1993-03-23

Mr. Speaker:: Last week, we heard the hon. member for Beauce comment on a newspaper article about the Acting Speaker. After a number of discussions, I think it may be appropriate to hear what the hon. member for Rosemont has to say.


Mr. Benoit Tremblay (Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Beauce quoted a sentence that was reported in a newspaper obviously out of context.
What people should realize is that we had a big meeting of militant members of the Bloc Quebecois in the riding of Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans, attended by nearly 1,500 people. These people know their member very well, especially since they were largely responsible for electing him in 1984 and 1988. They remember his doubts when he was about to join the Bloc Quebecois when he was in his riding in 19% and 1991, and then went back to the Conservatives in Ottawa.
What I said in addition to what was reported in the press is that by accepting his appointment as one of the Deputy Chairmen of the House, the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans had put himself in a position where he had to apply rules that did not recognize the Bloc Quebecois, with the approval of the traditional political parties here in this House. Of course I realize, and that is why I used the word instrument, that the Speaker cannot overrule a decision by members and party leaders who applied the letter rather than the intent of the Standing Orders, because everyone knows
perfectly well there are precedents that would amply justify recognizing the Bloc Quebecois as a political party.
It is quite simple. The hon. member for Beauport- Montmorency-Orleans had a choice. He made his choice and, as a result of that decision, he is now in a position to apply rules set by all or by almost all political parties in this House, by what we call the traditional parties.
I used the word collusion. Perhaps I should have said coalition, since collusion connotes an element of secrecy.
I may add that the committee's meetings were secret and that we were never able to explain our position. We were never able to discuss it. The Standing Orders were applied. In fact they were used as an excuse and there was never an open debate. I think it would be more accurate to refer to a coalition of the traditional parties in the House instead of collusion.
The crux of the matter remains the same, and the people of Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans realize that. The fact is that for the past two years we have had a situation where many members told their constituents they were very close to the Bloc Quebecois, and now when conventions are being held to elect candidates for the next election people should know where they stand. I think the residents of Beauport-Montmorency- Orleans will know exactly where they stand in the next election.


Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I may comment briefly on this point of order. Personally, and I am sure I also speak for most if not all parliamentarians in this House, I think that when presiding over the proceedings of this House the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency- Orleans is absolutely fair and impartial. If people say the hon. member takes political sides in his own riding, well I certainly hope so. After all, he was elected as a member of a political party. But to say that his role in the Chair makes him party to some kind of collusion or coalition is unfair because it reflects on the Speakership as a whole.

March 23, 1993
Speaker's Ruling
Mr. Speaker, you have said many times that the Speaker is the servant of the House, not its leader. You yourself, Mr. Speaker, are a servant of the House and your colleagues as well, including the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans. I think he is strictly impartial in the performance of his duties and, as I see it, this criticism is entirely unfair. He is no one's instrument. He is, as you are, Mr. Speaker, a servant of this House, and that is as it should be.


Mr. Gilles Bernier (Beauce):: Mr. Speaker, after listening to the hon. member for Rosemont going on at length about how he was misinterpreted or quoted out of context I still believe the journalists at the Beauport-Ex-press in Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans accurately reported what was said that evening.
There was talk of collusion. It was said that the rights of Bloc Quebecois members were violated in this House. I think the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency- Orleans is doing a magnificent job in this House as one of its Deputy Chairmen. With unruffled calm and an abiding concern for fairness and justice he has always given everyone his due here in the House.
Since the hon. member for Rosemont is apparently unwilling to admit that he went too far-although it would have been so easy for him do so this morning-I wish to move, seconded by the hon. member for Terrebonne:
That the matter of the comments made by Mr. Tremblay, member for Rosemont, with regard to Mr. DeBlois, member for Beauport - Montmorency-Orleans and Assistant Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole, as reported in the March 14, 1993 edition of the newspaper Beauport-Express, be referred to the Standing Committee on House Management.
I move this motion, Mr. Speaker, subject to the Chair's ruling.



SPEAKER'S RULING

Mr. Speaker:: This is, of course, a rather difficult situation, not only for the Speaker and the hon. member, but also for the House.
I listened carefully to what was said by the hon. member for Rosemont. He may have given some explanation of the circumstances in which he made the
comments that were quoted in the newspaper in question.
However, I have some difficulty with the facts, because clearly if we consider only what was quoted in the newspaper those words are in my opinion unacceptable to this House. If we consider the words that were reported we clearly have a prima facie case that affects the dignity of this House and our colleague, because our colleague is an officer of this House. As the hon. member for Glengany-Prescott-Russell said earlier, like the Speaker he is an officer of this House and an attack against the integrity of a person in that position is an attack against this House.
As I said before, I listened to the comments of the hon. member for Rosemont, and I assume the crux of the problem is the position of the Bloc in this House. I realize that there have been ongoing complaints by some members of the Bloc Quebecois about its status as a party in this House.
However, all members, and the public as well, must realize the decision on the status of members of the Bloc Quebecois was not made by the Speaker or by our colleague.
If the hon. member for Rosemont would accept this distinction and perhaps be willing to withdraw this morning the comments he made with reference to the Speaker-and as the Speaker of this House I am his Speaker as well-we would accept that.
However, in the circumstances, I think that for the sake of relations between Bloc Quebecois members and the other members of this House it would be entirely appropriate to withdraw altogether the comments reported in the newspaper.
If there is a withdrawal, it would be preferable to make it here. I therefore suggest that the hon. member for Rosemont consider the Chair's comments and perhaps, on reflection, he might wish to withdraw entirely the comments that were quoted in the newspaper.


M. Tremblay (Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether we have a language problem, but I think I made it quite clear that I understood the Speaker did not, and cannot, for that matter, make the rules that denied the Bloc Quebecois recognition as a political party. I made that quite clear.
March 23, 1993

I also said that by accepting the appointment the hon. member was bound to apply rules made by others. If that is interpreted as inferring that decisions made by the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orleans were not impartial, that certainly is not what I meant. I meant that by accepting this appointment, he put himself in a position where he had to apply rules against the recognition of the Bloc Quebecois, which are not his to change.
As the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell said earlier, he has become a servant of the members of this House. Instead of using the word servant, I used the words un instrument. I do not want that to be interpreted as being partial. When he makes decisions in the House, he cannot do otherwise but apply the non-recognition rule.
My point was that he had the choice to either accept or refuse this position. It is quite clear that he is a servant of the House. I referred to un instrument and I am quite prepared to withdraw the word collusion, if you prefer, and to talk about a coalition, which is common knowledge.
It seems to me my interpretation is quite clear, and people know, as the hon. member for Glengarry-Pres-cott-Russell said earlier, that the Speaker is a servant of the House.


Mr. Speaker:: First of all, I want to thank the hon. member for his comments and his explanation, but there still is a problem. Although the hon. member for Rosemont has put forward certain arguments which are not altogether impossible to understand, especially in politics, I still think we are faced with a difficult situation for the House.

Consequently, having found there is a prima facie case I am going to put the motion of the hon. member for Beauce to the House. Then it will be for the committee and the House to decide. The hon. member for Rosemont will of course have a chance to discuss the matter with his colleagues in the House and in the committee.
It may well be that out of that discussion may come something useful in terms of the general amity of
Routine Proceedings
members among themselves. I do think it is a matter for the House to decide.
The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is there agreement?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Benoît Tremblay: Mr. Speaker, you said that you had some difficulty. I am trying to understand what that difficulty is because I think I clearly explained that what I said was not a reflection on the decisions of the Speaker. I explained that I would substitute the word coalition, a decision by all the members of this House, for the word collusion. I am trying to understand your reasons for this decision, Mr. Speaker, and I must say, quite honestly, that I am somewhat at a loss.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Rosemont will understand it is not appropriate for the Chair to give an explanation after making its decision. However, I suggested he withdraw his remarks as reported in the newspaper. The hon. member may not agree with the Chair's suggestion, but lacking a specific statement by the hon. member in which he withdraws his words I believe it is appropriate to give the House and the committee an opportunity to consider this matter. The hon. member has every right to state his case, and he will have ample opportunity to do so in committee. After this brief explanation I think the case is closed. Once the committee has tabled its report the House may have a chance to consider the matter again. However, for the time being the case is closed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]


Mr. Lee Clark (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to several petitions.

Government Orders
[.Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]
March 23, 1993



TRANSPORT


Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Transport dealing with Bill S-8, the Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk)
Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: Mr. Speaker, Question No. 462 will be answered today.


Mr. Dingwall: With respect to the Canada Post Corporation, (a) how many hectares of undeveloped land does it own (b) how many hectares of developed vacant land does it own (c) what is the total market value of the land?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in House of Commons):: (a) Canada Post Corporation does not own undeveloped land.
(b)	The corporation owns approximately 18 hectares of developed vacant land in 27 locations. Some of those properties are listed for disposal.
(c)	The market value of the land is considered as proprietary information and is not released by Canada Post Corporation.


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


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Otto Jelinek (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, I move, pursuant to Standing Order 78(3):
That, in relation to Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of report stage and one sitting day to the consideration of the third reading stage of the bill; and
That, fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for government orders on the day allotted to the report stage consideration and on the day allotted to the third reading stage consideration of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required, for the purpose of this order and, in turn, every question necessary to dispose of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.


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


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Call in the members.


PAIRED MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Allmand	Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)	Duplessis
Hockin	Jacques
Kaplan	Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: I declare the motion carried.


MEASURE TO ENACT
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, March 19, consideration of Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, as reported (without amendment) from a legislative committee; and Motions Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14.
Mr. Ron Fisher (Saskatoon-Dundurn):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, the member for Timmins-Chapleau, for the amendments he has introduced to the unemployment insurance section of Bill C-113.

March 23, 1993
Government Orders
The legislation is so terrible that nothing can really make it palatable, but if we can in some small way lessen some of the effects of the bill, that at least is a worth-while exercise.
I understand that government members are being inflexible in their approach to the amendments, but I hope they will take a serious look at them and will actually choose to support some of the improvements to the impacts the bill will have.
There are a number of amendments dealing with clause 18 of the bill. This clause increases the grounds for just cause. The first paragraph of the bill suggests that just cause exists where the claimant has no reasonable alternative to leaving employment. Motion No. 7 would replace that phrase so the just cause for leaving employment exists where any of the following circumstances applied to the claimant.
The reasonable alternative is out, that the government provides for itself. In the "but book", the book of draft directives issued by the director of benefit entitlements, every legitimate reason for quitting a job also has a number of buts applied to it. You can quit your job to look after a child, but only if you first ask a trusted relative or if you have asked for a change of hours, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Even the new briefing book listing reasonable alternatives to go with every just cause provided the commission with a means of rejecting claimants, even though they have given just cause reasons for quitting.
Motion No. 8 adds reasons for just cause, bringing the total to 40. The Conservatives like to tell us that jurisprudence actually gives us 40 reasons that provide just cause. They speak of these 40 reasons in tones of reassurance. Why should we worry about people being unfairly penalized when there are all these reasons they can use to get benefits.
We have basically included all 40 to call their bluff. We notice the parliamentary secretary for finance said on Friday that he recognizes this as an attempt to expand the definition of just cause, but he calls the motion unnecessary because the 13 reasons listed already cover the vast majority of additional reasons proposed by the member. That is what he says.
In other words, the 40 reasons with which the government has attempted to reassure Canadians do not really have any weight at all. Most are variations of the original five already in the UI act.
It is true there is some minimal advantage in increasing the list to 40, just as there is some minimal advantage in increasing the list to 14. They may be a little stronger for being there but they should not be looked at in a simplistic manner. It cannot be said that because the reason is on the list one gets the benefits.
We have case after case which demonstrates how people listed these reasons and still lost the benefits. There are inconsistencies now in the application of the just cause penalties at the level of the agent, the appeal board or the umpire. It is the umpire level which establishes the new jurisprudence. In the future people will lose all their benefits because of some factor buried in the existing law which basically says a good reason is not good enough.
The last reason in our amendment does not include "as prescribed" which appeared in the bill. As prescribed pertains to jurisprudence and commission regulations. If these two words go into the new legislation, a truly just cause will not be considered if it is not contained in the jurisprudence and commission regulations. It limits any future additions to jurisprudence.
Motion No. 9 places the onus of proof with the commission and establishes that benefit of doubt beyond any reasonable doubt shall go to the claimant. In spite of the commission's continual assurance that the benefit of doubt will be given to the claimant, there is nothing in the act that says this. There is also nothing to reverse the onus of proof to the commission. Under the present practice the claimants must prove they had just cause rather than the commission proving they did not.
Motion No. 10 clarifies that a common law spouse is a spouse under the act. That should not be necessary as one would think that common law relationships are now fully recognized. However, we can show an umpire's decision which states that if Parliament in its wisdom had wanted to include-and I believe it should be included that it would be just cause to quit one's job to follow a common law spouse-Parliament would have stated so in the statute.
The parliamentary secretary smugly suggested this amendment was not necessary because UIC guidelines now include common law spouses. I remind him in the presence of legislation it is jurisprudence that establishes the rules. Because of this umpire's decision the policy should become stricter. Here is our opportunity to include it if members of the other side of the House will only support this motion.
March 23, 1993

Clause 20 of the bill amends section 30.1 of the UI act so that claimants disqualified on the basis of section 28 will lose all their benefits. Section 28 claimants are those who are fired for misconduct or who quit without just cause. These same claimants lose seven to twelve weeks of benefits and their benefits after that are reduced to 50 per cent.
Our position is that this penalty is severe enough. With that kind of penalty very few people would quit a job just for the fun of it, particularly in an economy where they risk getting no job again.
The minister likes to ask if anyone who quits a job without good reason should get UI. I would like to ask the minister: Does he believe workers who had good reasons for quitting their jobs should still lose all their benefits? Under this law that is exactly what is going to happen. No one really deserves to lose all benefits. The worst part of this legislation is that many of these people will be innocent victims; people who will not be able to prove their case. We all know that under this system you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
We are calling Motion No. 13 the Quebec amendment. As suggested by some Conservative members from Quebec, the bill as it stands now is too inhumane. We therefore suggest a three-step process. The first time a person is fired is the first event. The claimant remains under the current legislation of seven to twelve week exclusions. If there is a second event a person gets the maximum 12 week exclusion. Only if there is a third event will the claimant suffer a total loss of benefits. Motion No. 11 is included as cross-referencing for the purpose of the Quebec amendment. These corrections would have to be made to make Motion No. 13 apply.
This is the essence of the amendment the Quebec Tories who protested Bill C-105 wanted to see. We are putting it in for them. Allowing workers three chances obviously is more humane. While we in no way agree that it would make the bill acceptable, as with any of the amendments it is obviously better that total loss of benefits should not be the penalty until someone has quit or been fired on three successive occasions.
Government Orders
Under clause 20(4), once a person is disqualified none of the insurable weeks of employment prior to the event can be used to requalify for a later claim. I am running out of time but I would like to point out that with respect to time which has been earned previously and has not been used up in no way under any circumstances should the person be disqualified from using it. This is simply overkill. It is using a shotgun to kill flies and there are many other analogies one could make.
I hope that the minister and the government members will consider their opposition to these amendments as I believe they make vital corrections. The impact of this bill will be incredibly severe. Surely the government cannot object to some amendments which will soften it.


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to take part in this debate at report stage. I have one or two points I want to make. I know a lot has been said on both sides of the House and I know that members on this side have for the past several weeks condemned Bill C-113, particularly as it relates to unemployment insurance.
I have been involved in UI debates for many years and if there is one area of law making that increases the intensity of debate around here, it is amendments from time to time in relation to the Unemployment Insurance Commission.
Every government we have had in the 22 years I have been a member of this House has in its so-called reform approach to UI come in with measures that are ever more Draconian. For example, the Liberals a number of years ago reduced benefits from 66 per cent of income down to 60 per cent of income. Now they are screaming because the Conservative government is about to reduce the benefits from 60 per cent to 57 per cent.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Conservative government is using the Unemployment Insurance Act as a weapon in its arsenal for deficit reduction but it is doing it on the backs of the unemployed. That is simply not fair.
I am a member not of the labour committee but of the justice committee of this House. I cannot help but draw certain parallels between the Unemployment Insurance Commission and how it operates and the criminal justice system in this country and how it operates.

Government Orders
In the criminal justice system the onus of proof of guilt is on the system. In other words the Crown has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. The accused does not have to prove his or her innocence.
In the unemployment insurance system it is just the opposite. The onus of proof is on the claimant. When the claimant is adjudicated and there is any doubt whether or not his or her claim should be acceptable, and the Unemployment Insurance Commission says it is not acceptable, then the onus of proof is on the claimant. The onus of proof is on the person applying for the unemployment insurance.
Incidentally this is not a welfare system. This is an insurance system. It is a compulsory insurance system into which the claimant has been forced by statute to pay. It is an insurance against loss of income due to being unemployed. But at the same time the government insists that the claimant must prove that the claim is correct. It is not the other way around. It is philosophically unfair. It is basically unfair at the outset.
Second, in the criminal justice system, a person is innocent until proven guilty, as I mentioned a few moments ago. It is often an assumption in the unemployment insurance system if there is a very deeply disputed aspect that the claimant is guilty until proven innocent. This is very often involved in disputes arising from being dismissed for just cause or quitting for just cause.
Third, the criminal justice system is guided by laws that must be changed by statute. This is a very rigorous process. The unemployment insurance system is guided by directives that can be changed by the commission at any time, that can be interpreted loosely or severely, depending very often on the individuals who are involved in the actual hearing itself. Consequently in the UI system, many of the decisions are based upon individual officers in the commission itself, not according to law, not even according to regulations sometimes, but according to a whim, or according to a very narrow interpretation.
Fourth, in the criminal justice system all witnesses are treated equally before the law. That is a basic precept. The odd time this does not occur, it usually gets front page coverage, particularly in the criminal justice system
if it involves a person who has been charged with a serious offence. In the unemployment insurance system, employers have more power than the claimants through the separation slip and through the approach recommended by the UI directives. I do not think there is any question about this. In a dispute between an employer and an employee the decision goes in favour of the employer most of the time.
Fifth, under the criminal justice system decisions are made first by police that investigate a crime and gather information and evidence. They present the evidence to a Crown prosecutor. It is a decision of the Crown prosecutor whether to proceed with the charges or not. Then the trial itself involves prosecution, defence, the judge-that is the bench-as well as a jury very often. However, in the unemployment insurance regime the UI agent is the police officer, the lawyer and the judge, usually with the responsibility for making a decision alone. We are speaking here of the decision of first instance.
In the criminal justice system, except in extreme crimes, jail sentences or fines are not imposed until after the appeal system has been exhausted. The fine or the jail sentence may be arrived at in court and prescribed, but the fine is not paid or the jail term is not served until all the appeal processes have been exhausted.
In the unemployment insurance system the claimant suffers total loss of income immediately. What does the claimant live on while pursuing the appeal? This is particularly true in cases of alleged sexual harassment. It is easy for the government to say all the person has to do is launch an appeal if there is any doubt whether or not sexual harassment was a factor in a person leaving her job. That is fair enough. The point here is it may take months, in fact I have heard of some cases taking over a couple of years to resolve. In the meantime, that person is not receiving any benefits from the Unemployment Insurance Commission into which that person has had to contribute by statute. To me that is not fair.
Again, under the criminal justice system, sentences to fit the crime may increase or decrease minimally within a prescribed range. Under Bill C-113 the penalty goes from a maximum of 12 weeks' loss of income to full loss of income. I argue that is not fair.

In the criminal justice system though inconsistency exists in the system it is controlled by the appeal process. If mistakes have been made at the lower level, at the court of first instance, the appeal system is there to correct the inconsistencies or the mistakes that were made.
In the unemployment insurance system decisions from one employment centre to another can differ greatly. Appeals are also localized and potentially inconsistent. There is very little one can do about it, if anything.
Again under the criminal justice system if an appeal process is too lengthy the court may drop charges against the defendant. That happened in the province of Ontario a couple of years ago. Many charges, some of them fairly serious, were stayed simply because the courts were technically unable to receive and do their job. They were backlogged to the point where the Supreme Court of Canada said that it was not fair to keep the charges outstanding and therefore they were stayed.
Under the unemployment insurance system there are no regulations which proclaim a minimum appeal time in favour of the claimant.
Again I go back to the sexual harassment aspect of an unemployment insurance appeal. Why should a woman who says that she was sexually harassed and therefore was forced to quit her job have to wait for months, even up to two years to get justice in the unemployment insurance system and at the same time receive no benefits if in the criminal justice system there are prescribed limits of time after which the charges must be stayed? Justice delayed is justice denied. Surely the same principle should apply in the unemployment insurance system.
Finally, in the criminal justice system the defendant cannot be excluded from his or her trial except in cases of extreme misbehaviour in the actual court proceedings. Under the unemployment insurance system, Bill C-113 allows the chair of an appeal board to exclude the claimant while hearing evidence from the employer.
For some or all of those reasons, I am voting against Bill C-113.
Government Orders


Mr. George S. Rideout (Moncton):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure in some respects to at least stand and discuss this particular bill and point out some of the errors the government has made with respect to UI legislation.
I think all of us when we first heard that a bill was coming down-I think it was Bill C-105-looked at the general intent and said it was a good idea to look at unemployment insurance. We could see if there were ways to improve the system to make it work better and to make sure that it was not being defrauded or abused.
When we finally had a chance to analyse the bill it became very clear the bill was lacking. In fact the government knew it was lacking as well because it withdrew the bill and made many amendments and changes to try to make it look better.
The optics of correcting abuse in the UI system is always great. Anybody who works hates to think that their tax dollars are going to somebody who is freeload-ing or abusing the system or who is actually taking from the system unjustifiably.
It is great optics from the government's point of view to proceed on that basis and introduce this legislation, but it knew it was wrong. The government made changes. It has now brought back another bills which is what we are debating today, and the same problems are still there.
I think the government now is a little worried that the optics have gone a little sour. In fact, when we really analyse what has happened here the government is saying that it has a major political problem. There are 1.6 million Canadians out of work and of those about
400,000	are youth. The government is saying: "We cannot deal with it. We do not have any answers. We are stuck. We are finished. We do not understand. We cannot do anything. What do we do? Rather than trying to deal with the situation let us take a look at the optics again and see if we can come up with something that is just a little neater and divert people's attention".
I am sure everyone is familiar with the old shell game where you hide the pea and try to divert people's attention away from what is going on so that they cannot figure out where the pea is.

