Debates of Jan. 24th, 1994

Speech From The Throne

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while listening to the hon. member's support for small business I could not help feeling that he must have taken extractions from our red book. I think it is clearly emphasized how job creation and small business is an integral part of our program.

I was more concerned when he turned around and said that deficit reduction is the main and most important issue. If I am not mistaken I think in the greater metro caucus we have twice had people before us from the business community. There were two major banks as a matter of fact. We have pushed them to extremes to start co-operating with small businesses.

The member indicated that we must reduce the deficit and that it is the main priority. If people are not working then we cannot reduce the deficit. If they are not working then we are supporting them. We are draining our already depleted revenue. The emphasis is on getting the people working. Let us bring some dignity to the House as the Prime Minister has often said and let us reduce the deficit accordingly.

[Jim Hart, Reform, Okanagan—Similkameen—Merritt, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

First of all I would like to say that all good ideas should always cross party lines. It makes no difference where they come from but as I mentioned in my speech we have made Canadian history by electing 52 Reformers to this place. However, over the last few days I have sensed that there are more Reformers or more ideas to reform in this Chamber than just the 52 sitting here.

We feel deficit reduction is a very important part. Subsidy programs and initiative programs have a dismal rate of success in this country. It is evident from all statistics we have where the jobs are coming from. Eighty-five per cent of all jobs came from the small business sector. We need to stimulate this.

I have talked to the business people in Okanagan-Similkameen-Merritt and around this country and they all point to one thing. People do not have confidence in a country that is as mired in debt as we are.

We have to address this problem soon so that Canadians will have a feeling of goodwill and the spirit to invest in their country and create the jobs through small business.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks by congratulating you on your new responsibility.

I would like to begin my address by also thanking my constituents of Broadview-Greenwood for giving me a second term in this Parliament of Canada. I grew to have a deep sense of respect and appreciation for this Chamber, especially in the last three years of my first term. I found it a bit intimidating the first

year and I did not enjoy it as much. As a result of that I shied away from the Chamber.

However, after my first year of being a member of Parliament I made up my mind that I would work at trying to make a contribution to debate in the House of Commons in exchanging views and ideas. At that time I was on the opposition benches but I discovered if I worked at that many members on the government side were as interested in trying to achieve the same results as I was. I say to all members of this House that I am going to continue the same approach of trying to present ideas in a constructive way and listen to their ideas so that together we can advance real debate. From real debate I believe we have a shot at making real reform happen.

The danger that one has to be aware of in this town is that most of this town is in the hands of the bureaucracy or the paper pushers. I believe we have become a nation of paper pushers. I think one of the reasons why it has become like that is because so many of us who are elected by the people have not used or have not exercised our political will to transmit to the public service the fact that the ideas that we bring to this Chamber are not our ideas but those of our constituents, the people who elected us and sent us here. We are going to have to work forcefully to make sure they are implemented because ideas just do not happen automatically.

I put my energy into two very specific areas during the last Parliament. I want to begin my remarks this time by going back to those two specific themes of small business and tax reform.

As I said repeatedly during the last Parliament I believe passionately that the greatest hope for putting Canadians back to work rests with the small business community. We have close to 900,000 small businessmen and businesswomen operating across this country and they have been suffering incredible difficulty over the last few years. They have been suffering because of very poor tax design. It was exacerbated by the poorly designed goods and services tax which caused an incredible paper burden at a time when they did not need it.

However there is another area in which small business has been suffering and it has to do with the area of capital. Unless we address the issue of capital for small and medium sized businesses then this country and this House of Commons are going to continue to flounder.

I was just thrilled during the election campaign, even before the election was called, when the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance called a press conference in Ottawa in the early part of July. They told the people of Canada that one of the central themes of the red book would be built around trying to move or shift the attitude of the financial institutions of this country toward small business.

There is not a member of Parliament in this House who could not stand up and tell horror stories of how small and medium sized businesses in his or her riding have been terrorized by the local branch manager. Are there any members who could stand up and say they have not had that experience? I see all members in this House are nodding their heads.

The problem is that somehow as a House of Commons collectively-not just the government side, this is not just an issue for government members, it is an issue for all members in this House-we have to communicate forcefully to the financial institutions, the 57 charter A and B banks, the trust companies, the pension funds, anybody who has large pools of capital. We have to tell them that if they are so hung up on deficit and debt-and we are concerned about it too-if they really care about this community and this country, then they have to start figuring out ways of getting capital into the hands of small and medium sized enterprises.

