1993-02-26

Madam Deputy Speaker:: It is my duty to inform the House that a vacancy has occurred in the representation for the electoral district of North Vancouver, British Columbia, by reason of the death of Mr. Chuck Cook, and that in accordance with subsection 28(1) of the Parliament of Canada Act, the Speaker has addressed his warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer, dated February 25, 1993, for the issue of a writ of election for the said electoral district.


Mr. Horner:: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to ask unanimous consent of the House to table the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



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[Stage Direction]


[Stage Direction]
12TH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Robert Nesbitt Horner: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), your committee has considered questions relating to crime prevention and your committee agreed to report it with recommendations for a national strategy on crime prevention.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests a comprehensive response to the report within 150 days.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Mr. Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think you will find unanimous consent for this House to proceed immediately to the motion for concurrence in the sixth report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade, standing in the name of the member for Winnipeg South Centre, and that after the first three speakers and no later than 11 p.m., the debate would be deemed adjourned and therefore resumption of debate would be transferred to Government Orders.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Mr. Langlois:: Madam Speaker, I just want to make sure that I heard 11 a.m.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Lloyd Axworthy: that the sixth report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade presented to the House on Wednesday, September 16, 1992, be concurred in.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I would like to begin this debate by indicating my appreciation to members of this subcommittee.

February 26, 1993
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I would like to compliment the chairman of the committee, the member for South Shore, the member for Drummond who spent many hours working, and the member for Victoria. I would like to compliment the hon. member for Don Valley West, the member for Northumberland and the member for Cambridge.
I say that because in my 14 years of experience in the House this committee was one of the most important inquiries undertaken by a Commons committee. It did not receive a great deal of publicity but it delved into issues that go to the very heart of the significant changes taking place in the world around us and the impact that those changes have in our own country.
It opened up for many of us a look at the arcane, confusing and dangerous world of the international arms trade and Canada's role in that precarious business. It made us look very seriously at the question of the defence industries in Canada and what was happening to them. It made us look at how they are being affected by the substantial shift in procurement policies and the whole nature of the development of high technology that was so much part of the defence weapons systems during the cold war. They are now being substantially altered and affected by a major shift toward a peacemaking capacity for Canada.
It made us come to grips with some very tough choices as Canadians. I do not in any way underplay the incredible, tough, realistic problems that are faced by many communities, businesses and Canadians in making decisions about whether we continue as we have been doing. We are a reasonably significant player in the production of arms in this country.
Can we make a turn in the road toward a different attitude, a different approach occasioned by the demands of the post cold war world?
Perhaps the importance of the work of the committee has been highlighted in the way that the estimates that were tabled in the House of Commons displayed a certain set of choices.
On one hand we know there are significant cutbacks for economic development for native people, promotion of cultural activities in this country, young people in education and training, health care and seniors. There is a whole list of Canadians who are being asked to sacrifice on the basis of restrained budgets and limited resources.
On the other side of the ledger there is an increase of $1.4 billion to a helicopter project of $4.4 billion, bringing the total to $5.8 billion for a weapons system that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of the changes going on in the world around us.
At some time there may have been justification for the submarine detecting helicopters it bought in terms of our cold war responsibilities as a member of the NATO alliance.
Surely in today's world when the submarine threat is no longer there and the Russians have downed tools in large part, for us to proceed with a massive expenditure of $5.8 billion while at the same time making substantial cuts across the board in a whole range of industrial, economic and social programs just shows how crucial it is that this country get its mind around, and get a grip on, the real priorities in Canada.
That is what this committee tried to do. It tried to understand that the weapons trade is not in the best interest of Canada. One of the most tragic sets of figures and facts presented to members of the committee showed how in so many parts of the world the billions upon billions of dollars being spent on arms work to victimize women, children and people who no longer have the means of the basic essentials of life.
Somalia is a good example. We are now mounting massive efforts in Somalia through the UN not only to keep the peace but to rebuild the society. In the 10 or so years up to the outbreak of the civil war a billion dollars worth of arms was poured into Somalia by the Americans, the Russians and others. Now the UN and Canadian troops are having to contend with those arms. There are enough weapons in Somalia to keep that conflict going for 100 years.
Now we are paying an enormous price for it in trying to keep the peace because of this vast haemorrhaging of arms exports.
During the gulf war one of the great declarations made by the Prime Minister and others was that we were fighting the war to secure the peace in the Middle East. One of the objectives was to suffocate the arms race in the Middle East and to suppress the vast amounts of money that went into places like Iraq with which we have to contend afterwards.
February 26, 1993

What has happened since then? One report I read recently said that in Iran alone over $100 billion is being spent on new arms. The United States of America has just finished in the last fiscal year exporting close to $6 billion worth of arms into parts of the Middle East. Regretfully and sadly, our own country is also becoming an arms supplier in this most volatile of areas.
It would be a foolhardy person not to know that some day those arms may come back to haunt us. We will be paying a much larger price in terms of the blood of young men and women because of the need to make a profit.
In southeast Asia last year alone close to $90 billion was spent on arms. That takes away money that would be much better used for the development of the human potential in these areas.
One of the sadnesses we have is the need for all of us to see how we can provide some leadership. My colleague from Nepean points out another very important and salient fact. The United States of America spent $1 million a day in El Salvador. Now the amount of money the international community has to put in for peacekeeping efforts must try to contend with that incredible arsenal which was built up over the years.
This committee tried to come to grips with that issue by saying that we know that Canada alone cannot do the job. We must do a better job than we are doing to give a message to the world that the proliferation of arms must come to a halt. That is the reason for the recommendation to have a much tougher munitions control register. It was designed to say that we would not be party to sending arms to any area, region or country in which there are human rights abuses, civil conflict, or dictatorships using those arms to suppress people or create violence or conflict.
It is a message and a signal to other countries to hopefully follow the lead. It does not mean to say that arms exports are prohibited because we recognize the reality that we do have allies and friends that we have some mutual interest in supporting, such as NATO, the United States and some other places.
We want to make sure there is a system in which there could be a clear requirement that exports would only go
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to countries on the list and that there would be a transparency to that list so we would know who they are. We want to make sure that it would not be decided inside the bowels of External Affairs and all of a sudden an announcement would be made and before anything could be done it would be over, as happened with the sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
Furthermore, and it is a very important principle, we felt it crucial that Parliament have a role and that the elected representatives of the people of Canada should be given some opportunity to determine whether we want to sell arms to country A or country B. Therefore there is a requirement for tabling the name of any country that would go on this list to be reviewed by Parliament if we so decided.
We also understood that once that was done the system should be reasonably efficient in its processing. There is no reason to hold up companies unduly. Once the country was on the list then the processing could take place with some degree of effectiveness. The point of the matter is that we believed it was time for Canada to take some leadership.
We also recognized at the same time that it is not simply enough to put a prohibition or a limitation on the sale of arms. We have to look at the much broader and more critical substantial issue of how to convert those defence industries that have been creating arms to effective peacetime uses. This is a very important issue that is being faced by all countries.
It was interesting to see that in the campaign statements of President Clinton he talked about how to begin to transfer the enormous research and development capacity of the defence establishment into an effective reallocation to peacetime uses.
Our committee concluded exactly the same thing. It is important for Canada to begin to do the kind of analysis and reconstruction of its own policies to support and facilitate the conversion of our defence industries.
We came to that conclusion for a couple of very good reasons. First, our defence industries contain some of the best high technology minds in the country. It is on the high technology end that we have been providing parts and components over the years and we do not want to lose those skills.

February 26, 1993
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Surely we should have learned from the example of the Avro Arrow that those people working in those industries have incredibly good skills that could be used for other purposes.
Let me give one very good example. We all recognize, at least on this side of the House, that the whole issue of peacemaking is becoming central to our security. The contribution to and involvement in international collective security initiatives, whether in Bosnia, Somalia, Cambodia or wherever, is really the security issue of the future.
We believe we have to shift our spending priorities in the defence department to meet those requirements so that Canada can fulfil its role as a peacemaker. It is totally ridiculous and unacceptable for the Minister of National Defence to keep standing up in this House to say we have to begin pulling back our commitments on peacekeeping because we do not have enough money to get enough troops and to train and equip them properly.
At the same time she condoned, supported and endorsed an expenditure of $5.8 billion for helicopters which have no use in peacemaking. It is an absolutely and totally ridiculous contradiction in terms.
We should understand the time has come for Canadians and the Canadian government to make tough choices as recommended in this committee. It is time to shift our priorities and understand that the world has changed. We cannot have a Minister of National Defence walking around in a fog buying into the old cold war strategies and stratagems. That simply does not do any good for our international reputation and what we can do in our own country.
One of the opportunities this new peacekeeping role represents is the need for new kinds of technology for verification, observation and monitoring to make sure that arms are not spread into countries and we can monitor what happens to nuclear plants in Iraq if need be. There is an incredible need at the United Nations level and other areas for a much more sophisticated international monitoring observation system. We are well equipped to begin making contributions in those areas, to help our industries develop a capacity to meet
the world-wide need for those peacemaking technologies.
That is what the report talks about. It was a very important insight for us to see many of the plants. Our engineers and skilled technicians are anxious to get into those areas but unfortunately the fix of government policies in a sense almost prohibits it because we are not interested in supporting that. There is no conversion plan for Canada. The DIPP funds are not designed for conversion. They are designed to keep doing the same old thing.


An hon. member:: Don't forget environmental technology-


Lloyd Axworthy: I am going to come to that in just a moment. In the second dimension, the onus is not simply on the shift of military priorities to peacemaking. There is also an incredible opportunity to use technologies presently located in our defence industries for a wide variety of civilian uses.
My friend from Broadview-Greenwood points out the incredible demand for new environmental technology. We met with officials of a company in western Canada that is now beginning to develop a technique for sensoring using technology which has been used for spy satellites. It will now begin to focus on how many fish there are in the North Pacific or what is happening to the glaciers in the north or what is happening to the atmosphere. It will use its sensoring techniques to detect the environmental changes occurring around the world. It is an incredible growth market. When asked to what extent the company can be assisted and helped in making that conversion, there is none. It is not there. It simply does not exist.
One of the most important and significant proposals contained in this committee report is that the question of conversion be made a priority for our government. The government should table a plan and restructure the DIPP program to encourage conversion techniques. It should establish a centre to help industries plan and develop to adapt to peacetime uses.
It is an incredible opportunity to reconstruct our industrial strength in this country. We can use our best minds and skills not in the production of weapons but in the production of new high technology jobs and products that the world is going to need.
February 26, 1993

This report should not go on the shelf. It needs to be read by every member of this House. It should be read certainly by government officials and ministers responsible. Certainly I recommend that the Minister of National Defence read it, if she is not too busy.
Maybe she would come to some understanding of the serious mistake she is making in not doing a significant reassessment, review and reallocation of the priorities within that department. Then we can begin moving into areas that would give Canada some real leadership and some real opportunities internationally to try to suppress the developments in the arms race. At the same time and in the same way we can come to grips with the need to change our own priorities at home and to begin to stimulate, encourage and facilitate a shift and change in our defence industries to meet peacetime peacemaking uses.
It was a great privilege being a member of that committee. The document itself will serve in the future as part of a blueprint. It is not complete, committees cannot do that. It sets the direction, it sets a way. It tries to break out of the old thinking and tries to look ahead. For that reason I strongly recommend that members of this House endorse and support this report and particularly that members of the government read it.


Mr. Pat Sobeski (Cambridge):: Madam Speaker, I was not sure if we were going to have a period for questions or not, but I will commence my debate.
I was a member of that subcommittee. Indeed, it was a wonderful opportunity for myself, for my colleague from Drummond and for other members of the committee to look at this matter and put forward the report, Future of Canadian Military Goods Production and Export.
I want to take a few moments to put on the record some comments on the existing Canadian export control system which I believe is one of the strictest in the world. That is what the debate wrapped around. Canada as a nation probably has one of the strictest export control regimes in the world. I think that has to be understood.
The question is how to improve or why change something that is the strictest? It is important that
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people understand that export control permits just do not relate to guns. They relate to a wide range of items.
Canada has consistently advocated arrangements at the international level. These have been aimed at building security frameworks that effectively take account of both the military and non-military threats to security, that promote habits of dialogue and co-operation and that emphasize conflict prevention rather than conflict resolution by force.
Unfortunately, despite the great progress in the security and arms control field in recent years, we have not yet achieved the degree of success Canada wants and needs. For the foreseeable future Canada and other countries will still have to maintain a reasonable level of armed forces to deter, and if necessary, to respond to military threats to security and to participate in collective security and peacekeeping operations.
The need for countries to maintain reasonable levels of armed forces was fully recognized in the arms control initiative announced by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs in February 1991. This initiative called for efforts to prevent excessive buildup of conventional arms. By excessive buildup of conventional arms Canada means a buildup that goes beyond reasonable defence requirements. Canada is not proposing to stop exporting and importing military goods, nor is it telling other countries to stop doing so.
At the global level Canada was a leading participant in the negotiations in the UN leading to the establishment of a global conventional arms register. Canada must now work to ensure effective implementation of that register and will seek to build on it with the view of increasing the scope of its coverage and providing further avenues of consultation.
At the national level Canada has for the past three years issued an annual report on the export of military goods from Canada. I know that the member from Winnipeg mentioned Somalia, Iran, El Salvador. If Canadians looked at the report that is issued annually, Canada has not sent $1 worth of items under the export control list to those three countries. I think he did acknowledge that Canada is not participating.

February 26, 1993
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The matter they want to deal with is: "We have to take this export control list and apply it to countries rather than the process of each individual application being looked at".
What I would like to do now is read some comments I had put into the particular report. Again, I mention that the existing export control permit system is one of the strictest in the world. I will read directly from the report: "One committee member", which is myself, "strongly believes that the recommendations relating to establishing a munitions country control list will produce undesirable results".
I argued that to merge the items on the export control list group two with the rules to establish a country on the automatic firearms country control list would not produce a stable and transparent public policy environment and would place Canadian business at a competitive disadvantage.
The proposed munitions country control list would initially consist of only 10 countries, since only Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have concluded intergovernmental defence research, development and production arrangements with Canada.
I want to digress for a moment. If we want to send firearms to a country we have to go through a lot of work in the development of arrangements. This is very difficult to do, and Canada has only set up 10 such arrangements with 10 countries.
The proposed munitions country control list process would establish a process that tells Canadian companies that they can expect a permit to be issued without delay to allow them to sell bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles to Denmark but they could be denied permission to sell transport aircraft spare parts to Kenya. For example, this could have meant that in 1990 exports to Brazil of underwater detection devices, to India of electronic generators, to Kuwait of bomb disposal suits, to Morocco of aircraft flight simulators and to Singapore of fire control systems would not have been possible.
Rather than the current system of examining each application on its own individual unique merit their suggestion is that once a country is approved then anything can be sent to that country. That is important to
understand because this would have meant that in 1991 exports of military goods or components that come under the Export Control Act, and that includes things such as fire control systems and bomb disposal suits, to countries such as Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, which represents about 30 per cent of the controlled Canadian sales, would not have been permitted.
As a result of this recommendation we would say to Australians: "You are not on this list and therefore we do not trust you". That is the impact of the recommendations that they are making.
I further argued that this formula process could not be used as each case must consider the present climate in the country of destination, the goods to be exported and the potential end use. The current export control system already addresses every application as having a possible unique circumstance.
Canada can take a lead at the world level, and it already has in the UN, but part of the recommendations in this report basically say to the Canadian industries involved in this area: "We do not want you to do any business. We want you to go out of business", because that is the stranglehold that they would put on these businesses.
There is also the question about whether we should help these companies to convert. I can assure the House, based on the witnesses who have come forward, that companies already recognize that the cold war is over and that countries are not buying the amount of military goods they used to buy. It is a changing world and the businesses in that industry recognized that many years ago. They have already started their own conversion programs.
Therefore this is best left to those sectors that are motivated by profit because they recognize that they are in a shrinking market and that they must diversify and use the skills and technologies they have. A lot of the products they make do have dual purpose uses.
I think industry has already recognized that. If industry is sitting back waiting for the government to put together a committee to go out and tell all these companies how they should convert then those companies will not survive. Those companies have already started to do that.
fr

February 26, 1993

There are many things in this report that I like and I support. However, I do not agree with the recommendation to change the export control permit. It already issues reports, is very transparent and is considered to be one of the strictest in the world. I do not believe there is any evidence to indicate we should change it.
I could continue but I know that my colleague from Victoria certainly has his point of view. He expressed it in committee and I know he will do so on the floor of the House. I will now yield to him.


Mr. John Brewin (Victoria):: Madam Speaker, I rise to support the motion that this House concur in the recommendations of this committee's report. The committee worked very hard to produce a constructive and useful report on this important issue and I think the recommendations are to be commended to the House.
Let me recall how this subcommittee came about. At the time of the gulf war the world became aware of the fact that the arms trade, which in the first sentence of this report is called a monument to cold war international relations, had turned the arms production industry which grew out of World War II into an export trade to developing countries. By 1977, 80 per cent of the world's production was drifting into developing countries. We saw the folly of that in the gulf war. There was a brief moment when it appeared that the world might be resolved to try to deal with that issue, to try to bring the arms export industry around the world, and the scandal of the arms sales, under control.
Our Prime Minister made a very eloquent speech during the gulf war calling on the United Nations to convene a world summit to deal with arms exports. However within weeks of the end of the cold war the government seemed to have forgotten the eloquent statements and brought before this House Bill C-6 which authorized the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, contrary to previous government policy.
In the course of that debate the government conceded that the issue needed to be examined by Parliament. I was very pleased that the Minister for International Trade accepted my proposal that a subcommittee be established through the committee on external affairs.
In the summer and fall of 1991 the committee began its work. We travelled across Canada and heard repre-
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sentations from people throughout this country, from Victoria, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax, Montreal and Ottawa. We also heard from experts and government officials. I believe that we have put together in this report a very useful examination of how the world got into this mess and of Canada's contribution to it.
It should be understood that Canada is the eighth largest producer of arms on the globe. It is the 14th largest exporter of arms in the world. We contribute to the problem and we have a responsibility to respond.
The committee report could be divided into a number of sections.
First, we emphasize the importance of Canada using its diplomatic energies in multilateral efforts to bring the arms export industry around the world under control. It is not good enough for Canada to get its own act together. We have to work with other countries, most particularly with the industrial countries, to come up with enforceable common policies to reduce and control the export of arms.
We also have to work with the developing countries to produce secure regimes. Many developing countries are forced by the arms sales to their neighbours to respond in kind. Others are attracted to arms as a means of keeping their own governments in power. That is one of our concerns about sales to Saudi Arabia.
We have to work with other countries to try to produce a secure international order. That must be at the heart of our work in this area. Without that any efforts we make in this country will come to nought.
However, we have a special obligation to get our own act together, particularly if we are going to push other countries in this direction. The committee report outlines some very specific recommendations to make that happen.
We recognize in the report that there may be legitimate reasons for Canada to produce arms. We may need to supply our own police and armed services. The United Nations peacekeeping efforts will require arms. Under appropriate circumstances there are legitimate requirements for military arms to deal with those who would break international law.

February 26, 1993
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Therefore it becomes important that we establish an effective arms export regime. This committee report takes the current regime, which is totally internal to the government, and changes it into a statutory regime accountable to Parliament.
As things now stand the government has its own policy and whenever it wishes to make an exception it can do so. The only reason there was Bill C-6 was that because of a particular provision in the Criminal Code in respect of small arms the government was forced to come to Parliament to get a change. But for that the government would simply have changed its policy internally, without any accounting to Parliament at all. It is very important that the arms export system be established by Parliament and be accountable to Parliament.
The system should have two key elements to it. First, there should be a listing of countries to whom arms exports would be acceptable. All other countries would be outside the purview of the export system and exports to those countries would be illegal. If there was an interest in exporting to a country not on the list the government would have to come to Parliament and have the list amended. Second, each transaction would have to be reviewed and, in my view at least, subject to a parliamentary review.
The second element of the policy outlined by the committee is the conversion and diversification of the arms industry. As long as an arms industry exists there will be pressure, as we saw in Bill C-6, on governments and on Parliament to approve exports in the interest of maintaining employment.
Therefore for that reason alone it is very important that we begin to change the industrial structure of this country. In the period after the Second World War, and in particular after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow, the Liberal government of the day embarked on a policy of encouraging the Canadian defence production industry through subsidies and other programs.
So an industry has developed in response to government encouragement, yet it must now face the economic reality that not only are defence budgets beginning to decrease around the world but that the public is calling on governments to control and reduce defence production.
It is a bad, declining, and difficult industry to be in. Therefore from a strictly economic and social point of view it is important that the government encourage a change to civilian and other uses.
It is also important if we are to ensure the maintenance of an effective arms export regime that is not subject to pressure every time a company needs new markets.
We see now today a government which seems determined to ignore the wisdom of this parliamentary committee report. We still have not had a reply from the government. It carries on its policies as if this report did not exist, which is probably not a new phenomenon but continues to be a matter of disappointment. I wonder if the Minister of National Defence or the Secretary of State for External Affairs have even read the report.
It would be very interesting to hear the views on this from the government itself because what happens is that the government gets advice from the bureaucrats who are administering the policy the way they would like to. It seems to me that the government should be ready to rely on the wisdom of a parliamentary committee report and on the wisdom of Parliament. After all this subcommittee went out to the general public in this country to develop a balanced policy that respects the interests of all who are involved, that fits within the over-all policy of this country, and that the public insists upon.
We now see the phenomenon of the government encouraging more sales to countries in the Middle East despite the government's statement that arms exports should not go to areas of potential hostilities. Next week in Ottawa the government is convening a session with its trade commissioners inviting the world to come to Ottawa to look at our arms exports and our capacity to export. What countries are invited? They include Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
The high tech conference that is scheduled for next week is in direct contravention of the will of the Canadian people as we heard it during the work of this committee and it runs completely counter to the government's own stated policy.
Let me conclude by congratulating the member who introduced this motion. He is the official spokesperson for the Liberal Party on this issue and I am pleased to hear that in that capacity he is endorsing this report. I would hope other members of his party would be equally enthusiastic.
February 26, 1993

During the travels of the committee across the country there was the phenomenon of there frequently being two Liberal representatives. When those who favoured a restrictive policy were appearing before the committee the official spokesperson for the Liberal Party was there and was very supportive of their briefs. When the industry was appearing another member from the Liberal Party would be there and would be falling all over the industry representatives and saying how encouraging the Liberal Party would be to arms exports around the world and to defence production.
There were two voices from the Liberal Party. It would be very encouraging if we could believe that the member from Winnipeg actually represented the view of his party. During debate on Bill C-6 the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace took leadership on that issue. However, I fear that they represent a faint voice within their caucus.
I am looking forward to hearing their leader over the next few months stake his colours as firmly to the mast-head as the member for Winnipeg South Centre has in this debate.
It is crucially important to world order that the countries of the globe come to grips with this issue, and we have a chance now with the end of the cold war. The countries in eastern and central Europe that have themselves depended so much on military production will be looking to the western world to change its ways.
This report offers a guideline to do that. I call on this House to accept the report.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to an order made earlier this day the debate is deemed adjourned and the order is deemed transferred to Government Orders.