March 23, 1993
Government Orders
The simple fact of the matter is that is what is going on here with Bill C-113. The government is trying to divert Canadians' attention away from the problem of unemployment and put it on the backs of unemployment insurance and the small number of people who may be abusing the system.
The government keys in on some interesting things such as quitters. It has good optics with quitters. Anybody who quits is not thought of too highly so it wants to focus on quitters or cheaters.
That is the way in which the government has tried to divert people's attention away from the fundamental question of why the government has not been able to put Canadians back to work. Why has it not developed policies, procedures and directions that would see Canadians working so that they did not have to use the unemployment insurance system as it presently exists or as the government intends it to exist?
Instead, the government wants to play the shell game and divert people's attention. We have to deal with the bill. Looking at the bill, one can see that in order to make the optics look good, it has to be negative. It cannot be positive.
We have to say that all cheaters are guilty until they prove themselves not to be. The whole onus shifts. It is seen in the area of sexual harassment. One has to prove the harassment. Anybody who quits because they have been harassed for whatever reason must prove it. Again it shifts the onus.
It all sounds very good. The optics look excellent, but the fact of the matter is it is manifestly unfair. As the previous speaker pointed out, when we look at our fundamental system of justice the opposite is the case. You are innocent until proven guilty. If government feels that people are cheaters, quitters or harassers, then the onus should be on the government to prove that rather than shifting it in the other direction.
I look at unemployment insurance and from the people whom I talk to in my office I know that no one wants to be on UI. Nobody goes out of the way to say: "Put me on UI. I want to be on UI". They want to have a job. They want to have dignity and pride. That is not acquired by being on UI. Maybe what we should be doing
is rather than looking at the optics of unemployment insurance, why not get right to the root and find out how we can get people employed and off of UI. We have built-in systems within the UI system that in effect preclude people from getting back to work.
There was an interesting case of a fellow who lost his job. He tried to start up a business. It was a comer store operation. It took him two or three months to actually get that business up so that it would pay him some money. UI found out about it. They said: "No, no. Because you were working in this business for the last three months, we are going to penalize you. Not only are we going to take away the UI that you got for the three months, we are also going to penalize you". They made it so that he almost went out of business with the loss of money and the penalty UI put on.
He would have been better off to stay home and not try to better himself, not tiy to become gainfully employed and not try to find employment for others. In this particular business he was employing three other people.
What we have to do is change the optics of this to helping people. We have to put in a UI system that is for the people and not against the people. This government and its bill are doing just the opposite.
I look at what is going to happen to the provinces. We have seen statistics over the last little while with respect to bond rates and all of those types of things. The provinces are in trouble, very serious trouble. What does this government say? "This government says: "We are going to take people off UI and put them on the welfare rolls because they are not going to be able to survive either way". If it puts them on the welfare rolls then it is the provinces' problem and not the federal government's problem.
The governments least able to handle the situation are the provinces and the municipalities. The government says: "Let us shift the burden. Let us put the burden on those two levels". Then the welfare rolls grow, either in provincial governments that look after welfare, or municipal budgets which are strained to the limit to look after welfare situations.
We have an opportunity in this country now to come up with a system that works, not one that penalizes. Put in those incentives to try to create jobs rather than try to punish people.
March 23, 1993

Quite frankly, if the government looked hard, there are lots of real abusers it could find and really change the system. All one has to do is look at what is going on in some of the areas in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island to see where there are abuses in the system, not going to individuals, but just as to how the whole system functions. Those are the things that government should be looking at to see if some changes can be made.
I have to say when I first heard about the bill I thought it made some sense. We should try to make sure that those who abuse the system are dealt with. One hears all sorts of stories and no one knows if they are true or not. One hears of people getting paid a higher wage and then having to pay something back under the table. Or there is the creation of jobs for a prescribed period of time and then allowing people to quit and other people to come along. I think that is an abuse which has to be dealt with. We have to look at those situations.
However, we have to also look at the root cause. In certain industries we do have seasonal employment and this is the only way that seasonally employed people can function for the rest of the year. So why do we not build in a system that does not force them to be cheaters and in effect, crooks? Why do we not allow them to work at their profession but at the same time maintain some dignity? Instead, we have to drive them under the table.
I see my time is running out. I think that this bill is fundamentally flawed. It is done only for optics. It is only done for the leadership campaign that is unfolding and the anticipated election shortly thereafter.
Canadians deserve a better deal than that. It is time to put politics aside. It is time to deal with the root problem and that is the 1.5 million unemployed Canadians. Of that statistic we know that hundreds of thousands of Canadians have already given up and are not even looking for work any more. That is where the problem is. Let us get past the optics and to the problem. Let us create jobs for Canadians.


Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: I am pleased to stand and speak to Bill C-113, which is the new UI bill. My colleague from Moncton kept referring to it as optics. I call it a public relations exercise which fails to change the substance of Bill C-105.
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This new bill which is presented by the government will still deprive many deserving Canadians of UI benefits until they have been through a very lengthy appeal process. This issue is being used, as far as I am concerned, as nothing more than a smoke-screen. It hides the fact that the government has no idea of how to deal with the unemployment crisis we have in this country today.
The government says it is doing this to fight the deficit in the UI fund. If that is true, why does it not put Canadians back to work? Every time unemployment is reduced by a percentage point, $2 billion is cut from the deficit in the UI fund.
The UI fund is being used more and more for purposes other than replacement income. The government should not be deciding, in my opinion, how the fund should be used. It should be the employer and the employee as the government no longer even puts a cotton-picking penny into it.
Three billion dollars is now going from this fund into the retraining program. If the government used the money from other sources for the retraining program to put Canadians back to work it would not see such a huge deficit in the unemployment insurance fund.
The head of the Human Rights Commission, Max Yalden, when appearing before the legislative committee reviewing this bill said that the federal government should develop safeguards to protect claimants' rights while it reduces eligibility for unemployment insurance. He went on to say that in cases of alleged sexual harassment claimants should be given the benefit of any doubt. They should not have to prove harassment within legal definitions just that there was a valid perception of harassment.
As an example, the committee recently expelled a labour union delegation and expunged its testimony from the record. In other words, the government does not like to have anything uncomplimentary said about it. Fortunately, Judy Rebick read it back into the record last week so now it is known what many people in this country think of the government. When she appeared before the committee Judy Rebick also said that 53 per cent of those who voluntarily quit their jobs are women. As we all know, women are fighting for jobs in the first place and are fighting to keep those jobs.

March 23, 1993
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The unemployment insurance program is the federal government's single largest expenditure, forecast to be $22.5 billion for 1993. Before 1990 the federal government's contribution to the UI fund was approximately 20 per cent, and since that time it is now totally financed by employees and employers. As a result of rising UI costs the UI fund has a deficit of $4.7 billion. I have already read into the record how the government could have reduced that.
The government expects that cutting the benefit rate from 60 to 57 per cent will save a total of $2.45 billion over two years. Maybe so, but at what cost?
How does the government justify these cuts? It says that these cuts are necessary to stop all those shiftless, irresponsible people who quit their jobs and then expect to be supported by hard-working responsible Canadians. But how many people are actually abusing the system? I would like to suggest there are not too many. There are two kinds of abuse. There are those who defraud the system with false claims and other scams and there are people who receive benefits after quitting their jobs for no apparent reason or after being fired.
The government calls the first group the cheaters. According to its own statistics the amount of money that is lost annually to these cheaters is something like $200 million, or less than 1 per cent of the total program. It is not a great amount of money.
The government estimates that 6 per cent of UI recipients are people who either left their jobs without just cause or were fired for misconduct. It has been shown by a great number of people that the measures proposed in Bill C-113 will not reduce or even contain the deficit of the UI fund. The government is simply cutting for the sake of cutting without any all-encompassing vision of what the UI program should be doing or any idea of how the program could be made to work better.
The government does not know what to do about Canada's unemployment crisis, and that is the major problem. If the proposed changes in Bill C-113 become law then those people no longer eligible for UI will have to turn to the already over-taxed welfare system.
Let me relate this to the Ottawa-Carleton region, of which Nepean is part. At the start of this month there were 30,300 unemployed persons in the RMOC.
Changes to unemployment insurance are being felt in all sectors of this community.
The message from Canadians, as well as the people in this region, is that the changes to UI must not be taken as a simple budgetary measure but must be viewed in the context of a broader change affecting elements of our social safety net. They also go on to say that between 1990 and 1992 the number of unemployed persons in the RMOC increased by 10,800, or 64 per cent.
During the same period the number of social assistance case-loads had increased by an average of 540 per month, including a 345 per month increase in case-loads of employable persons. Changes in UI will mean that employable persons will remain on welfare longer. Approximately 6 per cent of all the UI claimants in the region quit their jobs. This means that as many as 1,350 individuals of the RMOC who are eligible for UI benefits in the present system will not be eligible for UI in April 1993.
Provincial and regional governments will experience increased financial burden as a result of changes to the UI law. The decrease in the number of people eligible for UI could mean a loss of $16,452 million per year in gross UI benefits to this region of Ottawa-Carleton. That is an incredible amount of money.
In addition, the reduction of the benefit rate from 60 to 57 per cent will mean a further annual loss of $24,684 million to the region in UI benefits. At the same time, contributions to the provinces and municipalities for social programs have not kept pace with the increased financial burdens they have experienced.
I mentioned this because it is having a very grave impact upon all of the municipalities across the country. It is clearly a case of shifting the burden from one level of government to the other and yet it is the same taxpayer who is footing the bill for them all.
The major criticisms that people have levelled at these changes are that people will be much less likely to quit their jobs, regardless of the working conditions, because they will no longer be eligible for UI; and employers will be able to use the threat of dismissal to force employees to accept a situation that might otherwise have met with resistance. Anyone who quits a job or is fired is required to prove that he or she was justified in doing so before receiving benefits, and people are considered guilty until proven innocent.
March 23, 1993

I heard of an example this morning in a meeting with people in the real estate area. They brought to my attention the UI program's treatment of commission salespersons. Realtors must give up their real estate sales licences to collect benefits for loss of employment, requiring extra expense to reapply for the licence when they regain employment. Their fluctuating income makes it impossible for some commission salespersons to meet the requirements. People who pay into the system for years are forced to accept much lower benefits than they would receive if the benefits were based on earnings averaged over the previous fiscal year. So real estate people are very concerned about this bill.
In summary, and I could go on at length, under Bill C-113 workers are in effect deemed to be guilty and must prove their innocence when they voluntarily have to quit or are fired by their employers. Under the current system a penalty for disqualification is already set at seven to twelve weeks. With Bill C-113 the penalty is total disqualification of benefits with loss of credits.
The bill does not come close to understanding the job reality for all workers, and this is especially true for construction workers.
I would hope that all members of this House would examine their conscience and vote against this bill.


Mr. David D. Stupich (Nanaimo-Cowichan):: Mr. Speaker, I join the member who just spoke in hoping that everyone will vote against this bill, but I am not very confident that will happen.
Some four years ago the government embarked upon a program to slow down what it called the overheated economy in southern Ontario. The method it used was to very gradually increase interest rates, so gradually that it had little effect on the economy in southern Ontario or anywhere else because what kept the economy going was the increasing amount of credit that was available. As long as the lenders were prepared to give that credit businesses kept borrowing. As long as the money was being spent and businesses were expanding workers were getting money, spending that money and buying the goods that were being produced, and the economy kept growing at a great rate.
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It was only when the lenders started to worry about collecting the money they had loaned out that the economy started to slow down. However it did not slow down as gradually as the interest rates had gone up. It slowed down precipitously, so that we entered the period that the Conference Board of Canada described as the first ever recession in Canada created by government policy. The government did it not by increasing interest rates but by increasing them to the point where the lenders started to worry about collecting their money back. The money was no longer in circulation and people no longer had the funds to buy the goods that were being produced in Canada, and we now have what some call a recession and what some know is a depression.
The government has learned nothing from that experience because we are now at the point where it wants to get the economy moving again. What does it do? It lowers interest rates. But again, it is doing it so gradually that it has little effect on the economy. It will not have any effect until it gets to the point where the lenders are confident about getting back the money that they lend out. They are not going to do that until Canadians start purchasing again.
It is hoped that this legislation before us now in part will save the UI fund some $500 million to $600 million this year. It may save the UI fund but, as others have pointed out by downloading these costs onto the provincial governments and reducing the amount of money that will be available, when people change from UI to welfare they will be getting less.
It is not just that people are getting less but that people are losing whatever confidence they might have had in any kind of a recovery.
When we see headlines from time to time saying that there are signs that the economy is turning around, fewer and fewer people believe that it really is turning around because they do not see it and they do not feel it. They know that the number of unemployed is increasing. They know that the number of jobs is decreasing, that is, the well-paying jobs, the ones that really count.

March 23, 1993
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From time to time we see stories of plants shutting down or plants, businesses and industry moving away from Canada to the sunnier climes of Mexico.
The government may well save the UI fund $500 million-I do not know, I understand that figure is questionable-but it is taking it from the people who can least afford to fight the recession and the depression. Those are the people who are already not earning very much, if they are earning at all. Those are the people who would be spending every cent that they received in their own communities throughout Canada, and by spending it would give some encouragement to people who are in business and give some encouragement to the people who are working, so that they can spend their savings in some security of the job which they hope will continue.
Now they have little of that because more and more people are worried that if others are losing their jobs, when will it be their turn?
Until the recovery does become a reality people are not going to have the confidence they need to spend their savings to get the economy moving, or to even spend their earnings.
We are taking it from the poorest. The people who have lost their jobs are now going to have something like a 10 per cent reduction in the amount of UI they can claim. If they do claim UI they will not know whether they are going to get it because there will be tests. They will have to undergo examinations to see whether or not they qualify for UI.
I do not mind that kind of checking up, but the purpose of it, which is to take more money out of the economy at a time when the economy needs it most, is the crazy part of this measure. It is the same as when the government seemed to have little idea as to how to slow down what it considered to be an overheated economy. It only happened by accident. It did not happen because of the gradual increase in interest rates; it only happened at the point where the lenders were afraid to lend any more.
Once again, it is reducing interest rates gradually, but it is having no effect. When there is some conscious effort on the part of government itself or if industry and business by some miracle get back some of the confidence they have lost in the Canadian economy, only then will it turn around.
In the meantime the government should be doing its share. The government should be taking the lead in providing job opportunities, just like the New Democratic Party which has presented a policy to create employment and put that money into circulation. People who are working are paying income tax. They are paying into the UI fund, not drawing out of it. They are not cutting back, they are expanding.
Putting people to work is the way to reduce the deficit, and eventually to reduce the debt. That is the only answer to the economic problems we have today and the only way we can do that is to bring back confidence. The only way we can bring back confidence is for the government to take the lead quickly, not gradually, not slowly, not in the way it slowed down the economy, not in the way it is trying to improve it right now. It must take dramatic steps to show that the government itself has faith in the future of Canada.
We have talked about an infrastructure program. We have talked about it in the last two federal campaigns in particular. The Liberals picked up part of the idea in the last federal campaign and we will be talking about it again in the coming campaign.
There is a tremendous amount of work that needs doing in this country. We should be hiring contractors in this country, not contractors in other countries who might produce $5.75 billion worth of helicopters. Contractors in this country could be building roads, sidewalks, sewer systems, water systems, things that are needed, upgrading what needs to be done in Canada, projects that would create employment from one end of the country to the other. Yet the government's attitude is that we have to draw in, we have to rein in, we have to control the spending.
By controlling the spending it is doing exactly the wrong thing if it wants to get the economy going again. It should know that. It has had a couple years of experience of gradually going downhill, with the occasional headline saying that things are turning around, things are getting better, knowing full well they are not. The real statistics show the number of people employed in good jobs that enable them to pay substantial income taxes and to pay into UI funds so that the money will be there to draw out for the emergencies some people experience. There is a way to improve our economy. As I stated, more than anything else it depends upon confidence.
March 23, 1993

To get business moving depends upon the confidence of the lenders to put money into the communities. It depends upon useful work being done, not paying people to stay home on welfare, not paying people to stay on UI, but providing them with useful jobs, especially for the lower income people. They are going to spend that money in their own communities in our country, consuming goods that are produced here in Canada, keeping the money circulating in Canada, and above all else creating some confidence that the government at last has some idea as to what it should do to get the Canadian economy moving again.
It can be done, but the government has to be willing and determined. The government has to show that at last it knows what needs to be done, that it knows the cure for the illness of the Canadian economy and is determined to make that cure available to the Canadian people and the Canadian economy.


Mr. Jesse Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Mr. Speaker, usually I begin by saying what a pleasure it is for me to participate in a debate on a certain bill. Unfortunately, because of the guillotine motion that we voted on just prior to this debate I am not entering this debate with such pleasure. This government has brought in closure and time allocation more in this 34th Parliament in a four and a half year period than in all 33 Parliaments prior to this Parliament.
I remember when we were in government between 1980 and 1984 how the Deputy Prime Minister used to get up and criticize us because we brought in one or two time allocations in a session. He ranted and raved how we were hijacking Parliament, how we were stifling debate, how we were killing free speech. Now, who is hijacking Parliament? On an important topic such as this he puts a motion to limit debate to one sitting day.
It is high time that this government was thrown out so that it can no longer guillotine this House and prevent free speech.
In fairness I must say I have been receiving criticisms on both sides of this bill from constituents such as Henry Raston who is in real estate and talks to a lot of people. He came into my office and shared with me what he has been picking up. Yes, the Canadian public is fed up with
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people who are collecting UI and living six months in Florida which makes them unavailable for work.
If you are collecting UI you are supposed to be available for work. The public does not want to pay for someone who is not available, who is sunning him or herself while the hard-working person pays for that.
The other category is the quitters, the ones who work part time, build up their UI premiums and then go off again. There are the cheaters and there are the quitters, but that is not what we are objecting to on this side of the House. We want to eliminate those people also and the present legislation can do that. There is no need to change the present legislation. Instead of sending the UI cheques out, have the people report and pick up the cheques as they used to do. You would soon find out which workers are available, which ones are cheaters and which ones are quitters.
Most of the representations I receive are on the other side, representations against this bill, and very strong representations. Some of them are reflected in the letters I receive. Here is one from Desmond McComish. He does not write to me. He is writing to the right hon. Prime Minister. He writes:
Dear Mr. Mulroney,
I am writing to you to express my dismay and disgust at the proposed changes to the Unemployment Insurance regulations, whereby you propose to deny UI benefits to people who quit their job or get fired for cause.
I was fired as the comptroller of a company last year and the boss took the position that I had been fired for cause-to protect himself from a lawsuit and because he was the type who believes a good offence is the best defence. Had the proposed UIC-
That is Bill C-113, that we are debating today.
- rules been in effect, I would have been denied UIC in addition to receiving no severance. That is appalling.
This is someone from a Conservative riding. He goes on to say:
If you persist, and that loose cannon, Bernard Valcourt, continues to attack the unemployed, I can assure you that I personally will bend my efforts in the election to ensure your defeat. The proposals are idiotic and political suicide. What fool would propose such changes this side of an election anyhow? Obviously not a friend. Unless you are letting Mr. Valcourt skewer himself as punishment. I helped vote you in before. Rest assured, I won't do it again. The middle class are scared enough and you have badly miscalculated the negative political fallout from these proposals-among the employed middle class, i.e.-the working scared.

March 23, 1993
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Signed, Desmond McComish, a close Conservative friend of the Prime Minister who is going to do everything he can to defeat the Tories over this bill.
Another constituent who does not want to be identified says this in writing:
It is unconscionable that the government is attacking the one group of people that is most affected by the current recession, the unemployed. This type of action is both insulting and disgusting. Although lam not on UI, it is an important safety net for people who may lose their jobs. Cutting back benefits and making it harder for people to collect will result in a tremendous backlog of appeals, trap people in dead-end jobs and especially hurt those that are wrongfully dismissed. More than likely the unemployed will be forced onto an overburdened welfare system. Contrary to what Mr. Valcourt thinks, most unemployed people will not be "proud" to help reduce the federal deficit.
Toronto and other major cities are complaining that the people who should be getting UI are not getting UI and are going on welfare assistance. The welfare tab is getting too large for the municipalities and the provinces to bear.
You may say: "Well that is fine, Mr. Flis, but what is your proposal?" My suggestion to the government is do not come up with smoke-screens. Call a spade a spade. The problem is not those who are receiving UI. The problem is that there are no jobs for these people. Create the jobs. Create the training. If they cannot find jobs because they are just not available right now let us put these people on training programs.
In the 1980s we had a tough recession also. Let me give an example of what the Liberal government did in my riding. We put people to work restoring the Sunny-side pavilion to its historical site. We got funds for Palais Royal, a cultural recreation centre, to get it functioning again. We created jobs at the Canadian National Exhibition, at Ontario Place and at the Sports Hall of Fame. We built a bridge over Dundas and Sorauren through make-work programs, through infrastructure programs where the city pitched in, the province pitched in and the federal government pitched in. Our leader has been recommending this for two years, but somehow this government has no ears. If it has ears it has no middle ear or inner ear. If it has that, somehow it is not getting to the brain.
If the government had taken our suggestion of sharing the infrastructure programs three ways people would be
working. Just in the few examples that I gave we put tradespeople to work: carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and decorative iron workers. All of these people who were unemployed got jobs, thanks to three levels of government getting together.
I know the government says there are 40 reasons under which people can leave work and claim it as a just cause. Let me give an example. I cannot identify this constituent who left his job after three months because the company he was working for was doing something illegal in telecommunications.
Yes, the government says those would be moral objections: "Employer practices contrary to professional ethics, law, regulations or illegal activities contrary to fundamental ethical values". These would be just causes.
What does this constituent have to do now? First he has to write to Keith Spicer of the CRTC so that the CRTC can identify whether the actions are illegal or not. That will take at least six months.


An hon. member:: Or longer.


Jesse Philip Flis: Then it will go to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. That will take another three months. That is nine months this person is not working and not collecting UI. What do you think will happen to him, Mr. Speaker? He will be forced onto the welfare rolls. A professional person will be forced onto the welfare rolls. That is what this bill is doing.
I appreciate some of the amendments and motions that have been presented here. My colleague from Saskatoon-Dundum went through all the motions so I do not have to repeat those. He put them on record, exactly what it is that we are debating.
Thank you for allowing me to put my concerns on the table. I would like to end up with putting my concern and tell this government to stop guillotining the debates in this House.


