Debates of Dec. 5th, 1994

Canadian Wheat Board

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Mr. Speaker, I have already indicated on a number of occasions that I will be providing the opportunity this winter for farmers to become engaged in a discussion about the marketing systems that they regard to be most appropriate and in their interest.

In the course of that kind of objective, reasonable, rationale dialogue, the respective merits of certain marketing systems will become obvious. I would imagine under the close scrutiny that public dialogue and examination gives, the Canadian Wheat Board will be able to demonstrate its merits very effectively.

Trade

[Dianne Brushett, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for Agriculture and Agri-Food, Fisheries and Oceans.

The Prime Minister's recent trip to China secured trade opportunities and created wealth for our country. On the heels of this success, can the secretary of state tell the House what is being done and what will be done to promote Canada's fishing products in the far east?

[Fernand Robichaud, Liberal, Secretary of State (Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague was certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit, since her question is quite timely.

I will have the honour of leading a Canadian delegation to China for the first ever China Fish Processing Expo on December 10-15.

Nineteen executives, representing 11 Canadian companies, will be participating in an attempt to forge closer links with the Chinese fishing industry and also explore business opportunities.

Furthermore, of 15 booths made available to participants outside China, 10 have been reserved for Canadian companies at that Expo. It goes without saying that Canadian participation is in keeping with the new spirit of closer ties between China-

Government Response To Petitions

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to certain petitions.

The Economy

[John Manley, Liberal, Minister of Industry]

Madam Speaker, under Standing Order 32(2), I am tabling a document, in both official languages, entitled "Building a more Innovative Economy".

I will have remarks to make apropos this document.

Job Creation And Economic Growth

[John Manley, Liberal, Minister of Industry]

Madam Speaker, before beginning my speech, I would like to join the Deputy Prime Minister, who spoke earlier, in wishing the leader of the opposition and his family a lot of courage on his way to recovery.

Today on behalf of my Cabinet colleagues, I am putting forward the next key part of the government's jobs and growth agenda. This plan introduces over 30 concrete measures involving ten Ministers and their departments "to help create a climate where business can create more jobs for Canadians", if I may quote the Prime Minister.

But before I turn to what we will do next, let us revisit where we were just over a year ago when this government took office.

We were faced with an unemployment rate when we took office of 11 per cent. Business confidence was volatile and consumer confidence was very low. After two years of a half-hearted jobless recovery, fewer Canadians were working and the economy was producing fewer goods and services than at the beginning of the decade.

As a government our first order of business was to work with other levels of government and the private sector to get the recovery moving. Our first weeks in office were characterized by decisive action, including the launching of the national infrastructure program. The reward for leadership and action has been a continuing rise in confidence and improvement in the overall economic conditions of the country.

Most important of all, more Canadians have jobs. Since taking office 414,000 jobs have been created by Canadians for Canadians. Only a year ago people were talking about unemployment rates in excess of 10 per cent to the year 2000. As of last Friday we broke the 10 per cent barrier and Canada's unemployment rate stands at 9.6 per cent. But the government believes it has to do better than just recover from the last recession.

The cycles of recession and recovery over the last three decades have shown some disturbing trends. Decade over decade average unemployment rates have risen, productivity growth has fallen and with it real incomes of Canadians have stagnated.

The time has come to reverse these trends. The time has come to get average unemployment rates down permanently. The time has come to increase productivity, thereby increasing real incomes. But you cannot do this simply by wishing or declaring it to be so. What is required is decisive action by government, wise investment by business and labour, and a new model of co-operation and partnership.

The government is taking decisive action. That is why we have launched a root and branch review of our social programs. That is why the Minister of Finance has set out a new framework for economic policy. That is why we are reviewing every program in every department and agency of the federal government. That is why the government is committed to reducing the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP, come hell or high water. That is why I am introducing Building a More Innovative Economy.

At the outset let me say that this plan will disappoint some. It will disappoint those who believe that government can and should do everything. That approach defined the success of economic programs by bigger budgets, not better government. That is an approach I reject.