Mr. Flis:: Madam Speaker, I believe the order said that the debate would end at eleven o'clock this morning. Is there not five minutes for debate yet?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The order said that there would be three people, one from each party, and that it would end at the latest, at eleven o'clock. So we will go with Orders of the Day.
Government Orders


Patrick (Pat) Anthony Sobeski: Madam Speaker, I think you will find that there is agreement in the House that if we did finish early that we suspend for a couple of minutes until eleven o'clock because everyone is planning their agenda around eleven o'clock. I think there is agreement to do that.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I agree with the hon. member. If the House is willing I thought it would be in the interest of the House for me to read the decision on Bill C-99 at this time and then we can suspend for three minutes.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-99, an act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another act in consequence thereof, as reported (with amendment) from a legislative committee.

Madam Deputy Speaker:: There are four motions in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-99, an act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another act in consequence thereof, all in the name of the hon. Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism.

Motions Nos. 1, 2 and 3 will be grouped for debate but voted on separately.
Motion No. 4 will be debated and voted on separately. SITTING SUSPENDED


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The sitting of the House will therefore be suspended for a few minutes. I will return at eleven o'clock for members' statements.
At 10.55 a.m. the sitting of the House was suspended.

February 26, 1993


SITTING RESUMED
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed at 11 a.m.
Madam Deputy Speaker:: The House will now proceed to members' statements pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. 0.31
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, dairy producers in the Abitibi region object to Treasury Board's 10 per cent cut in subsidies for dairy products.
I think we should consider the consumer subsidy aspect. According to the arrangement between the Government of Canada, through Agriculture Canada, and Canada's dairy producers, the subsidy enables them to lower their selling price to the industry, which in turn reduces its price to the consumer by the same amount.
We realize that something has to be done about the financial situation of the Canadian Treasury. In fact, that is the purpose of most of the recommendations in the Auditor General's report. The Minister of Finance would be well advised to look at these recommendations and adopt a strategy for their implementation.
According to Rosaire Mongrain, president of the Abitibi dairy producers, their net income will be cut by 10 per cent.


DOWNSVIEW AIR FORCE BASE
Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Madam Speaker, the Metropolitan Tbronto Hockey League, under the leadership of John Gardiner, has plans to build an international hockey and figure skating facility on 12 acres of land at the Downsview Air Force Base in Toronto.
This world-class facility will create instant construction jobs, long-term jobs in tourism, longer term jobs in fitness and amateur sport, not to mention the benefit to tens of thousands of figure skaters and hockey players, as well as a home for other Canadian cultural events.
The MTHL has raised the construction money from private sponsors and the government has declared the land redundant.
On behalf of all members of the greater Toronto Liberal caucus we urge this government to cut through the red tape and get this project going. It should remember its promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.


RIGHT HON. PRIME MINISTER
Mr. Gabriel Desjardins (Temiscamingue):: Madam Speaker, speaking on my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Temiscamingue, I want to thank the Prime Minister of Canada for the energy and determination with which he served this country during the past eight years.
The people in my riding have always seen him as a true leader, whose tenacity, determination and courage are extraordinary. We will remember him as a man driven by a consuming passion for his country and as a man of great warmth and generosity who was sensitive and attuned to the needs of the regions.
Clean air, decentralization of federal services, regional development and a Ministry of State for Seniors are all initiatives that were welcomed by my constituents.
I therefore want to join my fellow citizens in wishing the Prime Minister and his family a happy and prosperous retirement, and once again, we want to say, loud and clear: Thank you!


GOVERNMENT WHARFS
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Madam Speaker, inshore fishermen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence can be accused of feeling that this government and particularly this department of fisheries have it in for them. First it was the imposition of dockside monitoring fees which these fishermen have had to fight in court. Then it was the attack on the bona fide licensing program. Now there is the standoff at the government wharf at Lismore right in the backyard of the Minister of Public Works.
February 26, 1993
[Stage Direction]
It is true the federal government is making much needed repairs to the government wharf. Unfortunately this has required the destruction of a shed owned by a small lobster buyer. The fishermen believe a modest payment to the buyer to help replace this facility is warranted. The amount is negotiable.
Instead, the government wants to provoke a costly court battle with the fishermen, a battle neither it nor the taxpayers of Canada can afford.
Why does this government not try accommodation instead of confrontation in dealing with its inshore fishermen whose backs are against the wall because of its disastrous policies?

Mr. Barry Moore (Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle):: Madam Speaker, we were all saddened today to hear of the passing of a great Canadian, Mr. Danny Gallivan.
All Canadians from coast to coast have lost an irreplaceable citizen and a friend. Danny Gallivan will best be remembered as a pioneer. He revolutionized sports broadcasting as we know it today. We will all remember the voice behind Hockey Night in Canada and the Montreal Canadiens. We will surely remember the excitement and the euphoria he brought to our living-rooms on Saturday nights. The scintillating saves and the cannonading drives were all synonymous with Danny Gallivan.
One could feel his love for the game but, more important, his love for his country. Although best remembered as an avid broadcaster, Danny Gallivan nonetheless contributed as much time and dedication to the greatest of his concerns, human welfare.
In fact his love for this country and its people may be best exemplified by the multitude of charitable organizations he supported and contributed to. As well, his love for the youth of Canada was unmatched.
We will all miss Danny Gallivan.


ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Madam Speaker, the Gwa'Sala and Nakwaxda'xw Indian
bands at Smith Inlet and Blunden Harbour were forcibly amalgamated and moved to Port Hardy, B.C. in the 1960s.
This forcible amalgamation and relocation were exclusively for the convenience of the department of Indian affairs. Once the move was made the department of Indian affairs broke every promise it ever made to these people about housing, education, health and economic development. When they left it burned their traditional community so there could be no return.
The Gwa'Sala-Nakwaxda'xw sank into 30 years of hell, totally engulfed by social disintegration and social problems. One of the measures of these social problems was the fact that 300 children were apprehended by social services and taken out of that community. Some were adopted as far away as Europe, never to return again.
It is our hope that the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples would meet on the north end of Vancouver Island to hold sessions in the community to inquire into the impact of the policy of the department of Indian affairs concerning forcible amalgamation and forcible relocation of Indian people with no commitment to the promises made.
In the case of the Gwa'Sala-Nakwaxda'xw-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, in a survey last year my constituents expressed concern about the integrity of our immigration system. The majority supported the need to tighten up immigration laws to filter out those who would abuse our system.
I was one of several members who gave up time in my riding last summer to hear witnesses on Bill C-86, the amendments to the Immigration Act.
We were told by Immigration officials of cases where immigration officers would see a passport sticking out of the pocket of would-be refugee but had no right to seize the document. The power to search, they said, would greatly assist them in their efforts to prevent abuse.

February 26, 1993
We learn from the paper today that already those new powers are having an effect. Since the beginning of the month immigration officials have been able to seize several fake passports and documents, in some cases simply by asking people claiming to have no documents to empty their pockets. In one instance the phoney documents led to an RCMP investigation into a smuggling ring.
Canada is one of the most generous countries in the world when it comes to opening its doors to those who seek to enjoy what it has to offer. We want to continue our tradition of compassion but, to ensure this, officials must have the powers necessary to uphold our immigration system.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired.


THE LATE DANNY GALLIVAN
Mr. Russell MacLellan (Cape Breton-The Sydneys):: Madam Speaker, it was sad to learn this morning of the death of one of Cape Breton's finest sons, Danny Gallivan.
The broadcast voice of the Montreal Canadiens for three decades, Danny Gallivan's high-pitched and unfailingly colourful description of the games transfixed hockey fans around the world.
For more than 22 consecutive years he did not miss a single game because of illness. His great contribution to the sport was recognized in 1982 when he was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
On a personal note, I count the Gallivan family among my friends and I want to express to them my deepest sympathies.
Danny Gallivan's Canadiens were undoubtedly the greatest hockey team in the world. Their heroes included Maurice Richard, Doug Harvey, Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, and too many others to name here. But to me as a youngster, and even today, the greatest Canadien hero of all was the guy from down the road in Whitney Pier, Danny Gallivan.


VOLUNTEERS
Mr. Fernand Jourdenais (La Prairie):: Madam Speaker, on February 14,1 had the honour and the privilege as the federal member of Parliament for La Prairie to give nearly 50 people in my riding the commemorative medal for Canada's 125th anniversary on behalf of the Governor General.
More than 650 guests attended this ceremony where I was very pleased to honour and thank publicly these volunteers who have worked for many years to help my constituents in the arts, social affairs, culture and sports.
Such tribute had never been paid to them publicly and, as several of them said to me, this will help them continue to work tirelessly and even more eagerly to help the most disadvantaged and those in greatest need.
Congratulations to every one of them on behalf of all my constituents and in my own name. Any well-organized community needs such volunteers and should thank them in appreciation for their good deeds.
Once again, thanks to all.


MAIN ESTIMATES
Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster-Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, yesterday's budget estimates brought good news for helicopter makers and spies but bad news for women and children.
Spending on military helicopters has skyrocketed from $4.4 billion to $5.8 billion and Canada's spy agency is richer by almost $12 million. Yet $1 million was cut from women's programs, $5 million was cut from the child care initiatives fund, and billions were lost for child care in dramatically reduced transfer payments to the provinces. The health and welfare branch, which funds family planning and health promotion, was cut by $20 million.
February 26, 1993

Funding to prevent unwanted pregnancies and their costly social and economic consequences began a rapid decline under the Liberals and is continuing under the Tories.
Why are military helicopters and spies more important than the women and children of Canada? This government continues to mouth a commitment to equality but takes our society in exactly the opposite direction.


NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Patrick (Pat) Anthony Sobeski: Madam Speaker, yesterday in Parliament the government introduced legislation to implement the North American free trade agreement. The NAFTA is the culmination of 14 months of negotiations and 6 more months of careful drafting of the text and the legislation.
In Canada the level of interest in the agreement is high. That is why the government strongly supported the all-party hearings which took place on NAFTA in nine cities across Canada and in Ottawa during the past four months. Over 100 presentations have been made.
It is now time to start the debate on the legislation itself. I am confident that informed and serious consideration will confirm NAFTA's rightful place as part of Canada's economic strategy.
The NAFTA is only one component of that strategy. That is why the government continues to press for successful conclusion of the Uruguay round of the GATT. Nothing could send a more powerful signal of economic confidence to all world markets.
I do not claim this agreement will produce economic miracles but it will create opportunities for business and in time contribute to solid job creating economic activity.


CHILD POVERTY
Ms. Mary Clancy (Halifax):: Madam Speaker, the subcommittee on poverty is no joke. Child poverty is no joke. The fact that one million Canadian children are the clients of food banks is no joke either.
What is both tragic and laughable is the attempt of some hon. members to change the definition of poverty. It reminds me of a British farce entitled Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the Water.
The philosophical meanderings of government members will be cold comfort for children on social assistance as well as the children of the working poor.
It clearly is time for the children of Canada to pull up their socks. Their government has just said to them: "You are not poor; you merely think you are poor".
It is interesting that today the justice committee tabled the unanimous report that deals far more sensitively and realistically with the whole question of poverty in this country. Perhaps government members on the justice committee could do some missionary work with their colleagues on the poverty committee.


REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Madam Speaker, during Question Period yesterday I pointed out that regional development spending in Quebec was slated to go up by $40 million, and I welcomed that, while support for similar programs in Atlantic Canada, northern Ontario and western Canada were being cut by $36 million. The President of the Treasury Board claimed in his response that two programs, the Montreal Development Fund and the Canada-Quebec Industrial Development Agreement, had not been approved in time for the 1992-93 estimates so they were included in the new estimates released yesterday and this accounted for the difference.
In fact, the details of the new estimates show that regional development grants and contributions were $161 million in Quebec in 1991-92, $142 million the next year and slated for $206 million this coming year. Even the $27.5 million-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member's time has expired.


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Harry Chadwick (Bramalea-Gore-Malton):: Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today to express my concern and dismay with the decision by the government to proceed with new runways at Pearson International Airport.

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions
I am expressing the concern of my constituents who must live with the constant noise generated by Pearson's traffic. My constituents have been plagued by noise from airport operations for years with no relief or sympathy from the federal government. This latest decision by the government will only make an intolerable situation worse for the residents in my riding.
The government's own federal environmental assessment on expansion at Pearson recommended against taking any action at this time. The report by FEARO said there was lots of time to look at alternatives before building more runways. The government has obviously decided to ignore its own advice.
I charge that this decision is unfair and I urge the government to reconsider its course of action. It is up to the government to make sure that the people who live in the shadow of Pearson do not suffer for it.


CFB CORNWALLIS
Mrs. Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Madam Speaker, the Minister of National Defence came to Nova Scotia and stated that CFB Cornwallis would probably be closed. This statement was made without ever having visited the base, without having had time to see if it is cost-effectively carrying out its role for national defence and without ever having looked at the devastating effects such a closure would have on the area.
CFB Cornwallis presently trains and has trained since 1968 all English speaking new recruits for our Armed Forces. No matter what happens to this government, no matter which party is in power, we will need our Armed Forces. To sustain our Armed Forces we need new recruits.
Look at the difficulty this government has in meeting our UN commitments. Where would this government train new recruits? Why would it move this training base and incur massive new expenditures? Why would this minister say what she said without even knowing the facts?
I call on the minister to visit CFB Cornwallis before making statements that not only hurt the people in the area but which financially make no sense.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence.
At a time when more than 1.6 million Canadians have no jobs, at a time when more than one million children are feeding at food banks, the minister is promoting a helicopter deal with management fees alone of over $1 billion.
Yesterday we learned in the government's own estimates that another $1.4 billion had to be set aside for this deal. Can the minister explain why she is promoting a deal with management fees of over $1 billion when she does not have a penny for children at the food banks in this country?


Hon. Kim Campbell (Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Madam Speaker, that is an extraordinary question.
There are enormous amounts of government money going from the federal, provincial and municipal governments to aid children in Canada. There is only one level of government responsible for national defence and that is the Government of Canada.
In establishing our priorities and investing in equipment that will protect Canadians in the future, that will enable us to participate in peacekeeping operations to preserve our own sovereignty, the Government of Canada, the Department of National Defence, has long-term plans for serious equipment.
As I have said many times, the equipment necessary for the Department of National Defence is not cheap. That is why when the government makes a decision to engage in a particular procurement policy we work very hard to make sure that procurement has the very best possible benefit for Canadians, not just simply in terms of the service provided by the ultimate equipment, but in the spending of that money.
February 26, 1993

That is why one of the things that is so important about this project is that $3.2 billion of industrial benefits come to Canada, 45,000 person-years of employment.
I was recently at a plant in Winnipeg where $260 million will be spent. Half of the members of that work force are women. This is a growing area of the economy which is important for all Canadians. Therefore-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I am sure the hon. minister will have the opportunity to continue.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, we know that Montreal has 250,000 unemployed people. No more money has been provided for them; it is being cut. On the other hand the minister is promoting a helicopter contract with management fees of over $1 billion. The minister never told us that so much money from Canadian taxpayers would go into the pockets of foreign companies.
How can she justify giving over $2 billion from this contract to multinationals in England and Italy?


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, $975 million from this project will go to Quebecers, in industries in the province of Quebec. It is important to point out, as I said in English, that this project will provide 45,000 person-years of employment for Canadians-men and women. Furthermore, this project will have industrial benefit, which are of the utmost importance for Canada.
It is an investment in the future of our economy which creates long-term jobs and long-term jobs are the best way to guarantee our children's future. It is not enough to educate Canadians and provide them with social services; they must have the chance to use their skills and education so that industry can employ them in the future. That is what we have supported with this investment.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, some children in Canada have nothing to eat today but the minister prefers to spend $24 million per helicopter in management fees.

According to the government's own briefing we are talking about a management fee for each helicopter of
Oral Questions
more than $24 million. We are talking about a contingency fund per helicopter of $10 million. We are talking about an amount of money going into foreign multinationals of $36 million per helicopter.
Now that the minister finally understands the outrageous nature of this expense will she cancel the contract?


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, that is the most extraordinary arithmetic I have ever heard because if the management fee for each helicopter is $24 million, and I forget the other fee she referred to as being $10 million, we must be getting the helicopters themselves for free because the search and rescue version is $33 million and the naval version is $44 million. We are obviously getting a serious bargain.


Mr. David Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Madam Speaker, on February 8,1992, when asked in this House about the total absence of a fair public bidding process on the helicopter deal, the government House leader alleged that Boeing Canada had submitted a bid for search and rescue helicopters in June 1990 and that it had been rejected by the government.
Supply and Services documents state that this is not a bid solicitation but an inquiry for price availability.
I want to ask the Minister of National Defence if she will take the opportunity to correct the record and admit that there was never a proper bidding process for these helicopters.


Hon. Paul Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: Madam Speaker, as a matter of fact in dealing with the process, the present helicopters were declared in 1978 by the previous government as not being able to meet the needs.
In 1981 it started looking for new types. In 1985 nine companies were asked to bid on it and in 1986 two companies did bid on it. In 1987 National Defence and the evaluation team picked the EH-101 as being able to meet the needs in Canada.
One of the major reasons for that is that the Boeing helicopter, even if refitted, would not have a de-icing capability. If you want to do search and rescue off Newfoundland and maybe take care of some of the fishermen, you need to have a de-icing capability. Otherwise you are looking for a second-hand, used aircraft and leaving your fishermen to the prey of the weather.

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions


David Charles Dingwall: Madam Speaker, the government's helicopters expenditures will result in millions of dollars for management and contingency fees. Yesterday the estimates stated very clearly that an additional $1.4 billion has been set aside for this deal.
I want to ask the Minister of National Defence to confirm to the people of Canada that over $2 billion of the $5.8 billion contract will be going to E.H. Industries, the parent company, with plants in England and Italy. While the minister is on her feet, would she indicate to the House how many jobs will be created in those two foreign countries?


Paul Wyatt Dick: Madam Speaker, since they are asking a matter of contract, I should tell the hon. member we have a world-wide mandate on all EH-lOls, about 10 per cent, which will create jobs for all EH-lOls that are made around the world. There are 45,000 jobs of high-tech nature which will be-


Some hon. members:: Answer the question.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. A question was asked and the answer deserves to be heard.


Paul Wyatt Dick: The members of the Liberal Party indicate that they feel there could be more jobs created with the same amount of money. We have experienced their make-work programs that last for 20 weeks and then the people go on unemployment insurance.
What we are creating here is a world-class-


Some hon. members:: Answer the question.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Obviously they do not want to hear the answer. They are only interested in their own rhetoric. Perhaps they could ask the hon. member for Bonavista, who was the Rear Admiral and Vice Chairman of Maritime Command, and who is one of their members who supports this because I want to tell you, Madam Speaker, none of them know what they are talking about.


ESTABLISHED PROGRAMS FINANCING
Hon. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister, if
I can get an answer from him, regarding transfer payments.
The minister knows that yesterday it was announced that because of the preliminary estimates from Statistics Canada on population figures that equalization for the small provinces of this country will be cut back. In fact, they will be asked to repay some $600 million over the next few years.
The Government of Quebec has said that it is inappropriate and unacceptable to use preliminary statistics in order to base this call for repayment of equalization payments.
I want to ask the minister the following question: why force the poorest provinces of this country to repay equalization based on preliminary figures? Second, why not use some time this summer to convene a federal-provincial conference on the equalization formula to try to adjust the formula which would help the poorest provinces in this country? Why not do that to help the poorer provinces?


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to note that today the premier of Saskatchewan has been a little more attentive in his statement and said that what we are offering him is a fairly generous pay-back schedule.
That being said, these transfer payments are established by legislation. We are asking for money back but we are also giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the provinces, not because it is the whim of the Minister of Finance but because these are established programs that have an in-law regulation and it varies with population.
As for the legitimate concern raised by the hon. member, he said that they were based on preliminary estimates. We always do that but I can tell him without any hesitation that should these estimates vary and be made more precise in time, we will gladly make the adjustments.
February 26, 1993


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Madam Speaker, the minister and his colleague the minister of defence are anxious to spend billions of dollars on helicopters but will not spend a few dollars helping poor people in the poor provinces of this country. That is not good enough.
We have a debt crisis in this country. There is a debt crisis in Saskatchewan. Its debt has increased in the last 10 years from $3.5 billion to some $15 billion. In light of that emergency situation caused by Conservatives in this country, I want to ask the minister whether or not he will consider emergency assistance to Saskatchewan and to some of the other poorer provinces that need it now.
Why all the money for the minister of defence on helicopters and nothing to the poor provinces to help ordinary people?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, the rhetoric of the hon. member sounds good but his numbers are wrong.
Let me tell him very briefly what we will be transferring to the provinces this year. On the Established Programs Financing, we will be transferring $21,358 billion. That is an increase of $1.3 million. On equalization to transfer money across the country as the needs arise, we will be spending $8.3 billion. On the Canada Assistance Plan it will be $8 billion. This is an over-all increase of $3.2 billion. We will be transferring to the provinces $37 billion this year. If this is not assistance to the provinces, I do not know what is.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Madam Speaker, a supplementary question to the same minister.
In his first answer the minister said that the cuts are a result of legislation. Of course the minister is right. The cuts made by the Liberals in 1982 and the cuts made by the Conservative government in Established Programs Financing have hurt the poorer provinces of this country.
My province alone receives $280 million less in Established Programs Financing. Given that before this last cutback the province was already cutting funding to hospitals, to universities, to municipalities, to school-
Oral Questions
boards, what does he expect the provinces to do to provide services for their citizens?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, I just indicated that the federal government was transferring $38 billion to the provinces. That is a vast amount of money. In many instances, the provinces can use these moneys pretty well the way they want.
This is a very generous proposal, a very generous system. Of course we would all like to go beyond this and give them even more money. But I would like the hon. member to tell me where we will get it. Will it be through higher taxes or borrowing more money?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, my question is for the same minister who asked where we would get the money. It is interesting in looking at the estimates that the cost overrun of the helicopters is $1.4 billion. At the same time, the government is retroactively clawing back close to $1 billion from six poor provinces: $293 million from Manitoba; $246 million from Quebec; $76 million from Nova Scotia.
Why is this government paying for the inefficient poor planning of the minister of defence causing a $1.4 billion overrun by taking the money away from the poorer provinces for their health and education systems which help the poor, the young and the sick?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, words, words. Yesterday when the Leader of the Opposition got up, I was very surprised that a former President of the Treasury Board was not able to understand the meaning of current dollars.
The press release where it was indicated that we were going to proceed with these helicopters was written in current dollars. It means that when tailoring them in over a period of 15 years changes which may occur in the markets must be taken into account. Looking at OECD with our own numbers we have factored that in.
The helicopters have not changed in price. It is just the factor and if there is no inflation there will be no increase. This is not a miscalculation. It is a good calculation. I suppose that is beyond the understanding of the Liberals.

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, the one thing we understand is that $5.8 billion is $5.8 billion too much for these helicopters. The President of the Treasury Board talks about understanding what is going on.
I want an explanation as to why the formula used by this government to justify these clawbacks does not meet the regular standards of Statistics Canada. It will not even publish the formula because it is beyond its margin of error. The same formula was rejected by the U.S. government in 1990 because the margin of error was too high. Yet this government persists in using that formula to take away close to $1 billion for poor provinces.
.(1135)
Considering that the government has already set up a $2.6 billion slush fund to use for election promises, is it not much better and much more moral to take the money and give it to the provinces for their health and education systems? Will the government change this deplorable policy?


