1993-02-18

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Published under authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Queen's Printer for Canada
Available from Canadian Communication Group- Publishing, Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0S9.
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Thursday, February 18, 1993
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Prayers


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


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65TH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, on behalf of my colleague, the chairman of the Standing Committee on House Management, today I have the honour to present the 65th report of the Standing Committee on House Management regarding the question of privilege referred to the committee on December 4, 1992.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


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


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall all questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance) moved: that Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, be now read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Human Resources envelope. He said: Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to lead off the debate on second reading of Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint.
A new bill was required because parliamentary practice would not permit us to make the clarifications which we desire to the former bill, Bill C-105.
Bill C-113 seeks to implement a number of expenditure restraint measures which I announced in the economic and fiscal statement tabled in the House last December and supersedes Bill C-105 through the clarification of provisions in respect essentially of changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act.
These measures are essential in our work to contain the deficit and to maintain an environment that supports economic growth and increased employment. These are the goals, very specifically of this government, jobs and growth.
These are the goals and objectives that underlie the philosophy of this government. These are the goals of the policies and programs that we have brought forward to the House of Commons for the Canadian people that underlie the basic thrust of our government's initiative.

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Before I describe these measures, I want to note some very encouraging signs that are appearing that give us clear hope for a durable and sustained recovery.
Just this morning we were given by Statistics Canada the latest Canada merchandise trade figures for 1992 and, as my hon. Liberal colleague across the way just indicated, they are very impressive figures indeed.
Exports have reached a record high annual level of $157.5 billion. This was an 11 per cent increase over 1991 and the largest year over year increase since 1984.
Our exports to the United States reached a record high level of $122.3 billion, $14.7 billion more than in 1991, and about $20 billion more than in 1988, the year prior to the free trade agreement.
Canada's merchandise trade balance with the United States reached $17.7 billion, the highest since 1985 and $3.9 billion higher than 1988.
That clearly means that the policies we have been following are indeed working. The policies of restructuring, the policies of enhanced productivity, the policies of the GST which have made Canadian exporters, particularly manufacturers, more competitive, the policies of tax reform, the policies of expenditure restraint, the budgetary measures, the measures that we took in terms of improving the capital cost allowance for the manufacturing and processing sector, all of these things are starting to take hold.
What is more is that on February 16 we had the latest monthly survey of manufacturing statistics. Elere again is some good news for my hon. friend from across the way. Shipments experienced a strong recovery in the second half of 1992, increasing at an annual rate of 17.2 per cent since July. This really means that some of the things that we incorporated in the budget of February 1992 are starting to take hold. The fundamental philosophy of this government is indeed working, preparing Canadians to take advantage of a globalized economy and to take advantage of the competitiveness out there and meeting that competitiveness.
It should come as no surprise to my friends across the way that employment too has improved. Employment has risen in eight of the last nine months with full-time employment up 35,000 in January, bringing the cumulative gain since August to 161,000. That is clear progress.
I know my hon. friends across the way do not like good news. They are the preachers and they are the advocates of gloom and doom. There is some good news. It is not a tribute to them, but it is a tribute to the Canadian people, to small business and to the entrepreneurs. They are taking advantage of the kinds of policies that they know are needed in order to improve their competitiveness and to compete in a global economy.
The government's efforts to bring down inflation have too borne fruit. The inflation rate for 1992 was 1.5 per cent, the lowest in 30 years. That has an impact upon prices. It has an impact upon unit cost. It has an impact upon interest rates, all in a very positive way. As a result, interest rates have come down significantly. Today's 6.75 per cent prime rate is 300 basis points lower than its November peak.
As I indicated, labour productivity has grown strongly at 2.6 per cent for the first three quarters of 1992.
With housing starts, and again responding to a number of the initiatives that we took with respect to the housing industry, the fact is that housing is now made more affordable thanks to low inflation, thanks to low interest rates and thanks to some initiatives that the government took in the February budget such as the RRSP proposal. Yes, it is something that my friends across the way did agree with.


Mr. Milliken:: We suggested it.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: They did not suggest it. The home builders suggested it. Let us give credit where credit is due. The reduction in the level of the down payment from 10 per cent to 5 per cent, all of these things have had a very positive effect upon the housing industry. We have seen housing starts up by 7.7 per cent, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, in 1992. There is optimism for a 5 per cent to 6 per cent increase in 1993.
Our gross domestic product is the over-all gauge of where we are going in terms of economic growth. We have had seven consecutive quarters of growth in Canada. Contrast that with the United Kingdom. It has had nine consecutive quarters of negative growth. Germany now has had two consecutive quarters of negative growth and it is expecting to have negative growth in 1993. Japan has had a quarter of negative growth.
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Around us we are not experiencing that robust recovery and that too has an effect upon Canada because we are a trading nation.
We rely upon trade for one-third of our gross domestic product. When the world economic situation is in a slow-down, then obviously Canada experiences that. Notwithstanding that, we are making progress.
All these factors have underpinned a modest but steady growth in GDP as I have indicated. We have been experiencing this modest steady growth notwithstanding the fact that there has been a stubborn global recession.
Economic activity in the major industrialized countries world-wide has been held back by corporate restructuring, by trade uncertainties and by huge levels of debt overhang. These are facts of life. The weaker than expected economic growth we have seen in this country has meant that government revenues are less than we expected.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: In spite of the 32 tax increases.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I know my friends across the way are going to be fully supportive of the Clinton measures which amount to the biggest tax grab in American history. It will be rather interesting to see how they respond to that.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The Prime Minister said they are following your policies.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Just for the record, I did not increase taxes in the December statement. I did not increase taxes in the February budget. As a matter of fact, we reduced taxes and that irritates the hon. member across the way. He does not like anything that is good. He does not like anything that is positive. He is just so negative.
Government revenues have been a problem and I alluded to that in the economic statement. That is why we are dealing with this bill today. This has led to severe upward pressure on the deficit. As a consequence, we have to take strong measures to keep our fiscal situation under control.
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We know and even my friends across the way are starting to learn that sound fiscal policies are essential if we are to maintain economic growth that secures existing jobs and creates new ones.
In the economic statement I presented to the House in December I did outline the steps we are taking to assist economic recovery which is now under way and to foster and bolster stronger growth.
We took measures to stimulate job creation, especially through the small business sector. The small business sector is responding in a very positive way. I think it is a clear indication that in this country small business is indeed the main engine of economic activity.
We took steps to enhance support for research and development, which is one of the most generous R and D programs in the world. We continue to take action to encourage exports through improved access to foreign markets and to improve Canada's international competitiveness.
We increased funding for worker training coupled with measures to foster joint efforts by government, business, labour and the learning institutions to work together to upgrade our skills, to bring about new skills and to make learning a lifelong priority. There is $3.8 billion being provided.
We provided for additional support for strategic investment in Canada's infrastructure, not the willy-nilly infrastructure program that is being proposed across the way. It is an infrastructure program that is strategic in nature, that will help improve our productivity, that will help improve our competitiveness, that will remove economic bottlenecks. The work can get started on it almost immediately in co-operation with the provinces and the private sector.
These important investments in our economy are indeed necessary, but we cannot allow ourselves to make these expenditures without ensuring that we have sources of revenue and without allowing the debt and the deficit to get out of control. We are at the stage where we cannot simply say "charge it" and make no provisions to pay for the actions we have announced.

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The debts held by governments at all levels in this country and the deficits that are fuelling them are a serious burden holding back economic growth and job creation.
As I said in the economic statement: "Excessive government deficits, both federal and provincial, have contributed to a level of net foreign debt far higher for Canada than for any other G-7 country. This large net foreign debt, public sector and private sector, means that Canadians paid out more than $22 billion in interest last year to foreign lenders. That is money that Canadians cannot use to develop our economy".
Those words are as true today as they were in December and that is really what the C. D. Howe Institute was saying when it brought down its report earlier this week.
Since we have come into office we have worked to put this country's finances back in order. We have taken difficult steps and every one of those steps we have taken to curb and restrain government expenditure has been opposed by the Liberals and the New Democrats, every single, solitary one of them.
I think there are about 12 measures in all. We privatized Crown corporations and they opposed it. We passed a spending control act. We implemented the debt servicing reduction account making fiscal responsibility a part of federal law. We have cut the growth of program expenditures from 14 per cent to less than the rate of inflation, somewhere around 3.8 per cent. Government operations have been scaled back way below the rate of inflation. They have opposed every single solitary one of those initiatives.
Notwithstanding those measures which I think amount to about $118 billion worth of cuts, given the impact of the recession on the government revenues we have to continue to do more to restrain the deficit and we have to do more on the government spending side. In other words we have to cut back further still. There are two clear reasons why we must take this action.
First, higher deficits will damage prospects for sustained recovery. Growing deficits compete with productive private sector initiatives for the limited investment funds that are available in the country. This puts upward pressure on domestic interest rates and forces domestic borrowers to seek funds abroad thus increasing the nation's indebtedness to foreigners. As a consequence the country is left more vulnerable to exchange rate and interest rate volatility.
Second, if we fail to act now we will have to deal with even greater deficits in years to come and bringing the fiscal situation back in balance will exact an even more painful price from Canadians at that time. This would
mean significantly higher taxes, reducing our competitiveness and our ability to create sustaining durable jobs.
The alternative to spending restraint is the imposition of higher taxes and that in my view is not a solution. A recent editorial in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald made a very good point in commenting on the economic recovery currently under way and I quote: "Recovery is not yet so strong that it cannot be taxed away". I certainly agree with that.
As I indicated earlier in my remarks, we are going through some very positive economic indicators that clearly identify the fact that we are coming out of this economic downturn but we should not be doing anything deliberate that would undermine the fragility of that recovery.
Clearly then the most responsible avenue of action is to further constrain government spending. The measures we have proposed including those implemented by this bill will reduce allocations by some $8 billion over the next two years. Considering a portion of that is being allocated in the current fiscal year this will bring about a significant reduction in the structural component of the deficit.
The bill takes action in a number of specified areas. For example, it will impose a freeze on salaries for elected representatives and government personnel. It provides for changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act so that average benefits payable to claimants over the next two years remain at average 1992 levels. It also provides for claimants who leave their jobs voluntarily and without just cause or are fired as a result of misconduct to be ineligible for UI benefits. It provides for the reduction by 10 per cent of certain regional transportation subsidies where the decrease requires legislative amendment. Finally, it will implement a 10 per cent reduction in federal payments under the Public Utilities Income Thx Transfer Act.
Deficit control is a key foundation for Canadian investment, for Canadian competitiveness, for growth and for job creation. In the past when this government decided to put forward measures to restrain spending we knew that the government itself must set an example. Between 1984-85 and 1991-92 we limited the cost of government operations to an annual average increase of just 2.2 per cent. This was less than half the rate of inflation in that period and well under the 4.1 per cent annual growth rate in over-all federal program expenditure. Now, as part of this additional spending restraint, we are reining in further the cost of government operations, building on the efforts we have taken over the past number of years.
February 18, 1993

Bill C-113 proposes to freeze the salaries of some 390,000 personnel in the public sector. This freeze will cover the next two fiscal years and is expected to save the government $800 million over that period. Those affected include the Governor General, the lieutenant governors of each of the provinces and members of the federal judiciary. All federal public servants will also have their salaries frozen, as will the Prime Minister, as will all members of the cabinet and as will all members of the House of Commons and the Senate for a two-year period, as the economic statement suggested. It is interesting to hear the NDP scream about that.
The hon. member over there says: "Do not worry about the deficit. Just print more money and we will get on with the show". That is the old solution of the NDP. It is rather interesting that even the New Democratic leader is now talking about fiscal restraint and cutting the deficit. We are really going to be interested in seeing what she has to offer.
As well, employees of Crown corporations who are dependent on appropriations and not in competition with the private sector will have their wages held at current levels. Crown corporations that are dependent upon appropriations but in competition with the private sector will be funded as if their wages were frozen.
Departmental operating budgets are also being reduced by a further 3 per cent on top of the 2 per cent cut that was taken last fall.
Taken together the wage freeze and the operation cuts mean that the total cost of government will be 5 per cent lower than planned levels over the next two fiscal years. That is a very important element to bear in mind, because we have heard as we go through this very difficult economic period that businesses and companies have had to restructure, families have had to restructure and cut back and clearly, there is an expectation that governments must do the same. Governments at the federal and provincial levels must do the same. They must lower their overhead costs and they too must set an
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example. That is precisely what we are doing. Even the President of the United States recognizes that.


An hon. member:: He is following your example. Even the Prime Minister said that.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: If he follows us and it works as well as it has been working for us, as I have indicated here, he is really on the right track. The only difference is that he thinks he can tax his way out of this particular situation. We have chosen another route.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: You cannot. You have already done it for the past eight years.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: We are taking advice from a gentleman whose party when we came into power was spending $1.33 for every dollar's worth of revenue it was taking in. Anyone, even someone in kindergarten would understand that you cannot continue to spend $1.33 on program expenditures for every dollar's worth of revenue that comes in. That is how sadly they are lacking over there in terms of straight fundamental business acumen.
There is a lot of chattering over there, Madam Speaker, but no concrete ideas. It is rather interesting that when we brought down the economic statement we debated for the equivalent of three or four days to see what they had in mind. There was nothing, absolutely zilch. They said: "Spend $15 billion on infrastructure". Where were we going to get the money? "Well, you get it from the taxpayers. You get it from the municipal taxpayer, the provincial taxpayer and the federal taxpayer".


Mrs. Feltham:: Same taxpayer.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Right. Same taxpayer.
I suppose I should start attacking the NDP government in Ontario. Then my hon. friend and I would agree on that.
I turn now to the changes to the UI act. In the December economic statement we announced a number of measures to stimulate job creation and in this particular area we provided some very positive initiatives.

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For example, the government will effectively pay any increase in unemployment insurance employer premiums in 1993 over 1992 to a maximum of $30,000 for any small business that increases employment. This is a very good initiative and it is being utilized very effectively.
As well, we are holding the line on UI premium rates for both employees and employers in spite of the high payouts from the UI fund estimated to be something in the order of $22 billion in 1993.
Again danger is posed by growth in the deficit and means we must keep costs of the unemployment insurance system under control. With premium rates for 1993 kept to 1992 levels we are proposing to hold the average level of benefits over the next two years likewise to the 1992 levels.
The benefit rate will be set at 57 per cent of insurable earnings for the next two years, down from the current 60 per cent. This reduction will offset the growth in wages that would otherwise cause average benefits to increase during this period.
The new rate will apply to claims made after April first of this year or on the day that this bill comes into force if that is later. Workers who start receiving benefits before that date will not have their benefits reduced.
As well, we propose to establish a new rule that would disqualify claimants who quit their jobs voluntarily and without cause or who are fired because of misconduct. The total saving from these changes is estimated to be some $850 million for 1993-94 and $1.6 billion in the following year.
There has been a lot of discussion about these measures, a lot of hysteria and misinformation, but clearly our motivation in making this change was our commitment to treating all Canadians as fairly as possible.
In our current economic situation we believe it would not be fair to continue subsidizing those individuals who chose to quit their jobs without justifiable reason. However, many people including workers and their representatives have expressed some concerns about the implementation of this new provision.
In order to reassure them that the implementation of this measure will conform to the same standard of fairness that motivates this policy decision, we are making certain clarifications to the Unemployment Insurance Act, many of which are already part of the administrative procedures of the UI plan. Much of the jurisprudence and the Unemployment Insurance Commission policy already in effect will now be stated explicitly in law.
Over the years extensive safeguards have been built into the system to ensure that those who have just cause to leave their jobs will receive their full benefits. All cases are reviewed and will continue to be reviewed in an objective and compassionate way.
The definition of just cause is clearly laid out in the existing Unemployment Insurance Act and applies to a wide range of individual situations. For example, the disqualification does not apply to those who leave their jobs because of harassment, including sexual harassment or discrimination on grounds prohibited by the Canadian Human Rights Act.
As well, the act covers those who are obliged to quit their jobs to accompany a spouse or dependent child to another residence or because they work in conditions that endanger their health or their security. These people will not be disqualified. Workers who must leave their jobs to care for their children are not affected.
The list of definitions of just cause will be extended so that situations already recognized by the case law in this area will be explicit in the revised act. The act will now explicitly recognize the following situations as just cause: reasonable assurance of another employment in the immediate future, excessive overtime or refusal to pay overtime, significant changes in work duties or wages, antagonistic relations between an employee and a supervisor for which the employee is not primarily responsible, practices of any employer that are contrary to law, discrimination because of membership in any worker organization and undue pressure by the employer to force the employee to leave his or her job.
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As well, we are explicitly recognizing the special needs of workers and their families by extending the definition of child care just cause to include care for any member of the immediate family.
The purpose of this is to clear up some of the misinformation, distortion and confusion that has been perpetrated by critics and indeed by people across the way. We believe this is a step in the right direction and we believe that most Canadians will support it. Other aspects of the unemployment insurance policy are also being enshrined explicitly in legislation. For example, workers who leave their jobs because of harassment, sexual or otherwise, will have their claims heard with sensitivity and privacy and without having to confront their abusers.
I simply want to re-emphasize the point. A fair and efficient system of adjudicating claims is already in place to ensure that people who voluntarily quit their jobs are protected from biased considerations of their claims. What we are doing with this legislation is making much of the case law and UIC policy explicit in the Unemployment Insurance Act, both to reassure Canadians that the system is fair in practice as well as in principle and to better inform workers of their rights.
I now turn to the transportation subsidies and what we are proposing to do under this legislation in that regard. I would like to deal with the issue of regional transportation subsidies in particular with respect to the Atlantic Region Freight Rate Assistance Act and the Maritime Freight Rates Act. These programs will be cut by 10 per cent over the next two fiscal years, commensurate with our commitment to reduce grants and contributions by 10 per cent over the next two years.
Likewise, with respect to the western grain transportation subsidy, the bill we are currently considering proposes a new formula for calculating payments by the federal government under the Western Grains Transportation Act. The setting of freight rates under the act will be modified to achieve a 10 per cent reduction in federal expenditures for 1993-94 and 1994-95.
Turning to the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act, this legislation proposes to reduce payments under the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act, or PUITTA as it is commonly known in the House of Commons, by some 10 per cent. PUITTA provides for the transfer to the provinces of 95 per cent of the federal income tax collected from privately owned electric and gas utilities. The budgets of February 1990 and February 1991 capped these payments at their 1989-90 levels. However this
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measure has failed to provide any savings since payments in the last two fiscal years were well under the ceiling we had set. We have decided on a modest reduction to keep in line with the over-all approach of a broadly based cut in grants and contributions. We have provided for a modest reduction of 10 per cent in the actual grants that are provided under this program for the years 1993-94 and 1994-95.
By stressing these measures we are making it absolutely clear that it is necessary to keep our deficit under control. The issues of taxation, spending and interest rates are closely linked. The policies that we pursue in these area have a profound impact upon the viability of economic recovery which I have indicated is now gathering steam.
We know that the only way to ensure the prosperity of Canadians is through sustained economic growth. We have no intention of endangering the growth we already see by allowing the deficit to spiral out of control. This bill is a key part of our effort to rein in the deficit. I urge all members of the House to support it with enthusiasm. Given the fact we have the Leader of the Opposition committed to deficit reduction and given the fact we have the New Democratic Party getting on to this, we are now asking and appealing to them. This is what Canadians want us to do. They want us to act responsibly and they want us to bring the deficit under control. They are concerned for the future. They are concerned about their children and their grandchildren.
It was quite evident last night as we watched President Clinton set out his economic plan to the joint session of Congress. Obviously we welcome Mr. Clinton's initiative because he has recognized what we have been recognizing in this country for a number of years and has acted upon it. He has acted on confronting the difficult challenge of controlling the rampant growth of deficits and debt.
Under the plan he set out last night the U.S. government will consume less of the world savings rather than an increasing share. This should help reduce interest rates and encourage productive investment and growth, not only in the United States but in all countries around the world. We were encouraged by the fact that the president did not try to put any gloss on the enormous challenge of reducing the deficit. He was forthright and frank. He did not try to soften the hard reality that we as Canadians know to be true. Deficit reduction is painful. Deficit reduction is not politically popular. Deficit reduction affects all Canadians. We obviously want to support and maintain the programs we have in place but we

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cannot continue to do it on borrowed money. We have to pay our way.
It is interesting to note that the economic plan Mr. Clinton announced last night is very similar to the plan we have been pursuing as a government since we came to office. He has emphasized investments in public infrastructure and training and the important role that small business can play in stimulating investment in jobs. These precisely echo the themes of our February 1992 budget and the December 2 economic statement.
In December of last year I laid out a plan for bolstering infrastructure by $2 billion over the next five years. That is about $20 billion in American terms. Our plan emphasized roads, bridges, railroads and high technology communications just as the president referred to last night.
In Canada we too have emphasized skills training and education. We have doubled the funding for federal supported labour force training in the past several years. Tax assistance will be provided for sector training councils in the private sector.
In Canada we have stressed the importance of small business. In December I introduced a program for an investment tax credit so that small businesses could improve their technological capability, their productivity and their competitiveness through the purchase of new machinery and commitment.
Programs have been introduced for encouraging job creation by cutting the cost of hiring such as the unemployment insurance freeze for small business.
When we look at some of the more specific proposals in the president's economic plan we see obvious parallels to Canada's economic plan. For example, in the February 1992 budget we introduced an earned income supplement that will provide additional benefits to low and middle income working families with children. President Clinton has emphasized such a program for removing a major impediment to many families fully participating in the work force. The child benefit package we brought forward is a benefit package to help the working poor maintain their activity in the work force.
To reduce the deficit President Clinton has proposed deep cuts in program spending particularly in defence
and in the operating costs of government. In Canada we have consistently followed a policy of spending restraint during our term in office. For example, the president proposed a one-year freeze on U.S. civil servants' wages. In Canada federal public sector wages will be frozen for three of four years from 1991 to 1994. In many respects we are being harsher in showing federal government leadership in a more aggressive way than what the president proposed last night.
With his fiscal proposals he hopes to bring the U.S. federal deficit as a share of GDP down to 2.7 per cent by 1997, from about 5.2 per cent or 5.3 per cent, which will be about half what it is now. With the fiscal structure already in place in Canada our deficit by 1997 will be considerably lower as a proportion of GDP than the American deficit.
It is important to note that the improvement to the Canadian deficit will come through a focus on spending restraint. In fact in both the February 1992 budget and the December statement we were able to introduce tax cuts for Canadians, not tax increases.
The president has proposed higher taxes for wealthier citizens. The Canadian income tax system is already considerably more progressive than the American system and in a real sense the U.S. proposals bring it more into line with ours.
In the U.S., as we all know, there is considerable focus on health care reform. We in Canada recognize that we too must control the costs of the health care system while we maintain the standard of excellence in providing health care. However we do not face the same degree of difficulty as the United States does.
When I met Secretary of the Treasury Bentsen he indicated to me that health costs were extracting about 13 per cent to 14 per cent of GDP at the present time. In Canada our health costs extract something around 9 per cent or less. He indicated to me that if nothing was done by the end of the century health care costs would be extracting close to 20 per cent of the American GDP. They clearly have to do something to bring about cost containment.
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As a proportion of the GDP the U.S. faces a formidable task, but it also recognizes that in the course of all this 35 million to 40 million Americans have no health coverage at all. In Canada we do have a universal system and we want to keep it that way.
We will be working together with the provinces to try to identify the cost containment measures in an effort to deliver the best medical care in the most efficient and effective way possible. The ministers of health and the ministers of finance, federally and provincially, had a very productive meeting in that regard. We will be working together in a co-operative fashion with the health care sector because it too has some very important views and some very important recommendations to make in this regard.
In conclusion, we welcome the realistic economic plan set out by the president. In many respects it moves the American economy in the direction the government has been moving the Canadian economy. We have had, as I indicated at the outset of my remarks, some pretty clear indicators the plan is working. We are coming out of a very stubborn recession. It is clearly not over in some parts of the world, but we are moving ahead.
We hope the economic plan which Mr. Clinton put forward last night will sustain the trend toward economic growth, economic activity and job creation in the United States. That will make the North American economy very strong.
We firmly believe that as their economy grows, so will Canada's because we have the fundamentals right. We have made the tough and difficult choices. We have put in place the structural reforms which were necessary: tax reform, liberalized trade, a better tax system, investments in people through improved skills upgrading and retraining, more investment in research and development. It is showing up in our ability to reduce the labour input costs, the unit labour costs and in our ability to become more productive and more competitive.
There are encouraging signs. However we have a deficit and a debt that clouds the future and we must
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deal with it. That is why we are dealing with it here. I urge and I appeal to my colleagues across the way: Canadians do not want us to ignore this situation, they want us to deal with it and I ask for their support.


Mr. Maurizio Bevilacqua (York North):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to address a matter which is of great importance to millions of Canadians. The changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act contained in Bill C-113 will have serious consequences for many Canadians. It is very important that we discuss these changes in the House.
If Bill C-113 becomes law, people who leave their jobs without government-defined just cause or who are fired for misconduct will not qualify for unemployment insurance benefits. This change is very significant. What it says to any Canadian in a difficult or unfair work position is be careful, because if you quit or get fired, you are going to have to prove you deserve UI.
Bill C-113 tells Canadians in these situations that you are guilty until proven innocent. With this bill the burden of proof is transferred to the UI claimant, who is often a person in an extremely vulnerable position. This is unfair and it is the main reason why Bill C-105, Bill C-113's unloved predecessor, generated so much hatred.
Bill C-113 is the government's attempt to blunt that hatred. Under attack from every corner, including its own caucus, faced with daily embarrassments in the House and the minister's clumsy defence of the bill, the government had no choice but to retreat sheepishly in the hope of returning to fight another day.
Now we have Bill C-113, nothing more than Bill C-105 in sheepish clothing. It is a PR exercise. In the marketing of Bill C-113 minor changes are presented as major concessions. However the minister of employment made it clear that there is no question of compromising on the substance of Bill C-105, which is that voluntary quitters must be punished.
Bill C-113 attempts to make some positive changes. It attempts to make more clear the question of people who accept early retirement packages. It expands the definition of just cause and it attempts to be more sensitive toward sexual harassment.