This plan will also disappoint those who believe that the best thing government can do is nothing. That is not our view. We believe that economic leadership by government can contribute to economic success.

The fundamental premise behind Building a More Innovative Economy is that it is the private sector, not government, that creates jobs. What government can do is to improve the climate for the private sector to create those jobs.

Where can good government make a difference? The first priority is building a healthier marketplace. Business needs better access to the financing required to help it grow. It needs a labour-management environment that is more co-operative, less adversarial. It needs fewer and more focused government programs. It needs regulations that makes sense. It needs fewer demands from government to fill out forms and shuffle paper.

Tomorrow the President of the Treasury Board will announce the details of our plans for regulatory reform and paper burden reduction. We will use the power of government purchasing as a strategic tool for small and aboriginal business development and growth. My colleague, the Minister of Public Works and Gov-

ernment Services, will soon announce the details of this initiative.

Our second strategic priority is trade. The challenges here are crucial for all Canadians. For jobs, incomes and prosperity we depend more on trade than almost any other country does. Yet we are not the nation of traders that we could be.

That is why my first priority as Minister of Industry was to achieve Canada's first internal trade agreement-the beginning of a process that will bring down interprovincial trade barriers.

And that is why in the early days of its mandate, the government moved quickly and decisively to improve Canada's international trading arrangements both in North America and elsewhere in the world.

[English]

That is also why the Prime Minister has made international trade a personal priority. The recent Team Canada trip to China was an unprecedented success, showing how Canada can succeed in global markets when we work together. We will build on this momentum.

This plan introduces a variety of steps we will take to improve Canada's trading performance. For example, my colleague, the Minister for International Trade, will introduce measures to help develop globally minded businesses. Our challenge as a government is to equip more and more Canadian firms to win in the fiercely competitive international marketplace.

We will focus on support to small businesses that are entering export markets for the first time and target resources for exporter preparation.

We will improve export financing measures.

Taken together, these measures will quickly enable more Canadian firms to meet the challenge of international trade.

Also, a large component of our balance of trade accounts is in tourism. Tourism is big business in Canada and, for the last ten years, we have done a pathetic job promoting ourselves to the rest of the world. That is why last year, Canada suffered a travel account deficit of almost $8 billion.

That is why the Prime Minister announced we will be establishing a Canadian tourism commission to work with other governments and the tourism industry to be more aggressive in marketing Canada as a safe, beautiful and sophisticated destination, meeting the needs of almost every traveller.

Our third strategic priority is infrastructure, both physical and intellectual. This is an area of comparative advantage over which we have control. In this area the government is working on several fronts. The Minister of Transport is producing a new direction for transportation in Canada to meet the needs of the 21st century. The Canada infrastructure works program is well under way and will create a further 65,000 direct jobs.

Today I am announcing that the government will proceed with phase II of CANARIE, the Canadian network for the advancement of research, industry and education. This commitment will accelerate progress on the Canadian information highway.

In addition, I am announcing a continuation of the SchoolNet program which will see all of Canada's 16,500 schools and 3,400 libraries connected to the information highway by 1998, a full two years before the target set by vice-president Gore for the United States.

Our fourth strategic priority for building an innovative economy is science and technology.

In the world today, virtually all product innovation is science-based, the result of research and development. And nothing is more important than product innovation for businesses to maintain and improve market share, thus contributing to economic growth and productivity.

Therefore, nothing is more important for jobs. I believe that no one will dispute the importance of the federal government's role in science, technology, research and development. The need to be more strategic and to ensure that our investment in this area supports Canada's social, economic and environmental goals led to the launching of a comprehensive science and technology review last June.

This review is nearing completion and will set the stage for a clear articulation of a renewed science and technology strategy for Canada.

Building a more innovative economy lays out specific initiatives to do just that: build a more innovative economy. My plan is a series of over 30 initiatives involving ten ministers and their departments-a truly government-wide effort in responding to the challenges of economic leadership.

It is not a panacea. Panaceas do not exist. It is a co-ordinated plan of action, responsive to the real needs of the private sector, a result of consultation, a commitment to a work plan and the accountability that comes with it.