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, I suppose that the hon. member is referring to the $2.6 billion which is there in reserves and is in every budget. He says it is a slush fund because there is going to be an election. I will tell the hon. member that it is lower than the reserves we had last year.
The hon. member was asking questions a couple of days ago about the national AIDS strategy. We said that the minister will be coming forward and we will be funding it. We cannot fund it from thin air so we set aside reserves.
The member is aware, having been in this House longer than I have, that many times throughout the year there are supplementary estimates where additional spending is announced for programs that have not yet been designed. This is where the money goes. There are no secrets.
* *


YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand -Norfolk):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the minister speaking for the Minister of State (Youth).
Wednesday the minister announced that he would freeze the budgets of our Canada Student Employment Centres, just at a time when students desperately need their help.
Why is the minister, at a time when there are close to
500,000	young students looking for work and thousands of other students looking for jobs, freezing such a vital program?
The cost of one helicopter alone could put thousands of young people back to work.


Hon. Pauline Browes (Minister of State (Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to answer this question on behalf of the Minister of State (Youth).
The member will be very pleased to know with respect to the Challenge '93 job program we have set forth in the estimates that there is going to be an increase of some $5 million for that program for the summer of 1993. This is going to be very beneficial to young people in getting jobs.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Madam Speaker, I wish the minister were here because the minister knows he has frozen the vital program needed by students to help them get back to work.
This minister must be aware that in the past five months alone close to 100,000 young Canadians have been forced out of the work force.
What kind of government places a higher priority on helicopters than its unemployed youth? Will the minister make a commitment in this House today to revoke this outrageous freeze and increase the moneys spent on this very vital program for our young people?


Pauline Browes: Madam Speaker, I am very proud of this government's achievements with respect to youth, whether it is the start-up program, the stay-in-school program, the SEED program of people starting their own jobs. The youth centres help young people begin their own jobs. It is a very important project in the area of metro Toronto where $178,000 has been put forth for young people in particular to start new jobs.
I am very, very honoured to be part of a government that has put so much emphasis on youth.
February 26, 1993


INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
Mr. Howard McCurdy (Windsor-St. Clair):: Madam Speaker, yesterday in a question to the Minister of Finance I quoted from his economic statement which said: "Funding will be increased for the highly successful research assistance program which provides technology support and financial assistance to businesses". I asked him why the estimates showed no such increase.
Amid great hilarity, the minister of science said: "In the estimates there is an increase of over $14 million for science and technology". That was a deceptive non sequitur.
Today I ask the minister of science once more: why, instead of the promised increase was IRAP in fact cut by $1,333 million? This is the most successful technology program, the most successful job program the government has. Why the cuts instead of the promised increase?


Hon. Tom Hockin (Minister for Science and Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Madam Speaker, I tell my hon. friend that we were both right yesterday. First of all, S and T funding is going to be up considerably over this year. Out of that we will back-fill the decrease of $1.3 million for IRAP. Therefore, we were both right.
He was right. He read the estimates which said that IRAP's estimates are down. That is right. But the over-all point is the S and T envelope is up and we are going to back-fill the difference for IRAP.
What he is interested in and what the House is interested in is government spending for S and T. That is up substantially.


Howard Douglas McCurdy: Madam Speaker, the estimates are conceived to deceive and this minister demonstrates it.
If there is a $14 million increase in the $5 billion science expenditure, will this minister table his numbers that yield that total? Will he tell this House why the promise was made by the minister, reiterated by the previous minister of science and technology, that IRAP will be the core, the real delivery mechanism for the
Oral Questions
government's technology diffusion policy? An increase was promised and it is not there. Why is it not there?


An hon. member:: Watch your blood pressure, Howard.


Thomas Hockin: Madam Speaker, just because the member is endangering his blood pressure with his question does not make it a different question. The answer is the same.
The answer is that IRAP spending will be the same or up. This is a very important program. I agree with the hon. member. We are diffusing technology in unprecedented ways through this program. It is a core part of what we are trying to do under S and T and we will continue to do it in a major way.


TORONTO ECONOMY
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.
Yesterday, reporter David Lewis Stein of the Toronto Star captured the feeling of metro residents when he wrote: "For four years the greater metro Toronto area has been sinking into a terrifying economic depression and Mulroney has refused to use the power of the federal government to help us".
While the Prime Minister has decided to leave, nowhere is his legacy of economic failure more real than in metro Toronto. Why has the government so consistently abandoned the metro Toronto economy and when will it show a change of heart?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, I do not accept for a moment any accusation of abandoning metro Toronto. Indeed as I read the business publications in this country, all of which are out of Toronto, they seem to be suggesting a lot of the laws, regulations, tax rules and so on coming out of Queen's Park are having a very adverse effect on investment decisions and so on.
The fundamentals we have put in place and the opportunities presented by FTA and NAFTA are soon going to bring back restored vigour and growth. Toronto again will be leading this nation in growth. We may have to have a provincial election before that, but it will come.

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, the Acting Prime Minister and the minister from St. Paul's said that they do not buy the economic malaise. I tell the minister that maybe she should visit the riding from time to time and the Prime Minister should visit Toronto and find out exactly what is going on in that city.
Last week at the metro economic summit the federal government through the minister of trade dumbfounded all participants with a speech devoid of any admission of failure and devoid of any meaningful solution.
When will the government finally recognize that by strengthening and making the metro Toronto economy more vibrant it will also be boosting a very fragile national economy? When will it act?


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, in his opening question, we were not challenging the fact that the Toronto economy at the moment is not as buoyant as it historically has been. We were challenging the accusation by the hon. member that it was a deliberate plan and policy of this government and there is no evidence for that.
Last week the Minister of Transport was there to announce expansion at Pearson airport and of course that follows on the terminal expansion announced a while ago.
However when he was talking about vacuous speeches in Toronto, I think he was referring to the one at the Empire Club a few days ago.


SENIORS' PROGRAMS
Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Seniors. In yesterday's estimates for the Department of National Health and Welfare the Seniors Independence Program has "made important and positive differences to seniors". Despite this, there is only $3.5 million in funding for this program.
How can the minister justify a 75 per cent cut in this important and positive program?


Hon. Monique Vezina (Minister for External Relations and Minister of State (Seniors)):: Madam Speaker, I really do not know where the hon. member got his information.
We met our commitments in the past five years, as we implemented our senior citizens initiative. I agree that New Horizons and the Seniors Independence Program are excellent programs which help retired seniors to remain independent and keep active.
The initiative is drawing to a close, being a five-year project. These issues are on the table, funding renewal is expected, and support for seniors and their initiatives will always be maintained.
I really do not understand your question and I object to giving seniors the impression that we deceived them.


Lawrence MacAulay: Madam Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister.
Yesterday in a letter the Minister of State for Seniors indicated her government was committed to improving the quality of life for seniors.
Considering that the government can find $5.8 billion for Cadillac helicopters and not one red cent for seniors' health issues under the National Health Research and Development Program, how can the minister state that this government is committed to seniors?


Monique Vézina: Madam Speaker, I just said we have a five-year initiative that expires at the end of March 1993.1 would therefore ask members opposite to be patient, since discussions are going on in Cabinet. At the appropriate time, we will announce certain investments and the renewal of certain initiatives, including the availability of funds for research on geriatic diseases.
As a government we have shown leadership in this area and our record compares well with what has been done internationally if we consider the social and economic measures we have introduced to protect the independence of senior citizens.
February 26, 1993


NATIONAL DEFENCE
John F. Brewin: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence on what must be becoming her favourite subject.
Yesterday's figures show that the $5.8 billion helicopters-that is $116 million per helicopter-make them the most expensive military helicopter in the world.
The minister persists in trying to defend these helicopters on their value as search and rescue helicopters. Was she aware when she approved the purchase of the helicopters that not a single other government in the world is going to use these helicopters for search and rescue purposes? Can she name a single government that is going to make that use of these helicopters?


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, first of all it is important to point out that the hon. member is quite in error when he talks about the helicopters costing $100 million.
We are talking about a helicopter project, not simply the cost of the hardware. About half of that cost is for the helicopters themselves, a quarter of it is for logistic support and a quarter for contractors and government management costs and contingencies. In other words, the helicopters themselves cost about-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, it is not possible to have helicopters without having logistic support. In other words, it is a project and the figures have always been out front. They have been public. They were published in 1992 dollars and we have budgeted responsibly to make sure that there are no unforeseen overruns and that Canadians do not wind up facing the possibility of additional irresponsible financial policies by not having contingencies taken into account in the budget.
The hon. member is quite wrong in saying that these helicopters will not be used by others for search and rescue. He should also know that in our own province right now-and I say this because the hon. member is from British Columbia-we do not have the capacity to
Oral Questions
provide helicopter search and rescue north of the Dixon Entrance or Hecate Strait. These helicopters will, for the first time, provide adequate service. The Labrador helicopter cannot do it. You could spend a billion dollars on a Labrador and it will never be able to do it. These helicopters are going to save lives in our province.


John F. Brewin: Madam Speaker, 80 per cent of the people in the minister's own province, the province from which we both come, have the wisdom to be against the purchase of these helicopters.
In yesterday's estimates the government conceded that the cuts in operational funding for the Canadian forces will lead to this state: "This will affect the ability of the Canadian forces to mount and sustain operations".
Why does the government persist in undermining Canadian peacekeeping and operational capacity and at the same time go on this huge spending spree for equipment that is no longer needed as a result of the end of the cold war? Why will the minister not accept the wisdom of the people of her own province and of a wide range of experts?
Why will the minister not consider the alternative which can fund helicopters at less than $1 billion?


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, supposing for the sake of argument we cancelled this project.
We could upgrade the existing fleet of helicopters, Labradors and Sea Kings, for about $2.5 billion. TTiat is the actual cost. It gives them an extra 10 years of life. Therefore we get an extra 10 years of life on 1950s technology. We do not get increased range because the additional technology will add increased weight to the helicopters.
As I say, you can spend all the money you want on a Labrador but you cannot upgrade it to take off in winds higher than 35 knots. Certainly where I come from there are a lot of winds higher than 35 knots.
After an additional 10 years of life, after you have spent $2.5 billion on the helicopters, you still have to replace them. You still have people flying in 50-year old aeroplanes.

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions
That is why the House committee, of which he was a member, said unanimously in 1990 that the committee recommends that the Sea King helicopters be replaced as planned with the EH-101 and that this be done as soon as possible to avoid costly stop gap measures.


Gabriel Desjardins: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of National Defence. Lately the opposition parties have shown a great deal of concern about the helicopter contracts. Perhaps we should talk about those contracts. I would ask the minister to tell us about the costs involved and about the economic spin-offs for Canada's economy and especially for Quebec.


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, the economic spin-offs for the Canadian economy will total $3.2 billion. This amount will be spread among Canada's regions. In Quebec, for instance, $975 million will be spent, especially in the hightech-sector, which is so important for Canada's future. This expenditure is an investment in the future of our industry in addition to providing services to Canadians.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Defence. We know the helicopters will cost $3.2 billion in 1992-93 dollars. We also know that Marc Lalonde's Liberal project for scientific research tax credit was supposed to cost $200 million in 1983-84 dollars but ended up costing more than $4 billion in 1984. We also know that fraud was responsible for $1.9 billion of that amount.
Will the minister confirm to the House that today members of the Armed Forces are prepared to risk their lives to protect and rescue us, and to do so without the equipment they need for search and rescue missions in our Canadian provinces?


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, the hon. member has raised another important point about the helicopters. The search and rescue capability of the new helicopters is so much greater than that of the helicopters we are using today.
The weather conditions under which our helicopters must operate are very demanding: ice, wind and storms. The new helicopters are able to carry out more difficult
manoeuvres. Furthermore, they will be able to operate under those conditions. And last but not least, they will protect the lives of fellow Canadians.


LANGUAGE PROGRAMS
Mrs. Ethel Blondin-Andrew (Western Arctic):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State. As you well know, the Government of the Northwest Territories runs one of the most comprehensive and progressive programs and services in the aboriginal languages in all of this country.
The proposed 10 per cent funding cuts will have an immediate, negative impact on both aboriginal language programs and the provision of French language services in the Northwest Territories. Without their language, aboriginal people are without a culture and identity.
I want to ask the minister why the government speaks out to the international community in support of the year of indigenous people and here in Canada does everything in its power to diminish their cultural and linguistic rights and existence?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship):: Madam Speaker, the minister is very aware and shares the concerns of the hon. member. I know that any cuts that have to be implemented will be done in a fair and equitable way.
One of the realities is that we are in very difficult times and we have all had to undergo the same kind of restraints.
What does she expect us to do? Raise taxes or go deeper in debt? We are fully aware of the importance of doing what the hon. member wants. I am sure that the Secretary of State who is away today on government business will be doing all she can to be helpful in her area of responsibility.


Ethel Dorothy Blondin-Andrew: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Secretary of State. The fact is that taxes have been raised 36 times and the debt is no smaller, so I think that rests with the government.

February 26, 1993

Oral Questions
Any unilateral reduction of the French language budget contradicts the terms outlined in the Canada-NWT co-operation agreement for French and aboriginal languages. Full implementation of services and programs cannot be carried out with 90 per cent of the funding agreed to.
I ask the minister not to renege on the federal responsibility to assist the NWT in implementing the law of Canada's two official languages policy.


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, the minister understands her responsibility very well and will certainly do all she can, as I said, within her area of responsibility to make sure that she can do what the hon. member wants.


Mr. Ronald J. Duhamel (St. Boniface):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Can the minister explain to this House why there is $5.8 billion available for the purchase of Cadillac military helicopters while at the same time there is a $30 million cut for minority language education, $2 million being cut from literacy and much more that affects Canadians?
Why is this government's priority helicopters as opposed to people?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, the grants, contributions and subsidies of all departments have been reduced by 10 per cent. We have been particularly careful in making sure that this will be carried out in a fair and equitable fashion. We are very mindful of the need to continue to develop partnerships.
I know the hon. member has a specific interest in literacy, a program which has brought credit to all of us over the last five years. Under the very exceptional leadership of the National Literacy Secretariat we have seen growing partnerships from coast to coast, individuals, communities and associations that have participated in finding new sources of funding, making people far more aware of the debilitation of being illiterate. I know that we will continue to be able to reach out and have that kind of process in place.


Ron J. Duhamel: Madam Speaker, my question is for the same minister. An amount of $5.8 billion has been budgeted to buy helicopters. You had the choice but you chose helicopters rather than linguistic minorities, our illiterate, our elderly and native people. What are this government's priorities?


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Madam Speaker, as I said, our priorities have always been to develop partnerships. Throughout the country we have found people who want to participate. Next Monday I will participate with Peter Gzowski, who is himself trying to raise millions of dollars for literacy. The ABC Canada program is another example of business men and women who have been fully involved in helping us in this partnership.
The hon. member asks what we want. We want to help people in need of assistance. It is always the same taxpayers, whatever their taxation level, who do not want to pay more tax because their taxation level is already high enough and too much is already being spent. We will have to tighten our belts one way or another.


GUATEMALA
Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs, whose department and ambassador have magnificently helped many hundreds of Guatemalan refugees to return from Mexico to Guatemala.
However, as the minister knows, an international delegation, including Karen Ridd of the United Church of Canada, is now visiting displaced civilian communities in the jungle of northern Guatemala that the Guatemalan army now is harassing and threatening at a rising rate according to today's information.
Can the minister tell the House what action Canada is taking to persuade President Serrano of Guatemala to ensure the safety of both these displaced Guatemalans and also the international visitors, and can she tell us

February 26, 1993
Oral Questions
whether the Canadian delegation at the United Nations is pressing for item 12 and a rapporteur on Guatemala?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. He has longstandingly been a member who is very sensitive to issues in Guatemala. I should tell him that our embassy has been instructed to determine just at what stage these attacks are.
We have not actually had confirmation of the attacks but of the preparation for attacks. The embassy will continue, as it has in the past, to do what it can to guard human rights in Guatemala. I do not feel I have the full facts at my disposal yet.
I appreciate the hon. member's interest and will get back to him outside the House if I have anything to add.


TRANSFER PAYMENTS
Mr. Gilles Rocheleau (Hull-Aylmer):: Madam Speaker, further to the estimates presented by the President of Treasury Board yesterday, the government says that it is taking back some $230 million dollars in transfer payments from Quebec on the basis of population projections.
I ask the President of Treasury Board if he would agree to set up a federal-provincial committee with Quebec to study the data, which does not seem to correspond to those that Quebec has.


Gilles Loiselle: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to tell the hon. member that we are in constant touch with all the provinces to discuss problems that can arise with transfer payments.
As for the population projection or census to which he refers, I said unequivocally that the census requires us to spend several hundred million dollars and we are doing so.
If we realize that some figures are inaccurate as we work with them and refine them we will correct them, so the provinces do not need to worry.
 * *


POINT OF ORDER
John F. Brewin: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During the minister's response to my question she quoted a report to the House of Commons from the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs and she seemed to be reading from the report. It seemed to indicate that the committee not only recommended that the Sea King helicopters be replaced but that they be replaced by the EH-101 helicopter.
As the minister would concede, I hope, the report says no such thing. The recommendation reads in its entirety: "The committee recommends the Sea King helicopters be replaced as planned and that this be done as soon as possible to avoid costly stop-gap measures".
I am sure the minister would also concede that the conditions have dramatically changed since this report was tabled in the House.


A. Kim Campbell: Madam Speaker, I would concede no such thing because in reading the report it is very clear that the plan was by this time, which was November 1990, to replace the helicopters with the EH-lOls. In fact a discussion about concerns that might arise in delay of delivery of the Canadian-built EH-lOls says: "Delays in the delivery of Canadian-built EH-lOls may make it necessary to keep the Sea Kings in operation for longer than expected". Then the committee goes on to make the recommendation "as planned refers to replacing them with EH-101s". I am sorry that I cannot concede to the hon. member's point.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: There seems to be a very obvious dispute as to facts.
February 26, 1993



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to table, in both official languages, a number of Order in Council appointments which were made by the government pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 110(1). These are deemed referred to the appropriate standing committees, a list of which is attached.


POINT OF ORDER
David Charles Dingwall: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
I wonder if the government House leader could indicate the status of possible negotiations with regard to the special committee which will hopefully be struck for the purpose of studying the North American free trade agreement?


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, we have not yet been able to reach an agreement on that but we are still endeavouring to do so.
Obviously it will not be possible for the committee to meet next week but the government is anxious to have it up and running as soon as possible.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, on the same issue. As the minister knows, I and the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca wrote him a letter stating a number of things that we would like the committee to do, including travelling across Canada, going to the United States and the Maquiladora to see the conditions of the workers and the communities in that area.
We also requested that the committee hearings be televised. I wonder if he has any response to any of these requests at this time.


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, no, I do not have a direct response to that request but certainly we are most
Routine Proceedings
anxious the committee be in a position to offer Canadians an opportunity to appear and hear the debate.
We know there are thousands and thousands of companies anxious to appear and show how important this will be to their growth and job generating prospects.
I am a little reluctant to agree at this point that the committee should also go on a world tour. Certainly the final suggestion of the hon. member that the government not act on NAFTA until after an election is rejected.


GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO PETITIONS
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 27 petitions.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]



INTERPARLIAMENTARY DELEGATIONS


Mr. Jim Edwards (Edmonton Southwest):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 34, on behalf of the Speaker of the House of Commons, I have the honour to present a report of an interparliamentary visit lead by the Speaker to India from January 19 to January 27 of this year.
The visit, the first to India in nearly 10 years, took place in the context of Parliament's programs of parliamentary exchanges with foreign legislatures.



REPORT OF OFFICIAL DELEGATION

Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Supply and Services):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34, I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the official parliamentary delegation of the Canada-France Interparliamentary Association, which took part in the visit of French senators to Ottawa, Fredericton, Moncton and Quebec City from January 17 to 24, 1993.

February 26, 1993
Routine Proceedings



CONFERENCE ON SECURITY AND CO-OPERATION IN EUROPE

['Agreed.']
Hon. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Madam Speaker, in conformity with the Standing Orders, I have the honour to table today a report on behalf of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association of the latest executive meetings of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe.



John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the eighth report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade in both official languages.
In accordance with Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade has examined the future of the United Nations and wishes to report its recommendations to this point in time to the House.


HOUSE MANAGEMENT
[Stage Direction]
67TH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 67th report of the Standing Committee on House Management regarding the membership of standing committees. If the House gives its consent, I intend to move concurrence in this report later this day.
68TH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE


James (Jim) Stewart Edwards: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the 68th report of the Standing Committee on House Management regarding the membership of the legislative committee on Bill C-113.
Pursuant to Standing Order 113(1), this report is deemed adopted when laid upon the table.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PEACEKEEPING MEDAL ACT
John F. Brewin: for leave to introduce Bill C-412, an act respecting the establishment and award of a Canadian volunteer service medal for United Nations' peacekeeping.


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


John F. Brewin: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the concurrence of the House in the motion. I am very pleased to introduce this bill which will establish a Canadian volunteer service medal for United Nations' peacekeeping.
As it happens, there is no Canadian medal for those who have served on peacekeeping missions from Canada. The United Nations has established a service medal but we have failed to do so to date. This bill will fill that gap.
Over 100,000 Canadians not only within the military but in civilian life as well, including the RCMP, have served on such missions. Over 80 have given their lives in the course of these missions. I hope this bill will have the full support of all sides in the House.


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


HOUSE MANAGEMENT
M. Jim Edwards (Edmonton Southwest):: Madam Speaker, with leave of the House, I move, seconded by the parliamentary secretary, the hon. member for Man-icouagan, that the 67th report of the Standing Commit-

February 26, 1993

tee on House Management, presented in the House today, be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure to table a petition which was found to be in order.
The petitioners would like to remind the House that it adopted a motion unanimously on November 24, 1989 which read as follows:
This House expresses concern for the more than one million
Canadian children currently living in poverty and seek to achieve the
goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year
2000.
The petitioners, after stating their reasons for this petition, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to take the action necessary to reaffirm its commitment to seek the elimination of poverty among children in Canada by the year 2000 and to develop a plan with the implementation of this commitment.


Hon. William Rompkey (Labrador):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present a petition signed by several hundred residents of Labrador West and some on the island of Newfoundland. This is in addition to the petitions that we presented some weeks ago. It has been signed by a total of 25,000 people all across the country.
The petition was circulated by Mrs. Wanda Quigley of Wabush, Labrador, who had a son die from meningitis some time ago. In view of the ravages caused by the meningococcal disease in the lives of children of Canada and that there is a test kit that will detect all types of meningitis at their early stages, Mrs. Quigley and a lot of other people across the country are calling upon the government to make sure the test kit is put on the market as soon as possible so that other children in Canada will not have to suffer the fate of her son.
Routine Proceedings VIOLENCE


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, I have a duly certified petition to present. It originates from the New Westminster Presbyterian Church in my riding and is directed to the House of Commons.
The incidence of violence against women and children is unacceptable. Too often the abuser is a close friend, partner or spouse. The present social climate is such that many women feel intimidated or afraid to report incidents of assault or abuse. The present social climate is that when many women report incidents of assault or abuse they are victimized instead of helped. Aboriginal, visible minority, immigrant, disabled, lesbian and poor women face additional overwhelming barriers in reporting violence of abuse and receiving help. Women in the family law systems across the country are trying to protect their children and are suffering from maternal custodial victimization.
Therefore the petitioners humbly call upon Parliament to accept legislation designed to eliminate violence against women and children, encourage and support women to report incidents of assault or abuse, provide assistance and support for women and relief and support for women as mothers and children, emphasize the need for abuser rehabilitation, concentrate special effort on the training of police lawyers, court workers and judges, and focus public attention on this very important and long ignored problem.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: This is more like a speech than the presentation of a petition. The hon. member for Abitibi.