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These are only corrections of errors made in the badly designed Bill C-105. There is nothing in the bill that corrects the arbitrary nature of the proposed changes. Indeed, the minister almost seems to be proud of the bill's arbitrary, merciless quality.
It is no secret that the minister of employment has little sympathy for the unemployed. His crude description of voluntary quitters as freeloaders who take off to Florida or the ski slopes reveals his generalized contempt. Bill C-113 reveals the government's approach to Canada's unemployment crisis. It focuses on voluntary quitters but ignores the 1.6 million people in this country who cannot find work.
We were given an indication of the government's attitude toward this issue two weeks ago when a number of government members addressed an opposition day on Bill C-105. Most of the attacks on the motion were fairly standard Tory rhetoric, rambling, unfocused, sometimes making irrelevant observations.
However, one speech stood out. It was the one made by the Minister of State for Employment and Immigration. I am glad she felt this issue is serious enough to warrant a coherent, though misleading, response.
The minister's speech seems to be a fairly accurate summary of the government's position in the debate of these changes. That position amounts to a very simplistic rhetorical question: Is it fair for those who pay UI premiums to support people who decide to leave their job on a whim in order to take a little vacation? The answer to this frivolous query is a resounding, of course it is not fair. No one is arguing this.
For the record, I would like to say that I think it is wrong for someone to quit a job on a whim in order to take a few months of holiday at the expense of the unemployment insurance program. For the record, however, I am pleased to say that I have never met a person who has done this. Of the unemployed people I have met, not one is happy about his or her position. Each and every one of them wants a job immediately.
In reality, the unemployed are desperate for work. Despite the discouragement and despair of 1.6 million unemployed Canadians and 2.2 million Canadians who are on welfare, this government has chosen not to address seriously the problems of the unemployed.
Instead the Conservative government perseveres with the despicable fiction that our worst problem as a society is the army of freeloaders cashing their UI cheques in Florida and Jasper.
When the minister of employment and his colleagues in government are not leading a smear campaign against certain Canadians who leave their jobs, they are trying to assure us that the law will protect all those who leave their jobs with good reason.
During the debate I mentioned earlier, the Minister of State for Employment and Immigration said:
These changes will affect only those who voluntarily leave their jobs without just cause or who are fired for misconduct.
Wrong. The changes may be aimed at people who quit their jobs without reason or who are fired with reason. In reality, they will affect many others. The minister would have to be incredibly naive to think otherwise. Later in her speech, the minister referred to the special protections built into the guidelines for field officers as they relate to the question of sexual harassment.
In cases where all things are considered equal, the benefit of the doubt will be given to the claimant and thus tip the scale in his or her favour.
The minister puts a great deal of faith in the idea that the benefit of the doubt will be given to such women when they apply for unemployment insurance. I have to ask her however, what does benefit of the doubt mean? Does it mean that every woman who makes a claim and gives sexual harassment as her reason for quitting will get benefits?
As soon as you answer no, and reason dictates that you do so, you allow for errors. You admit that some women who are harassed but cannot prove it will not get benefits. You accept as a given that some deserving women are going to fall through the cracks. That is unacceptable to the Liberal Party. We in the Liberal Party say that these changes are too inflexible, too unyielding. They stack the deck against the most vulnerable among us and victimize the innocent.
The government believes that the letter and the spirit of the legislation will protect the innocent. We on this side of the House know that in the real world there are delays. We know that decisions are sometimes made in error. We know that people fall through the cracks.
February 18, 1993

It is clear from this legislation and the government's anti-quitter rhetoric that the Conservatives are out of touch with the reality of the work place. Look at the demonstration in Montreal a few weeks ago. Forty thousand people filled the streets in minus 25 degree temperatures to protest against the government's neglect of the unemployed.
The people in Montreal were shouting On veut traveller. We want work. They were not protesting for more UI. They were asking for jobs from a government that has abandoned them.
Those were not lazy, freeloading people. They were not sitting home watching videos or skiing in the Lauren-tians. They were demonstrating against an unfair government that does not have a plan to help them get back to work.
We were shown the real world that day at the demonstration, a world of frustration, anger and hopelessness. The government's response has been scornful and insulting. The government called the demonstrators separatists. It threatened to create a UI police squad and a UI snitch hotline. Its behaviour throughout these past few months has resulted in a tragic comedy. For too long this government has ignored the real world.
On December 2, the finance minister said something which I found deeply ironic, and I would like to repeat it. In his economic statement, the minister said: "There are those who would follow policies based on the world as they would like it to be, not as it exists". I found that ironic because the minister was putting down the first group, those who would follow policies based on the world as they would like it to be when he and his government are so obviously members of that group.
Think of it in the context of the present debate. Think of the minister and his civil servants who designed these changes and you will see how removed they are from the real world. They sit in their offices in LEsplanade Laurier, the closest thing to ivory towers in Ottawa. They develop these policies in safe, clean, air-conditioned offices, the ideal work place in many ways.
It is understandable that these people might not be completely aware of the larger reality, removed as they are from small factories, restaurants, offices and work sites where the majority of Canadians work. That is why
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the minister of employment can say with complete conviction that the changes in Bill C-113 will not inconvenience anyone other than the quitters. He does not know any better.
Sadly in the world as it exists, to use the expression of the Minister of Finance, reality is quite different. Already employers are starting to use the proposed changes to the UI act to pressure their employees into more restrictive work situations. Le Devoir recently gave the example of Litho Monteregie, a small printing company in Longueuil. Here the employer is imposing a 30 per cent salary cut on the older, better paid half of the work force. The people targeted by this move are highly skilled and were instrumental in computerising the business, one of the first to do so in the industry. They were well paid as a result. The president of the company has said: "I used to be at the mercy of their skills. Now it is a different situation".
Maybe people in such situations should quit and apply for UI. It is easy to say, but sometimes it is a difficult decision, especially if you are not certain you will qualify for benefits. Think about the typical person who quits his or her job or is fired. To begin with, he is under a lot of stress and probably does not have a very positive outlook when he goes to the CEC to apply for unemployment insurance. If he is required to justify his situation before a decision is made about his eligibility that adds more pressure.
What if he is not as articulate as he could be? Maybe he has difficulty convincing the employment officer that his claim is justified. Maybe his former manager is more persuasive. Maybe he does not get the benefits even though he deserves them.
What is there in Bill C-113 to guarantee that such a person will be treated fairly? What protection does such a person have against the perils of the world as it is? The fact is this bill does not and cannot protect everybody, and that is why it should be withdrawn.
Perhaps the government should listen to the Quebec Bar Association and the Conseil du Patronat which have both expressed serious reservations about the changes proposed. Perhaps the government should pay attention to the human rights commissioner, Max Yalden and Senator Solange Chaput-Rolland who have both expressed concern about the effects of this bill.

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Perhaps the government should have listened to suggestions made by members of its Quebec caucus instead of dismissing them so rudely. Those few brave men who dared to speak up did so on behalf of their constituents. They should have been shown some respect. Instead, the minister rejected their ideas out of hand.
Those Conservative members who spoke out against Bill C-105 understand that the changes will create a great deal of hardship for many Canadians. We on this side of the House know that too. We know that the problem is not laziness; it is joblessness. We know the problem is not layabouts; it is layoffs. We know the problem is not the indolence of our workers; it is the insolence of our ministers.
As we saw during the demonstration in Montreal, Canadians are angry at this government and will not put up with its neglect and misinformation any longer.
While we are on the subject of misinformation I want to be perfectly clear on one point. Job quitters are not the problem this government makes them out to be.
A 1991 Economic Council of Canada report found that people who quit their jobs are not a drain on the UI fund. Half of all job quitters went to another job immediately and another 43 per cent found new jobs within 10 weeks. The largest burden the UI fund must deal with are those hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have been laid off from the manufacturing sector. These people have been neglected by the government during this recession and are still waiting for the promised workers' readjustment programs.
The government claims it must penalize job quitters in order to control the deficit in the UI fund. It says that with the UI fund deficit at $4.9 billion in 1992 it cannot afford to support people who give up work. While it is true that the UI deficit is a very serious problem, I would suggest that the government is not doing all it can to control it. It has chosen an ineffective way to do so and could have chosen a better, more productive way. The government is not doing all it can to control the deficit and the UI fund. I say this because while the government moves against people who quit without just cause and people who are fired for misconduct, it ignores those who abuse the UI program through misuse or outright fraud.
There are many people who claim UI while earning more than they are allowed in under-the-table jobs. There are many who collect UI while studying full-time, and many who defraud the system with bogus claims. Those people, who we might refer to as cheaters cost Canadian taxpayers more than $200 million a year. Is it not strange that a government which claims to want to stop those who abuse the UI system has decided to focus on job quitters rather than cheaters? I would think the government would want to stop this type of abuse before any other.
I said earlier that by going after voluntary leavers the government has chosen an ineffective way to control the deficit and the UI fund. In order to illustrate what I mean by this I would like to briefly outline the present state of the UI fund.
In 1990 the government stopped contributing to the unemployment insurance fund from general revenues. The fund became entirely financed by premiums paid by employers and employees. Since then the cost of the UI program has increased by $7 billion.
To meet these rising costs the UI premiums paid by employers and employees have been increased twice. In July 1991 they were increased by 24 per cent and then by 7.1 per cent in January 1992. Unfortunately these increases in revenue have not kept pace with the demands placed on the UI fund. Chronic unemployment has kept the UI fund in a deficit. The cumulative deficit now stands at $4.9 billion.
Desperate to control the deficit in the UI fund, the government decided it had only two choices: raise premiums again or cut benefits. They chose the latter. Unfortunately, the cuts are expected to save only $2.5 billion over two years. The effect they will have on the UI fund deficit is negligible. By the end of 1993 the deficit will rise to an astounding $7.6 billion despite the cuts.
That is why I say the government has chosen an ineffective way to fight the UI fund deficit. Earlier I also said the government could have chosen a better, more effective way to control its deficit. I suggest the best way to control the cost of the unemployment insurance program is to put unemployed Canadians back to work.
February 18, 1993

Consider that every percentage point of unemployment is estimated to cost $2 billion. That means that if the government decided to help the unemployed by bringing the rate down to 8 per cent, we would cut $6 billion from the deficit in the UI fund.
The government could act but it refuses to do so. The government is still waiting, trying to ride it out and hoping that the economy will eventually turn around and take care of things naturally, just like it has always done. That is wishful thinking.
The government is deluding itself if it thinks the business cycle is going to save our economy from eight years of Tory neglect. The unemployment we faced in the past was cyclical. It resulted from a slowdown in the economy as factories laid off workers in response to a drop in demand. After a time, demand would rise again and the workers would return to jobs like the ones they had left.
While cyclical unemployment was a difficult problem, the unemployment challenge we now face is much more daunting. Instead of cyclical unemployment we are now faced with structural unemployment. Instead of joblessness caused by temporary slow downs we have joblessness caused by permanent shutdowns. Our economy is in transition. Factories are shutting down forever. Old established firms like General Motors and IBM regularly announce huge layoffs. Whole sectors of the economy are downsizing and moving toward smaller workforces. None of the old truths apply any more.
According to the OECD, the Conference Board of Canada, the UN Department of Economic Development and other institutions, Canada is going to continue to be plagued by high unemployment well into the next year and probably even longer, despite strong economic growth. We are entering the jobless recovery. In the past two years 460,000 people lost their jobs and analysts believe many of these jobs will never reappear.
These people and other unemployed Canadians have the right to look to their government for help and direction. They have the right to expect their government to live up to such commitment as jobs, jobs, jobs, adjustment programs for displaced workers and the development of a learning culture.
The government has not lived up to these commitments. For over eight years the Conservative government has ignored the unemployment problem and abandoned millions of Canadians to the mercy of the marketplace. The government put its faith in economic theory at the expense of everything else.
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Instead of an activist government which cares deeply about people, Canadians have an unfeeling government which talks coldly about getting the fundamentals right. We have a government which frittered away great opportunity in good years and did nothing to help the needy in the leanest years since the Great Depression.
This government does not understand that while deficits are very costly, human misery also carries a very high price tag. All of society suffers in a period of prolonged high unemployment because unemployment represents lost production, lost wages and lost human potential.
One organization estimates our economy is presently operating at 9 per cent below its potential, which means we are losing $60 billion a year. Between 1991 and the year 2000 Canada is expected to lose about $400 billion. That is $400 billion in lost exports, lost tax revenue and lost wages.
Besides the financial cost, high unemployment has a huge social cost as more and more people are forced onto welfare or out of the system altogether. In metro Toronto, for example, officials are predicting that the number of people on welfare could climb to above
200,000	this year. That represents a disastrous 75 per cent increase since 1990. In the past year every province has seen dramatic increases in the number of people who must rely on welfare in order to survive. All of this human suffering is a result of the most painful recession in 50 years.
The situation is bad at present but will only get worse if the changes in Bill C-113 become law. If people who quit their jobs or are fired are barred from collecting unemployment insurance, as these measures propose, they will have to turn to welfare. Because of technicalities some people may not even be eligible for social assistance. That is another unfair element of this bill and another reason why the government should withdraw it.
Finally I would like to address the question of how these changes will affect young Canadians. I believe that young Canadians have much to fear from these measures. There are presently over 400,000 unemployed young people in this country. The youth unemployment rate is 17.2 per cent, compared to a national average of 11 per cent. While young people are generally disenfranchised in our society, they are over-represented in the unemployed population. People aged 15 to 24 make up only 29 per cent of the total population but they represent 38 per cent of the number of jobless Canadians. Many speak of a lost generation of young people condemned to a lifetime of dependence on unemployment insurance, broken up by stints in low paying, low skilled jobs. Many young Canadians in their mid-20s

February 18, 1993
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have never even had a first job, and for those who have their introduction to the labour force is often a waste of their skills.
I read recently about a 23-year old-with an English degree who sells plastic dinosaurs and colouring books in a children's shop. She earns $7 an hour and is struggling to make ends meet. One of her former class-mates is slightly worse off. He is putting his education to use behind the deli counter in a supermarket.
These are the kinds of jobs reserved for the best and the brightest coming out of our universities. These are the kinds of jobs that the minister of employment is encouraging our youth to hold onto with this bill. Young people are caught in a vicious circle. They want to go to university to improve their employment prospects but in order to finance their education they are forced to find work.
An increasing number of young Canadians are finding it difficult to get a post-secondary education. Tuition fees have increased 58 per cent over the past 5 years. The price of books has more than kept pace with inflation and living expenses continue to rise. Many university students must alternate between work periods and school in order to get an education. The entry level jobs they find are often low paying, have little if any responsibility and are not very challenging. Often the only way for these young workers to advance themselves is by moving from job to job as they acquire experience.
Bill C-113 discourages that upward mobility and will have a dampening effect on youthful ambition. I, for one, do not think that is good for our society.
We need our young people to lead the way into the new economy. They must be encouraged to advance, not stand still. Canada will never be a leader in the global marketplace if it is a nation reliant on low paying, part-time jobs. We need highly skilled, highly paid jobs to lead the way to the 21st century.
In conclusion, I would like to summarize why I believe this is a bad bill. First, it is too arbitrary. Despite the
pious promises of the minister of employment, his minister of state and other members of the government side this bill does not provide the necessary protection for workers. By its absolute black and white nature this bill puts the onus of proof on the person claiming UI benefits, withholding those benefits until the person's credibility has been established.
It has been said before that this reverses one of the oldest and most cherished principles of our democratic system, which is that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
I also believe that this is a bad bill because it will not accomplish what it is designed to do. The bill's savings of $2.5 billion will not make a dent in the UI fund deficit of $7.6 billion. If the government is serious about controlling its spending why does it not cancel or scale down its plan to spend $4.4 billion on a submarine-hunting helicopter fleet? If the government is serious about wanting to put its financial house in order why does it not go after the $16.1 billion that Canadian companies have hidden in tax havens in Barbados, Cyprus and elsewhere?
This government has no clear plan for controlling its spending, and now the most vulnerable Canadians are being forced to pay for its economic mismanagement. That, in a sense, is the greatest failing of this proposed legislation.
Bill C-113, like Bill C-105 before it, reveals this government's glaring lack of vision. In this time of economic hardship the government could have proposed measures to help the unemployed find work, help young people break into the job market, or help high school drop-outs and others get skills training.
Instead the government chose to tinker on the sidelines. If it believes it wants to overhaul the UI system, if it wants to come out with a new innovative UI reform package, then it should present a serious approach toward this issue. This bill is a hesitant half measure which does nothing to address Canada's unemployment crisis.
February 18, 1993

The government has a moral responsibility to show Canadians how it intends to prepare our nation for the future. With this bill it has abdicated that responsibility. The people of Canada are in desperate need of help in order to acquire the skills needed for the new global economy.
In light of this urgent need for action, I find it distressing that the government would present such an inert piece of legislation. We can no longer afford such an action. Canadians need to believe in the future again in order to begin the rebuilding process.
I urge the House to reject the bill.
I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the
word "That" and by substituting the following therefor:
Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, be not now read a second time, but that it be read a second time this day six months hence.


Mr. Cid Samson (Timmins -Chapleau):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in opposition to Bill C-113, which is an omnibus bill that covers many areas as well as unemployment insurance.
Bill C-113 addresses the Crow rate, grain subsidies, wage freezes to civil servants as well as members of Parliament and the Governor General, et cetera. We will have other speakers later in the debate who will address those particular issues. However I would particularly like to direct my attention to the section of this omnibus bill that concerns unemployment insurance.
Bill C-105, the previous bill, had many faults. The Minister of Employment and Immigration said in the scrum area the other day that: "If anybody feels that I have backtracked on this they do not know the meaning of the word".
I would just like to point out to the minister that we know the meaning of the word and the minister did backtrack simply because he had to go back and redraft this bill to change certain parts that were not in the previous bill. Those came to light as a result of the pressure placed on him and his department by the opposition. If we had not brought our concerns forward he would not have had to backtrack and redraft the bill.
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The question that demands to be answered is: What consultations took place prior to and after Bill C-105? Where did the minister get the information that was necessary to make these changes?
There were not any consultations for Bill C-105. It was thought to be a bill that could be rammed through the House without too much opposition because the government felt that it had enough support out there from the right wing, that it could garner some votes from this move and that it was something that was very popular.
There is newspaper article after newspaper article that indicates exactly why the government has done this. They clearly show that there are 50 per cent of people on the right saying: "Yes, this is great, this is really good". Therefore the Conservative party thought: "Here is an opportunity to attract some votes in the west. We will get some of that Reform vote back. This is the kind of stuff they like. They have a feeling that workers are a little less than human, that workers are there to be exploited". This attack on the unemployed is simply that.
We asked the government about statistics. We asked it on what basis it is putting this legislation forward, what it is using as its statistics. We called the minister's department to get these statistics and were told that it was having some great difficulty in getting the numbers we asked for. I asked the minister in the House to table the statistics he was using to base this change on, which would clearly show that there were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Canadians quitting their jobs for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than that they wanted to become couch potatoes.
The minister said: "You are going to have to get those on the Order Paper. The member knows very well that is the proper procedure". If the minister had been totally honest and wanted to disprove what I was saying then he simply had to table the documents, but he did not have them. They do not exist. The biggest problem with this whole legislation is that the decision to attack the unemployed was based simply and clearly on political gain. It has nothing to do with deficit reduction or spending control.

February 18, 1993
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I have a newspaper article from The Citizen outlining information it received from Statistics Canada. It says:
Statistics Canada figures show they are a relatively small part of total unemployment insurance claims that are currently delayed or denied.
The statistics show that in September 1992 16,710 people quit their jobs, 2,740 people were fired for misconduct, and 132,800 claims were delayed or denied.
According to Statistics Canada, the article continues:
The major factors for denying a UI claim are failure to prove a person is unemployed, not being available for or capable of work and having incomplete documentation.
That does not tell us that there are thousands of people who are quitting their jobs just because they feel like it, but tells us that people are quitting their jobs and in most cases are not being given benefits. It tells us that there is no real problem in terms of people quitting jobs.
We must look at what the government is trying to do. It is trying to create a perception that if we can convince these people to stop quitting their jobs then the UI fund will rectify itself and return to the black. It is saying that people who are working should not quit their jobs simply because they want to sit at home and then expect fellow Canadians to support them for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Under the conditions in which we live today and under the economic failure of this government people who have a job are darned lucky and do not want to quit then-jobs. They want to work.
I can bring hundreds of names, if not thousands, of people who are very willing to work if they only had a job. The government should not tell me that people are quitting simply because they want to quit. It is not true. It does not happen. The government does not have the statistics to prove that is true. They do not exist.
Let us look at the situation as it stands in Canada and the changes to the UI. I would like to refer to another article that I have from the Hamilton Spectator headlined "Cutting unemployment payout is mindless and moronic". The article read:
We are 1old that by cutting the average weekly payout of UI, we will save a couple of billion dollars. This, of course, will go to reduce our deficit. This is the same deficit that went from $27 to $34 billion in the past year under this government. How can they be out $7 billion and keep their jobs let alone their self-respect?
These are not my words. They are from the Hamilton Spectator. That is the perception in Canada today.
This government is trying to blame all its economic failures on the unemployed. It is trying to create the myth that the unemployed are creating problem and that it is their fault they are unemployed. It is saying: "They are not victims of this economic policy. They want to be unemployed. They love suffering".
I do not understand how the government can introduce this kind of legislation and keep a straight face. Flow can it expect Canadians to believe that what it is doing is for the benefit of all Canadians?
The government did not anticipate that there would be such an outcry from Canadians from coast to coast to coast. It has seen the beginning of that in Montreal. It has seen the beginning of that with the people I invited here yesterday, clients of Mouvement Action-Chomage. We have put real faces on the problems. These are people who are directly affected. These are women who face sexual harassment in the work place. These are spouses who want to move with their families, to be with their families when the other breadwinners move as a result of their jobs.
We have seen the real faces of people who have come here and said: "I have to stay home to care for my child but I have been barred from doing that". We have seen and have heard from domestic employees who are not allowed to use the phone, to leave the premises without the assistance of their employer or to write letters unless they are screened. Yet these people are supposed to have their rights protected when they claim UI if they ever get a chance to apply for it.
One of the biggest problems with this whole legislation is sexual harassment. I do not really like to talk about about sexual harassment but I must. We must consider what a person who has been sexually harassed on the job has to go through. We have seen in the new improved formula, Bill C-113, that the government is attempting to say that it has broadened the range of just cause for quitting. There are certainly acceptable circumstances under which they can quit their jobs, but in the case of sexual harassment the burden of proof belongs to the claimant. The person must go before an agent who has had his or her wages frozen for three years, who has been legislated back to work, who has worked under conditions that are a little less than good and who has sometimes worked extended hours without remunera
February 18, 1993

tion. They get time off instead. These agents are sitting there and listening to people who have come for assistance and they have to make decisions. As well, these agents are restricted in what they can do. They cannot cross-examine. They are limited as to how they can approach these people and try to help people.
The sexually harassed person has to appear before such an agent, bear his or her soul and explain in detail what happened. The agent under the new and improved legislation will now do his job behind closed doors. That was not in the old legislation. This is not backtracking, but it is in the new bill. That is fine and is very much appreciated.
The problem is that the agent cannot take the word of the claimant because it is not good enough. Now the agent has to go to the employer. The employer is the one who has been sexually harassing the claimant. The agent will go to the employer and seek to determine whether or not the person was sexually harassed. What employer in his or her right mind will say: "Oh, yes, I did it. I sexually harassed this person. Give her the benefits"? I do not know too many employers who will do that.


Mr. Heap:: That will be the day.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Of course the employer is going to deny it. Where is the benefit of the doubt? The agent has the claimant's word and the employer's word. Let us bring in a witness. Keep in mind that all related parties will be excluded from the interview with the agent. During the interview the agent will be alone with one person.
If 1 were a claimant I would certainly want to be present when somebody is saying something about me. I have that right. That information will not only be available to me. It will also be available to the employer and to the witnesses in writing. Transcripts will be available.
Then the agent brings in a witness who works for the employer and was there at the time the harassment took place. Do we think for one minute, given the conditions we work under today, that witness will put his or her job in jeopardy by siding with the claimant and saying: "Yes, the employer sexually harassed the claimant"?
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Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Fat chance.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Fat chance for sure. They are going to take the side of the employers to protect their own jobs because jobs are hard to get. There are no jobs. Of course they are going to say: "I didn't see anything. Oh, gosh, I don't remember that. No, I don't think it was that bad". Or, they may even say: "Hey, listen, this person has been after the boss for I don't know how long. It is not his fault; it is her fault".
This is a lop-sided, sick piece of legislation. The claimant is the one who is going to lose. The hands of the agent are tied. When we look at the document it clearly says that the agent at no time will cross-examine to determine who is right or who is wrong.
If agents are to become police persons, lawyers and judges, how can they arrive at an answer if they cannot do all these things: do the investigation and do the cross-examination? How will they establish who is right and who is wrong? How will they establish if the claimant has a right to benefits or not? How will they establish benefit of the doubt for the claimant? They cannot. It is impossible.
There is something drastically wrong with this legislation. It implies that persons who are sexually harassed must tolerate the situation as long as they can. They must try to exhaust all other avenues, including asking for a transfer. That is a good one. While they are asking for a transfer because they are being sexually harassed, the spouse-he or she-may be in trouble. Unless they exhaust all other alternative measures to move with the other spouse, they have to go through this whole process too if both spouses are working. They have to prove that they tried to do everything they could in order for them not to move. They have to try to find alternative transportation measures. They have to try to find all kinds of things. The whole process is sick. It really is.
The government is saying that the unemployed have to realize they have to be part of the deficit reduction to get the economy going again. The answer is get people to work. Put people to work.

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The funds for training our unemployed people come out of the fund. A lot of money comes out of the fund. Administration costs come entirely out of the fund. Training comes out of the fund. Everything pertaining to the unemployed comes out of the fund. The government withdrew funding to the UI with the introduction of Bill C-21 in 1990. The government does not contribute to the UI fund any more but it still wants to regulate the fund and it still wants to control it.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: They also cut out its own training programs.


Mr.   Sanison@: I would like to go on for about another hour frankly, because I have tons of material that I can go through to speak against this bill. It is a Draconian bill.
I would like to conclude by saying that the attack on the unemployed which is created as a result of the economic policies of this government is not the answer to the problems of the unemployed.
The minister started out by arguing that we have to get rid of these frauds. Nobody in my office who commits fraud gets support from me, none. If they cheated the system by working while they collected unemployment insurance and there was a penalty to pay, fine, let us address that. If we are talking about penalizing the unemployed people for quitting their jobs, I am sorry. Let us make the penalty fit the crime. Let us not put people in jail for the rest of their lives for stealing a chocolate bar.
There is nothing wrong with the penalty that exists today. People are penalized now for quitting their jobs up to 14 weeks, the two-week waiting period, plus their benefits are cut by 50 per cent. That is penalty enough. That is deterrent enough. I feel this bill is Draconian. It goes far over to the right, and it should be defeated.


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Madam Speaker, I have one question for my hon. friend from Timmins who has made some very interesting policy pronouncements from time to time.
I want to ask him one question. Does he think it is right that an individual who quits his or her job for no good reason should collect insurance, which is designed for people, who through no fault of their own, need it to carry them over a period of time until they find another job?
Does he think the people, the union workers who are paying these unemployment insurance fees and stick with their jobs, should support those who quit voluntarily to sit at home and not work? Does he support that? I want a yes or no answer on that.
Does he also support the premise that the person who sets his car on fire or sets his house on fire should collect insurance on it?


An hon. member:: It is arson.


John Horton McDermid: It is the same principle.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for that question. When this minister starts answering our questions with a yes or no, I will answer his with a yes or no.
In the meantime I am going to tell him this. We must not lose sight of the fact that this is unemployment insurance and it is for people who are unemployed. Yes, people are unemployed. A penalty now exists for people who quit their jobs and that penalty is a two-week waiting period, a 7 to 12 week penalty period, plus a reduction of 50 per cent in their benefits.
At the end of the 14-week period they must prove to the agent they are ready, willing and actively seeking employment. If they fail to do that they get zero. I challenge the minister to tell me that it is not penalty enough to deter people from quitting their jobs without just cause.
People who set their houses on fire, who burn their vehicles, are committing arson, and there is a penalty under the law. Do they get life imprisonment? No. Do they have to pay a fine? Do they lose their residence? Do they lose their insurance? Yes they do. That is penalty enough.
However, it is not good enough for the unemployed, not according to this minister. The unemployed? No, no. It has to be worse than that. We have to cut them off. We have to make them starve. We have to send them on to the welfare rolls of the provinces and in Quebec they do not even have welfare. They cannot apply for it. They have to get a loan that has to be repaid in Quebec. They do not get welfare. That is what you are sentencing these people to with this legislation.
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There is no way that anyone is going to convince me that this is a fair penalty for people who leave their jobs because they may have a reason to leave but they cannot prove it or they cannot justify it to the agent, an agent who is under stress as it is because in this same bill their wages are being frozen for two years. Their working conditions are being affected.
According to this new and improved document people have just cause to leave their jobs for significant modifications in terms and conditions respecting wages and salaries. That is one of the conditions for leaving employment with just cause. Those agents can leave their jobs with just cause according to this because this government froze their wages. Now you tell me where the justification is.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Madam Speaker, the member is right in deploring the government action on UI, there are no two ways about it. In fact the government has recognized there are a lot of deficiencies in the UI bill. It is my hope that before proceeding with the bill it will look at the whole issue of fairness.
I want to ask my colleague from the New Democratic Party if he subscribes to the NDP government in Ontario because it has introduced a freeze when it comes also to employees at the provincial level. We on this side of the House deplore the action of any government that puts a freeze on Public Service wages, and limits Public Service wages to rates below that of inflation. I want to ask him if he deplores the action of the NDP government in Ontario when it also put a freeze on Public Service wages in Ontario.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question coming from my hon. friend from the Liberal Party. No one likes to see the wages of anyone being frozen. Nobody likes to see where a person's quality of life is in jeopardy.
I would like to remind the member that if the federal government would transfer the funds owed to Ontario it would not have to take these kinds of tactics.
The minister again is raising his voice and saying that is not true but the numbers speak for themselves. Check the record. Check the books. Look at the cap on CAP. Look at the transfer payments as they affect Ontario. What do you expect provincial governments to do when they do not have the income?
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One thing I would like to point out to my Liberal friend is during the speech of the Liberal critic it was very obvious to me that he did not say one word about the reduction of benefits from 60 per cent to 50 per cent.
I wonder why. Would it have anything to do with the fact that maybe that is the part of the bill the Liberals do support? Would it have anything to do with the fact that in 1978 they reduced benefits by 6-2/3 per cent? I would like to know what the Liberal Party position is on the reduction of benefits. I would like to know from the Liberal Party what impact that is going to have on local economies when, in a city like Timmins where I come from, that 3 per cent represents $195,000 per month in reduction in spending power from the people who are unemployed.
Unemployment insurance was designed as a safety net to help boost the economy during a time of unemployment. It was designed to boost the economy.


John Horton McDermid: Help boost the economy?


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Yes, boost the economy.


John Horton McDermid: Oh, come on.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Oh, come on. Yes, right, I know. Let us take all the money away and let us see what that does to the economy. Is that not a great idea? When I hear from the Liberals and they start asking me about our provincial government I look across the other way and I say: "Look, you get the transfer payments that are owed to Ontario and it will do what it has to do and will do it very well".


Mr. Peter L. McCreath (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Finance and Privatization):: Madam Speaker, I would like to put a question to my hon. friend. I must confess I am impressed with his efforts on this. He is very accurately reflecting the trade union movement and the CBC on this one, but he is not in touch with what the Canadian people are saying.
When the member talks about penalty he betrays that he does not understand what the issue is here. The issue is not one of penalty; it is one of eligibility. What the minister is saying and what he is reflecting in terms of public opinion in this country is that honest, hard-working Canadians do not think, especially at a time when employment is difficult, that people who simply decide not to work any more, those people without just cause, should be eligible to draw unemployment insurance. In the same way when talking about automobile insurance, you have to smash your car before you can claim the

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insurance. You cannot just say: "It is my vested right. I paid into it, therefore I should draw it out".
My question for my hon. friend is: Does he know what insurance is?