The challenge before us is clear, to push the limits of this recovery and to achieve real and sustained jobs and growth. We will not decree an innovative economy. That simply means we must work together to build one piece by piece. I believe we can do that by acting together, by focusing on real results and by targeting our programs and reducing our spending to meet our deficit commitment.

We said in the red book: "Dynamic economies constantly re-invent themselves and grow through innovation. Innovation and experimentation inevitably entail risk and the possibility of failure. It is the job of government not to protect entrepreneurs against all failure but rather to create the best economic conditions and institutions to allow entrepreneurs to get on with the job".

Building a more innovative economy is a plan of action to implement this vision.

[Gaston Leroux, Bloc, Richmond—Wolfe, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to react today to the tabling of the industry minister's policy statement for his department.

Although this document has some good points, as we admit, we can only see it as a political document that seeks to make up for a non-existent substantive industrial policy; we were entitled to expect a substantive policy, given the state of the Canadian economy.

The statement refers to a plan of action for some thirty programs involving co-operation among ten or so departments. We already know that for some aspects of the announced action plan, some ministers will work together and we will only see the results in 1998, according to information we obtained for parts of the document. Some plans will only take effect in 1995, if then, according to conversations I had with people in the department.

We therefore think that this paper is premature, since the proposed new policies depend on other departments' policies which are not yet known or will come, very late, from consultations that are still incomplete and program reviews that are a long time coming.

We know very well that several key documents on social programs have not yet been tabled. How can the minister boast that his policy takes into consideration all that businesses need to achieve the desired growth? For example, the action to be taken by the Department of Public Works will not be known until 1995.

The minister wants to promote growth for small businesses by opening up government procurement and allowing companies to have access to what is available in terms of such procurement. However, we have no idea of where this will come from, nor when the action plan will be completed.

In the context of that growth, how will this access to government procurement for small businesses work? Will companies be allowed to register in some file? Will there be calls for tenders for professional or technical services? How will this plan work? We do not know. For companies, growth does not mean the same as development. Indeed, the growth of some companies does not necessarily promote economic development for a territory or a region.

Given these unknowns, we find it hard to understand why the minister is so quick to extol the virtues of his action plan and say that it meets an urgent need in the economy, and particularly a desire to develop small businesses, which will generate employment as everybody agrees.

The strategy for technological innovation is another example of the government's lack of global vision. Indeed, the minister is considering a technological innovation policy without knowing the results of the current consultations on research and development, which will only be completed in 1995.

The minister talks about consulting with partners. However, when you think of the information highway issue raised by Quebec, it is very hard to see the minister showing leadership, since his government is totally opposed to any dialogue on this issue.

How can the minister justify the existence of a true technological innovation policy while putting on the back burner the whole issue of research and development? By definition, innovation implies the search for new products and processes, so that companies are competitive in the international market. Otherwise, we obviously cannot talk about competitive businesses.

In his action plan, the minister proposes three strategic priorities: Support for small businesses, infrastructure and technology. As far as support for small business is concerned, the minister reluctantly proposes to maintain funding support through the Small Businesses Loans Act program. I say reluctantly since it is only because this program is mentioned in the red book that the minister has decided to maintain it, although without implementing the red book promise to get rid of personal collateral.

The minister is announcing that available funds will be increased to $12 billion because this program gets results. In itself, this is good news.

This program is so popular that businesses register quickly. Small businesses are a well-known fact; they are dynamic, eager to innovate and expand. On the other hand, the minister is announcing that the program will have to be self-financing. This is what the government is seeking, to go and get back the money it loaned. I believe that to be its fundamental goal. In itself, it is laudable.

But if we compare that to what the Minister of Human Resources Development is suggesting when he says that access to credit will be made easier for students, we quickly understand the equation. To save public funds, the government is forcing individuals into debt. What is the impact of this on SMEs? Are they going to be pushed deeper into debt or will they really get help to start up or develop domestically or internationally?