Guy St-Julien: Madam Speaker, I would like to table a petition from residents of Dubuis-son, Riviere-Heva, Senneterre and Val-d'Or, in the riding of Abitibi, who say that films depicting violence on television are dangerous and therefore unacceptable because they act as a stimulus for violent behaviour.
The petition also says that all toys that incite children to play violent games are unacceptable and their manufacture should be banned. It is also pointed out that the repeated broadcasting of news about acts of violence on television, on all channels, and on radio may act as a stimulus for further identical violent behaviour.

February 26, 1993
Routine Proceedings
Therefore your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to pass the appropriate legislation in order to eliminate violence in our society and thus protect our children and make our communities a safer place to live.


John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, I have two petitions that have been certified correct as to form and content, pursuant to Standing Order 36.

The first petition is signed by 42 residents of Toronto, 14 of whom live in my riding.
They pray and call upon Parliament to adopt legislation designed to eliminate violence against women and children and to encourage and support women to report incidents of assault or abuse and other such matters.


John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, the second petition is signed by 71 residents of Toronto, 5 of whom live in my riding.
The undersigned petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to take the actions necessary to reaffirm its commitment to seek the elimination of poverty among children in Canada by the year 2000 and to develop a plan for the implementation of this commitment.


Mr. Robert E. Skelly (Comox-Alberni):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition signed by several hundreds of residents of the constituency of Comox-Alberni in memory of Dawn Shaw, a little girl who was raped and then murdered in that community just a short time ago.
Noting that the present system of justice fails to protect children of our communities who are increasingly becoming victims of sexual assault, they call upon Parliament to change the law in such a way as to lengthen jail sentences, to permit police to take DNA samples from persons suspected of sexual assault and to keep DNA
imprints of paedophiles and sexual offenders on a national police database.
The petitioners have a number of other suggestions that would assist in making children in our society safer from the possibility of sexual assault.


Robert Evans Skelly: I have a second petition, Madam Speaker, from thousands of teachers around the province of British Columbia. They note that teachers pay out a great deal of money from their own pockets to improve their own professional skills for the benefit of their students and that they purchase academic materials and supplies which are also for the benefit of the children they teach.
They also note that the Income Thx Act allows selfemployed professionals to deduct operating expenses and materials but that teachers do not have the same deductions. The teachers are therefore asking the Minister of National Revenue to take action accordingly to change the Income Thx Act to allow teachers to deduct the cost of professional expenses and materials purchased in the course of their employment.


Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition that was sent to me by Cathy Grasty of Coquitlam in my riding. It is also in memory of Dawn Shaw.
The petitioners say that the present justice system fails to protect the children of our communities who are increasingly becoming victims of sexual assault. They outline a number of suggestions and urge Parliament in memory of Dawn Shaw to enact legislation to change the justice system to provide greater protection for children from sexual assault and to assure conviction of offenders.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Madam Speaker, I have a petition signed by many of my constituents who are concerned about the refugee status of many people who are in Canada, in particular those from Third World countries.
February 26, 1993

These petitioners are calling on the House to urge the government to take all necessary action to ensure that compassion is exercised when dealing with those refugee cases.


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, I have a petition from residents of my riding of York West to present. They essentially wish to bring to the attention of the House the advantages of the existing compulsory drug licensing system by which generic drugs allow Canadians an adequate, accessible and fair price for prescription drugs.
They are asking this government to repeal recent legislation unfortunately passed in this House that would do away with that compulsory drug licensing system and therefore increase the cost of prescription drugs to Canadians.


Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, I too wish to present a petition that points out that the Income Tax Act allows self-employed professionals and business people to deduct operating expenses for improvement in the businesses.
Rhonda Lantz, a registered nurse, asks the Government of Canada to permit the deduction for income tax purposes of all professional development courses and peripheral costs such as child care, transportation, food and accommodation for registered nurses. Also professional development courses under $100 should be cumulative for income tax deduction purposes.


Lawrence MacAulay: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36,1 am pleased to present a petition on behalf of a number of Canadians from Simcoe, Ontario, Edmonton, Alberta, Nelson and Procter, British Columbia, and other places across Canada.
They wish to draw to the attention of the House that hundreds of thousands of Canadian senior citizens live below the poverty line, that it is desirable for all Canadians to provide senior citizens with the necessary support to live their lives as independently as possible, and that the federal government has the primary responsibility to ensure the adequacy of seniors' pensions.
Routine Proceedings
Therefore the petitioners call upon Parliament to urge the government to ensure that Canadian old age security pensions are sufficient to meet the basic needs of our Canadian senior citizens.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have the privilege to present before Parliament signed petitions from many of my own constituents and others around the city of Toronto.
They are calling upon Parliament to realize that the incidence of violence against women and children is unacceptably high. They are asking Parliament to accept legislation designed to eliminate violence against women and especially make an effort in the training of police, lawyers, court workers and judges to become knowledgeable about women and child abuse and to focus public attention on this very important and long ignored problem.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 425 and 456.


Mr. KarpofF: Regarding the 25th anniversary of the TimberMart Corporation on October 3, 1992, was the Minister of Finance present at that celebration at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver, B.C. and if so, (a) was public funding used for any part of the event and if so, (i) for what items (ii) what was the cost (b) did the minister arrive in Vancouver by commercial aircraft or on a government Challenger or by other aircraft (c) who paid for the flight to and from Vancouver?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: The minister did attend the celebration since he was in Vancouver on other official business. In so far as Finance Canada is concerned:

February 26, 1993
Government Orders
a)	i) No ii) Nil
b)	Commercial aircraft
c)	Finance Canada


Mr. Heap: Since the formalization of Canada's refugee determination procedures, Immigration Act 1976, and the establishment of the Refugee Status Advisory Committee, prior to its dissolution on December 31, 1988 did the RSAC ever review cases on the basis of belonging to a particular social group and if so, (a) how many people were granted refugee status based on belonging to a particular social group (b) how many people were granted refugee status based on being women as the particular social group and what were the countries of origin of these refugees?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Between 1979 and 1988, 8,374 persons were determined in Canada, on the recommendation of the Refugee Status Advisory Committee, to be convention refugees. That represented an acceptance rate that varied from 20 to 39 per cent, considerably lower than the current acceptance rate of the Immigration and Refugee Board. The statistical data gathered during that time does not identify the rationale for these determinations. Therefore, it is not possible to advise the honourable member of the numbers accepted on the basis of membership in a particular social group nor the additional details that he seeks without retrieving each individual case file. Further, most of these case files are no longer retained by Employment and Immigration Canada.


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


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The questions enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-99, an act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another act in consequence thereof, as reported (with amendment) from a legislative committee.
Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Motion No. 1.
That Bill C-99 be amended in Clause 3
(a)	by striking out lines 1 to 3 on page 3 and substituting the following:
"3.(1) Section 3 of the said Act is amended by adding thereto, immediately after subsection (1) thereof, the following subsection:
(1.1)	Notwithstanding paragraph (1)(6), but subject to all other provisions of this Act and, in particular, to the conditions set out in subsection (2), the Minister is liable to pay to a lender ninety per cent, or such other percentage as is provided by an appropriation Act or other Act of Parliament, of any loss sustained by the lender as a result of a business improvement loan made after March 31, 1993 and before January 1, 1996.
(2) All that portion of subsection 3(2) of the said Act preceding paragraph (e) thereof is repealed and the following substituted therefor:
(2) The conditions referred to in subsections (1) and (1.1) are as follows:"
(b)	by renumbering the subsequent subclauses accordingly.
RECOMMENDATION (Standing Order 76(3))
His excellency the Governor General recommends to the House of Commons the appropriation of public revenue under the circumstances, in the manner and for the purposes set out in an amendment to Clause 3 of Bill C-99, 'An Act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another Act in consequence threof":
(a) by striking out lines 1 to 3 on page 3 and substituting the following:
"3.(1) Section 3 of the said Act is amended by adding thereto, immediately after subsection (1) thereof, the following subsection:
Idem
(1.1)	Notwithstanding paragraph (1X6), but subject to all other provisions of this Act and, in particular, to the conditions set out

February 26, 1993

in subsection (2), the Minister is liable to pay to a lender ninety per cent, or such other percentage as is provided by an appropriation Act or other Act of Parliament, of any loss sustained by the lender as a result of a business improvement loan made after March 31, 1993 and before January 1, 1996.
R.S. c. 19 (1st Supp.) s. 2. c 22
(3rd Supp.), s. 3(1)
(2) All that portion of subsection 3(2) of the said Act preceding
paragraph (<?) thereof is repealed and the following substituted
therefor:
Conditions
(2) The conditions referred to in subsections (1) and (1.1) are as follows:"
(b) by renumbering the subsequent subclauses accordingly. Motion No. 2.
That Bill C-99 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 21 at page 3 and substituting the following:
"that did not arise more than one hundred and eighty days".
RECOMMENDATION (Standing Order 76(3))
His excellency the Governor General recommends to the House of Commons the appropriation of public revenue under the circumstances, in the manner and for the purposes set out in an amendment to Clause 3 of Bill C-99, "An Act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another Act in consequence thereof", whereby line 21 on page 3 is struck out and the following substituted therefor:
"that did not arise more than one hundred and eighty days". Motion No. 3
That Bill C-99 be amended in Clause 3 by striking out line 1 at page 4 and substituting the following:
"(ii) at least fifty per cent of the gross revenues".


Mr. John E. Cole (York- Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, I think you will find the amendments presently before the House have the support of all parties and actually reflect the excellent co-operation that has characterized the passage of Bill C-99 through the legislative process.
The amendments in group one are designed to improve upon the bill by increasing access to credit by Canada's small business sector. This first group includes two substantive and one technical amendment.
The substantive amendments increase the retroactivity of loans and increase the loan loss sharing ratio to 90 per cent. Both these amendments will have the effect of increasing the number of loans under the program and will increase the availability of working capital. Combined with forthcoming regulatory changes which will both restrict the taking of personal security by the banks
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and lending institutions and increase the maximum loan to 100 per cent of the value of the asset, these changes greatly enhance the availability of working capital. This initiative responds to the commitment made by the Minister of Finance in his recent economic statement.
On behalf of the government and the Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism, who is unavoidably away from the House at this particular time on government business, I would particularly like to thank all members for their support of these very important amendments.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I would like to make a few short comments regarding the amendments to Bill C-99.
I agree with my colleague from York-Simcoe that this was an example of a piece of legislation where all parties co-operated and worked together for speedy passage.
I believe these amendments are in fact substantial. One problem for small business today is that Canadian banking institutions tend to be very rough on small business. This amendment that was put forward in committee increases the loan guarantee by the Crown from 85 to 90 per cent. It should give the banking institutions of Canada a lot of comfort when these bank loan officers make loans to small businesses, which is where our greatest hope for new job creation exists.
The other amendment was substantive and one that we on this side of the House totally support. It was something we were worried about in the bill, but the minister and the committee co-operated. It is an example of, when there is co-operation, how quickly things can move through this House.
In the first bill there was a retroactivity date of 90 days. The minister and the committee, capably chaired by my friend from York-Simcoe, increased that retroactivity period to six months. In layman's terms, that would mean a small business person that bought a capital asset during the last six month period. I say today because it will be passed in this House today. Retroactivity starts on Monday if we get Royal Assent from the Senate by Monday. The six-month period means that moneys put out on capital equipment can be refinanced and it then becomes a part of a small business loan. I applaud the government for accepting that amendment. I think it is really going to make a big difference to small business.

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The last point that is so important to a small business person is the cap on the amount of the personal guarantee that is required. So often when a small business person tries to start or expand their business the banks want their life insurance policy, home, children or whatever else they may have. Banks have never been too shy in demanding all those personal guarantees.
I consider this third amendment a substantial one also. It limits the amount of personal security that a financial institution can demand. Therefore, we in the Liberal Party of Canada support all these amendments and we hope the bill can move to third reading quickly so it can become law.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, in the absence of our member for Okanagan-Similkameen- Merritt, I am speaking on this bill this afternoon.
We support the thrust of the bill and the amendments, especially those that limit the ability of the banks to demand unreasonable security from small businesses.
While I have a chance to speak on the amendments I want to point out that the reason this bill and the amendments are necessary is that the banking community has been very reluctant to encourage small businesses. I, and I am sure many MPs in this House, could go through personal example after personal example where instead of being helped, small businesses felt they did not get the funding they should have got and when they got a loan from a bank they felt almost harassed by those same institutions. I heard an example of someone who was actually making his payments and the bank decided it wanted a larger payment and almost forced that person into bankruptcy as a result.
I have noticed that the government through one of these amendments is basically saying that it will not only provide 85 per cent insurance to the banks, but will provide 90 per cent insurance to the banks. So there is almost no risk to the banking institutions under this amendment. That is quite remarkable. We are asking the banks to do what they should be doing as a business and the Government of Canada has to almost completely insure those loans.
Why are we doing that? We are doing it because we want to help small business. We know that. It is really a culmination of the whole banking system. It almost leads us to question why we are using the banks at all for this particular process. Not to argue about nationalizing the banks, but if the Government of Canada is providing almost all, 90 per cent, of the security for any loans that go in arrears or if there is a problem, why do we have to use the banks?
Related to this is my understanding that through regulation the government is also upping the rate that is going to be charged to the lender. It is now going to be not 1.5 per cent above the prime rate but up to 1.75 per cent maximum.
This is a situation where interest rates have gone down for a number of years. Certainly they have been going down since this bill was introduced into the House of Commons. It seems again that the thrust of the government's actions, in this case under regulations, is to aid and abet the banking industry.
Again I have to wonder why we have to do so much work to ensure the banks do their work.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Madam Speaker, I would like to take just a moment. The hon. member's remarks deserve some sort of reply. He said that this alteration from an 85 per cent to 90 per cent guarantee has been done to help the banks. That is not so.
It is being done to make sure that the banks will vigorously promote. The banks in times past have not been vigorous supporters or promoters of this and so this is to make sure that they will promote.
They can still have a 10 per cent loss. That is really not a pay-off in my books. This is something we will be watching very closely. I personally want to make sure that the local banks in my home town are vigorously promoting small business loans.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The first question is on Motion No. 1. Is the House ready for the question?
February 26, 1993


Some hon. members:: Question.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Carried.
Motion No. 1 agreed to.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Would the House agree to apply this vote on Motions Nos. 2 and 3?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I declare Motions Nos. 2 and 3 carried.
Motions Nos. 2 and 3 agreed to.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I will now put to the House Motion No. 4.


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: Motion No. 4.
That Bill C-99 be amended in clause 5 by striking out lines 24 to
27 on page 5.


John Cole: Madam Speaker, this amendment is very important. It is a consequential amendment as a result of the action of the committee members from all parties when we were discussing this.
This amendment has the effect of expanding further the eligibility of small businesses. Originally in the act it was a restriction limiting professionals, financial insurance and real estate businesses from taking part in this. By the actions of the committee in expanding the bill, it was necessary to amend clause 5.
This will ensure that there will be wider coverage, that there will be more benefits to more small businesses, businesses that contribute materially to economic activity. What I mean by that is that it is not a case for someone to purchase a piece of land to speculate or do something like that. It is those people who are actively engaged in a business that is going to expand, that can develop, promote expertise, promote effectively new jobs and purchase new equipment.
That is the kind of thing we wanted to make sure of, that every business would have access to these funds. I
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believe that these changes will dramatically change the way small businesses will have access to these funds.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I would like to make a few short comments on this motion.
My colleague from Thunder Bay, who is not here today because his sister passed away as a result of cancer, was very intent on making sure that this amendment was in the bill.
There are tens of thousands of businesses in rural Canada, small real estate firms, as the member for York-Simcoe mentioned, and life insurance businesses that sometimes are run out of the farmhouse or a small little office.
The way the bill was originally drafted, these people were not eligible. It discriminated against them. The original intention of having real estate firms and life insurance firms in there was to basically make sure that the large land developers and the large insurance companies could not use their techniques of shuffling paper around to get access to the loan. The minister and the members of the committee responded to this clause in a very constructive way.
The other point that will come through in the regulations was discussed in committee. It had to do with car dealerships. As members know, under the Small Businesses Loans Act a small business is defined as a business having sales of less than $5 million.
In a car business, it is the actual sale of the cars. You could maybe sell 20 or 30 cars and you would be over the actual amount of the sales of a small business. The regulations are being drafted to make sure that the portion of the transaction that is handled by a finance company is exclusive. It is not included in the gross sales of eligibility.
I believe that this amendment covers not only car dealerships which may fit the $5 million in sales but also the life insurance companies and the real estate firms. Once again I have to say that this was an example where the committee worked together. It worked quickly and it is going to make this a much better bill.
Now we just have to make sure that the 960,000 businesses that are eligible, those that have sales of $5 million or under, go out and test the banking system and make sure it reacts to it.

February 26, 1993
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Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, very shortly, we are also happy to see this amendment for reasons very similar to those of the last speaker.
We did not want to see this being a boondoggle for the land speculators, real estate speculators. I think this is a wise amendment in ensuring that those groups that need funding might be able to get it from the banks if the banks go out and advertise it. I hope it does not end up being a kind of loophole that is used by those who always seem to know whether it is a government program, whether there is a government tax dodge or something of this nature.
Hopefully the regulations that come out later will meet these concerns.
Motion No. 4 agreed to.


Gérard (Gerry) Weiner: that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Charles A. Langlois: Madam Speaker, there have been consultations, and I think you will find there is unanimous consent for proceeding to third reading of Bill C-99.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, there is unanimous consent for third reading today.

Hon. Gerry Weiner (for the Minister of State (Small
Businesses and Tourism)) moved that Bill C-99, an Act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act and another act in consequence thereof, be read the third time and passed.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


An hon. member:: Debate.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Madam Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I am actually just as excited as the government is today about getting this bill through the House.
I am excited about this bill going through the House today because this represents a tremendous opportunity for the 960,000 businesses in this country whose sales are less than $5 million. Many of them have tremendous difficulty in getting access to bank credit.
What has happened here today is that a law will momentarily be passed which will say to the financial institutions of this country that if small business people come into their bank and ask a loan officer for some credit to expand and grow their business or start a business and if that business plan which they present to the financial institution is right and makes sense then under this act the Government of Canada will guarantee 90 per cent of the loan. It will insure it to 90 per cent.
Businesses with sales of $5 million will have a loan limit of $250,000 at prime plus 1.75 maximum, and it could be less. When I say it could be less I would like to give a specific example of a banking institution that came to our all-day committee meeting on Tbesday. We worked into the night and heard witnesses from 9 a.m. right through. The Bank of Montreal was represented. One of the witnesses, Mr. Ronald G. Rogers, senior executive vice-president, personal and commercial banking, said: "The Bank of Montreal will do better than 1.75 per cent, in fact on loans for small businesses of $100,000 and under, it will be prime less 1 per cent".
If the prime is at 7 per cent-I realize that it is less than that today but let us just use that figure for discussion purposes. If a person has a small business and is only looking for $100,000 or less the Bank of Montreal will use the Small Businesses Loans Act, under which 90 per cent of that loan is guaranteed, and will only charge 6 per cent.
If this is used by the financial institutions of this country I really do believe it will get the economy of this country going again.

February 26, 1993

I have been standing in this House talking about small business and about getting capital for small business. I have asked questions in this House. I have participated in 50 different debates in this House during the last 3 years on behalf of small business. I have been pleading, practically begging this government to focus its energies on the small business sector because that is where the job creation potential is. That is where the greatest hope for new job creation lies in this country.
It is no secret to anyone in this House or anyone in this country that all the major corporations are downsizing, that they are laying off workers. My goodness, I think of a small city like Hamilton where Stelco and Dofasco laid off something like 1,200 people at a shot, or Oshawa where General Motors laid off thousands of people at a shot. Does the House know what that does to the hope and confidence of a community? We can go into a major mall, not just in Hamilton or Oshawa but anywhere in the country, after there has been a major layoff and almost feel the lack of confidence.
We can tell by the number of purchases in clothing stores, pet stores or, in my case, restaurants. On Dan-forth, Queen, Pape and Gerrard Streets in Toronto there are some of the nicest restaurants in all of Canada. Most of the time these restaurants have line-ups, but in the last eight to ten months it has changed. There are 300 restaurants in my riding. There are restaurants in my riding that represent over 40 different countries. There are a large number of Greek restaurants and a very large number of Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian and East Indian restaurants. They provide the largest number of restaurants, but there are restaurants from many different countries, many different cultures and many different communities. Collectively they employ 5,800 people; they are my Stelco, my Bombardier. In the last eight months people can walk into these restaurants and pick what seat they want because there are no line-ups any more. It is awful.
The confidence and the hope in our communities, no matter what part of the country, has been very low. We cannot get the hope or the confidence from the large corporations because they are all downsizing, they are all bureaucracies and they are all restructuring. Where do we get the jobs? We get the jobs from the entrepreneurship of this country.
I do not mean to be disrespectful but this is sort of like a deathbed conversion. The government is finally begin-
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ning to realize that small business is where the action is because there is no bureaucracy in small business. If a proprietor of a small business decides over a two or three-hour meeting that he or she wants to expand his factory or buy a new piece of machinery to be more competitive then he or she makes the decision in a couple of hours and goes forward.


Charles A. Langlois: Call the bank manager.


Dennis Joseph Mills: The hon. member is so right. That person makes the decision about how he or she wants to move but then says: "Now we have to go meet our bank manager".
For the last two years the financial institutions of this country have been so rocked and shocked by the collapse of Campeau, the Reichmanns, Edper, and the list goes on and on and on.
What have they done during that period? They have put out the word: no more lines of credit. Cut those lines back. No more new loans. It has been small business which has received the brunt of that abuse from the major financial institutions of this country.
Now with this piece of legislation when small business people decide on a way of expanding their business or starting another facet of their business they can go happily and proudly to their bank manager. They can say that the Government of Canada just passed a piece of legislation called Bill C-99 and that 90 per cent of the money the bank gives them is guaranteed by the Crown. It is guaranteed by the taxpayers of Canada. That should make one dramatic difference in the attitude of that bank manager.
A few weeks ago I spoke about the responsibility of banks in helping us reignite this economy. I mentioned in those remarks that banking institutions have to be the only business that I know of where the customers are afraid of the person they are doing business with.
In other words, Madam Speaker, if you and I went out to dinner in a restaurant-whenever you come to Toronto you are welcome and I will take you to one of the nicest restaurants in all of Canada-I will tell you what would happen if we went into that restaurant. You should come to my riding some time. Visit your daughter and come into my riding and I will take you out.
What would happen would be that the maitre d'-is that the first time a Speaker has ever been asked out?

February 26, 1993
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Madam Deputy Speaker:: If I may answer the hon. member on that. If he does not blush neither will I.


