely upon federal government revenues. I ask the hon. member to consider that. I think it is very fair.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Last week the Minister of National Defence boasted that her policy is the full equality of women in the armed forces. We now know that at least three reports in the last year told the minister that no woman is safe from harassment and that when she complains, she suffers the consequences.
I ask, then, how could the Prime Minister let this go on, knowing that harassers are protected while the victims are punished?


Hon. Mary Collins (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Environment) and Minister Responsible for the Status of Women):: Mr. Speaker, I think we are all aware that harassment of any kind, sexual harassment or personal harassment, is unacceptable, but I would like to reassure my hon. colleague that the women serving in the Canadian Armed Forces do indeed have policies and programs to ensure that they will be able to serve free of harassment.
Indeed, it has been as a result of the work that was done by the advisory board when I was associate minister to bring some of these issues out into the open that has ensured that DND has been able to review its policies, to upgrade them, to ensure that there is mandatory education throughout the commands, that there will be appropriate procedures in place with independent harassment officers.
All of these initiatives are part of achieving the policy that the chief of the defence staff sent out throughout the Armed Forces last fall of zero tolerance of sexual harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces.


Marlene Catterall: Mr. Speaker, it is leadership at the highest level that is required if women who have already been the victims of complaints of harassment are going to find any relief and if the situation is going to be stopped.

My supplementary is therefore directed to the Prime Minister. It has been five years since the Supreme Court informed the Department of National Defence that there was a serious problem with sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces. Will the Prime Minister instruct his Minister of National Defence to ensure that a person who is found guilty of sexual harassment is relieved of his duties?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, we have made considerable progress in this very difficult area, thanks in part to the vigorous approach taken by the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. Granted, in some departments and in some parts of Canada the problem remains.
The Minister of National Defence has taken vigorous and effective measures to deal with the serious problem mentioned by my hon. friend. So far, there have been a number of improvements but, as Prime Minister of this country, I will not be satisfied until the problem of sexual harassment has been rooted out completely, in this department and in our society. Every citizen has an obligation to ensure that this problem is dealt with once and for all, in the interests of society.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister knows that when a victim chooses to complain she becomes the immediate adversary of a powerful Canadian forces system, a male system which quickly will organize to humiliate and punish her further.
I ask the Prime Minister to immediately order an independent inquiry into all cases of sexual harassment
March 16, 1993

within the Canadian forces, an inquiry that will ensure it is the harasser and not the victim who is being punished.


Martin Brian Mulroney: I have just responded to my hon. friend in French and I can assure my hon. friend that the seriousness of this problem-


An hon. member:: She understands French very well. It just was not a good enough answer.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Oh, I see.


John Harvard: Like David Milford.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, given the seriousness of the question raised by my hon. friend, I would have thought that her colleagues in the Liberal opposition would have wanted to hear the answer without interruption.
The matter raised by my hon. friend has been given the highest priority by the Minister of National Defence. She will pursue this matter as vigorously as she pursued similar matters when she was Minister of Justice. I am sure the report that she will be able to make to my hon. friend in the House is one that she will find satisfying because we are in the process of dealing with this very serious matter.


Beryl Gaffney: Mr. Speaker, does the Prime Minister not realize that women in the Canadian forces see how other women are treated when they complain? They quickly learn to suffer in silence.
Will the Prime Minister immediately establish a process totally outside the military that will review any and all cases of sexual harassment, a process that will finally give women a fair hearing?
Right Hun. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister): Mr. Speaker, I apologize to my hon. friend that I am not au courant of the latest developments in the last number of hours that the minister has been working on. I can say that in general I support what my hon. friend has said. If there is a presumption to exist, the presumption is one of innocence and one of support in favour of the complainant.
There should exist a climate wherein a woman who makes an allegation of sexual harassment should be able to do so with all of the benefits of that presumption and in a climate which gives her the opportunity to bring this
Oral Questions
forward without reprisal and without the possibility of intimidation of any kind.
That is what we are working for and these are the procedures that the Minister of National Defence and the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women are pursuing. My expectation is that the Minister of National Defence will soon be able to give my hon. friend that assurance formally.


NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
When the Minister of Transport tabled the NTA review commission report last week in this House, he sent it to the transport committee for a public review. Yet on Friday the government appointed the author of that report, Mr. Gilles Rivard, to take over the National Transportation Agency, an individual who has clearly made up his mind on the direction of transportation policy in this country.
Given his recommendations, including increased foreign ownership and ripping up more rail lines, how can the minister believe that Mr. Rivard will be the impartial chair of this quasi-judicial agency?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, if the implication is that nobody should have a clear mind in order to become president of that agency, I think he is completely wrong.
This man is very qualified. He made a review of the NTA with four other colleagues that were as well qualified. I do not see anything in that which would disqualify him from becoming the chairman of the NTA.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, this is not a question of the philosophy of the individual, it is a question of the fact that Mr. Rivard has already passed judgment on matters that are before the NTA.
The application to acquire one-third of the ownership of Canadian Airlines by AMR, CN's application to sell its main line from Truro to Sydney, CP's application to abandon all of Atlantic Canada are all matters dealt with in the Rivard commission report.

March 16, 1993
Oral Questions
How can the minister in good judgment appoint a man who has already made up his mind on the specifics? Why does he not revoke the recommendation and the appointment now?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I repeat that this review commission was composed of five people who are well qualified experts in the field of transportation. This is a unanimous decision and I do not see anything in that which would disqualify this able person from becoming the chairman of the NTA.


TRANSFER PAYMENTS
Mr. David Walker (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance.
The minister in response to an earlier question on the problems created in Manitoba by the lack of transfer payments refused to acknowledge that in terms of real growth transfer payments have not kept up with the problems facing Manitobans.
The real problem facing Manitobans is the lack of an economic strategy to create jobs and to create wealth within their province. I ask the minister today: When is this government going to turn its attention to the economic problems of Manitoba and begin to create some money to address these questions of poverty?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question again, and for further clarity I will be glad to photocopy this and send it across the way.
Major transfers to Manitoba grew at an annual rate of 6 per cent per year between 1984-85 and 1993-94. This year the transfer payments are expected to exceed $1.9 billion. That accounts for about 40 per cent of Manitoba's government revenues and it is expected to exceed $1,700 per person, almost 40 per cent above the national average.
If that is not fair or beyond the scope of being fair, perhaps the hon. member may want to have an explanation sent over to me as to what he considers to be fair.


David Walker: Mr. Speaker, the minister deliberately avoided the question. He did avoid the question. The question is this: If all
these statistics are so great and if the strategy is so great, why does Manitoba, for the first time in its history, have the highest rate of child poverty? Why are all these groups being denied funding? Why is nobody able to make the economy work?
It is because this government sits there week after week and does nothing.
I again ask the government when it is going to start doing something for the Manitoba economy.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: As I indicated, perhaps that is a question he may want to address to the Government of Manitoba. The fact of the matter is that our transfers to Manitoba are 40 per cent above the national average.
If the hon. member was not so adamantly opposed to some of the initiatives, such as the free trade initiative and the GST initiative which are helping drive this economy out of recession, and if he was out promoting that rather than criticizing it every day, perhaps the attitude might change. I happen to believe, having just returned from Manitoba, that the economic outlook in Manitoba is improving there as it is right across the country. It is relying on exports. It is using the tools that this government has provided. I know that the hon. Minister of Finance from the province of Manitoba, the Hon. Clayton Manness, is a responsible individual. He will bring in a responsible budget that will deal with not only the fiscal problems but also the economic problems to which the hon. member has referred.


TORONTO ECONOMY
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Finance. Like everywhere else the number one issue facing metro Toronto is the stagnating economy.
Nothing illustrated this more dramatically than a weekend report by Gerard Kennedy, director of Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank. He stated that almost 10 per cent of metro's population have had to use a food bank. Of the 162,000 people who are dependent on it today over 2,000 are pregnant women, 70,000 are children, 12,000 are disabled and over 14,000 are in poor health.
March 16, 1993

Given that this represents a city within a city and a disturbing indictment on the status quo, can the minister assure us that whenever he presents his new budget he will abandon the old and failed Tory economic agenda? Will he seek new solutions that will create new jobs, new opportunities and above all, new hope which Canadians are desperately in search of?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the sincerity with which the hon. member poses the question and I sympathize with the difficulties.
The fact still remains that we are making progress. As I indicated earlier, employment in Ontario has increased for the sixth consecutive month resulting in a cumulative increase of 91,000. Ontario has gained 76,000 new jobs with more than half of those coming from the manufacturing sector. I think he would agree with me that there is progress.
He suggests that we shift gears and change the thrust of fiscal and economic policy in this country. The hon. member and I disagree on that. I think what he is suggesting is that we should borrow more money to spend more, or that we should tax more to spend more. I am sorry. I just do not agree with that kind of approach. I do not agree with his leader when he suggests that we can borrow money at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. You cannot borrow your way to prosperity and I think the hon. member should recognize that.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister.
In response to the food bank crisis in Toronto the federal department of health and welfare last month spent $75,000 organizing a conference which recommended such solutions as establishing a community-wide soup kitchen and actually another idea suggesting we should begin to grow food in the Toronto public park areas.
Instead of wasting taxpayers' dollars chasing harebrained ideas, why can the government not finally and very simply recognize that the most effective solution for such hard-pressed Canadians is a good job with decent pay? This means that the government simply must
Oral Questions
change course and produce a new economic strategy because the old one is not working.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member. The best social safety net is a job. This is what Phil Cross of Statistics Canada had to say in an article published in The Toronto Star on March 16 which stated:
"The real growth is in automotive products, and the big winner is machinery and equipment. There have been just some spectacular gains," Phil Cross, the federal agency's director of current analysis, said yesterday.
Cross said the gains were registered over the 12 months since February 1992.
I think that certainly does offer hope. It certainly means jobs are being created. The export demand is there. The economy is being driven by exports and by enhancement in productivity. This is thanks in part to the free trade agreement, thanks in part to the GST and thanks a whole lot to the policies of this government.


MINING EXPLORATION
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. If the mining industry is to contribute to Canada's economic recovery, it will first have to ensure there is a recovery in exploration activities.
Could the minister give us his position today on spreading exploration activities over an entire year, tax deductions for underground and surface exploration, the exclusion of flow-through shares from cumulative net losses on investment and the creation of a Canadian exploration expense account, to help the mining exploration sector in this country after the first federal budget?
[English ]
Hon. Bill McKnight (Minister of Energy, Mines and
Resources): Mr. Speaker, ordinarily I would say that is a question for the Order Paper. However, knowing my colleague's interest in the mining activity in the part of the country he represents, I would like to reply that in the exploration for using flow-through shares, it can be spread throughout a whole 12-month period even going 60 days into the next year.

March 16, 1993
Oral Questions
Also, under the federal Income Tax Act, there is not a differential between the subsurface and surface use of flow-through shares to provide for exploration initiatives. The hon. member should also know that the federal income tax rules require that only 50 per cent of the exploration expenses be financed through flowthrough shares in order to allow flow-through shares to be used for exploration.
As to the establishment of a Canada account, I am sure he would catch the interest of the Minister of Finance. I would be pleased to have discussions with the member for Abitibi and my colleague, the Minister of Finance.
He *	*


HEALTH CARE
Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George - Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Is the minister aware that doctors and medical specialists in Prince George and other communities in British Columbia have opted out of medicare and are charging fees to patients? That is extra billing by any other name.
If the minister is aware of this situation, can he tell the House whether his department has been consulting with the B.C. government on this situation to try to determine any future action either government might be able to take on this situation?


Hon. Benoit Bouchard (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, it is a very good question. We are actually in touch with the Government of British Columbia to ascertain the exact story of extra billing in that province. My hon. friend knows very well that the Canada Health Act does not allow extra billing by the provinces or doctors.
I repeat that we are in touch with the province. If there is any problem, we will act accordingly.


Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's answer. Examples have been prepared out of Prince George and other communities where some medical practitioners are asking for additional fees up front from patients. I will provide that information to the minister.
I would like to know what specific measures or action the government might have at its disposal in consultation with the minister of health in British Columbia to tiy to end these practices.


Benoît Bouchard: Mr. Speaker, the very short answer is that I will enforce the Canada Health Act, dollar for dollar.
In other words, it is known that we transfer money to the provinces with regard to dollars accepted by the Canada Health Act. If there is any extra billing in the province of British Columbia in collaboration with the province itself, we will make sure it cannot happen any more.
* + *


TRANSPORTATION
William D. (Bill) Casey: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Yesterday I got a great answer from the Minister of State for Agriculture about the feed freight assistance program. I hope the same happens today.
The Atlantic Provinces Transportation Commission has made a presentation to the Department of Transport about a far more equitable and fair formula for the maritime freight rate reduction.
I wonder if the minister could give us some good news on that. Will he consider that plan and accept it?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, we have been working with the Atlantic Provinces Transportation Commission to try to arrive at a consensus.
Thanks to his own involvement and that of his colleagues, I am happy to report today that we have come to a consensus of reducing the subsidy on the basic westbound portion of the agreement, eliminating the subsidy on used household goods and scrap materials and reducing the intraregional subsidies by 10 per cent. I think this is good news for everyone concerned.


SMALL BUSINESSES
Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
March 16. 1993

In his economic statement he committed support to small business through the Small Businesses Loans Act. There are approximately 960,000 small businesses now eligible under this act. In the last two weeks several small business people have come to me. They have been to financial institutions. The financial institutions say they either know nothing of the Small Businesses Loans Act or they are not going to co-operate.
When will the minister stop ripping the heart and guts out of small business and start promoting this piece of legislation?
Hon. Don Ma/.ankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, the bill was initiated by this government. My understanding is that it is currently before the Senate.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the hon. member for his co-operation. Lie and I and our colleagues over here are on all fours on this particular piece of legislation.
I have had discussions with a number of financial institutions and banks which are very supportive of it. I have had discussions with chambers of commerce and small business organizations that are looking forward to this legislation. It is a very major advance forward and will help the small business community very much. He and I both agree that the small business sector is the main engine of economic activity and job creation. This will be very helpful.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister. I sat in committee. I worked with this government. We co-operated and put the bill through in record time. The banks were there. They committed to support this. Your minister of small business committed. It is not happening.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the hon. member knows how to put the question through the Speaker and I am sure he will.


Dennis Joseph Mills: In this country, small businesses are our greatest hope for new job creation. My question through you, Mr. Speaker, is when will the Minister of Finance honour his commitment? When will he give us an undertaking to promote this bill throughout Canada and
Oral Questions
also call in the banks so that they will begin to act on their own commitment?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I generally appreciate the hon. member's enthusiasm. We have already had discussions with the banks.
The legislation has not received Royal Assent. As soon as the legislation receives Royal Assent we will conduct the kind of campaign the hon. member is talking about.