Thus, without even conducting a cost-benefit analysis, which could have shown the efficiency of the program and indicated which policy was preferable with respect to tariffs, the minister is acting, in our view, as an amateur, increasing, without any consultation, the cost of financing SMEs. We can draw a parallel with the social reform whereby the government says that it will cut support to students, but they will be given the chance to go deeper into debt while the government sets up mechanisms to recover the loans it guaranteed.

I wonder whether this is a responsible way to behave for the government and especially the industry minister, in the present economic context. Although some people on the government side sometimes think we are the bad guys, I must congratulate the minister on announcing measures to reduce red tape.

Everybody is complaining and rightly so. Everybody agrees, every time you want to do something you have to fill out 16 different forms and send them all over. Therefore this is a good move by the government. Reducing red tape is something SMEs have been asking for for a long time in order to stop wasting time and resources. Imagine having to submit 119 pages of information to get $10,000. Finally we are giving SMEs what they have been asking for.

However, I would like to point out to the minister that we are here to promote a sovereign Quebec and I mentioned the information highway where the message to the minister was to open up to negotiation and co-operation. The minister did not open up, so I remind him that under our option, a level of government-the federal level-will disappear, thereby reducing red tape, inefficiencies and regulations often at cross purposes, making our industry much more efficient. This is a clear goal.

The government is continuously reminding us that we must create the atmosphere for growth in the high-technology sector. We agree. SMEs in that area represent the future of our industrial base. True, high-tech SMEs are creating the jobs of tomorrow and will be mainly responsible for our ability to maintain the high standard of living we need and must have.

It is therefore regrettable that the government would not propose any policy to stimulate their growth and, in particular, improve their financing. We must realize that these companies pursue speculative endeavours and have specific financing problems. Banks are seldom willing to finance technology and this brings me back to the role of government. It says it wants to recover its money, and it acts like a banker. We know what a bank does, it loans money when it is reasonably certain that it is secure. Precisely what the government is doing.

Yet, there are technological areas where risk is high. It is impossible to act like a banker in the sense that we cannot expect all the guarantees that a bank would normally require. That is obvious.

If we really want to encourage the development of these businesses, we must provide ways to find more appropriate funding for them. In our dissenting opinion to the report of the industry committee we proposed extending the Small Businesses Loans Act in order to fund the working capital of all businesses. This would have made it possible to support the financing of small and medium size high-tech enterprises. Instead, this government proposes a piecemeal strategy with a program that would only provide exclusively for the financing of exporting SMEs.

Even the Canadian Association of Exporters recommended to the industry committee-and I do not know if the minister has heard about it-that the working capital of exporting SMEs be financed under the act. The government does not listen to the people involved.

As for infrastructure, the minister praises the transport minister's policy. We have seen what has been going on in that area up to now and we are not at all heartened. If this is an indication of what this government intends to do about transportation, we should expect the worst.

We believe that the national policy on airports, among others, is nothing but a disguised way to pass on the cost of regional transportation to municipal and provincial governments. This process had begun under the previous government and we already see costs being passed on to other levels of government.

Furthermore, the federal government has the nerve-and this is important because they did it in several departments-to keep the revenue from the national network of airports and use it to finance regional airport infrastructure while disavowing any responsibility for their operating costs. This is how the federal government wants to manage public property and public funds throughout Canada.

This is what federalism is all about. This is it. The federal government keeps the power even though it cuts funds and totally withdraws from the administration of services. As we were told, it does not have any choice, it is debt-ridden. It will have no choice but to turn to the provinces for help, and will be

unable to return the favour. The facts are really very simple. Everyone understands the situation.

The Minister of Transport is following a policy which jeopardizes some regional transportation facilities and will greatly increase the cost of transportation from region to region.