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Madam Speaker, it is a buffer during a time of need. If you lose your house, you collect on your insurance and that is why you pay it. You lose your job, you get insurance. If you leave your job because there are conditions you believe you cannot cope with, then you get insurance that you have paid into. It is plain and simple.
This government is trying to intimidate people into staying in conditions that are intolerable, that they cannot get out of any other way. Then they have to prove it. They have to disrobe themselves in front of all kinds of witnesses to prove their case. These guys are sick.


Hon. Mary Collins (Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of State (Environment) and Minister Responsible for the Status of Women):: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate on Bill C-113, the government expenditure restraint bill.
It has been interesting listening to the discussion about the bill. There has certainly been a lot of heat from the last two speakers but not a lot of light. I would like to have the opportunity of discussing some of the real elements involved in this bill.
As the Minister of Finance has already stated this morning, the major purpose of this bill of course is to bring government expenditures into line. It has to do some of the tough things. None of them are easy and in the best of all possible worlds we would not have to do these things but we have to. We are facing a financial situation in this country and we have to start at home. We all have to contribute to this exercise. Indeed, as members of Parliament and cabinet ministers we are contributing in that we are freezing our own salaries. There are many other measures throughout this bill and in all departments of government so that we can bring about those $8 billion of savings which will result from this bill over the next three years.
As the Minister of Finance has indicated there are some good signs developing in terms of the economy. Being from western Canada I know we can certainly see those developing in British Columbia.
That does not mean we do not have to continue to be persistent and consistent in getting our own expenditures under control. Whether it is within departments where we are reducing our operating expenses or whether it is in terms of grants that we give out and reducing those, we all have to recognize that we have to make these changes.
However, I too wanted to talk about one particular aspect of this bill that has caused a lot of discussion and generated a lot of debate over the last couple of weeks. That has to do with the provisions relating to the changes in unemployment insurance.
I thought this morning listening to the debate that there really are some very different views about what the unemployment insurance fund is all about. Some people seem to think it is there to boost the economy. That was never my understanding of what it was brought in for. Others seem to think it is an entitlement. No matter what happens to you, you paid into it and you get a chance to get your money out.
I say with respect to my hon. colleagues that was never the intention of the unemployment insurance fund as it was developed nor indeed is it the intention in most cases for insurance. Generally speaking, for insurance you pay a premium and then if basically through no fault of your own circumstances should occur and a catastrophe happens with respect to your house or your car or your life you will get whatever the arrangements are for the payment.
The same thing is true for unemployment insurance. You pay premiums and if circumstances should come about through no fault of your own that you lose your job, then indeed you have the opportunity of being able to collect under the terms and conditions of the Unemployment Insurance Act. It is not something that is automatic and never has been.
I would like to turn now to another part of this discussion. It deals with the aspect of sexual harassment. Over the past couple of weeks there has been a great deal said in the media and in this House that these provisions we are bringing in with respect to unemployment insurance will somehow have an adverse impact on
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women because they would deny the opportunity to a woman who was the victim of sexual harassment from being able to leave her job and collect unemployment insurance.
For the record, that is just not the case. That is not the case now and it will not be the case in the future. Indeed, let me remind my colleagues that in October 1989-and I know many of the members were here in the House at that time-we had the debate about unemployment insurance and amendments were made to the act to provide for specific definitions of just cause, reasons that would continue to make someone eligible for unemployment insurance. At that time a very specific provision was added to the act to be very clear that one of the grounds for just cause would be sexual or other harassment. That was a very important amendment.
I looked up the voting record on that and it is interesting. I was present and certainly voted for it and indeed my colleagues from the NDP voted for it. However, quite surprisingly, the members of the Official Opposition, the Liberals, voted against it. I never have been able to quite understand why that occurred.
That has been the case. Sexual harassment has been and continues to be a just cause for an individual to leave his or her job and be able to collect unemployment insurance. Indeed, of course this bill continues in that effect.
The debate around sexual harassment has been interesting as well. I think on balance it may be a very productive debate in that it is bringing to the public's attention just the fact that this issue exists. It has long been my view that one of the difficulties we face is that for many-and I am speaking primarily of women, although not exclusively because men too can be the victims of sexual harassment in certain circumstances-it is obviously a very traumatic and terrible thing. Often women have not wanted to talk about it and have just said: " I don't want anything to do with it, I just want to get out of this situation and get on with my life".
I sympathize with that and truly understand that, but it only perpetuates the problem because it does not bring the issue out into the open. It does not enable the
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individual employer or society at large to be able to do anything about it.
If we are really going to come to grips with the issue of sexual harassment-and we are talking particularly of the workplace-we have to make it transparent. We have to ask those women or those victims to speak out against it. That is the issue we talk about generally with regard to violence against women. It will not stop until we bring it out into the open. That is when we can really start to take those measures.
Sexual harassment of course is against the law. The Canadian Human Rights Commission very clearly makes that point. In ideal circumstances in many cases employers themselves have very specific guidelines and procedures through which an employee can go to get redress or hopefully be able to deal with the problem internally. That is obviously what we all encourage. All employers should have those kinds of guidelines with an independent person within the work place to whom victims can go, even if they are just disturbed by comments rather than actions. They can then bring the people together and make sure everyone understands the situation. Employers should have the appropriate training and orientation programs within the work place so people understand how language or actions can poison the work place and be offensive to people.
There are some very delicate issues around that. Sometimes what one person may perceive as harassment another does not. You will not really deal with that unless you get people talking around the table.
It was extremely interesting in my previous department when we got people around the table. Some people said: "I did not know doing that would be offensive to anyone. I am certainly prepared to change my ways." Obviously that is the ideal way to deal with these situations but it is not always possible. Some small companies do not have those procedures.
I want to make it very clear that no one, woman or man, should have to continue in employment as a victim of sexual harassment. There may be people watching today or reading this transcript who are in that situation. If there is no way within their work place to resolve the situation, they are absolutely and legitimately within

February 18, 1993
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their rights to leave that situation and be able to apply for unemployment insurance.
The question then becomes: What happens in a concern about how these issues might be dealt with? How might a woman feel going to the unemployment insurance office? One of the real improvements that is going to come about as a result of this new legislative package is that there will be-and indeed it is going on right now-an increased emphasis on the orientation and training of all the officers who deal with these issues. This legislation contains some very legislated procedures that will protect the privacy of an individual who is laying these complaints.
My own department, Status of Women Canada, has been brought in to these discussions. We have been working very closely with the Minister of Employment and Immigration and the Minister of Labour to ensure there are appropriate procedures. We have training packages which are now under way and I believe 75 per cent of the officers who deal with these cases are women. We make sure they have an understanding of the circumstances of sexual harassment, how you might deal with victims and some of the problems victims might face so they can deal with it in a very sensitive manner. I think there has been a lot of support and co-operation around that.
The guidelines make it very clear that the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the claimant. This is a very important point and I really do not think it has come out clearly enough at this point. In the circumstances of sexual harassment we are obviously talking about the victim. It is very clear. They are obviously not judges, but where there is conflicting information the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the claimant. I think that should really give some comfort to those who might be concerned about applying for unemployment insurance. They will be treated in a sensitive manner.
If for some reason a claim is not accepted at that first level it goes to the board of referees. As we see now in the legislation there are very specific provisions whereby the employer and the employee do not have to be in the same room. They can be separated. The hearings will be held without media or publicity which I think is very important in terms of the comfort level for victims. There is a very important strengthening of provisions that makes sense and will enable those, primarily women, to come forward in those circumstances.
The guidelines will also counsel the unemployment insurance agents to listen to claimants in a neutral and objective manner and recognize that situations such as sexual harassment may induce an employee to act out of panic or stress and there will be a lot of stress around them. They are instructed that in cases of sexual harassment the claimants will have the choice of talking to an officer of the same gender. Obviously, they may have a higher comfort level in doing that. A closed office is to be available for that interview to ensure the privacy of the information.
Again, just to re-emphasize a point, the guidelines are very clear in stating that UI agents are not in the business of determining who is right or wrong, innocent or guilty and the benefit of the doubt must be given to the claimant. In cases with conflicting information, the review process is to find in favour of the claimant. That certainly goes a long way toward dealing with these issues.
In addition to the issue of sexual harassment there are other just causes outlined in this legislation that are also very important. The obligation to care for a child was already in the old legislation but we have added as well, "or for a member of the immediate family". We are certainly aware of situations where a spouse or someone does have to leave their employment to provide that kind of care and support, and where it obviously can be considered as a just cause.
There is also the issue of antagonistic relations between an employee and a supervisor for which the employee is not primarily responsible. That is an issue of concern that has been raised by caucus colleagues. It also will give comfort to employees that in those situations they could-be considered to have just cause. This list that has been enumerated in the legislation provides that in addition to the enumerated reasons for just cause, other reasonable circumstances as prescribed by the Governor in Council can be added. This really does deal with the question of fairness.
I have heard from my own constituents, as I am sure many colleagues have as well, that people are really surprised. They say: "Good heavens, you mean up until now someone could just leave their job for no reason, just because they wanted to and after a period of time collect unemployment insurance". Most people think that is totally unacceptable. Ideally no one would do that and hopefully no one will. Then we will have the best of all worlds.
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Where they do in those particular circumstances, I do not see how any reasonable member of this House or of the public could say: "Oh well, it does not matter, they can just go and get UI". It was not the intention of UI nor do I think it is fair to the contributors, the employees, the employers and the general public who are involved in this program. UI is there for a very important specific purpose. It has been around for many, many years and will continue for many more years.
This bill with these changes can lead us forward by recognizing such issues as sexual harassment as well as verbal or physical harassment. There is a good definition that has been set out for harassment. Those persons who may be victims of harassment do not have to continue in those circumstances. They will be dealt with fairly at all stages of the process.
They will continue to be eligible for unemployment insurance and hopefully be able to get on with their lives. We can begin to deal more effectively with the whole issue of sexual harassment in the work place. This government believes it is a serious issue. It is one in which we all want to work together.
We want partnerships with employers, employees and unions to eradicate harassment from the work place so all individuals can be productive in their work lives without having to suffer from the fear or actuality of harassment and particularly sexual harassment.
That component of this bill combined with the broader measures to bring government spending under control is good news for the women of Canada. Women of Canada who are increasingly involved in the business community can take advantage of some of the new provisions that are being provided under our Small Businesses Loans Act. There is a time of grace when they will not have to contribute to UI and that will encourage the employment of more people. All of these measures will help us get our economy on track and encourage and improve the situation for women and all Canadians.


Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton -East Richmond):: Madam Speaker, I have listened attentively to the
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minister's intervention. Knowing her interest in the subject matter, I guess it would be safe to assume the minister had a fair amount to do with the provisions contained in this particular bill. I am making reference, of course, to the phrase and subject matter of sexual harassment.
Since the minister is responsible for the status of women, my first question is with regard to staff training. Since the minister has been so seized of the subject matter would she indicate to the House, in response to my question, how much money has been allotted for the purpose of training staff in order to make them more sensitive to the concerns which could be raised by potential claimants as they relate to sexual harassment? I am sure the minister has that in her briefing book.
The second question I ask the minister is that on page 2 of the news release from the minister, she indicated that the board of referees will be given a clear mandate. That is what the minister said: "a clear mandate with regard to the privacy of the victims".
In fact the news release says on page 2:
Boards of referees would be given clear authority to protect the privacy of victims of sexual or other harassment.
That is what the minister says. That is what the news release says but the law says something different. The law says:
That the chairperson of the board may direct that the hearing be held in camera or that the details concerning the circumstances not be published.
It is also discretionary for the applicant. I am not asking the minister to make a decision right now but would the minister consider the possibility of just changing that? Would she make it very clear that on the claimant's application it would say "shall" and not "it may" or "it may not"? I point out to the minister there is a discrepancy here.
There may be one kind of decision made by the board of referees in British Columbia and quite a different decision made by the board of referees in Newfoundland.

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I would suggest that the consistency to which the minister has referred would not be there. Perhaps the minister could respond to those two questions in full detail.


Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, I would like to advise my hon. colleague who raised the question of training, which is important. It is an area in which we have been developing this co-operation between our two departments. We are in the process, and it should probably be completed by now, of developing a national training package. It will be used to train about 17,000 unemployment insurance employees located at more than 440 Canada Employment Centres right across Canada.
Along with the package of materials for all employees, all staff who deal with claimants will also be attending a training workshop which will include video and discussion packages. It will involve the participation of local women's groups and persons with expertise on discrimination and sexual harassment.
These are going to be held across the country. We have been in close co-operation in developing this training package. The program is to be completed by April 1993, when the proposed legislation comes into effect.
We are also working on evaluation mechanisms, because they are important as well, to examine how the training is going and how effective it is. That will obviously be ongoing. The initial round will be for everyone and then we will be evaluating and determining what areas could be strengthened.
This is a very important plus. Quite honestly, I do not know if it has even been done in this way before. We certainly have not been involved to this extent before and we appreciate the opportunity. We have had a lot of experience in this area and have a lot of links back to the community.
I do not know exactly what the cost will be because a lot of it will be local. We will bring together people on a local basis and the national package materials will be funded by employment and immigration.
With respect to the issue of the board of referees, it is given the discretion. There could be circumstances in which it would not be appropriate. However, it is very clearly provided for in the legislation that upon the
application of the claimant these hearings can be held in private and without media attention, and that is very important. As I understand from past experience, these cases very rarely get to a board of referees and they are in fact adjudicated at that first level.
Given the circumstances I have already discussed about the benefit of the doubt it is unlikely that many will have to go to the board of referees. I hope not.


Mr. Neil Young (Beaches-Woodbine):: Madam Speaker, I would like to follow up on a case scenario my colleague for Timmins-Chapleau mentioned in his contribution. This scenario was also raised by the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond.
It centres around the whole question of just cause, particularly as it applies to sexual harassment. I have a case at the present time in which a young woman about two months ago was finally forced to quit her job because her employer was continually making remarks about her appearance.
He would grade her on a daily basis on a scale from one to ten. Today she looked like a nine and tomorrow she was graded as a number seven. This went on for six months. Although she requested him to stop he continued and persisted in doing so. It finally got to the point where she quit. She was immediately disqualified from receiving unemployment insurance benefits.
Subsequently, she appealed to the board of referees. She had the hearing. I told her to tell it exactly what was said and how it was said, et cetera. They overturned the disqualification and she was reinstated.
Now I want to deal with the comfort level. The board of referees forwards its decision to the employer. I do not think that is going to change under this system. The employer in turn appealed and is now under appeal to the umpire. He does not deny her story at all.
How will this change? This 21-year old woman had this indignity forced upon her in the first place. She had to go to the board of referees and explain. It overturned the decision, advised the employer of its decision, and he has now appealed it. It is a small work place and he went around and convinced other young women in that place of employment to write letters to the umpire saying that he did not sexually harass them. That is an exact case. On a privileged basis I am prepared to provide the minister with a copy of the decisions, letters, et cetera.
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Mary Collins: Madam Speaker, it is difficult to talk about a specific case. However, we anticipate that what will happen as a result of the training that will be done with the first level of officers is that there will perhaps be a greater sensitization to issues of harassment.
Let me share with the House what harassment is, because sometimes people do not quite understand the definitions that are being used. Harassment, sexual or otherwise, is improper behaviour. The person directing the behaviour ought to have known it would be unwelcome. Harassment may be verbal, physical, deliberate and unsolicited. It may consist of only one incident or a series of incidents that demean, belittle and/or cause personal humiliation or embarrassment.
Harassment also includes abuse of power through the injurious exercise of authority for the purpose of compromising a person's employment. Acts of intimidation, threats, blackmail or coercion are also forms of harassment. Whether it is sexual or not and whether it happens once or more often, harassment cannot be tolerated.
These are the kinds of guidelines that are now being provided. I think they are going to give a much broader understanding of what harassment is to all officers so that these situations can be dealt with much more quickly and expeditiously at the first level and then not require appeals.


Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace):: Madam Speaker, we are discussing Bill C-113, which is a bill dealing with unemployment insurance and other matters. It is a bill which attempts to correct many of the mistakes that the government made a few weeks ago in presenting Bill C-105, again relating to the unemployment insurance matter.
In effect Bill C-113 is an admission that the government bungled Bill C-105, that it moved in a clumsy way in drafting that bill and that it moved too quickly. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the policies of the Reform Party, which is threatening some of the Conservative candidates in the west. Therefore the government put forward these reactionary provisions in Bill C-105 concerning unemployment insurance. Now it has realized it was wrong and it is attempting to correct them.
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While these changes in Bill C-113 are an improvement they are still not right, and I would like to explain why they are still not right. First, in Bill C-105 the government was going to reduce the benefits to the unemployed from 60 per cent of their income to 57 per cent, up to a maximum of $447 a week.
Second, Bill C-105 was going to completely cut off from unemployment insurance those who presumably left their jobs without cause and those who were fired for misconduct.
Bill C-113 has kept the cut from 60 per cent to 57 per cent for benefits but only for two years, until April 1995. One might ask why the government is making this cut to 57 per cent of salaries in the middle of one of the worst recessions that we have ever faced in this country.
There are over one million people unemployed. They are struggling to put food on the table, feed their children, pay their rent, and meet the basic costs of their families and the government is cutting the benefit from 60 per cent to 57 per cent for two years, and then it will once again return the benefits to 60 per cent when hopefully we will be in better times. This is something that is not acceptable. We will continue to oppose that measure.
With respect to the second and probably just as controversial part of its policies, which is the provisions that would totally prohibit from unemployment insurance those who leave their jobs without just cause or who are fired for misconduct, the government has made some improvements. For example, it will set out in the law additional grounds defining just cause. That is good. It is good the government put that in the law. It will provide that in harassment cases, sexual and otherwise, these hearings will be held in private. That is a good thing, because sometimes the claimants do not wish to discuss matters of sexual harassment, in particular, in public. Providing that this be done in private is an improvement.
The government is also providing in Bill C-113 that those who leave a job in order to preserve other jobs in the company or firm will not be denied unemployment insurance.

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Despite those minor improvements, and they are improvements, the bill is still not acceptable because the penalty is still excessive. It is still an excessive and harsh penalty when we consider that just cause is not always clear. It is very often a grey area. It is very hard to prove and it is time consuming. It takes at least two to three months in the appeal process to prove that one has just cause when one leaves a job.
There was a case in Montreal in which it took up to two years of pursuing the appeal process before the applicant won his case and proved just cause.
In effect, this is a situation in which the application, the employee, is presumed guilty until he proves his innocence. It is presumed that when people leave a job they are leaving without just cause, that they simply want to goof off, and that most people who leave jobs simply want to goof off. It is presumed that they are guilty and that they are in that position. They must go through the whole process of proving: "No, I did not just goof off. I had just cause". That is not an easy job.
The individual must put together the proof, must get witnesses and documents and go before a board of referees or an arbiter to prove that it did have just cause. It is time consuming, expensive, and extremely difficult. Meanwhile, the individual has no income even though he or she may have just cause during the whole period of time that he or she is trying to prove just cause.
We are saying that to totally deny benefits to these individuals is an excessive, unreasonable, and harsh penalty, which was never in the law before. We in this party are not saying that there should not be a penalty for those who leave their jobs without just cause. There has always been a penalty in the law. The Liberal Party started the unemployment insurance program. For years we had in the law a penalty of one to six weeks, which was discretionary depending on the seriousness of the case.
The officials in the department could assign a penalty of one to six weeks. It was usually an average of two to three weeks in addition to the two-week waiting period for those people who left their jobs without cause. This was a reasonable penalty considering that many cases are difficult to prove and so on.
In 1990 the government changed that penalty to one of seven to twelve weeks. We opposed it at the time saying that it was an excessive penalty. At the time we said that we would have accepted extending the range from one to
twelve weeks but not setting the minimum at seven weeks because there were cases in which it may be desirable to give a two or three-week penalty. However, the government moved from a penalty of one to six weeks to one of seven to twelve weeks.
That was only two years ago. Now all of a sudden the government is proposing an absolute denial of benefits. There will be no range of penalties but simply a total denial of benefits when a person leaves a job without just cause.
One might have expected that maybe the government would have once again extended the range, let us say from a seven-week penalty to perhaps a total denial of benefits, and then the officials and board of referees could make a decision as to what was a just penalty in the case before them.
However, the government has eliminated any possibility of discretion and has not allowed the board of referees of the department to say: "Well, yes you left but this case is in a grey area. You have not been able to totally prove just cause so we will give you a five or eight-week penalty".
The government has to totally deny benefits in situations which are not always clear cut, which are very difficult to prove, very time consuming and expensive. Meanwhile, the individual is left without benefits.
In this debate the government has completely forgotten that there is another rule in the Unemployment Insurance Act, which is that in order to keep collecting unemployment insurance people must always be ready and available for work. If they show that they are not ready and available for work then they are cut off from unemployment insurance benefits.
We in the Liberal Party are not protesting that rule. It has been in the act for years and years. The government is presuming that if people quit their jobs for good reasons they are just going to sit at home and not try to get work. That is not the case. The law requires that once people are on unemployment insurance, once they receive it and have been proven eligible, and if they have suffered a temporary penalty if required, then during the period they are receiving unemployment insurance they must be searching for work. They must be ready and available for work. They cannot say: "I have retired. I do not want to work. I am going on a holiday to Florida" or "I am just going to sit home and write books".
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They must always be ready and available for work. If it is shown that they are not ready and available for work or if they refuse jobs in their own profession or trade then they are cut off completely.
Why is there the necessity of this massive and excessive penalty against those who leave their jobs when just cause is not always clear cut?
I want to repeat that we believe in a penalty for quitting without just cause. There has always been a penalty in the law for quitting without just cause, but it was a reasonable penalty. First it was one to six weeks and then it was changed to seven to twelve weeks.
The other day in the House I asked the minister why after two years he decided that seven to twelve weeks was not harsh enough and why he is moving to a total denial of benefits. He never answered the question. Was there an evaluation done of the penalty put in the law in 1990 which showed that people were sitting at home goofing off and going to Florida? He did not give us any evidence to that effect. There were no studies, no evaluations made and no impact studies.
We know what it was. There is a Reform Party now in the west, and it has an excessive reactionary policy on these things. That party was putting pressure on Conservative candidates in the western provinces and in part of Ontario. To respond to those voters in those ridings, without thinking and without really looking at it very closely the government threw this on the table. Now it has admitted it is wrong and it is backtracking to a certain extent, but it is not backtracking enough.
What the government has forgotten in the whole debate is that if people are not always ready and available for work while they are receiving payments, while they are considered eligible, then they can be cut off.
Every year thousands are cut off because they are not ready and available for work. That is a rule of our system. We in the Liberal Party do not oppose that principle. We put that in the law. We put penalties in the law, but we believe in reasonable penalties considering the seriousness of the situation and the fact that just cause is not always easy to prove and is not always clear cut.
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The government has said it is doing this because in recent months and recent years there has been a tremendous drain on the unemployment insurance fund. That is a real laugh.
In 1990 what did the government do? Before 1990 there were three groups that contributed to the unemployment insurance fund. Workers and employers contributed to the fund, and the government contributed to the fund when the unemployment rate went over, I believe, 6 per cent. Prior to 1990 the contribution by the government was $2.8 billion. What happened in 1990? In 1984 when this Conservative government was elected it began to cut the payments for training and retraining. Every year from 1984 to 1990 it cut the money available for retraining.
All of a sudden there was a lot of criticism of the government by people saying there was not enough money available for training. The de Grandpre commission report said more money had to be put into training. The free trade agreement had been approved and there was a need for more money for training. The government started searching around for more money for training. It looked at the unemployment insurance fund and saw that it had a surplus of $3 billion.
It amended the law in Bill C-21 and did away with the government's contribution to the unemployment insurance fund but took the $3 billion and put it into training. It took that amount out of moneys that were supposed to be for workers when they were unemployed and put it into training. Then it boasted about what a great government it was for contributing to the training programs in the country and about how much it did for training.
In 1990 when it hijacked the unemployment insurance fund of $3 billion for training it only brought the training budgets back to what they were in 1984 before it cut them so badly between 1984 and 1990.
It was quite a laughable matter to listen to the previous speaker, the minister from British Columbia, suggest that we believe that the unemployment insurance fund should be used for other matters than for the unemployed. It was her government, supported by herself and others, that agreed to change the unemployment insurance fund, take $3 billion out of the fund and use it for training.

February 18, 1993
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Prior to 1990 the unemployment insurance fund worked so that in good times when unemployment was low there was a surplus in the unemployment insurance fund. That is why there was a $3 billion surplus in 1989-1990. There was a surplus in the fund. When things became bad, as they are now and have been for the last two years, the fund would use up that surplus and go into a deficit. However, in the long run the fund remained rather stable. There was a surplus in good times and a deficit in poor times. In the long run the contributions to the fund, with the government contribution, kept it at a reasonable level.
Now the government says the fund is in a terrible deficit so it is going to cut benefits, cut people off and so on. The reason the fund is in difficulty is that the government hijacked the fund in 1990 and decided to use a great percentage of it for training.
We in the opposition were all for training, but we agreed that training, like education, should be paid for by the entire taxpaying population of the country and not just by workers who contribute to a fund. They alone should not pay for training programs.
We objected to Bill C-21 at the time. We still object to the principle on which it was based.
Bill C-113 does not correct the problems. There are some improvements in Bill C-113 but it does not correct them. The government is shifting a further burden to the provinces and the municipalities with respect to welfare and social assistance.
People who will not get unemployment insurance as a result of this bill will have to live. We are not a country that leaves people dying on the streets from starvation. They will be picked up by the provincial welfare system, and in Ontario and Nova Scotia by the municipal welfare systems. Their deficits for these matters are growing by great percentages each year because of the shifting of burden to them.
When I raised this the other day in the opposition day debate a government member got up, took issue with me and said that what I said was not true. The member said that the government is giving increased sums of money to the provinces and municipalities. It is probably correct that in dollar terms the amounts the government is
giving in 1992-93 are greater than it gave in 1990-91. However, in percentage terms it has cut back on what it should be giving and it is leaving a greater percentage of the burden with the provinces and municipalities. They have a much greater burden than they have had to deal with in the past.
We are in a very grave situation. Over 1 million Canadians have been unemployed for more than a year now. One would think that the principal thrust of the government's legislation and policies would be to put these people to work. My colleague from Toronto spoke of the very sad situation with respect to young Canadians coming out of universities and colleges with degrees and not being able to find work or working for minimum wages in fast food outlets and so on. One would think that its highest priority would be to create jobs and work for Canadians.
However, what is it doing? It is cutting unemployment insurance benefits from 60 to 57 per cent during this period of high unemployment. It is making it more difficult for those who leave jobs for just cause, and I say for just cause, harassment or whatever, because even though it says in the law that people get unemployment insurance benefits if they have just cause it leaves them with the great difficulty of proving it over a long period of time, which is a difficult and serious burden. That is what the government is doing when it should be doing more positive things to put Canadians back to work.
The jobs that are available to Canadians more and more are low-paying, non-union jobs without benefits. They are service jobs that do not compare at all with the industrial jobs that many Canadians had a few years ago.
Unemployment insurance was introduced in 1941 following the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 1930s there was no unemployment insurance and very little social assistance. The thousands and thousands of people who were laid off had to go to soup kitchens and bread lines and had to use up their savings. Many people lost their homes and sold their furniture because there was no unemployment insurance. Canadians in all provinces said: "We do not want to see that again" so they agreed to an amendment that gave responsibility for unemployment insurance to the federal government and we started the unemployment insurance program.
February 18, 1993

The unemployment insurance program was a great step forward for Canada, if we look back at the period before we had it. It is not only good for the workers who lose their jobs, because it helps them to put bread on the table, pay their rent, and take care of their children during that period of unemployment, but it is also good for the whole community because it keeps money in circulation. It is good for the corner store. It is good for the person who is renting homes because they do not go bankrupt. We avoid the snowball effect that happened in the 1930s when a whole community went under because there was no unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance economically sustains the whole community during periods of unemployment.
While this bill is an improvement on Bill C-105 it is still not good enough. Unless the government improves it even more we are still going to oppose it.