Mrs. Shirley Maheu (Saint-Laurent-Cartierville):: Mr. Speaker, for nearly eight years, the Conservative government has been telling us that it is trying to lead this country to prosperity. Unfortunately it seems to keep leading it to bankruptcy and, for many, straight to hell.
March 23, 1993

Unemployment is still rising and nothing seems to indicate that the trend will change soon. Of course, the government has an explanation, and as I said before, it always has an one. It is always other people's fault or it is worse elsewhere. That is some consolation for the thousands of jobless Canadians who see no sign of hope.
What about the level of poverty? The people whom the Conservatives are punishing with this bill are those who lost their jobs because of the recession which this government created, sustained and deepened. This government is cutting 3 per cent from the benefits of those who are in real need. The government's economic mismanagement has already cost the unemployed their jobs; now, they are being bled white a second time.
This government which is taking unemployment insurance benefits from those who lose their jobs as a result of misconduct is only giving bosses a most dangerous weapon. An employee can be dismissed for something insignificant, without recourse and especially, to the delight of some employers, without income. The door is open to all kinds of abuse and blackmail.
An employee could no longer risk complaining about questionable conduct, for fear of dismissal. Maybe there will only be one such case of abuse, but that would be one too many. Canadians deserve more respect.
Instead of helping the unemployed with a social safety net this government is shoving them through the cracks.
The Conservatives are making it difficult for people who have been discriminated against in the work place. Victims of racism or sexual harassment might be reluctant to issue complaints for fear of being denied access to UI benefits. The government has made it very difficult to cite these serious problems.
The measure dealing with just cause will discourage legitimate complaints about sexual and racial harassment as well as complaints about substandard working conditions. Immigrant women, who most often end up working in the worst conditions with the worst wages, will be
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far more vulnerable than they are now because of these changes.
Instead of proposing a system that actually combats the real problem the government is going ahead with a cynical political move that will hurt the very people who need protection.
If this legislation passes I can guarantee that the results will be an administrative nightmare. Thousands of people will appeal the automatic denial of benefits.
In 1991, almost 200,000 UI applicants were held to have quit their jobs without just cause and were already penalized by the existing system. Almost 20,000 of these rulings were overturned by either the internal review or the board of referees. The possibility now exists that 10 times that many will appeal. I cannot imagine the system being able to cope with that volume and still deliver fair and equitable decisions.
I know that the government has disbanded this organization, but in 1991 the Economic Council of Canada said that people who quit their jobs are not a drain on the UI fund. When we look at the 1986 figures, we see that half of all job quitters went to another job immediately and another 43 per cent found new jobs within 10 weeks.
These proposals will hurt the people of my riding and the people of the province of Quebec. At a rally in Montreal last month thousands of citizens demonstrated against these changes to the UI fund. Because this government no longer contributes to the UI fund it should not act without consulting Canadian businesses and Canadian workers who actually pay into the fund.
Statistics suggest the actual number of people quitting their jobs has declined as this government intentionally brought Canada into a recession.
In September 1988 at the height of the economic cycle more than 31,000 Canadians quit their jobs. In September 1990 the number fell to 26,000. Last fall the number stood at 16,700. It is plain to see that Canadians are not likely to quit their jobs for frivolous reasons, especially in these tough economic times. All the Conservatives have been able to do is remove a great deal of flexibility from the labour force.

March 23, 1993
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The actions of this government simply do not make any sense. You do not pull the safety net out from under people and impoverish them as they seek to make the change from one job to another. The government is just shirking its responsibilities and forcing other levels of government to take over the problems.
In some jurisdictions those denied UI benefits under the just cause proposal would not automatically qualify to collect social assistance. Municipalities in some of our provinces have the discretionary power to adjust or delay receipt of social assistance benefits for people who quit their jobs. It is unlikely that individuals would be eligible for social assistance immediately or while they plead their cases through the appeal process, as they have to deplete their savings or be almost penniless to qualify for these benefits.
Canada used to have a compassionate unemployment insurance system. Most G-7 countries pay UI benefits to voluntary leavers. Japan, Italy, Germany and the U.K. all have penalties for voluntary quitters but they do not deny all benefits. Only this heartless government would do that.

How will these proposals help 130,000 young Quebecers find the work they need for their future and the future of their province and our country?
All this law does is punish the unemployed for this government's inefficiency. We need programs to help the people of Saint-Laurent-Cartierville find permanent employment. We in the Liberal Party are proposing a new direction for the Canadian economy that would put Canadians back to work. If the Conservatives can no longer lead, we are ready to meet the challenge.

Just before closing, I would like to quote our critic when he said: "If the government is serious about controlling its spending why does it not scale down or cancel its plan to spend $4.4 billion on a submarinehunting helicopter? If the government is serious about wanting to put its financial house in order, why does it not go after the $16.1 billion that Canadian companies have hidden in tax havens such as Barbados, Cyprus, Liberia and elsewhere?
The fact is that this government has no clear plan for controlling its spending and now the most vulnerable Canadians are being forced to pay for its economic mismanagement. The government has a moral responsibility to show Canadians how it intends to prepare our nation for the future. With this bill it has abdicated that responsibility".
That is a quote from our critic, the hon. member for York North.


Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of my party, the NDP, to speak on this bill.
You will notice that the government is not defending the bill today. It is not even listening to a number of very serious amendments that have been put forward by the member for Timmins-Chapleau who is trying to take a bad bill and make it a little less so. He has a number of amendments which I am going to speak to in a moment.
Where is the government? It is not doing anything on this bill. The member from Nanaimo spoke for the NDP a few minutes ago and went into the general causes of the economic recession. He accused the government of taking out its inability to put the economy back on a sure footing in this country by tackling the poor and the working stiffs. That is what this government is doing and what this bill does.
We heard the NDP member for Brant speak earlier. He is the critic for the Solicitor General and he said criminals have more rights now than the poor claimants under unemployment insurance. He pointed out that in criminal law a person is innocent until proven guilty but in this system which, as he pointed out, is an insurance system the onus of proof is reversed. We are now making it harder and harder for the ordinary working stiffs to get unemployment insurance after they lose their jobs.

March 23, 1993

My constituents are in Port Moody-Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Many of them are working, but many are concerned about losing their jobs. When they lose their jobs and go on unemployment insurance-which they have paid into and are paying a heck of a lot more money into thanks to this government-they want to be able to collect. They want the system to operate in a hassle-free way. I will return to that in a moment.
It was interesting to hear members of the Liberal Party speak to advance some policy. Today is Tbesday so the policy is a little different than it was on Monday, but on Wednesday it will be different again. Canadians are beginning to see that the party is self-destructing inside. They are also beginning to see the Liberal Party members on every side of every issue. It is amazing. Now they are wetting their pants, if I might say so, because the Conservatives are changing their leader. It is pretty pathetic. When I heard the member for Parkdale-High Park speak I thought how pathetic that party really is.
The member for Timmins-Chapleau has suggested a number of amendments. I draw this to the attention of the House and the government.
Motion No. 7 would replace the phrase "reasonable alternative". The claimant had no reasonable alternative to leaving employment. Motion No. 7 would replace that phrase so just cause for leaving employment exists "for any of the following circumstances applied to the claimant". It goes on to deal with that. I challenge the government to look at this amendment seriously and agree to it if it wants to help the ordinary working person in this country.
Motion No. 8 adds reasons for just cause bringing the total to 40, which the government claimed and talked about. There it is. Yet the government does not seem to be prepared to accept it.
Motion No. 9 places the onus of proof on the commission and establishes that the benefit of doubt that is beyond reasonable doubt goes to the claimant. As the member for Brant said, why should it be easier for a criminal than a claimant? When in this country are we going to stick up for the ordinary working person?
Motion No. 10 clarifies that a common-law spouse is a spouse under the act. Just on that particular motion, it is not clear now what a common-law spouse is. Here is the decision by an umpire dated in Ottawa on October 2,
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1992 concerning the case of Ms. Frances Barzan. The umpire says:
If Parliament, in its wisdom, wanted to include, and I believe it should be so included, that it would be "just cause" to quit one's job to follow a "common-law spouse" Parliament would have so stated in the statute. Parliament has failed to do so and it is not for the umpire to do so. It is not for an umpire to expand the meaning of the word -
But he says he thinks Parliament should. Well here is the amendment. Here is the chance. What is the government waiting for? It should jump at the chance. That is what one of our amendments here deals with.
Here is another decision. I will not cite the name of the applicant, I will just use the initials, E.H. It is a decision by the Federal Court of Canada, Mr. Justice Muldoon, arising from an appeal from Hamilton, Ontario on January 11, 1991. He says this is, and I use the judge's words, "a pathetic case". The poor guy has had to live on the job site to work seven days a week. His back is gone. He leaves his job and Mr. Justice Muldoon makes sure he is allowed an appeal. He deals with it and says he only has to wait one week. Now with this new legislation that is gone. The poor guy would not get UI.
This bill is a tragedy. This is in fact taking it out on ordinary people.
I want to take a little different tack. I have gone through the number of motions. This is an insurance scheme. People pay into this and they pay a lot into it. We MPs, and I think I speak for a lot of members in the House, are getting more and more phone calls in our ridings. My riding office in Coquitlam today, as I speak, is getting phone calls about people whose cheques are delayed, who are not getting it or have to appeal and so on.
We treat these issues as priorities. Just think of the people trying to support their families. They go on UI and have no money even though they have paid into it. They do not want to go to welfare. They want to get their UI quickly and get back to work. They have paid for their UI, so we treat this as a priority in my riding and in other ridings.
We are lucky because we have a phone line to UI. We phone and try to get the case brought forward and so on. It occurs to me that politicians and this government are so unpopular, in spite of the little blip in the polls right at the moment, because they are not working for people any more.
You do not have to be a rocket scientist to analyse this. It is a simple thing like not getting your UI cheque on time, not being treated right and being faced with an impossible bureaucratic appeal process. In immigration it means not having a chance to bring your relative over

March 23, 1993
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for the wedding because the visa is delayed. It means the post office. You cannot believe the number of complaints I get every day about the way the post office is working.
This is not complicated. It is just simply making government work for people. That is what people want. They pay for it and they want government to deliver on it.
I want to say this to the employees of the unemployment insurance and immigration offices. I appreciate that they are under stress and they are under strain. They have been cut back by the government and we have 11 per cent unemployment. They have more and more people coming to them. It is tough to provide good service. I know they try very hard.
I also know that they have one of the worst ministers that I have ever seen in the job in my 13 years in Parliament. He is a little blow-hard who thinks he is a mini-Mulroney. He is an ineffective minister. I would not want to work in his department. It must be very tough. I think he is pretty ineffective. I am speaking of the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
The other reason it is hard for the Public Service employees in these offices is that there is a continued attack by the Conservative government on the notion of government. It wants to leave it all to the private sector. It says that government itself is bad. It pulls the wool over the eyes of people.
I say to Canadians and to this House, let us wake up and realize that what people want is government to work for people. Here we are making a UI system that is going to be even harder on people. We have a recession. We have problems with the government deficit. Instead of dealing with the deficit, instead of dealing properly with government spending and waste, instead of dealing with putting people back to work and dealing with the problems of interest rates, a proper trade policy and a proper taxation system so that the middle class does not get burned and burned, what does this government do? It ends up attacking the worker and the poor stiff who loses his or her job and makes it hard to collect UI.
I suggest the government look at these amendments seriously.


Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls):: Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words on this bill and the amendment before the House.
It is a very serious matter to try to figure out what would be a good reason for quitting employment, what would be just cause. You might think, Mr. Speaker, that something would be a good reason or a just cause and I may not think that would be a good reason or a just cause. It is a very serious and complex matter.
We have had a system in effect in Canada that has scales of penalty. I would argue in my 10 minutes that that is necessary under our system. What we have is a board to hear your appeal. We have a judge to hear your appeal if you are not content with the board. You have the law and you have members of Parliament here in this House.
I will just take the board for a moment. I was looking at some of the most recent cases under just cause. I looked at a case where a fellow had quit his job in Brandon, Manitoba and had gone to British Columbia because he was not getting very much work during the week and was being paid the minimum wage. The Unemployment Insurance Commission said: "No, you cannot collect your unemployment insurance". He appealed it to the board.
Look at what happened at the board level. At the board level he produced further evidence. What was the further evidence? He advised the commission that he faced imprisonment for 90 days because he did not pay his traffic tickets. He had so many driving offences in Manitoba that he decided to move to British Columbia.
What did the board say to that? It is incredible. The board of referees took the new evidence into consideration and found that for a young man to face a jail sentence was a very frightening prospect and felt he had no alternative but to quit his job, leave his family and friends to avoid prosecution, so therefore he qualified for unemployment insurance. That is the board that the government talks about as such an expert. What it was doing was trying to figure out whether this fellow had a good reason for leaving Manitoba.
March 23, 1993

Can you rely on the judge? Look at the recent case of a judge who in 1992 sat in judgment of a lady who had quit because of religious convictions. She was working. Her shift had been changed so she had to work all during the day. It was against her religious convictions to work on that day.
A judge can only deal with the law, can he not? The judge made a ruling. He said: "Look, the fact that I might have been persuaded to have come to a different conclusion, had I been trying the matter in the first instance"-but he was not, the board was. What was his conclusion? "While I have the utmost sympathy for the claimant and respect for the undoubted sincerity of her religious convictions, I am nonetheless obliged to dismiss her appeal". The judge knew that it was wrong. You cannot depend on the judge, can you, in certain cases.
Can you depend on the law? When you walk in, you have got just cause. The law says: "You can appeal this to the board of referees if it based its decision on a misinterpretation of the facts". That is not what is in the law. That is what you were given when you got to the Unemployment Insurance Commission. What is in the law?
The law says: "If the board made an erroneous finding of fact in a perverse or capricious manner", a perverse or capricious manner. That is the law. It is not this that is given to an unemployment insurance claimant. A perverse or capricious manner, go and argue that. Tell that to somebody who cannot get their unemployment insurance. They are trying to figure out: "Do I have just cause? Did the board make a decision in a perverse-". What does perverse mean? Perverse, wicked. A capricious manner, was it a whim?
Can you depend on the law? No, you cannot depend on the law. Can you depend on members of Parliament? Looking at this most recent case here under just cause, it deals with misconduct. This guy was fired for reporting his boss, his supervisor, who he claims was stealing things from the company. The appeal was dismissed. He was fired. The board said: "It appears this type of personal work in the company premises has been condoned in the past" and held that the action of the claimant amounted to misconduct because there is no definition of misconduct in the act. You cannot appeal all those cases on misconduct.
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Let us get to the heart of the matter now. Can we really depend on members of Parliament on voluntary leaving with just cause? Here is a ruling of a fellow who had serious nosebleeds, health reasons. Silica dust in a plant was causing him nosebleeds. The judge ruled this and the board and the commission: "The jurisprudence is clear that an employee does not have just cause for leaving unless he has other employment to go to or conditions of work are intolerable with no possibility of them being remedied".
Certainly not turning up for work without even advising the employer is unacceptable. Because he left, because he was having nosebleeds and did not follow through on the remedial action, he has no case to anybody, to the board, to the judge, to anybody.
Finally, where are we in this Chamber? Look at perhaps the most recent case of just cause in which a chap was dismissed for accumulating demerit points. It was deemed that he was dismissed properly. The case went to the courts. The court ruled that he was innocent. Meanwhile, he had lost his unemployment insurance. Now, he is out in the cold.
The law says that the employer had just cause because of this, this and this which was not proven. When a court of law says: "No, that is wrong; there was no just cause", there is nothing in the act to then go back and say: "Give that poor man his unemployment insurance".
In conclusion, let me say that we are dealing with human beings who are applying for unemployment insurance, human beings at the board level, human beings in the person of judges of the Federal Court. What can we expect a judge to do? A judge can only follow the law as it is written and interpret it under jurisprudence that has been determined over a period of time. Finally, we are dealing with human beings who make the law. That is where we fall down in this bill. We have to realize we are dealing with human beings at all levels who can make mistakes.
The law must be flexible enough so that people do not get an unfair deal or an unfair hearing. Certainly let us recognize that the boards are not perfect by any means. Neither are the judges and neither are members of Parliament.


Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Newfoundland who put all of these excellent cases before the House. I hope the government has listened to his arguments and will use them as a basis for returning this bill to its own tables or

March 23, 1993
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scrapping it altogether. If it is determined to proceed with the bill, it should look at those points and try to amend the bill in a way so that its impact on people will be negligible.
For those who are interested, we are debating the UI bill which deals with the question of reduction of unemployment insurance payments from 60 per cent to 57 per cent effective April 1, 1993.
There is a second segment to the government proposal that deals with people who might quit their job without just cause. Those people will no longer qualify for UI benefits.
As my colleague from Newfoundland has indicated, it is extremely difficult at times to justify what is just cause. We are really going against the basic principles of our justice system that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The government is reversing this principle when it comes to the unemployed. In other words you have to prove you are not guilty. You go before the board with the assumption that you are guilty and have to prove your innocence.
Perhaps we should look at the question of the board that will be looking at what is just cause and what is not just cause. In 1991 more than 191,000 cases came before the board. The board was able to deal with about 19,000 cases and was able to reverse those cases.
If the government is to proceed with Bill C-113, all we are going to see is a tremendous increase in the number of people who will be appealing their cases before the board trying to justify leaving their place of employment.
The government has been saying over and over again that it is taxpayers' money involved when it comes to the payment of premiums. That is not quite so. The government used to make contributions to the UI account until the year 1990. After that it became the responsibility of both the employee and the employer.
What will be the impact of this bill if it passes? The unemployed will not disappear from the face of the earth. However those hoping to collect unemployment insurance will have to go to another source for income. That is the social welfare system. By passing the UI bill the government is unloading or passing on the responsibility to another level of government, the municipal government.
The people we are talking about are supposedly the quitters. I am going to take one example from here in our city. We have an unemployment rate of approximately 30,000 people. Of those 30,000 people, approximately 6 per cent or 1,800 people have quit their jobs.
If this bill is passed does it mean that these people will not be eligible to collect UI benefits? The cost would be in excess of about $30 million annually. That money would be taken away from our region. The result of this would be that more people will have to rely on the social assistance benefit. As well, when you add to that the reduction of the benefit from 60 per cent to 57 per cent then you will have an addition to the $30 million of quite a few millions. All of that money has been taken away from the local tax base.
It has been the position of the Liberal Party and members of the opposition that the government has to address the heart of the problem which is the question of unemployment. Rather than attacking the unemployed, why do we not focus on employment and on measures to stimulate the economy so we will have more jobs?
The whole idea behind proper employment initiative programs is to promote labour flexibility and mobility. After all, it is unemployment insurance. It is an interim measure that has been put in place in order to help employees move from one job to another. It is only fair that such a measure is mobile and flexible. It has been put in place in order to meet the objectives.
I see we are getting close to one o'clock. I want to leave the House with one thought. Every time we deal with a situation in this House it always seems to be a question of reacting rather than a question of preventing something from happening.
Most of the bills that I have seen over the past four years have been reactive bills. One would suggest that they should have been preventive bills that would stimulate the economy and help reduce the unemployment rate or create jobs. This bill obviously is no different.
For the sake of 1 per cent of the work force that is quitting their jobs or abusing the system the government has put everybody in the same basket. We will not be supporting this bill. It is my hope that the government will review its decision in light of all the comments and recommendations that were made by our caucus and by the community as a whole.
March 23, 1993


Mr. Samson:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
Given the hour, I wonder if we could have consent from the House to call it one o'clock. We do have other members who want to speak.


Mr. Robitaille:: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government, we would be prepared to give unanimous consent, if our colleagues in the Liberal Party agree.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I do now leave the Chair until two o'clock, pursuant to Standing Order 24(2).
At 12.59 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Shirley Maheu: Mr. Speaker, during the three years she served in the Department of Justice the member for Vancouver Centre did nothing to fight groups which promote hatred or hate propaganda.

It takes political will to fight racism. We cannot afford the luxury of doing nothing, like the former Minister of Justice who now hopes to be Prime Minister.
The government's own estimates show that the March 21 anti-racism initiative is ineffective. At the same time, the government has cancelled the Race Relations Foundation, slashed anti-racism funding, and has completely ignored the issue of hate or bias crime.
It is time to take these threats seriously. The former justice minister ignored the problem. I hope this one will not.


BARRIE WELCOME CENTRE
Mrs. Edna Anderson (Simcoe Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to applaud the efforts of the Barrie Welcome Centre. As a community service of the Barrie YMCA the Barrie Welcome Centre assists the settlement of immigrants into the Barrie area. In four years the centre has smoothed the cultural transition of over 1,300 immigrants who have come into Simcoe Centre.
The centre provides services such as translation, help with government and legal documents, information on local social services, health care, housing, employment and recreation areas.
The priority of most newcomers is to obtain a working knowledge of English. Currently it provides English grammar lessons to over 60 enthusiastic new Canadians.
Small things like these services provided by the Barrie Welcome Centre help everyone understand our cultural differences. These first steps of understanding will go a long way toward eliminating racism and helping to create a united country.


PAKISTAN
Mr. Dan Heap (TVinity-Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, the minister of minority rights in Pakistan, His Excellency Peter John Sahotra, is now visiting Canada for a few days.
Canadians urge him to ensure maximum protection in Pakistan for Christian and other religious minorities. We hope good relations between our countries will not be marred by an increase in human rights violations in either country.
The Christians, who are less than 1 per cent of the population in Pakistan, were there before the state of Pakistan was founded and have their roots there. Nevertheless, recent violent mobs have attacked Christian clerics and churches, prompting cancellation of some Christmas services.

March 23, 1993
News reports indicate that Christians in some cases have been killed or sentenced to death on false charges of blasphemy against Islam.
We congratulate the Government of Pakistan for abandoning plans to show religious affiliation on citizens' identity cards, which would have opened the way for more discrimination against Christians in lodging and employment.
We call on the Government of Pakistan to fulfil its commitment to provide compensation to the churches that were damaged in riots last year and to provide adequate security in the future, rather than curtailing the rights and freedoms of Christians and other religious minorities.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Marcel R. Tremblay (Quebec-Est):: Mr. Speaker, the government has a strategy which will foster economic recoveiy, and pave the way for the future and will control the deficit. It depends on private sector support, because the private sector will guarantee our future growth.
We know that just stimulating public spending in the hope of stimulating growth does not work. We have many examples of countries that tried to escape the realities of the world economy. Many times we saw them try to throw money into ill-conceived public investments and poorly designed job creation programs. Many times they have had to retreat, cut spending and get their finances back in order. This has happened in France, in Great Britain and more recently in Ontario. Why would the opposition recommend policies that have always failed?
Look around the world and see the countries which are prosperous. They are not the ones which tolerate inflation, close their markets to trade or accumulate deficits by spending on make-work projects. This government would prefer to learn from those success stories. Why is the opposition always ready to repeat failures?