The information highway is the best example of the total lack of consultation and co-operation between the federal government and the provinces. As I said earlier, the minister is about to ask the CRTC to significantly change the regulations concerning telecommunications in order to facilitate the creation of this information highway, without even consulting the provinces. The information highway will have a major impact, as you know, on a great many areas, some under exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

In committee, we were very surprised to learn that the minister is going ahead with the information highway. But who will control the information to be found on this highway? Who will provide the information? One thing became clear in our discussions with officials from the Department of Industry, nobody has the answer to these questions. This issue has not been examined yet. It will be in the months to come. We are about to go ahead with the information highway without even making sure that its contents will be controlled and that there will be joint action with the provinces, which obviously have jurisdiction in this area.

Finally, I would like to address the issues of technology andR & D. The document tells us that Canada's effort in R & D is less than that of other G-7 countries. However, the Canadian government invests as much as its competitors in civilian R & D. This demonstrates how badly administered and inefficient the government's R & D effort is.

It is about time we thoroughly reviewed our involvment inR & D matters and adopted a true science policy for R & D. The government must be ready to question everything, to decentralize our technological efforts and to base our research laboratories outside Ottawa to take advantage of the scientific resources that are found across the country and make better use of them. This may create some synergy with the scientific research capabilities throughout Canada.

To conclude, the document tabled by the minister is nothing but an incomplete policy statement, which contains many policies already announced by his colleagues and others that will be announced by 1998. Thus, to be able to put Canada and Quebec back on the prosperity track, we have to consider-

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Maheu)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. I will now recognize the hon. member for Okanagan-Centre.

[Werner Schmidt, Reform, Okanagan Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and very exciting actually to be participating in response to the minister's statement. I think there were some very positive things said by the minister and I want to commend him for those kinds of things, particularly for the fact that he recognizes that there is a problem. The difficulty is that I am not quite so sure that he has a solution to the problem. This is where I think we have to focus our attention.

It is very interesting the way this particular paper has been presented to us. The first omission I find that really bothers me a lot is that there is no particular and no direct reference to the recommendations that were contained in the "Taking Care of Small Business" report by the Standing Committee on Industry.

There were many recommendations in that particular report that gave direct impetus to the kinds of strategic planning that ought to be done in the Department of Industry and in the government at large.

It became very clear during that particular discussion that there was a major gap in the recognition of the contribution that small business makes to the creation of jobs in Canada. It is true that there have been a number of new jobs created in Canada but for the government to take credit for this is not correct. The jobs were created by entrepreneurs and those people want to develop themselves.

I commend the particular suggestion that there is going to be a particular place for small businesses to enter into government procurement contracts, contracts that are $125,000 or less but larger than $25,000. It raises all kinds of interesting questions that my hon. colleague raised not so long ago when he spoke about a particular department other than the Department of Industry in which certain contracts were divided up into smaller components so that indeed they would not have to meet certain regulatory provisions.

Is this a possibility now that certain procurements may be made so that larger procurements will be broken up into $125,000 ones, or will that not be the case? Will others be combined? This not clear.

I want to pay particular attention to the Small Businesses Loans Act. That ceiling was increased from $4 billion to $12 billion. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that particular program is not working so well. This morning I heard the hon. minister say on Canada AM that small businesses liked it so much that they used it up right away, within 18 months of it having been increased.

The interesting thing is that banks have to a large extent used the SBLA to cover their particular risks, so that it became a subsidy to the banks. It is small wonder that with this kind of help the larger banks in Canada can show a combined profit of something like $4 billion. Is this the kind of thing that small business is supposed to be supporting, so that the big banks can

make big profits like that? The Small Businesses Loans Act had no small contribution to that particular sector.

That is not all. The other part of this is that there seems to be a suggestion that subsidies and grants to businesses create jobs. I submit to you, Madam Speaker, and to the minister and to this House that is probably false, that in fact when you have a subsidy which may create a job over on this side, it loses a job over on the other side because this business over here has to pay larger taxes, has to pay increased interest rates in order to subsidize that particular business over there. That is misleading if nothing else.

There is another thing that happens when you do this sort of thing. You divert investment from those businesses that are solid to those businesses that have some kind of artificial government support and shoring up.

Business should be allowed to stand on its own feet. Where I commend the minister is where he says that the government should create an environment so that private businesses can succeed. I endorse that 100 per cent. I commend him for that statement. Now may he go ahead and prove that he believes that by taking away subsidies and grants for small business.