Mr. Jean-Marc Robitaille (Terrebonne):: Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to the hon. member who said, in concluding, that when unemployment insurance was introduced, it was a good thing for the unemployed. It still is. As far as we know, people who lose their jobs will always be able to receive unemployment insurance benefits. In fact, I think the hon. member is making a mountain out of a mole hill, and even engaging in demagogy.
In the bill before the House today, eight valid reasons have been added for quitting one's employment. These apply to more than 40 situations that are considered to be just cause for quitting one's job on a voluntary basis, including adoption, pregnancy, union activities, going into business or becoming self-employed, moving to get married, a job that would require a person to work away from his family, and so forth. After exhausting all these possibilities, a person who decides to quit voluntarily without just cause, without provocation, will be assumed, according to this bill, to be the author of his own misfortune, and Canadian workers should not have to pay for that person.
Finally, the hon. member is actually saying he is fully prepared to pay for people who voluntarily quit their jobs and abuse the system. Considering the deficit in the unemployment insurance fund, it is clear the federal government has to borrow on international markets to be able to finance that particular deficit and the Canadian deficit. What is the result? The result is that your
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children and my children and future generations will be saddled with a debt that was created because we did not have the guts to put some teeth into the system.
My question to the hon. member is very straightforward. Does he really mean what he and his party are saying, when he rises in the House and says that he disagrees with our proposal to put some teeth into the system and make people who create their own misfortune, their own situation, bear the cost? That is how insurance works. Madam Speaker, have you ever seen a person who set his house on fire get compensation from the insurance company? What we are saying is that someone who sets his house on fire, who voluntarily quits his job without just cause, should not expect the workers of this country to pay his keep. Does the hon. member really mean it when he says we should maintain the status quo, ignore the deficit and keep raising the national debt and mortgaging the lives of future generations?


William Warren Allmand: Madam Speaker, as I and members of this party have said several times in our speeches, we believe in a penalty for those who quit without just cause, but the penalty has to be reasonable in consideration of the fact that just cause is often a grey area. It often is not clear cut, is very difficult to prove, takes a long time, and so on.
We do believe in a penalty that is reasonable. We believe in such reasonable penalties because we know, and the hon. member should know as well but he does not seem to, that even if you get unemployment insurance after, let us say, a penalty of five or six weeks you have to be ready and available for work. If you are not ready and available for work, then you can be totally denied unemployment insurance.
I would like to ask the hon. member a question, but he will not be able to answer. Maybe members of his party will be able to answer when they speak further in this debate. In 1990, just two years ago, the government did not seem to have this view of the unemployment insurance system. What it did was it extended the range of weeks of penalty to those who quit without just cause. At that time, two years ago, the government did not seem to think it was necessary to totally deny unemployment insurance benefits to those who might quit in a very difficult situation, because it was realized that they had to be ready and available for work and if they were not they would be denied benefits altogether.

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I could ask the hon. member, as I did in my speech, where were the evaluation studies or where were the impact studies of the government which showed that what it did two years ago was not working? We were not given any such study. No, there is no basis for what it has proposed in Bill C-105 and in Bill C-113, this total denial of benefits.
A Conservative government was in place under the right hon. member for Yellowhead in 1979. He did not take the same point of view as this Mulroney government today that unemployment insurance benefits should be totally denied to those who quit. The Diefen-baker government in the late fifties and early sixties never took that point of view.
For years we have had unemployment insurance with reasonable penalties for those who quit without just cause. Reasonable penalties, because we knew there was another rule that you had to be ready and available for work.
Our policy in this party has been the mainstream policy of all parties for a number of years now, including the Conservative Party. It is the Conservative Party that has done an absolute flip-flop on these things from what it did two years ago. It has brought in this absolute denial of benefits to those who quit without just cause.
We agree that those who quit without just cause should be penalized, but it should not be an absolute excessive penalty. It should be a reasonable penalty considering that those people will still have to be ready and available for work.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
I would like to preface my comments and my question by saying that I have a great deal of respect for that member. I consider him to be one of the senior members in this House and someone who has been here for many, many debates and for the many, many changes in legislation which have passed through this place.
At the same time, I would like to ask the hon. member a question. When he talks about the reduction of benefits from 60 per cent to 57 per cent, he refers to unemployment insurance as being a buffer, a stimulant for the economy in a community that is being hit hard by
unemployment insurance. It helps people pay rent. It helps people put food on the table, et cetera. He is absolutely right.
I would like the hon. member to give me, if he can, his party's position. He has declared his position in that he opposes the reduction. In asking for his party's position, I remind the hon. member, who was probably in cabinet in 1978, it was the Liberal Party that reduced the benefits from 66-2/3 per cent to 60 per cent. At that time the Hon. Bud Cullen was the Minister of Employment and Immigration. He said that one of the reasons it was being reduced was to encourage people to stay at work, so that they would not quit, loaf and be on unemployment insurance.
I would like the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace to give us his explanation as to what his party's position is going to be in terms of the reduction in benefits. I doubt it very much but those members seem to think they are going to form the next government. I would like to ask the hon. member if that happens by some magical reason, will those members reintroduce benefits at the 66-2/3 per cent level in order that people are not put through undue hardships as a result of being unemployed?


William Warren Allmand: Madam Speaker, the comments I made during my speech represent our party's policy.
We are opposed to the cut from 60 per cent to 57 per cent. It will be noted that in Bill C-113 this cut which was supposed to be an ongoing cut has now been limited to two years. We are opposed to that cut as a party. If we were to form the government, we would put it back to 60 per cent. Maybe at one time or another we would have a review of the unemployment insurance system and consider other ranges as well. We are not committed at this time to restoring it to 66 per cent. I have to be honest with the hon. member on that. What the exact amount of entitlement should be is open to debate.
Obviously no unemployment insurance system pays workers 100 per cent of what they were getting when they were employed. They are paid 75 per cent, 60 per cent, 66 per cent, or whatever. He is correct that in 1978 our party cut the payments from 66 per cent to 60 per cent. I can tell the hon. member I have not always been in full agreement with things done in our party, but overall I think our party's programs are better than any other party's program.
February 18, 1993

He is a member from Ontario. I would not be surprised if he does not agree with all things that are now being done by the NDP government in Ontario. He may think it is the best possible government for Ontario. I would be surprised if he agreed with everything that it has done recently. It has not done everything that I would expect it to do as a government in Ontario. It made a few cuts here and there that were not expected and that were never talked about when that party was in opposition.
Our party policy is that the rate should be 60 per cent at least. Perhaps we would agree to review that as a government to see if there is a more reasonable or a more just rate, but we are not committed to returning to 66 per cent. I appreciate that 66 per cent put more money in the pockets of the unemployed, but at the time the minister must have been balancing one thing off against the other.
We are opposed to this cut at this time. We think to bring in this cut now when we have over one million Canadians unemployed is totally ridiculous.


An hon. member:: In the fifth year of its mandate.


William Warren Allmand: Yes, in the fifth year of its mandate. It is obviously a reaction to the policies of the Reform Party threatening the government's candidates in the west. There is no doubt about it. It was badly thought out, badly conceived and now the government is back-tracking and trying to correct the mistakes it made in Bill C-105.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The period for questions and comments has now expired.
It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
The House took recess at 1 p.m.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island -Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, the recent announcement that 1,200 public servants have been terminated by the Department of Supply and Services is to be followed by 1,700 more Public Service jobs to be lost within that department.
This a penny wise and pound foolish Conservative government. It has over its nine years in office demoralized the Public Service of Canada. It has destroyed a long proud record of public service to Canadians. The Tories have not saved Canadians any money with these cuts.
The goal for the Tory government is to scapegoat the Public Service. The goal for the Tory government is to privatize public services to provide additional patronage for its friends already too deeply gorged with public patronage and public taxpayers' dollars.
We call on the government to end this practice of destroying the Public Service of Canada.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Jean-Marc Robitaille: Mr. Speaker, a press release issued by the National Media Archive on February 16, 1993 says: "CBC sources misled the public on the changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act announced in last December's Economic and Fiscal Statement. This is the primary finding of a soon to be released study conducted by the National Media Archive on CBC's and CTV's national news coverage of Don Mazankowski's mini budget".
It also says: "On the December 2, 1992 newscast, CBC quoted Judy Rebick's false claim that victims of harassment would be ineligible to collect UI benefits under the proposed changes. CBC not only failed to refute the statement in the remainder of the story but has continued to report these allegations as if they were true." That is from the press release.
Canadian taxpayers fund the CBC to the tune of nearly $1.3 billion. I think this study's finding on the quality of information that the CBC should provide is

February 18, 1993
very important. I therefore ask the CRTC and Keith Spicer to consider this issue seriously. Canadians are entitled to expect that our national networks will provide quality, unbiased information and report the facts.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Mr. Guy H. Arseneault (Restigouche -Chaleur):: Mr. Speaker, today I challenge the Canada Post Corporation to abandon its policy of closing all rural Canadian post offices.
Under the corporation's natural opportunities policy, all rural post offices are slated for closure when the natural opportunity of retirement, resignation or death of a postmaster occurs.
This policy is seriously flawed and short-sighted. It does not allow for the examination of the particular situation of a community. When a natural opportunity presents itself, the corporation moves and closes the post office.

Canada Post announced that it would close the post office in Pointe-Verte, in my riding of Restigouche- Chaleur. The corporation is still going ahead with this disastrous policy.
I oppose this policy and the closure of the post office in Pointe-Verte. I urge the government to order Canada Post to abandon forthwith its policy of closing post offices.


INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to inform you that an organization in my riding, the Societe de cooperation pour le developpement international (SOCODEVI), has developed several original initiatives for International Development Week, an activity sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency.
To help Canadians understand the issues of development and international co-operation, SOCODEVI has
done various things to inform the public and raise awareness in the riding of Quebec-Est and in several other regions of Quebec.
Also, with the co-operation of the Agropur co-operative, a message on International Development Week is being carried throughout February on more than seven million milk cartons all over Quebec.
This initiative shows the interest that private organizations have in working closely with international development groups to provide a better future for all.


TORONTO ECONOMY
Hon.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, in the past two years over 100,000 jobs have been lost in metro Toronto, many of them never to return. In addition millions of square metres of office space sit empty. Almost $200 million in property taxes are due by companies that have gone bankrupt.
Tomorrow at the economic summit metro Chair Tonks and the six mayors are likely to ask Ottawa to declare Toronto an international banking centre like Vancouver and Montreal, to remove the federal freeze on transfer payments to Ontario, to invest in research and development for the advancement of rapid transit technology, to help redevelop the railway lands to enable urban intensification in the city, to clean up the polluted Toronto harbour from toxic contamination and hopefully to improve the aging sewer infrastructure.
We urge this government to help kick-start the metro economy. When Toronto thrives, Canada thrives. When Toronto suffers, Canada suffers.


Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, MSV Resources of the Corpomin group announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement in principle with Westminer, a mining company, whereby MSV would by the Copper Rand and Portage mines and the processing plant in Chibougamau from Westminer.
February 18, 1993

With this acquisition, MSV, which has a mining concession in Eastmain, north of Lake Mistissini, will produce
45,000	ounces of gold and 11 million pounds of copper a year and own a smelter with a capacity of 3,000 tonnes a day.
MSV announced that the transaction was preceded by an agreement on salary reductions for some 300 miners who lost their jobs when two plants closed on November 26, 1992.
On behalf of the mine workers, I want to thank the Mayor of Chibougamau, Ronald Blackburn, the James Bay Development Corporation, a dynamic minister in the Quebec government, Lise Bacon, and federal member of Parliament and Minister of National Health and Welfare for their work on this issue.


FORESTRY INDUSTRY
Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, the importance of forestry to the economy of Canada is really Canada's best kept secret. The forestry industry which is the production of newsprint, kraft, fine papers, container board, and softwood lumber from two-by-fours to the finest plywood made for furniture is Canada's single largest industry.
The forestry industry provides over 750,000 jobs for all Canadians. There are over 8,000 businesses from small family sawmills to large corporations whose main purpose for being is the forestry industry.
Forestry is the main employer in over 350 small communities in Canada. It creates over $35 billion worth of wealth in our country and almost $20 billion of that is in export sales. Need I say more?
I ask this government and the governments of every province and every territory to protect this valuable Canadian resource, to protect this valuable Canadian industry, to assist it to expand its horizons and thereby create more jobs for all Canadians.


WORLD VISION FAMINE
Hon. David MacDonald (Rosedale):: Mr. Speaker, last month I wrote members urging them to support World Vision's 30-hour famine.
For the past 15 years World Vision Canada has encouraged teenagers across the country to abstain from eating solid food for 30 hours in an effort to raise awareness of the issues of Third World hunger.
Today I want to urge all Canadians through Parliament to support this worth-while venture. Last year the 30-hour famine involved 100,000 students across Canada and raised over $2 million.
World Vision is committed to emergency relief, the supplying of food, medicines, and supplies in situations of disaster and natural famine. It is also committed to long-term sustainable development.
Young people participating tomorrow and through Saturday will learn what lies behind the gnawing hunger that is a reality for millions of men, women and children every day in this world. They learn that they can do something about it. By inviting their families and friends to support them they also discover the benefits of being an advocate for the poor. By participating in this 30-hour famine young people become proactive in the program of experience, learning and sharing.
World Vision is proud of the kids who support and promote the 30-hour famine. They are tomorrow's leaders but they are making a difference today.


ARTS AND CULTURE
Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina-Qu'Appelle):: Mr. Speaker, earlier today at the National Arts Centre, a map of Canada was raised with over 200,000 signatures of Canadians from all regions demanding a halt to the cuts in arts and culture.
Since the election of the present government there has been a steady decrease in support to the arts. The arts community understands the dire conditions of our country's financial situation but it wonders about the economic management and wisdom of the government. While programs like the $4.4 billion for 50 helicopters are not cut and megadollars continue to be poured into

February 18, 1993
white elephant megaprojects, the government however cuts funding to the arts and cultural industries.
The arts and cultural industries provide jobs to over
346,000	Canadians, return $17 billion to the Canadian economy and earn $1.3 billion in annual cultural exports.
This government's misplaced priorities will mean orchestras, theatre companies and galleries will have to close resulting in job loss and less productivity within the arts and cultural industries.
Canadians who have signed the largest petition ever presented by the arts community demand that the funds which have been cut be restored.
Canada has a strong and vibrant arts and cultural industry. Canadians are telling this government: "Do not destroy it".


ARMED FORCES
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring to the attention of this House the most unusual thing that has occurred to our Armed Forces.
Because we do not have enough regular troops to replace the ones in Yugoslavia and other areas, we are training reservists to be able to replace the regular force if necessary.
This House is aware that for almost two years the people of Annapolis and Digby counties along with the elected officials, both provincial and federal, have sought to add peacekeeping training to CFB Cornwallis.
What did this government allow our Armed Forces to do to train 826 reservists and regular troops? It allowed them to be sent from Manitoba to California to be trained for peacekeeping.
Imagine what that says to the rest of the world about Canada's ability for peacekeeping training. Imagine what it says to the people in the Armed Forces and to a place like CFB Cornwallis that does recruit training. Imagine what it says to the laid-off people and the businesses in the CFB Cornwallis area.
It makes absolutely no sense to send 826 Canadians to California to be trained in peacekeeping when we have the facilities in Canada.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE REFORM
Charles A. Langlois: Mr. Speaker, today Canadians have an example of a government that listened to their representations after Bill C-105 was tabled.
A special committee of the PC caucus conveyed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration the legitimate concerns expressed by Canadians. The committee members also made specific recommendations not only on the amendments proposed in the bill but also on several other points concerning the administration of unemployment insurance.
The minister listened to the committee and took its recommendations into account. That is why we have tabled the new Bill, C-113 which responds appropriately to the earnest representations we received.
This is the result of the serious work done by a committee of Progressive Conservative members and the open-mindedness of the minister.


MARKET VALUE ASSESSMENT
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, literally thousands of residents in my riding of York West have been attending giant sized meetings and rallies to protest the increasing amount of property taxes and particularly to protest and outcry the decision of the Ontario New Democratic government to block market value assessment.
Market value assessment would have meant that for the residents in my riding over 80 per cent of those households would have seen a reduction in their property taxes.
The New Democratic Party purports to be the party of working class Canadians and the party that suggests day in and day out it is prepared to reform the system. The blockage of market value assessment by the New Demo-
February 18, 1993

cratic government in the province of Ontario is absolutely irresponsible.
I call on the premier of that province and of that government to reconsider and to give working and middle-class Canadians in my riding and countless other communities in metro a legitimate break. They have been paying too much for many years and now the New Democratic Party is forcing them to continue to pay those illegitimate costs.


TORONTO ECONOMY
Hon. Alan Redway (Don Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, employment in the Toronto region is now just over 90 per cent of its pre-recession level. In the rest of Canada employment has returned to 99 per cent of its pre-recession level.
The Toronto region represents one-sixth of Canada's population and about one-fifth of its total economy. Therefore Toronto must recover before Canada will truly return to prosperity.
The economic downturn has however created an opportunity. The fall in commercial and industrial real estate prices has made the region much more internationally competitive than it was during the late 1980s. Metro Toronto wants to take advantage of this by building a new international trade centre. A new trade centre in T'aipei boosted the entire economy of Taiwan. A new trade centre in Toronto can do the same for the Canadian economy.
Hopefully our government will be prepared to help Toronto to help Canada.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Mr. Speaker, fair is fair and some issues should never be partisan.
Just as Jean Pelletier was wrong in his judgment about politics and race, and his views condemned, so too should be the views of those who have explicitly agreed with him such as that self-styled New Democratic pundit on CTV.
We should condemn as well the parliamentary secretary-remember the member for Athabasca-and his Tory colleagues on the employment and immigration committee who not only acted in an unusual way to suppress from public view testimony concerning discrimination in the Immigration and Refugee Board, but proceeded to treat the witnesses in the same inappropriate way about which refugees too often complain.
All of them are wrong. All have sullied the image of the Canada that I love.


Mr. Speaker:: I am taking nothing away from the matter which the hon. member raises. While names were not named, I do not think it would be very hard to identify them. The imputation of motive was certainly very strong in the statement.
I listened carefully but I would ask hon. members to be very careful when they are making statements to keep in mind the strictures which bind us and that is there should be no personal attacks in member's statements.


LOBBYISTS
Mr. Scott Thorkelson (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, on Tbesday the Eamscliffe Strategy Group appeared before the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
An allegation was raised by the Eamscliffe group concerning the objectivity of a member of the press corps. It was alleged that Mark Kennedy, a reporter from The Ottawa Citizen had contacted Gordon Ashworth, who is the campaign director for the Liberal Party, concerning recent articles Mr. Kennedy wrote about the relationship between lobbying firms and government.
Mr. Kennedy pointedly asked Mr. Ashworth if Michael Robinson, a member of the Eamscliffe Group and also affiliated with the Liberal Party, was upset about the stories that had appeared in The Ottawa Citizens.
When Mr. Ashworth replied yes, indeed, Michael Robinson was less than happy about the coverage, the Citizen reporter stated that Mr. Robinson should not be upset because, and I quote: "the purpose of these stories was not to get to the Liberal Party but in fact to embarrass the Tory government".
It is small wonder that the Canadian public is disillusioned with politicians when stories are written or fabricated by the press corps with the express intent of embarrassing the government.

February 18, 1993
Oral Questions
I call on The Ottawa Citizen to conduct an internal investigation of this allegation regarding Mr. Kennedy's journalistic practices.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Yesterday, we saw an extraordinary contrast. President Clinton introduced measures to create up to 500,000 jobs, to stimulate the economy, to raise taxes for those earning over $100,000 and to spare families earning less than $30,000. Here in Canada on the same day, the worn-out, tired Conservative government created no jobs and attacked the unemployed who make $253 a week on average.
Does the minister really think that he can fool the people of Canada as easily as he fooled the Conservative caucus?

Hon. Don Ma/.ankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance): Mr. Speaker, as usual the hon. member's interpretation and allegations are absolutely
false.
What I heard last night in President Clinton's address to the nation was a program to provide stimulus to strengthen the economic recovery, a program of targeted investments in people, training, infrastructure, technology and equipment.
That is precisely what we undertook to do in the December statement. We took steps to invest in people, to invest in infrastructure, to enhance the small business sector activity, to enhance trade, to enhance research and development. We talked about partnerships with labour, with business and with the provinces. We froze salaries. We continued our program of de-scoping government and scaling down the operations of government, streamlining agencies. We put forward a deficit reduction plan.
Clearly the President of the United States believes that the deficit and the debt are important considerations, key to economic growth, key to bringing down
interest rates, and key to investment. In that regard, it is really very little different from the plan we announced in December. The only difference is that they propose to tax and tax very heavily. We provided tax relief.


Sheila Maureen Copps: There have been 34 new taxes since 1984, Mr. Speaker. I wish the minister would go to the people and let them judge this government on its tax record. President Clinton said quite clearly last night that people earning under $30,000 a year would be spared.
In fact, this week in a bill put before the House, the Minister of Employment and Immigration is asking those people who earn on average $253 a week to take a 3 per cent cut in light of the government's deficit position.
How does the government justify attacking the unemployed, whose average salary currently is $253 a week? Why is the President of the United States kick-starting the economy and the Prime Minister of Canada kicking the unemployed?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, again the hon. member is outdated. She is talking about horrendous tax increases. Yes, there were some tax increases. Surely she would not expect the Canadian people to go on with the policy the Liberals had in place which provided for the expenditure of $1.33 for every dollar's worth of revenue that was being taken in and that generated a $38 billion deficit.
She talks about low income people. I remind the hon. member that under tax reform a number-850,000 families, I believe-were taken off the tax rolls. People earning under $30,000 have their GST refunded to them. The child benefit program helps the working poor. It targets the money from the rich to the working poor to help them raise their families and stay in the labour force. Those are very positive and progressive policies.
The hon. member should go back and read up on some of the programs and plans that we have put in place.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, the minister knows perfectly well that in Montreal, one family in four is living on welfare thanks to his economic policies. Last night, President Clinton announced a program to create at least 500,000 jobs. Here in Canada, although the Liberal Party has been asking repeatedly in the past year for a municipal infrastructures program that could provide that kind of boost for the Canadian economy, it has yet to materialize.
February 18, 1993

Again, I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister how he can justify cutting benefits to people who are earning $253 a week, while he does not take anything from people earning more than $100,000?
[English ]


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Clinton's shortterm proposals provide for $3 billion in highway investments, $2.5 billion in community development block grants, $845 million in waste water clean-up initiatives and a temporary incremental investment tax credit.
We have provided for an infrastructure program that will invest some $2 billion and create some 4,000 to 5,000 jobs every year in strategic investment. Based on the size of the two economies, we have contributed more to the infrastructure program than has President Clinton. Also, the additional investments in research and development, the electronic highway and the investment in the microwave landing system are investments in infrastructure. They are investments to create new job activity and new opportunities for Canadians.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of employment.
The many changes to the UI legislation proposed by the minister only fooled the Quebec Tory caucus. The fact remains that the proposed changes to the UI act do not guarantee that a person who deserves UI benefits will get them. This is the most fundamental flaw of this legislation.
Will the minister abandon this ridiculous approach toward deficit reduction and so-called UI reform and withdraw this bill?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. .Speaker, if the hon. member is suggesting that those people who voluntarily leave their jobs should qualify for benefits under the Unemploy-
Oral Questions
ment Insurance Program, paid for by the workers and the employers of Canada, I have to tell him no, we will not accept the position of the Liberal Party.


Maurizio Bevilacqua: Mr. Speaker, I am suggesting that while this government was trying to figure out whether the demonstrators in Montreal were separatist, whether it would set up a UI snitch line or UI police, the reality of this tragic comedy is that there are
1.6	million Canadians waiting for this government to take the leadership and put them back to work.
Why do you not address the number one problem of this country which is unemployment?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, what we have done in this bill is clarify a number of the issues that were raised.
We particularly clarified the distortions and the misinformation that was perpetuated by the members opposite and by other critics of the program. We have clarified the issue and we hope that the hon. member will now support it.
There is some very positive action on the trade front which is good for jobs. In the manufacturing sector-


Mr. Nault:: What are you going to say now?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: I know good news is not welcome over there but manufacturing sales have increased by 17.2 per cent in the last six months.
Canadian exports reached a record high annual level of $157.5 billion. That is an 11 per cent increase over 1991 and the largest year over year increase since 1984. Exports to the United States reached a record high of $122.3 billion, $14.7 billion more than in 1991 and $20 billion more since the free trade agreement came into effect in 1988.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, they are not going to shout me down. Good news is very tough to filter through this gang. I am telling you and the Canadian people the fact of the matter is very simply-

February 18, 1993
Oral Questions


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: These people across the way are trying to oppose the free trade agreement, the GST and all the things that have turned this economy around.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex -Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, this morning our New Democrat leader released a live-year plan to achieve half a million additional jobs and cut unemployment-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Steven W. Langdon: As I said, our New Democrat leader this morning released a plan which would achieve 500,000 additional jobs and cut unemployment levels to 7 per cent. For the first time ever in the country the plan was released with an independent assessment by a neutral, professional, economic forecasting company.
My question is for the Minister of Finance. This independent assessment says that the New Democrat plan means thousands more jobs, an $8 billion savings on the deficit and lower taxes for 80 per cent of Canadians, compared to the present government's approach. Will the government take off its partisan hat, seriously consider this full employment package and accept this challenge to put 500,000 more Canadians back to work?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues on this side of the House called it a plan from Disneyworld. In many respects it is kind of a Chretien II economic policy. They are calling for a national infrastructure and the expenditure of something in the order of $25 billion. They have not told us whether they are going to borrow the money or who they are going to tax.
They talk about eliminating the GST and that is going to create 50,000 jobs. They should ask the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. The Canadian Manufacturers' Association tells us that the GST has had the effect of improving their competitive position by between $3.5 billion and $4 billion. That is why we have seen manufacturing sales going up by 17 per cent in the second half of this year. They want to scrap the free trade agreement.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Isn't that wonderful? Our exports to the United States are up by almost 20 per cent since we signed the free trade deal. Every province in Canada has benefited from the free trade agreement, and they want to dismantle it. Why do they want to dismantle those things that are creating jobs, creating economic activity, bringing the economy along and allowing people to enjoy-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Essex-Windsor on a supplemental.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I suggest the minister should read the plan before he comments. He would find the figures that he has quoted-


Mr. Speaker:: The proper way to put a question is to put a preamble and to put the question. The proper way to answer it is to pay attention as closely as possible to the question and try to respond to it. The hon. member will put his question.


Steven W. Langdon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for pointing that out to both of us. My point is that we have a plan to put forward which eliminates the GST because it will benefit jobs and will cut taxes for 80 per cent of Canadians.

We have a realistic plan of action that will create
500,000	more jobs and reduce the deficit to a far greater extent than would the government's proposal.
Is the minister prepared to set partisan considerations aside? Is he prepared to give our plan of action careful consideration and create the jobs that are so important to Canadians?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member's question, he has to make up his mind. According to the document I read, I think the NDP's objective is to contain the deficit and not to reduce it. He talked just now about reducing the deficit.

February 18, 1993
The member also says that they have a plan for creating jobs. I think they are calling for the creation of
1.6	million jobs over a five-year period.
The Conference Board of Canada, on the basis of the current economic policies in place and the monetary and fiscal policies the government is following, has estimated that there would be 1,651,000 jobs created over the next five years. That is the Conference Board of Canada. That is about 51,000 more. Why is he being a piker about it?


Hon. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton -Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of Finance. The minister must admit that at least we have a plan, unlike the Liberal Party of Canada.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I would like to ask the Minister of Finance to take a look at one of these specific proposals: the idea of creating 70,000 new jobs through a national day care system, a promise that was made repeatedly by the Conservative government across the way, a promise that has been broken repeatedly by the government across the way. Will he now look at a national day care plan and put 70,000 people to work in something that is needed in this country and do it right away?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, indeed there is a striking similarity between the NDP plan and the Liberal plan. That is why I call it a Chretien II plan.
They are proposing a national infrastructure program. They are not saying how it would be paid for. They are talking about deficit reduction or deficit containment, and yet they are going to spend $6 billion to $10 billion on a new national child care program. They talk about the elimination of the GST which would force our manufacturing and processing sector to be in a non-competitive position again. They do not talk about how they are going to replace it.
They talk about abrogating the free trade agreement. Why would they want to abrogate the free trade agreement when it is one of the most important elements of our economic success? That is where the jobs are being created. That is where the initiative for growth is occurring. That is why the combination of the tax reform, the dismantlement of the manufacturers' sales tax, the free trade agreement, the North American free trade
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agreement, the tax policy and the investment policy are now starting to produce results. The Conference Board of Canada has recognized that.