I stand up here today, not just as the member of Parliament for Broadview-Greenwood, but thanks to the Prime Minister I also have the responsibility of being the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry. I want to assure all members that just because I am on this side of the House I will not stop for a second in campaigning on behalf of small businesses, that banks must start coming to their assistance.

I want to be fair about this as well. We are beginning to hear signals from some financial institutions. I want to be very fair when I talk about financial institutions in this sense.

Two weeks ago the Toronto caucus listened to a senior vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada, Mr. Charlie Coffey. He admitted to all of our members that the banks have really been falling behind in changing the attitude of commercial loans officers toward small business and that they were working aggressively and quickly to try to rectify this problem.

Mr. Coffey stated that until this problem was solved he would take calls from any member of Parliament. He gave us his fax and phone numbers and encouraged us to circulate them. There is one institution that has publicly declared it is committed to join us in this campaign. I can only hope that this country's other 56 financial institutions will be just as aggressive.

I want to go on to the next area that also affects small and medium sized businesses. It is an issue many members of the Reform Party have talked about during the campaign and in the House of Commons. It is the issue of tax reform.

Our Prime Minister has stated unequivocally that we as a government are committed to comprehensive tax reform. He stated clearly in the Speech from the Throne-I believe it is on page 4 at the second paragraph-that he is going to set up a finance committee that will first of all do away with the goods and services tax. That committee will also look at the idea of comprehensive tax reform.

I want to declare publicly my particular bias for a specific aspect of the Reform Party's platform. It has to do with the whole area of tax reform. As a Liberal I am committed to tax reform and I know many other Liberals share that commitment. This is the Tax Act of Canada. This is the document that really decides how the economy of Canada is run. This document is approximately 15,000 pages of rules, regulations, exceptions and exceptions to exceptions.

To all members of the House I want to say that even the best tax lawyers and best tax accountants in Canada will admit privately that this no longer works. We all know this. Canadians know it and they are showing their total lack of trust in this particular act first of all by going underground.

As members know the GST exacerbated the underground economy. Even before the GST we had the largest underground cash economy of any country in the world, after Italy. That is a statement from Canadians that they have lost trust in the system. It is not working and it is time to go back to the drawing board.

Fortunately we are a party that encourages open and constructive debate. Because of that I have been allowed with a lot of support to advance an idea called the single tax system. It is not too far off the idea that the Reform members campaigned on. To all members of the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois, this is in both official languages. The single tax is an exercise a group of us undertook in the last Parliament after the first year when the government asked for a constructive alternative to the GST. It is a simple, fair, efficient, workable alternative to the current tax act of Canada.

I want to say to all the Reform members and members of the Bloc as well that I am happy to share the research and the experiences I have had because I believe that Canadians really do want us to work together. Canadians want us to act now. Canadians, as do all members of this House, believe that this cannot be a Parliament of consultation. We have been consulting to death. We have been consulting and the consultants have been consulting the consultants. The last thing we need to do so early in this Parliament is to get back into the consulting business. Canadians are fed up with consultation. They want action now. They want us to move now.

When I say they want us to move now, it is not that people want us to move irresponsibly. One very specific thing we can do immediately is we can phone the leaders of the financial institutions and tell them we are all together on the issue of banks supporting small business. If every member in this House just made one or two calls to a leader of a bank and said that we were all together on that issue, that would be immediate action.

If we did that to all the financial institutions they would move quickly. Members in this House should not forget that they are the designers of the law that governs how the banks function. I can say if I were a bank president and thought that a united House was going to start looking at other ways of regulating my business because the banks did not come to the party on their own, I would probably move quickly.

However we cannot do that job alone. Everyone must participate in this and I plead with all members to get involved in the issue.

Another thing which must be dealt with is the whole hangup on the deficit. I am as concerned about abuse and paper burden and duplication as any other member of this Parliament, but we have to be very careful. If we become so fixated on the deficit and if we become so fixated on cutting costs and cutting programs just because we want to meet some magic number of cutting, I am afraid we are going to exacerbate the already serious crisis of confidence we have in this country.