Much was made about trade and much was made about the imbalance in trade when it comes to tourism. There is a suggestion that some $100 million is going to be spent in the tourism industry, approximately $50 million for the setting up of a tourism commission, another $50 million from $15 million, so it is not quite the $50 million in addition, for a promotion budget that has been increased from $15 million to $50 million. That suggests more than a triple amount of dollars spent in promotion.

I ask the minister and the House whether they really believe that spending three times as much money will result in three times as many tourists coming to Canada and spending three times as much money than if that promotion budget were not there.

Madam Speaker, I suggest to you that there may be an increase but it will not be in direct proportion to the increase of public spending in that particular sector.

The minister said not too long ago and he states in his orange book that the solution is not in throwing dollars at a problem but rather to solve the problem. The best people to solve the problem are the entrepreneurs. They understand the business. They understand the marketplace. They know the value of the dollar. They know how to efficiently deploy those dollars. They know how to employ people. They know how to get good work out of people. Throwing dollars at the problem is not the answer. We need to recognize that applies in the tourism industry as well as in every other industry.

There has been a suggestion that the infrastructure program is a major innovative development in this particular strategic document that has been presented to the House. The infrastructure program that currently exists, I believe it is $6 billion on the one side and that is going to be matched by the provincial government and the municipal government, is a beautiful pot of money. It has become known in many quarters as boccie Canada, and builds boccie courts.

The infrastructure program needs to be recognized for what it is. It is a program that benefits particular places. I want to really commend the British Columbia government. So far I know of no instance, and there may be some since I last looked at the list, when the money has not been spent on bona fide infrastructure programs such as highways, bridges, water systems, sewer systems, things of that sort. That is significant but building boccie courts is not. Building canoe museums is not. These are the kinds of things.

I want to move into another area which has to do with the science and technology program. We have had a review this spring of the science and technology program all across Canada and we had the hon. secretary of state go across Canada holding various discussions with business people, interest groups, looking at what should be done in this particular area.

Three things became very clear. When they put together the summary forum which took place here in Ottawa in mid-October they came up with a bunch of round tables with some very high powered, highly trained, highly developed and intelligent people who made some beautiful statements. When I examine those particular conclusions and compare them with conclusions of 1940, 56 years ago, there are in many instances very few substantive differences between the problems articulated today and the problems articulated some 50 years ago.

When a noted journalist put things together and compared the two he recognized, in particular when it came to the industrial application of the technological and scientific studies and R and D research that had been done primarily through government funding, that the minimal effect was industrial application.

Some $6 billion is being spent in that area plus $1 billion being spent on tax credits. That is a total of $7 billion. In this fall's statement the Auditor General said that we were not getting an effective resolution and application of those dollars. We were not getting the kinds of results we should be getting.

The time has come for us to do some new thinking, not to go through the old thinking and do it all over again. We know what the problem is. It is time we build a new innovative economy

that provides for the private entrepreneur the ability to make money and to give everybody jobs.

Pictou Landing Indian Band Agreement Act

[Ron Irwin, Liberal, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-60, an act respecting an agreement between Her Majesty in right of Canada and the Pictou Landing Indian Band.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

Agriculture And Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act

[Ron Irwin, Liberal, for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-61, an act to establish a system of administrative monetary penalties for the enforcement of the Canada Agricultural Products Act, the Feeds Act, the Fertilizers Act, the Health of Animals Act and the Meat Inspection Act, the Pest Control Products Act, the Plant Protection Act and the Seeds Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

Criminal Code

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-293, an act to amend the Criminal Code (use of a firearm in the commission of or attempt at an offence).

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley West for seconding introduction and first reading of the bill.

Today it is my pleasure to introduce the bill to the House. It will increase the minimum mandatory sentence for the use of a gun in the commission of a crime to five years.

Canadians are demanding stiffer sentences for the criminal misuse of firearms but the recently proposed four-year mandatory sentence of the justice minister is only restricted to 10 offences and is not consecutive.