ARTS AND CULTURE
Mrs. Sheila Finestone (Mount Royal):: Mr. Speaker, a funding crisis for over 400,000 workers in the Canadian arts and cultural industry has been created by this government. Today hundreds of artists stood out in the freezing cold, raised a petition on the wall of the National Arts Centre, called for no more cuts to the arts and asked for a positive, forward looking response from the government to the cultural committee's four-month old report requiring a response called The Ties that Bind.
Will the Acting Prime Minister stand and promise no more cuts to the arts? Will he commit to a positive response to the committee's recommendation that would strengthen Canada's national identity, properly financed through our Canadian cultural industries? Will he do that today for Canadian artists?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Mr. Speaker, the communications and culture portfolio's adjusted total appropriations in 1992-93 are $2.3 billion. Even with the reductions from the February 1992 budget and the operational review exercise, adjusted appropriations for the portfolio in 1992-93 show an increase of $178.8 million over 1991-92 or 8.5 per cent, which clearly exceeds the level of inflation for the same period of 2.3 per cent.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, that is the most creative bookkeeping the arts, culture and Canadians have heard in a long time.
[Translation\
Parliament has passed the Status of the Artist Act which provides, among other things, for establishing a tribunal on professional relations. This was eight months ago. Unfortunately the government still refuses to make this legislation effective, thus denying artists the right to collective bargaining.
My question is directed to the Prime Minister and otherwise to the Minister of Labour. When will he make this legislation enforceable? When will he establish this tribunal? Is the government capable of keeping its word? Or is it going to maintain its present attitude, in other words ignore all artists in this country?

February 18, 1993
Oral Questions


Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I have made a note of the hon. member's question. I know the bill respecting the status of the artist was adopted by the House of Commons and by the other place. I am discussing the matter with the Minister of Communications, and as soon as we have a decision, we will be delighted to confirm that for the hon. member.


CRIMES OF VIOLENCE
Louise Feltham: Mr. Speaker, my question today is for the Solicitor General.
Many people across the country are angry about the number of violent crimes committed by people on parole. They feel that law-abiding members of society are being placed at risk by the parole system.
What is being done to ensure that the protection of the public is the most important factor in all decisions relating to the treatment and release of inmates?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I share my hon. colleague's concern about this issue.
Bill C-36 was proclaimed in December. Clearly the paramount principle in the legislation guiding the parole board in granting any form of conditional releases is the protection of society.
With Bill C-36 we also lengthened the time that violent and serious drug offenders spend in prison by delaying eligibility for full parole.
It is most important to make sure that society will be well protected by keeping those who represent a danger in jail for a longer period of time. We understand that and I think this is in Bill C-36. My colleague and I are still looking at this issue.


MAGAZINE INDUSTRY
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Communications, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Finance.
Sports Illustrated thinks it has found a loophole in Canada's laws that are protected in the free trade agreement and in the NAFTA. This magazine plans to divert from the Canadian magazine industry large advertising revenues at a time when the industry is reeling from Tory economic policies.
Will the minister say no to Sports Illustrated, and to all other foreign publishers who seek to violate Canada's laws and to ruin Canada's magazine industry?


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would have been following the debate with U.S. magazine publishers and the government, he would have noted last week that, as this article says: "Ottawa warns U.S. magazines over ad inserts". That continues to be the case.
We fought very hard on behalf of Canada to keep the cultural context in the free trade agreement. I can assure the hon. member and this House that we will continue to maintain that position.
We are in discussion with representatives of Time Warner with regard to Sports Illustrated magazine. We have warned them of the existing rules and regulations that are in place. We have told them that they must abide by those rules and regulations, otherwise appropriate action by the government would be taken.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: Mr. Speaker, the minister did not go far enough to say that if there were loopholes in the present law the government would bring in new legislation to plug those loopholes.
I also have another suggestion for the minister. As he knows, Time Warner is the American owner of both Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. This company is the one that is pressing ahead to subvert Canadian laws and to steal away Canadian advertising revenues.
Maybe the minister would be willing to consider ending the special privileges Time magazine now enjoys in Canada, of dumping U.S. content into Canada and

shipping millions of Canadian dollars to the United States.


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member prefaced his question by saying if there are loopholes in the legislation. That is a hypothetical question and very difficult to answer because we do not know at this point in time what Time Warner intends to do with Sports Illustrated.
In discussions with Time Warner, we have asked them to deliver to us a detailed brief to tell us what their plans are. Upon receipt of that brief we will look at what they are planning to do, failing which we will wait until the first publication comes into Canada and then we will take the necessary and appropriate action according to the rules and regulations that are in place today.
* * +


INCOME TAX
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg Transcona):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
The Minister of Finance will know that many times in this House I have asked him and his predecessors to consider making the income tax system in Canada more progressive, particularly by creating new income tax brackets at the top end of the spectrum for people who are making six figures in this country. Many times I have received the answer that we cannot do this because we have to remain competitive with the United States.
Given that President Clinton has moved to create such a tax and such a tax bracket in the United States, will the Minister of Finance now consider making Canada's income tax system more progressive by doing what the NDP has been asking him to do for a long time and reiterated today in the statement by our leader?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, if we take into account the provincial and federal levels of tax, the U.S. proposal that Mr. Clinton outlined last night would reduce the difference in the top Canadian marginal tax rale and the top U.S. rate. The U.S. proposals provide for a range from 40 to 47 per cent, while the top Canadian range would be something in the order of 46.1 to 51.9 per cent in 1993.
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In effect, at that level our taxes are still considerably higher than the United States.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, President Clinton has asked wealthy Americans to make some sacrifice in order to bring around their economy and in order to reduce their deficit, a sacrifice that has not been asked of the wealthy in this country.
I am asking the Minister of Finance to reconsider the answer that he just gave me. On previous occasions I have asked him about the business and entertainment tax deduction which costs this country about $1 billion a year. I understand that President Clinton has apparently moved to reduce that kind of break in the United States, so the Minister of Finance no longer has the excuse that we have to remain competitive.
Will he consider eliminating that tax break here in Canada and freeing up $1 billion to create jobs in this country?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, when the hon. member talks about the loopholes and the wealthy not paying taxes, he really is in effect dealing in many respects with those people who utilize their lifetime capital gains exemption. Because of that there is a reduced tax burden. There is no question about that.
What I think the hon. member is really suggesting in an indirect way or maybe even in a direct way is the fact that he would like to see the lifetime capital gains exemption removed. That is not the position of this government.
He would like to see the lifetime capital gains-


Mr. Speaker:: We really will have to move on. The hon. member for Moncton.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mr. George S. Rideout (Moncton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence or whoever is going to speak for her in her absence. It concerns the closure of the Moncton base and depot.
I was pleased that the minister agreed last week in a statement to media in Charlottetown and Halifax to review the decision to close the Moncton depot.

February 18, 1993
Oral Questions
Will she promise to the citizens' committee input into a review? Because the workers at the depot are on tenterhooks wondering whether they have a job or not, will the minister tell us when the review on the closure will be completed?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence is unfortunately not in Ottawa today. She indicates that she certainly is aware of the concerns of colleagues in the community, but the reality is that rationalization of DND structures is essential if there is going to be enough money to provide the equipment the military needs. As she indicated, she will in fact be discussing the issue with the community involved. If the hon. member wants more details, I am sure he can talk to the minister when she is back in Ottawa.


George Saunders Rideout: Mr. Speaker, this minister and the previous minister have both indicated that the closure of the Moncton depot is to proceed quickly. Has the minister issued a stop work order on the closure of the Moncton depot pending the outcome of her review, or in light of her letter of February 4 is this promised review as hollow a promise as the $100 million expansion given by three previous Tory ministers?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I guess he had his supplementary written out before I answered his first question. I do not think I have anything more to add.


ABORIGINAL PEOPLES
Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):: [Editor's Note: Member spoke in Inuktitut]

My question is for the Minister of Finance. The aboriginal people of Canada, including the Innu of Davis Inlet, have identified control of their own lives and preservation and enhancement of their languages and cultures as priority goals.
Given the desperate social conditions in aboriginal communities nation-wide, why is the government in this international year of indigenous peoples about to cut
aboriginal language, culture and communications programs by as much as 10 per cent?


Hon. Pierre H. Vincent (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Indian Affairs and Northern Development)):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's question, but I imagine he is also aware of the general situation in this country. Government decisions are made with that situation in mind, and not on the basis of one particular sector. I think he should remember that when asking his question.


Jack Iyerak Anawak: Mr. Speaker, with respect to control, the Innu have expressed their desire to establish a bilateral relationship with the federal government without the province in between.
The premier of Newfoundland has expressed a willingness to discuss this. Is the federal government prepared to enter into direct bilateral negotiations with the Innu in relation to the Innu getting control of their own lives?


Pierre H. Vincent: Mr. Speaker, I think the government and the Prime Minister made considerable progress in 1990 on Native issues, and subsequently-especially in 1992-the Prime Minister worked very hard to ensure that Canada's native people would have their place in the Canadian Constitution. Once again he did a remarkable job.
That being said, to respond more specifically to the hon. member's question he must realize that the way the Canadian Constitution and our statutes are drafted means that we must work as a team and consult with the provinces on certain issues. That is the philosophy which guides this government and my department in helping to improve the well-being of native people and Innu across the country.


LUMBER EXPORTS
Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the absence of the minister of external affairs and the international trade minister, the
February 18, 1993

two ministers involved, I would like to put this question directly to the Deputy Prime Minister since it does involve international relations and a disaster about ready to happen unless the government takes a little stronger action than it has taken to date.
I am referring to the European Common Market non-tariff barriers on the importation of Canadian lumber.
I know there was a delegation in Ottawa the other day.
I hope that delegation met some of the members of the Tory government caucus and that it may have been discussed in caucus.
I think the Deputy Prime Minister must know that the effective date of this non-tariff barrier that affects $1.4 billion worth of trade is June 1.
What is the government going to do about the lack of response on the verbal note, the protest note, that was sent on September 4? We still have not had a reply from Europe.


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister for Science and Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister for International Trade has protested what the hon. member is complaining about.
There are intense communications going on now. I expect we are going to have a favourable reaction to what we have proposed to the Europeans.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister and/or to the minister of small business or whatever.
We are talking about trade. This House is preoccupied with NAFTA, unemployment insurance and many other important things. These are people who presently have jobs in a very precarious part of Canada, the Atlantic region, eastern Canada, and parts of Ontario. I ask the government if it is action to sit for five months when in the arcane world of diplomacy there is a protest note and you have not heard a reply. As I understand it, it is because five ministries are involved in Ottawa-


Mr. Speaker:: I think the hon. member has put his question. The minister may wish to respond.


Thomas Hockin: The Minister for International Trade is heading up the team and
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progress is being made. I would like the hon. member to know that we are hopeful of a successful resolution of this.
I would also like to remind him that today export figures came out indicating that our trade surplus, not just with the United States which is up a record amount, 8.8 per cent to $17 billion, but with the rest of the world which is now over $9.6 billion, the highest it has ever been in Canadian history.


EMPLOYMENT
Howard Douglas McCurdy: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Acting Prime Minister. One of the things that the New Democratic economic statement recognizes is that joblessness and the empowerment of Canadian workers in a knowledge-based economy depends upon a very much greater emphasis being put on training and education, from day care to the doctorate, if we are going to thrive and create jobs in the modern economic circumstances in which Canada must compete.
My question to the hon. minister is this: Is this government prepared to recognize that it must put far greater emphasis on creating the context for workers in this country to be much better trained, much better taught and have greater opportunities to learn, to create jobs as a most effective attack on the deficit, rather than using the deficit as an excuse for doing nothing?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the hon. member. That is why under the science and technology envelope we are spending $5.9 billion on research and development through the universities and the granting councils. That is why we are spending $3.8 billion on training and skills upgrading and retraining programs. That is why we have established the network of Centres of Excellence. That is why we are increasing the funding to the Industrial Research Assistance Program. That is why we are committing $250 million over five years to lever a national private sector driven training effort. That is why the government is developing tax incentives to help defray the cost of training workers to the occupational standards set up by the councils. That is why we are committing-

February 18, 1993
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: This is of great interest and I know the hon. minister might want to send a note. The hon. member, a short supplemental.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: The fact is that expenditures on training and education and research and development are inadequate in this country. In the president's economic statement of last night he indicated that there are going to be sharp cuts in the expenditures on the space program.


Mr. Speaker:: I do ask members and ministers to co-operate. We are getting close to the end of Question Period. I have asked that questions be put succinctly and as short as possible and that the answers be the same.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: My question, Mr. Speaker, is this: There are going to be hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade saved by a cutback in the space program. Will he use this money and the money saved from abandoning the helicopter program to double investment in the Industrial Research Assistance Program and double grants to universities and colleges so that they can carry out research and increase their level of research in this country?


Thomas Hockin: The Canadian Space Program is perhaps the jewel in the Canadian science crown in terms of producing high-tech jobs. I am surprised that the hon. member wants to do away with the Canadian Space Program. I am shocked. Tens of thousands of jobs.
In the president's speech last night three things were reaffirmed by his science adviser: First of all, the program will continue. It will be streamlined. What they do they will do in consultation with their partners, Canada included.


FORESTRY
Mr. Reginald Belair (Cochrane -Superior):: Mr. Speaker, the Ontario NDP government has recently announced that it is cutting its tree seedling program from $170 million to $110 million per year. This is a whopping 35 per cent reduction. It is obscene.
What is the federal government going to do to rectify this more than deplorable situation?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, I think that is absolutely awful. We will look into it right away.


Réginald Bélair: Mr. Speaker, moreover, in 1989 the Prime Minister tabled in the House the bill to create the forestry department.
Then he added much importance to the concept of sustainable development. How can this government stand by idly today and allow the Ontario government to regress on its reforestation policy?


Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member that our government's Minister of Forestry is very respectful of fields of jurisdiction. My colleague knows very well that reforestation is in provincial jurisdiction. Nevertheless, in 1991 we signed a $50-million agreement with the province of Ontario to promote sustainable forest development. The Government of Ontario and the federal government, through the Department of Forestry, put over $30 million into technology transfer and I think this is a considerable contribution of our government to the province of Ontario.


ICE JAMS
Jean-Marc Robitaille: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. For several days, an ice jam on the St. Lawrence River at Tracy has threatened to flood properties along the river in several municipalities, including Repentigny. Some have said that these problems are due to the failure to install ice booms this year.
Could the minister give us some indication of where matters stand now and explain why no ice booms were put up this year?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform my colleague that the question is important because several municipalities along the St. Lawrence River are affected by this situation. I must tell him that a few days ago, we had at least five ice-breakers working to remove the jam and the operation was successful. The situation should now return to normal very quickly.
February 18, 1993

We did not install ice booms because observations made by the Coast Guard in recent years showed that they were not effective.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY
Mr. Speaker:: I wish to draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in the gallery of Mr. Varaztad Avonyan, member of Parliament of the Republic of Armenia and General Secretary of the Parliament.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to correct an erroneous impression that may have inadvertently been made during Question Period.
During the preface to his question, the member for York North implied that changes made to the unemployment aspect of what is now Bill C-113 were introduced as a concession to a Quebec caucus.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry. It may be a very important point and it may be an exact point, but it is a matter for debate and is not a question of privilege.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. John Harvard (Winnipeg -St. James):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
On February 12, this month, the Minister of Agriculture announced the appointment of Ken Beswick as Commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Since that time, Mr. Beswick has given interviews in the role of commissioner. No Order in Council has been tabled in this House. As late as just a few minutes ago, my office checked with the Privy Council Office and no such order has been issued.
Business of the House
I would like to know what is going on. Is this a charade? After all, we have a man parading around as a new Canadian Wheat Board commissioner but there is no Order in Council. As you know, Mr. Speaker, certain members of this House have responsibilities regarding the Canadian Wheat Board but we have difficulties carrying out those duties because of the incompetence of this government.
Why has the minister made the announcement-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member has made his point. I am prepared to consider it. Is there any reply?


Harvie Andre: Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, yes, there is a reply.
To begin with, that was not a point of order. It has nothing to do with the order of the House. There is nothing that this gentleman has done, at least by what I heard, that was disruptive to the conducting of business in this House or in any way reflects on the order of the House, which points of order are supposed to be all about.
From what I understand of the gentleman in question from all concerned, he would make an outstanding commissioner of the Wheat Board and I am sure the hon. member from Winnipeg is looking forward to his appointment as I am.


Mr. Speaker:: I have some concern as to whether it is a point of order, but I will consider the representation made and I will report back to the House.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the government House leader could give us the House business for the remaining part of this week as well as next week. While he is on his feet, perhaps he could also indicate when the next supply day might be.
Third, can he confirm for the House that the tabling of the estimates will in fact be next Thursday, February 25? In view of the break in the calendar could he indicate to the House the date and timing of the throne speech which has been intimated in previous conversations by numerous individuals on that side of the House?

February 18, 1993
Business of the House


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, in terms of business this afternoon we will proceed with second reading of Bill S-8, the Motor Vehicle Act, which we hope we will be able to consider during the course of debate and proceed with all stages of this bill. I understand there might be a consensus to look at that. In any event, my intent then is to go to Bill C-88. I understand there might be agreement among all parties to have report stage and third reading of this important legislation passed.
Tomorrow we will complete third reading of Bill C-76, the Budget Implementation Act. On Monday I hope to complete second reading of Bill C-110, the Northumberland Strait Crossing Act, which is so important to job creation in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island by this important infrastructure program. Since all parties are in favour of infrastructure investment, I am sure they will be anxious to pass this bill to show that their views expressed about infrastructure investment are factual and not simply for effect.
On Tuesday morning we will commence second reading debate on Bill C-92, the income tax technical bill. In the afternoon we hope to complete second reading of Bill C-101, the Canada Labour Code Act. If time permits we would also like to have second reading of Bill C-101, the Criminal Code Act dealing with radio communications, protection of privacy and so on.
As usual, I will carry on discussions with House leaders in terms of other business.
In regard to a supply day, given the way yesterday's supply day was used, I am surprised that there should be so much interest in getting another one, but the rules spell out the number of required supply days. However, I also have a lot of legislation which failure to pass is costing the taxpayers a lot of money. I would like to get the co-operation of opposition parties to pass this legislation to save the taxpayers money. Then of course we could look at supply days and in fact other interesting debates on subjects that would be of interest. Our first priority has to be the concern for the taxpayers who are paying unnecessarily because of the delay in the legislation.
It still is the government's intention to bring the Main Estimates on Thursday, February 25.
In terms of a throne speech, stay tuned, you will be enthralled and on your feet applauding vigorously.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, just so the government House leader and members of the House are not in the dark, the hon. House leader of the government knows full well that those of us in the opposition have been attempting to try to co-operate with the government where we can. However, it is not our fault that the government is waiting so long to call Bill C-110 which it says is of great importance as well as other legislation. When it does pass second reading I would hope that ample opportunity would given at committee stage to have a full airing of the legislation. Although it may be important, it is important for Canadians to have a full debate of those subject matters. I hope I can get an undertaking from the government House leader that he will instruct his colleagues in that regard.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, in reply to that comment, the one thing those who observed this House and expressed such disapproval of its conduct have not said is that we do not debate enough. The one thing they do say is that too often the debate is irrelevant.
I can assure the hon. member that all members on this side are always interested in good, productive, constructive debate, suggestions, ideas, comments and so on. At some point in time we have to allow things to come to a vote. All I am appealing for is to allow that to happen in a timely fashion so that we can use the rest of our time debating subjects of the opposition's choosing and other areas not directly related to the legislative program of the government.


Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Mr. Speaker, when the government House leader reported on House business he suggested there might be an agreement to consider Bill S-8 at all stages today.
To my knowledge-and in addition to being the Whip I am the critic-there have not been discussions to do anything more than facilitate second reading approval today. Then off it goes to the transport committee for the normal review, not necessarily for a long time. Certainly I do not want the House to misunderstand the agreement which, as far as I know, is only for second reading today.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, obviously we cannot proceed any further without the agreement of everybody in the House. Since the agreement is not forthcoming that is it.
February 18, 1993


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I understand by divine telepathy that there have been discussions among the House leaders, but not being party to them I should like to ask in the open court here of the House of Commons just where the electoral reform bill stands.
As the government House leader and anyone who read the commission report will know, there is a fundamental discrimination in the present election law adverse to Independents raising money and giving tax receipts, which is a pretty fundamental part of the whole election process. Frankly it is something I should have taken to the Supreme Court last year. I would have won but I did not have the money at the time.
I think the government intends to bring in a whole bill and is trying to get the agreement of parties. I indicate to the government House leader that other members and I-in fact we all do-have a very real interest in the bill.
Are we going to see it before the break in March, or is it going to come in after March? I should like some idea of a timeframe.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I am very hopeful I will be able to get a draft copy of it within minutes. Hopeful is the operative word, not sure.
With regard to the question the hon. member raised, a committee of the House has been looking at amendments to the electoral act for some months. There are some things on which there is a consensus among all parties that would be useful to put in place and that require the Chief Electoral Officer to have a long lead time before he can do them. The first bill that will be coming forward will actually deal with those subjects.
The question of the rules with respect to funds, tax deductions, allowable limits and so on is something that literally could be agreed to on the eve of an election and be implemented during an election.
It is my understanding that the committee is now working on those and expects to have a report on that within weeks, not months. That second tranche of amendments would also be brought forward as a bill.
It is certainly the desire of the government to have these changes in place prior to the next election. A lot of money was invested in the Lortie royal commission on
Business of the House
electoral reform and there have been many months of hard work by members of this House of Commons. It would seem to me a disservice to everybody concerned if we did not get these changes passed and in place prior to the next election.


Mr. Louis Plamondon (Richelieu):: On the same bill, Mr. Speaker, I have the same reservations as the hon. member, especially when we consider an article that appeared in Le Soleil. It says that instead of providing for comprehensive changes in the bill, the proposed amendments seem to be taking aim at members of the Bloc Quebecois and Independents, in that these members would lose their right as the candidates having received the most votes to monitor enumeration proceedings. Similarly by abandoning phase two of the bill we would also lose air time on television and radio.
Will the minister confirm that if there is electoral reform it will be across the board? In fact his party made a formal commitment to improve electoral practices. This commitment was mainly to restrict spending by big corporations and so forth, not to a mini-reform leading to partisanship or the form of dictatorship we see in certain countries, and ensuring that specific parties, not democratically elected representatives, control the electoral process.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, this whole set of reforms comes out of the Lortie commission and has been studied by a committee of the House.
The government has not come forward with a set of proposals and said: "Here are the government's proposals". What has happened is that a committee of the House has examined the recommendations and has come up with a report. All the government did in respect of that report was check it out to see whether the Department of Justice would okay certain amendments as to whether they agreed with the charter of rights.
They should not accuse the government. I know certain interests have been suggesting that the Prime Minister was behind the business of spending limits and so on. The Prime Minister has never expressed an opinion on that to me. I do not know what his opinion is.

February 18, 1993
Business of the House
This is an initiative of the House of Commons and it is a consensus of all parties. I cannot guarantee at the end of the day that it will have 100 per cent approval of each and every member of the House. I can say with some assurance that if there is significant opposition by significant numbers of members it probably will not go through. These are the rules for running elections. It has to have the approval of members of the House of Commons, and that is what we are seeking.
I remind the hon. member, as I said to the member for Annapolis Valley-Hants, that there are three tranches. The big issue and the first one, quite frankly, is the question of allowing Canadians who are not in their constituency or not in the country on election day to vote with special ballots. It requires about six months for the Chief Electoral Officer to put them in place. That is why it is separated from the second issue of spending limits and so on which the committee is working on. I am expecting a report very soon.


Miss Deborah Grey (Beaver River):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. I would like to make a couple of comments regarding some of the issues we have been speaking about. The member to my left spoke about the whole situation of spending limits and making sure that radio and television time had been paid for and distributed fairly. This is something I have had particular interest in and Canadians have been watching. It would seem that someone in power-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I regret, but this is debate. I do not think we should get into that. If the member has a question for the House leader I ask her please to put it.


Deborah C. Grey: My question revolves around volume VI of the report of the Electoral Commission. I do not have it with me, but it is the one about women and spending ceilings for nomination meetings. I heard from members of the committee that actual legislation was written up.
The commission was obviously aware that legislation was difficult. It took the time to write up an actual piece of legislation. I am just wondering at what point it is. Will it be used? Will it be paid attention to or will it be nixed?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I have to suggest the hon. member should go to the committee that is looking into it because she is asking technical questions.
I do not know. I am not a member of that committee. I am reacting to the report of the committee. The first tranche does not deal with that kind of question as far as I know.
However, if the member wants to get into the details of the Lortie report and the committee's activities, she should attend the committee meetings.


Louis Plamondon: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order about this subject.

It is about this bill.
My rights and privileges as an independent member will be violated in the report that is to be tabled. The newspapers mentioned this. I want to make sure of the bill and the complicity of the three major parties. It never mentioned the Bloc Quebecois. It referred to the three major parties. They have agreed to violate the rights of independent members and members of the Bloc. This is a serious matter. Mr. Speaker, and it is your responsibility to investigate this.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, no one minds hon. members asking questions of the government House leader with regard to the business of the House. In point of fact the government House leader responded in full to the questions which have been put to him.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


David Charles Dingwall: You may not like the answers, but nevertheless there were answers.
The second point is that the hon. member has used the term complicity. We in this House all know the connotations of that word. It impugns the motives of all hon. members of different political parties.
I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that you would do some reflection upon the intervention made by my colleague. I do not think it is necessary. I do not think it is appropriate. I do not think it is fair to members of the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I agree with the hon. member.
February 18, 1993

If the hon. member wishes to withdraw and drop the debate, I would ask him to withdraw his statement. Does he wish to withdraw?


Louis Plamondon: The hon. member was disturbed by the word complicity. I am willing to explain the meaning I had in mind when I used it, but I will withdraw and use another word. Mr. Speaker, just a minute; let me finish. You are very patient with other members but seem to be very impatient in my case. If I use the word-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I think I have been very patient with the hon. member. I wish he would come to the point. If he has a further question to ask of the government House leader, then he should ask it, put his question.


Louis Plamondon: My question is as follows: Will the bill violate my rights as a member and as a winning candidate by prohibiting me from monitoring the enumeration proceedings and giving that right to the party with the most votes? These are my rights and that is why I am saying that, like in the last referendum-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: This is not a question. It is debate. Orders of the day.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Jean Corbeil: that Bill S-8, an act to regulate the manufacture and importation of motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment to reduce the risk of death, injury and damage to property and the environment, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Economics envelope.


Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Just before the minister rises to speak on this bill, there have been some discussions among the three parties. Because
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of an overlap of the transport committee sitting simultaneously with this bill, the member for Davenport who will be speaking on behalf of the Liberal Party has graciously agreed to switch places with me, provided that he has the normal amount of time that would be allocated had he spoken in the normal order; in other words, whatever the Standing Order provides for the second speaker.
I will speak for 10 minutes at the most. The order will be the Minister of Transport, followed by myself, followed by the member for Davenport.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to open the debate on second reading of Bill S-8, an act to amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. This bill is an update of existing legislation and combines two acts, the Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Motor Vehicle Tire Safety Act, that are now in force.
I would like to put this bill in context by noting that in the 20 or so years since the original acts were passed, we have incredibly seen a reduction in the number of traffic fatalities despite a doubling of the number of vehicle registrations. Even with these remarkable improvements, road accidents cost Canadians more than $6 billion each year in lost working time, health care, property damage and legal actions. This economic reality does not count individual pain and suffering. The new Motor Vehicle Safety Act will play a major role in future safety improvements. There are exciting opportunities for vehicle design and manufacture, including anti-lock braking systems, air bag supplementary restraints and improved side impact protection.
An effective regulatory program will ensure that these measures and many more are available to Canadians as soon and as widely as possible.
The bill seeks to make the process of regulation development more responsive to changes in industry and international standards. Nowhere is that more evident than in areas that touch on our concerns for the environment. The new legislation provides us with the ability to incorporate complex technical standards for a dynamic industry at the leading edge of technology, as fast as they are implemented anywhere in the world.

February 18, 1993
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Harmful emissions from motor vehicles have been the target of considerable attention, within the restrictions of our existing legislative framework. The new act will make us even more responsive.
Better combustion through elaborate sensors and electronic control, improved after treatment with new catalyst designs and on-board diagnostic systems to warn of and identify emission control failures all offer cleaner vehicles in the future.
The bill provides for phase-in of standards and for a system of emission credits, providing Canadian industry with the same flexibility to plan compliance as is offered in the United States.
The emission credit system proposed in the bill will allow standards to be set that more evenly challenge industry to achieve the tightest possible emission targets. Averaging, banking, trading and civil penalties, components of the credit program, are all contained in the bill. These authorities will allow Canada to apply parallel standards with the same force as those in the United States and other jurisdictions.
Another area that witnesses discussed during the committee hearings in the other place concerned vehicles purchased in the United States for importation to Canada.