I get very concerned when I see the emphasis on deficit versus the emphasis on putting Canadians back to work. As the member for Yukon, the leader of the New Democratic Party pointed out in her remarks, for every unemployed person we have in this country today it costs the treasury $17,000 directly, not counting indirect costs like health care, crime costs and so on, not to mention the fact that we lose a revenue source to the treasury.

I personally believe the best way to handle the deficit and ultimately the debt is by getting Canadians back to work. If we have to go through a short period where there might be a little bit more of the same deficit and debt, but if ultimately it means we can get Canadians working so that a year or 18 months from now we have more taxpayers and therefore more revenue coming in, that is the approach I support. I hope members understand that.

Of course that is the design and the objective of the infrastructure program which is totally supported by the Minister of Finance. It is a fine balancing act but we have to remember as I said the other day that our ultimate responsibility in this House is not for the people who are advantaged. We come to this House as people in government for the people in our communities who are disadvantaged: the unemployed father who does not have enough money to buy his kid a hockey stick; or the unemployed single mom who sometimes just does not have enough money to

give her child proper nutrition. That is our bottom line responsibility.

I hope we will not put human capital on the back burner in the name of the deficit, when it really should be on the front burner.

Again I want to thank my constituents, especially all of the volunteers. We all have very special volunteers who helped us come here. A young man, 32 years old, comes into my office. Nick Lamacchia is unemployed and has been for the last six months. He comes into my office every day from about ten o'clock in the morning and stays until about seven at night. He listens to other people's pain and frustration.

As long as we can keep in touch with the reality of what is going on in all of our communities we can overcome whatever we have to in order to make sure the people we are sent here to serve are ultimately being served.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your patience and time. I am going to do my best to advance my support for small business and tax reform. I will be happy to share any research I have from the last Parliament with anyone.

[Alfonso Gagliano, Liberal, Saint-Léonard, QC]

To make your job easier, Mr. Speaker, and to clarify matters for the House, I would hope to obtain unanimous consent that beginning with the next speaker on the government side, the 20 minutes allotted be split into two 10-minute periods, followed by two 5-minute periods for questions and comments. This would not apply to ministers who would continue to speak for 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions and comments. Is the House prepared to give its unanimous consent?

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[François Langlois, Bloc, Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, part of the proposal put forward by the hon. member for Saint-Léonard has eluded us. We do not reject his proposal but we would like him to repeat it so that everything is clear.

[Alfonso Gagliano, Liberal, Saint-Léonard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I proposed that all government members starting with the next speaker talk for 10 minutes, with five minutes for questions and comments, except for the ministers. The ministers will continue to have 20 minutes at their disposal, with 10 minutes for questions, since they must talk about specific projects mentioned in the throne speech.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Does anyone else wish to speak on this point of order?

I believe there is unanimous consent for the government whip's proposal.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Jean-Paul Marchand, Bloc, Québec-Est, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the hon. member's comments very much, particularly when he stressed the importance of small and medium sized businesses, and I would like to ask him several questions.

Before I do that, however, I would like to make two brief remarks, as it seems to me that the hon. member reacted very negatively when the Bloc Quebecois announced its sovereigntist stand in this House. As I recall clearly, he reacted very openly and very negatively.

He noted at the outset that most of his ideas came from his constituents. I would like to remind him that I, and all Bloc members, were elected to this House to represent the views of our constituents.

Late in his statement, he also said that he was tired of consultation and wanted action. Well that is precisely how Quebec feels. We too are rather fed up with consultation and want action on the sovereignty issue.

I want to broach the subject of small and medium sized businesses because it is dear to me and affects Quebecers and Canadians equally. I realize it is an important issue, one that you have addressed at considerable length, as did a member of the Reform Party who made some timely comments. I ask the hon. member if he would be prepared to support measures which would enhance the climate conducive to the development of small businesses?

We know that the deficit, taxes and all of the government forms that small and medium sized businesses must contend with impede initiative. Would the hon. member support eliminating family trusts, trimming the fat from government and setting up a parliamentary committee to reduce government waste and duplication in order to lower the deficit and promote the development of small and medium sized businesses?

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking the member for his question.

The member used to be a former resident of Penetanguishene, Ontario. I remember his presence there. He always made a great contribution to that community. I talked to some of his supporters from Penetang-Midland Coach Lines this morning. They asked me to convey a hello to him.