TAXATION
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, municipalities across Canada are being hit hard by the decision of the Minister of Finance to freeze their grants in lieu of taxes at the 1992 level this year.
This drastic action will cost municipalities $40 million this year as they try to cope with rising costs for welfare and other municipal services. Other municipal taxpayers have to pay the increase in their municipal rates this year. Many of these municipal taxpayers in the Algoma riding are unemployed. Yet if they do not pay their taxes the municipality will seize their home and their property.
Why should the federal government be any different from other taxpayers? That is why this very high-handed move by the federal government places an unfair additional burden on municipalities.
I call on the Minister of Finance to reverse this decision immediately, remove the freeze on municipal grants in lieu of taxes and pay taxes just like any other taxpayer.


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Don Blenkam (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, a complete environmental review process was put in place with respect to the Lester B. Pearson International Airport and its expansion. The committee held extensive hearings and completed an interim report in November 1992.
The government has totally disregarded that report and has decided to build a major 8,000-foot runway 4,500 feet west of the existing north-south runway. This new runway will create a new air traffic corridor over homes, schools and the Queensway Hospital, facilities that until now have had no air noise.
The environmental review report said the buildings and homes that are seriously affected should be compensated and retrofitted with anti-noise baffling. The minister has refused to do this and refused to do anything to protect homeowners threatened by the new air corridor
March 23, 1993

and is moving in total disregard of the environmental review process.
I call on the minister and the government to change their course of action.


SUDBURY, ONTARIO
Mrs. Diane Marleau (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, on March 20 in an article by Jane Taber in The Ottawa Citizen on the upcoming events scheduled for the Minister of National Defence it was noted that she would spend the evening at the Juno awards. Then it said: "It beats spending Sunday night in Sudbury or the North Bay legion hall wooing potential delegates".
Legion halls can be a source of much inspiration and education. Legionnaires are wonderful Canadians who care for their country. Those of us who have not participated in past conflicts can learn a lot from their experience.
As for Sudbury, it is a wonderful place in which real people have got together to overcome adversity. Chatelaine magazine included Sudbury as one of the 10 best Canadian cities to live in. Sudbury has achieved recognition for its environmental programs. The people of Sudbury have worked to diversify the economy of the area and have been and continue to be successful at it.
Unlike other levels of government Sudbury is debt free. Many would benefit from the Sudbury experience. It is a great place to visit and it is an even greater place in which to live.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member from another great place, Delta.


HELP FIGHT LIVER DISEASE MONTH
Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to remind the House that March is being proclaimed Help Fight Liver Disease Month by the Canadian Liver Foundation. I might add that I was going to get the member for Mississauga South to read this.
The foundation, the first organization in the world exclusively devoted to providing support for research and education on the causes of liver disease, aims to reduce the incidence and impact of all liver-related illnesses.
Among its many other services it develops support groups for the sufferers of liver disease and their families.
During the month of March the Canadian Liver Foundation's volunteer chapters will sell daisies and daisy items from booths across the country. I am sure the House will join me in congratulating the foundation on its work and in wishing it every success during Help Fight Liver Disease Month.


YUGOSLAVIA
Ms. Lynn Hunter (Saanich-Gulf Islands):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians are horrified by the atrocities that have been committed in the former Yugoslavia. Rape, torture and death have been inflicted on tens of thousands of women in that war-tom region.
I have in hand petitions signed by over 1,000 people in my riding calling on this government to pressure the United Nations into action. The latest reports indicate that the UN has yet to make a credible response.
Delegates to a war crimes tribunal conference have questioned the international political will to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice.
Canadians think with honour and pride of our vaunted international peacekeeping tradition. We provide peacekeeping troops to prevent the very atrocities we know war will inevitably bring. We must now use our peacekeeping traditions to strengthen international resolve on war crimes.
I call upon the Secretary of State for External Affairs to use every effort to convince the UN to provide adequate funding for the investigation and trial of war criminals.


CORRECTIONS AND CONDITIONAL RELEASE ACT
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, recent changes to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act were intended to tighten up parole eligibility for those convicted of violent crimes. However, loopholes in the parole system are thwarting our attempts to protect the public from violent repeat offenders.

March 23, 1993
Last week Albertans learned that because of the practice of sentence merging a convict on parole who reoffends has his new sentence added to his old sentence for parole purposes. Time served on the first offence counts as time served toward parole on the second.
A convicted rapist in Edmonton sentenced to 15 years will be eligible for parole in only 18 months. If he had reoffended after his parole was completed the earliest he would have been eligible for parole would have been the year 2000.
We must ensure that the justice system works the way it is intended to, and the way Canadians expect it to. In the case of violent offenders, sentence merging for parole purposes must be stopped.


IRANIAN NEW YEAR
Mr. Jim Peterson (Willowdale):: Mr. Speaker, March 21, the first day of spring for Canadians, is celebrated by Iranians throughout the world as the first day of their new year, or Nowruz, meaning new day. This secular observance of the start of the Persian calendar, the arrival of spring and the renewal of life on earth has continuously taken place over the past 2,500 years.
Iran, formerly called Persia, is one of the world's most ancient civilizations. Recent political events in that country have caused many Iranians to leave their homeland and resettle around the world, including in Canada where we have benefited much from the rich heritage of their traditions, values and ideals.
Members of this House wish a happy Nowruz to all Canadians of Iranian descent. We welcome not only their celebration of this time of renewal but also their contribution to Canada's national cultural mosaic and to our way of life.


CANADA-UNITED STATES FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
Mr. Ken Monteith (Elgin-Norfolk):: Mr. Speaker, some of my hon. friends in opposition from the Windsor area have had nothing but ill to say of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement since it came into effect. Perhaps I could point to some major projects in their area that
the companies involved say can be attributed in large part to an increasing flow of Canada-U.S. trade since the FTA and forecasts of even greater growth under NAFTA.
There have been $25 million in improvements to the Canadian side of the Ambassador bridge, and another $75 million on the U.S. side; $28 million will be spent upgrading the inside of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, and another $25 million will be spent refurbishing the plaza on the Canadian side; $38 million is being spent to enlarge the CN-CP railway tunnel; a $100 million expansion of Sarnia's Blue Water bridge will be started in 1995; and there are also CN's plans for a new railway tunnel between Sarnia and Port Huron.
That is more than $290 million in investments in Canada's trade infrastructure in the Windsor-Sarnia area. Perhaps my hon. colleagues would like to comment on the jobs that investment is creating and will create in Canada.


NATIONAL PAROLE BOARD
Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough West):: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's recent patronage appointments to the National Parole Board have further reduced the level of corrections experience held by National Parole Board members. In fact, the percentage of board members with such experience has declined from 85 per cent in 1977 to 40 per cent today.
National Parole Board members make life and death decisions every day and as such require experience in the criminal justice field. Without such experience, their decisions may unnecessarily place Canadians at risk.
The 1988 Daubney report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General said:
The board can only be as good as its decision makers. If those who are appointed as decision makers do not have the requisite qualifications or experience, their decision making is unlikely to be as effective as it should be.
I call upon the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General to re-examine the process of making these appointments and to put the safety of Canadians first instead of delivering million dollar farewell gifts to Tory supporters.
March 23, 1993


Mr. Willie Littlechild (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, Olympic gold medalists Kerrin Lee-Gartner and Mark Tewksbury were chosen outstanding Canadian athletes by the Sports Federation of Canada last night. Lee-Gartner of Calgary won the Velma Springstead award as Canada's female athlete of the year. Tewksbury, also of Calgary, took home the Norman H. Crowe Award as the top male athlete.
Several other Canadian athletes were also honoured at the federation's annual awards banquet. The gold medal winning women's eight rowing team from Barcelona was team of the year. Nicolas Gill of Montreal won the Viscount Alexander award as top junior male athlete. Nancy Drolet of Drummondville won the Elaine Tanner award as the top junior female athlete.
A friend and colleague, Alwin Morris, was also awarded the Johnny F. Bassett award for exemplary community service, a recognition for all his work in developing indigenous sports programs helping youth across Canada.
I ask the House to join me in congratulating all these outstanding Canadians, athletes who in their own special way have always made us proud to be Canadian, and the Sports Federation of Canada for its work and recognition.


WATER DIVERSION
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg IVanscona):: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the provincial government in Manitoba is planning to continue with its proposed Assiniboine River water diversion.
According to the Supreme Court ruling on the Oldman Dam case in January 1992, the federal government may do an environmental review when there is an affirmative regulatory power involved. The Minister of the Environment confirmed his acceptance of this view when I asked him about this in May 1992.
The fact that federal funding for this water diversion comes from the western diversification fund and the prairie farm rehabilitation administration, that the Assiniboine is a navigable river, that aboriginal land will be
Oral Questions
affected, and that irrigation in one region is being favoured over potable use in another, gives the federal government plenty of jurisdiction and responsibility for a proper assessment.
A basin-wide review is necessary to study the cumulative effect of this development. There will be a reduction in the amount of water and an increase in the concentration of chemical pollutants already in the river from agricultural run-off and industry, namely from the American based pharmaceutical company, Ayerst.
I call on the Minister of the Environment to live up to the image he is fond of projecting in his leadership campaign and order the assessment.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

['I listened very carefully to the exchange between the hon. member and the minister. The hon. member is rising now and seeks some information with respect to jurisdiction in this matter.\nFirst of all, it is not for the Chair to enter into that debate. I say this with respect, but nonetheless I remind the hon. member that in a very real sense he is extending the debate which arose with the questions and answers.\nThe hon. member, of course, has the right to ask questions of the appropriate nominated member of the Board of Internal Economy if he wishes to do so. If that is the route he wishes to follow, then I am sure with consultation he could find an appropriate time to put a question of that sort.\nIt is certainly not for the Chair to get into an argument about where the jurisdiction is in this particular case.']
Hon. Jean Chretien (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the Prime Minister.
We know that President Yeltsin has not yet asked for a change of venue for the meeting in Vancouver in 10 days, but today the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia said: "We will prepare this meeting to take place in Moscow. This will be a symbol of support for our country".
In light of the statement of the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, will the Canadian government indicate that Canada will not be offended at all if the United States and Russia were to move the venue to Moscow?


Right Hon. Brian Mulroney (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I indicated yesterday that we would not in any way be offended at all if the venue were moved anywhere that would benefit the bilateral arrangements and the support for President Yeltsin and his democratic reform.
We are happy to make all the arrangements to accommodate both parties in Vancouver. Should either or both decide that it could best be held and more advantageously be held for President Yeltsin elsewhere, we would be happy to accommodate that.

March 23, 1993
Oral Questions


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the Prime Minister.
Yesterday in Chicago the U.S. Secretary of State argued in favour of an aid package that would be better targeted and better co-ordinated by western countries. Mr. Christopher also said that to achieve this a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers and foreign affairs ministers should be held as soon as possible.
Would the Prime Minister agree that this meeting should preferably be held before the meeting between President Yeltsin and President Clinton, and that it would be advisable to try and organize a meeting early next week to pave the way for the meeting scheduled between the two presidents in Vancouver or Moscow?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of what was said by Mr. Christopher yesterday in Chicago.
Perhaps I may point out to the Leader of the Opposition that on May 21 last year I said the following at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, and I quote: "I believe that so far the west's collective response has been hesitant and timid and certainly not commensurate with the needs and opportunities that are out there". I was referring to a collective response by the west to the problems of President Yeltsin and to opportunities in the former Soviet Union. That was my government's position a year and a half or two years ago, and it still is today.
In fact, earlier today I received a call from President Frangois Mitterand of France who shared this opinion and who believes, as I do, that the problem is a complex one and that if there is a change of plan with respect to a bilateral meeting, it may be useful for G-7 members to consider a meeting of heads of government or heads of State. The problem is so important and so complex that it requires political leadership by heads of government. That is President Mitterand's position and it is also the position of the Canadian government.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister.
I would like to know from the Prime Minister if it is the intention of the Canadian government to make sure that there will be a linkage between the aid packages and the maintenance of a democratically elected government in Russia.
We would like to know if the aid will be linked to democracy or separated. It is very important to know so that there will be pressure on the people in Russia to make sure that they maintain a democratically elected government in that country.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, the link must be direct, evident and ongoing. In the same speech at Johns Hopkins University at the commencement exercises on May 21, 1992 I indicated that it was time to unite the people of the former Soviet Union with democrats everywhere.
The first step is to complete the integration of the countries of the former Soviet Union into the global economic system. This refers to IMF, World Bank membership, the creation of stabilization funds, individual technical assistance programs, and the coming together of the G-7 with a view to dealing with this fundamental problem.
My friend and I have discussed in the past how much Canada, the United States and other G-7 countries would have paid had the leader of the Soviet Union said 15 years ago: "I am ready to get out to disband the Warsaw pact. We are going to facilitate the unification of Germany. We are going to bring about a democratic system in Russia and the Soviet Union and end the cold war".
What would the G-7 countries have been ready to say at the time? They would have said: "How much can we provide, when and where?"
The absence of this kind of response is why I said at Johns Hopkins that the western collective approach thus far had been timid and lacking in daring and responsibility. I think the time has come, even at this late hour, for us to respond in the manner suggested by my hon. friend with a profound linkage to democratic institutions and democracy itself in Russia as best exemplified by the
March 23, 1993

maintenance of President Yeltsin in office as the only elected head of government in Russia in a thousand years.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister.
It was reported in The Winnipeg Free Press today that the Minister of Agriculture indicated that the government is considering spending an extra $80 million to make up the shortfall of 500,000 tonnes of grain promised or committed to Russia last June.
Is the government simply going to unfreeze the credit system that was arrived at last June? Are we planning to spend an extra $80 million to fulfil the previous commitment? Or, are there going to be new commitments made for new grain assistance to Russia?
If I might ask as well, is the government considering altering the charter or the legislation of the Wheat Board to allow it to engage in direct barter arrangements with Russia in order to facilitate the grain trade between the two countries?


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, in regard to the question raised by my hon. friend, 523,000 tonnes out of 1 million tonnes of the grain shipment agreed to in June have already been shipped. Shipments were temporarily suspended simply because Russia was paying some creditors in hard cash and not honouring some commitments to Canada.
Had all of us been placed on the same footing there would have been no difficulty. But I have had discussions with President Yeltsin about this. The matter is satisfactorily resolved and our expectation is we will be able to proceed.
I mention as well the question properly raised by my friend yesterday about the nuclear safety initiative, which was a $30 million commitment by Canada over three years. Approximately $8 million will be disbursed in this fiscal year honouring that commitment.
Technical assistance in general, which is a very vast and I think constructive program between Canada and Russia with a wide range of projects, is well under way in some pretty impressive people-to-people ways. I give my hon. friend one illustration: 700 Russian oilfield workers and managers are being trained as a result of Canadian assistance in safety and petroleum production. With the
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assistance of Canadian community colleges funded by Canada the training programs at three Russian oil and gas institutes are being significantly upgraded with 20,000 Russian students benefiting from Canadian expertise delivered at the ground floor level.
If we multiply this kind of technical assistance program perhaps dozens of times we get an indication of what Canada has been seeking to do.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister was quoted yesterday as saying that they are now looking at another aid package that might be part of a larger commitment, and I think he indicated there have been some initial discussions.
Given that Canadians share this deep concern about the seriousness of the situation in Russia, but also knowing that we live very much in a time of constraint, I think it is clear that any new initiative should have the support of the public as expressed in this Parliament.
I want to ask the Prime Minister if the government would commit to full parliamentary consultations on any new aid or assistance package so there can be a consensus on what Canada can do to assist the people of Russia, so we can determine where the money will come from and what purposes will be served.
The Prime Minister would agree it is important at this time to have full agreement and consent of the people of this country as expressed through all their parliamentary representatives.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the suggestion of my hon. friend that a parliamentary debate on this matter would be very appropriate. Obviously the government would be happy to lay its plan in this regard on the floor of the House of Commons. My hon. friend can comment on it, approve it, criticize it and do all the things we ought to do in a parliament.
When one looks back at the Marshall plan and the extraordinary success it had in rebuilding Europe and in maintaining vibrant democracies throughout European countries that had once been devastated, when one considers the extremely modest contributions, relatively speaking, being sought for the former Soviet Union and the timidity and the hesitation encountered in some G-7 and other industrialized countries, it is astonishing to see that this is actually taking place.

March 23, 1993
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It is time for the leaders of the world in respect of this great challenge to stop thinking like bookkeepers and to think like statesmen and visionaries because that is what is required in regard to the former Soviet Union and democracy in Russia.



Hon. Audrey McLaughlin (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada today put forward his sixth annual report wherein he said, not surprisingly, that debt reduction should be an important priority.
I want to say to the Minister of Finance that this is the same Governor of the Bank of Canada who raised the interest rates in order to control inflation. For every point those interest rates were raised $1.5 billion was added to the debt and that high interest rate policy created record bankruptcies among farms, individuals and businesses. It is the same Governor of the Bank of Canada who deliberately created unemployment in Canada.
I want to ask the Minister of Finance if he is not shocked that the Governor of the Bank of Canada does not see the failure of these policies after six years and bring out a new directive. If not, will he bring in the Governor of the Bank of Canada and tell him it will be impossible to address the debt in this country as long as that governor supports 1.5 million unemployed in this country?


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I am shocked at the rationale that the hon. leader of the NDP is using.
I think she is a supporter of lower interest rates in this country. In order to have low interest rates you have to have low inflation. That is why we have today the lowest bank rate in 21 years and the lowest mortgages in 35 years. Why is the hon. member opposed to that?
I think the hon. member also recognizes that we have to get the fundamentals right. Today's Ottawa Citizen
says: "Economic recovery ready to roll". Another headline says: "Recovery posts steady gain, analysts say".


Mr. Milliken:: You have been trying for eight years.


An hon. member:: It is 10 points down today.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: There we go again. No one likes good news over on that side of the House. Well, the news is improving, employment is improving, growth of the economy is improving, exports are improving, utilization is improving, housing sales are up and manufacturing sales are up. Why is the hon. member arguing with those results?


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker.
It is clear that if this government and the Governor of the Bank of Canada had not had the kind of fiscal and monetary policy that has been in place in the last six years and had this government not doubled the debt in the last eight and a half years, we would not need these measures for the recovery that he is talking about. We would not need to have a bigger recovery because we would not have had as big a problem.
It is clear that this government and the Governor of the Bank of Canada had implemented for a number of years a monetary policy which led to a made-in-Canada recession. Two economic analysts both respected in Canada, Informetrica and WEFA, have indicated that we would have higher employment and a greater gross domestic product if interest rates had been kept lower at that time.
I say to the minister that it is his government's policies, supported by the Governor of the Bank of Canada, that created the problems. Will he bring in a budget to address the problem because the problem is the unemployment created by this government?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party should get together with the premiers of the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia who recognize that deficits and debts are a serious problem in this country.
If she wants to talk about records in accumulating debts, I remind the hon. member that under the Liberal government the debt multiplied 11 times.
March 23, 1993

Quite frankly, as The Toronto Star pointed out: "The seeds of disaster were planted in 1975". That just so happens to follow that marriage of convenience that took place between the Liberals and the NDP between 1972 and 1974.


Audrey Marlene McLaughlin: Mr. Speaker, no province ever signed a free trade agreement that cost the country more than 100,000 jobs, and no province created the excessively high interest rates that led to a record number of bankruptcies in this country.
I have a question for the minister. This country does not want any advice about the debt. What this country needs is specific steps to create jobs. How can the minister expect us to consider the debt problem when we have about 1.5 million unemployed in this country? How can we, with an unemployment rate of nearly 11 per cent?


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, this is rather amusing. I find it strange that the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party would criticize policies like the free trade agreement and policies like the GST which are really the instruments that are driving the economy out of recession.
It is exports that are driving the economy. I know the hon. member does not believe in liberalized free trade. She believes we can build a wall around Canada and trade our way to prosperity. That is not the way we feel about it. The fact of the matter is the trading initiatives, thanks in large part to the free trade agreement, and in large part the contribution of the GST in improving the competitiveness and productivity are the two most important features which are driving this economy out of recession.


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Etobicoke North):: Mr. Speaker, a number of trade experts from the C.D. Howe Institute to the government's own recent prosperity initiative have identified as the central weakness of the North American free trade agreement the continuing absence of a
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common set of trading rules. Yet the minister has said that Canada cannot propose a parallel accord on such common trade rules in the current negotiations with Canada and Mexico because, and I quote: "Any change in the subsidies code would entail reopening the agreement".
Why does Canada not propose a parallel accord on subsidies? Can the minister explain why a parallel accord on subsidies proposed by Canada would entail reopening the North American free trade agreement while parallel accords on the environment and labour proposed by the United States do not reopen the agreement?


Hon. Michael Wilson (Minister of Industry, Science and Technology and Minister for International Trade):: Mr. Speaker, trade rules are at the heart and core of a free trade agreement. Rules related to the environment or labour matters are not at the core of a free trade agreement. If you want to have changes in the rules on the subsidies or countervail or anti-dumping, you have to reopen the agreement. That is logical.
If my hon. friend says he wants to reopen the agreement, what is he prepared to give up? What is he prepared to change? The Americans are seeking changes in the cultural exemption. They are seeking changes in the supply management system. The members of Congress are seeking changes in the dispute settlement mechanism. Those are the three priorities that the Americans want. Which one of those would my hon. friend give up in return for changes in the subsidies code?


Roy MacLaren: Mr. Speaker, the minister says that parallel accords on the environment and on labour standards are virtually meaningless. Let us be clear on this. He says that they are not central to the agreement, but that a subsidies code, which we do not have and he has never negotiated, is central to the agreement but he cannot get it.
If Canada cannot propose a parallel accord on subsidies, on common trading rules, the least the minister can do in the negotiations which resume next month is to propose a trinational panel to work out a common set of trade rules. How can Mexico and the United States refuse to participate in such a panel? Why does he not take that initiative to represent Canadian interests?