First I want to absolutely assure this House that the authority provided by this bill will be used to establish an effective process to see that all such vehicles meet our over-all Canadian safety standards.
Second, any regulation emanating from this bill will be consistent with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and will seek to ensure that there are no anti-competitive repercussions for the Canadian motor vehicle industry including manufacturers and dealers.
Third, Transport Canada will take action to see that a system is developed so that a manufacturer's notice of defect campaign for U.S. vehicles will also provide notice to any Canadian owners of those vehicles.
I have been necessarily extremely brief today. Nonetheless, I believe you will find that the bill contains the detailed changes necessary to enable the Motor Vehicle Safety Act to provide the efficient technical regulations
that will meet the future needs of Canadians for the best available vehicle safety and emission control technology.
I look forward to discussion of this important legislation which I believe benefits us all.
I would like to conclude by asking for the consent of the House to amend the original motion to refer the review of this bill to the Standing Committee on Transport. I hope you will find such consent.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Members have heard the terms of the motion. Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Iain Francis Angus: Mr. Speaker, before I begin, let me once again thank the hon. member for Davenport for agreeing to change the rotation so I could speak on this bill before I have to go to the Standing Committee of Transport where this bill will be going.
I want to thank the members of the Thunder Bay Association of Automotive Trades for the assistance I received in reviewing this bill. I would particularly like to thank Glen Harmer, who is the president of the Thunder Bay branch as well as the national president. I also want to thank a member of the Thunder Bay police force who was there at my request and with the permission of the chief. Bill S-8 deals with a number of relatively minor but important elements in the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. They are gaps that have been in the system that the government is wisely moving to correct.
There are new child restraint safety regulations so they can control that add-on. They can ensure that if there is a recall there is consumer registration, et cetera. Another positive move is the government's ability to control the standards for all-terrain recreation vehicles.
Too often we find that a vehicle that was bought for the bush is used on the roads. It may be in unsafe condition and whether it was used illegally or not it is appropriate that we control the manner of the manufacturing. The increase in fines for corporations from $200,000 to $1 million and for individuals from $5,000 to $10,000 is also quite appropriate. It brings it in line with some of the other acts we have passed in this House.
February 18, 1993

We may want to look in committee at putting some kind of COLA clause in there; a CPI link so we do not have to amend that part some time in the future.
There is the whole question of emission credits and averaging. I am not going to go into any detail but we have looked at that. We think it makes sense within the automotive industry. We do not believe it is necessarily the answer for smoke-stack industries. Within the automotive sector it will allow for implementation of clean air controls without harming the economic viability of the companies or forcing them to scrap equipment that is already on line but due to be phased out within a year or two.
There is also the ability to follow up if there is an imperfection in the manufacture of a pollution control element of an automobile. You can do a recall on that. Currently, as I understand it, the act does not provide for that opportunity.
There are a couple of areas I want to focus on that have been raised with me, not just in the context of this bill but in the context of the need to ensure that whatever is on the road is safe.
I want to start with what I will refer to as wrecks. These are cars that have been totalled and normally end up in the junk yard. We have a lot of folks in this country and I suspect in the United States who take those cars, cannibalize them, recycle them if you like, and in a lot of cases those recycled cars are not as safe as the new cars. I am advised if you weld the frame on a vehicle and it is not done right, in an impact you are actually jeopardizing the lives of the occupants or the occupants of the vehicle with which you have collided.
Under the Constitution at the manufacturing end it is the federal government's responsibility. Once the car or truck is built anything beyond that is the responsibility of the provinces. We need to find a way to impose a national standard on the provinces. One of the ways suggested in this bill is the use of a national safety mark. Whether it is a tire or a vehicle built according to Canadian federal standards developed under this act, they will get a safety mark that says this is a safe vehicle. It will be similar to the CSA putting a tag on our appliances because they have passed with approval.
I want to explore this concept in committee. If a vehicle has the national safety mark and is wrecked, we have to be able to remove that mark and develop a system so that before that vehicle can be put back on the road it must go through some kind of process to make
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sure it is a functioning automobile that is structurally sound.
The province of Quebec, I understand, has a system whereby if a vehicle is wrecked and someone wants to put it back on the road when they go into the licence issuer they have to bring a photograph of that vehicle on what is called a full-body frame. Instead of somebody repairing the vehicle in the back yard it proves they have gone to an authorized repair facility which uses the most up-to-date equipment and has the knowledge of the integrity of the structure. They can therefore assure the licence issuer that this vehicle complies with, in that case, Quebec standards. I would like to see us do that on a national basis.
We have all seen these folks in our communities, at least in the rural and northern communities, who decide it is really neat to put tires on a car or truck that are five or ten times the size of what is supplied at the manufacturing level. In other words, the vehicle has been redesigned by the owner and does not meet the safety requirements or certainly the manufacturer's requirements. I think we can use the national safety mark as a mechanism to prevent that from occurring. The moment they add those monster truck tires, they would lose that safety mark and the car or truck would not be certified by the provinces.
Under this act we are also managing the trade of used automobiles between Canada and the United States. Under the free trade agreement, American-produced used cars are able to come into Canada. Until the free trade agreement very few cars came across. This bill sets out the requirements for those vehicles. They must meet Canadian standards. It is a way of managing this particular trade deal until the FTA is abrogated, but that is for another debate at another time.
It is designed to ensure that any vehicle imported meets Canadian standards, U.S. safety recalls apply and there is a consistency of labelling.
I would like to suggest there is a gap in this particular aspect as well. If I went to Duluth, Minnesota, bought a used car and brought it to the Canadian border I would only have to sign a declaration at the border that I was going to get any deficiencies fixed. There is no provision to ensure that those changes are done by the appropriate personnel. I could do them in my own back yard, or I could just say I had done them. I think we need an amendment to ensure that anyone bringing a vehicle across the border has to take it to a body shop, if it is something like a bumper replacement or a service station.

February 18, 1993
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In Ontario there are various types of licences issued to certified mechanics licensed by the province of Ontario, and I am sure it is the same in other provinces. Let us make sure the vehicle goes through some kind of third party who can attest to the fact that the work has been done and the vehicle is safe to drive in Canada.
The final point I want to make concerns the question of wrecks coming here from the United States. Under this act wrecks will be allowed in. I argued that any Canadian wrecks should go through some kind of certification process and I believe American wrecks should be forced to undergo the same process as well. That may be another way we can set a national standard that is easily adhered to or adopted by the provinces.
Those are the areas I will raise in committee. There may be one or two witnesses we wish to call. I think this bill is an important one and it is not my intention to drag out the committee review, but I think we need to take a specific look at some of these elements so we can improve the bill.
Hun. Chas. L. Caccia (Davenport): Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we would like to congratulate the senators for initiating this measure. It is a bill that will obviously help clear the air in our Canadian cities and rural Canada. It is a measure that is badly overdue which has been promised since 1989.
In our presentation today we would first like to examine what is generally understood about car emissions and put that into a particular framework.
Generally speaking, there is an impression that so long as car emissions are diluted they are not damaging to human health. Therefore idling a car, for instance, or accelerating, excessive burning of fuel in other words, is something that one should not pay too much attention to because it will dissolve and go up into the air.
This notion has to be dealt with because the emissions from a car contain a number of extremely dangerous substances. Therefore, the motor vehicle is a very convenient means of transportation that burns substances that are profoundly poisonous and dangerous to human health and to certain types of crops and agricultural activities, which I will mention later.
In examining the environmental damage, one finds out that the combustion of fossil fuels has an impact on the question of climate change, particularly because of the production of ozone. There is also the production of heavy metals and the pollution that is attributable to the toxic substances contained in gasoline and other transport fuels.
It is a well-known fact that the burning of gasoline and petroleum products through motor vehicle engines does contribute to the creation of smog, particularly from cars. The formation of smog in the urban setting and also in densely populated areas outside the urban setting can lead and has led to damaged crops and to poor quality air in our urban centres; so much so that sometimes in the summer there are excessive measurements of pollution in the cities, which in good part is attributed to ozone and other forms of pollution emanating from motor vehicle activity.
The substances in question are carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, toxic chemicals, lead, benzene, formaldehyde and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. In essence, carbon monoxide interferes with the blood's ability to absorb oxygen and it impairs the perception and thinking ability of humans. It has the capacity to slow reflexes. It can cause drowsiness, and in high concentrations it can even lead to death.
Nitrogen dioxide can increase the susceptibility to viral infections such as influenza, irritate the lungs, and cause bronchitis and pneumonia.
Ozone is one of the pollutants formed by the burning of gasoline and related substances. Ground level ozone irritates the respiratory system, causing coughing, choking, impaired lung functioning, reduced resistance to colds and possibly pneumonia. In some cases, the medical profession has identified chronic heart disease, asthma, bronchitis and even emphysema as being attributable to the burning of gasoline and related substances.
February 18, 1993

In the case of toxic emissions and metals one must underline the importance of the presence of lead in gasoline. In Canada we have reduced the amount of lead in gasoline in recent years. We could still further reduce it to the standards the Americans have reached and thus improve the quality of air and the health conditions of our population, particularly of children. Other chemicals that are found in gasoline are cadmium and asbestos, which collect on the roads through the wear and tear of tires, through the activity of brakes and the use of clutches and the wearing of clutch linings.
That can cause nerve damage in children and even in expectant mothers. Cadmium is suspected to cause cancer. With regard to asbestos, although the question is hotly debated, it may cause lung cancer.
This background is simply intended to put on record and demonstrate the fact that we are dealing with activities dangerous to human health and the environment. We can now briefly analyse the substance of the bill.
The requirements in the bill for the reduction of emissions would allow us to achieve new standards which will reduce emissions by up to 60 per cent per kilometre driven. That is a welcome measure. Under the scheme envisaged in the bill new cars would produce .25 grams of nitrogen oxide per each kilometre compared to the present .62. That is reduction by over half.
The production of hydrocarbons will be reduced from .25 grams to .16. Carbon monoxide levels will remain unchanged.
The point of contention does not so much concern reduction, although it could be improved, as the timetable. The question is when this measure will come into effect, which the minister unfortunately did not answer in the course of his introductory speech.
In 1989 the then Minister of the Environment and Minister of Transport promised to have these standards incorporated in this particular bill by 1994. We find out today that these measures will instead come into effect by 1996, and this is a very disturbing factor. In other words, the government made a commitment with a target date of 1994 but now finds itself in the position of postponing the date of enforcement until 1996 because of the slowness in producing this legislation. That is
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highly regrettable, because it is at the expense of public health.
Another aspect of this bill that is a cause of concern is that the government, having promised binding regulations, has now produced a voluntary agreement by way of a memorandum of understanding with industry. This memorandum of understanding is not legally enforceable. We therefore find ourselves in a situation in which what is being proposed through the legislation and subsequently through the regulations may be implemented but may not be. It will depend on the good will of the parties concerned.
That approach leaves much to be desired. A piece of legislation should instead be passed by the Parliament of Canada in the interest of public health which is written in a manner that gives an assurance to the public that what is contained in the bill will rather than may take place. The difference between the two can be considerable.
The third point that must be raised here today is the question of permitting the industry to average emissions. In other words, certain fleets and certain models of cars would be above permitted standards and certain others would be below and the average between the two, so long as it meets the over-all standards, would then be accepted. In other words, certain types of cars would be polluting more and certain types of cars would be polluting less.
This type of approach is not very clever and is not very good for human health or the environment. This point was stressed in a submission presented by the AirWatch program of the Canadian Acid Precipitation Foundation from Toronto. When it appeared before the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee in June of last year it drew this particular question to the attention of concerned parties.
I would like to put on the record a paragraph from its brief that enunciates the position with which I concur:
This bill amounts to legislative sleight of hand, which would allow
the department and the industry to increase emissions by employing
emissions averaging methods already rejected in the United States.
The averaging approach is the issue on which this non-governmental group focused in particular. It specifies the problem in the following manner:

February 18, 1993
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Under a vehicle-by-vehicle standard, individual vehicles must each meet a certain emission standard. To do this, there must be a margin between the actual amount of pollution produced by each vehicle, and the standard, in order to ensure compliance and to avoid recalls. Under an averaging system, the same margin must exist for some vehicles, but other vehicles can be allowed to exceed the standards. Depending on where such non-complying vehicles are sold, how many are produced, and the amount by which they exceed the supposed standard, additional pollution can be produced, and air quality problems can be aggravated.
The point to be made, and it is an important one, is that instead of emissions averaging, as this bill proposes, we would urge the government to have standards that would be applied to each car, vehicle by vehicle. Then public health and environmental concerns would be met in a far superior and more satisfactory manner.
Another point that needs to be made in connection with this bill is the moot question as to the importation of used cars in the proposed NAFTA area. Suppose that used cars will be imported from Mexico and the United States. These cars would already be of a certain age. Whose standards would these imported cars be expected to meet? They will probably be quite cheap. They will be quite appealing. However, they could be highly polluting vehicles and their presence in the marketplace could constitute a considerable threat to air quality and human health.
The issue here is one of balancing a variety of interests. The government with respect to the economic aspect of this issue, another key point, has come down in favour of allowing in clause 8 of the bill payment in exchange for permission to increase tailpipe emissions.
In other words, what the government is proposing is the introduction of the polluter pays principle. That in itself would not be a bad thing if we were to know what the polluter will pay and how the funds collected by way of this principle will be used. Will they be earmarked for additional pollution reduction, pollution research and other initiatives that will help reduce pollution in that industry?
I would argue, and it is a point that needs to be made in this debate, that the polluter pays principle is all right if the fee to be charged will discourage the polluter. If the fee to be charged will be such that the polluter will pay his way into polluting in having paid that fee, that fee will not act as a disincentive. That principle will not be
served and will not be implemented in the manner that it was originally intended by those who introduced it some time ago.
It should be clear that by charging a fee that is too low, you would just provide a licence to the polluter to continue to pollute. Under this bill, instead of charging a fee that is a disincentive to pollute, you would be applying the polluter pays principle in its original intent and meaning.
Therefore, it is incumbent upon us in the opposition to make this point in the hope that when the bill is examined in committee at second reading it will be given a thorough analysis. The section dealing with the matter of fees to be charged for vehicle emissions permits will be examined appropriately. The fees that will be charged for permission to produce excess pollution should be such that instead of becoming licences to pollute, they will become disincentives to pollute.
I am sure that there are members in this Chamber in all parties who would agree with this point. They would see the distinction between the two approaches.
To summarize our presentation, I will put it in those terms. We have a history of lagging behind the United States with respect to progressively implementing motor vehicle emission standards. This step is highly desirable and overdue. Second, we regret very much that the full deadline for implementation has been moved from 1994, as promised, to 1996.
The emission averaging as proposed in this bill, my third point, would result in increased vehicle emissions rather than in reductions. The alternative to this would be an enforcement of a vehicle by vehicle standard approach.
This legislation creates the authority for a vehicle manufacturer to pay fees in exchange for permission to possibly produce excess pollution. If that is going to be the net effect of this legislation, then this legislation regrettably will have failed its own purpose as set out in the preamble.
Having put these points in as concise a manner as possible and seeing that you would like to hear another voice on stage, thank you for your patience and your attention.
February 18, 1993


Mr. Robert Wenman (Fraser Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, in beginning my remarks on this speech, I would like to express my appreciation for the process that brings a very progressive bill like this one to us from the Senate to the House of Commons. I would like to pay tribute to the work of Senator Murray and Senator Oliver in the Senate who carried this bill through the committee and through the Senate and delivered it on June 19, 1992, for my birthday.
I hope for my next birthday on June 19 we will be able to have the regulations complete and the act in place, all in a good cause of cleaner air for Canadians.
This is an area in which I have considerable interest, quality of life issues, not just for the Fraser Valley where I live and where it is very important, but around the globe as a major issue that is carried forward by global parliamentarians on human settlements and particularly our emphasis toward developing sustainable cities programs.
The updating of this act is very significant because it reflects contemporary concerns regarding climate change and sustainable development. Therefore it is appropriate and not just for Canada. It is an initiative in co-operation with global discussions that came out of Rio and so forth.
This is of particular interest in the major cities of Canada, Toronto, Montreal, and above all Vancouver because greater Vancouver is located in the Georgia Puget Basin which is very akin to Los Angeles. Each of them is in a valley reservoir of rapid growth, confined geographically by mountains that produce air inversions. Along with ever increasing car emissions, over one million cars cross the bridges of Vancouver each day.
As we put these combinations of factors together, we do not want the Fraser Valley to become Los Angeles north. In fact that has to be a major fight, a major voice and a major reason why I stand here in the House of Commons.
The very basic essence of life is the quality of our air and the quality of our water. The quality of the airshed of the bioregion of Georgia Puget Basin, now with 4.5 million people, is intensely threatened daily as that population over the next 20 years doubles from 4.5 million to over 10 million people.
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We do have in the greater Vancouver region a particular interest and concern that this bill be introduced, passed and more important, made effective. The nitrogen oxides, which are a key factor in causing ground level ozones, are released into our environment during the combustion of fossil fuels including gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal. Nationally both nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which are the major contributing agent of ozone, are both projected to grow by about 6 per cent between 1985 and the year 2005. If no new controls are developed to combat this problem, more problem areas will merge throughout our country and our globe.
California needs credit here because California has realized this difficulty and has legislation in place to deal with the problem, including laws mandating the sale of minimum percentages of zero emission vehicles and the maintenance of supply of alternative fuels to power these vehicles at gasoline stations.
California also has credible marketable credits for exceeding emission requirements. These credits allow for the attainment of the over-all policy objective at a lower cost to society because of efficient gains reaped by market allocation of these credits. I am pleased to see that this legislation follows that basic idea.
Canada must follow this lead before it becomes too late to save our air quality, particularly in our cities. Our approach must, however, be somewhat different in order to deal with the jurisdictional realities and constitutional differences between our countries.
We must have not only action at our national level in this form but joint action with the provinces that would permit the problem to be addressed in a more comprehensive fashion and that is the effective approach that we should take.
Our cities will only be made sustainable if we can combine the constitutional and jurisdictional responsibilities of the national government, the provinces and of our local governments, including our regional districts.
We must change this format, but until we can change it, we must operate respecting those jurisdictions, as I believe this bill has done.
An approach I strongly believe that Canada should take to deal with this problem would be by encouraging the development and sale of either ethanol of electrical

February 18, 1993
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powered vehicles. I am pleased that the research in this area is moving quite dramatically.
In fact, if you take the issue of electric vehicles, all the major car companies of the world are producing prototypes in this area. This prototype research is important and needs to be encouraged through incentives and of course through regulation and legislation.
When you think in terms of not just the research where in low emission vehicles, zero emission vehicles and electric vehicles there is encouraging results that are gained through vehicles like the Los Angeles car which is a combination of gas and electric, or some of the newer technologies that are looking at alternate fuels. Mazda, for example, is showing in Ottawa and Eastern Canada Day at the car shows. It is showing a rotary engine combined with a metal hydride fuel tank. This Mazda car uses hydrogen gas.
Nissan and others are working with liquid hydrogen fuel and the many other kinds of possibilities. All of these present particular problems. The particular problems they create are the problems of supply of fuel, whether that supply is found at the electrical level at residences or the need to have fuel supplied for whichever of the alternate fuels are required for the new vehicles, the new prototypes.
The method of approach in this bill I think is particularly useful. Bill S-8 proposes the use of emission credits as a tool for implementing tighter emission standards. Emission credits have been very effective incentives for encouraging manufacturers in California to produce zero emission vehicles.
The possibility of selling credits also encourages the development of desirable zero emission vehicles by permitting the recovery of some development costs from competitors.
I think the point that was made by the member for Davenport is a valid and interesting point that needs to be explored further and that is the question of how do you apply them? Do you apply them through averaging of vehicles or do you apply them on the basis of specific individual vehicles? This would vary from province to province according to the capacity of a province to have motor vehicle testing stations, if you are dealing on a vehicle by vehicle basis. Perhaps there could be an application in co-operation with the provinces. To start
with the concept of averaging is appropriate and probably all we can achieve at this stage. However, I think we should look in the direction of ultimately testing individual vehicles as well.
This is an area of opportunity, an opportunity to consider the North American free trade agreement. President Clinton will sign the North American free trade agreement, but he has suggested parallel agreements on the environment. Vice-President Gore has been particularly strong in this area. It is an area where we can demonstrate leadership through this bill. In fact, the bill does have the flexibility to adapt to certification and international standards of other countries. This is a place where we could find agreement.
As the parallel agreement on the environment is established with the free trade agreement, we need to rationalize the various laws and regulations of all three countries; Mexico, Canada and the United States. There could be a tendency toward two things in this parallel agreement: to take the lowest common denominator of all of the standards of each of the countries; or to take the highest common denominator. In other words, we would take the strongest regulations from Canada, the strongest regulations from the United States and the strongest regulations from Mexico, and put those as the standards for the North American continent.
I hope we will choose the high road and the highest possible standards for the regulations for all three countries. I hope those will be established in a parallel agreement to be signed along with the free trade agreement. I urge that we proceed in that direction.
I hope also that in the free trade agreement those parallel agreements will mean that competition among the countries will be on a level playing field because, in fact, we are all playing to the same standards.
A second element of the free trade agreement parallel accord that should be developed in air and vehicle emission standards should relate to enforcement. We can write this law but if we do not have the capacity to enforce it through the testing of vehicles and through the co-operation with manufacturers, then we have nothing. It is like a constitution; it means nothing if it is not enforced and applied.
*
February 18, 1993

Therefore, the regulations that go with this act are extremely significant. I would hope that the regulations can be looked at in committee because if you pass the act and the regulations are not stringent, then you have accomplished nothing or very little other than a statement of principle and intent. If I had my preference, I would put in this bill that the regulations be known at the same time as the bill is passed. In fact the government is working on regulations on the basis of the bill that it has produced. Therefore, I would like to see consideration given to putting some of those main regulations in the bill.
I recognize that we do not want the regulations to be so inflexible that we cannot change the standards as technology allows us to change them, but I think it is something we will need to consider in committee.
This bill is not the end, it is but a beginning, the first stage. In addition to that is the implementation process of this bill, taking us from prototypes in each of the experimental automobiles to the fleet situation, a situation where you try it in a large group of cars and then finally the broad public market. Government can help in this area.
I will be proposing two private member's bills in companion to this bill which suggest, for example, when the Government of Canada and our Crown corporations buy new automobiles, a percentage of these automobiles should be low emission vehicles or zero emission vehicles. If we are spending billions of dollars and of those billions of dollars a good portion are automobiles, why should the government not set the standard by buying these and use the fleet system that is necessary to carry us to the next stage?
For example, when you buy a hydrogen gas car, you have to find a gas station that sells hydrogen. You cannot expect every station suddenly to have hydrogen. If you use it through the fleet process, Crown corporations and governments will establish a central depot that these vehicles operate from and then that can be the middle stage. The co-operation of governments is required and I will bring in a private member's bill in to that effect.
Second, the bill has a sanction of tax on vehicles that in fact will raise some money hopefully. The tax is a disincentive. I think we should also have incentives. While the government might feel this is a bit of heresy it is my view that as an incentive to introduce electric
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vehicles or alternate fueled vehicles we might allow an exemption from the GST.
If that kind of exemption could be given, it is a very high-profile exemption that says to people it is important to the quality of air that they should go out and buy one of these cars. To do that the Government of Canada will give the incentive right to the individual in the marketplace.
Second, we need a fast write-off for businesses. A business person should be able to get a write-off in one, two, or three years as opposed to five or ten years. Perhaps we would have a further incentive for business to go beyond the government corporations, the Crown corporations, to the business corporations and then to the individual in the market. I think we would have a considerable speed-up of moving from prototypes to reality and to a higher quality of air.
These are some ideas I have. This is pioneering the new world. This is pioneering the next century as we move to live in cities. Many of us are country boys with country values. We want clean air, clean water, a little green space in our cities. We want an efficient transportation system.
Would that I could will away my desire for a car but I am a North American male-and this would apply to the North American female-and when a North American male or female turns 16 the first thing they want, your children, my children, and me, conditioned or whatever it is, a car because a car is synonymous with freedom. You can try to defeat that and say to your son or daughter at age 16 "take a bus". Well you can try. You can try to say to yourself "take a bus" or get on the rapid transit. I think we need lots of support for rapid transit, but at the same time there is the reality of our passion for our cars. It is North American. It is Canadian. It is world wide. Look at China today, it is going from the bicycle to' the motorcycle, to what is highly desirable after the television set and the refrigerator is the car. This is true everywhere in the developing world.
You can fight that value and try to condition that value by saying get on your bicycle, get on the rapid transit but it will only sell in part. Therefore we must deal with the issue of cars themselves and that means electric cars. It means hydrogen gas cars, hydrogen liquefied fuel cars. Look at Mohawk and the great ethanol movement. It deserves a word of credit. You can drive by a Mohawk

February 18, 1993
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station in Vancouver and put ethanol in your car. These are the very positive kinds of initiatives that governments need to reward. We are never going to take the car off of our roads in our time because it is a special symbol of freedom for young people, of prosperity, affluence and so forth. Therefore, we are going to have to deal with these alternatives.
On that basis, this is a futuristic bill. It deserves the support of all of us. It deserves that we should all look forward to this bill, not in the context of safety as it used to be drafted-that is part of the bill-but in the context of can we continue to live in the 21 megacities of the world whose quality air is depreciating and the major factor in that depreciation is auto emissions.
Members of the House and of the Senate, this is a great bill to proceed with. We must make the regulations stringent. I look forward to a cleaner, better world because we met and had this debate today.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 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 the Standing Committee on Transport.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Before I call Orders of the Day, 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 Fredericton-York-Sunbury- Old Government House; the hon. member for Park-dale-High Park-Job Training; the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Employment; the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond-Health; the hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre-Agriculture.


COPYRIGHT ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-88, an act to amend the Copyright Act, as reported (with amendment) from a legislative committee.
Marcel Danis: that Bill C-88, an act to amend the Copyright Act, as amended, be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: that the Bill be read the third time and passed.


Mrs. Nicole Roy-Arcelin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity today to lead off the debate on third reading of Bill C-88, tabled in the House on June 18 last year, whose purpose is to amend the Copyright Act.
The bill reflects the main objective of the Copyright Act, which is to protect creative activity. When we say copyright, we no longer refer exclusively to printed works. Today, creative works are transmitted in a multitude of ways, as a result of the incredible technologies that have been developed in the past 20 years.
By amending the Copyright Act, we are trying to adapt the legislation to the present context. There have been radical changes in recent years, while the wording of the legislation remained practically unchanged from 1921 to 1988.
Bill C-88 proposes to amend a number of definitions contained in the Copyright Act. More specifically, it proposes to replace the obsolete definition of the term musical work, redefine performance and clarify the definition of the term network in order to determine who pays what to whom. For instance, the present legal definition of a musical work is "any combination of melody and harmony, or either of them, printed, reduced to writing or otherwise graphically produced or reproduced".
February 18, 1993

In fact, only music scores meet the current criteria for musical work. According to the amendment we are proposing, any form of musical composition, with or without words, will constitute a musical work in the meaning of the Copyright Act.
The Society of Composers, Authors and Musical Publishers of Canada, also known as SOCAN, collects royalties on behalf of authors and composers, both for the transmission of musical works to the public by means of telecommunications and for the public performance of such works.
The impact of technological change, which has also changed the way musical works are used, has been greatest on composers, authors and music publishers. Previously, the definition of a musical work or, should I say, a music score prevented SOCAN from collecting royalties for the transmission of musical works by specialized services and "paying" services.
This kind of transmission is meant when we refer to the right to communicate to the public by telecommunications. Bill C-88 makes a clear distinction between the right to communicate a musical work to the public by telecommunications and the right to do a public performance of the work, a distinction that is not made in the Copyright Act in its present form.
In making that distinction, the bill determines that payment must be made in return for exercising each of these rights. Bill C-88 ensures that everyone who transmits musical works and who takes an active part in their transmission, including programmers, cable companies, networks and their affiliated stations, is jointly and individually responsible for all payments chargeable for rights to communicate such works to the public by telecommunications.
This provision will simplify the equitable distribution of royalties to be collected pursuant to those rights. Failure to clarify the situation and ensure that the amendments proposed to the Copyright Act in 1989 are fully implemented will further increase the amount of royalties fore gone.
For artists, who are one of the least well-off groups in our society, the situation is a serious one. The government is determined to ensure that authors and composers of musical works are fairly remunerated for every use of their works, and I know members on both sides of the House support this objective.
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By adopting Bill C-88 we will meet a commitment made to copyright holders. This measure will send a clear message that review and clarification of the Copyright Act, which has tremendous repercussions on the economic viability of this group, is a priority.
In concluding, on behalf of the Minister of Communications, I would like to thank all members of the legislative committee for their work on Bill C-88. As a result the process has been constructive and well timed. I would also like to thank all members of the House for their co-operation.


Sheila Finestone: Mr. Speaker, it was a great pleasure for me to listen to the hon. member, who was a good witness for the interests of artists, especially those who appeared before us on the committee. I listened to you with pleasure. You spoke on behalf of the minister, because you are faithful to the committee and I am pleased to recognize that today.
[English)
The enhancement under Bill C-88, the act to amend the Copyright Act in this third reading comes finally after years and years of an absence of a right, which deprived artists particularly musical composers and writers from earning a fair livelihood through an error committed during the negotiations of the free trade agreement. Not only did the free trade agreement have negative fall-out in many other areas, certainly for the artistic community and those who write, produce and compose it has been a source of great irritation and an unnecessary degree of financial deprivation which I would think has concerned all of us.
Those people involved in this particular field, those song writers and composers, can really be very appreciative of the incessant pressure they have put on this government through their collective SOCAN. They were very articulate in explaining and expressing their deep and serious concerns. It has taken a long time and it took a strong friend of the government to really get this whole thing moving.
We are pleased to be standing here today and finding a mechanism to answer that concern and at the same time to acknowledge that the essence of copyright is the finding of a fair balance between the rights of the creators and the rights of the users.