IMMIGRATION
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of immigration.
Yesterday the department of immigration announced the closing of eight local offices throughout Canada and the virtual closing of 28 others. This is simply to proceed with the centralization of its services in Vegreville, Alberta.
How can the government so callously leave thousands of Canadians without important immigration services simply to prop up the re-election possibilities of the Minister of Finance?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: The hon. member refers to the member for Vegreville. For his information, for over 25 years now the minister has been re-elected to this House and knowing him, I know he is in for another 25 years.
The hon. member is suggesting that Canadians would be deprived of services. I want to correct the record and correct his statement because it is not correct.
The Canadian public will be better served with this case processing centre. Instead of people having to line up in offices and wait hours for service, they will be able to use a mail-in system. This has been proven to be very successful, so the people will be better served. More important, Canadian taxpayers will save money and I know Liberals do not care.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, this proposal to replace face-to-face immigration interviews by a centralized paper review in Vegreville, Alberta will take longer. It will generate more errors. In the long run it will cost more. The pilot

March 16, 1993
Oral Questions
projects show that. In addition, this proposal will facilitate fraudulent applications from the criminal element.
Why does the minister not listen to reason and send this pork-barrelling project back to the drawing boards as quickly as possible?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, Canadians will find little comfort in the assertion of the hon. member that using new technologies, trying to better serve the public with new technologies, with a more effective and efficient service, is going backward.
I know that the Liberal approach to things is to go back and see in the past a solution for the future, but that is not the way to go.
People will be better served by this new service, will benefit from it and, more important, taxpayers will save money. That is what we have to do.


BILL C-7
Mr. Gilles Duceppe (Laurier-Sainte-Marie):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Labour.
On June 11, 1992, this House passed Bill C-7, respecting the status of the artist. On June 23, 1992, the bill received Royal Assent. Today, March 16, 1993, the legislation is still not in effect. As a result, associations representing artists are unable to settle a number of important issues, which has very serious implications for many artists.
The Minister of Communications has already told artists that the legislation required a complex process. If the process is so complex, I would like to ask the Minister of Labour when he intends to consult the interested parties and when the legislation will finally come into effect?


Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform the hon. member that it will not be long.


FORESTRY
John Williston (Bud) Bird: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Forestry.
It is my understanding that European governments are about to ban green lumber shipments from Canada because of a high nematode infestation and that this ban is going to take effect on June 1 this year.
Further I understand that because of the increased costs for kiln drying and heating our manufacturers are going to be at a disadvantage for costs they cannot recover.
In light of what is really a trade sanction disguised as a scientific sanction, what action is being taken to alleviate the situation? Is there any prospect that the ban can be postponed? Can our industry be competitive with heat treated lumber on a certified basis?


Hon. Frank Oberle (Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, my friend is correct. This is a very serious issue in the sense that it puts at risk potentially $300 million worth of trade with the European Community. It is for that reason we are dealing with it at the highest level.
Our efforts in the first instance are to ensure that our European colleagues understand the clear distinction between plant health issues and trade. We have applied for an extension to allow us to do further studies. We have also applied for a species exemption to allow those species that are not affected by the nematode to be shipped freely.
We expect some answers from the Europeans in due course.


Mr. Speaker:: I want to advise the House that I have a question of privilege from the hon. member for Timmins-Chapleau, but before hearing that I want to respond to a question of privilege brought by the same member on March 11.
March 16, 1993


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker:: On March 11, 1993 the hon. member for Timmins-Chapleau raised a question of privilege concerning an occurrence in the legislative committee on Bill C-113 the previous day. Members of the committee had found remarks made by a witness to be offensive; and after the witness had refused repeated requests from both sides of the committee table and from the chair to withdraw the remark, the committee had agreed to a motion that his evidence be expunged from the committee's record.
The hon. member indicated that the action taken was not within the committee's powers because committee evidence and the testimony of witnesses before the committee are privileged; because the correction of the record, which is within the power of committee, cannot extend to the expunging of whole sections of the verbatim transcript, and finally because a majority of the committee's members had acted to silence the witness. He also suggested that the chairman of the committee might have intervened during the hearing of the testimony to caution the witness or even to eject him.
In support of this position the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace added that the extreme measure taken, of expunging the entire testimony because of one unacceptable statement, was unprecedented in his experience and contrary to democratic parliamentary procedures.
The hon. member for Red Deer, the chairman of the committee, then briefly related the events in question from the committee chair's perspective. He indicated that he had been reluctant to interrupt the testimony at some earlier points on account of questionable remarks and that "one extremely inflammatory-statement" had come at the very end of the testimony. At that time he had asked the witness to withdraw the remark. During the subsequent discussion he and other members had repeated this request; but when the motion to strike out the witness' testimony was proposed he felt he had no choice but to put it before the committee.
Privilege
The hon. member for Ontario who had proposed in committee the motion which has been brought to the Speaker's attention, argued that the committee's action was in order because a committee like the House has the power to enforce the rules of order and civility on all those within its ambit and also the power to order the exclusion of the public from its meetings. He also pointed out that the House had not yet received the report from the committee relating to this question citing Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 107, which states that the House deals with a question of privilege arising in committee on report from that committee.

I would like to thank the members who contributed to the discussion on this point for the conciseness and restraint they have shown in making their arguments. The events occurring in committee were clearly such as to cause strong feelings, and the Chair appreciates the rationality and objectivity with which all members put their points of view.

I would particularly like to thank the hon. member for Red Deer for his help. He seemed at one point to be beginning to wonder if the chair of a legislative committee was as great a mark of honour as he had supposed; but I would like to assure him that, in the eyes of the Speaker, selection to the Panels of Chairmen, like election to the Speakership, is a distinct mark of honour if not always good for the nerves.
With regard to the question that has been raised, I need hardly detail to the House the many occasions on which the Chair has clearly stated its reluctance to interfere in the proceedings of a committee. I have already mentioned the quotation by the hon. member for Ontario of citation 107 of Beauchesne.

As the House knows, however, this rule is not entirely inflexible. The Speaker may pronounce on such a question if it is very serious or urgent or if there is a lack of direct or recent Canadian practice available for the guidance of members. Such a departure from regular practice cannot in my opinion be considered a precedent.

March 16, 1993
Privilege

There are in fact some Canadian precedents for the deletion of short passages of the Debates of the House because of their unparliamentary or offensive character. The most recent of these that the Chair has been able to find dates from April 3, 1933, when the Speaker ruled that an unparliamentary word previously used in the House should be expunged from the Debates of that day.
May's 21st edition at page 634 states that committees have expunged evidence which is "improper or inadmissible-which properly speaking [was] not evidence-and even the whole of the evidence given by a witness''. This is in accord with the implications of our own Standing Order 113(5) which gives a legislative committee the power "to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it"; and therefore necessarily the power to decide not to print.
The procedural objections raised to the committee's action were, very briefly, because testimony is privileged and because the correction of the record cannot extend to wholesale deletion. It seems to the Chair that the privileged nature of testimony mentioned in Beau-chesne's sixth edition at citation 106 refers to the witness' immunity from prosecution rather than to any inviolability of the evidence itself. I agree that what was done in this case is not a correction as envisaged in Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 828, but rather as I have mentioned a decision not to exercise the power which the committee undoubtedly possesses.
Such a decision by a committee would of course be noted in its Minutes of Proceedings and Erskine May suggests, at page 636 of his 21st edition, that "the committee-indicate in the evidence as printed the places in the text where material had been omitted". I understand in the present case these measures have been taken.
In conclusion, the Chair must find that the actions taken by the committee, as outlined by its chairman, were within its powers and that the matter raised by the hon. member for Timmins-Chapleau does not under the circumstances constitute a question of privilege.
I have a further question of privilege from the hon. member and I will hear the hon. member.


PROCEEDINGS OF LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE ON BILL C-113
Mr. Cid Samson (Timmins -Chapleau):: Mr. Speaker, I must say that I am very disappointed in your decision.


Mr. Speaker:: Just a minute. The hon. member may be disappointed in the decision but the duty of the Chair is to bring decisions down according to the rules and according to the procedural law. It is completely improper and certainly not appropriate for an hon. member to start off on a second question of privilege arising from the same committee, and it just may be that the Chair is being very generous in even hearing it with that kind of a criticism. If the hon. member does not like the decision the hon. member has other places where he can go and express it, but not in this Chamber.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You are quite right. I withdraw the comment and I do apologize to the Chair.


Mr. Speaker:: I just want to say to the hon. member that I appreciate the comment and the apology is accepted.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of personal privilege concerning the legislative committee studying Bill C-113. On March 11, 1993 I raised the question of privilege in the House concerning the decision by the majority of the committee studying Bill C-113 to expunge the testimony of the witness.
My point is very short. I am at a loss as to how the committee could proceed prior to hearing your decision. Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 693, deals with clause-by-clause study of legislation and states:
(1) Before beginning its clause-by-clause study, the committee will
usually call the sponsor of the bill and such witnesses as it deems
necessary, to give evidence upon the merits of the bill.
While the committee called witnesses who testified on the merits of the bill, the question of privilege I raised related to procedural and substantive defects with how the committee dealt with one of those witnesses. Beauchesne's clearly establishes a condition that must be satisfied before a committee can begin clause-by-clause study of a bill.
March 16. 1993

My earlier question of privilege was one which had to be dealt with by you, Mr. Speaker, since it was argued that the committee exceeded its jurisdiction. The decision of the majority of the committee to proceed with clause by clause, without first hearing the ruling of the Speaker, is I believe a display of contempt for the Speaker of this House. This is especially true, given the fact that the committee was given the option this morning of suspending clause-by-clause hearings and the majority of members of the committee chose not to wait for Your Honour's ruling.
I ask that the proceedings of the committee today be declared a nullity. I also ask that this matter be referred to an appropriate committee of this House for disciplinary action of the chair and the majority members of this committee.


Mr. Speaker:: I have listened very carefully to what the hon. member is saying and I understand. I want the hon. member to know that I understand there is some dispute going on within the committee. It is not for me, at least at this point, to enter into one side or the other of that dispute.
The point the hon. member has raised is an interesting one. I will consider it very carefully and will report back, as of course I am obliged to do and which I would want to do. But I do want to make one thing clear: However I may report back, I do not think I have any power to interfere with the proceedings of the committee at this time.
I will take the hon. member's comments under advisement and I will return to the House to try to give an appropriate response as soon as possible. Again I thank the hon. member for his courtesy.


Nelson Andrew Riis: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I listened carefully, along with others, to your ruling and I simply seek clarification on two points.
First, the evidence referred to in your deliberations, Mr. Speaker, was presented again yesterday. It was
Privilege
exactly the same evidence and was accepted yesterday. In other words the evidence that was removed from the record one day was accepted the next, and I seek clarification on how this can be done.
Second, do we understand now that if members feel strongly-I think that was the term you used in your ruling-it means the majority through a motion can then eliminate from the record what has been said? Is it fair, now that we have assumed that is the case, that we might apply the same here in the House of Commons, that is if the majority of members of the House of Commons had strong feelings on an issue they could introduce a motion and again have Hansard stricken in terms of some of the evidence presented here?


Mr. Speaker:: First of all I want to say to the House that the hon. House leader of the New Democratic Party, the hon. member for Kamloops, rises on this matter. The hon. member is a very experienced member of this House as we all know, and I am taking very carefully into account what he said.
The answer to the first part of the hon. member's question is this. As I understand it a completely different witness went in front of the committee and said much the same thing that had been said by the witness that had caused the committee to expunge the record at a prior time, and in this case the committee decided to do nothing but to hear it out. That of course is within the prerogative of the committee.
There certainly cannot be any criticism of the committee for having heard a witness and allowed the witness to say whatever it was, no matter how offensive some members of the committee may have thought it was. That is the answer to the first part of the question.
On the second part of the question I would ask the hon. member to perhaps find a moment this afternoon to look carefully at the recent opinion that I gave which basically comes down to this: The committee does not have to report all of its proceedings. I think the hon. member will see that is really what the judgment turns on, but if the hon. member is having further difficulty with it after having had a chance to look at it I would be pleased to discuss it with him.

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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Mayer that Bill C-95, an act to continue the Farm Credit Corporation and to repeal certain acts in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.
Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned for the lunch hour I was talking about the Farm Credit Corporation Act at third reading of Bill C-95.
The bill makes a number of important improvements in the structure and organization of the Farm Credit Corporation. It gives it more independence and so on. The real acid test of whether it will make any difference in the back concessions of Canada will really depend on whether the government provides additional funding. This will be especially important when we look at the fact that this legislation will provide for funding beyond the farm gate for further processing and so on.
Clearly the facts of the matter are not very encouraging. If we look at the amount of funding and the amount of loans that are being provided by the government, we see they have dropped by some $1.2 billion in the last five years. The government is not increasing the amount of funding available. In fact it has reduced it by almost 20 per cent over the past several years. Although the legislation as passed will be beneficial, the question is how the government will actually operate it.
I spent some time this morning pointing out that the net farm income is projected in this calendar year to drop by almost $1 billion. The government has given no indication that it is going to provide the same level of support in this coming calendar year as it provided even in 1992. We saw the tremendous rallies in Lucknow, Ontario and Saskatoon in the first couple of months of this year, where tens of thousands of farmers rallied to protest the lack of action by the government.
It seems to me that the government's approach over these past several years has been to increase the support
to the industry, tied to the prospects or likelihood of a general election. In 1987-88, the support was very high for the grain industry which is facing an extremely difficult time because of the international grain wars that are going on between the European Community and the United States. In 1990-91 the support was reduced. Everything was set for a larger amount of funding in 1992 and that occurred, except it occurred when prices were still at a very low level and inclement weather meant that many thousands of farmers in northern parts of Saskatchewan and Ontario were not able to harvest the crops.
Although this legislation is a good structure, it is really permissive legislation that allows the government to do certain things and the Farm Credit Corporation to do certain things. Whether or not they will ever do it remains to be seen. Clearly the financial crisis facing rural Canada this year is absolutely devastating. In Saskatchewan, the net farm income is dropping from more than $600 million to some $238 million. Three or four years ago it was almost $1 billion in that one province, which is so dependent on a healthy farm economy.
Last fall the government should have realized what an extremely bad situation there was. It was the worst for crops in southwestern Ontario and Ontario generally. The fall months were cold and wet and the corn crop could not be harvested. What did the government do? It fumbled around until about late September or early October tiying to decide whether or not there would be an advance payment regime. This program, which the government wiped out three or four years ago was brought back within a matter of months and the interest free cash advances were provided on the first $50,000 under that program. The government did not make up its mind for several months whether or not this program would be reinstated this year. It short-changed the program so there was only some $41 million. The Ontario Corn Producers Association had to go from bank to bank trying to find somebody to fund the program which it operates on behalf of the Government of Canada.
On top of that, for a number of years in western Canada when there were difficulties harvesting wheat or a grain crop, it was possible through an Order in Council and special arrangement to have unthreshed grain paid
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for or a farm advance provided for it. In the Ontario case, the government spent several months making up its mind whether it would provide this help for the 25,000 corn producers who are facing the worst cropping situation in history. Finally it came through with the $15,000 limit rather than the $50,000 limit which is available for threshed, harvested corn.
If the government is willing to provide a $50,000 interest free cash advance for threshed or harvested corn, why would it lower that limit when farmers are facing the terrible situation of not being able to take off the crop? Yet that is exactly what happened. In the end, the whole thing floundered. I think there were only 20 producers out of 25,000 who were able to even take advantage of that program. It is a case of niggling and nickel and diming and fighting for every dollar that is needed even though the economic situation for many of these commodities was as bad last year and this year as it was in the 1930s.
We are glad the bill is going to be passed. We hope it will not take very long to be passed in the Senate, but the over-all situation is that the farm financial crisis being faced this year should be the priority for the government.
We know farmers are facing a $1 billion reduction in net farm income. We know the government has chopped the estimates for the Department of Agriculture by over $600 million. Producers really want to know why the parliamentary secretary cannot come into the House today and say the government knows the net farm income is going to be down dramatically this year. It knows there is going to be a general election some time this year, whether it is in the fall, summer or spring. The parliamentary secretary, who was so positive on third reading debate, cannot make a clear statement outlining exactly what additional financial support will be made available, not just for this bill but to help farmers face the perilous drop in net farm income which in Saskatchewan is simply a disaster. It is about a quarter of what the net farm income was four or five years ago.
If the government really wants to show its commitment to agriculture this would be the time to make that statement. 1 think the parliamentary secretary has seen
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the tremendous devastation in the corn crops and the difficulties of harvesting that crop last fall. Much of it is still in the fields in southwestern Ontario. I really do not know why he would not move in and help.
Right now we not only face the fall-out from the grain trade or subsidy wars that are going on, but we face the tremendous uncertainty of the free trade deal. The NAFTA is even more uncertain now because we do not know whether the United States is going to accept it. There are also the GATT negotiations.
So much of that uncertainty goes back to the FTA itself. There are problems with the countervail duty that the Americans are trying to impose on our hog producers. There are problems we face with regard to durum wheat. Investigations have been carried out by the United States International Trade Commission with regard to beef production. So much goes back to the FTA. The Prime Minister went to New York and said that American trade law cannot apply to Canadian producers. Ask the hog producers who have had to pay a countervail duty off and on since 1985.
There is great uncertainty in all the sectors. I think there is greater uncertainty now in the supply management and marketing areas than there ever has been because the GATT negotiations have proceeded and stopped, proceeded and stopped, and at some stage you start to wonder if there ever will be a GATT agreement. Either way people in the supply managed sector are very uncertain of their future.
If there is a GATT agreement, clearly the Dunkel commission report which we are concerned this government will accept, will bring in tariffication. Ultimately that will open the borders and drive down the price of poultry products and dairy products. If there is no agreement, then we face the ice cream and yoghurt decision under the FTA. Clearly the government promised it was going to provide import controls. John Wise, the minister for agriculture at the time, stood in this House and said the government had no fears that producers would be protected. Commodities like ice cream, yoghurt and so on would simply be taken from the tariff lists and put on the import controls list. Clearly the government misled Canadian producers.