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Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, first of all, let us just make sure that my hon. friend and I are on the same wavelength here.
We both agree that the subsidies code is in the agreement. There is a subsidies code in the agreement. My hon. friend is nodding. He would like to see some improvements in that. I also would like to see improvements in that but we have to get agreement.
Where we do have agreement is in the GATT. The proposals that have been made by Director General Dunkel on the subsidies code are very acceptable to Canada. We have participated fully in the negotiations there and that, I think, would answer the questions that my hon. friend has. I would encourage him to be somewhat patient. He will get a Uruguay round and he will get the subsidies code.


Mr. Joe Comuzzi (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also to the Minister for International Trade.
Today in Washington, over 600 representatives of the American lumber and home-building industry are asking President Clinton and Congress to repeal the 6.5 per cent tax on softwood lumber.
This tax not only increases the cost of a home in the United States by over 4 per cent but it hurts every Canadian softwood producer and hurts every Canadian worker.
Will the minister ask the President directly to repeal this tax at the April 2 timber summit that is being held in Portland, Oregon?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, on April 11 will be meeting with the U.S. trade representative Mr. Mickey Kantor. I will be raising the matter of the softwood lumber issue at that time.
I know my hon. friend realizes there is a process that must be gone through. We must respect that process on both sides. I know that he has heard me say many times in the House that there was no basis on which the softwood lumber issue should have been brought to a countervailing duty position.
The government has taken a very strong position on that. In fact what we have been doing since that time is
engaging in an advocacy exercise in the United States where we have gone to the home builders in the United States. I believe that our efforts have been instrumental in part in the positions that these home builders have taken and that he just referred to.


Joseph R. (Joe) Comuzzi: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary question to the same minister and on the same issue.
We both realize that the softwood lumber industry can be the one bright spot on the Canadian resource horizon if this government ensures that sufficient assistance is given to all of these areas.
I know that in my area alone we could create 1,000 new jobs almost immediately. Will this government make loan guarantees and other resources available to all of the sawmill operators throughout Canada so they can modernize and better compete in this vital industry that is absolutely hot? This government should be taking advantage of it today.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend thinks he has put all the facts, but I believe that it is not possible in Question Period. Let me draw a couple of others.
There has been almost a doubling in the price of lumber in the last year or so. There has also been a drop in the value of the Canadian dollar so that the returns to the lumber producers in Canada, including in his constituency, have increased significantly in recent months. They now have the cash flow and can do some of the expansions that he is looking for.
That together with the changes in the Small Businesses Loans Act that my friend the Minister of Finance has brought in, plus the drop in interest rates that has resulted from the drop in inflation, all combine to put in place an environment which is very very positive for investment in that industry.


PARLIAMENTARY EMPLOYMENT AND STAFF RELATIONS ACT
Mr. Lyle Kristiansen (Kootenay West-Revelstoke):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Privy Council. In his absence, perhaps the government House leader can deal with it.
March 23, 1993

Oral Questions
Six and three-quarter years ago in June 1986, the 33rd Parliament, with all-party support, passed the government's Bill C-45 and enacted the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act, which very simply extended to workers on Parliament Hill the same basic rights to decent working conditions and health and safety laws enjoyed by all other federal employees.
Almost seven years and one election has passed since Royal Assent was given. Still the cabinet has not proclaimed the operative sections of the act, parts II and III, into law. My question is: Will the government proclaim this important basic legislation before the end of this Parliament? Just when will it act to end this obvious and continuing injustice to those who serve us in this place?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government, we say that it is not really the government that is holding up this issue. This issue deals exclusively with the House of Commons, with employees of the House of Commons and with employees of individual members.
There are certain aspects of the law which would impose on individual members some requirements that there has been some reluctance to take on. The proper forum to discuss this is the Board of Internal Economy. I will certainly relay the hon. member's concerns to the board.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Mr. Speaker, after seven years, I and I am sure the workers of Parliament find that answer absolutely up on cloud nine.
The workers we are talking about not only work directly for members of Parliament but they are all of those employees, some unionized some not, who are employed here for the House of Commons, whether they are security workers, whether they carry out the garbage, whether they cook in the kitchens or whatever else. Surely if there was to be a consultation process, they and any Canadians-who I must admit expect the wheels of government to grind slowly, especially this government's-have a right to expect that it will be less than seven years before consultations are held and something gets done. It is an obvious injustice.
Why has the government not acted at this time? What is the reason? Did it not know what it was doing or does it not know what it is doing now?


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, perhaps the hon. member was rehearsing his supplementary question and did not hear my first answer.
This is not a government question. It is a House of Commons question. There is a distinction. The Board of Internal Economy has the responsibility for this and the hon. member's party has a representative on the Board of Internal Economy. If there was such indignation in the NDP caucus all these years, how come it was never raised by the hon. member's representative?


AIRLINE INDUSTRY
Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, last December, the Minister of Transport promised in the House that he would present a plan in early February to stabilize the airline industry. Today is March 23, and since Canadian International and Air Canada had huge losses in 1992 and Nationair now needs protection from its creditors, is the minister finally prepared to announce measures to stabilize an airline industry that is on the brink?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite will surely recall that I informed the House in November that if the airlines did not impose the self-discipline required to return to profitability, we would intervene by proposing corrective measures in this House.
Since then, the two airlines have announced reductions in their capacity that are likely to improve their situation. We are continuing to examine various options available to correct the situation if the airlines do not continue in the same direction.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, the airline industry has a lot of high quality, high paying jobs that are clearly in jeopardy. It now seems clear that the

March 23, 1993
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basis of the minister's policy is that airline companies will fail.
Will the minister disclose to the House what he expects will be the total loss of employment in the airline industry when his policies have had their full effect?


Jean Corbeil: Mr Speaker, I do not believe the member is suggesting that the Government of Canada should manage the two national airlines. The representatives of these two airlines have said repeatedly over the past few weeks that overcapacity is their main problem.
As far as I am concerned, they control the capacity and can address the problem themselves if they want their industry to survive.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. He will know that Canadians are massively opposed to the purchase of the EH-101 helicopter for the sum of some $5.8 billion at a time when one million children live in poverty and 700,000 children use food banks.
I want to know from the Minister of Finance if he personally supported the purchase of the helicopters. Yes or no?


Hon. Paul Dick (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows, the government made a decision in 1987 to purchase the EH-101. It confirmed and signed a contract in October 1992. The government stands behind that decision.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting to note that the Minister of Finance did not defend the helicopter purchase.
I want to ask a supplementary question of the Minister of Finance.

The helicopters cost $5.8 billion. Some manufacturers are bankrupt and Canadians have had enough of this whole affair.
So I come back to the Minister of Finance. Is he prepared to tell us today whether or not he still supports buying these helicopters at a cost of $5.8 billion? This is a simple question.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Mr. Speaker, a simple answer for a simple question.
The Canadian government has made a decision in the national interest and in the interest of our Armed Forces and our UN peacekeeping forces. We need this equipment and we will acquire these helicopters with a 13-year program, instead of having 30, 40 or 50-year old helicopters that could endanger the lives and safety of our soldiers and those who have the heavy responsibility of defending Canada's interests.

My friend asks whether one minister is supporting this. Well, of course, all the ministers are supporting it. Only in the Liberal Party does the leader go one way and the party the other.


IMMIGRATION
Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of immigration. First I would like to congratulate him for adopting new guidelines for women refugees facing gender discrimination.
Based on these guidelines I would ask the minister if he will review the case of my constituent, Amina Mohamed, who along with her four sons is to be deported tomorrow to the U.S. and then to Somalia. As a divorced Muslim woman, she has no status and will be shunned. Her parents are dead and she faces grave danger.
Will the minister delay the departure of this woman and her sons and personally review her case based on the new gender discrimination guidelines?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, because of the Privacy Act I cannot discuss any particular case in the House of Commons. But I can undertake to review the case the hon. member mentions.


Margaret Anne Mitchell: I want to thank the minister. I want to mention also that we have an affidavit from American lawyers which proves that if
March 23, 1993

she is deported to the United States she will be ineligible for refugee status and will be deported from there.
I would ask the minister also to look at this case from a compassionate point of view, to allow this family to remain in Canada where the woman has support from her family and friends-


Mr. Speaker:: The question is becoming a brief on behalf of the lady. I understand that but it is going too far. Does the minister wish to respond?


Bernard Valcourt: Mr. Speaker, all I can assure the hon. member is that I shall be reviewing the particular case she has mentioned and will get back to her for further details or information she may have.


EL SALVADOR
Hon. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
The report of the UN truth commission on El Salvador both names and condemns those on both sides who committed heinous atrocities during the war years and attempts to contribute to reconciliation by recommending inter alia that all of the persons named be barred from public office. Yet last Saturday, almost before the ink on the report was dry, President Cristiani moved to grant amnesty to all those named, including apparently those already convicted and in jail for the infamous murder of the Jesuit priests.
Will the minister undertake to convey to President Cristiani that many Canadians who care about the peace process and who have seen him exercise constructive leadership in the past feel betrayed by this action? Will Canada urge him to implement the recommendations of the report in full?


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, yes we will do that directly with the president. Through my colleague, the Minister for External Relations, we have conveyed that directly to El Salvador's minister for economic and social development.
We will take every avenue in which to do this. We think it is a cynical use of the amnesty procedure, given the need of El Salvador to continue down the track of economic and democratic reform which we have strongly
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supported. We have strongly supported the President when he has made those moves. We will be equally strong in condemning him as a result of this very cynical action.


FISHERIES
Hon. Roger C. Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my friend, the minister of fisheries.
He will know that today in Halifax fishermen in large numbers are there to send a strong message to him and the government for the way they have handled the fisheries crisis, as did hundreds of fishermen in Sydney yesterday. They are there for very good reason. It is because the government has failed to provide a compensation package for those people who have been victimized by the severe quota cuts and the downturn in catches.
The government is putting the blocks to fishermen on the licence issue and it has the industry in a spin over its cock-eyed reform proposals.
Why is it that the minister insists on putting the boots to these people whom he should be helping?


Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, I think that all members can recognize the partisan and silly nature of that question because the record speaks for itself.
Whenever fishermen have needed to be assisted by this government they have been assisted. That goes from ice compensation, when there was an unusual ice condition several years ago; to a gear up program, to help them when they needed assistance in gearing up after having a bad year; to the Atlantic Fisheries Adjustment Program, $584 million; to the northern cod program, $780 million.
With respect to licensing and the new Atlantic ground-fish management plan and reform of the department of fisheries, there is widespread support across the country except in Newfoundland. You can never expect any support from that government for anything constructive. So we have no support from that particular government which does nothing but criticize and condemn-

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Mr. Dingwall:: I thought you liked Clyde Wells.


Mr. Speaker:: Let us try to move on.


Roger Simmons: Okay, okay, I will tell Clyde you still love him.
Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister. I want to ask the minister again, if things are as hunky-dory and as perfect as he suggested in his answer a moment ago, what is it about ail those hundreds and thousands of people in Halifax yesterday and Sydney today? Is it that in his army everybody is out of step except him? Is that the problem, that he is the perfect guy and these people are all wet? Or maybe they have a cause.
Would the minister recognize that and agree now to do something about their concerns instead of ballyhooing as he is doing here today?


John Carnell Crosbie: Well certainly the hon. member's party is not out of step, Mr. Speaker. Clyde Wells and Elijah Harper are going arm in arm to assist the hon. gentleman opposite in his next election campaign, the same two people who wrecked the Meech Lake accord. They are not out of step.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


John Carnell Crosbie: With respect to the demonstrators in Halifax harbour, when the Atlantic groundfish management plan was announced-


An hon. member:: Cheap partisan bull.


John Carnell Crosbie: You hate to have your sins of commission and omission-


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Moncton.


JUSTICE
George Saunders Rideout: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice and concerns the issue of stalking.
The stories we have read in the paper about women who are killed or violently assaulted by men who stalk them represents only the tip of the iceberg. For every week that goes by more and more women are living in terror.
Why is the minister delaying in tabling legislation to deal with stalking?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: Mr. Speaker, I already said in this House that this issue, which concerns many Canadians, also concerns me. We will come back to this House very shortly with something that will answer these questions.
Nevertheless, I must say that five sections in the Criminal Code now deal with this issue. Obviously, further to the consultations we had with police groups across Canada, especially at the symposium with my colleague, the Solicitor General, it appears that these sections do not work. We may therefore have to amend the Criminal Code for that purpose. We are now working on it and I should be able to report back to the House soon.


George Saunders Rideout: Mr. Speaker, the previous Minister of Justice as well as this minister have indicated they have been studying this issue.
Provincial ministers of justice and attorneys general are still concerned. Women are being stalked to death. How many more women must be terrorized before this government acts?


Pierre Blais: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat in English what I said in French. We will be back in the House very soon with legislation on that issue.


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Harry Chadwick (Bramalea-Gore-Malton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
The announcement of new runways at Pearson International Airport will inevitably bring additional noise problems to my residents.
Can the minister tell us when RAMPS, the noise abatement system promised for Pearson International Airport to detect flight path violators at a cost of $20 million and which sits idle, will be operational? Can he give us a specific date?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will be pleased to learn that this system will be operative in the fall of 1993.


Mr. Speaker:: There will be a single question from the hon. member for Mississauga South and a single question from the hon. member for Calgary Northeast.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Transport.
The minister has received the environmental review panel report on Pearson airport. The minister has rejected virtually all major recommendations and is proposing to create a new north-south runway 8,000 feet in length and create a new air corridor. The minister has received a copy of an objection from the panel chairman, David Kirkwood, who has indicated that he cannot proceed with any further environmental work under the circumstances.
What is the minister's response to Mr. Kirkwood?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will be pleased to know that the chairman has requested that we clarify the mandate of the panel for the next step of this evaluation which is the rest of the north-south airline needs for Ontario and we are in the process of redefining the mandate.


Mr. Alex Kindy (Calgary Northeast):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
The secretary of state in her address in February 1993 to the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry entitled "Canada and Russia-Managing Change" expressed the opinion: "The recent Minsk summit showed once again that Russia, as the accepted nuclear weapon state, has a major responsibility in ensuring the secure command and control of those weapons within the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Byelorussia and Kazakhstan".
My question to the minister: In view of the political and constitutional crisis and the possibility of a takeover
Point of Order
in Russia by the military, is she still holding the same point of view?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, yes, our position today is totally consistent with the position as reflected by the Prime Minister in his earlier answers and with the remarks I made in Moscow at that time.
We do recognize the significance of Russia as well as Ukraine and some others as nuclear powers. This is one of the reasons it is very much in Canadian interests that we be among the leaders in the G-7 and in the western world for providing aid and demonstrating support for democracy and economic reform in those countries not just Russia although Russia obviously is the most significant player at the moment.
One of the reasons we want to continue to do that is because they are nuclear powers and they do have a responsibility. This is well recognized by President Yeltsin.
Also in the hon. member's preamble he was somewhat more dramatic than I would have been in describing the situation there. While we are very concerned about the exchanges between the hard-liners and President Yeltsin at the moment I would not want to over-dramatize it in the terms that he used.


POINT OF ORDER
Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Mr. Speaker, my point of order arises out of the response to my earlier question regarding the status of the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act.
The government House leader clearly suggested it was the Board of Internal Economy and not the cabinet that had the responsibility for proclaiming legislation passed by this House. I am in a quandary. If this is his intended answer, I want to know how to proceed as we appear to have a new Constitution. Who has jurisdiction over proclaiming legislation passed by this House: the cabinet, or who?

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Mr. Speaker:: I listened very carefully to the exchange between the hon. member and the minister. The hon. member is rising now and seeks some information with respect to jurisdiction in this matter.
First of all, it is not for the Chair to enter into that debate. I say this with respect, but nonetheless I remind the hon. member that in a very real sense he is extending the debate which arose with the questions and answers.
The hon. member, of course, has the right to ask questions of the appropriate nominated member of the Board of Internal Economy if he wishes to do so. If that is the route he wishes to follow, then I am sure with consultation he could find an appropriate time to put a question of that sort.
It is certainly not for the Chair to get into an argument about where the jurisdiction is in this particular case.



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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-113, an act to provide for government expenditure restraint, as reported (without amendment) by a legislative committee; and Motions Nos. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14.
Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to debate the issue this afternoon on Bill C-113 at the report stage. This is the bill, as you know, for government expenditures.
The bill is a fairly complex one, comprised of four parts. I am going to address that part concerned with unemployment insurance because it is the most controversial part of the bill and has received most of the attention in both the media and the public eye. Perhaps more specifically and more important, it has received the most scrutiny and concern from those many unemployed Canadians who are now desperate and in the ranks of
over 1.5 million Canadians, on the issues that are being debated.
It bothers me and a lot of my constituents that in its mini budget of December 3 last the government did not come up with measures and macro-measures to put some of the unemployed back to work and save money on the deficit.
Instead it is trying to save $2.35 billion by attacking those people who need to be attacked least. It is reducing the benefits for the unemployed from 60 to 57 per cent and imposing what I believe are unfair penalties on those people who quite often, through no fault of their own, have to quit their jobs and go to work elsewhere.
There is nobody in this House who needs to be told what the unemployment insurance program is all about, but there are some changes that have been made since this group of politicians was elected in 1988. Considerable changes were made to the program that I suppose in part are responsible for this shameful measure that is being debated in the House today.
The unemployment insurance program is the federal government's largest single expenditure and exceeds national defence costs, Old Age Security costs and the total administration costs of the federal government. Its forecasted cost for 1993 is $22.5 billion.
I think the key issue here, and it has not been missed by some speakers, is the fact that until 1990 when Bill C-21 was passed, the government paid up to 26 per cent of the unemployment insurance fund. That does not happen any more. The unemployment insurance fund is now totally paid for by employers and employees. Essentially it is a private insurance fund.
I do not believe the money that will be lost by those people who are involved in pursuing their claims from 60 per cent to 57 per cent is going to be equivalent to the difficulties people will have who quit their jobs through no fault of their own. Irrespective of the changes that were made since Bill C-105, which was so unpopular it had to be changed, those people are being asked now to go to appeal. I believe it is tantamount to telling them they are guilty and have to prove themselves innocent. It
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is all very well to say they can appeal, but what does that mean?
In 1991, 191,000 UI applicants were held to have quit their jobs and were penalized. About 10 per cent or
19,000	of these decisions were reversed by various boards. As you know, we have 99 boards of appeal that include roughly 1,000 people. Canada has 450 CEC centres, but about 250 of them actually process claims. If we look at the volume of information that is involved, last year in the 29 telecentres, 8.65 million telephone calls were made on the subject of these appeals to sort out clarifications in the unemployment insurance decisions made by follow-on appeals, boards and eventually judges.
If that was worked out on the back of a cigarette package, 8.65 million telephone calls in a year at 29 centres with an average number of working days in the year, it works out to 1,300 to 1,500 calls a day. This bill tells people: "Do not worry, you are going to be guilty". In other words, it is assumed you have quit for reasons that would penalize you. If you think you have a case, come back and see us with the 1,900 other appellants, the 1,500 phone calls a day and the 250 centres across Canada.
My confidence in that is not very strong and I will tell you why. I just recently learned of a case. Reference was made to it today by the hon. member for Port Moody- Coquitlam, but not in the context I am going to report to the House. It will give some indication of the confusion and difficulty one has in actually appealing a case. This case does not even relate to an appeal. I am not going to use names because I think there will be less of a bias.
I am reporting information that was given to me on March 18. It involved a lady in one part of Canada. She was planning to quit a job she had for almost 15 years to join her fiance who was posted to another part of Canada. She had to resign because she was obviously moving to another place. Before she made this decision she contacted the UI office in her area and asked if she could collect benefits if she were to quit her job and follow her fiance. After looking at the circumstances involved, the answer from the office was yes.
She made the move and later expected to receive her benefits. After some inquiries she received two letters
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on the same day at her new address from the Unemployment Insurance Commission. One said she was entitled to the claim she had filed. The other letter from the same office said she had been disqualified from receiving benefits for seven weeks because she had quit her job voluntarily without just cause. This letter said her benefit rate would also be reduced. The point I am making here is that one letter recognized the relationship she was having with her fiance as a common-law relationship. The other did not because it was reckoned they had not been living together full time for a year. The letters were from the same office, dated the same day and more remarkably were from the same person.
How in the name of Heaven can we expect a member of Parliament, who has been invited to participate in this process by the latest circulars being passed out to employees and the public, to get a handle on a system of flexibility and judgment that allows one person to give two completely opposite answers to the same person in one day? It is bad enough to give one answer with identical circumstances to two different people. It does not excuse the poor judgment made there. But to actually send it to the same person and presumably not know it was going to the same person indicates the kind of system we are being asked to cope with if we pass this legislation.
There is a great belief that those people who quit their jobs go away and never look for work and are a total drain on the work force of Canada. The facts do not support that.
An analysis of the unemployment figures done in 1986 showed that half of all job quitters went to another job immediately. I believe the premise that is inherent in this bill has been the basis of all the vindictive discussion that is going on. The reason the government is having a lot of trouble with this bill, even in its own party, is because it has not really done its homework. Also, it is trying to save money and cut the deficit by nickel and diming and hitting those people who can least afford it.
I believe that is probably one of the most despicable things this government has done in the eight and a half years it has been in power. I for one, and I believe I am speaking for my party, will not be voting to support these measures.