Dennis Joseph Mills: Okay.
Madam Speaker, if you went into that restaurant on the Danforth the maitre d' or the person looking after the tables would wait on you hand and foot. That would happen in any business, such as a clothing or furniture store.
If someone goes into a bank the bank manager says: "We are doing you the favour". With this bill we can flip it around because if someone does not get service with the first loan officer that they meet, if they do not feel comfortable or if they do not feel they are being respected then they can walk across the street to another financial institution.
I received this advice to pass on to the small business sector from the president of the Canadian Bankers' Association. Helen Sinclair, the president, came to my riding a few weeks ago to speak to a conference "Women in Business". We appreciated her candor. She said: "If you walk into a bank and if you don't feel that the chemistry is right, if you don't feel you are getting good service from the person operating the bank, walk out. Walk across the street".
We have 50-odd financial institutions in this country and there are over 7,000 branches. We have a great banking structure in this country. The problem has been that the loan officers-not all of them, there are lots of great loan officers-act in a condescending way toward their customers.
I know that there are other members of Parliament that hear this as many times as I do. It does not matter whether we are Conservative or NDP or Liberal, we are all hearing the same complaints when it comes to financial institutions.
With Bill C-99, the small business person in this country can go to their financial institution and say: "I want some help and I would like you to get your Small Businesses Loans Act forms in place since I believe that my business plan qualifies me, because Mr. or Mrs. Bank Manager, 90 per cent of the loan you are going to give me is guaranteed by the Government of Canada".
I think this will make a dramatic difference. There are 960,000-odd businesses in this country whose sales are $5 million or less. Just think if each one of those businesses
hired one person, we would move that unemployment insurance-welfare liability, which combined today is close to $30 billion including interest payments, down to about $8 billion to $10 billion. Overnight we would have productive people, people with their dignity back, people paying taxes again. Just think what that would do to the deficit and ultimately the debt of this country.
I have had some frustration with this piece of legislation. In fact, the Canadian Bankers' Association mentioned the same frustration. In 1986 it brought to the attention of the government amendments that were needed to the Small Businesses Loans Act in order to make it work. 1987, 1988 and 1989 passed and finally in December 1992 the Minister of Finance put it in his budget papers and it is through the House 60 days later.
I think the government missed a tremendous opportunity by not doing three years ago what it is doing today. However, we are going to focus on the positive today. The bottom line is that this act is in place.
I want to mention two concerns. Even though the Canadian Bankers' Association, the Credit Union Central, the Bank of Montreal and Federation des caisses d'economie Desjardins du Quebec came to committee and said that they liked this bill, they were going to support this bill and they were going to market this bill, I must say through you, Mr. Speaker, to the government that I am nervous about that commitment. I want the government to be nervous about it as well because there is no time. I have said in this House at least half a dozen times that if this legislation is really going to work, if it is really going to do the job we all would like it to do, to pump some hope, some energy and some employment back into the system, we cannot rely solely on the marketing of the banks.
I appeal to the government, and I have taken this up with the Minister of Finance and the minister responsible for small business and I am going to repeat myself on this until it happens, to drive this act, not from the banks to small business, but from small business to the banks. The way to drive it is not by a few of us standing in this House today on third reading. I will definitely put it in my householder and I will promote this bill to all the 2,100 small businesses in my community. However, not all the small businesses in my community or I dare say in every other member's community read our householders.
February 26, 1993

We have to use the same principle on this bill that the government used on the "we can do it" competitive package. What is the package of the minister of trade called? The prosperity initiative.


An hon. member:: That was a big hoax.


Dennis Joseph Mills: My good friend Jim Ramsay, using all his old marketing skills, spent millions of dollars on television advertising and sending papers to all households in Canada saying: "We can do it". If the government can spend millions on saying "we can do it", I beg it to use a little bit of the taxpayers' money to help the small business community of this country, not the ones that are already in business. You cannot just go to the Federal Business Development Bank and put it in their profits magazine. With the downsizing of large corporations in this country, there are literally tens of thousands of people right now thinking about starting a new business. We have to get this message into their hands.
I mentioned that there was a women in business conference in my riding three weeks ago. It was just a four and a half hour event. I expected 40 or 50 women to show up to hear how to start a home-based business, how to approach the bank manager and how to do a business plan. We had mentors, women in business who had succeeded, speaking to these women. The shock of the day was that not 40 or 50 women showed up but over 400 showed up.
Today the most credit-worthy customers of financial institutions are women in business. Did you know that? I was shocked, not that I do not think women are capable of running a business but that the banking institutions had such a favourable attitude. They prefer women customers, in business especially. They have a much better track record.
I appeal to members opposite to promote this bill. Take out some eighth page or quarter page advertisements and communicate to the people of Canada that this instrument is available.
If we have to spend $400,000 or $500,000 to let all the small business people, those thinking of getting into business, and those who are in business, know in order to
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get this bill moving-and I say this with respect to taxpayers who pay this-I think it is the cheapest and best money we could ever spend. If in the next 30 days
100,000	people knew of this bill, went to a bank and each hired one more person, just think what that would do to the employment numbers. As those employment numbers come down, just think of the ripple effect that will have on this economy.
Because the spirit right now is locked in such a state of depression and no confidence, I think anything less than a major approach with this bill is not going to work and we are going to miss a great, great moment.
I am happy today about this piece of legislation. I support this government initiative. I support all the amendments we brought through. One of the real flaws in this bill was the fact that in the past it never had a provision for working capital. Under this legislation any capital purchases that have been made on April 1 or prior, going back six months, can be refinanced under this Small Businesses Loans Act, which would mean that money would go back into their working capital. That is a pretty good instrument.
I conclude my remarks by saying two things to the government: it has one shot at getting some credibility back between now and the end of June, and the only hope it has for getting any credibility is with the small business sector. It has an instrument called the Small Businesses Loans Act. The only way it is going to work is if the government takes some advertising dollars and promotes it. I would also appeal to the government that in 90 days we review what happens with this bill and make sure in 90 days that we ask for a report from all 58 financial institutions in Canada on the number of small business loans each one has approved and how many people they will put back to work in the next 90 days.


John Cole: Mr. Speaker, it certainly is an honour for me to stand and speak today to Bill C-99. I would like to take this opportunity to compliment the member for Broadview-Greenwood who has just given an excellent speech. He talked about many aspects of this bill and certainly was a major contributor at the committee level. I do want to have that on record because I think it is important.

February 26, 1993
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An hon. member:: He might get pumped up if you continue.


John Cole: We might even get him to move over.
This bill, as has been previously mentioned, was put in place to improve the access of small business to financing and really help increase that working capital, increase the availability of that working capital to small businesses, the entrepreneurs.
That is something to recognize. I believe when you talk to small businesses they want to get going. They feel they are being held back. They feel there are restrictions on their entrepreneurial spirit, on their financial capabilities and on their drive to make things happen. Most of these people have the kind of initiative that it takes, but sometimes they do not have the financial wherewithal to make that happen.
.(1315)
This bill presents a great many opportunities for small business. I think this is a very positive bill and a very positive step.
Someone mentioned earlier the excitement and the really good feeling a piece of legislation like this gives and certainly I concur with that. This is a real opportunity for businesses.
I think about the people back in my riding of York- Simcoe. I think about the Chamber of Commerce in Newmarket, East Gwillimbury, Bradford and the Georgina Board of Trade. In my riding alone there are over
7,000	small businesses that will now be eligible to take part in this program, a program that we could not even find an application for six months ago.
The program was sitting around but we could not get it. It was stuck in the bottom drawer, probably glued upside down to make sure that the loan officer, when he or she went in to get it, could not find the thing so it was not available and whatever happened after that happened.
Many of us in this House have heard those kinds of stories from businesses that have tried in their own way to help the economy. They have said continuously to us: give us some help, give us something. We do not want you to throw money at us. We do not want you to spend more money, especially when we know you do not have any, especially when we are in a deficit position, but just
make sure that we have access to money. Put the boots to the banks and the lending institutions and force them to co-operate.
I believe this bill will do that. With the changes we have brought in, I think there will be improved access for these small businesses.
Mention is often made in this place about the importance of small business. I believe the number is rapidly approaching a million small businesses in this country. We want them to be successful because it is going to take them being successful to pay the bills. It is also going to take them being successful to hire more people because the big companies are not hiring people. However, the little companies have the ability to do something like this. What a wonderful opportunity.
Small business is really and truly the engine of this country. It can get things going, create jobs and do some very positive things for the economy and just for the general feeling and attitude of Canadians, whether they are in business or whether they are employees the fact that there is an opportunity there, that there just be a change of attitude by everyone involved with it.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the particulars in the bill. I know we get excited because we have been involved with it. The one other group it is important to recognize is the number of people who may be sitting at home today who do not have a job. Perhaps they received a golden handshake. Maybe they have a few bucks tucked away in their jeans and they are thinking: "Gee, I have always wanted to be in that kind of a business or I have always wanted to set up my business this way. I can manufacture whosits or I want to manufacture something else". This presents a real opportunity.
Think of the dreams of those people who quite often and very recently have had their dreams shattered because of the economy of the world and because of everything that has gone on internationally. Here is an opportunity for these people to take some of their assets, but not all of them, not to lock them up to buy that one piece of machinery to make a dream business start but to have the government back them to the tune of 90 per cent, putting in some of their own capital, again depending on whether the financial institutions are even going to insist on that.
February 26, 1993

One of the things that was very interesting was that we talked about limiting the personal commitment on these loans. It is in the regulations that the limit is going to be 25 per cent personal commitment as far as the financial contribution is concerned. There are obviously other things that are important like a game plan, the way the business is run, the structure and everything else, including competitiveness and ability to sell product.
We are not asking entrepreneurs to mortgage their houses to the limit, to mortgage their futures to the limit, to sell their car, to do everything else in order to get this one piece of equipment that will allow them to start the business.
We are telling Canadian entrepreneurs that if they have a plan of action, if they can produce a product, if they can convince the institution that this is a good idea, the Government of Canada is going to back this loan to the tune of 90 per cent.
That is going to leave this new entrepreneur, the man, the woman and even the young person today who has these ideas thinking they just do not have enough to buy the equipment and still have some money left over for working capital. Anybody going into business knows they need to have working capital. This plan is going to allow that to happen. I am really excited about this because this is a group of people we have not even tapped. We have not even thought about them. That is an area that certainly has to be addressed.
I look at some of the changes that are a little more technical but they are basic to the whole program. Changing the loan limit from $100,000 to $250,000 is a major step forward for businesses, as is increasing the size of the eligible businesses up to $5 million. We can all recognize that businesses are still small businesses and can still be doing $4 million worth of business in their gross sales. It is very important to recognize that. I think it is something that the business community can recognize and understand. Obviously the banks will recognize that.
The other thing that is important, and it was mentioned a little earlier, is it is terrible putting the limit of the rate to 1.75 per cent over prime. It is too bad that hon. member was not in committee because if he had heard the banking institutions it might be different. That is not the critical factor. It is not the rate.
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We want to make sure that this entrepreneur can make this a success. We want to make sure that he or she has a product or the ability to do that.
That is not the key factor. It is important because the banks are owned by Canadians. They are not owned by some person sitting on Bay Street or sitting maybe in the Speaker's chair today. He does not own a bank. They are owned by Canadians. He probably has a lot of shares in a lot of banks, but he wants to see those banks successful.
We as Canadians want to see banks successful. If the banks are not successful we are going to have major problems throughout this country.
It is very important to recognize that we want the banks to be successful but not at the expense of small business and everybody else. That is the key point.
It was very interesting in committee to hear different bankers saying they really liked this program and that it was going to be interesting. All of a sudden there was one particular banker saying: "I think we can do a lot better than 1.75 per cent for most of our customers". There was another banker who said: "I can even do better than prime for a lot of our customers under this program".
There are a number of people who have to realize there is going to be major competition among the banks. It is not going to be a closed shop. It was mentioned earlier about the fear and trepidation of an individual going into a bank. We wonder what will happen when we walk into the bank.
Now small business people will have the ammunition. The facts will be available to them. They will be able to walk into the bank and tell them they have a plan. "I am going to be successful. I want to do something. I want to be an entrepreneur". We all have good days and bad days. Maybe the loans officer of one particular institution says he does not think someone is a very good risk and does not want to get involved. However that business person is now going to be able to walk across the street and maybe get a rate of 1.75 per cent, maybe 1.5 per cent, but that entrepreneur is not going to stop there. He or she is going to go to another lending institution and say: "Look, I am getting a loan under the Small Businesses Loans Program of x dollars because I have this program and I am going to go ahead with this. Can you beat that rate?"

February 26, 1993
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We will see major competition among the lending institutions because they are going to want to take part in this. They really want to take part in this. This is a good program. It is a win-win situation, if you like to look at it in that regard among the lending institutions and the business communities of the country. If they both win, the country is going to win. People in Canada are going to do much better as a result of all of this.
Earlier we talked about some of the changes the committee had recommended and the minister has responded by changing the six-month retroactivity. We can all think of businesses that are struggling right now. Perhaps they bought some capital equipment maybe two or three months ago. As long as it is within that six-months prior to April 1 when this comes into effect they are going to be able to use it. That is a major change. Before it was 90 days. It was going to be too tight. The committee members recognized that and the minister responded by making this change. I think this is a major plus.
There is also protection for the government. We are saying to business, we are saying to the banks that it is a two-way street. We are going to make sure that a cost recovery fee is put in there to make sure that the people of Canada are not on the hook for all of this. That is an important aspect to keep in mind.
We have had some discussions concerning the eligibility of some businesses in Canada. As I said when talking to some of the officials, and I think they understood where I was coming from, in my riding there are about
7,000	businesses. I would bet that under the proposed legislation 20 per cent of them would not have been eligible. It was suggested that the bill could be fixed up and they could be made eligible in the regulations.
That is fine but you and I know, Mr. Speaker, that there are not too many Canadians and fewer businesses that have ever read the regulations of any act, let alone proposed regulations in this bill and understand, particularly after the bill has said they are not eligible.
I am very pleased that we were able to make these changes and the officials were able to understand where we were coming from. Now all these businesses will be
eligible. A business that is active, that is manufacturing, maybe it is in the insurance business, maybe it is in the automotive business, and maybe it is in the real estate business, because those are very active businesses in my view.
We are not suggesting for a moment that a person could go out and purchase a piece of land under this program and hope it is going to go up in value. That is not an active business. That is not what we are suggesting. That individual has other ways of raising funds and it is certainly not to be going through the Small Businesses Loans Program. It is very critical that we recognize that.
It was mentioned earlier that there needs to be a commitment by the Government of Canada to promote this program. I agree. I could not agree more. I am not an expert in advertising and promotion but I know that by word of mouth, by communicating with chambers of commerce, boards of trade, we will get the message out.
I think quite frankly it is necessary for the Minister of Small Businesses and Tourism to work it into his budget, to advertise and promote this to businesses, but also to those individuals who might be thinking about starting a business. Those are just as critical if we look at this process.
I mentioned that to the minister earlier this morning before he unavoidably had to leave Ottawa. He agreed with me. He said that he will do everything in his power to promote this particular program. I believe that is the right way to go. I believe that if we can do this, if we can market it, many people will benefit directly and many more will benefit indirectly.
I think I have covered most of the bill. It is an important piece of legislation. I could probably go on for a lot longer, but it is Friday afternoon.
I do want to take the time to particularly thank the members of the committee, the witnesses who were very informative, very constructive and helped us quite a bit in making the changes and particularly to the staff of the minister's office who were able to accommodate the concerns we had by making the amendments and changes.
February 26, 1993


Rodney Edward Murphy: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on this bill. It is not often that the New Democratic Party supports a piece of government legislation. I must admit in the last eight years of this particular government it has been very seldom that we have actually supported a piece of its legislation.
I agree with a lot of the statements made by the two previous speakers. We really need to make sure that small businesses and those that are in small business know about this opportunity.
We do not want to see one of those fancy government ad programs where it is patting itself on the back saying: "We have done a wonderful job. Rah, rah for us". We want an informational campaign. It is hoped that whatever campaign is proposed by the minister ends up as an information campaign as opposed to one of those that might be considered a pre-election campaign, especially at this time.
I am very concerned there is no monitoring system to make sure that the banks are actually allowing their customers to use this program. We have heard many good words, many good intentions in this place and in the committees of the House of Commons. Quite often circumstances change, new opportunities develop and perhaps banks or other lending institutions, to be fair, may have other priorities.
We recognize that the government has gone quite far in insuring the risk for the banks. That should be enough to encourage them to promote small business in this country. However, I do have to disagree with one of the other statements made by the previous Conservative speaker. I do not believe that increasing the rate from 1.5 above prime, which was the government's original intention, to 1.75 per cent above prime is any indication of the banks' competitive spirit. It looks more like greed to me.
We heard the hon. member indicate that the banks say: "We can offer less than prime with this bill". If that is the case, why is the government amending the purpose of its own legislation through regulation? If it believes what the banks said in front of the committee that 1.5 per cent is probably not even necessary, that the banks will be offering loans to small businesses at a much lesser
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amount, then why is the government increasing the maximum?
I also do not believe it is the individuals with personal loans or small businesses in this country that have threatened the financial situation of our banks. Our banks had record profits after taxes year after year after year. It is only their own bad loans to very large institutions that have caused their financial plight as of late.
I think the previous speaker from the government side may have left a wrong impression. The problem is certainly not created by small businesses and individual borrowers. Most Canadians will pay back their loans. One problem that most small businesses have is getting the money in the first place. They have not been defaulters in great numbers, although I do recognize that with bankruptcies and all the rest of it there certainly have been some problems in that area.
This is a good measure which is supported by the three parties in the House today. The others are not here today, so I do not know what they think. We have said that we support the legislation. We hope it works. We hope the government monitors the situation. We hope the government advertises appropriately in this area and we hope it can report back to this House that there has been great success in this area.
When I was the regional and economic development critic for our caucus, it would upset me when I got the figures from DREE, the old Department of Regional Economic Expansion. When I looked at where the money from the government was going, it was going to large corporations. We asked: "How much are you getting when you give a large corporation $100,000 or $1 million?" The government would admit in the figures produced for me year after year that investment made by the government in small businesses was producing more employment. To be fair to the government, the Liberals were in power at that time. Using the government's own figures it was very difficult to understand why small and medium-sized businesses were not getting a larger share of government support through loans, grants or whatever.

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It seemed that the government of the day and its officials, many of whom are still here in top positions, had blinders on which made them say: "We have to have the megaprojects. We have to go to the big schemes. We have to give a lot of money out". Maybe it was for political purposes, I do not know. But there was no focus on developing small business.
In an earlier intervention today I said that we have all had people come to our constituency offices. Some of these individuals are in business or want to be in business. They are finding it very difficult to get loans and support from the banks.
This legislation is a challenge to our banking institutions. They obtained the amendments they wanted. They are getting the improvements, the higher profit that they wanted through regulations. They said they would go out and sell this program. It is the job of the House of Commons and especially the government to make sure that happens.
While I have the opportunity to speak about small businesses, I will be very brief because I know there are others who want to speak and I understand that there is an assurance that this legislation will pass this House by three o'clock today, so I am not going to abuse this opportunity.
During the last trip I made to my riding I talked to small business owners. I would say that the great majority of those people, by nature, are not supporters of the New Democratic Party, although a few have made donations to my campaign in the past. I was still facing a great outcry against the goods and services tax. We have had hard economic times in this country. I heard from tourist operators, small machine operators and people in retail business who said that the GST was killing their businesses. Those are their words, not mine.
It is time that the government stopped listening to the large concerns. We know that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association has always promoted the goods and services tax. We can understand why a number of the large corporations in this country, especially in some sectors, were very favourable to the goods and services tax.
However, from day one small businesses knew that the goods and services tax was going to hurt their businesses. They knew from day one it would be harder to attract tourists. They knew from day one it would encourage
people to cross our borders and shop in other countries. They knew from day one it would add to their administrative costs. They knew from day one it would make attracting Canadian customers into their institutions that much more difficult.
Now some would say that Canadians have to shop somewhere and most will shop at home and therefore most small businesses will not suffer. The reality is they are telling me that they are suffering. They are telling me it is time to get rid of this tax.
Since the government has done one good measure today, a measure we support, I can assure you that if it moved to get rid of the goods and services tax we would support it yet again.


Mr. Lyle Dean MacWilliam (Okanagan-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise and speak on Bill C-99, an act to amend the Small Businesses Loans Act.
As my colleague pointed out earlier it is one of those unique opportunities when we on the this side of the House have an opportunity to agree with and support legislation that this government has brought forward. This is certainly the case with respect to this particular piece of legislation. So I stand and give my enthusiastic support to see this legislation go through.
We have to recognize that our small business community is really the life-blood of our social communities throughout Canada. Small businesses are the major engines of growth in our economy. Eighty to ninety per cent of all new jobs created over the last decade have been created by our small business sector.
Over the past 10 years Canada's large corporations, many of them branch plants of U.S. companies, have fared very poorly in terms of job creation. The figures indicate they have not provided one iota of new jobs over the last 10 years. New jobs in Canada over this 10-year period have been created largely from our small business entrepreneurial sector.
Had it not been for our small business communities from Victoria to St. John's and their ability to create jobs and their ability to attempt to continue the stimulation of the economy, the job loss we have experienced as a result of the restructuring that has taken place with the free trade agreement would have been even greater than it has been. Much of the credit has to go to our small business communities in their demonstrated resilience and their ongoing ability to maintain job creation.

I am thinking back to a previous piece of legislation that passed through this House with the implementing legislation to allow the government investment in the Hibernia oil fields. I was quite upset at the time. I pointed out that the government had decided to spend millions of dollars to basically subsidize yet another energy megaproject.
I come from the province of British Columbia. A few years back in the old Bill Bennett administration hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers' money was spent in trying to develop the infrastructure for the export of north-east coal. That was another energy megaproject.
I said at the time with respect to north-east coal and also with respect to Hibernia that the number of jobs that can be created from such investment is really veiy limited. One has to spend over $1 million of capital investment in projects such as Hibernia and north-east coal to generate one long-term job.
If we take that $1 million of capital investment and, rather than apply it to the megaprojects that past governments have been so willing to endorse, put it into the small business sector we find that 40 to 50 times the number of jobs will be created: long-term jobs, lasting jobs, jobs that provide cash flow in our communities and tax revenues for the government. We find that 40 to 50 times the number of jobs can be created for every $1 million of capital investment in the small business community than can be created with capital investment in our energy megaprojects and our large business sector.
That is real bang for the buck. Getting back to the current legislation before us, I was very pleased to see the government has at least attempted to recognize the necessity to provide assistance for our small business communities so they can get on with the job of serving the public interest and creating jobs.
We all know that the 4,000 to 5,000 job loss directly or indirectly attributed to the free trade agreement has been very damaging to Canada's economy, particularly in the central region, in Ontario and Quebec. We need as much assistance as we can from our small business community to overcome the long-term damage brought about by the implementation of the FTA.
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The amendments in the legislation, the amendments to the Small Businesses Loans Act, provide a greater flexibility to encourage the Canadian banking system to assist the government in its task of creating economic incentives for small business development.
Our banks have been very reluctant. If we go into our communities and talk to people in the small business sector, we find out that they are extremely frustrated with their inability to obtain financial assistance either to start a company, to expand a company or to invest in a company for future growth opportunities. They are extremely frustrated with the hard-nosed, hard-headed, almost pigheaded attitude of established Canadian banks.
I am pleased the changes brought about by this legislation will hopefully encourage Canadian banking institutions to loosen the purse strings and provide the opportunity for small businesses to acquire the SEED capital needed to run their particular businesses.
I understand there has been a number of amendments made to the legislation. One amendment would increase the interest rate charge to about 1.7 per cent above prime and liability underwritten by the Crown would increase to 90 per cent from 85 per cent.
Those changes have been made to encourage Canada's banking system to be a little more forthcoming in providing the necessary loans for small businesses. I am very pleased to see them. The increase in the size of businesses eligible under this amended Small Businesses Loans Act will go from some $2 million to $5 million in annual gross revenues.
I understand as well that loan limit will more than double from $100,000 to $250,000. These changes are positive ones. They are changes that are necessary. They are changes that will allow more flexibility in helping our friends in the small business community to fulfil their obligations and their desires to contribute economically to the growth of our communities throughout Canada.
It is one of those unique opportunities when as a member of the opposition I have an opportunity to agree with this government and to support this government enthusiastically. Small business people throughout our larger cities and our smaller urban centres need and desire the assistance this amended legislation could provide.