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As soon as that was done in the fall of 1989, the United States immediately took Canada to the GATT, had a panel struck and within nine months of its complaint had a decision that the import controls being put on ice cream and yoghurt were not in keeping with our international commitments. That decision is sitting there waiting for the United States to demand that it be implemented.
If the GATT agreement does not go ahead it will clearly demand access for those two dairy products. If it makes that stick, it can demand access to our markets for cheese, butter and milk powder. Then the whole supply management marketing system, which has been so beneficial for some 34,000 of our producers will start to crumble.
Either way there is great uncertainty today for the supply managed commodities. It really goes back to that FTA agreement in 1987.
There is very great uncertainty, whether one is talking about the grains and oilseeds sector or the supply management sector. It is nice to see the Minister of State for Agriculture here in the House when wc are debating the Farm Credit Corporation Act. He knows the previous Minister of Agriculture misled the dairy farmers and poultry farmers when he said their supply managed marketing boards were fully protected and they would be protected by putting-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. Minister of State for Agriculture.


Mr. Blais:: I note that the experienced member for Algoma knows better than to say that the former Minister of Agriculture misled. It is not true. I think my hon. Iriend should retlect on that and withdraw his words. I think it is not true when one looks at what the government has done for dairy farmers and particularly how it has delended the system in Canada. It is the best system in the world.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A situation like this is always very difficult for the Chair, because in debate, interpretations can vary widely from one side of the House to the other. I prefer to let freedom of speech prevail in such cases. The hon. member for Algoma may proceed.


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see that the Minister of State for Agriculture is not so preoccupied with the leadership convention of the Tory party that he recognizes that dairy farmers and poultry farmers are very concerned. They are very concerned because the former Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Wise, told farmers: "You have no fears about this government selling you out. There are no fears that the supply management system is going to be protected".
When he announced to the dairy farmers of Canada in January 1988 that he was going to put ice cream, yoghurt, butter, cheese and skim milk powder on the import control list, Mr. Bentsen, who was the chairman of the Senate finance committee in the United States said: "Mr. Wise, if you do that, we will take you to the GATT and we will open those markets for ice cream, yoghurt and similar products, so don't do it". Mr. Wise said there was no problem, he could do that. Mr. Bentsen reminded Mr. Wise that there was no provision in the FTA for import controls on Canadian dairy or poultry products. The United States has it. It has its GATT waiver. It has complete control. However, in the FTA there was no provision in that way.
After the election in 1988, the government went ahead and put these products on the import control list. The United States government immediately challenged Canada and asked for a petition to GATT to set up a panel. That GATT decision was rendered in September 1989. The government tried to cover it up for months. Ultimately even the Minister of State for Agriculture from la belle province agreed, reluctantly I believe, because they had made a promise to accept that GATT panel decision.
Here we sit with a decision by a GATT panel in December 1989 calling on Canada to open its border to ice cream and yoghurt. That precedent could be applied equally to other processed dairy products. Processed dairy products represent 63 per cent of all of our production. One significant thing about it is that a disproportionate amount of it, on a population basis, is located in the province of Quebec. It will really fall to the Minister of State for Agriculture in Quebec if and when the United States demands access for those commodities to explain to those industrial milk producers in Quebec why he ever agreed to that arrangement. Clearly
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there was no provision made in the FTA to protect those commodities.
That is why producers are very concerned. They know that the FTA exposed them. They know that the government lost all of its bargaining power in the GATT negotiations. Because the Americans had already gained access, why would they negotiate very hard or at all in those GAIT negotiations?
That is why our position has been so weakened in those GATT negotiations. It is because the Americans already have access under the ice cream and yoghurt decision for processed dairy products. They could easily go back and get similar decisions for skim milk powder, butter, cheese or other commodities or poultry products.
There is very great concern not only that the government has sold out in the FTA, but that the ice cream and yoghurt decision really weakened Canada's bargaining power with the United States which after all is a big player.
It was not surprising three or four months ago when the chief negotiator for Canada announced that Canada had lost support. Where there were six countries supporting supply management a year ago, by January or by October last year it was down to only one or two. It is just one step after another that has been a relentless move toward tariffication. That is the American proposal which helps them but would destroy our supply management system.
There is very great concern as to whether the government really has any clout or any bargaining power at all. It is strange that the Prime Minister in New York back in 1987 said that the United States trade law could not apply to Canada and he would make sure that happened.
Of course he did not get it in the FTA. The FTA leaves our producers of steel, forest products, hogs, Durum wheat or whatever open to United States countervail duty.
It is interesting that in the North American free trade agreement, the government did not go back and try to get those things. It is amazing that after the experience we have had with the constant harassment of anti-dumping and countervail duties, that it did not go back and
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correct that and get a subsidy code and an anti-dumping code put in. Every other international free trade agreement in the world has them. Yet for some reason or another apparently the government did not even try.
Why did the government not say to the Mexicans: "Look, we really got taken on the FTA. Let us combine our forces and get an anti-dumping code. Let us combine our forces and get a countervail duty code. If we have support programs then we will know exactly what support program is going to be subject to U.S. countervail duty and how to handle anti-dumping activity by United States corporations". Yet we look at the NAFTA and all that is there.
That is exactly why we argued in the 1988 general election that the government is better off to negotiate in the GATT. There is over-all support from 108,110 or 120 nations and the United States is not a country with 10 times the economic power that Canada has or maybe 20 times the economic power that the Mexicans have.
Clearly it cannot be argued that somehow or another, the government got mixed up and did not know what it was not getting in the free trade deal in the fall of 1987. Clearly it knew it was not getting anything in that regard.
It is even worse when it comes back with a NAFTA deal in the fall of 1992. Here is another deal where it did not make any arrangements. Fortunately the Clinton administration is concerned about some of the other things we did not get, things like environmental and labour standards. Of course Canada gave up its energy provisions which Mexico got. We did not stick for those same energy arrangements.
One has to ask what kind of negotiators we have. Our whole supply management system is in a turmoil and very concerned about what is going to happen in the future. Our food processing industry, the second largest industry in the country, is very concerned. Over 100 plants have been closed or have moved to the United States. Some 34,000 jobs have been lost in that processing industry, much of that due to the FTA and the move by the United States to take over those sectors.
It is most unfortunate. This Bill C-95, the FCC bill, provides assistance for further processing. However, if an industry has been wiped out by the FTA and has moved its plant to the United States, it is hard to save

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the horse when the stable doors have already been thrown open.
The bill we are passing today is a good bill but it does not solve all the problems of agriculture in this country. It does not even begin to do that. We want to see it passed. However, we want to see the government show some responsibility with regard to the farm credit crisis which is facing this country. This bill certainly does not cover those crises and what will resolve those problems, many of which are devastating for thousands and thousands of producers in this country.


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina -Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to participate in the discussion of Bill C-95 considering the changes to the Farm Credit Corporation Act.
First of all, I would like to acknowledge that I do have a bit of a conflict of interest in this. The head office of the Farm Credit Corporation is located in my constituency and I am of course concerned with it. I would like to acknowledge the government's moving the head offices to Regina. It makes a lot of sense, especially considering that the largest land owner in the province of Saskatchewan is the Farm Credit Corporation. In September it held 1,943 leases totalling 877,000 acres of land. It is the largest land holder in my province of Saskatchewan.
There is much in Bill C-95 that we support. We are happy to see that the government dropped the one section, section 5, trying to establish in the bill that it is exempted from the provincial laws. Of course, the government did that in part because of the court decision.
We can pass laws but we should also surely deal with the intent. I still have some concern here. There are some very grave problems facing the farm community. We have heard this eloquently expressed by members from all sides of the House.
Farm families are losing their land. This land has often been in the family for many generations. There is a crisis, mainly due to the dramatic drop in what farmers get for what they produce. While the costs of production have gone up, their return has gone down.
Many farmers have been continuing to exist on the edge of bankruptcy. They are never certain whether it is
this year they go under or whether they will be able to survive for one more year in the hope that things will improve. It is no wonder that in Saskatchewan we call our province "next year country". If it is not drought or frost or grasshoppers that threaten farms, it is low commodity prices. But the sense of optimism and hope that exists in my province, particularly among the farming community, makes them keep going. It is in the hope that next year conditions will be better, prices will be better and again they will be able to make an honest return on all their effort and investment.
One of the problems, of course, has been the declining value in farm land. Billions of dollars have been lost in the province of Saskatchewan just on the decrease in the value of the land. Many farmers are staying on the land because they do not feel that the price for farm land is adequate right now. They are hoping that the price will go up, that the farm economy will turn around. Then they will be in a position to sell.
That means the average age on the farm continues to increase. By that I mean the average age of the farmer on the land is quite high. It is because young people are not able to get into farming. They are either being discouraged or they do not have the necessary capital to get in.
To begin to turn all this around requires a new mind-set, a new attitude, particularly on the part of federal and provincial governments. It is a crisis that can only be addressed by co-operation between federal and provincial governments.
The provincial government in Saskatchewan made some honest attempts to deal with the farm debt crisis and the numbers of farmers being forced into bankruptcy and having to give up their land. The province moved to develop a moratorium on farm foreclosure. Since the FCC was the largest land holder in Saskatchewan it was very important that it co-operate.
The federal government took the position that legally they did not have to co-operate and apparently one of the courts have found in their favour. As I mentioned before it is not just a legality. It is more than that. I implore the federal government and the Minister of Agriculture to de-politicize agriculture and to look at the attempts by the Government of Saskatchewan to
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deal with the crisis, particularly the crisis of farm foreclosure, and to co-operate with it.
What the Government of Saskatchewan is trying to do has been accepted by the banks and most lending agencies. It is fair and makes a lot of sense. It is trying to help farmers stay on the land. Surely the federal government can co-operate. We cannot afford to play political games. We have to de-politicize agriculture. We have to work together to develop a strategy so that farm families can stay on the land.
Agriculture is more than a business. Agriculture for us in Saskatchewan is also a way of life. People want to stay on the farm and raise their children there because they prefer the rural way of life. It is in the national interest that we maintain a strong and viable rural community and farm community. It is more than just a business. We have seen governments invest and help faltering industries and faltering businesses. We feel that type of assistance should also be available to the farm sector of our economy.
Much of Bill C-95 is positive, as I have mentioned before. It allows for a greater flexibility in terms of the type of lease arrangements individual farmers can enter into with FCC. It allows for flexibility of FCC to work with either provincial governments or other lending institutions in developing viable plans. I hope this government through FCC will expand on the opportunities this bill allows them and will enter into co-operative efforts particularly with the provincial government to help slow down the amount of farm foreclosures and to help, with the provincial government and other lending institutions, farm families facing a severe crisis.
There are some things we would have liked to have seen added to it. We would have liked to have seen the advisory panel being maintained and used more actively. We would have liked to have seen an appeals board. As is bound to happen, disagreements occur between people working for FCC and farmers. It would allow the farmer an opportunity to go to an arm's length-type board to hear his complaints. Fie would have the feeling there is a body out there he could bring his complaints to.
.(1555)
We would also like, and we feel this is essential, long-term lease options and long-term fixed interest. These are essential in agriculture. There are many
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variables in agriculture, particularly price that goes up and down. As a foundation to the farm we have to introduce some stable elements. Surely a stable longterm lease on fixed interest would allow the farmer to do more planning, to know that his monthly or yearly payments on loans for purchasing his land are going to be fixed. That would create some stability in a network that has a lot of instability.
We also want to see community trusts for farm lands that have gone into a bank. Intergenerational transfer of land, transferred from one generation to the other, from fathers to sons and daughters, is very important. The previous provincial government of Allan Blakeney introduced the land bank to help facilitate the intergenerational transfer of land in a smooth and orderly way. It allowed the young farmer to be able to start farming the land, make his yearly payments and eventually have the option of purchasing the land or continuing to work the land on a lease-type basis as long as he wanted to. On the other hand it allowed the older farmer the opportunity of taking out what he had invested in the land over all the years of working it and retiring.
In other words it allowed the younger generation to enter into farming without requiring a lot of up-front cash for a down payment on the purchase of the land. On the other hand it allowed the older farmer to retire and get his investment back out. This is what we were hoping the land bank would do.
In many ways the land bank did that. Perhaps there was some criticism of it. The only legitimate criticism I would have is that many decisions tended to be made in Regina. Reform that would have allowed more of a community-based board or such organization on a community basis to manage the land in the bank would have been a much wiser course to have taken. It would have given the local people a sense that they owned the land and that they were custodians and guardians of that land upon which the well-being of their community and their districts depended.
These things I speak of are not included in Bill C-95. They are steps I hope we will take in the not too distant future. I think they are necessary steps to address the severe problem of the intergenerational transfer of land, the need for a co-operative strategy among federal, provincial and local municipal governments to make

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agriculture more viable and to work on value added projects.
I point out that Bill C-95 allows us-and I congratulate the government for this new addition to the act-to begin to co-operate to bring all our resources together. That is the only way we can begin to save agriculture.
We know the province of Saskatchewan has severe debt problems. Its payments on the debt it has incurred are horrendous and create a deficit situation that prevents the province of Saskatchewan from directing the needed resources to agriculture.
The federal government also faces a similar situation. In fact in some ways it is a more severe situation. It is time these dwindling resources available from either the federal or provincial government go to agriculture. It is time they started being used more wisely. Instead of playing political games it is about time these resources were brought together for the maximum benefit of the farming community. I hope new politics will be developed. Certainly there is a need in agriculture for new politics.
We have some objections to Bill C-95. Our agriculture critic has introduced some amendments. Unfortunately the amendments were not acceptable to the government. We also feel the Farm Credit Corporation is only part of the solution. It is not the whole solution. Other steps have to be taken by governments at the provincial and federal levels to adequately address the problems being faced.
Over all we are happy with Bill C-95. We see it as a step in the right direction and on the whole we support the bill.