I want to deal with the question of the Bloc Quebecois before I get to small business. One has to try to understand that this is the Parliament of Canada. There has been a traditional view I have always supported that when one comes to this Chamber the objective is to make a better Canada. There have been times when I have struggled, and I still struggle, with the idea of coming to this House of Commons of Canada saying basically that I want to separate from it.

Please bear with me as I try to understand how that fits logically. I have not been able to figure it out yet but I have tremendous personal affection for their leader when he was Minister of the Environment and I was a member in opposition. He came to my riding and supported my people's summit on the environment so none of my feeling is of a personal nature. It has to do with an ideological difference we have. I am already seeing signs that the Bloc is shifting its position.

When I hear members of the Bloc stand up and passionately care about the image and the play of Team Canada I say there is a spark of hope because eventually their interest in Canada will probably expand to other areas.

I have less than a minute. I want to deal with the subject of family trusts. One can check Hansard. I spoke against the government three times on that bill. I voted against the bill. I personally think it is obscene that the richest people and the wealthiest families in Canada, some of whom actually happen to be friends, have billions of dollars that have gone untaxed for 20 years when we have people living in poverty and people making less than $50,000 a year who are paying tax because of the complexity and other complications related to the tax system. There is no argument from me and we will be fighting for reform.

I call that comprehensive reform and we are with them on that.

[Laurent Lavigne, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

I will be very brief, Mr. Speaker. I have a question and a few comments for the hon. member who just spoke.

I for one consider that what the hon. member just said is fair for any one who still believes in the Canadian system and its effectiveness. Personally, I believe everything has been tried over the past few years. How long have we been telling the federal government that duplication between Ottawa and Quebec is horribly expensive?

The hon. member himself admits that even accountants do not trust the Income Tax Act any more. He himself has lost confidence in it. We, in Quebec, have understood that the Canadian tax law was working against us. It is too expensive. The entire Canadian system is too expensive, starting with the size of the public service, our embassies and the very operation of the Canadian government. That is why the national debt has reached $500 billion in Canada, creating a $40 to $45 billion annual deficit. I respect what the hon. member said, but as far as I am concerned it is nothing more than pious wishes.

I do not believe that in the present system the federal government can solve the problem with studies and analyses.

I do believe, however, that it can be solved. My question is the following: how would the hon. member feel about Quebec opting out of the Canadian Confederation, bringing along its $28 billion in taxes to administer on its own? I would put more faith in that approach that in the one the hon. member has put forward.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry. You have two or three minutes remaining.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I am a naturally optimistic and hopeful person but let me say why I believe we all can be more hopeful.

With the exception of 60-odd members this is a totally new Parliament. I happen to believe that one of the reasons I am back here, aside from the red book and the great performance of my leader and my colleagues, and that I have had such support is because I stood for a couple of causes people believed in.

I am from Ontario, as you are. We have the same problems you have in terms of duplicate-

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. I know this is a new Parliament, but would the hon. member please address the Chair?

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my apologies to you. Through you to the member, I am much more optimistic obviously and because we have new members we can address these issues quickly.

Concerning the people of Quebec, through you Mr. Speaker to the members of the Bloc Quebecois, we must never forget that they do have 50-odd members and two million votes, but there are seven million people in Quebec. I think the challenge for all of us in this House who want to keep Canada together is for us to address some of the legitimate problems that are brought to this House. I say that there are some real legitimate beefs. If we can address those things then ultimately it is our responsibility to go over the heads of the separatists right to the people and tell them to stay in Canada.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The time has expired for questions and comments. The next speaker will be the member for Medicine Hat. I might say before recognizing our new colleague that an error was made. It was my error that you did not get recognized earlier. You now have 10 minutes with 5 minutes of questions

thereafter before we go to the member of the Official Opposition.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker and hon. members, first of all I offer my sincere congratulations to all who won election to the House of Commons. To serve as a member of Parliament is a great responsibility and a great honour.

Mr. Speaker, yours is certainly a double honour. You were honoured by your constituents in Edmonton in becoming a member of Parliament once again and of course now by your appointment as a Speaker of this place. Please accept my congratulations.

To the government and to the Prime Minister in particular I extend my wishes for every success in solving the problems that stand before us. They are problems that really cut across party lines, provincial boundaries, cultures, genders, institutions and even the generations. If we are to solve these problems it will require the best efforts of all Canadians. It is my sincere hope that we will all together apply ourselves to that task.