He is merely introducing a minimum sentence for four years for these crimes, and with parole it may be less. Although the tougher sentences in his reaction plan are a step in the right direction the bill would go even further. It would make the minimum five-year sentence consecutive to any other sentence and would apply to any accomplices who had access to the firearm during the crime or attempted crime whether or not the gun was fired.

Canadians want deterrents and I believe the bill would provide some.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

Petitions

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am honoured to present a petition on behalf of Susan MacDonell and 59 other Albertans, many of whom are my constituents.

The petitioners request that Parliament act immediately to extend protection to the unborn child by amending the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to extend the same protection enjoyed by born human beings to unborn human beings.

Not only am I pleased to present the petition but I endorse it as well.

[Rose-Marie Ur, Liberal, Lambton—Middlesex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour and privilege to table to two petitions signed by the constituents of Lambton-Middlesex, pursuant to Standing Order 36 and duly certified by the clerk of petitions.

In the first the petitioners are concerned about the future of VIA Rail passenger service in southwestern Ontario and call upon Parliament to urge the government to place a moratorium on any passenger rail cuts in the Sarnia-Toronto corridor.

[Rose-Marie Ur, Liberal, Lambton—Middlesex, ON]

Madam Speaker, in the second petition the petitioners pray and request that Parliament not amend the human rights code, the Human Rights Act or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in any way that would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality, including amending the Human Rights Act to include in the prohibited grounds of discrimination the undefined phrase sexual orientation.

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I give my support to two senior citizens' clubs in the beautiful riding of Frontenac, namely the Saint-Alphonse and the Saint-Maurice clubs in Thetford, which are opposed to the uncontrolled use of voice mail.

Since senior citizens are naturally more intimidated by voice mail technology and have a right to expect proper service, especially for enquiries concerning income security payments, we ask the Liberal government not to use voice mail for senior citizens.

I fully support the Saint-Alphonse and Saint-Maurice senior citizens' clubs from Thetford Mines.

[Bernie Collins, Liberal, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions that I have the pleasure of putting forth this afternoon. One petition deals with gun control.

[Bernie Collins, Liberal, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition in opposition to euthanasia or person assisted suicide.

[Bernie Collins, Liberal, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition in support of the Canadian Wheat Board.

[Bernie Collins, Liberal, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition in opposition to same sex couple benefits.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have several petitions I would like to enter, the first dealing with sexual orientation.

The petitioners pray and request that Parliament not amend the Human Rights Act or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in any way that would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality, including the amending of the Human Rights Act to include in the prohibited grounds of discrimination the undefined phrase sexual orientation. There are 304 signatures.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have two petitions dealing with the topic of euthanasia, one with 242 signatures and the other with 93.

The petitioners pray that Parliament ensures the present provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada prohibiting assisted suicide be enforced vigorously and that Parliament makes no changes in the law which would sanction or allow the aiding or abetting of suicide or active or passive euthanasia.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker the third petition deals with the sanctity of human life. There are 305 signatures from my riding.

The petitioners pray that Parliament acts immediately to extend protection to the unborn child by amending the Criminal Code to extend the same protection enjoyed by born human beings to unborn human beings.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, the last petition deals with immigration levels. It has 128 signatures from various parts of the country.

The petitioners pray and call upon Parliament to reduce immigration to the previous average level of one-half of 1 per cent of the population, or about 150,000 per year, with the basic intake of not less than 50 per cent of the total composed of carefully selected skilled workers required by the Canadian economy and to bring our refugee acceptance rate in line with the average of other asylum destination countries.

I heartily agree with all petitions.

[Jack Frazer, Reform, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 it is my duty and honour to rise in the House to present a petition, duly certified by the clerk of petitions, on behalf of the constituents of Saanich-Gulf Islands.

The petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to immediately revoke the directive from the Minister of Transport that proceeds with a detailed plan for a program of unmanning all west coast light stations and request a complete and thorough public inquiry in the province of British Columbia into the need for these manned light stations on the west coast.