Lyle Vanclief: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to make more comments on Bill C-95, an act to continue the Farm Credit Corporation and to repeal certain acts in consequence thereof. We have spent a considerable amount of time today on this bill in the House at report stage and now at third reading.
I would like to make a few closing comments on this bill. As was stated so well by some speakers before me, this is a piece of permissive legislation. I talk to people in
the riding of Prince Edward-Hastings quite frequently. I remind them of the work we do in the House in Ottawa and that many of the pieces of legislation are permissive legislation. This means that if the direction or the permission given in the legislation is allowed to happen, flows and follows the way we hope it will, some good things can come from its passage.
Perhaps we do not need to remind Canadians it is not always the case. The intention may be very good, but there must be the will of those who write the regulations and put them in place after the legislation is passed here. That is what really makes it tick. That is what really makes it work.
For the most part this is a good piece of legislation as far as the agrifood industry is concerned. The government accepted an amendment to the bill this morning stressing that the FCC was first and foremost to deal with family farms and small and medium sized businesses in rural Canada. That is more prominent in the legislation than it was just a few hours ago. For that I say thank you to the government. That was one step.
There are other good points to this bill. One is that it now makes Farm Credit Corporation money available to those who lease property but do not own farm land. The Farm Credit Corporation management tools or loans have not been available to lease holders in the past. In addition, it gives the Farm Credit Corporation the power to make or guarantee loans to farmers or a group of farmers that have an operating farm or businesses relating to their farming operations and thereby hopefully allow more value added facilities in rural Canada.
In some comments earlier in the House today I said, I hope clearly, that one of the things we need very badly in rural Canada right now is the facility, the opportunity and the support to take the raw product that we have been quite successful in selling in the past in Canada, and many times in exporting, be it wheat, beef, pork or fruits and vegetables, and process it further and develop it further so that Canadians can have the jobs doing that and Canadians can enjoy the benefits. Farm credit changes here will allow the board of directors to make loans to individuals or groups of individuals who want to do that and therefore create jobs in rural Canada, in the
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smaller or medium-sized towns or wherever it might happen to be, and take that process on.
Unfortunately but in reality the world has changed in the last lew years. We have been very successful in the past in selling grain on the world market, but we know that for many producers today world prices do not allow them to survive economically. We have to consider ways in which we can value add that grain. I am only using that as an example of products that are produced by family farms in Canada today.
Another positive change in this bill is the opportunity for the Farm Credit Corporation to take more than just the real properly as security. At the present time the Farm Credit Corporation takes a mortgage on the property on which it is loaning money. That is the extent to which it can go for security.
The bill allows the board of directors to make regulations that will allow them to take off-farm property or off-farm security as security on a loan to be used in agriculture. In my view, this is a positive step. This allows someone to have a job somewhere else or to acquire some capital or some equity someplace else and then use that to back their farming operation or their rural on-farm manufacturing or value added business that they might want to put in place in a community.
It also gives the Farm Credit Corporation, and I think this is a plus as well, the power to set interest rates. It does not have to go to the cabinet each time it wants to change interest rates. The board of FCC has the ability and the duty of borrowing money wherever it can borrow at the best interest rate it can get. Now it is able to set its own interest rate on what it has to charge.
I say last, but certainly not least, is that it is made very clear in this bill that it is the intention and the direction of the Farm Credit Corporation to act on a break-even basis. Unfortunately in the past we know too well that the Farm Credit Corporation has not always done that. For the good of all of us and for the good of the taxpayers in Canada I hope and I think it can fill all of these other requirements and duties and obligations that it has and still do it on a break-even basis.
I remind the House as well that this is, as other speakers have said today, not necessarily the be all and
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end all and the answer to the financial crisis in rural Canada and the farming communities today. There are problems out there. The present government likes to brag about the amount of money it has directed toward rural Canada and to farmers in its term of office. Yes, it has been a considerable sum of money. But I have to remind the government that it has not been successfully and correctly directed.
If we look at the situation we have on farms in Canada today compared to when this government came into power, the total farm debt today is equal to or greater than it was.
The number of farmers that are exiting the industry is at the same rate if not greater than what it was. I could give many other examples to simply tell Canadians that what this government has done has not been successful. There must be some changes.
We have to change our priorities and the manner in which we support the agrifood industry and the primary producer. I outlined some of that. My first suggestion would be to assist that industry to take its products through further stages so that if it cannot obtain from the world price or from the price of the raw product a market price for the raw product it can obtain what is needed, a piece of the action from the development and the value added of that product as we go on up through.
The government talks about parliamentary reform and so do we. We in this party have put forward a number of suggestions on how parliamentary reform can make the legislative process more successful. I have used Bill C-95 in some discussions I have had in my riding as a good example.
Here is an example of a topic and a bill that everybody agreed needed to be discussed, revamped or whatever words you want to use. It has been talked about in the agriculture community and the farm community for a number of years.
In my view the process we went through today would have been far more successful if we had taken this discussion first to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and asked that committee and any witnesses it wished to bring forward to that committee for sugges-

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tions on how the Farm Credit Corporation Act could and should be improved.
After having heard those suggestions and witnesses then the work could have been done in drafting the bill. However, as we know very well, that is not the way it happens. That is not the way it happened with this bill.
The minister brought the bill in, the bill was basically cut and dried. Yes, there was one clause at committee that the government agreed to withdraw. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture mentioned it today when he stated that it had been withdrawn. I might say that was done for legal reasons, so the government had very little choice.
Those amendments that we put forward at the legislative committee after the bill received second reading should have been discussed in the way that they could and should have been by the government members, rather than voting down every amendment that the opposition brought forward. They knew from the start that basically we were in favour of the bill.
It is a good piece of legislation but it could be better yet. This is where so often in this House we fall down in our obligation to our constituents and to Canadians.
Of the two amendments that were put forward today, one was passed. Two others were put forward today. I do not think we are asking too much. I do not know whether it was out of stubbornness or what, but the government simply would not pass them. That is all there is to it.
That is asking for an appeal board so that if someone is not happy with the decision or how they are dealt with when they make an application to the Farm Credit Corporation they have one, two or three individuals that they can discuss that with. I do not know what more anybody can ask than that.
As I said earlier today, it was not going to cost much but it would serve a useful purpose. Since this board of directors will be dealing with and making rules and regulations and policy respecting family farms and small and medium sized businesses, primarily in rural Canada, there were amendments before this House today suggesting that the legislation state that a percentage of the board of directors be primary producers.
Whether that be 50 per cent, 40 per cent or 30 per cent I suppose does not matter. There is nothing in this
legislation today that says that any of that board of directors has to be primary producers. They in all fairness would have a better understanding of what happens, what is going on and what people down on the farm are faced with today. The instruments and tools of financing would be very valuable and very useful to them.
In closing, there are a couple of other concerns that I have. A number of us have received a copy of a letter from the Canadian Bankers Association which states that it is not happy with this legislation. I may not be using its words but using my words. It says that this may allow the Farm Credit Corporation to intrude on the banks' territory. That does not bother me much. If that is what it takes to keep the banking institutions' feet to the fire, fine and dandy, it will keep their feet to the fire.
Some of the banks have said that if this happens they will consider closing some of the rural banks. I do not think so. The Farm Credit Corporation fills the gap of long-term financing. The banks are needed there for operating loans and for shorter term financing and they will still be there.
Again, if this is what it takes to get the banks' attention then I think that is another good part of the bill. However, with the track record that this government has in privatizing things, I also see where this government could very well be setting up the Farm Credit Corporation to be privatized, sold off, or whatever way we want to say it, to another lending institution. We must be very, very careful and very cautious that that not happen because it does serve, for the reasons I have just stated, a very useful purpose. It has a useful bit of clout in the agrifood industry.
It is a good piece of legislation. I am pleased that it is passing today and I am pleased to support it. In that light I remind Canadians that we in the opposition are often accused of only voting against the government. This is an indication where parties can work together in this House for the good of an industry, for the good of a segment of Canada, but I remind everyone that it could work even better yet.
As I say, this is a good piece of legislation and it deserves passing, but it is too bad it could not have done the whole job and been fixed the best way that it possibly
March 16, 1993

could because it will likely be a long time before it comes back. We should have done a little more work on it while we are here. However. I guess 90 per cent of a loaf is better than none at all. We will take this today and maybe in less than a year or so from now a number or all of us on this side of the House will have the opportunity to complete the job that this government did not wish to do.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I am taking part in the third reading debate today on Bill C-95, the act to continue the Farm Credit Corporation. While there are parts of the bill that do have merit, I sincerely suggest that this bill puts the cart before the horse.
I reflect back to my years of running a farming operation. When we wished to make changes, we always had to do a projected cash flow for at least one year or sometimes up to five years. We had to show to our bank that the loan could be repaid and we had to prove on paper that the revised operation would benefit our entire operation.
Here we are today making several changes to the legislation under which FCC operates and there are no programs in place in most sectors of agriculture-I say in most sectors of agriculture, I make exception with the dairy and poultry sectors-to provide the financial stability to repay the loans made to the Canadian farmers with any certainty.
I have spoken in this House before about the huge corporations which my colleague from Broadview- Greenwood referred to this morning, transnational corporation agendas as he called it. These are spelled out in the March 9 issue of Farm and Country tabloid in an article by John Muggeridge called "Agriculture Inc.".
John Muggeridge shows in detail the concentration that is taking place in the United States that I have spoken about a good many times in this House, and how they are taking over the agriculture industry there. He also cites a study that I have used on many occasions by university professors William Hefferman and Douglas Constance of the University of Missouri.
The same names keep cropping up again and again in terms of agricultural production in the United States.
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These firms are rapidly expanding into Third World countries and becoming a force here in Canada as well.
In the March 10 issue of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Jim Romhan in an article headlined: "Buying groups have clout with suppliers", talks about the further concentration of various buying groups in Canada who supply the supermarket outlets and bring more pressure to bear on the processors and naturally then down the line to the producers. That pressure really results in the price discovery system in the marketplace not being allowed to function as it should.
We also relate back to May 1991 to a study done by the Library of Parliament for the agriculture committee of this House. It spells out what happened even in the Chicago Board of Trade in 1989 when the price of oilseeds took a dramatic drop.
I respectfully suggest to this House that until these problems of concentration in production and processing that we have in the U.S. for those firms now branched here in Canada are corrected, Canadian agriculture will continue to suffer. We cannot hide our heads in the sand and think that a few amendments to the Farm Credit Corporation Act are going to resolve the long-term problem.
Before lunch at the report stage of this Bill C-95, I made reference to the fact that our so-called self-styled professionals, many of whom are economists, continue to dream in Technicolor as they swallow the gospel of globalization and refuse to support the need for our marketing boards. They are ignoring the fact that the cost of establishing environmentally sustainable agriculture should be shared by all of society.
I would like to share that thought for just a few minutes because there are no better conservationists in society than the farm people themselves. But it is something they cannot practice if they do not have a return on investment, management, labour and risk.
We criticize countries in South America for cutting down the rain forests but then we look at Canada and see the small percentage of land covered by wood lots. I am speaking here of southwestern Ontario or other areas across Canada. Somewhere along the line there has to be a return on investment if that land is going to be put back into wood lots. I suggest to this House that we should select a species of trees that could be planted on these lands to give a long-term return to the landowner and a return to society in general. We know that trees add to

March 16, 1993
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the environment and use large amounts of carbon monoxide.
I would like to continue that line of thought for a moment and make a few further observations. The development of environmentally friendly value added processes must be speeded up to create new domestic markets for Canadian grains, whether for renewable fuels, road de-icers or other biodegradable products.
We now have road de-icers made from grain corn and biodegradable products such as garbage bags made from the same grains.
The use of grains for renewable fuels alone has tremendous spin-off potential. Although the government voted down Bill C-226 last Wednesday evening, it failed to recognize the spin-off benefits of renewable fuels. These fuels would cut the carbon monoxide emissions by 20 to 30 per cent and the carbon dioxide emissions by 6 to 10 per cent. Then the residue or stillage that is left could be used for cattle feed. If wheat was used as the base, the residues could be used for human food. It would be particularly suited to feeding starving children of Third World nations.
The government is not moving fast enough on these issues. EIow can it expect the farm people to borrow money if they cannot see where there is going to be a return. I suggest it is completely irresponsible. It is ignoring the need for a domestic pricing system for those sectors that do not have price-setting authority. They are ignoring other nations where input costs are much lower than ours and the targeted prices in most cases are substantially higher than in Canada.
I am referring, of course, to the U.S. target pricing systems, where U.S. corn growers will now be receiving one-half of their deficiency payments prior to planting their crops. Yet the Canadian farmers have to make their annual pilgrimage to the bank to ask for a new line of credit for this year or go to some of their suppliers or transnational corporations that make them sign away their farms and assets to give them credit, usually at a high rate of interest. If we are going to compete globally, we have to have prices that compare with those of the U.S. and a return.
We also have to ensure that under article III of the GATT, other countries exporting food to Canada live up to the same stringent environmental and safety food standards we have in Canada.
Recently we were appalled by the outbreak of food poisoning in the western United States directly related to contaminated meat. This was a disaster waiting to happen. Three children died and hundreds were violently ill. Some will have permanent kidney damage. I am appalled that this could be allowed to happen in a country next to us with which we trade and exchange food across the border.
I am deeply concerned, as well, about the growing oligopolies that have developed here in Canada in the food sector and that the problems identified by the previous royal commissions of inquiry in two provinces have never been acted on. This is public information and again, government has hidden its head in the sand and paid out subsidies to keep some of the farmers on the land, while other sectors of the food industry make profits that place them in the top 10 of the 1990 Globe and Mail "Report on Business", report 1000.
There has to be a return on investment, labour management and risk if agriculture is to survive in Canada. Yet just a few years ago, the government removed the two-price wheat system and it has ignored the fact that consumer prices continue to rise after producer prices have fallen. In fact, on a box of crackers the consumer price went up by 235 per cent while the producer price of wheat down by 43 per cent.
It does not take a genius to realize that Canadian agriculture cannot survive under such conditions, especially, as I indicated earlier, when our competitors are operating with target prices and export enhancement subsidies are paid to the exporting companies involved. Not only are they getting subsidies, but a year ago they were also getting Commodity Credit Corporation grain to feed to their livestock operations. Those huge companies are not only exporters of grain, they are producers of beef, pork and poultry meats. They used that export enhancement funding in exchange for grain from the Commodity Credit Corporation until it ran out some time ago.
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I call on the members of this House, particularly on the government side, to stop toying with the lives of thousands of Canadians across rural Canada, admit a series of mistakes has been made and place the welfare of the primary resource industry first and foremost on the agenda. Food production and processing in this country must be made a national security item.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Victoria-The environment; the hon. member for Sudbury-The economy; the hon. member for Northumberland-Somalia; the hon. member for Markham-Whitchurch-Stouff-ville-Rouge Valley; the hon. member for Burnaby- Kingsway-AIDS.


INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW IMPROVEMENT
Hon. Pierre H. Vincent (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)) moved: that Bill S-17, an Act to amend the Copyright Act, the Industrial Design Act, the Integrated Circuit Topography Act, the Patent Act, the Trade-marks Act and other acts in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
He said: Mr. Speaker, when my colleague in the opposition applauds, that is a good sign; it means that this is a good bill. I want to thank him for that. You will also allow me to thank the senators who studied this bill and passed it.
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I believe this is the first time that Parliament has considered a bill amending five laws on intellectual property. This is a first for the Parliament of Canada. I think that several departments should consider such an approach so that, where a vast subject is concerned, the laws dealing with it can be improved together as a package.
Bill S-17 is a result of consultations with the interested community and those concerned are in favour of the various amendments contained in the bill. One may wonder why we would amend five laws on intellectual property all together. For one thing, it is to make the system more efficient and, for another, to make it more accessible for Canadians.
With this package, we are making administrative and technical changes to five existing laws. In the world economy as we know it and as it is coming to be, no country will be able to live or survive if it does not look after developments related to intellectual property. Any country that did not consider intellectual property a priority would be mistaken. In this regard, we in Canada have been working and must continue to work.
The various pieces of legislation we are discussing today are not necessarily up to date and do not necessarily meet the needs of Canadians, which creates higher costs for Canadians in the intellectual property sector who use these five different acts.
I can give some examples of how the situation has changed. Take the Patent Act, for instance. Today, according to the legislation, an inventor must provide a detailed description of his invention in writing, but we know that in 1993 and future years, there will be many new developments in biotechnology. Describing an innovation in biotechnology in writing is probably not the best and cheapest approach for most users. Producing a sample of the biological material would be a more sensible and practical alternative, and that is one of the changes we find in Bill S-17.
Electronic filing and processing of all patent-related documents does not exist at the present time. This is something else that has to be done, both for the government and for Canadians who use the system. Technically, a person can now file a new application but

March 16, 1993
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not be able to protect an existing application. Some technical amendments are therefore necessary. One can easily imagine the problems and inequities this can create, so these are the kinds of amendments being proposed in Bill S-17. Of course, filing of patent applications will be simplified.
With regard to the Trade-marks Act, since 1954 there have been no technical or administrative changes in this legislation. We know that today, for instance, it contains no definition of an entity, but it does contain a definition of a group. Once again, these matters are dealt with in the bill.
Bill S-17 also provides for improving the operation and administration of the Copyright Office. Canadians will have better services.
Earlier we referred to the Industrial Design Act. It is important to protect our industrial designers. As you know, Mr. Speaker, although the Industrial Design Act has been in existence for almost a century, there have been no significant amendments to improve the legislation in many years, so this is important. I may add that all the amendments mentioned were suggested and approved by people in this sector.
At this point I would like to congratulate the Intellectual Property Advisory Committee, which was created in 1988, on its excellent work. Committee members represented business, cultural groups, consumers, universities, researchers and experts.


An hon. member:: Lawyers.


Pierre H. Vincent: My honourable friend mentioned lawyers, but I wanted to use the word "experts". In any case, we understand each other. It boils down to the same thing.
These are people who worked very hard to make changes and provide positive and badly needed solutions for the intellectual property sector which was covered by five different acts.
Finally, this legislation, which is intended to improve the administration of five acts, will simplify procedures. It will simplify the technical aspects and introduce advanced technology, while giving Canadians more convenient access to the intellectual property sector.
The Senate has already examined the bill and judged it to be a valid piece of legislation.
I hope my colleagues on the other side of the House will adopt this legislation as soon as possible. If they are prepared to adopt all stages of the bill today, I am available. I would be delighted to be here in the House to support the bill and ensure it is adopted without further delay.


Mr. Ron MacDonald (Dartmouth):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to congratulate the hon. minister on his ascension into glory with his new position in the cabinet. I have had the pleasure of working with him in the House since I was elected and so far he has been a refreshing change from the way that some things work around here. We have already had a few meetings and they have been somewhat productive. I think this is the first bill that the minister has introduced in the House, and so it is a milestone for him. It is generally a good bill to be introducing.
I say that because of the process that resulted in this particular piece of legislation coming before this place. For those who are watching, it happened in kind of a strange way. Bill S-17 was not initiated in this place but in the Senate, or the other place as we call it from time to time. It was introduced in the Senate of Canada. This is the reversible pipeline of legislation which we do not see a lot of in Canada. Indeed, it was debated, there was some committee study, and witnesses were heard.
It comes to us now after having had a fairly significant degree of examination and after some witnesses have come forward. It is sort of a hodgepodge and does a whole lot of things. There are five acts dealing with intellectual property which it proposes to amend. This bill came up through an advisory committee of stakeholders in the industry which had been set up. It went through a lot of the issues of the day dealing with intellectual property in Canada and the things it could agree on it did. It came forward with a series of amendments to five acts.
The five acts are the Copyright Act, the Industrial Design Act, the Integrated Circuit Topography Act, the Patent Act and the Trade-marks Act. Many parts of this bill deal primarily with housekeeping and try to harmonize regulations and correct some deficiencies and prob-
March 16, 1993

lems that the industry stakeholders have had some level of consensus on.
I am not about to say at this point in time that I think that type of approach has led to a flawed bill. That is the way we should be approaching legislation in the House of Commons. If we had more legislation coming forward after that type of non-combative and non-partisan review and consensus we would have better legislation on the floor of the House of Commons.
If we go back to Bill C-22, the Bankruptcy Act, my colleagues on all sides of the House had an unprecedented level of agreement when we pre-studied the bill. Then when we returned to the partisanship, after approval at second reading, things started to come apart again.
There was something that told us way back then that we could do legislation differently. When we consult widely and listen to people's points of views the Canadian people are the ones who benefit because we have better legislation. We are able to strip away a lot of the nonsense that goes on here from time to time and we are able to tap into the intellect, experience and commitment of all members of Parliament, and it does not really matter whether they are Tories, Liberals, Reformers, Bloc Quebecois or New Democrats. Most people who come to this place come here because they want to serve the public of Canada.
I know that the minister was quite anxious to try to get this bill through the House today because of the factors I have just mentioned and because it has already had some debate in the other place. We have not agreed to do that, not because we want to hold the bill up but for two reasons.
First, I am a firm believer that we are paid to oversee the passage of legislation. Although I have a great deal of respect for my colleagues in the other place I was not over there when this bill was debated.
I have read the committee reports and I have perused the Hansards from the Senate. Nevertheless, this is a fairly complex bill. It has over 70 clauses in it. Much of it is highly technical.
For me to say today that I trust what has gone on in the other place, and there do not appear to be many flaws
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with the bill, so let us just get it through to clear the legislative agenda is not in the service of Parliament. It does not pay the deserved respect to the people who have put this legislation together.
As a purist, I believe that we have to go through the process and I think we will be doing that over the next few days.
The second problem I have is that there are a number of places in the summary where it says that certain clauses in the legislation have the effect of giving Governor in Council more regulatory authority. In short, in these cases it says, and it may be for good reason, that we will give the Governor in Council, which is the executive branch, the right to change certain aspects of the implementation of these pieces of legislation solely by regulation.
When we deal with regulation, then I have some trouble with that. The former minister knows this. When we are dealing with regulation we owe it to the people of Canada to be very sure that we understand the full impact and the depth of the regulatory powers we are giving to bureaucrats, who after all are not accountable, do not have to face the electorate, and are not public figures.
In this bill, and I guess we will find this out in committee, there are a couple of clauses that bother me more than a little. One is clause 8, which amends the Copyright Act. It allows the Governor in Council, which is the executive, to change the fee structure for the application process for copyright by regulation. That bothers me, because I have always felt that any fee that is imposed, be it a user fee, an application fee or a direct piece of tax legislation, is a tax. Any time we are talking about giving unelected people the right to go forward and alter fees without any debate in this place and without going back to a parliamentary committee I get a little nervous. Perhaps when we get to committee we will be able to talk to the officials and find out exactly what regulation-making powers we are giving to them.
There is one other aspect of the bill that bothers me, and it deals with the patent co-operation treaty. I will be quite honest. I am not exactly sure what the heck it is all about. One thing that does bother me is that one clause of the legislation which would change the way we do things quite clearly gives Governor in Council the ability to pass regulations that can override the legislation. That

March 16, 1993
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seems really strange to me, and I am not exactly sure how that is done. I would strongly doubt, unless we are just giving very limited powers, that is the type of precedent we would want to be pursuing. We will be asking questions again on that particular aspect of the bill.
There is another aspect of the bill which I have a little difficulty with, and it concerns biological deposits. This is a whole new field for us, in which new pharmaceuticals, new strains of crops and things like that are coming forward, and it is based on biological agents. My concern is only that we should explore this more closely. We have to look at exactly what we are doing.
In the past, from what I can gather from reading the summaries on the legislation, many times a biological sample would be deposited as part of the application process and they would say that this is a sample of what is and it is different from anything before, so they would ask us to give them a patent on it. That has not been accepted in the past and there have been some court cases on that issue.
My concern is that this now makes that biological deposit acceptable as a significant body of evidence to justify the granting of a patent. I am not opposed to it, but I am concerned about its retroactivity. I am not convinced from the information I have read that it is clear. What would happen if a patent had been struck down, or if a patent had been rejected based on the fact that the main supporting documentation for uniqueness was the biological deposit, or the sample, which was not accepted before?
If there is product out there now and this bill has some retroactive impact, what happens to a farmer who has a particular strain of hybrid seed for which he was never able to get a patent in the past? What happens to some of the drugs and pharmaceuticals currently out there? Indeed, there are a number of pharmaceuticals in the field which may now be challenged by some of the generic companies as to the validity of the patents. I want to find out what will happen to those court proceedings or those cases if they do go forward, if this bill is passed.
In conclusion, we are looking forward to some discussion on this bill when it does go to a legislative committee. Our intention certainly is not to hold it up. I applaud the process by which the bill came forward.
The stakeholders in the industry have waited a long time to get these things cleared up and have done an exemplary job so far. I would just ask them to wait a little bit. We have a few questions from our end. Perhaps working together we can come up with a piece of legislation we can all be proud of and that will fix some of the problems dealing with intellectual property in those five various fields.


Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, when dealing with Bill S-17 we have to also deal with the fact that this bill before us has been presented to us in a very hasty manner from the time it was initially presented in the other place.
We have not really been adequately briefed. We have not been briefed at all by the government which is presenting the bill. Furthermore, this is a bill if ever there was a bill that needed to go to committee for a thorough analysis to look at the consequences in many areas. On religious grounds, people could be veiy much opposed to the genetic engineering aspect, the biotechnology aspect of this bill. This kind of bill needs that airing out in a committee with expert witnesses.
Very quickly I am going to go over what this bill does and does not do. Generally I think it is safe to say that this is a hardware bill. It is a house cleaning bill which is being put forth by the government in order to bring many of the related laws we already have on intellectual property into line and make them applicable in a most efficient manner.
For the people who are watching and listening to us today I want to mention that on intellectual property we are basically dealing with patents. We are dealing with creators of functional ideas. We are dealing with much more than books. We are dealing with medicines, biotechnology, the creation of completely new organisms. Some very serious questions arise from the impact of this legislation.
As my colleague has said, without opposing the government's Bill S-17 we could still have a better idea on how to actually be in favour of it if we could get a full airing out of its implications and particularly the retroactivity aspect of parts of the bill.
March 16, 1993

The bill essentially makes amendments to five different statutes all dealing with various aspects of intellectual property. Patents, which protect the embodiment of ideas of a functional nature, are governed by the Patent Act. Copyright, which protects the expression of ideas, is governed by the Copyright Act. Trade marks, which protect symbols and distinguished goods and services in the marketplace, are regulated by the Trademarks Act. Industrial designs, which relate pretty much to ornamentation applied to an article, are governed by the Industrial Design Act.
An interesting new field is called topographies. As a new MP I remember asking: What is this bill on topographies? What are we talking about? I was thinking of territory, topography on a map. That is not what it means at all. My friends, here we are dealing with the computer age. We are dealing with microchips. This is called topographies, or the contents of a microchip. That is actually regulated by-and here is that word again- the Integrated Circuit Topography Act. If that word is seen in the newspaper, they are talking about microchips.
All that is what Bill S-17 is concerned with. It is important to highlight that this bill was not sneaked in. Although it has been very hastily presented to us, it was not sneaked in. This bill was not bull-dozed. The bill has had extensive consultation and hearings with different consumer groups. Actually, the Canadian Bar Association was one of the players as well.
The bill has been involved in a great deal of consultation. All we are asking as members of Parliament is that the consultation continue in committee so that we can understand the full intent of this legislation before we adopt it.
The amendments to the Copyright Act are primarily of an administrative nature. For example, it eliminates the requirement that entries in the copyright register be personally signed by the registrar of copyright or by the commissioner of patents. That sounds to me to be a fair housekeeping measure.
Dealing with the Industrial Design Act the bill allows the applicant to designate somebody else, an assignee to file an application in their own name. You can designate someone to make an application. Once again that seems to be a fairly inoffensive part of the bill.
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With respect to the Integrated Circuit Topography Act this would extend protection to us and countries which are reciprocating with Canada. That is just common sense to me.
I have some serious misgivings when it comes to the biotech part of this bill where we are dealing with new organisms. I am not quite sure that it cannot be described in writing. As a writer myself I would like to know why we would be going against the recent ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada which said it had to be in writing in order for it to be valid when application was made for a patent.
I understand the biological sample can be deposited and that would be the example. That would be your so-called application part of the affidavit, but I am not quite sure that in and of itself would suffice. There should be some attempt to write what went into that biological sample, why it is so unique and why there should be a patent on it.
Dealing with this whole question of biogenetic engineering, I am very much concerned that we are actually homogenizing life forms. We are homogenizing plants. We are homogenizing animals. If you read the papers, it appears we are creating a new strain of pig so that we can have parts for transplants.
I am concerned that this is something that is going to receive a great deal of scrutiny by the churches and by people with religious beliefs who do not believe we should be involved in this. He who controls the patents for seeds, animals and livestock, what does that do for the agricultural sector where farmers with the ability wish to buy these animals and seeds without having to deal with a monopoly of a company? It may be a pharmaceutical company or some other company which has a patent on that particular livestock or that particular seed. I am wondering about that. That question has to be answered in committee.
Finally when talking about biogenetics and talking about creating new organisms we are really talking about getting a patent on life. To claim a patent on a life form is a direct and total denial of that person above looking down upon us who is the ultimate individual, I believe, to have that right. We have to look at the whole question of what creation means and whether we can actually seek a patent on creating new life forms.