To the people of the Medicine Hat constituency I give my gratitude for the warmth, friendship and support they have shown toward me as their member of Parliament. I thank them for the great trust they have placed in me as their servant and representative to the Government of Canada.

I begin that job by offering advice to the government on its intention to bring reform to the unemployment insurance program. The government is to be commended for recognizing that unemployment insurance as it is presently constituted is a destroyer of jobs and a ravager of initiative. Likewise, the government is correct in asserting that more emphasis must be placed on improving training and that business should play a major role in providing training.

Who could know better than businesses themselves what skills are required for their future success? Certainly not government. I am concerned, however, when the Prime Minister talks about a training tax to coerce business. If the government would instead cut spending and ultimately lower taxes one could be sure that business could provide its own training because it is in the best interest of businesses to do so. Nonetheless, simply recognizing that a problem exists is the first major step in resolving it. For that alone I give the government full marks.

I am also profoundly concerned when the government fails to outline the process by which it will shape the unemployment insurance program of the future. It is no exaggeration to say that the present unemployment insurance program has not only failed Canadians, it has wounded us. In ignoring pleas for change from both businesses and those people who are sincerely looking for work we have cut the soul out of entire regions of the country. If this is the type of help that comes from government then Canadians should run from government as fast as they can. On the other hand, if the government is prepared to share the decision-making power to involve those who fund the program, to design it for the long run to ensure that it is in line with what other levels of government and the private sector are doing, with the current fiscal reality, if it is prepared to set clear measurable objectives, if it is committed to making the program more accessible and user friendly, if it is committed to promoting equal access and benefits for all, if it promotes and rewards personal responsibility and initiative, if it commits itself to following that process in designing an unemployment insurance program, it will succeed beyond our greatest hopes. Contrarily, if it is a program that is designed and implemented and controlled solely by government, it will fail. If it invites greater public input but then ignores that input, it will fail. In failing it will again crush the initiative of the unemployed and business creating economic and human carnage of tragic proportions.

Specifically how should we go about redesigning the UI program? The first decision-making principle is that all stakeholders must have a voice in designing this program. That includes business, particularly small business which pays most of the premiums. It should include of course the workers who pay into the fund. It should include the federal government as an adviser and a junior stakeholder. Although this may seem obvious, governments I find often ignore this advice. The process should not include those groups which have a vested interest in not resolving the problem.

It is a great truth that incentives matter. If a group or an individual receives funding so that they can protest high unemployment levels do not expect them to propose solutions that will make their position or group unnecessary. Even though they are often well-meaning and claim passionately that they want to solve the problem, I point out that they have a powerful economic incentive to perpetuate the problem. These two competing forces can never be completely disentangled.

The second principle is that decisions must be made with the long term best interests of the country in mind. Too often decisions are made without considering their long term implications.

In 1971 the Liberal government chose to regionally extend unemployment insurance benefits. Today we reap the rotten fruit of that hastily planted seed. Governments must always consider the effect of their decisions over the long run.

The third principle is that decisions should always be made with complete awareness of the current environment. By that I mean the current economic, social, cultural and political environment, both within and without the country. Unless we are all pulling together in the same direction on every front even the best designed programs will ultimately fail. Today's environment is one of tight fiscal constraints, freer trade and greater public participation in the democratic process. A newly de-

signed unemployment insurance program must be sensitive to this and reflect these trends in its design.

The fourth principle is that all government programs must have clear measurable objectives. What is the point of designing a program whose effects are not measured or cannot be measured because the objectives are never made clear? In those instances when the effects are obviously counterproductive why have a bureaucracy? Why even have a government if it will not fix the problem?

For 20 years the evidence against high benefits, regionally extended benefits and training boondoggles has been mounting. Every government in that 20 year period has cowered from fixing the problem.

The fifth principle is that all government programs must be designed to be user friendly. Today the myriad programs offered by human resources development are hopelessly complicated. As one field level bureaucrat told me: "Our job is to make poorly designed programs run efficiently". What a damning indictment of the system that is.

In the introduction of the 1985 Forget commission report there is a touching letter from a lady who decries how hopelessly complicated getting a UI benefit can be. Sadly that is still true eight years after that report was tabled.

Governments' failure to solve problems can be traced back directly to the process by which they make decisions. Without public input in the design of these programs they will never ever be able to respond to the needs of the public.