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If I could summarize, we have to look very carefully at focusing what assistance this government can provide. We have to recognize that in future years we will have to provide the financial incentives necessary to generate the maximum amount of job creation that we can.
That is not coming from our large corporate sectors. Canada has seen a veritable haemorrhage of jobs from large corporate entities across Canada, jobs that have left Canada, have gone to other areas such as the United States and even Mexico, and are not coming back. This kind of restructuring is permanent.
In order to combat economic haemorrhaging we need to provide the assistance our small business communities require now and will require in the future so that we can hopefully re-energize the economy and create the jobs that have been lost over the past few years.
I am pleased this legislation has come forth and I am pleased to support it.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I take pleasure in having an opportunity to put a few remarks on the record concerning this legislation on small business.
I want to take a different tack. Small business is a very broad term. We tend to think in terms of small manufacturing organizations, retail outlets or service opportunities. One area of small business involves the fishers who participate in the Pacific fishing industry off the coast of British Columbia. These individuals view themselves as small business entrepreneurs. They are generally individuals who own a fishing vessel, who go out in pursuit of economic activity and who generally participate in the ebb and flow with the prevailing nature of the resource, the economy and the management plans of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The impact of the combination of the chartered banks and the Government of Canada on fishers or that small business sector on the coast of British Columbia is interesting. I want to talk about what the government has done to fishers in the Pacific fishing industry.
First, just over 20 years ago along came a fellow named Jack Davis, a Liberal minister of fisheries, who decided the way to resolve the problem of overfishing on the west coast was to put in place a licence limitation program. I
guess we can say that was the first government impact without any response to consultation. In this small business area many people actually advocated against the activity. The government forged ahead and imposed on these small business people a regime that was extremely harmful, contrary to the recommendations made by people in the industry and wise observers. This was the wrong approach. There was no consultation.
This licence limitation program created an enormous increase in fishing capacity. People went out, especially some companies involved in the fishing industry, and pulled every wreck off the beach in British Columbia and threw a fishing licence on it. They understood clearly how Jack Davis and the Liberal government had instantly created a source of enormous wealth. They pulled those wrecks off the beach, put licences on them and created an enormous increase in capacity. Some individuals became very creative in further increasing the capacity when they pyramided those licences and turned-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: I am sorry to interrupt but the hon. member for York-Simcoe has a point of order.


John Cole: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member is well-intentioned and is making some very valid points about the fisheries and fishing conditions on the west coast. I certainly appreciate his concern, but today we are debating Bill C-99 and his comments are totally irrelevant to the bill. I would ask that the member speak to the bill on the Order Paper.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: Knowing the member for North Island-Powell River, I am sure he will become relevant.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, one of the major problems is that the Conservatives do not in fact see the relevancy. There are thousands and thousands of people who view themselves in that industry as entrepreneurs dependent on the actions of government and the chartered banks which in combination have caused them harm over the years. If they listen they will begin to understand the correlation between the two items today. I thank the hon. member for presenting his point of view.
February 26, 1993

To continue the key point, people were able to pyramid these limited licences from gill-netters and trailers and create seiners. By pyramiding they created tremendous increases in overcapacity, further increases in overcapacity. The capacity to catch fish increased well beyond what the resource could ever tolerate.
The department responded correctly with its only weapon and reduced the fishing opportunity. The reduction in fishing opportunity set off a whole new range of capital expenditures. It forced these entrepreneurs, these small fishermen or fishers, to head to the banks under what the government had created, the fisheries improvement loan.
We should notice the small business protection procedures that are in place. In the beginning it was well-intentioned. It was to provide a source of guaranteed funds that the government would guarantee to the banks, if the fishers did not deliver on their payment program and they were able to increase the overcapitalization of those vessels.
In response, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans again reduced the fishing opportunity time. There was more and more limited time to fish in the face of the most efficient catching machine in the world in any industry, this enormous efficient capacity encouraged and fuelled by the management program, encouraged and fuelled by the licence limitation program, encouraged by the banks and a government that provided guaranteed loans.
All of a sudden it crashed. The resource in down-cycled years was not there. The fishing opportunity became even tighter. At the same time interest rates began to rise dramatically. People could not catch enough fish to make the payments on their boats. Then the cycle began of the banks seizing their vessels and people being driven out of the industry with a vengeance. There are all kinds of cases where the banks simply said: "We want to get rid of this loan. We do not care. It does not matter. We are worried about other aspects of the economy. We are going to yank your fish-boat anyway and put you out of business in order to get it off our books".
To give some credit to the Liberal government there was a policy that once the guaranteed loan had been dealt with, with the banks, that was it. They were not interested in taking their homes. They were not going after people who had co-signed the loans. They said:
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"Enough is enough. We have driven you out of the industry and that is it".
At one point there was a suggestion of putting a couple of hundred million dollars into a buy-back program to relieve these entrepreneurs, these fishermen; to get the capacity out of the industry so it simply did not move away from the bankrupt individual into the hands of another fisher who could be a dentist in Tbronto, the way the government set it up; and simply to keep the capacity in the industry. They thought they would just let it bankrupt its way out. They did not go after the homes or the family members who co-signed.
Then we come to the 1980s. The Liberal government decides it has a fiasco and it hires Peter Pearse who says that the way to deal with it is to turn around and manage the fishing industry like they did the forest industry in British Columbia, to turn the whole thing over to 10 big companies, to increase the ability of a small number of people to catch fish and when they deliver the fish to charge a royalty, to get rid of people within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who are no longer needed to police a small fleet, and to make the fishers pay for the landing and the landing inspection facilities. There is no need for enforcement.
Then we have the situation where these business people have been absolutely shafted by the banks and by the downturn in the economy, the increase in interest rates, the increase in fuel prices, and have been driven out. Along comes Pearse and says: "Let's drive them out even further". So we get a situation in which Pearse wants to model the fishing industry the same way as the B.C. forest industry so that there are a small number of extremely large fishing operators and the marginal ones are gotten rid of.
At that point in time that comes along. In come the Conservatives in 1984 and they say: "Oh, oh. We see quite a big pile of money that we would like to go back and recoup". They reversed the policy. The policy now was to go after those people who they guaranteed loans to the banks for. They hired a chartered accountant firm to go back and figure out how much money there was and how to put this in place. They then told the chartered banks: "You signed a clause in these agreements years ago to go back and shaft these people. We want you to go after the co-signers. We want you to go after their homes, their cars, and their assets, and clean them out even further".

February 26, 1993
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That is exactly what they have done. They have revisited these people who have gone through a horrible period of time. They had rebuilt their lives after this catastrophic event which was a combination of government policy, banking, and a misguided approach to things.
All of a sudden these people are visited again, and it is going on today. They are yanking away homes and forcing extreme payments out of people. It has to change. There is a group called the Fishing Redress Committee headed by an individual named Jack Larson on the coast of British Columbia who lost his vessel and virtually lost everything. He is representative of a large number of people to whom this government owes the removal of this harassment a decade later. It went back after assets that they had because of an obscure clause in this thing. It is really a vengeance that has been visited on these people and it should be removed.
The second issue is the whole question of the advisability of the Pearse program. It is continuing. Its objective is to create a small group of bigger and bigger businesses in the fishing industry. It is driving small businesses out. We have a situation in which the government from day one-when the Speaker was the minister of fisheries I remember him campaigning in the riding I represent and saying: "We don't accept Pearse's program. This is the wrong way to go".
Yet this government for nine years has followed it as if it were the Bible. It has wreaked tremendous hardship against people in the fishing industry and the coastal communities of British Columbia. This is a small business sector of entrepreneurs who have been shafted by the banks and this government's policy, and it is continuing.
We now find that the government has involved itself in another policy, the aboriginal fishing strategy. It is interesting. Small business people are involved in this. I know the member has sat in front of a three-day committee and listened to their concerns but there is no response to the concerns.
The minister stood up and said: "Well, what is the NDP point of view on this particular sector that involves fishers?" It is that the Supreme Court has laid down the aboriginal right to fish. You can fish by chaos or you can fish by an agreement. We support an agreement for these individuals in the aboriginal community and the agreement with-


Ross Belsher: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have listened with great interest to the hon. member and he has taken us all over creation with regard to the fisheries in B.C.
I do not understand the relevancy he brings to this bill at this time by talking about the current situation of the fishing industry in British Columbia. Would he please come to the point and speak to the bill that is in front of us.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: This is the second time the hon. member has been interrupted as far as debate is concerned. I wish the hon. member would deal with the small business part of the fishing industry.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the hon. member for Fraser Valley East does have trouble comprehending this issue. Short of sitting down and drawing him a picture I am doing the best that I can.
This is another government program that is really causing enormous hardship to that industry. The aboriginal fishery strategy is going to create allocations for aboriginal people. It is going to create opportunities for management in recognition of the years that there was a need for greater participation.
However, at the same time there needs to be protection and conservation of that resource, there needs to be decent and fair consultations with all stakeholders in the industry and there needs to be a fair buy-back program on the order of a couple of hundred million dollars, not a paltry $7 million, so that these people in the business of fishing who want to voluntarily leave the industry can hope to sell their boats. They were put in this situation by poor government policy and the banks.
February 26, 1993

We do not take objection to the need for responding to the aspirations of aboriginal people to fish and to have fair agreements but we do take profound exception to the failure to observe the basic requirements of conservation, consultation and compensation.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, February 25, consideration of the motion of Mr. Beatty that Bill C-109, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act and the Radiocommunication Act, be read the second time and referred to a legislative committee in the Departmental envelope.
Russell Gregoire MacLellan: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege today to be able to speak on Bill C-109 and reply to the Minister of Communications who delivered the speech on behalf of the Minister of Justice.
For the most part this bill includes some very good stipulations. I look upon this bill as really being in two parts. The bill deals with the police use of electronic surveillance methods and introduces protection of radiobased communications and cellular phone calls.
First, we are dealing with the electronic surveillance methods of the police, and second, we are dealing with the protection of radio-based communications.
With respect to the police use of electronic surveillance methods, there really is not much of a problem. There really is a need to make some changes in this regard to allow the police to be able to do their work. Some of the problems I have are in the area of radiobased communications.
However, it is our hope in the Liberal Party that the bill will get second reading so that it can go to a legislative committee. Then we can have the witnesses and the expertise before the committee that we need to really answer some of our concerns, and certainly some of the concerns that I have.
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I would first like to deal with the first aspect of the bill concerning electronic surveillance methods. This part was formulated in response to three Supreme Court decisions in 1990, the Wong case, the Duarte case and the Garifoli case, and the Wise decision in 1992. The Minister of Communications outlined these cases yesterday in his speech so I will not go into the details.
As a result of these decisions the police found that they were severely restricted in their use of electronic surveillance and have been urging government since that time to update legislation in such a way as to once again permit the use of traditional surveillance.
Bill C-109 does this in four main ways. First, it allows the police to use electronic surveillance where there is a potentially dangerous situation.
Second, it allows judges to authorize such surveillance with the consent of one of the parties involved in the surveillance.
Third, it allows judges to issue similar authorization in other circumstances where it is clear the request for authorization meets the tests prescribed in the charter.
Fourth, it streamlines the procedure in the Criminal Code for introducing evidence obtained by electronic surveillance.
Reinstatements, police and undercover agents use these electronic lifelines. Conversations are recorded and used from these lifelines only if the surveillance is for the protection of bodily harm.
There are limits that are placed upon the evidentiary use of such material. For instance, it cannot be used to prosecute other crimes. That is fairly straightforward and it makes a lot of sense.
I think the police are supportive of this legislation. They have been pressing for changes. They believe that electronic surveillance is vital for fighting organized crime and drug rings in particular, and there is a good deal of justification in what they are saying.
As well, authorized public agents and others who assist these police and undercover agents, for instance landlords who permit entry to a residence, would be afforded protection from civil and criminal liability. This is meant to prevent litigation chill from deterring law enforcement.

February 26, 1993
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Judges can also authorize use of video surveillance and tracking devices in circumstances where audio surveillance would be permitted. One could say that with these recommendations in this part of the bill better use will be made of the judge's time with respect to issuing authorization warrants and evidentiary rules. This is in response to what the Supreme Court called the "procedural quagmire" with respect to the above.
The definition of private communication is changed in two ways. Either the originator or the receiver would have to be in Canada and scrambled radio communications would also be covered.
I would like to state a couple of things that the minister said yesterday in his speech which I think are important. He said that the primary purpose of these amendments is to permit the use of technology by police forces in the performance of their duties, but only in a way that does not contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is very significant. I can support what the police want to achieve if I feel that the charter is being respected.
I do not think anyone in this country wants to frustrate the police in their duties. Goodness knows, they are having a difficult time as it is. We have to ensure that while we are giving the police the means to be able to do this we are not interfering with the rights of the Canadian public. I do not think we are. If we are I do not think we have to. We can counteract that. I want to repeat, that is my concern.
The minister feels that the amendments would have the effect of simplifying the rules of admissibility of evidence. They would also increase the effectiveness of both the police and the Crown prosecutors in accordance with the recommendations of the Supreme Court. We are talking about the resources police officers need to perform their duties satisfactorily. I do not think anyone could quarrel with that.
We need good testimony to reinforce that. I want eveiyone to know that we in the Liberal Party support the police in this area. I think it is very important that we work toward that.
I would like at this point to move on to what I consider the second part of the bill, about which I do have some concerns. This part would create an offence of intercepting maliciously or for gain communications over cellular
phones. The maximum penalty would be five years. It would also be an indictable offence to wilfully disclose the existence or contents of intercepted cellular phone calls without the consent of one of the parties to the call. A maximum sentence would be two years.
Under this bill it would also be an offence to divulge or make use of cellular phone calls, faxes and computer signals carried on certain frequency radio waves. It would be a summary offence with a maximum fine of $25,000 or one year for individuals and $75,000 for corporations.
Victims of divulged communications could sue the divulgers for unlimited damage. I think you can see where this is going. It is going into sort of a grey area, an area of concern. It is not that the idea of what the government may want to achieve is not laudatory, it is just very confusing and somewhat misled.
The bill tries to give radio communications similar protection as is now given to other private communications as required by recent technological advancements. These amendments recognize that radio waves can be used for more than voice transmission. They would eliminate the loophole in cases where intercepted communication is not a voice transmission.
There have been criticisms already of this part of the bill and I think with some justification. The Canadian Association of Journalists strongly opposes this because it believes the bill severely hinders freedom of expression. This particularly refers to sections which cover cellular phone conversations. They believe the government is trying to protect business interests of cellular phone companies that pay the government millions of dollars in licensing fees. I think that is an aspect which is worth considering.
These cellular phone companies are very prosperous and would have the money to lobby hard for such legislation. As people become more aware that conversations on cellular phones are happening via public radio waves, these companies may lose business.
It is to their advantage to protect the privacy of their customers. In that, the government is taking the ball and running in the direction pointed to by these companies. Politicians and governments are major users of cell telephones. You could say that perhaps it is a self-interest, that government and politicians simply want then-indiscretions to remain confidential. I think that would be a little simplistic.
February 26, 1993

The media will suffer from a bad case of "libel chill" if such legislation is passed. I think that is of concern to them and I can see why it would be. They would be sued if they used information gleaned from conversations which took place over cellular phones.
The Canadian Association of Journalists argues that cellular phones are not regular phones and should not be viewed as such. They are simply sophisticated CB radios. As the Minister of Communications said, the cellular phone is not a cellular phone at all, it is a radio. Every conversation is a radio broadcast transmitted on radio waves. Every conversation unless specially treated can be monitored by anyone with a scanning device.
He said this last December and essentially he reiterated in his speech yesterday. What happened between then and now? What happened when he made this statement? One can only speculate as to the arguments, to the considerations and so on that is now making him a champion of the privacy rights of the cellular phone users.
In the United States, if I may look to that country for a moment, the situation has been handled somewhat differently. In the United States scanners are illegal. In Canada there are far fewer scanners than there are cellular phones and cordless phones, which by the way are also susceptible to interception.
The Minister of Communications has decided that it is easier to stifle freedom of expression than to ban radio scanners, perhaps because the owners of radio scanners are individuals who do not wield the clout of large cellular phone corporations.
As I have stated, the Liberal Party will support this bill on second reading because we want the information and the dialogue that the legislative committee can give. We want it very much to have good competent witnesses to give this the closer examination that we feel this bill needs.
For my part, my criticism of the bill centres around the sections dealing with cellular phones. The bulk of the legislation does address electronic surveillance. Police have been asking for such legislation. The latter is important and must be dealt with in light of the recent Supreme Court rulings.
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The whole bill warrants close scrutiny. With respect to the cellular phones and the cordless phones, we have to examine this a little more at this time to bring forward more of the potential problems that can arise.
This bill will also allow victims to obtain injunctions and sue for unlimited damage in the civil courts. The bill not only prohibits disclosure of the contents of the cellular phone conversations to anyone under any circumstances, it also bans disclosure of the existence of those conversations even though it is perfectly legal to monitor unscrambled radio-based conversations.
While we can monitor radio-based conversations, the Minister of Communications is saying that cellular phones and cordless phones are in fact radio receivers. We are saying an orange is not an orange, an orange is an apple here. I have a little problem with that and I do not know how that is going to be projected legally in the courts.
I also feel that Bill C-109 would certainly protect the commercial interests of cellular phone companies that pay government millions of dollars every year for their licensing fees. I am also concerned that they are going to be shielded from the consequences of the indiscretions they commit on the airwaves and the lack of work that needs to be done if the right course of direction were taken.
We also have to look at a bench-mark here, and that is what we are trying to achieve with the restrictions on cellular phone conversations. First, we have to ask is this the right direction to take? Second, are we not asking a question here that the price is going to be far too high for what we want to achieve? I am concerned that we are doing just that, that we are really infringing on the rights of Canadians for the wrong reasons if there ever are right reasons for something like this.
It is very important to understand that there are one million cellular phone subscribers in Canada as well as several million cordless phones. They can be very easily monitored.
The Minister of Communications says it is unreasonable to ban the scanners. The Americans were able to do it. I do not agree with everything that the Americans do but I just do not see the unreasonableness of banning scanners.

February 26, 1993
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We are saying you cannot listen in on cellular phone conversations, use the information that you hear in those conversations, transpose it or relay it to somebody else who can use the information but we should not ban the scanners.
I do not agree. Please do not get me wrong. I do not condone eavesdropping, I do not condone the infringement of privacy. I do not condone the malicious utilization of private information for public or private gain, but I do think we have to move in the right direction. If we do not, then we are not correcting the problem, we are misleading the public. I think that would be a very sad thing to do and certainly something I do not think the government is intending.
Once again I would like to look at what the minister said. As reported at page 16492 of Hansard:
The second amendment included in Bill C-109 is close to my own heart and deals with the issue of cellular radios and personal privacy. Not long ago The Financial Post conducted an experiment listening to cellular conversations on an easily obtainable inexpensive scanner. In a brief period of time the Post intercepted calls made by stockbrokers, real estate agents, federal bureaucrats, police and others. The subjects varied from the mundane to the illegal, everything from what to serve for dinner to where to conduct a drug transaction.
He goes on to say in another situation:
During one two-hour session The Edmonton Journal heard one caller give his credit number over cellular, one woman give her address to a date, several intimate conversations and numerous business telephone calls. Another caller mentioned by name a man recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is possible the Journal reporter knew about this before his next of kin.
Then he goes on to say that privacy is disappearing and Canadians are worried about it. There is no question that privacy is disappearing. I want to know whether the provisions regarding cellular phones are going to change that.
I do not know how many newspapers the minister has contacted about their listening in on cellular phone conversations. I do not know if there has been a program to determine this or what. I, frankly, do not appreciate the government cavalierly discussing this with newspapers as if this is some kind of survey. I think it is much more serious than that.
Whether you make it illegal or not, there is nothing in this section that is going to stop the abuse. Sure, you can say to someone that they cannot listen to another person's phone conversation, that they cannot benefit from it, that they cannot pass it on to somebody else, but how in heaven's name are you going to prove it? If something is picked up on a cellular phone conversation and used, chances are you are never going to know that it was picked up and, if you do know, you are never going to know by whom. Chances are that the person who picks it up is not going to tell everybody that they have done it. The ones who will be punished are the ones who somehow are known through their conversations with other people that this has happened.
The problem is that it is not addressing the abuse. There are many ways to get away from it. It will be done day after day after day. Those who do it, maybe for a reason much more bona fide than most, may be caught and charged.
What we want here, surely to heavens, is to give Canadians the sense that their privacy is not being invaded and that this abuse is going to be corrected. It is not going to be corrected by giving them the false sense of security that their cellular phone conversations are going to be secure because they are not going to be secure, not by a long shot.
Most people in Canada are not technically sophisticated on the operation of a cellular phone. They do not realize that every phone call they make can be picked up by scanners, of which there are 900,000 in Canada. A lot of people are just interested in what other people say.
The reason we got away from the party line was because we did not want people listening in on our conversations. You did not know if your neighbour was telling people what he or she heard, but you knew that he or she did hear your conversations. It was an invasion of privacy. This is going to be much worse than a party line because everybody is going to be your neighbour, everybody, and you are not going to know it. Moreover, with the party line you could at least hear clicking at the other end so that you knew somebody was on the line. I know how to do it, yes. I have been on a party line, I have got this down pat. The point is that you at least had a little tip-off. But here there is no tip-off.
February 26, 1993

People are being led to believe that this legislation is going to protect them. It is almost a legislative entrapment to put this forward in its present state. I think we are going to have to really examine this and make some changes.
I want to quote what the minister said: "We found that the majority of Canadians feel they have less privacy today than they had a decade ago. There is a sense that personal privacy is under greater pressure today than used to be the case". I could not agree more.
He also said: "Briefly, the principles are as follows: Recognition: privacy is a right, respect it; informed choice: users must be aware of privacy implications and services they are offered. The truth is the cellular phone is not a telephone at all. Every conversation is a radio broadcast transmitted into the air on radio waves and is very public indeed". He is reiterating what he said at first reading, that these are not telephones, they are radios and we are utilizing the radio airwaves which are open to everyone.
It is a radio but it is not a radio because the government says it is not a radio. It is like saying February in Ottawa is summer and it is not cold. You cannot just by legislation make reasonable designations that are going to be helpful to the Canadian public. I think we have to look at the reality and that is this is not going to work.
The minister also said: "I have asked my department to work on a media campaign which will help to transmit our message". I have a problem here in that the message that the government wants to transmit is not the correct message. It is going to say that you are not allowed to listen to a person's conversation and if you do, you can be charged both criminally and in civil court for unlimited damages. If you pass it along to somebody else you can be charged civilly for unlimited damages.
That is not the point. The real message here is that cellular phone conversations are not safe and nothing in this bill is going to make them safe. That is what Canadians need to know.
If it wants to pass on other messages, fine, that can be an ancillary message, a footnote or a matter of opinion,
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but that is all it can be, a matter of opinion. We are not acting in the best interests of the Canadian public by spending millions of dollars to tell Canadians about their rights on cellular phone conversations which are not effective.
The minister then went on to say: "This brings me to the third critical element of our strategy which is prosecution. There is nothing particularly damaging about listening to someone else's conversations. However, when a third party uses that information or passes it to another party, irreparable damage can take place. Canadians need to have legislative tools to defend themselves against invasions of their privacy. Give them these tools. The Minister of Justice and I are proposing complementary amendments to the Criminal Code and the Radiocommunications Act. First of all these amendments will deem all encrypted radio based communications to be private and protected by the full strength of the law. Second, the proposed changes to the Criminal Code will prohibit malicious and profit-motivated interception of any radio-based telephone communication. Anyone who deliberately intercepts communications with the intention of harm or any other motive of securing a financial advantage should be subject to prosecution".
It is not satisfactory to tell people that they are going to be prosecuted for something that is not going to secure their rights in the first place. It is awfully difficult to tell somebody they violated a law when everybody else who wants to do it, or 90 per cent or 80 per cent of those who want to do it, are getting away with it. Because they blabbed, because they could not stand that no one knew that they had committed the first perfect crime and had to tell people, they are charged.
We may get some transgressors but we are not dealing with the problem. We have to ban the scanners. We have to garble the message somehow. You have to at least be able to know when someone is intercepting your call and you have to tell people that this means that communication is not safe, at least not yet.
This is a very unsettling portion of the legislation with which I have some problems.