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I and the Liberal Party support this bill because in its present form it does represent what we consider to be the kind of fair balance between the rights of the song writers and composers and the people who make commercial use of music. Rights were denied and I think even though those rights were denied in error during the free trade implementation legislation procedure, it is nonetheless not too late. I hope to repair some of this very serious damage.
I must make an observation about copyright. My colleagues have heard me say only too often that it is the kind of legislation I hate to do. Most people do not understand what copyright is all about and its vital importance to the life of many people in terms of intellectual property. It is particularly important to Canadian artists, entertainers and creators in every field of their expression. It is also a subject of increasing importance to the welfare of our Canadian economy. The same holds true on the international scene today through the multilateral conventions.
I would like to draw to the attention of the minister some very important multilateral issues that are going to arise in Stockholm very shortly, I believe at the beginning of June. These will have serious implications for the audio-visual producers and for the song writers if we do not take a firm stand to protect their claims under the Berne convention, the Rome convention and to ensure that our American neighbours are supportive of the interests of the arts.
We already overlooked them once. We fought hard in order to protect our cultural industries through the free trade agreement. We got special concerns.
Today is a very important day in the life of the artists. They were here to express their very serious concerns about the underfunding and the cuts that have taken place in the field of artistic grants and contributions by this government over the last eight years.
They raised against the wall of the National Arts Centre that incredible banner of Canada on which
200,000	signatures had been affixed as the flag went across this land which indicates the importance expressed by Canadians who support the arts, buy tickets to the theatre, buy the records and the songs, who enjoy the plays. They recognize that our films, movies, videos and our television series are selling so well around the world
and that we have as a small country the most incredible talent everywhere.
Today is a very apt day to move once again into a field where there has not been adequate protection which in, of and by itself creates the low income our artists have to live with. In essence, it is the artists who are the best supporters of the arts of this country. It is the artists who not only produce but also have to sacrifice many things in life in order to allow their creative juices and talent to be expressed in a variety of ways.
To them we have to be very grateful for they mark our place on the global map as Canadians, as distinct, as unique. In a globalized world it is very important that we with the values we stand for express them through the screen, song and dance or in any variety of ways throughout the world. We should pay and respect these people to the best of our ability.
Today these artists and entertainers who are performing works across the country and around the world and in whom we take great pride bring into this country very important revenues. I do not know how many people realize the numbers of people involved in this field. Over
400,000	people work in this field.
We bring in over $17 billion in revenues to this country. We are about number four in the GDP of this country. About 2.6 per cent to 3 per cent of the GDP comes out of the field of art. It is the successes of artists like Roch Voisine, Bryan Adams and Celine Dion who are selling around the world. Their revenues come here and we take a good part of them in taxes and that helps the economy of this country. It is a business. Art is an expression. It is not a widget. It is a business, but it is a different form of business.
There are hundreds of names I could mention. These people are recognized by critics and audiences around the world. They are among the best in the world. When they sing, perform, write and compose, they do not get paid for their work if it appears on a cable system or on our network system. That is because of an error in law.
The artists have been losing millions and millions of dollars and I think that is grossly unfair. This is what the minister, this bill and this government were trying to shore up and fill in. It is its own error in the free trade agreement which it is trying to patch up now. I know we are pleased to participate in that.
February 18, 1993

Copyright protects their interests and enhances the cultural sovereignty of Canada. I do not think I need to go into a song and dance about that. If we did not have these cultural expressions, who and what would we be? Would we be extended Americans with no identity? It is happening fast enough. We need to really maintain this and who we are through the expression of these people. Copyright is important to business, as I said.
Intellectual property is the bedrock upon which we build our information-based society. It is critical to the future of this country. The accelerating pace of technological change demands greater ingenuity and creativity to compete in world markets. It is our knowledge that adds value to the goods and services we sell.
Canadians need a legislative framework to be able and capable of supporting these developments and defending the rights of Canadian creators.
Bill C-88 is another step toward the modernization of the Copyright Act. For some Canadian song writers and composers it is a very important step. It is by no means the major revision that is required in phase two of copyright that was promised before copyright phase one even came in. Although I am delighted that we have this revision, it is by far not the answer that we really need so that all forms of copyright are protected. Canadian artists and Canadian businesses can really be protected in the fullness of the intent.
The Canadian Independent Record Production Association in a recent newsletter called for phase two of this copyright reform. It reflects the current realities and enables creators to receive fair recompense for their work. I think this bill fills in a large part of the void that was highlighted.
I would like to read into the record what they had to say because I think it is important. They said: "It is extremely difficult to run an efficient, profitable business if the law allows users and consumers to use our property freely while negating the efforts and business acumen of our members. It seems unbelievable that such a gross injustice should continue to have been perpetrated over more than two decades, not just from the point of view of the lack of morality and disregard for the basic principles of justice and fairness that this implies, traits which are
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supposed to be common to all Canadians, but equally important, the attitude toward intellectual property that ignores the inherent value to Canadian society of having a strong, value-added industry that will make a substantial contribution to Canada's future prosperity. We can but hope that 1993 will bring a long-awaited change in this unhappy situation and enable our sector to make the contribution to Canadian culture and export earnings it is capable of, given the proverbial level playing field of opportunity that it has long deserved".
Although this particular aspect of the bill will cover one small part, it certainly does not cover home taping, performing rights, neighbouring rights and many other rights which are yet to be discussed.
I asked today in the House during Question Period whether we were truly interested in the well-being of our arts, cultural institutions and artists. The bill we passed on June 8 last year gave artists the right to go before a tribunal and a tribunal was to have been set up so they could negotiate properly and in due form. The government has not seen fit to put that into place. It has not proclaimed that bill even though it has gone through the Senate and is law. It takes political will to name the judges for that tribunal. All that is left is political will.
Although we are debating and passing this bill today, I call on the government to realize it is one thing to put on a public face and lots of performance, but this box we are now presenting may be a Trojan Horse unless this bill is proclaimed into law and enacted upon. The tribunal for the artists has not been acted upon to date.
Cable companies that carry specialty services such as MuchMusic, MusiquePlus, YTV, Vision and Arts and Entertainment, that do not broadcast over the air, use the works of Canadian musicians without paying for them. Is that right? Would you like your works to be used without any recognition or pay? It does not put food on your table or pay your rent. This means that while song writers such as Gordon Lightfoot, Roch Voisine or whoever, might receive royalties for air play of a song on radio or on a broadcast television like CTV, TVA or CBC, there is no remuneration for their air play on channels such as MuchMusic, MusiquePlus, Nashville Network or other services which are available only on cable.

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The whole reason for this is forgetfulness when the free trade agreement was negotiated, amongst other forgetfulnesses. I will not go into that. I can see you are smiling, Mr. Speaker. This is perhaps not the moment, but boy could I really enjoy a real debate on free trade.


An hon. member:: Do it.


Sheila Finestone: Do it, okay. How about you speaking for me over here?
This is an injustice as is any other service. Let us put this bill through and ensure that the errors that were about to be committed are not committed again by a minister ill-advised by his staff. This minister almost committed an error that would have caught nursing homes, hospitals, mom and pop shops and small businesses where they had a radio on or were playing a cassette because it would have been trapped under the gramophone act it had put in here.
I can say to you we got rid of the gramophone exemption. We then clarified the copyright issues around CTV. We hope we will not have to be concerned that there will be any kind of double payment and that we are severally and jointly considering responsibilities.
We will hopefully have the Canadian Copyright Board review the flat revenue tariff versus the incidental tariff that is presently in place as the payments system, in the interest of what is best for the artists involved.
I hope this copyright bill will be the forerunner of phase two of copyright which is desperately needed. I certainly support the move of this bill into law.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, the fact that this is a short debate and there is all-party agreement to this government bill tells an interesting story. It is a story that is worth putting on the public record.
When the Standing Committee on Culture and Communications was holding hearings earlier last year on the state of the cultural industries in Canada which resulted in our unanimous report on The Ties that Bind, we heard presentations from SOCAN which is the Society of Composers, Authors, and Musical Publishers of Canada. We heard how a technical oversight in the drafting of the copyright law is costing them millions of dollars every year.
As the government person and the spokesperson for the Liberal Party have also pointed out, the problem was
that the old copyright law defined a musical work as having a written score. The cable companies were saying; "we are not transmitting a written score. We are transmitting sound".
In the old copyright law, the definition of broadcasting was something that was broadcasted over the air. The cable companies were saying; "but we are not broadcasting over the air, we are broadcasting by wire".
They were using the works of song writers, composers and authors without paying one cent in royalties. I suppose the other television companies like CBC and CTV, Global and so forth could have also said: "Well, we are not transmitting something that is written". But they did not. They lived within the intent and spirit of the law, unlike the cable companies.
I initially suggested to my fellow members on the committee that we have a quick little amendment to plug this. It was obvious that all members from all political parties who were at that committee hearing were convinced this was an unacceptable situation. It was stupid. Why not have a quick little amendment to change this and rectify the situation?
We invited the government to bring in the bill that is in front of us, although it is not quite the bill in front of us. There was full co-operation of all political parties and members on our committee and we worked in a co-operative way together. It is an example on how Parliament can and should operate and what we accomplished demonstrates what a truly representative system can do.
Also interesting was the interference from the department and bureaucrats, although not from the minister. I would like to separate the minister from the bureaucrats, although I was not privy to all the communications. My criticisms were of the bureaucrats from the department. Instead of presenting us with a bill to plug those loopholes as we wanted, they brought us a bill that also had a whole bunch of other bells and whistles attached to it.
They wanted us to tackle the whole question of what is commonly called the gramophone exemption. This is an exemption in the existing law that would allow a restaurant or a public place to play a gramophone and not be charged royalties. It is outdated and has to be addressed but this was not the place.
February 18, 1993

Organizations like the Restaurant Association et cetera made a valid submission to our committee asking us to leave it as it is right now. We have to discuss this whole other area in phase two of copyright. Do not take this little part that has to be reformed and try to do it. Leave it because there are some interesting questions.
I used to operate a restaurant and would turn the radio on in the kitchen to listen to music. Now is that commercial exploitation? Should I be paying royalty for that? I do not believe so, but if I was running a fancy restaurant and tuned into an FM station that just played certain types of music, if it was important for me in terms of creating the ambience of my commercial establishment and I was making money off somebody else's creative work, then yes I should pay some royalty for that.
These are some very fundamental principles and we have to debate them. I urge the government to proceed with phase two of copyright. It is badly needed. I am critical of the government for delaying it so long but to deal with it in this particular piece of legislation is inappropriate.
Finally the department came with some further amendments. Those amendments in turn created a whole slew of other problems and then we started hearing from people who made films including educational films because the amendments the bureaucrats were introducing affected a whole group of other people. Finally we were able to convince the bureaucrats and the government to drop that section of the bill.
I thought everything was solved but then the last Wednesday before Christmas recess the committee was to deal with clause-by-clause considerations. Before we could proceed the government came up with a whole new set of amendments.
We began to wonder whether the government and the bureaucrats really wanted this. Every time they introduced these new amendments they created another road-block. This new amendment dealt with the definition of a network. I asked them if they had consulted and they said they had but when I went to the broadcasters they told me they had not been consulted.
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You have to ask the question: Why did the government bureaucrats come in at the last moment with a whole new set of amendments that did not affect the intent and essence of the bill? My experience in copyright is that if you change even one part of it the ramifications can affect all sorts of different enterprises and groups you were not even aware of.
The only decent way of handling it is through a consultative process, an open process that holds hearings so all parties can appear before our committee and tell us the effects of whatever change is being proposed. We did not do it. The government came in at the last moment with a whole new set of amendments and did not allow us to listen to the broadcasters.
In this particular case, CTV would be directly affected. We have never heard from CTV how this amendment which is now in this bill is going to affect them. I think that is wrong and unfair. It is not the correct process. I am not certain if we really understand and know what this will mean until we hear from all interested parties.
I am very happy to see the bill and will not object to it, nor will I object to any parts of it. I suspect once I understood the implications and application of the amendment the government introduced at the very last moment, I would probably agree with it. I certainly did not want to be stampeded into it. I certainly did not want to make a decision on it without hearing all the affected parties. The government did not give us that opportunity-
Even though Bill C-88 is an example of where all political parties and parliamentarians from the government and the opposition can work together in harmony, it is also an example of how bureaucrats can interfere with that process. I want to put on record that there is a lesson to be learned from this.
I am happy we will be able to proceed with Bill C-88 and pass it in all stages, hopefully this afternoon. It corrects an injustice. It corrects a wrong. It establishes some fairness, some justice and some equity for important citizens of our society, the creators of musical works that we listen to, musical works that are like mirrors of ourselves and society.

February 18, 1993
Private Members' Business
It does not solve all the problems. It certainly does not solve all the severe problems of the artistic community in this recessionary time and in a period of increasing government cutbacks. The cutback to the Department of Communications by 10 per cent this year and 10 per cent next year across the board will have devastating implications and applications.
When granting agencies like the Canada Council have to scale back it means that some orchestras, some theatre groups and some galleries will not be able to continue, and that is unfortunate. It is not just unfortunate for the cultural life, the image of our country and our self-awareness as a country, but it has negative economic implications.
My colleague from the Liberal Party, the Liberal critic for culture, put on record some of the economic factors involved. Earlier today in my statement to the House I went into some of the economic factors. Almost 350,000 people are employed in the industry. Some say it is almost 400,000 people. It contributes some $17 billion to economic activity in Canada or some 2.5 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product. These are significant economic realities.
The arts, the culture, artists, musicians, writers and actors make a tremendously important contribution to the psyche of the country and to the economics of the country. We earn in Canada in terms of our foreign balance of payments from the arts some $1.7 billion from people offshore who bought our records, our movies, our books, et cetera. For us to cut back in this important economic activity is counterproductive.
These are the arguments. These are the debates. These are the battles I am sure will be fought in this House on other occasions and during the election campaign whenever that occurs. However today we are united. There is total unanimity of all members of the House in urging the passage of this bill.


Louis Plamondon: Mr. Speaker, since there is only a minute left and we would like to pass this bill today, I would like to say that the Bloc Quebecois fully supports this bill and even congratulates all parties in the House for co-operating so much in order that
authors can earn a living from what they do. We are ready to vote.


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


Some hon. members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: 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. Paproski):: It being five o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 30(6) the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough -Rouge River) moved: that Bill C-336, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Young Offenders Act (absence of criminal liability of child under 10 years of age and definition of child and young person), be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to present a private bill that I feel addresses a flaw in our justice system.
I would like to take a look at the purpose of the bill. It is specifically to reduce the age for the operation of the Young Offenders Act from the current 12 years of age to 10 years of age. That requires two specific statutory amendments.
The first is that section 13 of the Criminal Code will have to be amended to reduce the age of criminal responsibility from the current 12 to 10. Second, it will require a change in the Young Offenders Act of the definition of a young person from the current 12 to 17 year age group to 10 to 17 and describe as a child a person who is under 10 years of age.

February 18, 1993

A little background would be useful in understanding why I propose this amendment. The Young Offenders Act was enacted in 1984. Prior to that act, offences by young persons were covered by the Juvenile Delinquents Act which covered youths aged 7 to 18. In effect, after 1984 youths aged 7 to 11 simply dropped out of the justice system. It was believed at that time that child welfare legislation would be sufficient to regulate their affairs even if those affairs involved ciminality.
In any event, now the public knows that the Young Offenders Act has more than one problem. Many people have suggested that we should change the name. Let us be honest. Changing the name of the statute will not do anything. We have to address the real problems in the statute.
As I see it there are at least two flaws-there are others-in the current act. It is odd that just a year ago the House passed an amendment to the Young Offenders Act. We were told at that time by the government that the act would address the flaws in the Young Offenders Act. I say that is not true. It did not address them and it was only a superficial response. We still have work to do.
The criminal justice net currently excludes crimes by those who are under 12 years of age. Not only do we have the scope or net problem where acts by those individuals escape the system, but to many the act appears not to have any teeth. It is ineffective. That is not just a perception; that is a reality.
If one looks at the principles contained in the Young Offenders Act, and I will simply cheriy-pick through, one reads things like: The youth have special needs and require guidance and assistance; it is not inconsistent with the protection of society to take no measures or take measures other than judicial proceedings; young persons should have special guarantees of their rights and freedoms; rights and freedoms of young persons include a right to the least possible interference with freedom that is consistent with the protection of society. The act shall be liberally construed to mean that young persons will be dealt with in accordance with the principles, some of which I just enunciated. In the end we can see that in those principles there is no principle of general or specific deterrence to young offenders contained in the act, none at all. If there is no goal, if there is no deterrence, the act has no teeth for that age group.
Private Members' Business
Let us move now to the amendment I propose: the lowering of the age from 12 years to 10 years to include young offenders. Let us take a look at what has been happening with the under-12 group over the last few years.
In 19911 received a letter from a principal in my riding of Scarborough-Rouge River. I will just read a portion of it because it is very instructive. He wrote: "A 10-year old boy in my adjustment class assaulted seven girls" and he described the sexual offence, sexual assault. "While discussing the problem with him he went into a rage, physically assaulting, kicking, punching, biting my viceprincipal, social worker and myself. He threatened to return with a gun and shoot me. He was suspended. The following week he returned with a bb gun or pellet gun. I was out of the school at a meeting so he threatened several students with it and followed two of the above-mentioned girls home".
He described the action that the school took including a suspension and informing the Children's Aid Society. He continued: "My problem is the inability to deal with the incident as it affects society. The police inform us that they can do nothing because of the Young Offenders Act. They further stated that they probably could not even take away the gun. The Children's Aid Society has difficulty doing anything if the problem is not a threat to the boy himself. Threats to others are not their mandate".
In 1992 I had a letter from two teachers from another school. They said: "There have been increasing occurrences of theft in our classrooms. Children are stealing from other children as well as from adults. These children have no remorse about their actions. Some of these young children continue to commit these crimes on a regular basis and as a result we are dealing with property damage, home-made weapons, verbal abuse, physical abuse, harassment, intimidation. If we continue to excuse inappropriate behaviour from the above areas we will also continue to give students the message that their crimes are not serious enough and they will not be accountable for their actions. We feel that if students choose to commit crimes they should also be responsible for these actions and serve the proper punishment according to the law for all people".
That is just a sampling from my riding, but Scarborough is not alone. There is great frustration at the failure of the Young Offenders Act in every area of the country.

February 18, 1993
Private Members' Business
In August 1992 the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, by a resolution at its annual conference, urged the Minister of Justice to review the application of the Young Offenders Act to include individuals under 12 years of age.
We have information from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. It is a collection of data from 10 per cent of Canada's police forces. If we extrapolate-this is not scientific-from the data gathered by that centre for statistics we can estimate that there are approximately
14,000	otherwise criminal acts being committed by offenders under the age of 12. I call them offenders even though in law they are not offenders and even though in law those acts are not criminal offences.
I have some additional examples from that grouping. Last February The Ottawa Citizen reported the case of a five-year old girl who could not go to school because a ten-year old boy had slapped her and was threatening her with a knife. In September 1991 two serious incidents occurred, also in the Ottawa area. Four elementary school students, all under the age of 12, kidnapped, gagged and physically assaulted a seven-year-old. In the other incident a 10-year old boy was shot in the arm and leg by an 11-year-old.
In the 1989-90 year, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association conducted a survey of assaults upon teachers and students. Among other things, it found 664 incidents of common assault; 73 incidents of assault with a weapon, threatening with a weapon and serious physical injury and harassment; and 570 incidents of vandalism.
The number of those incidents are growing. I want to point out that many police will not either bother to report or act in relation to criminal acts committed by youths under 12 years of age because, they say: "It simply is not a crime. It is not a criminal offence. We do not have a criminal. We have not got a charge. We have not got a process. We cannot arrest. We cannot intervene. We cannot detain. The matter is closed". Many statistics just do not get reported.
In a report prepared in 1990 for the Department of Justice, it appears that there are recommendations from the governments of the provinces of Nova Scotia, Ontario and British Columbia, all recommending that the Young Offenders Act age be reduced to nine or ten years
of age. I point out that my bill would bring the age down to 10 years of age.
One of the problems cited in that study is the ineffectiveness of existing child welfare legislation in filling the gap in dealing with and responding to those kinds of offences by youths under 12 years of age. I do not have time to review the child welfare legislation in every province, but essentially child welfare legislation permits intervention by authorities only to protect the child. It is for the purpose of protecting the welfare of the child that the authorities can intervene, not for protection of the public.
When the intervention occurs generally, it must be by law in the following manner. They must take the child home to the parents or to a place of safety. That is only for the purpose of protecting the child. In many of the incidents I have mentioned there was not any question of any danger to the child involved. The child was a danger or had committed a criminal act in relation to someone else.
Therefore, in those instances where we think we can rely on child welfare legislation, there is no sanction, absolutely no sanction at all. What do we do when we take this offending child home to a family where there is no real family, when they do not care, when they do not know what to do? That child is simply given a free ride home with no sanction.
From the study prepared for the Department of Justice there were a number of reasons cited why the age should be reduced. Again, I will just cherry pick through some of those reasons. Some children under 12 are responsible for their actions and take advantage of their immunity from prosecution. They do have a criminal intent.
We could lower the age to prevent or to reduce the likelihood of older persons using under 12-year-olds to commit offences; to protect the public and to give consideration to victims; the need for consequences for the child when a law is contravened; the need for specific and general deterrents which are simply not in the system at all now, not even in the existing Young Offenders Act as it applies to all youth under the age of 18. There is not even any reference to general or specific deterrents in that act, let alone for the children who the act does not cover at all.
There is a need for more effective intervention, more effective than a simple referral to the child welfare system, and a need for some middle ground or alterna-
February 18, 1993

tive measures between returning a child home with no further action and referral to child welfare. The children will benefit from services available in the youth justice system as well as the controls possible with a court order like curfew, probation, non-association conditions.
There are many reasons why many observers think this act should be amended in the way I have proposed. I am not advocating that 10 and 11-year-olds be dealt with in adult court. No. I am simply asking that they go to youth court. I am not asking to send them to a maximum security institution but only that they be dealt with by the young offender system that is in place. It is the same place where we deal with 12, 13 and 14-year-olds.
I ask you to put yourself in the position of a parent of an 11-year-old who is either robbed, physically assaulted or sexually assaulted by a person of the same age with criminal intent. That person is simply met by someone and taken home.
You are helpless to deal with that youth. Society is helpless in dealing with the youth. There is no legislation that permits intervention or sanction. That simply is not acceptable when we already have a Young Offenders Act. It specifically provides for youth services, intervention, sanction, probation, curfew, conditions, guidance and psychologists.
The Young Offenders Act provides for that system in each of the provinces. Yet for these young offenders aged 10 and 11, we are not using it. They simply drop outside the system. They do not come within the net. I think Canadians want young offenders of that category dealt with by the Young Offenders Act.
Maybe there is no real family at home. That is often the case for young offenders of this nature. There is no accounting. There is no apology and there is no sanction for these 10 and 11-year-olds.
What kind of message does that send to the young offender of that age? What kind of a message is it? He or she would be totally unsure whether there was any line drawn in the sand, whether there was any sanction, whether or not society was really showing any denunciation for the act.
Sadly yesterday we learned about a case in the United Kingdom. It was not in this country. It is a few thousand miles away. It involved the case of a murder of a
Private Members' Business
2-year-old who was bludgeoned and then left on a railway track. As awful as those details were, I was shocked when I heard that the police were looking for two suspects, youths aged 10 to 12.
If that happened in this country, I say that those youths would by law, if they were caught and if they were of that age group, be simply taken home. They would have to be taken home to their parents. That is it. There is no more sanction. There are no more dealings. A social worker would check into it. That is it. There is no ability to do anything other than to do something to protect the offending child. There is nothing to protect society. That is simply not good enough.
Child welfare legislation is there to protect the young child and not the public. We need legislation that will address protection of the public. Where is the justice now? Where is the sense of proportion? Where is the ability of society to protect itself? Where is the procedure to give those 10 and 11-year-old young offenders access to young offender treatment programs? It just is not there.
On this one item of amending the age category, the Young Offenders Act needs reform. I know members opposite know that. The age must be reduced. I urge members in the House to adopt this reform as one of several which we have to see to. My constituents want these reforms, as do all Canadians.


Mrs. Barbara Sparrow (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate with regard to young offenders.
I have to say right from the very start that I am not in favour of lowering the age from 12 to 10. The minimum age of young offenders prior to the Young Offenders Act being passed in the House in 1984 was certainly discussed not only here in this House but right across the country in each province as well as the two territories.
A lot was taken into consideration. First of all, you have to take a look at the mental capacity of a 10-year-old. While chronologically somebody can be 10, their capacity to understand and comprehend varies greatly. It varies with the individual and the family surroundings in which he or she has been raised.

February 18, 1993
Private Members' Business
Let us just take the capacity of a youngster who is 10 or 11. Does he or she understand the criminal law system? Does he or she understand what it is to go into court and what their legal rights are? I think we would be taking far too much for granted if we ever even gave a thought to lowering the age.
I agree that there are some things within the Young Offenders Act today that need to be amended. I know my colleague mentioned that in his closing remarks. However, it is not lowering the age by any means.
I want to look at a troubled youngster. A 10-year old or an 11-year-old troubled youngster commits a crime. Why? Often it comes down to a family in which there is some sort of dysfunction. Either it is a single parent or, not always, two parents where both of them are working and there is not enough supervision or indeed there is abuse. When I speak of abuse I do not just mean sexual abuse. We get into psychological abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse. There are all kinds of abuse. Many of our youngster grow up in that today. We need to put more emphasis on the family and ridding ourselves of family violence and family abuse.
Obviously this is a major problem. I understand what my colleague said with regard to two or three cases that he elaborated. One had to do with a youngster in a school who was sexually assaulting. He was 10-years old and sexually assaulting another youngster and then coming back with a pellet gun.
I would have to ask myself, number one, about the principal and counsellors within that school. Certainly some reporting must have been done. Second, when youngsters are apprehended by the police department they are, yes, taken to their house.


Derek Vincent Lee: They cannot be arrested.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: I am not asking that they be arrested but there is something wrong to cause them to commit that particular offence in the beginning. I think it is up to our social services with regard to assisting these youngsters. It may be a family problem and the youngster would have to be removed from the family. That can be done. It can be done through the social services or through the child protection system. It is unfortunate but sometimes it is a lot better for the youngster.
It is clear that the needs of youngsters who are 10 or 11 years old must be looked at and must be reviewed by the
child protection and mental health systems, not by forcing them into family court and not by finding them guilty of a certain criminal crime. Incarceration, you cannot do that to a 10-year-old. Not at all.
What we have to do is strengthen the social services so we could get into the home, into the communities and into building up the family life. That is what is so needed.
Let us talk about the Young Offenders Act. This has been a very volatile subject in my riding and in a lot of ridings right across the country.
First, under the 1984 legislation, it deals with youngsters who are 12 years old through to 17 years old inclusive. I would strongly say that youngsters who are 16 years old and 17 years old should be moved to adult court. They are not young offenders. I would like to see an amendment where we would lower the age from the top down and say that the 12 to 15-year-olds are young offenders. However 16 and 17-year-olds who can have jobs, leave school, drive cars and assume responsibility should be treated like adults.
I feel very strongly there are habitual young offenders and they are the ones who we have to treat more seriously. Any young offender who has been twice convicted of an indictable offence and is back in court for the third time should automatically be moved to adult court.
There are weaknesses in the system. I feel very strongly that there are some amendments that need to be made, but I am not going to say that a youngster of 10 or 11 should fall under the Young Offenders Act. We have to deal with it with our social services, and I know that a lot of those responsibilities are within provincial jurisdiction. I also know that by working with Brighter Futures, which the Minister of National Health and Welfare tabled some months ago, or working with our aboriginal peoples we can certainly improve the system.
However, it is through education, counselling and public awareness that we can improve the situation.
If both parents are working, that is tough. How many members in this House have latchkey kids? How many members in this House are really single parents with full responsibility for their youngster plus a job? There are not very many. It is a big responsibility, so there is a lot more to this than sending youngsters who are 10 years old to jail.
February 18, 1993

Let us look at the young offenders. There are lots of things we can do. We legislate the law, the provinces administer the act along with the courts, and the police department makes all of the decisions about whether to charge or not. We do have problems and a lot are in the court system. The court system is under such stress and strain because of the backlog that there are certain convictions that should not even go into court, such as speeding, unless it is dangerous driving. There are certain tickets that I can pay by sending in a cheque, be it a speeding or parking ticket. We should remove these from the family court system.
What about sentencing charts so that all across our country youngsters in the young offender system who are found guilty and convicted of a similar crime receive a similar sentence? It differs greatly from the city of Calgary to the city of Vancouver.
We can encourage out of city initiations to put the youngsters to work so they understand what an eight-hour day is, be it perhaps in the forestry business or the parks and recreation business, and at the same time teach them a vocation so that they then can carry on in a meaningful way with employment in their future lives. There is education. A lot of these youngsters have dropped out of school. They do not have enough education to get them through society in the coming years.
It is most important that we not only have the young offenders system that we have today but that we set up certain types of work camps for habitual young offenders and teach them a trade.
How about the financial accountability of some of these young offenders? What of those who steal cars for a joy-ride and then damage them? The car is then a write off. Somehow through the insurance system, and even through the income tax system, there could be a charge so that over the period of 10 or 12 years, once they go into the working system, they will slowly have to pay off their financial responsibility to society. That should be put in there.
I absolutely believe that there are many means by which we could strengthen the Young Offenders Act so that youngsters who are 16 and 17 are treated as adults and we get to the habitual young offender, who is 6 per cent of all the young offenders but is doing 80 or 90 per
Private Members' Business
cent of the offences. Those are the people we should be after, not the little kids who are 10 and 11 years old and come from broken families or families who have problems. They need counselling and they need help. I agree.
If there are family problems they should be removed from the family, I agree with my colleague from across the way, but there are certainly ways to help the family without putting these youngsters in jail.