The sixth principle is that all government programs must always treat all Canadians the same. Choosing to live in a particular area of the country should not be a reason for receiving greater or longer benefits. The government must recognize that in attempting to correct what are sometimes inequities in the natural resource wealth of the country it only succeeds in corrupting the human resource wealth of the same area of the country it originally set out to help.

That is the malady of large tracts of Atlantic Canada and it is the legacy of a government that did not understand that government has its limitations.

The seventh principle is that all government programs should promote and encourage personal responsibility and initiative. Of course this should be demonstrated at the top by giving business and employees the responsibility for setting premiums and determining benefits. Those premiums will reflect more accurately than any government decree what businesses and employees can afford to pay in premiums and pay out in benefits while maintaining and strenghthening the viability of businesses and the purchasing power of employees, thereby strenghthening the economy.

Those who are chronically unemployed because they lack experience or training should be the beneficiaries of an integrated program of training and income support provided jointly by the provincial and federal governments. That, however, is a speech for another day.

Before we can reform unemployment insurance or social programs or anything we do in government, we must first reform how we make decisions including all the stakeholders looking at the long run, being aware of the current environment, having clear measurable objectives, designing programs to be user friendly, treating all Canadians equally, encouraging personal responsibility and initiative. This is the framework within which unemployment insurance should be reformed.

The $20 billion Canadians spend on unemployment insurance is not play money. It is not the government's money. It is the product of the hard work of millions of Canadians. It is their money. It is their right to have a say in how it is spent. If we respect that most basic right we will produce a responsible and sustainable unemployment insurance program. If we respect that right in all of our deliberations we will have a government that works within its limits and lives within its means.

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my friend from Medicine Hat for his first speech in the House. I just got the last part of it because I was so busy stuffing my face.

[John Nunziata, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

With what?

[Roger Simmons, Liberal, Burin—St. George's, NL]

Food. My friend from York South-Weston is here. Anything can happen now.

The member for Medicine Hat talked about the unemployment insurance program. Certainly I would be the first to agree that there is a need for change. I want to scrutinize some of the suggestions he made. One that caught my attention I will come back to in a moment. But let me make a basic point about the unemployment insurance system.

It is not a bogy. It is a system that has served this country very well. Let us not, to use a cliché, throw out the baby with the bath water. This is a system that has served this country very well.

The issue I want to come back to is the one of the variable entrance requirements. I say to the member kindly that if we were to extrapolate and take to its logical conclusion his point that one ought not to have a different entrance requirement depending on where one lives in this country, he is also espousing that all automobile insurance plans ought to be identical and that there ought not to be any variability in the type of coverage that is needed by different individuals.

Of course he does not believe that. I ask him to examine a little more closely his thesis that where one lives in the country makes no difference.

I submit that it makes a whole lot of difference. For example, it makes a difference in the ability of one to work in construction activity. I would suggest that it would have been much more difficult three days ago to do construction activity when it was -30 degrees in Ottawa than in Newfoundland where it was 12 degrees above that day.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has raised a couple of issues.

First, he wants to know whether unemployment insurance as it is presently constituted has been a boon or a problem in the country.

Certainly the premier of Newfoundland would suggest that as it is presently designed it has not served the interests of Newfoundlanders very well. He points to the fact that a generation of people have become dependent on unemployment insurance as it is now. That is not only an economic tragedy but a human tragedy. We must work quickly to change that so that we can save yet another generation from that type of situation.

It is very important to recognize that there is a great difference between an insurance program that puts the onus on individuals to show that they are trying to stay in the work force and setting up different benefits depending on the unemployment rate in particular areas of the country.

I point out that before regionally extended benefits we had unemployment rates in Newfoundland of around 7 per cent. Since we have regionally extended benefits they have gone up, up and up to 20 and 25 per cent. It is very important that we not ignore the lessons of history lest we be doomed to repeat them.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member's time has expired. Before recognizing the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata, I think the hon. member for Bellechasse has something to say, am I right?

[François Langlois, Bloc, Bellechasse, QC]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I want to rise on a point of order. The next speaker for the Official Opposition is the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata. Like every woman sitting in this House, she is very active and only sickness or some mishap would slow her down just a little. Unfortunately, she broke her ankle during the weekend. So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask you to show some leniency and allow the hon. member for Rimouski-Témiscouata to stay seated while she makes her speech.