February 26, 1993
Government Orders
We will accept it on second reading because we want it to go to a legislative committee. It is not a good fact basis for law. I hope the government will consider this even before the committee meets and give consideration to making changes. If not then certainly our priority in committee will be scrutinizing this very carefully.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I rise as justice critic for the New Democratic Party to speak on this bill.
My friend from Cape Breton-The Sydneys is correct in that the bill is divided into two parts. The first part deals with matters of wiretap and so on and concerns police officers and a few others.
The second part deals with cellular phones and the like. It worries me a bit that this bill, which is such an important bill on such an important issue that affects so many Canadians, is coming at the end of a dying Parliament.
We have to get at it for some reasons. It is mainly because the courts and the police require it. The Supreme Court has directed us to make amendments and the police require them to make life safer for them. At the same time we should not go too quickly because there are some rather immense issues involved.
Let me deal with the second part just briefly, the matter of the cellular phones. My colleague from the Okanagan, who is our communications critic, will deal with this in more detail but I could not help thinking of an occurrence when I was listening to the hon. member from Cape Breton.
Brian Smith, the former Attorney General of British Columbia, got caught using the cellular phone to talk to his girlfriend of the day. She happened to be a journalist at the time. He would have liked this bill. I was thinking about the two civil servants in Quebec who were caught criticizing their boss, Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec over the Charlottetown accord. They would have liked the bill as well.
I told the hon. member that when I was on the gun control committee, a member of the public called me and said: "I want to give you a tape". I was sent the tape. It had on it the private conversation of a Liberal member, not the hon. member who is in the House, from the committee with his assistant. They were basically bad mouthing me in my position.
I found it shocking, quite frankly. It was not so much that he bad mouthed me. That is part of the game and I
probably deserved it that day. What I found shocking was the fact that some unknown member of the public gave me this. I could get right into the private conversation of someone like that.
I did nothing with the tape. I got rid of it and forgot about it. I indirectly warned the member that he should be careful because what he says on a cellular phone can be picked up by others. That is what the hon. member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys was saying, that Canadians have to learn that these are radios. They are not really phones as we know them which are supposed to be private, even though they are wiretapped far too often.
I am particularly concerned about this. I read an article just a few minutes ago by Ms. Cristin Schmitz who is the Ottawa correspondent for The Lawyers Weekly and a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists. I am not sure which publication this comes from but I can let members see it. I think it is from The Hill Times. She says: "The Canadian Association of Journalists last week voted to oppose Bill C-109". She mentions this is a violation of freedom of expression. Here is the argument: "Bill C-109 will certainly protect the commercial interests of cellular phone companies who pay government millions of dollars every year for licensing fees", but will hurt people's freedom of expression, particularly the news media where there will be a chilling effect.
I quote: "We can anticipate future cases where reporters will receive highly newsworthy legally-intercepted information which they will only be able to print or broadcast if they are prepared to break the law".
The problem I see for the journalistic community, and I am one who has spoken loud and long for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, is that there have been a lot of abuses of intercepted cellular conversations.
In the Quebec case, that was in many ways an abuse. In the civil servants' case that was published, I think it was an abuse. Look at the conversations between Prince Charles and other people, Lady Di and other people and so on. There is a right to privacy. One of the problems that journalists are going to have to deal with is that they have in fact exploited for their own purposes, to sell newspapers and to make money or to broadcast and make money just like the cable companies make money. Have they gone over the line? Does freedom of expression run into people's violation of their rights to privacy? That is what we are going to have to look at in committee.
February 26, 1993

This is a serious matter and I anticipate some very lively debate. I hope that the Canadian Association of Journalists comes before the committee.
To summarize what the bill does in the second part, it is that the Criminal Code will be amended to enhance communications privacy over radio-based, that is cellular, telephones. In other words, it is going to treat the cellular phone like the regular telephone as a private communication. Second, it will prohibit the interception of radio-based telephone communications which are carried out maliciously or for gain. What is maliciously or for gain? They are pretty debatable words. They seem to be rather strange words to be put in legislation.
Third, it will prohibit the disclosure or other use of information obtained for the interception of communications between any remote unit primarily used for radiobased telephone communications and a base station. I gather that is the cordless phones and so on. It is indeed a problem. It is something that we will have to deal with.
I would like to deal now in some detail with the first part of the bill, which is the more difficult part. It seems less understandable to the average person. The second part is easier. It talks about cellular phones and people are instinctively interested because they know what is at stake.
This other one is important too. Let me try to put it in layman's language. Part one is responding to some court decisions. For example, the police hid a video camera to record illegal gambling in a hotel room. The court ruled that radio surveillance by agents of the state, that is by the police, without a judge's warrant or authorization violates section 8 of the Charter of Rights. The courts said that the police just could not do that. They needed to get a warrant in order to do it.
The bill permits electronic surveillance by the police where police and others are in potentially dangerous situations. It provides judges with the authority to authorize electronic surveillance where there is the consent of one of the participants and in other cases for serious crimes. It gives the power of the judiciary to issue a warrant in other circumstances where it is clearly indicated the request meets the test of the charter.
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It changes the Criminal Code in a manner that streamlines and rationalize procedures necessary to admit in court evidence obtained from electronic surveillance. The bill deals with some of these cases.
Here is another case where the court instructed us to act. The police followed a man suspected of multiple murders. For several months, with the aid of an electronic tracking device hidden in his car, the police said that they used the device to gather evidence. They could hear what was going on in the car, and tried to prevent another killing. That is very important because there is a serial killer on the loose. You have a suspect, you put an electronic bug in the car and you might be able in that way to stop another killing.
The courts said yes, you could do that, but you had to get a judge's authorization. If you did not, that is an unreasonable search. While the courts want to allow the police to use the video camera, the electronic bugging and so on, they want to make sure that the police just do not do these things every time or any time they feel like it or with anybody they feel like. They want some control. That is why the police have to get a judge's authorization. They have to show to the judge reasonable and probable grounds why they should be allowed to do that. That in our society is the right balance; to balance someone's right to not be unreasonably searched, not to be spied upon, to have privacy, versus the right of the state and the police to catch crooks, to do what they are supposed to do, to enforce the law.
That is the balance we are looking for and that is why I believe we have to pass these provisions of the bill. I want to hear in committee from the Canadian Bar Association, defence lawyers and people who have day-to-day experience in courts and in the streets with electronic bugging and with wire-tap evidence. I think we need that information before this House can fully agree to this bill. That is why today, or whenever we have the vote on second reading, my party will let the bill go through on division to the committee where we will consider it clause by clause and we will consider these issues.

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There is one other thing I want to mention. I do not have to refer to the individual cases, the Duarte case, the Wong case, the Garifoli case and so on. The hon. member for Cape Breton-The Sydneys did that. I want to put the rather unusual position, which was put very well in an article in the Globe and Mail on November 17, 1992, by Peter Moon who was writing about this issue.
He said: "Ottawa wrestles with changes to electronic surveillance law, amendments made necessary by recent court rulings". He pointed this out: "While the court has barred police and other agents of the state from using the techniques (the electronic surveillance and so on) there is apparently little to stop private investigators, journalists or anyone else, even criminals, from using them. These techniques include secretly recording a conversation where one person involved in the conversation gives permission, clandestine use of video cameras and installation of tracking devices to follow and locate vehicles".
He quotes a policeman as saying: "This is a curious world. We are really frustrated because people who are not police, ordinary people, can use these devices now whereas the police cannot". It seems to me there is something wrong with the law and that is why we have to address it. Either they all can use it, or better still as should be properly put into law, the devices can be used by certain people under certain standards to make sure that it is not abused. That is what the law attempts to do.
I want to flag a couple of matters in the provisions. The electronic surveillance amendments boil down to the following: one, they allow police and others in potentially dangerous situations to have their conversations secretly monitored. Who are the others? What are the potentially dangerous situations? What does that mean? How dangerous does it have to be? What is the nature of the potential? It raises a lot of questions which I hope we can address in committee. Two, allow judges to grant authority based on reasonable grounds for police and others to intercept communications with the consent of a participant in a conversation in order to gather evidence or information relevant to criminal activity. I should ask the hon. member for Regina West this. He and I are familiar with electronic devices used at leadership conventions. I thought maybe you would have him speak on this but I will not mention that. Perhaps the Tory leadership candidates should think twice before they are asked to put a microphone in their pocket. I will stay away from that. That gets a little naughty and self-incriminating.


An hon. member:: You can be a witness.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Yes, you can call me as a witness before the committee.
Again, what are others as defined here? What kind of consent needs to be given and what are the reasonable grounds? Is it like regular wire-tap evidence or is it different?

Three, allow judges and justices of the peace to grant authority for police and others to use video and other surveillance technology such as electronic tracking devices. Again, some similar questions arise.
What is surveillance technology? We might want to hear in the committee about the future of surveillance technology. If we are going to give the police this power, how much power will there be? Does it mean a police car can park outside your house and with new devices hear every conversation inside? We have to balance this.
I am not saying the police do not need some of this and I do not want the House to get me wrong. When I think of the new gang activity in my city of Vancouver and other big cities I think of the drug matters. I want the policeman who is going under cover to be protected, to have a lifeline back to his colleagues, the other policemen. We want to make sure that happens. We want to try and get a balance and we want it defined properly in this bill otherwise some smart lawyer will come to court and get it thrown out again.
The next one is to allow judges the authority to issue warrants and orders to engage in activities or obtain information or co-operation which would otherwise constitute an unreasonable search and seizure. Again, we get to the problem of some of the definitions. What is an unreasonable search and seizure?

February 26, 1993

Finally, to streamline the process applicable to evidence gathered through electronic surveillance. Streamline is a big word. Does streamline mean that you lose some of the procedures that you must have so you can get a judge, a judicial officer or justice of the peace to properly examine why they want a warrant? You do not want to make it impossible for the police to get a warrant. On the other hand, you do not want to set up a system that is easily abused.
It is not easy. We have had a lot of experience with wire-tapping, some good, some bad. I would like to hear from some of the lawyers and the police who have been involved in that.
We do not intend to delay this. I know there are other members who want to say something on this. I will conclude there. As I say, I hope the bill goes to committee, gets fairly speedy passage but is actually looked at it in some detail.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have studied this bill and I have done an analysis of the bill. I have listened to two speakers, the justice critic from the Official Opposition and the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, who is the justice critic for the New Democratic Party. They are two people who serve on the justice committee with me for whom I have a great respect. I know they have great respect within their own parties.
Both of them said that they would like to see this bill with some inadequacies moved on division into committee. Therefore I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to seek unanimous consent of the House to have this bill moved into committee.


Mr. Milliken:: Mr. Speaker, I recognize the hon. member's interest in the bill and I think there is a general disposition to pass it. On the other hand I think there are some members of the House who would like to debate the bill. Unfortunately the government leaves very little time for the opposition to have an opportunity to debate government bills. We usually get closure after an hour of two of debate. If there was a little more reasonableness in the amount of time that is allowed for members to do this we probably would have been through it. Unfortunately we have run out of time today. I would suggest we leave it and call the bill again the
Private Members' Business
week after next when we are back and I expect that after an hour or two of debate it will receive second reading and be referred to committee.
I am sure it is not planning to have the committee sit next week.


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, it is true there is general agreement in allowing the bill to proceed to committee.
I might remind the hon. member on the other side that the bill has essentially a twofold intent, and in that respect responsibilities in the bill are somewhat divided. Some of the areas of responsibility certainly come into the area of the Minister of Communications-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: We are going into the realm of debate now. I see there is no unanimous agreement. Therefore, it being three o'clock the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.



PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from February 17, consideration of the motion of Mr. Waddell:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of introducing legislation on the subject of euthanasia and, in particular, of ensuring that those assisting terminally-ill patients who wish to die not be subject to criminal liability.
Douglas Fee: Mr. Speaker, the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam is asking the government in his motion to consider the advisability of introducing euthanasia legislation, exempting from criminal liability those assisting terminally ill patients who wish to die. He is asking the government in the name of compassion to legalize murder. I want to add my name to those who think that our compassion would be better served by expanding palliative care and pain relief rather than endorsing the killing of people.

February 26, 1993
Private Members' Business
It seems to me there are two questions that must be asked in responding to this motion. The first is whether there is a need for legislation on euthanasia, and second what affect such legislation might have.
It will be recalled that a 1983 report by the former Law Reform Commission of Canada recommended against decriminalizing voluntary euthanasia and was in favour of continuing to treat it as a culpable homicide. The commission also recommended that the offence of counselling, aiding, or abetting suicide should not be removed from the Criminal Code or revised.
The commission maintained its view in the 1977 report and continued to approve the prosecution of mercy killing as murder but suggested that it should not constitute first degree murder. The term mercy killing has never been defined.
In the time that has elapsed since these reports, there have been a number of developments in relation to terminally-ill persons, chronically ill persons and persons who are unconscious and in what physicians call a persistent vegetative state.
Public consensus is continuing to develop regarding issues related to cessation of treatment but most assuredly no consensus has developed on issues involving euthanasia and aiding suicide. In fact there are strong indications that apart from the special case of the Netherlands, most western industrialized nations are not prepared to legalize practices which currently constitute crimes.
These practices continue to be condemned by the courts and opposed on moral grounds. The medical profession and other health care workers have said they want nothing to do with them. Why we are asking for something for medical practitioners that they do not want astounds me. Doctors I have discussed this with expressed a concern and a local doctor that I talked to told me that well-meaning legislators could very well complicate professional judgment and treatment.
The case of Nancy B. in Quebec is known to all of us, an incurable but not terminally-ill woman who had failed to respond to treatment and who wished to have the hospital disconnect the respirator which was keeping her alive. The court found that under the civil law of Quebec the patient had the right to refuse treatment and that this did not conflict with the provisions of the Criminal Code.
Other similar cases exist around the world. We should not confuse the issues. No one is required to accept medical heroics to maintain life. That principle has been decided. This motion goes beyond that and asks that we open the door to legalizing murder. This is not about turning off respirators. This is not about artificially resuscitating and reviving people. This is not about forcing life into unwilling bodies. This motion asks for permission to kill patients.
What happens if we allow it? Let us look at the American example, the well publicized Dr. Death. I think his name is Kevorkian. He claims to operate on the basis of compassion.
Just today there are media reports that he is being investigated and possibly being charged with murder. Apparently one of his patients changed his mind at the last minute and the well-meaning doctor proceeded with his procedure anyway and killed him. Is this what we want to open the door to? I think not.
I love life and I respect the right of all people to live. I also understand suffering, not my own, but I have sat at the bedside of people who were sick and suffering. I have had a desire to help and felt the frustration in not being able to do anything. We all have compassion. We know what it feels like. Most of us have had that same personal experience with suffering and death. We felt helpless and wanted to help.
Surveys have been done in the United States and Canada that show conclusively that people are sympathetic to the situation that people find themselves in when they are suffering from incurable or terminal illnesses. But when referendums were held in those same areas, which specifically allowed voters to decide whether they wished to decriminalize euthanasia and aiding suicide, the voters were always unwilling to take that step. They may have remained unpersuaded of the need for such action. They may also have been concerned about the effect that it could have.
Nor has a case been made for decriminalization. Court decisions have made it increasingly clear that generally approved medical practices, such as administering palliative care for pain relief, even when it may also have the effect of hastening the death of terminally ill patients, is not murder.
February 26, 1993

Removing a respirator at the request of a patient is seen by most as an accepted practice. Withdrawing drugs from a patient in a persistent vegetative state at the request of that patient's family has been recognized as an extension of the patient's own right to refuse treatment. In all of these situations, treatment has not been successful and all that remains is to make the patient as comfortable as possible or to grant the request of the patient or his or her family to cease any further attempt to treat.
Is there a need for action? In 1991 when this House was considering a private member's bill to amend the Criminal Code in respect of terminally ill persons, I had the emotionally draining experience to serve on the legislative committee that studied Bill C-204. Among the evidence we studied were medical witnesses who explained the importance of palliative care for the relief of pain. They rejected the argument that Canadians are faced with a choice between a quick good death and a slow painful one.
Palliative care to relieve pain is intended to relieve symptoms, not to sedate patients and hasten death. A physician with great experience in the provision of palliative care in appearing before the legislative committee expressed his concerns in these words and I quote from the testimony: "At the present time, this option of full palliative care is not available throughout Canada. Instead of our present obsession with euthanasia we should invest more resources so that the option of palliative care is freely accessible to all Canadians".
In other words, there is a need, but the need is not to legalize euthanasia or aiding suicide. The need is rather to consider how best to promote a palliative care strategy which includes widespread education, research and bedside services to relieve Canadians' fear of pain and dying.
There is training in medically accepted methods of palliative treatment to relieve pain, but the sad fact is that there are some physicians who are not aware of this training and the methods of fine-tuning symptom control. Until they are made aware, it is premature to consider the advisability of decriminalizing euthanasia. The danger is that where physicians decide to practise euthanasia or aid suicide, the patients may not be aware of the option of appropriate and effective palliative care.
Similarly, there is little incentive for health care systems to promote and support effective palliative care
Private Members' Business
where doctors are known to assist suicide or provide euthanasia service. There is a real danger that euthanasia will be regarded as a cheap substitute for palliative care. Those who would debate that last statement need only look at the recent Dutch experience.
There was another medical witness who appeared before our legislative committee in 1991. They compared the situation in the United Kingdom with the situation in the Netherlands. They used the following terms, and again I quote from the evidence presented to the legislative committee studying Bill C-204: "The United Kingdom has pioneered the development of hospices and palliative medicine and is known world-wide for the compassionate care and symptom relief its citizens are afforded. The Netherlands failed to develop hospice programs and as a result is known for its poor standards of palliative care and pain relief. In desperation it has turned to euthanasia as a cheap solution to suffering".
In conclusion, in Canada there has never been criminal responsibility where a palliative care treatment has had the effect of hastening death as long as that treatment is provided without negligence. There are alternatives society should look at before asking Parliament to legislate on euthanasia. We cannot let compassion overrule our moral values. Let us promote palliative care and pain relief. Let us not glorify murder.
I cannot support this motion and I hope no other members will either.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak in support of the motion of my colleague from Port Moody-Coquitlam. It reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of introducing legislation on the subject of euthanasia and, in particular, of ensuring that those assisting terminally-ill patients who wish to die not be subject to criminal liability.
With deference to the previous speaker from the government side, I wish to put on the record alternate points of view to the ones he expressed. He said the courts are against this. The courts are really neutral on the question of euthanasia. Their hands are tied by the legislation of this Parliament. They do not make judgments about the moral acceptability or unacceptability, as my colleague sees it, they simply read the law and interpret it the way it is written.

Private Members' Business
We are proposing with this legislation that the government put forward legislation that we can examine and debate and then go to the public and allow it to discuss this in a rational way with a model before it.
The speaker says the medical profession is against this. This is not correct. The medical profession approaches death as an enemy to be fought. The interesting dilemma I think is that the medical profession has continuously encroached in this area. They have in hospitals what they call nocodes, individuals who are designated by family members as having reached the situation in which they will not use heroic intervention and if the individual is not capable of sustaining themselves they are allowed to pass away in dignity.
The question of murder is interesting. I guess we are talking today about the Criminal Code providing a definition of culpable homicide in providing somebody an opportunity to die with dignity. What my colleague is getting at is that he would like to see that area of culpable homicide removed from the Criminal Code so that terminally-ill patients, suffering tremendously and wishing to end their lives, can be assisted in a reasonable and practical way to do so. That is an element of compassion. It is not a matter that the courts are against and that the medical profession is against.
If we decide that it is not murder then it is not murder. In fact it is compassion and dignity that is being requested here.
The most outrageous thing I have ever heard is the suggestion that euthanasia is an alternative to providing quality palliative care. This is an outrageous statement and it is absolutely not true.
I read in detail the presentation of the the head of the Elisabeth-Bruyere institution in town. I could be mistaken because it was presented a couple of months ago, but I read the testimony in detail. The individual has a perspective on euthanasia that is hostile and, at the same time, is tremendously concerned about providing palliative care.
The government on the other side of the House has created an interesting situation in health care where it
has limited the funds available to provinces. One of the things that has suffered is funding for palliative care. The individual when he appeared before that previous committee on euthanasia made a plea for increased sensitivity for palliative care. I make that plea now, my colleague makes that plea and every person in our party makes that plea. Let those funds go so that people do not have to die in pain and agony, so that they can make a choice of going to a palliative care unit where they get decent treatment and can end their last days in relative comfort and dignity.
That is the point the witness was making. The witness was personally opposed to euthanasia but was strongly speaking for palliative care. We strongly speak for that too. We need more resources in that area, but at the same time the door should not be closed on an individual who says: "I can no longer live in unbearable pain, with a lack of dignity and have no control over myself or my bodily functions. I wish to end my life and I wish to have medical assistance to do so".
It is interesting that we in the House can no longer use the murder argument no matter what our perspective is. This is not murder. These are individuals requesting assistance to terminate their lives. They are incapable of doing it safely and effectively. They ask for medical assistance and there is a willingness to provide that on the part of medical practitioners.
We wish to see more palliative care but we also wish to see options for those people who wish to have them. Of course the courts will carry out the law of this land. If this institution decides that it is not culpable homicide, the courts will read it that way too and people will not have to appear before the courts for assisting a terminally ill patient to die.
There certainly are standards. In the Netherlands it is an outrageous argument to make the statement that it passed this particular legislation because it was against providing palliative care. That is just unmitigated nonsense.
February 26, 1993

The Government of the Netherlands heard the message from its people. It passed into law a limited provision with plenty of safeguards so that there is no abuse to basically deal with the wishes of terminally ill patients. We have an obligation to do the same thing in this House.
If we let this motion go forward what will happen? We will not have euthanasia. We will move this debate one step further. I commend the hon. member for Fraser Valley West on the government side who put through the first private member's bill on this matter which produced a very positive debate on both sides. They were some of the best arguments I have heard for and against by witnesses who appeared before that committee.
It was an excellent presentation and argument on both sides. There is an obligation on the part of this House representing the people of Canada and those who are terminally ill, those suffering from AIDS or any of the other chronic afflictive illnesses that incapacitate people. We have a responsibility to bring forward and place before the people of Canada a proposal. Let it be limited but let it address the question.