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Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca):: Mr. Speaker, I just want to make a few comments before I launch into my main burden about the comments made by my predecessor. Although I agree essentially with his remarks, I think he has been misled into believing this is an attempt to save money. When he says nickels and dimes, that is part of the trap the government is trying to create.
This bill really has more to do with the harmonization required under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American free trade agreement with Mexico. I will take my friend through this step by step so he will recognize how insidious this bill is. Not only is it an attack on the unemployed, it is a capitulation to the loss of sovereignty of the nation of Canada to determine its own policies because of the signing of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
I know when I am through there will be one Liberal in this House who will stand with me when we fight the NAFTA deal and demand the abrogation of the free trade agreement. It is regrettable that the Liberal Party has abandoned its position on this issue and its trade critic has accepted NAFTA with some fancy petticoats, but it is essentially the same agreement, an extension of loss of sovereignty. When I am through speaking I know that good member will support me as the lone Liberal in this House against this particular bill.
Mr. Speaker, I know it comes to your edification that this is the second step in destroying the unemployment insurance program as we have known it in this country since we signed the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
The United States signatories to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement have insisted all along that our unemployment insurance benefits are far too beneficial to the recipients compared to the Americans.
The first assault on the Canadian unemployment insurance program, in terms of harmonization and a level playing field, was the de Grandpre report, which was tabled in this House as promised by this government to make sure that workers would allegedly be protected from the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement fall-out.
Almost every major recommendation of the government's own de Grandpre report was ignored. It went in the opposite direction. The first thing it did three years
ago was to slash the amount of weeks that a beneficiary could receive the insurance that he or she bought.
It was the first step on the road to harmonization. This unemployment insurance bill that we are dealing with now is the second chapter delivered from Washington, D.C., through the Tory government.
This is harmonization number two, and if the government keeps it up it will sell it as a video tape. It could call it "Terminator One of UIC" and now "Terminator Two of UIC". It is all written in the United States of America in Washington, D.C.
Does anyone think this government is standing up and fighting for Canadian working men and women? Mr. Speaker, I know that you cannot say because you are in the chair, but if you could speak I know you would agree with what I am saying and say that this government is heading on a sinful path.
I would further say that this government had lied to the Canadian people, but accusing the government of lying is out of order and the last thing I would do is break the rules of this House by accusing the government of lying.
Maybe some of its candidates did, and that is what bothers me. The impression was left with the Canadian people that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement would be a harmonization that would bring American standards up to Canadian, and then NAFTA would be a harmonization bringing Mexican standards up to Canadian. Nothing could be further from truth. Every single step is a cutback and a cut down to the American standards and ultimately to Mexican standards.
Some wag suggested that the Minister of Finance would end up, as a result of the NAFTA agreement and this kind of legislation, no longer selling used cars but used tacos. That is the kind of harmonization we are moving toward. Everything that is the lowest common denominator in these agreements between Canada, the United States and Mexico is the direction in which we are going.
Who is standing up and fighting for the unemployed in this country? Not the government, not the Liberal opposition. It is regrettable that both the government and the Liberal opposition have been captivated by this same course of cutting the services in this country to meet the new global economy as defined by the United States.
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This bill written in Washington, D.C. and sent up, I hope with adequate postage, to this government is an example of the kind of harmonization that is destroying the social fabric of the Canadian work place.
Why would a government move in this direction at this time unless harmonization was the goal? What the government does not talk about is the growing banking system for the poor. One of the fastest growing banking systems for the poor are the food banks. We now have more food banks in this country than we have McDonald's restaurants. Two million people a week are lining up at food banks in this country. That is a record of the Tory government, the free trade agreement and harmonization.
There are 1.5 million people unemployed and the number is rising. Instead of giving people an option to have more time to find ways of finding a job the government is cutting back on access to unemployment insurance and on the payments themselves.
It seems obvious that this government has abandoned its responsibility to Canadians, except for Canadian industries that are a pale reflection of the corporate agenda dictated by the United States and the international capital community.
It does not like to hear these words any more. It believes that the new global economy demands that we cut the guts out of everything we have fought for in this country on behalf of working men and working women. It is urging workers to be more productive with less wages. It is urging men and women to not dare to give up their jobs, even if they are harassed or the working conditions are subhuman, because they will be punished under this bill if they do so.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, two minutes. I thought for a moment that you were giving me a salutary greeting but I understand it was just the two-minute signal. Nonetheless, I appreciate your friendliness.
It is unbelievable that this House is not jam-packed for every second of this debate because this debate is at the crux of the social fabric of which this nation is built and which is being abandoned by the Conservative government at the behest of its erstwhile partners in the American business community who are dictating the policy for the Canadian nation.
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This bill is an example, quietly and relentlessly pushing its way through this House, of how the Tories have capitulated to outside capital interests to destroy a competitive edge we had in terms of Canadian working men and women.
What is furthermore regrettable is that while image is being pursued by the mass media around the Tory leadership candidates, not one of them has been asked whether or not he or she will vote against this bill to show that they are different than the present Prime Minister of this country.
They can change a man's suit or a woman's hair-do but that does not change that person's policy. It does not matter a fig who is leading that party over there because they support this kind of legislation which hurts Canadian working men and women.
My dear friend across is mumbling but I do not interpret those mumbles other than as a subdued confession that he, too, will abandon the possibility of running for office simply out of shame at what this bill is doing.
I know that my time is up in this debate, but I want to warn the government that I will be relentless in my pursuit of the fact that none of the leadership candidates of the Conservative Party has taken any position other than to support this destruction of unemployment insurance as we know it. Let every woman and man in this country know exactly what the government is doing.


Mr. Dennis Mills (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I do not always agree with the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, but after listening to the latter part of his remarks I do support what he has to say. I find it amazing, and I said this yesterday in the House, that we are almost one month into the Conservative leadership campaign and with the exception of the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore there has not been another member in the Conservative Party who has been advancing debate or promoting ideas in terms of what he or she stands for.
I agree with the New Democratic Party member. I guess we are going to get the real test in about three or four months but when we are knocking on doors in mid-July or late August, whenever the government decides to call the election, we can be sure that the people of Canada are not going to forget about the GST, the devolution of powers that this Conservative government has orchestrated over the last 10 years, or the dismantling of national institutions.

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When this piece of legislation came forward I was trying to figure out where it was coming from.
When I returned to my constituency office, about one week or so after the first session that we had on this bill and after parts of it were introduced during the economic statement, the people that supported this bill in my community were the people who seemed to be doing okay in terms of their own jobs. For starters, I must say there were very few. They would say: "The government is really doing a good job of cleaning up the abuse".
I reflected for a while and I said that now we know the genesis of where this bill is coming from. This bill was designed to try to send a signal to Canadians that in the name of efficiency the government was going to clean up the Unemployment Insurance Act.
It is a cruel piece of legislation when we have an economy in which 1.6 million people are on the unemployment insurance rolls. The latest Statistics Canada numbers show us that 2.2 million people are on the welfare rolls in this country. This piece of legislation does nothing for the people who are out of work.
It does absolutely nothing for the dignity of people who are in tenuous situations in companies. We have already discussed at length the situations that can exist in companies in terms of harassment being a cause for someone to want to leave, and we have discussed how they are not protected under this bill as clearly as they should be.
This bill was packaged, created and put here to appeal to the right wing in this country. Everything now is done in the name of deficit and debt reduction. Those who are most disadvantaged in our community seem to be on the short end of the stick.
The government has missed the whole point of why it is here. Governments are not here for the advantaged. It is not here just to develop policy for the advantaged. Governments exist to design and develop policy for those in our community who are disadvantaged. When a bill like this comes through the House it violates the whole
first premise of why we are in government. It does not meet the test of looking after those who are disadvantaged.
I stand here today in total opposition to this bill. We in the Liberal Party are not against cleaning up any abuse in the system. We do not tolerate people who are trying to take advantage of the system.
There are ways of ferreting out those who take advantage of the system. Instead of spending all of this time trying to focus on the abuse factor, which the government has said costs somewhere in the neighbourhood of $200 million out of the close to $35 billion that was paid out last year in unemployment insurance and welfare, and taking all this time to restructure the Unemployment Insurance Act so dramatically in the name of that $200 million, this government should be creating hope and designing policies that will spark or ignite small business people in this country so that they can put people back to work.
With the exception of the Small Businesses Loans Act, this government has done very little to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and that is where our greatest hope for new job creation lies.
When I go door to door in my riding people tell me the number one priority of any government in this country right now is to put people back to work. This particular bill in no way, shape or form does anything to meet that objective.


Mr. Phillip Edmonston (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House this afternoon to speak to Bill C-113, because according to me and according to my colleague, although this bill is apparently supposed to improve the present situation, if we consider the polls in Quebec and elsewhere, it is clear most people are against this kind of reform, because they do not perceive it as such. Now there are polls and polls. The Tories opposite say that the political polls confirm their popularity, but I am talking about the popularity of this particular bill.
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Let me explain. What strikes me most about this bill is that it is a denial of the basic rights of the consumer, or the policyholder if you prefer. It has often been said that Bill C-113 is basically an insurance contract between employer and employee.
However, I remember that when I was president of the Automobile Protection Association I had to intervene in litigation between insurance companies and policyholders. I can tell you that if this was an insurance contract and I had to advise a consumer, I would tell him never to sign a contract that contains so many denials of basic rights.
I will give you a few examples to show that the so-called improvements in Bill C-113 are likely to make the situation worse and take away basic rights we already have and which are unique.
For instance, in criminal law we can compare this with the rights of a policyholder. It is up to the system to prove the guilt of the accused. This means that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. But as you and I understand Bill C-113, that is not what happens. Under the present unemployment insurance system it is up to the claimant to prove the validity of his claim, and he will receive no money until he has done so.
In criminal law, when there is a doubt the accused is always innocent until proven guilty. In the case of unemployment insurance, the claimant is guilty until he can prove otherwise.
Imagine the case of someone in need of money and acting in good faith when he or she asks the government for help. Now we have a problem, because the government wants to investigate. The investigation may take a week, a month, two months, three months, and during that time, you do not have a cent and your insurance contract-let us call it that-is not paid up. You will get no compensation until the investigators-who are paid for what they do, so they are in no hurry-have finished their work.
This is a pretty serious problem, because the government theoretically-, and I say theoretically, because I can hardly believe the government is all bad and it must have wanted to do the right thing but the difference between theory and practice is staggering.
I remember when people filed claims with their car insurance companies, for example, and that is not as critical as unemployment insurance, but car insurance claims were usually paid in two or three weeks. Most insurance companies pay as soon as they receive the claim. When the government says that payment is made very quickly, in a week or two, I do not agree. We have figures showing that it takes months and months and in that time people are stressed. Most people who have to wait are in a real fix.
I would like to give you another example from the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) in Quebec. The CSN has a striking example: someone works all his life for the same employer, quits his job and then works somewhere else for 15 weeks. That person would be refused benefits if the requirement to work 16 weeks applies. With Bill C-113, the bill before us today, all insurable weeks from the first job would no longer count for anything, even if premiums were collected during those weeks.
Mr. Speaker, if you were a steelworker and had worked for 20 years and decided to change jobs, but had only worked 13 weeks at the new job, you would not be eligible for unemployment insurance. That is not right, even if the Conservatives opposite find it funny. It is not funny. Knowingly putting people in a tight situation is not at all funny. It is shameful.
Instead of criticizing the government all the time, today I would like to give some help to people who want their claims to be processed with some speed and efficiency. I would like to give those who need unemployment insurance some examples or suggestions to have their claims processed better. This comes from a publication by employees of various unemployment insurance centres.
First, they say you must arrive early. If you want good service arrive around 8.45 a.m. and you will probably have better service.
Second, if you want to begin a job retraining course, because you want to change your line of work and do something else, it is best not to apply in January or September because they are really loaded with claims from people in those months. In months other than January and September you have a better chance of obtaining a retraining course. Also, something very

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important, if you are already receiving UI benefits, you have a better chance of getting one of these courses.
Third, apply very promptly. As soon as you know you will be let go or no longer work for the same company, you should apply right away because your two-week waiting period starts from the time of your application, not the time you lose your job. So apply right away and you will wait at most two weeks.
If you need a cheque because you are really in a bind and do not know what to do you can still ask the government to issue you a cheque right away. They have a 24-hour service and if your claim takes too long and you have bills to pay, ask for a cheque right away.
Finally, and this is very important, if you have problems with unemployment insurance, contact your member of Parliament. Conservative, Liberal or New Democrat, we are able to help you because things do go a little faster and more efficiently when a member of Parliament is involved. Also, you can always appeal. Apparently, about 25 per cent of people win their appeals against the government, so you have one chance in four of winning your claim if you are not satisfied with the decision of the Unemployment Insurance Commission.
Finally, keep a record of everyone you spoke to, because not only politicians forget. UI officials can often forget who you are and what you asked for.
With these suggestions, even if Bill C-113 as now proposed puts you in a bad spot, perhaps in your case you can improve your situation. But one thing is sure. With this Bill C-113 there is no chance of improving your situation.


Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, in speaking on Bill C-113, I would like to follow up on what the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood was saying about the government's role.
The government's role in a society that considers itself civilized is to counteract the often cruel forces of a completely free market system, to recognize that from time to time people suffer from changes in the economy, people are hurt by the decisions of others, and to assure them that society and the community are ready to support and help them make the necessary adjustments with a view to resuming a normal life as soon as possible, so they can earn a salary and have enough money to feed their family and pay their mortgage.

When a government forgets that its role is to find a balance in society to assure that forces beyond their control do not destroy individuals or families, when it forgets its obligation to support through a period of difficulty those who have been hurt by its decisions and the decisions of others, then we truly start to have a society that is less civilized. That is really what this bill is all about.
This bill is about a government forgetting that economic forces are at work in the world hurting people badly and forcing them out of employment. I have to repeat the figures. We now have over five million Canadians, one-fifth of our population, without jobs and subsisting on either unemployment insurance or welfare. That really is a national disgrace.
This legislation tells us the system that many of these people have contributed to for all their working lives, the unemployment insurance system, will no longer be there to help them.
I will go back to the case that to me is the most indicative of what this bill is all about. It is based on the assumption that people who are not working do not want to work. It is not because there are not enough jobs or their skills may no longer be needed by their employers. It is not because the conditions of work may have become so harsh that they have become intolerable or so unsafe that they have become unhealthy or so cruel that they have become personally unbearable, which are some of the reasons people leave their jobs. I do want to talk a bit about what has become the beacon for what is wrong with this bill. That is the case of a person, usually a woman, who leaves her job because of harassment.
We have a very bureaucratic system and it says to this woman that she still qualifies for unemployment insurance, but only if she made sure that before she left her job that she told the harasser that she did not like what he was doing and only if she made sure that if she had a supervisor she reported it to her supervisor, and only if she did all of those bureaucratic things.
Let me tell the House about some of the women I know who find and have found themselves in that kind of a situation. They are not going to be helped at all by the assurances of the minister and the voices on the government side of this House saying that it does not really include them, because it does.
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I will explain what happens. There are many women My colleague mentioned that a booklet has been who have gone through a period of supporting their prepared by the people who work for Employment and families, often on their own, often living on welfare after Immigration Canada. These are the people on the front the break-up of a marriage. They start working them- lines who deal with desperate men who have lost their selves out of that situation, go through a period of job and do not have the money to feed their children or re-education and retraining and get back into the work pay the rent, who suddenly run into a morass of rules and force. What they are mostly lacking is confidence. It regulations that says that they are not going to have any takes them a while to get back into the work force and money for weeks and weeks and weeks and how they get build up their confidence.	along is none of the bureaucracy's concern.
They are often working in small places where there is not a union, there is not a system that tells them that they do not have to put up with harassment. They are being harassed.
Now, if people have just started a new job and have not been in the work force for ten years they have lost a lot of their confidence. They are not going to turn around to the person who is harassing them, to their boss, and confront them on it. They are simply not going to do that. They are just going to feel humiliated, belittled, and demeaned, and they are going to walk off the job. Then they are not going to qualify for unemployment insurance.
Most women who find themselves in that position will not have read the Canadian Eluman Rights Act. They will not know the rules they have to follow until afterwards, when it is too late. Other people who find themselves working in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, who are required sometimes to handle dangerous chemicals or work in an environment in which their health is threatened, are not necessarily going to know what bureaucratic steps they have to take to satisfy some person in the Department of Employment and Immigration that they really had no choice but to quit that job.
They are going to leave, and so they should because no worker in this country should have to put up with working in unsafe conditions.
That is what is wrong with this bill. It does not recognize unemployment insurance as a system that people have contributed to throughout their working lives and from which they are entitled to draw when they need it.
It is an attitude that says: Punish people if they are not prepared to work under any conditions, for any wage, for any employer.
The people who work day to day and hear the stories of the women who are out of a job, cannot get training, and even in our own government are told that they must have a grade 12 education or they cannot have the minimum unskilled job in the Government of Canada, have now been told they cannot distribute these helpful hints to their clients.
This is typical of the other section of the bill, which has been less debated. It says to all Public Service employees, whether they are earning $18,000 or $160,000, that there is no increase for them next year.
We are not going to solve the problems of this country by confronting, blaming, or victimizing other Canadians. We are going to solve the problems of this country by working together, and that includes working with our employees, sitting down and asking them to give us their ideas on how the Government of Canada can operate more efficiently and how we can better serve their clients.
What does this government do? It says that they are to blame. The entire federal Public Service costs us 5.6 per cent of the national budget, but on their backs we are going to solve all the economic woes of the country. We are not going to let them be helpful to their clients. This kind of measure, looking after those who are doing well and punishing those who are having a hard time, is not the way to solve the problems of the country. This bill is typical of that approach and that is why I am against it and that is why we are against it on this side of the House.


Mr. Raymond Skelly (North Island-Powell River):: Mr. Speaker, one of the main issues in this matter before us is the question of whether somebody who is forced out of unemployment insurance will have a fair hearing.

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The question has to be judged by a number of activities before these quasi-judicial appeal procedures that go on within the federal government. The issue has been largely addressing one aspect of this bill, and it is far broader than the single issue of fairness. The previous speaker talked about the individual who is harassed on the job, quits, and does not qualify for unemployment insurance and then goes through an appeal process. Will that person who quits justifiably and goes before that appeal board be reinstated or provided with unemployment insurance?
The issue is whether people can obtain a fair hearing. The opposition says that on the balance of probabilities they will not because it is rigged. The government on the other side, and it is the same thing with the minister, day after day stands up and says that they will and the process is fair so let it continue.
I would just like to read into the record the report of the standing committee for regulatory scrutiny. The ninth report of that committee on May 5, 1988 discussed the process of fair procedure before the committee. It talked about these appeal boards, including the unemployment insurance appeal board. The report said: "For the reasons which follow, your committee has concluded that these regulations lack the necessary procedural safeguards to ensure that the appeal process is consistent with basic requirements for fairness and equity".
Further along in the report it said: "The committee has, on numerous occasions, requested the Public Service Commission to remedy this situation by adopting additional regulations so as to better define the rights and duties of parties taken to appeal under legislation and under government appeal boards". The committee was co-chaired by two people, one from the other place and one from here.
The question is whether people could obtain a fair hearing before a committee. I would like to just read another item into the record. It involves a case heard before the Supreme Court of Canada, court file No. 20882 in which Leila LeCorps-Tremblay was trying to deal with the appeal board of the Public Service Commission. It uses examples in this document, in the reasons for the leave to appeal. It states that:
The Federal Court of Appeal erred in failing to find that the applicant had denied to her a right to a fair trial in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice before an impartial tribunal as
a result of the Public Service Commission Appeal Board's decisions
to:
(i)	proceed in the unavoidable absence of the applicant from the hearing and overrule unjustifiably the expert advice on which her absence was based;
(ii)	interfere with or permit the interference with the applicant's ability to communicate with and instruct her counsel and advisors;
(iii)	decline motions to grant an adjournment so that the applicant could adequately examine her personnel file in the department and could receive, study and confer about copies of documents necessary for reasonable disclosure of the accusations against her and disclosure of the evidence on which such accusation was based;
(iv)	instruct the applicant not to make any written record of the appeal board proceedings.
The notice of leave to appeal goes on to criticize the appeal board for:
(i)	expunging from the record documentary evidence submitted by the applicant and refusing to accept documents properly introduced into the record and to assign exhibit numbers to them;
(ii)	failing to conduct the proceedings in an official language comprehensible to counsel for the applicant after receiving prior written notice from the applicant of her choice of language, without reasonable cause or justification;
(iii)	unreasonably denying the applicant recesses and adjournments without apparent cause or justification;
(iv)	repeatedly interrupting the applicant in her testimony and submissions;
(v)	refusing the applicant permission to tape record the proceedings;
(vi)	permitting the respondent department access to an electronic recording of the proceedings while denying the applicant such rights;
(vii)	refusing to exclude witnesses in order to ensure the independence of testimony;
(viii)	refusing to grant the applicant's requests for scheduling of witnesses while granting similar scheduling requests to the respondent department.
It goes on and on.
The interesting thing about this is the response by the Department of Justice to this listing of reasons for leave to appeal. It never addressed any of these procedural abnormalities or denials of fair treatment. Unfortunately we have a situation in which these appeal boards do not have a fair and due process.
The argument in this House, which has gone on and on and on, about Bill C-113 is that by the time these people go to appeal where errors have been made or problems have happened, such as the case of harassment or quitting with just cause, they are in a situation in which the government has argued there will be a fair process in front of the appeal boards.
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This is an argument that with government appointees on that appeal board it will wind up not giving due process. It is a serious example in which natural justice is compromised in the allegations here, and it is never answered.
At this stage of the game all that can happen is the hope that in the other place there will be substantial hearings on this bill and that closure today will be rectified. It is unfortunate that the elected representatives of Canadians again face closure in this House, that they are unable to examine in careful detail this odious piece of legislation, particularly when even a committee of this House has recommended improvements in the regulations for due process before these committees, which have been continuously denied.
Our only hope lies with the place next door. It is ironic that we as members of the House of Commons wind up appealing to the other place, as odious as it is, to hold decent and fair hearings on this matter.
Hopefully, when it calls those hearings and looks in detail at the committee report, rather than just rubber stamping it, the committee will call witnesses before it such as Leila LeCorps-Tremblay, Nancy Jennings, Rachel LaBelle, Michael Cassidy, Jack Miller, and Val Bourgeois. The last person is an individual who went before a House of Commons committee. At the end of his testimony the Tories decided at that committee that freedom of speech does not apply and expunged his entire testimony from the record and then let another individual put virtually the same testimony on the record.
Hopefully, in the other place when its committee's hearings are held freedom of speech will be available and Val Bourgeois will be able to speak freely. Lauren Hopkins is another witness it may want to hear.


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to remind the hon. member and this House, regarding the testimony of Mr. Val Bourgeois, that the issue was raised in this House and brought to the attention of the Chair. The Chair did recognize that the committee had every right to make the decision it made.


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, a majority government is justified in doing virtually anything, including suppressing freedom of speech. My concern is that we can no longer assure that there is freedom of speech. The hope is that in the other place when it decides to hold committee hearings on this matter it will look at a broad range of witnesses who have had some experience with these government appeal boards and the lack of due process.
I hope that it will take the example of the ninth report of the standing committee on regulations and examine its recommendations for implementing due process, so that when people go before these boards, in particular the unemployment insurance board, they will be guaranteed a fair hearing with due process.
Those are the remarks I would like to make. I hope that they will have the opportunity to be considered since the government, with closure, has imposed its kind of free speech.