Mr. Rod Laporte (Moose Jaw-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate today. This bill that is before us is proposing to lower the age of people covered by the Young Offenders Act to 10 years from 12 years. Although I sympathize with some of the member's concerns and some of the points made by the member from the government side I do not think, and certainly members of the New Democratic Party would not think, that we should lower the age from 12 years to 10 years.
In this country we spend over $8 billion a year on the justice system right now. Canadians are feeling less safe in this country than they have probably ever felt. The United States has become very serious about building more jails and becoming tougher on offenders but it has a worse record than we do.
The answer is not in making tougher laws and further deterrents. The answer is in other areas. With respect to this bill, yes, there are children who are 10 or 11 or sometimes 7 or 8 years of age who have some severe problems and are a detriment to themselves and the people around them. However, changes should not be made specifically to the Young Offenders Act unless they are linked with increased mental health and social services with the provinces and with federal cost sharing for those services. There must be a broader approach.
A child who is seriously out of control, such as the one mentioned by the hon. member who threatened to use a pellet gun, is a serious problem. A child who is seriously out of control requires long-term, open-ended treatment. That simply cannot be appropriately provided under the definite sentencing framework of the Young Offenders Act. Criminalizing behaviour is not an effective response in dealing with a child with severe behavioural problems.

February 18, 1993
Private Members' Business
The Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General is examining law enforcement and the future of law and order in this country. I want to note the Canadian Police Association position on this issue. It stated before this committee just recently that: "As a society we should also recognize that the solution to crime by younger criminals is not to reduce the age of the Young Offenders Act applicably, but instead to accept the reality that failing to intervene in some cases does the young person and society a greater disservice in the long run. This approach, intervention by provincial authorities in child welfare situations, is obviously fraught with immense difficulties itself. Just because that is so, however, should not deter us from carefully having the courage to make the tough judgments necessary. It will by no means be easy. But to ignore such problems potentially condemns children to a likely worse state".
These are the people who are working on the front lines. These are the police officers who deal with this on a daily basis, and they are taking that approach. Yes, there is a need to deal with this issue. Yes, there is a problem in this area. Yes, there are problems with the Young Offenders Act and they will be looked at.
If we are going to deal with this problem effectively we must have a broader approach. I understand that the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, which is looking at this area, is going to come out with a recommendation that will say that we must look at preventing crime before it begins by working with the family, and by doing things in this in society that will be preventative in nature. That is the approach this committee is going to take, having looked into it. That is the underlying principle from which we are going to have to deal with this issue and other issues pertaining to law and order.
Although I sympathize with the member's concerns and I agree with him that there is a problem the answer is more in terms of looking at crime prevention and seriously working with the provinces to deal with these incidents. In many cases a deterrent factor is not going to help a child who is 10 or 11. If we do lower the age to 10, what happens when a child who is 8 or 9 commits murder? Are we going to lower the age to 8 then? No.
The way to deal with this issue is to take the broader approach. That is the way we should deal with this issue.
With due respect to the member, I think that would be the better approach.


Robert Lloyd Wenman: Mr. Speaker, if the intent of the member who proposed this bill is to express a concern for law and order in Canada I would be standing with him and beside him, because all Canadians want to see a greater level of law and order maintained in our communities. If he wants to specifically recognize that law and order has changed to the point that it is not just adults or young people but children who are now involved in crime then I would also agree with him.
The question is how to handle the situation to obtain more law and order and fewer offences, less criminality. I am not sure that the solution the hon. member is proposing is really an answer, let alone the answer.
We have argued these ages before. I sat on the first Young Offenders Act committee in the seventies when we made the first revision since 1911 or 1921, it was something like that. We had the same problem of making a subjective or arbitrary decision: What would the age of a young offender be? At that time we were dealing with the upper age: Should it be 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and so forth?
As a matter of fact it was a Conservative member of the committee, Allan Lawrence, the former Attorney General of Ontario, who moved to make the age that we were going to establish 16. The NDP members at the time said it should be 21. I remember making a motion myself saying that we should saw it off at 17, which it is in several of the provinces now.
It was also an issue of jurisdiction. At that point in some provinces it was 16, some 17 and some 18. The question was who would take responsibility for the young offender at that time. Would it be the federal level or the provincial level? If the federal government legislated, that meant the provincial governments had to increase their facilities and their ability for care.
The federal government forcing the provincial governments to increase the numbers of people they had to care for meant that their facilities became overcrowded. As the facilities became overcrowded they put them out onto the street too fast and too soon and there were not enough spaces. All of these kinds of repercussions further undermined law and order.
February 18, 1993

It was a problem of choosing an arbitrary age. In that case, the question was when does a person become an adult? Certainly, all the arguments that were put forward are arguments similar to ones being made now.
It is true that some people become adults at 14 or 15 years old and others never become adults for their entire life. Maybe the age is 25 or maybe it is 30. It is true that this is an arbitrary subjective decision that is not the same for all people in our society.
Similarly the issue of 12, 11, 10, 13, 14, and 15 years of age are all subjective decisions that are different for each person, each child, in each family in each situation. You cannot draw that perfect line.
I think it is generally agreed that the young offender at the other end becomes an adult when they become independent of their parents or away from their parents. We were trying to find that age somewhere in there. Probably in retrospect I think we came up too high. At that time I moved an amendment that it should have been lower and in the same space at the end when a person becomes an adult.
Then at the other end of the range the same thing occurs with a child. I think generally it is perceived that a child becomes a young person probably around the age of puberty because that is when the changes really start to happen. Usually it is around the age of 12.
It is true some people enter puberty at 10 or 11 years or whatever age, but a space has to be picked where most children are. I think to say it is 11 years of age or less is probably too young. As they approach 12 years of age then they come into a new category.
The Young Offenders Act then accommodated the fact that at 12 years of age one can also be a violent criminal. Therefore we allowed in the revisions that a young person at the age of 12 could then be brought before a higher court, to an adult court if necessary and appropriate depending upon the nature of the crime and giving flexibility.
It could be that we could recognize a degree of criminality or allow some sort of a judgmental process which could raise that child to a young offender depending upon maturity and other things. I do not think that is where it is at in the attitudinal sense about how we want
Private Members' Business
to care for children, how we want to care for young offenders and how we want to care for older or adult offenders.
There is the sense that we look at each of them differently. Perhaps for the older offender we are looking at rehabilitation, incarceration for the protection of that person plus society or their victims and the victims of that criminal. Then we are into the field of actual punishment which could go anywhere from emotional punishment to the age-old question of corporal or capital punishment which has been removed from our system. That is another area of debate.
At the adult level we want to apply all of those things. Perhaps in some measure it is to cause correction, in other words to cause correction giving us social behaviour as opposed to anti-social behaviour.
We get down to the bottom end. Let us say the top end is the ultimate criminal who has the least chance of rehabilitation and perhaps none. We always hope that person can be rehabilitated. However, that person is a violent criminal murderer addicted to drugs and alcohol, an almost total reject from our society with very little probability of rehabilitation. Therefore the maximum incarceration would be given for the protection of the public because we cannot bring that person back to the public.
Going to the second level of young offenders surely there is a greater emphasis in the young offender group that there is a possibility for rehabilitation. Therefore rehabilitation needs to be a pre-eminent factor among young offenders.
If we are talking about children we have to have maximum hope for rehabilitation. Surely we are not ready to write off a young person up to the age of 11 or 12 in terms of criminal justice, criminal punishment, retribution and these kinds of things. Hopefully the child is someone we can care for and correct because the patterns have not been so severely established that they cannot be corrected.
We are causing an almost impossible corrections process for a child under the age of 12 because even those systems of care are being totally imperilled. Those systems of care are the first line of care, the home and the family. There is the denuclearization of the family.

February 18, 1993
Adjournment Debate
We are no longer a nuclear family. Our values are different, circumstances are different, and so forth and thus the loss of those family values that normally care and nurture. That is the best place to find it. That is where it works the best, but our system has changed and it does not necessarily exist.
Already we are going to start with problems. Those problems are not identified when a person becomes 12 years old. Ask any grade one teacher and they can tell you which of those kids are already problems and are going to be problems heading toward age 12. However, do they have the resources or the capacity to correct it?
This is an important issue. I do not think the age question is the answer. The answer is in recognizing the symptom of the problem of a child and finding the resources within the community, within our families, to accept that child, love that child, care for that child, rehabilitate him and give him a chance as a young person and an adult in our society.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: There being no further members rising for debate, the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 96(1) the order is dropped from the Order Paper.
Do I have unanimous consent to go to the adjournment motion?


David Charles Dingwall: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think there might be a disposition to proceed to the late show but I am wondering if we could perhaps get the consent of hon. members to rearrange the order of speaking. Some of our colleagues are on route to the Chamber. In fact one of the more distinguished members has just arrived and perhaps, Mr. Speaker, if you would give him about 30 seconds to get his breath we would then be in a position to proceed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: He will be number two anyway. The hon. member for Moose Jaw-Lake Centre is number five. We will try to rotate it if the other members are not here.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Mr. J. W. Bud Bird (Fredericton-York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker-


An hon. member:: Curly.


John Williston (Bud) Bird: I will tiy to ignore that demeaning remark from across the aisle simply because that hon. gentleman bears the same characteristics, not nearly so well groomed I might say and not nearly so grey.
I welcome this opportunity to elaborate on a question I put to the hon. Minister of Public Works on September 10 with respect to Old Government House in my riding of Fredericton-York-Sunbury.
Old Government House is a national historic site that represents probably one of the best expressions of the tricultural history of our country, native, English and French, that exists anywhere.
The property is now surplus to the requirements of the Department of Public Works. Over the past four years through the efforts of all three levels of government at the local level we have been preparing a plan and advancing a case for the restoration of that property to be used as the lieutenant governor's office quarters for the province of New Brunswick. It would house the protocol offices of the province of New Brunswick, have a tricultural museum on the second floor and maintenance and historic furniture on the third floor. There would be a very large block of parkland surrounding the property on the banks of the Saint John River for which the city of Fredericton has committed itself to beautification and upkeep.
The general thrust of the proposal is that the Government of Canada would deed the ownership of the land and the property to the province of New Brunswick. The province of New Brunswick would undertake the ownership and the maintenance thereafter.
February 18, 1993

The cost of the restoration is estimated at about $10 million excluding property costs for which the local trilevel steering committee proposed that the federal government consider approximately 70 per cent, the provincial government approximately 30 per cent and the city of Fredericton would put its contribution in in terms of the long-term property maintenance and beautification of the area.
I have suggested in my correspondence with the hon. Minister of Public Works that the federal contribution of approximately $7 million would be divided as follows: $1 million from Public Works Canada itself would be in lieu of ongoing maintenance work. The building is in serious need of repair and there is a major maintenance cost that is presently attributable to it. It will increase as the years go by. Environment Canada under its Canadian Parks Service and National Historic Sites would contribute $1 million. Communications Canada under the Museums Assistance Program and the Cultural Initiatives Program would contribute $2 million. Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency would contribute the final federal equity of $3 million.
The province of New Brunswick as I have said would contribute the remaining $3 million to the capital restoration costs. It would assume in our proposal, and it has not committed to this, the annual maintenance of about $350,000 with the city of Fredericton's ground maintenance being $30,000 per year.
We proposed that this project would be conducted over a five-year period. The initiative is presently with the Minister of Public Works on the federal side and with his counterpart, the Minister of Supply and Services, at the provincial side.
My question for the Minister of Public Works is as to how this matter stands with respect to the proposals I have made to him. Is he ready now to give us a definite and an affirmative answer that will see the opening of this restored Old Government House in Fredericton- York-Sunbury before the turn of the century?


Mr. Dave Worthy (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Public Works I would like to respond to the question by the most hon. member from Fredericton.
Adjournment Debate
He has spent a lot of time not only at home but also in Ottawa working on this project. Not only he and I but the department and the government also agree it is a worth-while project. It is one that is highly desirable. There are not that many buildings in Canada that have the same kind of historic significance. If I understand correctly, that building was actually part of the initial discussions that led up to the Confederation of this great country of ours.
As the member indicated, there has been a trilevel committee of which he was one of the co-chairs. It involved the municipal, provincial and federal levels. It produced a report of the recommendations. Of course, the essence of that report was that they proceed with the renovations to make this a permanent historic site.
As a result of that report, the Department of Public Works has drafted a memorandum. It outlines the work that has to be done as the member has indicated along with an allocation of costs. Under the proposed formula, the federal government would be asked to contribute in land and by other means through the departments that have already been mentioned a total of about 65 per cent of the cost.
Although there has been broad general agreement, there are still some outstanding issues and negotiations are continuing. It is our hope that they will see an early conclusion because we are anxious to move ahead with this project and will give it all our support and encouragement.


JOB TRAINING
Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, on September 15 I asked the Minister of Employment and Immigration what he was planning to do to help the unemployed in all of Canada, but especially in the greater Toronto area. At that time 11.7 per cent of the people were jobless. Now, five months later, the situation has not improved very much; it is still over 11 per cent. This means that 212,000 people are looking for work in metro Toronto.
In the same period last year, toward the end of January, beginning of February, 202,000 people were looking for work, which means an increase of 10,000 jobless people in metro Toronto over the past year.

February 18, 1993
Adjournment Debate
The Leader of the Official Opposition announced that job training will be the number one priority when the Liberals form the government. I ask the government of the day why can that government not make people its first priority also?
Toronto used to be the place where people from other parts of Canada came to find jobs. If jobs were not available in the Atlantic region or in the western provinces, people would come and find jobs in Toronto. Now, unemployment is higher in Toronto than in Halifax, Saint John, New Brunswick or Quebec City.
I have constituents in my riding who have never been unemployed for one day in their lives, suddenly at age 55 finding themselves without work and too young to retire. Job retraining is often the only hope for these older workers. These people need help in the new economy, and yet last year the government ran out of money around May or June because of poor planning.
I have many constituents who paid into the UI fund all their lives and when they needed help the government said: Sorry, we goofed, we mismanaged the economy and we cannot help you. Actually, many of them did not even get a sorry; they were very rudely treated when they went to apply for the retraining programs.
My constituents are not looking for handouts. They need a hand up. What assurances can the government give Canadians that the job training fund will not run out of money again? I was pleased that the minister did commit extra funds for the year 1993 of $2.2 billion. Again, are these funds going to run out in May or June, and then for six months people will be coming to their MPs' offices because there are no funds when they go for training?
I did a little research and I found out that the job training fund does not respond to demand. If the money runs out before the end of the fiscal year, Canadians are out of luck, even in the middle of this recession. What kind of economic management is this?
The government has never been capable of managing the economy. The numbers speak for themselves: three million people on welfare; 1.5 million people unemployed. The minister said that the ones who get retraining do go on to better jobs. If that is the case let us put our money where our mouths are. Why should it be just
the employees and the employers paying for retraining. Should not all Canadians pay? When a doctor goes to be trained it is not the medical association and the client that pay. When someone goes to learn to be a teacher, it is not the teaching profession that pays for that education. It comes from general funds. It is the whole country that pays. This should be treated the same way.
Do not put all the training on the backs of the employers and the unemployed. They have been hurt already. I hope the government will have an appropriate answer today.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, I would like to review this. When Bill C-21 first went through the House, and was held up in the other house and went back and forth, we did not get much co-operation from the other side. In that bill we introduced training expenditures under the UI program. In 1990, $500 million was committed to training the UI recipients.
Bill C-21 really showed us that this is the way to go and in 1993 we continued our support to training and set up UI training dollars at $2.21 billion. Canada Employment and Immigration over-all expenditures on training and employment assistance is going to reach $3.8 billion in the years 1993-94. With that $3.8 billion, as my colleague has been saying, we are going to provide assistance to over one million Canadians; $300 million of total UI developmental uses goes to address the needs of displaced workers or workers who have a history of long-term attachment to the labour market but who have lost their jobs.
Some 326,000 Canadians are going to receive skills training. Another 162,000 Canadians will train under the Fee Payer Program. We will see $110 million allocated to self-employment assistance and $15 million to assist workers to move to where the jobs are. Over 11,000 Canadians will be assisted under this particular program.
We are also going to see $120 million budgeted for UI job creation in 1993 to assist probably about 31,000 unemployed workers to get back into the work force. Also we will be providing $130 million in work sharing assistance and, therefore, about 160,000 Canadians are going to participate in that particular initiative.
February 18, 1993

I agree with my colleague across the way that training, education and skills training is extremely important. As we see the job market change all around the world, not just here in Canada, but all across Europe, England, Japan, the United States, Central and South America, there is going to be more of a necessity for skills training.
I know that private enterprise, unions and educational institutions are also joining with various governments, not just federal but provincial governments, to realize and emphasize the importance of that. While $3.8 billion may not be enough at this particular time, because of the restraints we are under it is all that we can afford. We have to spend it in the most effective places and get the best bang for our buck.


AGRICULTURE
Rodney Edward Laporte: Mr. Speaker, on February 1 I asked the Prime Minister a question. The question was based on a meeting the Prime Minister had with the premier of Saskatchewan last fall. The Prime Minister had said that if there was a need, the government would be willing to look at some other solutions with respect to agriculture.
I just want to refer to the response. When I rose in the House I asked the Prime Minister exactly what his government was planning to do with respect to agriculture in Saskatchewan as a result of the very poor harvest and the difficulties that exist in Saskatchewan at this time, he responded, and I quote: "This government brought in the GRIP. This government brought in the NISA. Both programs are greatly admired by Saskatchewan farmers".
The GRIP is not greatly admired by Saskatchewan farmers. Saskatchewan farmers do not like the GRIP. They do not like GRIP 91. They do not like GRIP 92. They do not like the Alberta or Manitoba GRIP. They do not like GRIP. That was made abundantly clear at a rally that took place less than a week prior to the day I asked the question. It was made very clear by the 13,000 farmers and others at that rally they did not like the program.
For a government and a party that purports to be such good managers of the economy, I find it strange that the
Adjournment Debate
Prime Minister knows so little about western agriculture, especially considering that his government has spent over $16 billion in direct payments in the last seven or eight years in this field.
Perhaps if the Prime Minister knew more about western agriculture that money would have been spent more wisely.
If the Prime Minister cared more about western agriculture and western Canadians he would not have eliminated one agriculture minister recently and given the other agriculture minister the position of justice minister. The justice ministry is a very full portfolio and that minister will not have time to deal with agriculture. He will be the agriculture minister in name only. We in fact have one agriculture minister.
It seems clear that the government has abandoned this area, that it has lost interest in this area, and we in western Canada are going to suffer for it.
We do not want to hear a litany of all the things the government has done, because they have not worked. Farmers and rural people, in fact all western Canadians, want to know what approach this government is going to take toward agriculture in the future.
We know there has to be consultation with the provinces. We know there have to be new programs developed. It is going to take the leadership of this government to initiate those programs.
What plan does the government have with respect to the future of agriculture? Oftentimes when governments do not have an answer they simply stand on their laurels and brag about all the things they have done.
I hope the government will not do that this time. Please tell western Canadians, please tell the people watching the parliamentary channel right now or those who will be reading Hansard what this government is planning to do with agriculture. What is the future direction with respect to agriculture in this country?


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, the federal government has supported farmers at an unprecedented level. We are going to continue to do so. We are going to continue to use all the safety nets which happen to include NISA and GRIP.

February 18, 1993
Adjournment Debate
Those programs were developed by the producers through consultation with the agriculture minister and indeed the Governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. There was three-way participation. This was not by any means a unilateral agreement.
From 1985 to 1992 the federal government has provided close to $17 billion in direct payments to agriculture. Out of that $6.6 billion has gone to Saskatchewan. Much of this support was provided to overcome problems of drought and the effects of the international grain export subsidy war.
This year payments under crop insurance in GRIP alone are expected to increase to between $800 million and $1.1 billion in Saskatchewan, to which we are going to be adding $170 million from the agreement worked out a few weeks ago. I think my colleague mentioned the agreement that was worked out with that particular province.
In addition, we still have an offer of $63 million with Saskatchewan if we can cost share with the province. That represents a significant amount of money for a single province at a time when all of us at all levels are under restraint and other programs are being cut.
This government recognizes there are problems. We know that. We are making our programs as responsive as possible. The problems cannot be solved by more federal payments. The industry also needs long-term solutions and we would all like to see better prices. We want to see improved market opportunities, diversification and rural development opportunities. These are areas that we continue to work through.
We will be able to put more emphasis on GATT with regard to removing the subsidy war between the U.S. and the EC. Western diversification kicks in there as well.
I think the member will find that we have done a great deal.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, on November 18, 1992 I put a question to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. I asked the minister if he would establish a full and independent inquiry, independent of governments, bureaucrats and
politicians, with regard to a very serious issue concerning tainted blood.
Early in the 1980s the blood supply in many countries, including Canada, was contaminated by HIV. A study conducted by the Canadian Haemophilia Society provides reasonable grounds, and I underline the words reasonable grounds, to suspect that hundreds of blood transfused persons within Canada have yet to be notified of their HIV positive status.
The minister of health unfortunately rejected my call for an independent inquiry based on the grounds that it was not needed. He did however, to be fair and objective, say that he would consider an inquiry if it were needed to maintain Canada's faith in the country's blood management system and if the Red Cross and the Canadian Haemophilia Society were to request an inquiry.
On December 3, 1992 the Canadian Haemophilia Society called for a full independent investigation into the current blood system. Also five out of the six witnesses who have appeared before the subcommittee on health and welfare have called for a full independent inquiry.
I would hope that the parliamentary secretary, a very able and a very knowledgeable individual on the particular subject matter at hand, would avail of the minister as well as the department to concede to the request for an independent inquiry. To underline the sincerity of the request, I wish to tell the Chair and hon. members that the kind of inquiry we seek will certainly go back into years in which members of the opposition were in fact members of the government. This is not a witch-hunt of any sort. This is an opportunity to clear the air, to have an independent inquiry, in order to put some of these major issues to rest.
I would hope the parliamentary secretary responsible would respond in the affirmative, whereby careful and prudent consideration would once again be given to this request in view of the evidence which has come forward from reliable, sincere and responsible individuals following the issue for quite some time.
I hope the parliamentary secretary, in her usual way, could give me the kind of answer that would give
February 18, 1993

assurances to those people who are in desperate need at this time.


Barbara Jane (Bobbie) Sparrow: Mr. Speaker, the contamination of the blood supply in the 1980s by the HIV virus really represented a source of great personal tragedy for many people around the world. Indeed Canada did not escape.
According to the federal government's extraordinary assistance plan for HIV infected blood and blood product recipients, 928 Canadians were infected with HIV in this manner between 1978 and the implementation of the blood screening in 1985.
Others of course have been infected from transfusions that were received between 1985 and the establishment of the assistance plan in 1989. To the best of anyone's knowledge, these cases are associated with donors who through a brief window period before having developed any detectable sign of HIV infection donated blood.
While anything less than perfect is really very lamentable, today we do have a high standard of security and quality control in the blood system. However I would like to review the role of the federal government. We are a regulator. Under the Food and Drugs Act, Health and Welfare Canada has been responsible for the regulation of manufactured blood products like factor 8 and factor 9 for the treatment of coagulation disorders like haemophilia since the inception of these particular products.
The first factor 8 was licensed for sale in Canada in 1969. Also under this authority in November 1984 the department required all manufacturers of factor 8 and factor 9 to heat treat all products for use in Canada by a method known to inactivate HIV.
The second component of the department's role is as national health advisor to Canadians. Through the department we report the results of surveillance of AIDS and we started as early as 1982. We have provided regular comprehensive information on AIDS since then.
The third element is the department's role in the blood supply was as a non-voting advisory member of the Canadian Blood Committee. The federal government relinquished its non-voting advisory role in overseeing the blood supply in 1989 when the provincial and territorial ministers of health agreed to establish the Canadian Blood Agency.
As my colleague mentioned the subcommittee of the Standing Committee on National Health and Welfare is studying this particular issue of HIV transmitted disease in the blood supply during a specific period, looking mainly at prior to 1985.
Adjournment Debate
I know there are numerous witnesses we have not heard from yet but I can say that under the direction of our chairman from Delta in B.C., who is a physician, the committee will be bringing forth recommendations.
I am a member on that committee and look forward to hearing as many people as possible. We hope to come forward with recommendations that will be satisfactory to all members in the House.


EMPLOYMENT
William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, on February 12 I put a question to the minister of employment and asked him why he was proposing to totally deny unemployment insurance benefits to those who quit their jobs but could not prove just cause, when in 1990 his government brought in a penalty of seven to 12 weeks for the same matter.
I asked him why this excessive new penalty. Was the penalty he imposed in 1990 of up to 12 weeks not harsh and tough enough? If it was not, where were the studies to show it was not? Where were the evaluation studies? Where were the assessment studies?
Why after two years with a new rather harsh penalty of seven to 12 weeks was it necessary to bring in this new total disqualification of these individuals, especially when very often the matter of just cause is not clear cut? It is very difficult to prove and takes a long time to prove. It takes from two to three months on average to prove. We had one case in Montreal where it took up to two years.
Why is it necessary to have this absolute total disallowance of unemployment insurance benefits when you have another rule in the Unemployment Insurance Act that says you can only continue to receive benefits as long as you are ready and available for work?
I am saying this new proposed penalty is disproportionate to the offence. Under the present law a real abuser, the person who wants to quit without just cause and simply take a holiday, can be subject to a 12-week penalty. He then becomes eligible for benefits but if he is not ready and available for work he is totally disqualified. He does not get any unemployment insurance.
On the other hand is the person who wants to work but quits a job and has a just cause but cannot prove it because it is difficult to prove. Under the present law that person would get the 12-week penalty but would then qualify and immediately start looking for work. He would get unemployment insurance because he would be ready and available for work. He would be out searching for a new job.

February 18, 1993
Adjournment Debate
Under this proposed law that same person would have no chance for any benefits whatsoever. He leaves his job. He believes he has just cause but cannot prove it. He gets turned down for one reason or other and is totally disqualified even though he is looking for a new job.
He does not want to sit at home; he does not want to go to Florida; he wants to work. He could not stand the situation he was in for one reason or another. Even under the new rules that were proposed yesterday under Bill C-113, he just may not be able to get his evidence together because it may be a grey area or an unclear area but he wants to work.
I want the minister to show me the evidence that this new penalty of seven to 12 weeks imposed in 1990 in Bill C-21 was not tough enough. Why did we have to go to this total disqualification, especially when we will have another provision in the law that says that if you are not ready and available for work at all times you totally lose your benefits anyway? I support that provision in the law.


Dave Worthy: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond today. The member is correct. In 1990 I served on a committee where we spent a lot of time trying to deal with that bill. It covered a number of improvements, a number of reforms, one of which attempted to get a better balance between the training and retraining of workers, rather than strictly the insurance aspect, and staying out of work and collecting UI with no preparation whatsoever for returning to the work force.
Obviously with the restraint the government is faced with, there is no question that UI is a very big factor in
the country's economy. It is over $20 billion a year. The current deficit in the UI fund is in excess of $4 billion.
There are a number of people who are using the UI fund who have quit without just cause. This government does not feel that the average worker in this country should be forced through their premiums to support people who leave their jobs for no just cause.
It is an opportunity in trying to address the restraints that are required to re-establish unemployment insurance with the insurance basis, to insure those who through no fault of their own have left their jobs and this government does not feel that the other workers should be forced to support them.
There have been a number of changes brought about in the new release of the bill. We have heard from not only members opposite but from people across the country. There is concern about how this is going to be applied. There will have to be extreme care taken by the government. It has added eight other major reasons of just cause. They were there before but they are there to try to ensure that the people across the country who have a legitimate concern will realize that this is not meant to penalize them and that the insurance program will work well for the unemployed people across Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Pursuant to Standing Order 38(5), the motion that this House do now adjourn is deemed adopted. The House therefore stands adjourned until tomorrow at ten o'clock a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.22 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Friday, February 19,1993