Fernand Jourdenais: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion of the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam.
This motion raises a number of difficult issues which must be resolved before the question of whether legislation can be considered. One issue is how to determine that the patient is terminally ill. As we know from the media reports, many persons initially diagnosed as terminal have continued to live and contribute to society in a meaningful way for many years.
Objections to the consideration of such legislation bring immediately to mind that the diagnosis of terminal illness could in effect have the consequence of labelling a patient as qualifying for euthanasia.
In the Netherlands the courts have approved guidelines which, if met, provide a defence to criminals charged with euthanasia. There have been reports from that country that elderly people fear pressure from society and families to submit to what has become an increasingly prevalent practice.
Private Members' Business
In this countiy we have gone a long way to combat the labelling of the disabled as being somehow different from the rest of society. Are we to reverse this practice by making an exception in the case of the terminally ill? A related question is why terminally ill patients should be singled out in this regard when some chronically ill persons may in fact be experiencing greater pain.
Recent reports of the passage of legislative guidelines on euthanasia by the lower houses of Parliament of the Netherlands indicate that this is not proposed to limit euthanasia to terminally ill persons. In practice it has not been so limited.
For the information of hon. members, the Netherlands legislation, which must still be approved by the upper house, is available to those experiencing unacceptable suffering. This is defined as follows: the patient must experience his or her suffering as perpetual, unbearable and hopeless. Although these criteria will always contain an element of subjectivity, the physician must reasonably be able to conclude that the suffering being experienced is unbearable.
If through some such definition euthanasia is made available to chronically ill persons, the same labelling process will result and may cause this group of citizens to fear pressure from society and family not to remain a burden on scarce resources.
There is danger of even more subtle pressure from those responsible for allocating scarce health care resources who may consider that the availability of euthanasia for certain classes of patients excuses them from trying to make scarce dollars available to the medical services that care for these patients.
In other words, the allocation of health resources would reflect the value put on individual persons by society's approval of euthanasia. In such an atmosphere our democratic respect for the intrinsic worth of every individual would be breached and we would not find it so difficult in future to weigh money against life.
I believe that the medical profession as well as other health care workers would oppose the legalization of euthanasia. Indeed medical associations in the United States and in England have already recommended

Private Members' Business
against such a step. There are a number of reasons for their opposition.
In the first place it would effect the relationship between physician and patient because of the conflict that would exist between the common expectation that the doctor will advise what is best for the patient and the legal reality that some diagnoses will mark the patient as a possible candidate for euthanasia or assisted suicide.
A conflict of this nature could go a long way toward destroying the relationship of trust which the medical profession is attempting to preserve even in this era of more impersonal health care where fewer people have a family physician who has looked after them for many years.
A similar conflict would exist between patients and other health care workers. Nurses, for example, have in addition to their other responsibilities regarded themselves as advocates for the patients. If euthanasia was legal, they could be faced with situations whereby reporting their observations they would contribute to marking the patient as a possible candidate for euthanasia and to the resulting pressure on the patient to agree to euthanasia in order not to be a burden on the medical facility or on the family. This could lead to an undesirable conflict between the nurse's duty to the patient and his or her responsibility to carry out the instruction of the physician.
I am concerned that the decriminalization of euthanasia would result in undue pressure on patients to resort to this solution and that it would affect the relationship between the patient and health care professionals. I cannot support the motion from the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam for presenting this motion because it does allow us to at least debate the issue in this House. The intent of the motion is:
That the government should consider the advisability of introducing legislation on the subject of euthanasia and, in particular, of ensuring that those willing to assist terminally ill patients who wish to die not be subject to criminal liability.
I want to share with the House personal experiences with two different cases which could almost give both sides of this issue. One case is about a young man in his thirties who was walking home from a meeting with his friends. He was hit by a car, went flying into the air and crashed to the pavement. His head injuries were so severe that he was in a coma. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in my riding. The young man was
married and had two children, ages four and six. His wife and children would visit him every day, sometimes twice a day, in hospital. My wife and I also visited him because we knew him very well. As a matter of fact, he had worked in my first campaign.
Months went by and the man was still in a coma. One year went by and the man was still in a coma. Two years went by, the man was still in a coma. Four years and the man was fed intravenously. He looked quite healthy lying in his bed. It was quite heartbreaking to see the children bring cards they would make for their dad, saying: dad, please wake up, please come back to us.
After four years, this man finally passed away. How tough it was on this mother and the children to go through this for four years, disrupting the whole family. In that case you could argue that maybe it was better with modem medical advice to have disconnected the tubes after one year in a coma, or maybe after two years in a coma, because the doctors were quite sure that he would not come out of this coma. So it may have been a more humane thing to allow this gentleman to pass on in the first year and save a lot of grief and hardship for the family.
But then I have another case, a gentleman who was beaten up in the subway in Toronto about 20 years ago. He had brain injuries back then. But then about 10 years ago he had a heart attack and a stroke. He was rushed to Western Hospital in Toronto on Bathurst Street.
I found out about it through his family. So my wife and I went and paid him a visit and it reminded me of the first incident. Here was this gentleman, in a coma, hooked up with all sorts of tubes and being fed intravenously, and evidently just not hearing who was visiting him, who was talking to him. But we started talking to this gentleman and my wife started saying to him: "Takhur, Bhonjai is here". He called my wife Bhonjai, which in his language meant something like sister-in-law. My wife kept saying: "Takhur, Bhonjai is here, Bhonjai is here". And as he was lying on his side a tear rolled from his eyes.
We were there for about an hour and it was time to leave and the doctor happened to be by the desk as we were walking out and we asked him what his chances were of coming out of this coma. The doctor said: "No, there is no way that he will come out of this". But my wife and I said: "But his eye twitched when we spoke to him; surely he must be hearing what we were saying". The doctor said that no, it was just reflexes and he would not come out of it. We took the doctor's advice. We went home.
February 26, 1993

I will never forget what followed. It was in 1984. As we walked into the campaign headquarters to begin our 1984 campaign I thought I saw a ghost in front of me. Here was Takhur standing at the entrance, unshaven, skin and bones. This was three months after I had seen him in hospital, and I thought he was gone already. There he was standing, and the driving force was that he wanted to help me win the next campaign. He had such a will to live that he wanted to help me to win the next campaign. The medical doctor had said straight to my wife and I: "No, he will not come out of this".
Let us take the case where maybe this gentleman would have signed something that said: "Should this happen to me I want no assistance and I want a doctor to help me end my life without pain". That man would have been gone in 1984. He is still living today and quite active. He is not in the best of health but he is looking after himself. He cooks for himself and looks after all his needs.


An hon. member:: Is he still supporting you?


Jesse Philip Flis: Yes, he is still supporting me.
If we pass this legislation that could have been someone whose life would have been snuffed out in 1984, and yet he is living today. As a result of those two experiences I have to speak out strongly against any legislation that would assist taking someone's life.
I may be wrong or I may be right. However, after going through that kind of personal experience I am sorry but I must speak very strongly against this motion and any such legislation that would promote the enhancement of taking someone's life.
I have a third example. My own mother-in-law in Joliette, Quebec had a very severe stroke at 79 years of age and she was a vegetable. She could not speak, she could not move her limbs, et cetera. It would have been very easy had she said, as she did in her cultural ways: "Oh, it is time for me to go" before she had her stroke.
Private Members' Business
Well that woman, my mother-in-law, lived to be 89 years old. Again professional advice and her own will could have said: "I want to end it at age 79". She had a will to live. I remember when she was recovering and her hand was not working. She did not take any physiotherapy. She did her own physiotherapy. She kept slapping her hand. She would say: "You crazy hand, how come you are not working?" She got herself going to the point where she was walking. She saw more grandchildren grow up and she went on peacefully, but at 89 years of age not at 79 years of age. I am sure other members in this House have other examples of cases like this.
I thank the hon. member for introducing this motion because it does allow us to debate this calmly and intelligently in this House. I am getting a lot of direction from my constituents and I am sure other members are. I am sure this debate is going to come back to this House again. I hope it will because we do have to debate it seriously.


Robert Nesbitt Horner: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on the motion of the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam. I understand why the member has moved this motion. I understand his concerns about dying with dignity. I understand his concerns about alleviating suffering. I understand his concerns about quality of life, but I have a concern that maybe things are being rushed.
I am not clear what the member is trying to achieve with this motion. The way I understand it the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam is not asking the government to legislate on euthanasia but is asking the government to consider the advisability of introducing legislation on the subject of euthanasia. In a sense we may say that the member is not asking for too much. I am sure this debate will return to the House of Commons.
I would think that monitoring the criminal law is part of the responsibility of the Minister of Justice, and surely monitoring the criminal law means looking at areas in which the law needs to be changed. It means considering the advisability of introducing legislation in those areas which are in need of change.

Private Members' Business
In a sense the motion we are debating today is part of the ongoing duties of the Minister of Justice. I am confident that the Minister of Justice is fulfilling his responsibility.
I have chaired the justice committee for the past five years and I am confident from my experience with the Minister of Justice that he is monitoring the situation with regard to euthanasia, as he does with situations in other areas of the criminal law. I am confident that if he thinks it is necessary to consider legislating on euthanasia he will advise the government to do so.
So far I see nothing wrong with the motion of the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam but I wonder if the motion was meant to ask the government to act too hastily or too quickly. Are we rushing into things?
I have consulted with my constituents. It seems strange to me that we are debating this motion in the House of Commons on the afternoon when the news story this morning was that in Michigan there is a case involving an assisted suicide. The allegation is that the chap changed his mind and now there may be murder charges. I do not want to get concerned about that. It happened in Michigan. I am sure it will be dealt with there. However, I would be very worried to see the government act quickly in such an important area.
We are talking here of a life and death issue. It is worth taking plenty of time to know what we are doing. Before we do anything I would ask the government to look carefully at questions which are of particular concern to me and my constituents.
In his motion the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam is asking the government to consider the advisability of introducing euthanasia legislation to ensure that those assisting terminally-ill patients who wish to die not be subject to criminal liability. This raises the issue of how to determine that a patient is terminally ill.
We all know that sometimes a person who has been diagnosed as terminally ill continues to live against all odds for many years after such a diagnosis has been made, and we have heard of cases from other speakers. A person who would have committed an assisted suicide after hearing the news and becoming understandably depressed would in such a case have been deprived of meaningful years during which this person could have enjoyed his life to some extent and contributed to society.
If the rationale to assist the suicide of a terminally-ill patient is because that person is in pain, then what about the pain suffered by those who are chronically ill? In some cases, they may suffer as much pain as is suffered by the terminally ill. Should we allow them to receive assistance in committing suicide? I think not.
Should we make pain the criteria for assisted suicide? In that case, how do we define pain? What threshold of pain would qualify for assisted suicide? Is the threshold the same for everyone or is it adapted to the individual? Who would decide that a patient had reached the threshold?
There is another important issue that I am concerned about. If euthanasia is available to certain individuals will there be pressure on these individuals to commit suicide in order to be relieved from pain and to relieve their relatives from the burden they impose upon them, even if this burden consists only of making them a witness to their suffering? What about the danger of even more subtle pressure from those responsible for allocating scarce health resources? Would not the availability of euthanasia be an excuse for allocating these resources away from those who request euthanasia?
On such a life and death issue should we not take plenty of time to consult with those who deal with this issue as part of their daily activities? I am speaking of the medical profession. Are they not the ones to whom the patient will turn to get assistance in committing suicide? What if the medical profession and other health care workers are opposed to the legalization of euthanasia?
When the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam mentions in his motion "assistance to terminally-ill patients who wish to die" he raises the issue of consent.
What about children who are terminally ill and wish to die? When would they be considered old enough to consent to their own death? If they are too young who would consent for them? Should the consent be a written one? You would think it should be in a matter of this importance. What about the patient who is too weak to write or who is unable to write for reasons of physical disability? When should consent be given? If a patient has given advance instructions in what is called a living will should these instructions have legal effect after the patient has become unconscious? Or should we appoint a third party to give consent on behalf of the patient who is unconscious?
February 26, 1993

When the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam mentioned those assisting terminally ill patients who did he have in mind? Is it any individual? Is it a friend or relative of the patient? Or is it a member of the medical profession?
Whether protection against criminal liability for helping terminally ill patients to die should be limited to physicians or to other health care professionals is a fundamental issue that would have to be looked at before the government moves on euthanasia.
I believe there are a number of important and serious questions that will have to be answered before the government is in a position to decide on the advisability of introducing legislation on euthanasia.
I have a definite fear that we are moving too fast on this issue. We have to consult and we have to look at the issue very well before we come to any decisions. I believe this is the responsibility of the Minister of Justice and we should not rush into this.
I would caution on the desire to react emotionally to provide a hasty response in situations that we all agree are very sad. But that should not lead us to act without the wisdom appropriate to the issue.
For these reasons I believe that at this time we should not be moving on this motion and I will vote against the motion. I think it will return to the House. I think some day we will debate it on a government bill. However, at this time I will be working and voting against the bill.


John William Bosley: Mr. Speaker, I do not participate in a lot of debates any more unless something comes along that I regard personally as extraordinarily important. I want to speak to this today.
I want to congratulate the mover of the motion and the committee on motions that chose to make this a votable motion. I think it is an extraordinarily important item.
My friend the chairman of the justice committee has just spoken and indicated he would be voting against this motion. Let me be clear. I will be voting for this motion, perhaps not for the reasons that my long-time colleague,
Private Members' Business
the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park, has given in the stirring and moving stories of experiences he has had. I suppose we all can.
My wife if she were here would tell the story of her father and his palliative care experiences and how that made the end of his life a much more extraordinarily happy experience than it might otherwise have been. She probably would not be for this for many other reasons that others have spoken on.
I will never forget my mother's pleading to kill her when she was dying of cancer. I do not for a minute think I could ever have done it. However, when I was reading through the clippings on all of this I found the most stirring quote in an article that talked about the pros and cons of the matter before us in terms of primarily the notion of whether a doctor should be able to assist somebody who chooses to die.
One of the questions that was raised precisely in Euthanasia: The Doctors' Dilemma and struck such a chord with me was what if the doctor prescribes higher doses of morphine to kill pain even though a hastened death through respiratory failure is known to be a side effect.
I do not know if the doctor who prescribed the morphine for my mother prescribed such a dosage that it led to her dying sooner. If he did, bless him, because there was nothing being achieved in what she was going through, nothing whatsoever.
For a mother to turn to her son and ask him to put pillows on her face so she would die is something that no son or mother should go through. I listened to the testimony of Sue Rodriguez. Members may say that some day the justice minister will act or that Parliament should wait until the justice minister acts.
I do not think that is ever going to be reasonable to expect. If there was a thing that Parliament should do on its own as members, it is this kind of thing that it must discuss. We must find a way among ourselves to take this completely out of the partisan arena. I welcome the motion for that reason if for no other.

February 26, 1993
Private Members' Business
If we are going to deal with the issues of quality of life they are going to be the hardest issues we are ever going to deal with. They are the ones our people need us to deal with it seems to me. We are well past the issues of quantity of life. We are into the issues of what do you do for a population where we are going to see thousands more cases like my mother and Sue Rodriguez.
We know how to keep people living longer. We know how to make the quantity of life issues produce for us longer, healthier and hopefully happier lives. That means we have to begin to face quality of life questions. This is one of them.
I do not pretend for a minute that I want to be a doctor who would ever want to do what Jack Kevorkian is doing. I could not do it. I know I could not do it. In Dr. Kevorkian's case at least, with the greatest respect for him, if there is a case this morning where he has broken his word and gone back on it then that is awful.
I understood what he was trying to do was to say to people who needed the preparation of a solution that could be dripped through an intravenous tube by flipping a switch when you chose to do so. It is I presume assisting in suicide. It would be in the same way as if my colleague sitting beside me were incapable of getting a glass of water to take the pills he had to end his own life, which is legal. If I went and got that glass of water and put it there for him, would that be the aiding and abetting of a suicide? I suspect it would be.
Should that be a criminal act? Of course not. How can it possibly be imagined that it is reasonable to say to someone who dedicates his life to care giving that when the best care is to aid someone to get out of that misery that it cannot be done? Someone is in a situation which they want out of. You know they want out of it and there is nothing left in their hope. They have no hope left whatsoever and they choose to die. It is a horrible thing. Even if that glass of water created some peace on the way out, I do not know whether I could give it in that circumstance. I know whoever did would be doing a service, as terrible as that is to think.
I will never forget the day when I had to think through all these questions, ever. I suppose we all go through that in our families. We are going to go through it more and more.
Ms. Rodriguez' quotes are all here. We could read them into the record. There is a moving op-ed page she
did.	One of the other moving pieces was an article in The Ottawa Citizen quoting a book I had forgotten. It was called Man's Search for Meaning.
Victor Frankl wrote this book having survived the horrors of the Holocaust. He came out of it and talked about the experiences of all those he faced those things with. He said that if there is a purpose in life at all there must be a purpose in suffering and dying. No man can tell the other what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes.
It goes on, in effect, to say that one has to choose everything now. We have to choose the way we will live and ultimately we are going to be choosing the way we
die.	We recognized that a long time ago when we said that if someone took their life they did not commit a criminal act.
I think the hon. member's motion is about the notion that if somebody assists someone to do something that he or she chooses to do then should that person be criminally liable, as horrible as in some ways people find that? I have had that experience and entirely accept the reaction the member for Parkdale-High Park had in terms of when there is uncertainty about the consequences. I do not debate one moment the notion of whether somebody should end a coma. I do not think that is the issue here and I do not think it is the issue the hon. member is referring to in his motion.
The motion is about when somebody has clearly defined for themselves the course of action. I accept all the questions that the chairman of the justice committee asked and it is entirely appropriate that he should ask them. However, I wish that the justice committee, when confronted with Ms. Rodriguez, had taken on the case and asked the questions there so that it could have defined something that would have allowed us to move as a Parliament, rather than simply pushing it back out and leaving us with only this way of getting the matter to the floor of the House. That is a shame.
I congratulate the member. As emotional as this issue will be for all of us it is the kind of issue we must deal with. I hope we will get on with dealing with those issues because only we can. It must not be left entirely to governments and oppositions. It will not get dealt with that way.
February 26, 1993

Private Members' Business


Lyle Dean MacWilliam: Mr. Speaker, it is a sombre moment to stand and congratulate my good friend, the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, on having the conviction and the courage to bring an extremely important motion before this House. That motion says that:
The government should consider the advisability of introducing legislation on the subject of euthanasia and, in particular, of ensuring that those assisting terminally-ill patients who wish to die not be subject to criminal liability.
This issue has been around a long time and it will continue to be. It is the responsibility of this government and of this Chamber, if we have the courage of our convictions, to approach this issue and debate this issue in its fullest context.
Euthanasia is not about murder. Euthanasia is about compassion, about an understanding of the needs of those who are terminally ill to face death with dignity. It is about an understanding of the trials in making that transference from life to eternity and an understanding that in many cases those individuals who are facing the end of their lives are doing so in great pain and great suffering.
Euthanasia is an act of humanitarianism. We have to realize that there are times when individuals with terminal cancer or other serious chronic diseases have prepared themselves for death. They have made their minds up that life is no longer worth living. There is the situation out in Victoria concerning Sue Rodriguez, who is rapidly losing her ability to make that decision for herself. It is not an easy decision to make by any means and those who have made that decision have great courage in reaching that point in their passage.
I am sure all of us have faced, either directly or indirectly through our families, similar occurrences. I faced that situation with my mom and dad. It was a difficult situation to see my mom, for many months knowing she was dying with Alzheimer's disease and knowing that as she was slipping into that terrible disease that she was losing her ability to make those decisions for herself. She was losing her ability to control herself and to control situations around her.
I remember her telling me before things got too bad that she hoped she would be able to face that time when she knew it was time to go. She knew that she had prepared for that. She hoped that the situation would not be such that she would be unable to face that choice and unable to control her future. But as we all know, in Alzheimer's disease, with the progression of that disease, it takes away the ability of the person to truly understand and to control the situations around them. Before she got too bad she said that she was ready to go and she only hoped that it would not be too long.
It was a long, long time. It was a very painful time for us to have to watch a person whom we loved very dearly slip away. What made it worse, and I guess it is why it takes me so personally, is that at the same time as my mom was facing that situation, my father was facing the spread of prostate cancer that had gone to the bone and had metastasized through the body. He was in great pain himself and he had the difficulty of being the caregiver for my mom. How much more difficult it was for him, facing his trial, knowing he was responsible for his loved one and seeing her slip away before him.
The most painful thing that I saw as the son after my mom had passed away and my dad was becoming very ill, was to see him, the proud individual that he was, lose the dignity that he had, and how it hurt him to lose that dignity and to understand that he had lost complete control over his own facilities, over his own bodily functions, and how terribly frustrated and embarrassed he was to have to come to that end. As he lay on his bed in his last days I could do nothing as a son except try to comfort him in his last very painful hours.
He did not ask me, as my hon. colleague from across had indicated the difficult choice that he had made. I did not face that choice of having to have my parents say: "I want to die and I want you to help me". I do not know what I would have done had that happened. All I can say is in having experienced that situation directly, that there are situations in our lives when individuals face that choice and want to make that choice, they have the courage of making that choice, because they want to have the chance of dying with dignity, of controlling their lives to the end.

February 26, 1993
Private Members' Business
I think it is reprehensible that we as a community, as a society, would deny that choice to our loved ones. So I am very pleased that my friend, the member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, has raised this issue. It touches my heart very deeply, as you can judge from my voice, but it is an issue that we have to face. It is an issue that will not go away. I only hope that we as a parliamentary Chamber, despite our political differences, can face this difficult issue with the courage and the dignity that it deserves.


Mr. Michel Champagne (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Forestry):: Mr. Speaker, I see that time is
nearly up in such an important debate, and you will know that-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: It being four o'clock, the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the order is dropped to the bottom of the list of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.
It being four o'clock, this House stands adjourned until Monday, March 8, 1993, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 4 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, March 8,1993