Hon. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure how many times I have risen to speak under government closure. The government is applying a time limit on debate in order to limit the remarks of various members of this House who are speaking on behalf of the constituents they represent.
Bill C-113 was brought in by the government on February 17, 1993. It will reduce the unemployment insurance benefits from 60 per cent to 57 per cent of insurable earnings as of April 4, 1993. People who voluntarily leave their jobs without just cause, or lose their jobs through personal misconduct, will no longer receive unemployment benefits.
A board of referees is to be given clear powers to protect the privacy of victims of sexual or other harassment, if they come forward and make an issue of it. But I believe this is going too far for women in the work place who simply cannot condone the harassment they sometimes go through and choose to quit their jobs in order to escape.
Workers who leave their jobs through voluntary severance and downsizing will be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.

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Across Canada we have 1.5 million people unemployed, according to the unemployment insurance statistics. We have an unemployment rate of 10.8 per cent. In Ontario the unemployment rate is 10 per cent or 532,000 people. In my own constituency, on the Lambton county side, there are 921 persons on unemployment insurance. However there are 2,428 people listed as being employable whose benefits have run out, for a total number of people who are unemployed of 3,349. On the Middlesex side of the constituency the total is 910 people.
We have five million Canadians now looking for work,
1.5	million listed in unemployment insurance figures. In addition we have 3.5 million employable people looking for work whose unemployment insurance benefits have run out.
In one town pf 10,000 people in my constituency, three major lay-offs, due to the free trade agreement, have resulted in the loss of 465 jobs. The government's response was to reduce the staff at the unemployment insurance office in that town from two persons to one person and the office is open five hours a day. That is clearly unacceptable.
As I meet with the people, with those workers who lost their jobs through these plant closings due to the free trade agreement, I am becoming very angry with the way these workers are being treated. These people have paid into unemployment insurance for years. In fact, one man who was in my office last week had been at one of these plants for 27 years and contributing to unemployment insurance and now must be available for work if the opportunity opens up.
He has never once been unemployed in those 27 years, never once collected unemployment insurance, and now he is taking counselling and would like to be retained but it appears as if he has fallen through the cracks in the system. He is becoming very frustrated and upset, to say the very least. Like others in this town who have lost their jobs through plant closings as a result of the free trade agreement and whose insurance benefits have run out they have had to resort to social assistance. That is
placing an increasing burden on the municipalities, the counties and the province. These people deserve better.
I suggest this latest move by the government is to try to bring the Canadian system into line with that of the U.S., as in other cases to harmonize our system with theirs.
The officials from the Canada Employment and Immigration Centres have been instructed to give the claimants the benefit of the doubt in establishing just cause when they walk away from their jobs whether it is through sexual harassment or other reasons. Perhaps for health reasons they have to walk away or perhaps it is because of allergies they may have to chemicals or other products they are working with.
It goes on to say that the Canada Employment and Immigration Centres will receive special training including legislative knowledge training, adjudication principles and practices, technical and automation input training, and awareness training dealing with sexual harassment, discrimination, child care problems and unsafe working conditions.
This is of little consequence when only one person is staffing the office and it is open only five hours a day.
The unemployment insurance program is the federal government's single largest expenditure at $22.5 billion forecast for 1993. Much of this, as I indicated earlier, is through the job losses and plant closings in this country since 1989.
More money is spent in the unemployment insurance program than on national defence, old age security, or the total administration of the federal government.
Before 1990 the federal government's contribution to the unemployment insurance fund was approximately 20 per cent. But in 1990 the government decided that general revenues could no longer contribute to the unemployment insurance fund.
We warned at that time what was going to happen. Since that time the fund which had been financed by unemployment insurance premiums, which are paid for by the employees and employers, has run up a deficit of
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Government Orders
$4.7 billion. It is estimated it is going to increase to much higher than that by the end of the year.
The government expects that cutting the benefit rate from 60 per cent to 57 per cent and eliminating UI benefits for voluntary leavers and those who were fired from jobs will save a total of $2.45 billion over two years. Nonetheless, even with these cuts the deficit in the UI fund is expected to rise to $7.6 billion by the end of 1993.
It is clear therefore that the effect of the changes in Bill C-113 will be negligible. If the government's purpose in introducing these changes was to control spending, as stated in the December 2 economic statement, it can be said that the government has failed.
How many people are abusing the unemployment insurance system? It is estimated that the figure is less than 1 per cent of people who are taking advantage of the system. We know that in the past quite often construction workers would work over the summer months, the spring months the fall months and be laid off in the winter because of the harsh climate which makes construction impossible. They are referred to by the government as cheaters. I take exception to that description because it is impossible for people who work in construction to pour concrete and that sort of thing in the winter months to find work all year round. These are not cheaters. These are people whose profession dictates that they have to work during the seasonal months of the year.
This is a very harsh bill. It is another chip out of the social programs we have built up over the years. Less than 1 per cent of these people are taking advantage of the system but here we have a government cutting the benefits at a time when we have factory closings creating unemployment at rates we have never seen for years and years in this country.
The Canadian people and the workers deserve better. The Government of Canada has to accept the responsibility and ensure we make jobs even more secure than they are at the present time by taking a hard look at what the unemployment rate is going to be from the fall-out of the North American free trade agreement.
We know what the wage rates are down there. Make them come up to our standards. Make them bring up their social programs to our programs then we will compete, but do not take away the social benefits in this country that have been built up over so many years. They are among the best in the world.


Mr. Jack Shields (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, my first remark is to correct some questionable things which may have been inadvertently said by the opposition.
The previous speaker mentioned harmonizing the system. For example, I have heard it said we are harmonizing the system with that of the United States because of the free trade agreement. That is just not fact. It is just not fact at all because in the United States it is necessary to have 20 weeks of employment so that a claimant can draw 50 per cent of the wages for a duration of six months.
We are quite different. We have 10 to 20 weeks, 60 per cent of the wages and the unemployed will be able to draw it over a period of 12 months.
Let us look at some of the other countries in the OECD. We do not have any agreement with Germany, for example, but it requires 52 weeks employment over a three-year period to draw 63 per cent over 12 months.


Ron Fisher: What is the unemployment rate in Germany?


Jack Wendele Shields: In Italy 26 weeks over two years to be able to draw 15 per cent-
I find it very difficult. I sat and listened to the speeches from the other side. I am sorry that the member from across the way does not understand. He does not like to hear anything that would disagree with what he thinks.
For example, in Italy an employee must work 26 weeks over two years, to be able to draw 15 per cent of the wage for six months. That is 15 per cent of his salary.
Then we go to Japan. In one year they have to work 26 weeks and can draw 48 per cent of their salary. We do not have an agreement with these people.
In Great Britain, they have to have worked for one year and they can get 16 per cent of their salary for 12 months. That is 16 per cent of their salary for 12 months.

March 23, 1993
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Let us look at some of the facts and some of the problems that we have. A total of $19.3 billion was paid out in UI benefits in 1992, including $15.4 billion in regular benefits, $1.77 billion in special benefits, that is for sickness, maternity, parental and adoption, $1.84 billion in developmental uses and I am speaking about training, work sharing, job creation, self-employment assistance and that sort of thing and $296 million went to the fishermen's and fisherwomen's benefits.
Let us look at some other figures. Unemployment payments have been rising. In 1990 there was a surplus of $2.2 billion in the UI account. Now the account has a deficit of $4.7 billion. Even with changes the total UI account deficit is expected to rise sharply and to reach $7.6 billion by the end of 1993.
We have to slow the rate of growth in the expenditures. We have to curb the UI abuse and there is abuse, contrary to what my friends across the way say. We have to try to get the Canadians who want to work back to work as quickly as possible.
The UI program is an insurance program originally designed to provide temporary income support for men and women who through no fault of their own lose their jobs.
Only those who choose to be unemployed will lose benefits. People who voluntarily seek unemployment will lose their benefits and, in an effort to curb the abuse, only those who agree or feel that they want to get out of the work force will lose their benefits.
We have all sorts of scenarios painted by my friends on the opposite benches. What if a woman is sexually harassed? If she is sexually harassed and quits her job, she has a reason for quitting her job. It has been arranged so that she can make her claim on sexual harassment behind closed doors, in camera, away from the employer who may be or may not be sexually harassing the individual. The government has gone miles to cover those kinds of things.
Then the government says well, if somebody has to quit because he has an allergy and cannot work in the work place, that is a valid reason for quitting. He then would be eligible for unemployment insurance.
The fallacious arguments we are hearing from the opposition benches just do not hold water when people sit down and examine the legislation.
We hear that this is a crime and that we are bringing in closure. We are not putting closure on this legislation. We have put time allocation on this legislation. We on the government benches sat and listened to the tirades from the opposition benches without putting up a speaker. We have not put up a speaker for the last couple of hours. I got up only in an attempt to clarify and to put something on the record that should be placed there.
Fairness in this whole legislation is the key. It is not fair to pay people who choose unemployment. If they choose unemployment, they should not be paid unemployment insurance.
If I have my house insured and I deliberately set it on fire and then turn around and ask the insurance company to pay for my loss, surely it would not be fair. The same applies in every insurance situation that we can think of.
It is not fair for someone to choose to be unemployed. There are people who choose to be unemployed who earn just enough points or weeks to qualify for unemployment insurance. They then choose to quit so that they can draw unemployment insurance after a certain penalty period. It is not fair to those who are paying into the system year after year.
I heard my friend from the other side say that he had a client who came into his office who had worked for 27 years. He had been paying unemployment insurance for his whole working life. He worked for this one company for 27 years and he felt really hard done by because he was not able to collect unemployment insurance after paying into it for his whole working life. I have those people come to my office also who say: Gee, I have paid into this for 30 years. I have now taken early retirement and I should be able to draw unemployment insurance.
Insurance is insurance. When you get out of the work force, whether it is through voluntary retirement, retirement or you decide to choose unemployment, surely to goodness you do not expect the unemployment insurance fund to pay.
They say what about those guys who are fired for misconduct? If someone was working for me and was paying into the unemployment insurance fund, and all of those employees who are working for me were religiously paying into it, and then through misconduct for theft or for a number of other reasons is fired, surely he should not be receiving unemployment insurance. He
March 23, 1993

did something in a deliberate fashion and he got fired. He chose to be unemployed by his misconduct.
The fallacious arguments from the opposition just do not hold water. I hope that people will look at this and read the legislation. This is not closure, it is time allocation. If we did not have time allocation these people on the opposite benches would be standing up day after day going through the same fallacious arguments that they are going through now. We have heard them ever since the legislation was introduced into the House of Commons.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite has just said this was not closure.

That is about the same as telling us they did not use the meat axe, they just used the broad axe. That is much better and Canadians should be relieved at that. Well, they are not.

Mr. Speaker, if someone was drowning, what would you throw him or her, a lifebuoy or an anchor? What this government is doing is just that, weighing down the neediest Canadians. Canadians who need a lifebuoy are being dragged down toward the bottom by the very government that caused the massive unemployment that we are faced with now in this country. The government intends to take away about $2.4 billion from unemployed Canadians.

If that was not enough, the government was planning-get a load of this-to set up a toll-free line to denounce suspected cheaters of the program. I guess the toll-free line would have gone this way: 1-800-RAT-FINK. I suppose that was the number that the government was planning.
Government Orders
Yes, it was true. The minister said it. The minister confessed and two days later in the House of Commons he recanted.


An hon. member:: No.


Don Boudria: Of course he recanted. He had to recant on many things, but such is life. However, Canadians will remember this minister.


Jack Wendele Shields: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I am sure that my hon. friend would not want to deliberately mislead the House, but the facts are that this was something that was created in the bureaucracy as a suggestion to the minister that the minister never accepted and that was the 1-800 number or the RAT-FINK line as my hon. friend has indicated.
It was never the intention of this government to install a line and that member over there knows that. He knows that if we look at the record it did not come from the minister and it did not come as a policy. It came up from the civil servants through the bureaucracy.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, this is not a point of order, nor a matter of privilege. It is not even a valid point that the hon. member opposite is raising. He knows full well that it took the minister two or three days before backing down. By not saying anything at the time, the minister in fact agreed to this RAT-FINK telephone line. Meanwhile, Canadians are not getting the help-


Jean-Marc Robitaille: Mr. Speaker, as you know, loads of suggestions are regularly made to our ministers. I think it is only normal that they should take the time to-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The Chair is willing to show some tolerance, but this is a matter of opinion and, strictly speaking, it does not qualify as a point of order.


Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, meanwhile, there are groups of workers in my riding who care for those who are unemployed. I am referring in particular to the Hawkesbury unemployment action center run by Mr. Guy Belisle. My hon. colleagues know how fond I am of Hawkesbury. I mention it often in my speeches in this House.

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Government Orders
This group was set up in January 1992 with the Fibreworld plant committee. Seventy-five workers had been laid off when the plant closed.
These people have assessed the workers' needs. Some have gone back to school to complete grade 12. Fifteen took a course in heating and cooling systems at the Cite collegiale, in Hawkesbuiy. These people have managed to find new jobs. That is the kind of thing we should be doing as a government: training people.


Mr. Hudon:: That is what we are doing.


Don Boudria: I heard opposite, my hon. colleague from Beauhamois-Salaberry, say: "That is what we are doing".

I want to bring a case to your attention, Mr. Speaker. I have in my constituency, like all others here, small business development centres. They administer the selfemployment assistance program of the government. That is a program by which unemployed workers can convert their unemployment benefits to start up a form of small business and in that way gain meaningful employment.
Let me describe what goes on. The Cornwall office of Employment Canada administers this program for Stormont, Dundas, Glengarry and Prescott counties plus the city of Cornwall. This year it got $200,000 to administer this program.
That might sound like a lot of money. Two hundred thousand dollars is a lot more than I have and a lot more than many of my constituents have, but the $200,000 does not even cover those contracts which are already signed for this year. In other words, we cannot put any new people on the program and those who are already approved might not even get the funds that were approved for them. That is how bad it is.
A constituent phoned me today. She wants to start a marketing and distribution system for goat milk in the riding. It has been approved. A complete business plan has been approved and everything. This is going to work. Everyone has agreed it is going to work. Everyone agrees this person qualifies, but the government, after having approved her for the program, said: "Well, you know the
money that we said we would give you when we approved this, well, we are not going to give it to you because we do not have the money that we said we would give you". That is not a very honest way for the government to proceed. That is just one example.
A lady in Apple Hill in my riding, a constituent, phoned me this morning in desperation, trying to get this government to advance the funding under that program. Why is it not there? Why is that not what the government is talking about today in the House of Commons, all these people who are trying to find ways to get back to work using government programs that have already been announced and approved and they still cannot get them? Why?
Are we talking about putting more funds in the self-employment assistance program? I am right now, but not the government across the way. What it is concentrating on is stopping these alleged cheaters.
Government members say that those who leave their job with so-called just cause will continue to receive benefits. Any member who has ever defended an unemployment insurance case knows better and knows that by the time you can win one of these cases, and that is just winning it at the local level of Employment Canada, the case is often four or five months old. Anyone who has ever appealed one of those to the courts, to the umpire, who is a really a judge of the Federal Court, will know that it sometimes takes a year.
What point is it to tell someone a year later, possibly when they are bankrupt or have been on welfare for a long time, that the adjudication of their case a year ago was wrong. Big deal.
What about the ones involving sexual harassment and so on? They go before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We know how much of a hurry it is in. These people take forever to even return a phone call from an MP, let alone adjudicate on one of the cases. They just do not give answers. I am sorry to speak disrespectfully of employees of a quasi-judicial body, but maybe if they were even so kind as to return phone calls every now and then I would have a bit more respect for them. In any case, when they do adjudicate, two years or two and a half years later, the discussion and the adjudication is academic.

I am against this bill. I urge all my colleagues to vote against this bill.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Before resuming debate, it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception-National defence; the hon. member for Hastings-Frontenac- Lennox and Addington-Indian affairs; the hon. member for Calgary Northeast-Revenue Canada; the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier-Language minorities.
The hon. member for Nickel Belt.


Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on the report stage of Bill C-113.
I want to congratulate my colleague, the member for Timmins-Chapleau for the excellent amendments he has introduced. I want to particularly address my remarks to Motions Nos. 16, 17 and 18.
The first thing that strikes me, and it has struck a lot of people who are familiar with the way unemployment insurance works, is that a person who applies for UI has a two-week waiting period. Often it takes longer than the two-week waiting period for the agents at UI to collect all the relevant information so the decision can be made on the application. Often it will run to three or four weeks. The client does not get cards and certainly does not get any cheque from UI. The client may get a response from UI eventually as to the disposition of his or her application.
My colleague has introduced a very logical amendment to ensure that time limits are adhered to so the decision is rendered to the claimant within the two-week waiting period.
By law the employer must provide the claimant with the separation certificate. If the employer does not, it has to be reported to the commission. This can cause a considerable amount of delay because the claim cannot be set up until the separation certificate is received.
The way it works now, the client informs the commission that he or she has been unable to get the separation certificate and the commission then goes after the employer. If the employer does not provide the separation certificate, the employee is asked to bring in the pay stubs and a claim is set up based on those pay stubs. That all takes time.
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With the advent of new technologies in the processing of applications and the computerization which has taken place, surely it is possible to adhere to a two-week waiting period as my colleague has suggested. If the employer does not come up with a separation certificate in two weeks, then a claim would be set up for the client based on the stubs if the claimant has them, or some verification by the client of what his or her pay was. The claim is set in motion for the claimant, and the employer is dealt with according to the law if he has not provided the separation certificate or other information that is required. I think this is a very appropriate amendment and I do not think it will create any problems on the part of the UI agents or those who process the claims. I think it is quite possible to have a two-week period within which a decision is made and rendered and the claim is processed.
It seems to me that my colleague's Motion No. 17 requires the commission to maintain statistical data. I understand that when the committee held hearings my colleague asked witnesses for statistical information about those who were disentitled without good reason. He asked what those reasons were.
He discovered that 190,000 clients were disentitled without good reason in 1991. When he asked for the statistical information with respect to the reasons Mr. Gordon McFee, who is the director of policy and legislation development, Department of Employment and Immigration, told my colleague that the precise reason for the disentitlement of these 190,000 is not coded but the fact that the claim was adjudicated negatively is. The way one comes up with the 190,000 figure might have been a simulation.
Decisions are being made on amending the Unemployment Insurance Act in Bill C-113 which are not based on information. The government is not able to determine whether the information on which it has based its proposed amendments is really appropriate because it does not have the statistical information. My colleague asked if one could assume theoretically that some of the reasons given for leaving employment may have been valid even though a negative decision was reached. He was told that was possible and there may have been negative decisions given for reasons that were totally appropriate. They may have been just, but we do not know that because we do not have the statistical information.

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Mr. Max Yalden, who is the commissioner of human rights, appeared as a witness before the committee and on this question of accumulating statistical information said:
I would suggest finally that whatever system is put in place to deal with the situations I've been describing should include some means of recording and categorizing the number and nature of voluntary quit claims, especially where harassment has been in question and how they have been disposed of, and second, the provision of some form of overseeing body, which will periodically verify those data and report on how successfully the regime is dealing with so-called just cause claimants.
Here you have two witnesses. First, the Unemployment Insurance Commission admitted it has just guesti-mated and it really does not keep the statistical information on the reasons for the 190,000 not just cause disentitlements. The commissioner of human rights suggested statistical information should be kept. What did the Unemployment Insurance Commission representatives say? They said it was a good idea and as of April 5, they were going to incorporate the system. It seems to me it is putting the cart before the horse. These changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act should be held in abeyance and we should develop the experience with the reasons why people quit their jobs.
We have to look at the reasons, not fly blind and come in with amendments. The government wants to pander and cater to what it senses is a right wing agenda out there and wants to punish these people because, after all, we are in a deep recession and unemployment is high. Tvo million people are unemployed in the country. The government asks: "What do we have? We have people quitting their jobs. Oh, good heavens, we have to nail them. We have to show how tough we are with them". I do not think that is the way to legislate. A sensitive government does not legislate in that fashion.
My colleague's Motion No. 18. is an amendment that would make sure that the claimant cannot be excluded from a board of referees hearing. Can we imagine anything so ludicrous as excluding a claimant from a hearing?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. It being 4.45 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier this day and in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 78(3) it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of report stage of the bill now before the House.
The first question is on Motion No. 7. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), a recorded division on the motion stands deferred.
The next question is on Motion No. 11. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.
The next question is on Motion No. 13. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
March 23, 1993


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.


Cyril (Cid) Samson: Motion No. 16.
That Bill C-113 be amended in Clause 21
(a)	by striking out line 31 at page 10 and substituting the following therefor:
"ment;"; and
(b)	by striking out line 34 at page 10 and substituting the following therefor:
"claim; and
(c)	make its determination within two weeks after its consideration of the claim."
Motion No. 17.
That Bill C-113 be amended in Clause 22 by adding immediately after line 5 at page 11 the following:
"(w. 2) providing for the compilation and publication of statistical information relating to
(i)	each of the circumstances referred to in subsection 28(4) that were invoked by claimants, and
(ii)	all decisions made by the Commission;".
Motion No. 18.
That Bill C-113 be amended in Clause 23
(a)	by striking out lines 10 to 13 at page 11 and substituting the following therefor:
"ulations authorizing the chairperson of a board of referees to exclude from a hearing before the board any employ-"; and
(b)	by striking out lines 19 to 30 at page 11 and substituting the following therefor:
"being given."


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The next question is on Motion No. 16. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.
Government Orders


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.
The next question is on Motion No. 17. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: A recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.
The next question is on Motion No. 18. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


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


Some hon. members:: Yea.


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


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen.

March 23, 1993
Government Orders


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois)):: A recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.
The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred divisions at report stage of the bill now before the House.


[Stage Direction]
Call in the members.

And the division bells having rung:
Mr. Speaker:: The first question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 3 and 19.
An affirmative vote on Motion No. 1 obviates the need for a vote on Motion No. 2. A negative vote on Motion No. 1 necessitates a vote on Motion No. 2.


PAIRED MEMBERS
[Stage Direction]
Allmand Blondin-Andrew Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Tlirner (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
March 23, 1993
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion carried and I therefore declare Motions Nos. 3 and 19 carried.
The next question is on Motion No. 4. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 5.