March 16, 1993
Private Members' Business
There are serious questions that we have to deal with in committee. However, I do applaud the minister's approach. I think it is salutary for the House to present a bill in this way. I hope for a speedy passage of it in committee.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It being five o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 30(6), the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, February 10, consideration of the motion of Mr. Crawford that Bill C-301, an act to amend the Financial Administration Act (financial information), be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Economics envelope.
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay -Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, just by way of background, I compliment my colleague again for having the foresight to bring what I call the accountability and reliability of taxation measures before the House of Commons by way of a private member's bill.
On the last day we spoke on this legislation we were discussing in some detail the effects that legislation like this would have.
Suffice it for me to say that this legislation would make all government programs to be costed out fully and completely before any programs were implemented. Any cost overruns would need the special authorization of Parliament. That really is the critical issue with respect to this legislation.
Even if this House were to approve some project, once that project exceeded the approved limitations of this House, the legislation would have to reappear before the House of Commons. Every member would be apprised of the efficiency of that project. Then there would be a debate on the full extent of the additional costs involved in any program the government implemented.
It would require long-term planning by cabinet ministers. They would have to give the House a very detailed statement on the original cost of the program, the cost in the previous two years and the expected cost over the next five years.
The last time we were debating this particular legislation I made a statement with respect to the goods and services tax. Let me use the goods and services tax as an example of what this legislation is all about. When it was implemented there was some accountability with respect to what it was supposed to do on the taxation system in Canada.
We heard many statements on what was the original start up cost on the goods and services tax. The estimate we heard at the time was that with the addition of 4,000 employees by Revenue Canada in order to monitor and police the goods and services tax, the start-up costs in implementing this tax were going to be $1 billion.
That $1 billion was only an estimate. The tax has been in effect for some two years. We still do not know how much revenue that tax has generated to pay off our debt. We heard at one time that when comparing the goods and services tax with the manufacturers' sales tax which it replaced, that it was going to be revenue neutral. We still have not heard. We have had no accountability from the government with respect to whether the goods and services tax is revenue neutral as it said.
What is the net revenue of the goods and services tax with respect to how it affects the total debt of this country? What are the original set-up costs? To this date we do not have the figures with respect to the actual
March 16, 1993

start-up cost of the goods and services tax. It is information I think all Canadians want to know.
What are the effects and how much money has been reimbursed to all Canadians since the start up of the goods and services tax? I speak of the amount of money that was being sent back to those taxpayers in Canada under the poverty line who could not afford to pay the goods and services tax and were to be reimbursed for the added expense to their cost of living. To this day we have not been apprised of that particular figure. We are interested to know.
The manufacturers' sales tax was reduced. We want to know how much was reimbursed to all the manufacturers and retailers who were compensated for the inventories they had in so far as the manufacturing tax was concerned. How long did that manufacturing tax stay reduced or removed from the products they were selling? What is the experience of those products with respect to increases in prices?
We talk about exports. Canada is a great exporting country, but we have not found out yet how much money is returned to manufacturing industries in Canada that pay export tax on their production methods. When they export those goods to other countries, how much is reimbursed to manufacturers in Canada in businesses entirely involved with export? That is remuneration every member of this House should have knowledge of so we can assess fully the accountability of the government with respect to how much it cost to implement the goods and services tax.
Another example and one that is very prevalent today is that of the helicopters. We talk about accountability of the government. When the helicopters were first introduced in Canada they were supposed to be $2.8 billion. I see the Minister of National Defence who originally gave the contract out is with us today. It was $4.4 billion. We have just heard in the last two months that the contract was no longer $4.4 billion but had risen to $5.8 billion. The legislation my friend is trying to implement and put forward by way of a private member's bill is the means by which this House can control that type of expenditure.
I know my time now has elapsed but I compliment him for having the foresight to bring forth this type of legislation which is so badly needed by this government and by future governments of Canada to control expenditures and save the taxpayers of the country the money
Private Members' Business
they work very hard to pay into the coffers of the Treasury.


Mr. Bill Kempling (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-301 attempts to amend the Financial Administration Act in three areas: special Governor General's warrants, long-term planning and the tabling of public accounts. I might say at this point that the comments the member-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but the record shows that the hon. member spoke on the matter.


William James Kempling: No, absolutely not.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It is maybe an error. The error is in the member's favour.


William James Kempling: It is the first time I saw the bill. As I was saying, the member who just spoke was talking about controlling the prices of helicopters and that this bill would do nothing for that whatever. That is a lot of nonsense.
The bill seeks to amend the Financial Administration Act in three areas: special Governor General's warrants, long-term planning and the tabling of public accounts.
In the case of special Governor General's warrants the amendments would require added information to be tabled in the House by the President of the Treasury Board and would change the timeframe in which these special warrants can be used. I would remind the House that special Governor General's warrants can be issued to provide the government with funds only when three conditions have been met. These conditions are carefully spelled out in the Financial Administration Act.
First, Parliament must not be in session because it is dissolved, prorogued or adjourned. Second, there are payments to be made which are urgently required for the public good. Finally there is no other appropriation to which the payment may be charged.


Mr. Flis:: Mr. Speaker, I just came in and I may be out of order, but I thought the hon. member had spoken on this bill. I have quotes where he said that the bill would fly in the face of parliamentary tradition, that it would threaten the ability of governments to plan strategically, and that it would cloud the services of the Auditor General who should be a commentator on government long-term objectives, et cetera. I was under the impres-

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Private Members' Business
sion the hon. member had spoken. Your Honour knows the rules of the House on private members' bills.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I asked the table officers to check and I am waiting for confirmation in the next few minutes as to whether the member for Burlington did indeed speak. However, I take careful note of the point raised by the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park and I thank him for it.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I draw to your attention and the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State for Finance that on November 30, 1992 he spoke in this House on Bill C-301.
I know the hon. member is a very busy member. He might not remember speaking on Bill C-301, but Hansard of November 30 does record his remarks.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I have here a copy of Hansard for November 30 and the point raised by the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park and the hon. member for Regina-Qu'Appelle is quite correct. I am sorry that I must take the floor from the hon. member for Burlington. Perhaps he would like to add something?

Does the hon. member want to add some comments about that? He spoke to the bill on November 30, 1992.


William James Kempling: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the House. November 1992 is a long while ago, at my age. I apologize to the House for taking up its time.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I appreciate the comments of the hon. member.


Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds -Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for Kent for bringing forward this private member's bill. It must be a pretty good bill when some people want to address it twice or more. It requires a bit of persistence on the part of a private member and a bit of luck too to get a private member's
bill this far. I want to congratulate my colleague from Kent county.
This bill has a reputation now for being what we call a common sense bill. That in itself is a rather simplistic way of describing something, but it has a lot of common sense and sensibility about it although it is officially called an act to amend the Financial Administration Act.
A few parts of it sort of fascinated me. We can put them in more complicated context if we like, but what would be wrong with having a bill that would very simply state the objectives of any program? That would seem to make sense to me. One of the objectives of my colleague's bill, Bill C-301, would be to state clearly the objectives of the program.
Another would be the estimated total cost of the program over its proposed life and the method by which that cost would be estimated. How do they determine that cost? Unless we know that, they may have forgotten to build in some of the factors which would have a bearing on the final cost of the project. Then there are the estimated sums that will be required for the program over each of the first five years. Sometimes several things we have noticed in this House have come in as what they call cost overruns.
Let us sit down and determine every five years whether a program is still accomplishing what its original objectives were. Is the estimated cost so far out of whack that if we had had all that information initially we would no longer have the program, for example? It would not seem to be anything but common sense to me to anticipate some of those things and evaluate them every five years.
The anticipated effects of the program on the economy, environment, employment and social programs in Canada tend to change periodically. An ongoing evaluation of a program every five years would seem to be in keeping with what we are endeavouring to do.
Finally there is the appropriation out of which the program will be funded. Where is the money going to come from for this program?
I noticed the Minister of Finance made a statement as reported in The Ottawa Sun of February 10.1 could table
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it if anyone is interested. I just want to read a short paragraph which states: "The federal deficit of $34.4 billion is still a big problem". That is what the Minister of Finance said. "He admitted it particularly with the figures released yesterday showing the deficit widened in December to $1.74 billion from $1.54 billion a year earlier".
With my colleague's bill that sort of thing would be less likely to happen. It would not guarantee that it could not happen. However if it started to happen we would have the mechanism in place where we could say: "Let us examine it, let us put it under the microscope, let's see if its original objectives are still valid and do something about it instead of just lumbering on".
The impression in the general public these days is that government spending, not only federal but provincial and I suppose municipal too, is out of control. Reducing the annual deficits in my opinion is the only way to address the long-term debt. If we do not attack the annual deficits how are we ever going to be in a position to attack the long-term debt?
If someone thinks this bill is too risky maybe it is time the federal government and all other levels of government started to take those risks. I do not see it, for example, threatening long-term strategies and longterm plans. Perhaps it would cause us to examine those long-term strategies and those long-term plans, something we have been rather reluctant to want to do.
The public from its point of view sees paying more, paying more and paying more and getting less, getting less and getting less at the same time in which the deficit keeps mounting. That is rather puzzling for the public. It seems this bill would be an attempt to try to get a hold on things so that would not happen, so that would not be allowed to happen.
The idea of cost overruns really means being accountable to the public every once in a while so that there would not be cost overruns and some of the things the Minister of Finance said in The Ottawa Sun on February 10 would be less likely to happen. The other thing the public is continually saying, to me anyway, is: "If we ran our businesses the way that you guys spend our money, we would be out of business very, very quickly.
Private Members' Business
There is great evidence of that. In this country in 1992, 76,139 people declared bankruptcy. They were not allowed to carry on any further. Somebody put a stop to it. The government does not seem to be in any position, seemingly, to realize that that could happen to the government. More and more regularly you are seeing that there is a great threat. If independent businesses can declare and have to declare bankruptcy, put in a position where they must declare bankruptcy, perhaps it would not be so unusual for the government to visualize the difficulty that the public has in seeing from their perspective why governments are allowed to go on when they have been put to the point where they have had to declare bankruptcy and are out of business.
It is this government's ability, it seems, to disregard all the rules under which private enterprises and private businesses must operate that is aggravating the people. That is why there is so much cynicism today and so much concern about the debt that this country is carrying.
As we all know, it is very easy to get into debt but it is sometimes very, very difficult to get out of it. There are times, of course, where it would make sense to get into debt, but I think what has happened in relation to government is that it does not seem to have a plan for getting out of debt. If you are going to get into debt you should have some plan for getting out of debt.
I think my colleague's bill here is a modest attempt at trying to be realistic about getting into debt. Some kind of an ongoing evaluation must be in place to see that you have a plan for getting out of debt. Only in government are you allowed it seems to get into debt without having any realistic plan for realizing that there will come a day when you must concern yourself with getting out of debt.
Governments do not do things very efficiently. My opinion on that is perhaps it is time they started to do things more efficiently. The reason they do not do things efficiently is because they have never had to. They have got into the habit of thinking that there is a bottomless pit there and all they have to do is tap it and it continues to fill up, something like a spring I guess, once you tap it there is a source there of unending wealth.

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Private Members' Business
We are now in debt in this country to the tune of about $450 billion and it is growing by the minute. I think that is what my colleague's bill is attempting to address, to see if something could be put in place, something in the way of a common sense bill which would allow governments, indeed force governments to have a process for regular examination. Hopefully, that would avoid the cost overruns which get us into the problems that have put us into the $450 billion debt category.
It does not mean that programs would cease by any means. It means that there would be more scrutiny applied whenever a new program was introduced. I congratulate my colleague on bringing this bill forward. I for one will have no hesitation, and I hope those on all sides of the House will see the sense in supporting this bill. I wish him the very best when the vote is taken, if it gets that far.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I rise today also in support of the motion presented to the House by the hon. member for Kent. I think it has been described as the common sense motion. I would suspect that government members if they were not government members but sitting on this side of the House would be voting in favour of it today. It seems to me that what I am hearing from opposition members and as I read some of the speeches from past Hansards and some of the speeches that have been given on this bill, they are things that I have heard members of the Conservative Party speak about when they were in opposition. It is unfortunate that they lost this part of their rhetoric when they made the transition from opposition into government.
.(1725)
They were quite eloquent at times in opposition when they talked about Parliament losing control over spending, that spending was out of control, that we needed a new system and a much tighter system of accountability in order to get spending under control.
I read the remarks from the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State for finance and the excuses he was giving us today. If I would have had the time I would have gone back through the records because I am certain there is a speech somewhere before 1984 where that hon. member would have made remarks in this House criticizing the
way expenditures occur and the lack of control over them.
Our country is facing very serious financial problems. We have growing deficits adding up to a horrendous debt that will take generations to pay off. It is time we got our house in order. It is time we stopped allowing expenditures to occur that get out of control.
There is one megaproject after another. Estimates come in, the House approves certain expenditures, a month later we hear that the expenditures have gone up. One, two, three or five years later when the final bill comes in, we begin to realize that it is nowhere near what the original estimate was, what the original approval was for.
It is time for that type of activity to come to an end. We cannot continue to afford that type of expenditure. When the minister or the government make proposals for certain expenditures, those proposals should have a total scrutiny so that Parliament knows if the estimates are accurate, if there is inflation built in and what the final bill will be. Not only Parliament but the people of Canada should know.
As members of Parliament we are ultimately responsible. It is not the government, it is this House of Commons. Ultimately, we the members of this House of Commons are responsible for the type of debt and deficit that we are facing now.
As members of Parliament we are not given the opportunity nor the information to really make wise decisions. In part the government and the bureaucracy want to maintain this control. That is why I believe we now see- Conservative members who truly should be supporting this bill speaking against it because they are now captured by the government and not acting on what they really believe in. Surely they really believe in trying to control government expenditures so that we have wise expenditures and members of Parliament can fulfil their proper duty.
The other thing that appeals to me was expressed as I read the remarks of the hon. member for Kent when he moved a motion in the House. If I may quote from his remarks that appeared in Hansard, Monday, November 30, 1992: "As well any cost overruns would need special authorization. It requires long-term planning by cabinet ministers. They would be forced to present to Parliament a detailed report showing any program's cost and its
March 16, 1993

