Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the motion tabled by the hon. member for Regina-Qu'Appelle, regarding the "On to Ottawa" trek which started in Vancouver and ended in Regina, on July 1, 1935.
I think it is important to tell our viewers how this episode came about, and to see if there are lessons to be drawn from it. It must be remembered that 1935 was one of the worst years of the Great Depression, which was probably the worst economic disaster of our century.
It must also be remembered that this disaster occurred at a time when governments were saying: "The less we get involved, the better it is. The less we try to control, the more we will promote wealth and its distribution". Reality, however, turned out to be quite different. There was an enormous lack of confidence in the economy. Unemployment suddenly soared to astronomical levels, which had nothing to do with reality, but which meant that people could not get enough income to ensure their survival.
We must not forget that, in those days, there were no social programs such as welfare and unemployment insurance. The safety net was not yet in place; consequently, those who lost their jobs had nothing to fall back on except begging.
Faced with this situation, the government of the day decided to set up work camps. Unfortunately, conditions in these camps were absolutely appalling, and this eventually led to the strike.
There is a lesson to be drawn from certain important aspects of this strike. We are about to launch a reform of the old age pension and unemployment insurance programs, and crucial decisions will also be made regarding things such as social assistance funding. It is easy, when you overlook certain factors, to make quick assumptions on the actual impact of such measures.
Finally, measures were established to ensure a distribution of wealth, a distribution of income and an opportunity to balance consumption. When essentially everything is in the hands of the rich, what remains, once the rich have taken what they require to satisfy their basic needs, becomes luxury. This situation moves the economy a lot less than if everybody had enough to live on and to feed their families.
This sort of strike, which was stopped by violence, happened because the government of the day lacked sufficient means to distribute wealth.
In order to avoid the excesses of the past and to permit redistribution of wealth, we must absolutely avoid behaviour such as that of the Government of Ontario, which drew up a list to show people they could live and feed themselves on $90 a month, forgetting milk for cereal and really crazy things. This sort of thing could lead to behaviour similar to this strike. We forget about respect for basic human dignity.
The other point we should remember is that mandatory work in unacceptable conditions is one thing that should be rejected as an option, because this too represents a failure to respect people's dignity. It leads to behaviour, which may not be justifiable, but which can be understood on closer examination.
There is also another component, which got less attention this afternoon, and that is police intervention. There have been a number of police interventions in Canada's history which have been more or less justifiable in the past. In this case, we are talking about an intervention that affected workers in western Canada in 1935.
In Quebec, there was another one that affected us in a very particular way. It happened during the October crisis in 1970, where a lack of control over police action resulted in unacceptable behaviour and unwarranted arrests, as was described earlier in connection with events in Regina. The same thing happened in Montreal and Quebec City during the October crisis in 1970.
As a state, as a country claiming to be one of the most democratic in the world, with highly interesting democratic practices we can boast of to others, we still have a number of lessons to learn from these examples, which must drive us to ensure that our police forces have very clear mandates and proper training to deal with the situations that arise. They must obtain mandates from a judge in special situations, so that such excesses never occur.
I think we can say, with hindsight, that these young men-for it was mainly young men in these work camps-represented in some way the future of Canada at the time the strike took place. The way that they were crushed is something that must never happen again.
One of the participants in the march, Joe McEwen, summed up the situation in a way by stating in the conclusion to his description of what happened "We were the salt of the earth". Young people, aged 20, aged 30, wanting to work, wanting acceptable conditions, not finding them, and taking steps to let the government know how dissatisfied they were. Their expression of the need for change fell on totally deaf ears which led to aggressiveness and unacceptable behaviour, probably on both sides, but this must serve as a lesson to us today to make sure that we are not demolishing everything that has been built and to avoid such situations.
If the next unemployment insurance reform requires, as we fear it will, 26 weeks of work rather than 20 weeks in the first year of eligibility for unemployment insurance, we will see an increase and a perpetuation of the current statistics which show more and more people on welfare because they are not eligible for unemployment insurance. This type of reform leads directly to violent behaviour, because when people cannot feed their families and provide them with the basic necessities it is somewhat normal for them to seek some way out, to show their dissatisfaction, sometimes in an aggressive manner.
The other reform from which similar lessons must be learned is the reform of old age pensions. Over the past 15 to 20 years, we in Canada have developed a program which has enabled our seniors to enjoy greater security than before, at least from the economic point of view. In the upcoming reform, we must make sure that this economic security is not threatened, so our seniors may continue to have a decent income, one that enables them to meet their basic needs and to make a proper contribution to society.
Often when these things are being discussed, there is talk of fearmongering and a desire to frighten people. I think we have to learn from the past and see that history often repeats itself. We must always be sure that rights are protected, and this is the main lesson I have learned from the motion, which asks the federal government to make an official and unequivocal apology for the reprehensible acts committed by the government of the day.
The main lesson I can draw today, in 1995, is that we must ensure that the government opposite, as Parliament, does not repeat the same mistakes and that it provides a system of social programs that meets the needs of the 21st century. Globalization of trade does not mean standardization of social programs and this seems to me to be the challenge of the 21st century for Quebec and for Canada.