[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Thrner (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
You ng (Acadie-Bathurst)
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost. I therefore declare Motion No. 5 lost.


Mr. Gagliano:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think you will find unanimous consent to apply the result of the vote we just took on Motion No. 4 to Motions Nos.

March 23, 1993
Government Orders
7, 11, 14,16 and 17; then to apply in reverse the result of the vote on Motion No. 1 to Motions Nos. 13 and 18; and finally apply in reverse the result of the vote on Motion No. 4 to the concurrence motion.


Mr. Plamondon:: Mr. Speaker, we were never consulted, either by the government or by the opposition, about these resolutions. We have always said that we are willing to co-operate with the House as long as we are consulted. Consequently, we refuse our consent.


Mr. Speaker:: The next question is on Motion No. 7. A vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 8, 9 and 10.



[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Timer (Vancouver Quadra)
Members
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hoc kin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 8, 9 and 10 lost.
The next question is on Motion No. 11.



[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew C hares t
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
TUrner (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
Mr. Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.
++NAYS
Members
Anderson	Atkinson
Attewell	Belsher
Bernier	Bertrand
Blackburn (Jonquiere)	Blais
Bouchard (Roberval)	Boyer
Bright well	Cadieux
Casey	Chadwick
Champagne (Champlain)	Chartrand
Clark (Brandon-Souris)	Cole
Collins	Cooper
Corbeil	Corbett
Cote	Couture
Crosbie (St. John's West)	Danis
Darling	DeBlois


Alfonso Gagliano: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe you will now find unanimous consent to apply the vote we just took on Motion No. 11 to Motions Nos. 14, 16 and 17; then to apply in reverse the result of the vote on Motion No. 1 to Motions Nos. 13 and 18; and to apply in reverse the result of the vote of Motion No. 4 to the concurrence motion.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

March 23, 1993
Government Orders


Mr. Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, I would like my vote to be recorded as yea on Motions Nos. 13, 14, 16 and 17, but nay on Motion No. 18.



[Stage Direction]
Members
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellow head) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Turner (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)

[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Tbrner (Vancouver Quadra)
Members
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
(Division No. 445)
++YEAS
Althouse
Arseneault
Baker
Bellemare
Bevilacqua
Blackburn (Jonquifere)
Bouchard (Lac-Saint-Jean)
Breaugh
Caccia
Comuzzi
Dingwall
Duhamel
Ferguson
Fisher
Fontana
Gagliano
Germ
Harb
Harvey (Edmonton East)
Hunter
Keyes
Langan (Mission-Coquitlam) Lee
MacLellan
Maheu
Marleau
Mifflin
Mills
Nault
Nystrom
Peterson
Proud
Rideout
Rodriguez
Samson
Skelly (Comox-Albemi)
Stewart
Thylor
Vanclief
Waddell
Wappel
Young (Beaches-Woodbine)-83
Members
Anawak
Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre)
Barrett
Benjamin
Blackburn (Brant)
Blaikie
Boudria
Butland
Catterall
Copps
Duceppe
Edmonston
Finestone
Flis
Gaffney
Gauthier
Gray (Windsor West)
Harvard Hovdebo Jordan Kristiansen Leblanc (Longueuil)
MacLaren
Mac William
Manley
McCurdy
Milliken
Murphy
Nunziata
Pagtakhan
Plamondon
Prud'homme
Rocheleau
Rompkey
Skelly (North Island-Powell River)
Speller
Stupich
Tremblay (Rosemont)
Volpe
Walker
Whittaker
++NAYS
Members
Anderson	Atkinson
Attewell	Belsher
Bernier	Bertrand
Blais	Bouchard (Roberval)
Boyer	Brightwell
Cadieux	Casey
Chadwick	Champagne (Champlain)
Chartrand	Clark (Brandon-Souris)
Cole	Collins
Cooper	Corbeil
Corbett	Cote
Couture	Crosbie (St. John's West)
Danis	Darling
DeBlois	de Cotret
Dick	Dobbie
Domm	Dorin
Edwards	Epp
Fee	Ferland
Fretz	Friesen
Gibeau	Gray (Bonaventure-fles-de-la-Madeleine)
March 23, 1993
[Stage Direction]
Government Orders
Greene
Guilbault
Halliday
Hawkes
Horner
Hudon
James
Joncas
Kempling
Langlois
Layton
Lopez
MacKay
Martin (Lincoln)
Mazankowski
McDermid
Merrithew
Moore
Oberle
Plourde
Redway
Reimer
Robitaille
Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth)
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Tetreault
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
Tbrner (Halton-Peel)
Van De Walle Vezina Vincent Wenman
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek-< Wilson (Etobicoke Centre)
Worthy-114
Grey (Beaver River)
Gustafson
Harvey (Chicoutimi)
Hogue
Horning
Hughes
Johnson
Jourdenais
Landry
Larrivee
Lewis
MacDougall (Timiskaming-French River)
Malone
Mayer
McCreath
McLean
Monteith
Nicholson
O'Kurley
Porter
Reid
Richardson
Roy-Arcelin
Shields
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thacker
Thorkelson
Tremblay (Lotbiniere)
Valcourt
Vankoughnet
Vien
Weiner
Wilbee
iniboia)
Winegard

[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blondin-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
TUrner (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)

[Stage Direction]
Allmand
Blond in-Andrew
Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Tliraer (Vancouver Quadra)
Members
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
Mr. Speaker:: I therefore declare Motions Nos. 13, 14, 16, 17 and 18 lost.
Reid
Richardson
Roy-Arcelin
Shields
Sobeski
Sparrow
Tardif
Thacker
Thorkelson
Tremblay (Lotbinidre)
Valcourt
Vankoughnet
Vien
Weiner
Wilbee
Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek Wilson (Etobicoke Centre)
Worthy-119
Reimer
Robitaille
Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth)
Siddon
Soetens
Stevenson
Tetreault
Thompson
Tremblay (Quebec-Est)
TUrner (Halton-Peel)
Van De Walle Vezina Vincent Wenman
Assiniboia)
Winegard
++NAYS
Members


Donald Frank Mazankowski: that the bill be concurred in.



[Stage Direction]
Allmand Blondin-Andrew Charest
Clark (Yellowhead) Duplessis Hopkins Kaplan
Timer (Vancouver Quadra)
Belair
Campbell (Vancouver Centre)
Clancy
Desjardins
Hockin
Jacques
McKnight
Young (Acadie-Bathurst)
March 23, 1993
Mr. Speaker:: When shall the bill be read the third time? At the next sitting of the House, pursuant to order made earlier this day?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Ms. Langan:: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Saskatoon-Dundum thinks he was missed in the count for the last round and would like to have his vote included with the NDP caucus in the applied votes.


Mr. Speaker:: Is it agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Jack Wendele Shields: Mr. Speaker, I just want everyone in the House to realize that in Calgary today it is 20 degrees Celsius.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Speaker:: It being five o'clock p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's Order Paper.


Don Boudria: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Given that it is 5.55 p.m., our colleague who has the private member's motion that we will be discussing now will only be entitled to have his motion discussed for five minutes. I would like to ask the consent of the House to call it six o'clock and permit this Private Members' Hour to be an hour, which after all was the intent behind the rules.


Mr. Speaker:: The House has heard the suggestion by the hon. member. Is there agreement?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Fred J. Mifflin: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on a follow-up to a question I asked the Minister of National Defence some time ago. The question was essentially on the report of the Auditor General who looked at the difficulty he saw in the defence program management system.
Adjournment Debate
This was a very serious allegation because we are looking at expenditures of really fantastic and mind-boggling proportions and major programs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It is not every program that is $6 billion or $10 billion. It is only the major capital projects, but it is not very difficult for a project to assume the dimension of $100 million.
The point I want to make at the outset, which I believe was missed by the minister, was that I did not make these allegations. They were made by no less an authority than the Auditor General. I know some of my previous colleagues in the Department of National Defence are uncomfortable about this observation.
I simply asked the present minister and her predecessor to make a comment on this, discuss it in defence committee or make a ministerial statement to say it was not accurate and the defence department was looking at it, or it was accurate and corrections were being made. I happen to think it is not totally accurate, but the point is, the observation has been made.
We are looking at tremendous expenditures in the controversial EH-101 program. Notwithstanding its merits, this expenditure in the magnitude of $5.8 billion is being managed by a program which the Auditor General calls into question. This controversial program is under discussion practically every day in the media and in this House. The more specific observation was made that the defence program management system does not totally address the system. Using the words of the Auditor General, it is also ineffective. He went on to say that all the problems that were observed occurred in the mitial stages of these major programs. If that observation is overlaid on the situation as it exists with the EH-101 program, the result is a recipe for considerable concern and consternation with respect to those people who are following the progress of these important programs.
I would simply like the minister to address this observed deficiency. I would invite her to make a statement in the House of Commons. It is very simple and would take less than a couple of minutes. Alternatively, she could make use of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs and appear in front of the committee to address this very disturbing and very significant observation that was made by the Auditor General who has the authority and credibility to do so.

March 23, 1993
Adjournment Debate
I believe the minister should have a closer look at the question I asked, advance the answer she gave me and simply address the observation of the Auditor General. Is the defence program management system ineffective or not? If it is not, tell us why. If it is, what immediate measures are being taken to correct these deficiencies?


Marcel R. Tremblay: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer a question that the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception asked the Minister of National Defence in this Elouse on February
Since the Auditor General took a representative sample of projects in February 1991, the Department of National Defence has made important changes which directly affect this management problem. For greater efficiency, the Canadian Forces have adopted capital programs which reflect the defence policy announced in September 1991 regarding present and future military roles.
The restructuring at national defence headquarters to support this initiative led to the setting up of a team responsible for co-ordinating and monitoring the defence program management system. The streamlining of the project approval process and some needed changes should lead to greater efficiency and savings in the project management cycle.
Since the hon. member raised the issue of the EH-101 project, I would like to make the following comments. Several recommendations made by the Auditor General have already been implemented in that project. For example, no contractor was given responsibility for the whole project. Instead, this responsibility is shared by two main contractors who will work in their respective fields of competence.
One of the main contractors is from another country, while the other is Canadian. Also, procurements were made in the most sensible way by buying what we could in Canada, in the best interests of our economy.
I also want to point out that these two main contractors have the contractual obligation to provide for
regional economic benefits in Canada, which will be monitored and assessed by 1ST Canada. If these two contractors do not meet their obligations, they will incur appropriate penalties.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, further to my question to the Minister of Indian Affairs on February 24 I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak about native hunting and fishing rights in Ontario.
The Williams treaty was signed in 1923 and is the most recent Ontario treaty with the native peoples. This treaty involves seven Indian bands in south-central Ontario and included a very substantial financial compensation to the Indian bands in the amount of $500,000 in return for their giving up any right to fish and hunt during closed seasons.
In 1993 dollars this compensation is equivalent to $20 million. The courts have ruled that due to the treaty, members of the seven bands must obey the seasons and regulations.
In one particular case, Mr. George Howard was charged and convicted for fishing in the closed season. He has appealed through the courts up to and including the Ontario Court of Appeal. Each time his conviction and therefore the Williams treaty has been upheld.
The Ontario government is now seeking to ignore these facts and give licences in the form of interim agreements to the seven Williams treaty bands.
The legality of the Williams treaty has been upheld by the courts yet the provincial government pushes on. The area which will be affected includes approximately 1.5 million Ontario residents and cuts a huge swath through the heart of Ontario's tourism and recreational industry.
To arbitrarily tear up this treaty would not only do serious harm to these industries, but also damage the lasting good relations between Ontario's native peoples and non-natives, perhaps to the point where public safety could be threatened. Conservation in Ontario would also be put into peril by such actions.

Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources biologists have recently urged for a shorter wall-eye season, not an open season and that is taking into account the fact that the current closed season and sanctuaries apply today to both natives and non-natives. To totally open up the season which is closed year-round to fishing for natives simply does not make sense.
A recent report has indicated that the majority of Canadians favour native self-government. However, achieving this by tearing up existing treaties without consultation with all interested stakeholders will only create discord and bitterness where bridges and understanding are needed.
I am not questioning the ideal of native self-government. Surely the $5 billion to $6 billion spent by the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development can be more efficiently directed by native Canadians themselves in a similar manner as municipal government does under the provincial division of powers in the Constitution, only under federal jurisdiction.
The process however is presenting problems. Whether it be a question of native hunting and fishing rights, a question of land claims, as is the case with the Algon-quins of Golden Lake claiming a large portion of eastern Ontario, or the efforts of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society to designate the Madawaska highlands region in my riding as an endangered spaces area, special privileges for any one group are not acceptable to my constituents in Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington. Native self-government should be clearly defined and must not ignore existing treaties and laws.
Only by way of thorough consultation and understanding can an acceptable solution be found and the rights of all concerned be respected.
I caution the Government of Ontario and the federal government of the dangerous emergence of nationalism. In the former Yugoslavia, in the former Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, as well as in Canada, there is an increasing tendency for historic tribal or nationalistic groupings to want special status.
We all know Canada is a very difficult country to govern due to its size and the diversity of its people. Over the past decade, the constitutional debate has highlighted the difficulties which exist in a bilingual nation and with the status of First Nations within Canadian
Adjournment Debate
boundaries, to say nothing about racial and ethnic groups increasingly promoting their nationalism.
The last thing we want in-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: I am sorry. The rules are tough, but rules are rules.


Mr. Ross Belsher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency):: Mr. Speaker, in reply to the hon. member I would like to explain first how the jurisdiction of our fisheries is shared between the federal government and the province of Ontario.
Section 91(12) of the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the federal government the responsibility for the sea coast and inland fisheries.
In non-tidal waters, the provinces have partial jurisdiction over fisheries that arises from provincial ownership of the water-bed or where the water-bed is privately owned, from their jurisdiction, as a result of section 92(13) of the Constitution Act of 1867 over property and civil rights.
As part of their jurisdiction the provinces allocate the fishery in non-tidal waters after conservation needs have been met. Moreover, nearly 100 years ago the federal government delegated administrative management responsibility to the Government of Ontario. I want to emphasize this point very clearly. The province of Ontario like other inland provinces is the manager of those fisheries within its boundaries.
The province wants to amend the Ontario fishery regulations so Ontario could issue aboriginal community fishing licences under the Ontario Game and Fish Act to the Williams treaty bands to fish for food and social and ceremonial purposes. Proposed changes to the Ontario fishery regulations, which are passed pursuant to the Fisheries Act, must be processed by the federal government.
Provinces proposing regulations should consult with parties likely to be affected by the regulation so that their concerns can be considered. I do not think it wise or appropriate for the federal government to re-enter the field of regulating Ontario's fisheries either in part or in whole. I do not think Ontario anglers need a second level of bureaucracy imposed on them.

March 23, 1993
Adjournment Debate
It is the minister's intention to honour the long-standing agreements authorizing Ontario to exercise management responsibilities in this area. Consequently should Ontario submit a final version of the proposed regulation the federal government will process it in the usual manner.


REVENUE CANADA
Alex Kindy: Mr. Speaker, on March 18 I raised a question with the Minister of National Revenue regarding his reported decision to not even attempt to collect over half a million dollars in GST payments that were refunded by mistake to the yes side of the referendum committee in last October's referendum.
The minister's excuse that the yes committee comprising party officials from the Liberals, the Conservatives and NDP has officially disbanded therefore the government cannot collect is outrageous.
There is great confusion over the minister's statement. On the one hand the minister has ruled that the GST refund is owed to Revenue Canada by the yes side of the referendum committee. Then the minister says it was an ineligible refund and therefore cannot be applied against the expenditures in the committee's referendum finance return.
On the other hand he has said that he cannot collect the money because the yes committee is disbanded. I say the committee has not disbanded because Elections Canada is waiting for the minister's ruling but he is sending mixed messages to Elections Canada.
Perhaps the minister is not aware that the referendum finance return of the yes side referendum committee is being held in limbo by Elections Canada waiting for the claim dispute to be resolved. Therefore it does not see the yes committee as being disbanded.
I would like to point out that if the Elections Canada ruling is in favour of the yes referendum committee and it is allowed to apply the GST credits to its expenditures it could be sufficient to reduce its expenditures to fall within limits as defined by the Referendum Act.
If, however, the Elections Canada ruling is not in favour of the yes committee there is a possibility it has broken the law in the Referendum Act because it has exceeded the expenditures limit and would be subject to penalties.
Canadians see the potential for improprieties by the minister and his department. I might add that this decision also raises many unanswered questions such as how it was given a GST registration number in the first place. Some of us believe it does not qualify for that. What implication does this have for candidates in party elections financing in the upcoming election? This incredible policy, favouritism for the yes referendum committee, is not only immoral but is of an extremely important precedent setting level.
Maybe the parliamentary secretary could explain to the House why Revenue Canada officials are prepared to go so far in pursuing ordinary Canadians when in the case of the yes committee they are not even going to try to collect.


Ross Belsher: Mr. Speaker, I rise in order to respond to the question asked by the hon. member for Calgary Northeast with regard to the Department of National Revenue's policy concerning uncollectable GST and more specifically with respect to its application to the yes referendum committee.
It has always been the department's policy to administer the Excise Ikx Act in a fair, impartial, predictable and consistent way, using the rules, sanctions and processes securely founded in law. The majority of Canadians meet their tax obligations with good grace.
Sometimes, however, there are situations when the government is not always able to collect the amount of tax due. In the case in point the Canadian Referendum Committee, which ceased to exist as of February 26, 1993 under the terms of the Referendum Act, has no remaining assets and is unable to conduct any further activities.
It is unfortunate that the inaccuracy of the information provided to the department and the department's misconceptions regarding funding and viability of the committee has led to this amount being uncollectable.
March 23, 1993

I want to assure the House that the action taken by the Department of National Revenue with the yes referendum committee in this situation is the same that the department would take with any other registrant in similar circumstances.
I assure the House that the Department of National Revenue administers the Excise Tax Act in such a manner that all taxpayers are treated equitably and fairly.


LANGUAGE MINORITIES
Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, on March 8,1993,1 asked the Secretary of State whether she had embarked on serious negotiations with the provinces to set up school management in those provinces that continue to show some reluctance, namely Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Newfoundland. I will get to the other provinces later.
The minister answered that she was discussing with her colleagues "a series of measures to help the provinces"-those are her very words-and that she expected to be able to start discussions with the provinces in the coming weeks.
Let me give some historical background. In the Mahe case, in Manitoba, three years ago, and more recently- just a couple of weeks ago as a matter of fact-in the case of the Manitoba Parents' Committee Federation, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that minorities have the constitutional right to manage their own educational institutions. In fact, it has ruled that Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants parents from the linguistic minority of that province the right to manage and control the educational facilities where their children receive education.
How much further ahead are we now, 11 years after adopting this Charter? There are of course quite appalling disparities. I admit that there have been negotiations between the federal and provincial levels of government. The fact remains that Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and Newfoundland are holding out. On the other hand, the Atlantic provinces of
Adjournment Debate
Canada, which are not the richest, agreed and have implemented a series of measures to put management in the hands of their minorities. In Quebec, the anglophone minority has been managing its own schools, from elementary to postsecondary, for quite a while.
The provinces that put up the most resistance or reluctance are not the poorest. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia certainly cannot be labelled as poor. But the federal government said: "It is going to provide them with financial assistance." They have been negotiating for years now. Last year, I had hope because the then Secretary of State, the hon. member for Ber-thier-Montcalm, had suggested to me in this House that an agreement would be signed very shortly. The federal government promised some help. Negotiations have been going on for quite a few years now. I was very hopeful last year. The then Secretary of State had indicated to me in the House that an agreement was about to be signed. But nothing happened. Now we have a new Secretary of State who tells me that negotiations are still ongoing.
Where is the political will of this government to negotiate a comprehensive agreement with all the provinces in order to give members of our linguistic minorities the right to manage their own institutions, a right which is entrenched in the Constitution?
My question is simply this: What progress have we made in these negotiations? I understand that the new minister is attempting to meet with the province of Ontario, for instance, and come to some agreement on certain issues. It is not easy, I know. The NDP government in Ontario turns a deaf ear and claims that it has not heard from the minister in quite some time now. But I know full well that it is not so and that she has been trying to meet with it time and time again and to speak with the minister of education and skills development.
Now the said minister claims that the federal government is spiteful and acts in bad faith. I am sorry but I have to ask the parliamentary secretary to set the record straight. We must know what is going on. Is the federal government negotiating with the province of Ontario or not? Is there a general agreement regarding school management between the federal government, the western provinces and Ontario?

March 23, 1993
Adjournment Debate
I would like to know if this government has any political will to deal with this issue which has been dragging on for several years now. I know that I have the support of members in this respect and that they are fed up with excuses and explanations which do not hold any water. I am told that we have the Official Languages Act. What good is a legislation that is not enforced? What good are all our laws if nobody has the guts, the will to enforce them?


Mrs. Nicole Roy-Arcelin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the question asked by the hon. member, on March 8, about the right of the francophone minorities to manage their own educational institutions.
The federal government has always supported, in a very concrete way, official language minorities, especially in the area of school management.
The government provided funding, in several provinces, to working groups made up of people involved in education, including representatives from minorities. These working groups have studied school management by minorities. French-speaking communities have welcomed the reports tabled by these working groups.
Moreover, the memorandum of understanding signed by the government in 1988 and the bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories have given official language minority groups easier access to education in their own language.
Supplementary agreements with several provinces, including Saskatchewan, have filled specific or appropriate needs.
As she already mentioned several times, the Secretary of State of Canada has discussed with her Cabinet
colleagues a package of measures to help provinces set up school management by minority groups. Thlks are continuing, and we expect to start, in the next few weeks, actual negotiation with the provinces.
The Secretary of State submitted to her cabinet colleagues a proposal to renew the Official Languages in Education Program. Pretty soon, we will be starting discussions with the provinces, which should lead to a new Protocol and new agreements.
Let me remind the House that education is a provincial jurisdiction. The federal government has always clearly shown the provinces its willingness to help them fulfil their constitutional obligations. But the provinces have to provide appropriate structures for official languages minorities to manage their own educational institutions.
In that sense we welcome the decision handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada last week, on March 4, three years after the Mahe decision.
While reinforcing the previous decision, the Supreme Court decision adds more elements which provincial governments will have to consider when they prepare school legislation. The federal government will have to be convinced that provinces abide by these principles before supporting any school management program.


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


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 6.22 p.m.