effects on the economy, environment, employment and social programs to the extent that it is possible".
This House has fruitfully debated the whole notion of environmental review so that governments, particularly governments but also private industry, cannot engage in massive undertakings that would alter the physical environment of our country, alter the quality of air or water and affect living species, et cetera.
Now we demand that there should be an environmental review so we know the environmental costs to a program. I maintain we also need a social environmental review. We know when unemployment goes up and poverty goes up, crime, suicides, violence and drug and alcohol dependency go up. There are social costs to this government's Unemployment Insurance Act that it is presenting to Parliament.
Social scientists can show the statistics, the correlation between an act of this government that would restrict the number of people who are eligible to receive unemployment insurance for example and the social effect that will have. They can predict with a relative amount of accuracy the number of suicides, the number of crimes, the amount of family breakdowns, and violence that will occur.
The hon. member suggests in this bill that we should also have some social cost accounting so that when government brings in measures Parliament also knows the effects they will have on our community, on the people and the cost to treat the social ills that a certain particular measure the government might introduce might create.
I think there is a lot of common sense in this bill. I suspect that government members in their hearts would likely want to support this bill. I urge them to let their hearts speak and not their blind ambition of trying to get a cabinet position at some stage.
This bill calls for the government to be more accountable to Parliament in its expenditures. What is the problem with that? Why are Conservative members opposed to that? Is this not really a conservative philosophy that is being introduced here?
As a New Democrat I have no trouble with that. I believe as my colleagues believe, and I am sure hon. members across the way believe, that the government
Private Members' Business
has got to be accountable to Parliament. No greater area for accountability is there than accountability over expenditures and how the government spends the taxpayers' money.
That is what is being called for in this private member's bill. It deserves the unanimous support of this House.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Kent for introducing this private members' bill, one of the very few private member's bills which is votable. I apologize for cutting off the hon. member for Burlington but I did not want people who have not spoken on the bill to lose their time on it.
The media has already dubbed this bill as a common sense bill which I think is the intent of this bill and that is to put curbs on runaway government spending.
CFCO radio in the hon. member's riding said this about the bill. "What Crawford's bill proposes is that government be responsible with our money, that spending is studied before it is done, and overspending be answered for. His bill would give more people in Ottawa a kick at the can known as accountability, members of Parliament, the Auditor General, and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts".
That pretty well sums up the intent of this bill. We have been hearing a lot in Question Period and in debates recently in this House about the cost of the Cadillac helicopters. Initially when the purchase of the helicopters was announced the tab was $4.2 billion. Now all of a sudden it has jumped up to $5.8 billion and the taxpayers are fed up with that kind of throwing taxpayers' money into the wind.
Be honest with taxpayers and tell them exactly what the cost will be three years from now, five years from now, or ten years from now.
We have an experience right in Toronto, a project near my riding of Parkdale-High Park, the SkyDome. In 1985 when the SkyDome project was proposed the cost of the SkyDome was $150 million.
Everyone thought this was a great project that would bring in jobs and revenues. The public was sold on it, but by the time the contract was signed in April 1986 the figure had jumped to $234.7 million. Once all the final

March 16, 1993
Private Members' Business
touches were put on the Sky Dome, the final cost was $590 million.
Three levels of government were involved as well as taxpayers. I support the Sky Dome. I think it is worth every dollar of the $590 million, but the planners and designers should have been honest with the public and said: "The cost of the Sky Dome will be $590 million". They should not have jumped from $150 million to $590 million.
I am looking more specifically at clause 3 of the bill and part III.I, which deals with the creation of new programs. It says that where a new program is to be established requiring the expenditure of money appropriated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the minister who is to be responsible for the administration of the program shall, prior to the commencement of the fiscal year in which the program is to be continued or established, lay before Parliament a statement showing the objectives of the program. It should show the estimated total cost of the program over its proposed life; the method by which the cost has been estimated; the estimated sums that will be required for the program over each of the first five years; the anticipated effects of the program on the economy, environment, employment and social programs in Canada; the appropriation out of which the program will be funded.
Section 42.2 deals with the excess costs. Where the minister is informed that the cost of a program on which he has laid a statement before Parliament pursuant to section 42.1 will exceed the estimated cost shown in the statement for any year, the minister shall lay before Parliament a statement showing the amount of the excess cost for the year, the reasons for the excess and the alternatives that have been considered before concluding that the excess is unavoidable.
Looking at the bill in detail, I think it ensures that the taxpayers' money is wisely spent through good planning. The bill ensures that taxpayers' money is protected because controls will be in place to do proper accounting.
The bill ensures that taxpayers' money is not wasted through over-costing and if more money is needed for the completion of a project, justification must be given for the additional money required.
I am appealing to the members on the government side and I am pleased that the hon. member from Burlington South has spoken on this bill. He did say that this bill flies in the face of parliamentary tradition. It would threaten the ability of governments to plan strategically. It would cloud the services of the Auditor General who should not be a commentator on government long-term objectives.
I think just the opposite. I think this bill would help government plan strategically and help the Auditor General do his job.
The member went on to say he did not think requirements should be invoked which inhibit the government's ability to govern effectively. The government is governing ineffectively now and that is why the hon. member for Kent brought in this bill. This would allow governments, present and future, to plan more effectively.
The member from Burlington South went on to say the government will want to consider whether the proposed amendments are in the best interests of the House. I was never aware that the legislation we pass here is for the best interests of the serving members.
I think the legislation we bring and pass in this House should be measured by whether it is in the best interests of the people who elected us. Is the legislation we pass in the best interests of the taxpayers who are paying for these projects and programs, such as the constituent who called me just before this debate? She is a single parent with a child to raise. She earns $26,000 a year and cannot make ends meet. There is the small business entrepreneur who has to pay the GST and it is killing the business. Whatever legislation we pass should be in their best interests and not work against their best interests as some of the present programs this government has brought in are doing.
I am again appealing to the government members to support this bill. I know some members look at things very objectively and listen to their constituents, as the hon. member for Kent has. I know my constituents support this bill 100 per cent. What the hon. member heard from his constituents I am hearing from my constituents in Parkdale-High Park. They are just fed up with overspending.
March 16, 1993

I might remind the members that once this bill is voted on it is passed to the committee. Sure it needs a lot of fine tuning, but the committee can do that. Let us not kill a good thing here.
I hear a lot of bellyaching on this Hill, Mr. Speaker, as you do, about members wanting more freedom to vote on legislation that reflects the wishes of their constituents. Here is an excellent example. If we have any guts, and I am speaking to members from all parties and the independent members, let us show that we can do things constructively. We do not have to listen to our leaders on this bill. We do not have to listen to the Whips on this bill. We have to listen to our common sense because this is a common sense bill. If we vote for it we have done the right thing in this House once and for all by listening to our constituents. Therefore I encourage every member in this House to be on his or her feet supporting this bill as soon as we have the vote.


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton Southeast):: I believe that I have 10 minutes, Mr. Speaker. Is that the case?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: You have up to 10 minutes.


David Kilgour: I will not take much time, Mr. Speaker. I simply want to mention that what my colleague from Toronto just said is true. As usual, he made some good points and I fully agree with him.

I would like to take perhaps a different tact to what has been taken until now. I would just like to focus the members' attention on a program you may have seen, Mr. Speaker, about a week and a half ago about New Zealand. A number of people have spoken to me about it and I suspect they have spoken to other members here as well.
Let us just look at three themes struck in the CTV W5 program. During 1984, the year foreigners simply stopped buying New Zealand government bonds, all levels of government deficit in New Zealand were at 7 per cent of its GDP. The accumulated government debt in our sister member of the Commonwealth that year was 62.7 per cent of its GDP. Its net public-private
Private Members' Business
foreign debt, according to W5 at least, was 47 per cent of its GDP.
If you fast forward to our country in 1993, the yearly budget deficit for all levels of government for 1992 was
8.5	per cent of our GDP. Our accumulated all-government debt, which is approximately $650 billion I believe, was 90 per cent of our GDP. Our net foreign debt of approximately $300 billion was 44 per cent of our GDP.
I would ask hon. members if anyone in this House thinks that federal-provincial budgets will get better during the current calendar year.
The music stopped for New Zealand's financial party in 1984, the week the newly elected Labour government of David Lange learned its central bank lacked enough foreign currency to meet bond interest payments. A very excruciatingly painful crackdown on government spending followed immediately because, as former Prime Minister Lange put it, his government was "suddenly forced to behave like it was to the right of Genghis Khan". Over the next decade, New Zealanders watched their standard of living drop from third to twenty-second in the industrialized world. A final point on that program is that the New Zealand politicians of all stripes agree that excessive government deficits did them in.
Richard Prebble, Labour associate minister of defence between 1984 and 1989, said: "More debt is like liquor to an alcoholic. Governments must bite the bullet". The current New Zealand health minister, Simon Upton of the National Party, added: "We had hit our credit limits. The only difference between Third World states and countries like New Zealand and Canada is that we are given more rope to hang ourselves with".
Does anyone in this House disagree? Do we really think as members of this House that the IMF is very far now from Canada's financial doors? Does anyone in the House think our country is going to avoid the New Zealand wringer if we continue to spend and borrow, the spend and borrow addiction of the Mulroney years and, in fairness, some earlier Liberal ones?
Our federal-provincial finances are simply grotesque by any objective measurement. How can any MP or MLA for that matter-and I know we prefer to blame the voters for asking for more and more government servi-

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Private Members' Business
ces-look any young Canadian in the eye today? Do Canadian politicians have no 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, I think they would want to run us out of every capital across this land.
Premier Clyde Wells put this point very well the other day. He pointed out that in 1975 each Canadian family's share of the national mortgage so to speak was about $50,000. In 1993 it is about $665,000.
The problem, as some members will appreciate, is that a new government, hopefully a Chretien government, will be caught between a very fragile economic recovery and escalating federal-provincial debt. Too much cutting too fast would cause our economy to shrink yet again, taking many real family incomes even further downward and increasing UI and other social spending, thereby ultimately adding to federal and provincial deficits.
That said, I am very 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 even though the jobs, to put it mildly, would not be created proportionately across the country.


An hon. member:: And most of them not even in the country.


David Kilgour: Indeed. I guess I will leave it there. There may be other speakers. I simply want to say that I hope all hon. members in this House will respect the McGrath committee and will vote according to their consciences, not according to what their party Whips tell them to do on this important vote. We can do ourselves proud, I think all of us, by voting for it.


Mr. Jerry Pickard (Essex -Kent):: Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Kent on his thoughtful approach to a reasonable bill that would bring a great deal of credibility to this House of Commons, if this bill were passed.
We are talking about credibility. If we stop and think about a small service organization, if we stop and think about every municipal government whether it be the city of Toronto or the small town of Harrow, we know that planning for the future is done through a budget process where all people elected to office are carrying out very
diligent views of what is happening within that budget process. This bill is basically asking for that budget process to be dealt with on a reasonable basis.
As a member of the House of Commons one of the things I find very difficult is the fact that I do not have access to the knowledge about how money is being spent in the government. I do not have the information I need to direct my constituents about federal spending. It has been the case ever since being elected. Projects are announced in my riding. I tried to get detailed information about those projects and it was not available to me.
One of the examples that I could give is a project that was announced in Wheatley, in my riding, a $1.5 million marina project. I went to the estimates and searched through them to try to find where that $1.5 million was tucked into the government estimates or accounts so I could make sure that this money had been put aside for that project.
I went through it in as much detail as I could. An expenditure the size of $1.5 million did not appear. It was announced during the election. A large sign was erected in the town of Wheatley, saying "$1.5 million for a marina to be constructed here." However, that money was not placed in the estimates. It was not placed where the general public or a member of this House of Commons could have found it.
Pursuing through the bureaucracy to try to find where those dollars were spent and how those dollars could be brought to Wheatley, I could find no record anywhere. I could not find a department that could say that money had been placed there. This is four years later, and that has not been spent. The sign was placed there saying that this project would go ahead but it is not there.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It being 5.50 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 93, the time provided for debate has expired.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: On division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Economics envelope.
March 16, 1993

The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: It being 5.52 p.m., I suspend the sitting until 6 p.m. for the debate on the adjournment motion.
At 5.52 p.m., the sitting of the House was suspended.


SITTING RESUMED The House resumed at 6 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, on November 27 last year I raised a question with the Minister of the Environment concerning assistance from the federal government to the area of Victoria with regard to the sewage treatment problems it is having.
As it considers this issue the House should first understand that over one thousand communities in Canada dump raw sewage into Canada's lakes, rivers and streams. Unfortunately Victoria is not alone, although we are probably alone in the international abuse we are taking for the problem. In this we feel very much aggrieved.
We have tried hard to deal with the sewage treatment problems in our area. We have a new collector system. We have a modern screening system. We are taking the advice of engineers on how best to dispose of our sewage.
As the House may know, although many members will not have an acute grasp of the sewage problems of Victoria, the system the engineers have recommended would take the sewage well out into the straits of Juan de Fuca where the waters are cold and quickly moving. The engineers tell us, though most of us as lay people find it impossible to understand and believe, that it is quickly
Adjournment Debate
absorbed into the water and is of very little serious consequence to the environment.
Be that as it may, we in Victoria are determined to deal with this problem. It has given us international difficulties. The member opposite who will be replying for the government seems to smile at this. It is not a happy problem for the people of Victoria, and I suggest for the people of Canada, because of the consequences. Conventions have been cancelled because of this problem. We think it is an unfair rap because we have tried.
We look to the federal government for support in two areas. The first area is the problem of communicating the facts about the efforts that are happening in Victoria to our friends, particularly in the United States, who are being encouraged not to understand this issue as it should be understood. Instead of laughing at us, I would hope that the government would be sympathetic with us on this issue and would help us with a communications strategy.
Second, I would hope that the government would be prepared to sit down with the provincial government, the capital regional district and the local municipalities to determine if we can actually come up with a more effective method of treating our sewage. In our community on the whole we simply do not accept the engineers' advice. We would like to see better sewage treatment than we are getting.
We have to continue to deal with the other environmental problems in our community including how to get rid of liquid waste and solid waste. We are trying to do that, but it would be helpful if the government would be prepared not just to try to sell us some surplus land, which was the government's most recent offer, but to constructively sit down and help.
The federal government provided $200 million to Halifax to help it with its sewage treatment. So far the government has not put up one dollar to help the people of Victoria. I hope the government will take this problem seriously, as we do, and assist us in dealing with this very difficult environmental problem.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member opposite that the minister stated back on November 27 when the member asked his question that the municipal waste water discharge is an

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Adjournment Debate
environmental issue that needs to be addressed. British Columbia's ministry of the environment, lands and parks is now taking a very strong stand with respect to municipal waste treatment in British Columbia and is requiring that all municipalities move toward secondary treatment systems.
The hon. member for Victoria made specific reference to the situation in Victoria. Let me assure all members of the Elouse that this government is committed to encouraging the provision of the necessary sewage treatment system in Victoria.
The federal government's goal is to promote a sound approach to management of municipal waste waters. The federal approach is built on its role related to technological development and transfer to promote the optimization of municipal treatment facilities, public education about water use and responsible decision making, the use of economic instruments such as full-cost pricing to provide adequate funding for municipal infrastructure requirements, environmental stewardship to ensure that federal waste waters are dealt with in an environmentally sustainable manner, and the development of a better scientific understanding of the environmental impacts.
I am sure that the member for Victoria is well aware that the federal government is in the midst of intensive discussions and negotiations with the capital regional district of Victoria and the province of British Columbia concerning the treatment of Victoria's sewage, and progress is being made. Given the position being taken by the province, we remain very optimistic that a negotiated agreement can be reached and that the city of Victoria will soon be developing plans, obtaining land, confirming funding, and beginning construction of appropriate sewage treatment facilities.
As part of this government's leadership in promoting sustainable development the polluter-pay principle has been adopted in decision making on environmental issues. As the municipal and provincial governments have the primary responsibility for the management of municipal waste waters and treatment infrastructures, we recommend to the responsible authorities the use of economic instruments such as user fees in addressing this issue.


Mrs. Diane Marleau (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, on November 26, prior to the finance minister's economic statement, I asked in this Elouse whether his forecast would be accurate and reliable with respect to the deficit. As well, I asked whether he would put forward measures to create jobs now for our unemployed. The finance minister answered that his statement would give encouragement, optimism and hope for the future.
Surprise, surprise. It certainly did not do that. Instead, the finance minister presented a stay-the-course budget with more cutbacks and more attacks on the jobless, recipients of unemployment insurance, and public servants. Besides failing to stimulate the economy, Canadians were faced with higher unemployment into the future.
As if this were not enough, the finance minister had to admit in his economic statement that this government has been unable to deal effectively with its pet economic cause, which is the deficit. The finance minister admitted in his economic statement that the deficit for this year would actually be $7 billion higher than he had predicted the previous year, and that it would be $10 billion higher the following year.
I wonder today whether even those predictions are false because I gather that the deficit will be even higher. It might be as much as $8 billion higher than he had predicted.
It is three months later, and we are asking the same questions. The finance minister in previous years said that this Conservative government was absolutely going to give us a budget every year at the same time in February. Of course, it forgot to say that it would not do it in 1993.
Then we had the scenario of the off again, on again budget. First he was going to give us a budget some time toward the summer, but then we were not sure because he was not sure whether he was going to run for the leadership or not. Now I gather we are going to have a budget after the Easter break.
I am going to ask again if the government is prepared to listen to Canadians. Canadians really need hope. More and more are joining the ranks of discouraged Canadians.
March 16, 1993

We can quote statistics and can talk about fundamentals, but when I am in my riding office person after person comes to me saying: "What am I going to do?
I do not have a job. I want a job. I want to work". Other people are telling me that they are worried whether they will have their jobs next month.
What will the government do to provide some hope? Is it possible or is it absolutely impossible? Has this government totally lost touch with the realities of Canadian life?
It is absolutely essential first, to have the kinds of forecasts we can rely on and, second, to give some hope to Canadians by creating some jobs right away, not sitting there, doing nothing and waiting for something miraculous to happen and then maybe there will be jobs for Canadians.
Once again I ask that the government give Canadians, not just me, the replies and actions they have been awaiting for some time now.


Marcel R. Tremblay: Mr. Speaker, the member for Sudbury asked if the government would present a deficit forecast in the economic statement. As she already knows, the government has presented its new deficit forecasts: $34.4 billion this year and $32.6 billion in 1993-94.
The member will have noticed that the deficit outlook for this year and next has deteriorated essentially because of the drop in revenue due to the slow recovery of the Canadian economy from the 1990-91 recession.
The member says that Canadians want jobs. I wholeheartedly agree with her on that. But what does she recommend? Maybe a magic economic formula? Of course Canadians want jobs. Perhaps the member would like to use a magic wand to create them. The Canadian economy was slowed down by a world-wide economic crisis. Just wishing that it were not so and that everyone had jobs will not make our problems disappear. Much as the member might want it to be so, the Canadian economy cannot be the little engine that will pull the world economy out of its slump.
Adjournment Debate
The government's economic strategy is to invest in growth. Sound budgetary and monetary policies, streamlining the machinery of government, freer trade and broader opportunities for business have created an economic environment favourable to the private sector. This is the sector which holds our potential for future growth.
By investing in Canadians acquiring skills, we have a more productive labour force and more competitive producers. More funds are being given to manpower training programs. Investing in human resources will ensure the basis for lasting improvements to our prosperity.
Small businesses create the most new jobs in this country. The government has helped them with various tax breaks and incentives for research and development. The government is proposing an exemption for unemployment insurance premiums to small businesses that create more jobs next year. It is proposing a 10 per cent investment tax credit and raising the limit for loans to small businesses.


Bill Attewell: Mr. Speaker, as I said in the House of Commons last November, I was astounded to hear that the NDP's interim waste authority had included site M-6 which borders on the Rouge River Valley on the short list.
I went on to say that if the NDP government were foolish enough to proceed with this site, my government would seriously consider terminating the $10 million financial commitment we made in 1988 to help create a natural heritage park in the Rouge Valley.
In mid-January the NDP government approved a plan to create the natural heritage park which will be 20,000 acres in size or 26 times the size of Toronto's High Park. This news while late in coming is wonderful. What is far from wonderful is that the IWA is still considering M-6 as a possible site for metro Toronto's 40 million tonnes of garbage. When we made the $10 million commitment for the park it was conditional on three critical elements: no dump, no roads and no housing in close proximity.
I have talked to the federal Minister of the Environment and he is very concerned and disappointed that a

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Adjournment Debate
megadump is still being considered on site M-6. It is simply too close to the proposed park.
Just today I heard that the IWA had drilled seven test holes on the site and it expected this step to be finished by the end of March. Anne Katsoras who chairs the citizens' advisory committee against the dump told me today about that news and said the community was working hard to organize several events to help raise community involvement and awareness of the seriousness of the M-6 site proposal and to help raise money.
The NDP government continues to ignore considering viable options such as incineration or the rail haul option to the Adams mine site near Kirkland Lake.
Provincial Bill 143 forbids consideration of all other options. Landfill is the only option to be considered. It restricts the area for the megadump. It says metro Toronto's garbage must be dumped in York region. It could not, for example, be dumped one-half mile outside York region. This is crazy.
The NPD government continues to close its eyes and ears to the views of the people of this province. We will not forget or forgive it for this arrogance and insensitivity. There will be an election in two or three years. As I have said in my December 1993 mailing to 52,000 residents of Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville: "We will throw Bob Rae and Ruth Grier out of office before we allow a shovel in the ground at M-6".
Bud Wildman was recently appointed minister of energy and environment and Ruth Grier was shifted to the health portfolio. Howard Hampton became minister of natural resources. We would think that these new ministers might have taken a new look at the absolute havoc bill 143 will create in Ontario.
Regrettably they have missed this opportunity. They are still marching blindly to Bob Rae's band which is determined to wreck this once great province with regressive tax measures, harmful labour laws and outlandish spending resulting in horrific deficits, to say nothing about Bill 143, one of the most undemocratic laws I have ever seen.
If the Rae government would simply listen to the people and the facts it would have another good reason to forget about the M-6 site. One reason concerns Transport Canada and its bird hazard guidelines published in 1989. These guidelines stated that a dump site
could not be created within an eight-kilometre radius of an airport or a heliport. The M-6 site is only three kilometres from the heliport at Markham-Whitchurch-Stouffville hospital. This is a 24-hour emergency service. The M-6 site is also less than eight kilometres from the Markham airport and is only 2.5 kilometres from the edge of a potential international airport on the Pickering lands.
The Minister of State for Transport has also expressed her amazement that the Rae government would ignore the guidelines and therefore put people's lives at risk since air crashes are a distinct possibility when there are thousands of sea-gulls at a megadump.
In closing I want to say again that I will do everything I can to stop Bob Rae and the IWA from creating a megadump at the M-6 site. I cannot believe they would be so stupid to proceed with M-6.
In the end we may have to drag this issue into the courts for two or three years, by which time there will be an election and we can throw the rascals out along with the IWA.


Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member on his perseverance in the situation in the Rouge Valley.
The IWA or the Interim Waste Authority was established by the Government of Ontario to examine and review all potential landfill sites within the regions of Durham, Peel and York metro. The members of the advisory board are charged with making a single recommendation for a landfill site in each area by mid-1993.
The inventory of the potential sites was based on scientific and technical data rather than on political and social pressures or considerations. That is the over-all game plan of the Ontario government. It functions at arm's length from the Government of Ontario and its recommendations reflect the members' technical assessment and not the government's plans or policies.
The IWA has reduced its long list of 50 sites down to a short list which still includes M-6, an area bordering on the Rouge Valley. Consequently M-6 will be assessed in terms of its technical feasibility. Adjacent land use and other influencing factors will be weighed accordingly when its suitability is being considered.
March 16, 1993

Subsequent to the IWA final recommendations, public hearings will be held to encourage input and inquiry into the appropriateness of the recommended sites following the consultation stage. The final decision will still rest with the Ontario cabinet.
In all likelihood the next stage of technical assessment will eliminate M-6 from the short list. As IWA operates independent of the government's proposed plans for land use in the Rouge Valley and as the government's current support for a park in the Rouge Valley neither restricts nor encourages the IWA's review process, advising the Ontario government of the federal government's concerns would not prove effective at this time.
The minister of natural resources made the Government of Ontario's position quite clear on January 19 of this year when he announced the creation of an urban park within the Rouge Valley and the preservation of
8,000	acres of adjacent agriculture land. The M-6 site is located within the area identified for preservation as agriculture land.
In evaluating the suitability of M-6, the IWA will now have to take into consideration the Ontario government's expressed intention to establish a park in the Rouge Valley. It is a decision which will likely have considerable influence in the IWA's final assessment of M-6 suitability for landfill purposes.
I remain confident in the Ontario government's commitment to the Rouge Valley park. I am hopeful that the IWA recommendations will not favour the M-6 site, given its current and projected adjacent land use.
When the IWA recommendations-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry, but the rules are tough. The hon. member for Burnaby-Kings-way.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, on December 1 last year, I asked a question in the House about federal funding for the fight against the AIDS epidemic. I asked the government to accept the unanimous recommendations made by the four main groups that are fighting against AIDS in Canada: the Canadian AIDS Society, the Canadian HIV Research
Adjournment Debate
Foundation, the Canadian Hemophilia Society; and the Canadian Public Health Association.
Last week, these four associations and all Canadians received the government's response. It was negative.

The response of the Conservative government was a devastating blow to those involved on the front lines in the fight against AIDS.
Instead of the budget of $55.35 million per year which was requested as a minimum by the four groups to which I have just referred as well as by the ad hoc parliamentary committee on AIDS in a strong and unanimous recommendation to the government, the Minister of National Health and Welfare allocated $42 million a year. This falls far short of what is essential in the fight against AIDS. Tragically we will, of course, spend more money later rather than now on prevention and on assisting community groups that are on the front lines of the struggle against this epidemic.
I want to ask the parliamentary secretary to the minister for an explanation as to why this government ignored the recommendations of the four national groups that are on the front lines in the fight against AIDS as well as the ad hoc parliamentary committee. Why did it ignore these recommendations?
Government says it does not have enough money for the fight against AIDS. At the same time it is prepared to spend $5.8 billion on attack helicopters. This government is morally and ethically bankrupt.
On the same day I asked the government when it was finally going to keep the promise to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Over seven years ago, seven long years, the Minister of Justice of the Conservative government promised to accept the unanimous recommendation of the equality rights committee and to amend legislation federally to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The Ontario Court of Appeal said that the federal government's law was unconstitutional, that it violated the charter of rights. How did the minister respond? The then Minister of Justice is now the Minister of National Defence. She wants to be leader of the Conservative Party. She said: "Well, okay. I will bring in an amendment to include sexual orientation". However, in the same breath she brought forward an amendment that denied the reality of gay and lesbian relationships. It

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Adjournment Debate
restricted the definition of those relationships and restricted the definition of marital status to opposite sex relationships.
That is not only an attack on committed loving relationships, but it also flies in the face of the Leshner decision of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. It flies in the face of the very eloquent comments of Madam Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dube when she spoke in the judgment in Mossop on the reality of Canadian families.
I call upon the government to bring forward the necessary and long overdue amendments to ensure full equality and justice for lesbians and gay men in this country, but not to take away a fundamental element of that equality by defining marital status in the narrow and restrictive way that the Minister of Justice did.
In conclusion, I once again appeal to the government to increase the level of funding for the epidemic against AIDS and to amend Canadian human rights legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and also to recognize the reality of lesbian and gay relationships in that act and in all other federal legislation.


Mrs. Suzanne Duplessis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for External Relations and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member for Burnaby-Kings-way, on March 11, 1993 my colleague, the Minister of National Health and Welfare, announced that the government would renew the national AIDS strategy.
The renewal of this strategy for a period of five years, at a time of severe financial cutbacks, is an indication of the federal government's commitment to meeting the challenge of fighting AIDS and HIV-related diseases. The national AIDS strategy, phase two, will receive
annual funding totalling $42.2 million, or $211 million over the next five years. This new funding represents an increase over the annual $37.3 million provided in phase one.
At a time when federal departments are being asked to downsize their programs, this investment in the health of Canadians is tangible proof that the federal government is committed to finding a cure for this disease.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare has also asked his deputy minister to provide an annual supplement of $1.5 million from his department to improve support for initiatives in this area.
Furthermore, the Medical Research Council of Canada is committed to spending $2 million annually over the next five years to support AIDS research. Since 1983, the Council has spent more than $13 million on research and education in this field.
That is why I appeal to all Canadians to get involved and support what is being done by the government, community groups, researchers, health professionals and the private sector.
As the minister has said repeatedly in the House and on many other occasions, this government remains firmly committed, now and in the future, to the objectives of the national AIDS strategy.
In concluding I would like to add that I think the national AIDS strategy is an indication of this government's commitment to improving its social policy and making Canada a healthy country.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 38(5), the motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.28 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Wednesday, March 17, 1993