Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Lincoln):

Mr. Speaker, may I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment, one I am sure all Members of the House agree with.

It is rather unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, but unavoidable that this debate has been cut so short, because it seems to me to be one of the more important debates the House has been seized with in some considerable time. At the very outset I want to congratulate the Members of the NDP for not only introducing the debate, using up one of their opposition days to do so, but also for the rather moderate proposal which they put before the House for our consideration. As other people have noted this morning, the five NDP proposals are, essentially and in principle, acceptable, or should be, to all Members of the House and to all Parties.

It would be wrong, of course, to leave the impression that none of the proposals are not already in law at one level of

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government or another. One of the difficulties of debating the particular issue of technological change is that there are so many facets to it. One could talk with a certain amount of knowledge 1 suppose on a multitude of things and it would take days and weeks. However, what I also like about the NDP motion is that they use the term "technological change", rather than "high-tech" or "technological innovation" or "new technology". That reminds the House that technological change has been part of the industrial scene for a long, long time.

I want to predict perhaps the future rather than dwell too long in the past, but I also want to remind Hon. Members of the House that technological change in the 1960s had as wrenching an impact on the work force as technological change will have in the 1980s or 1990s. It is, if you like, a different sector which is affected. In the 1960s the main cause of concern, worry and uncertainty was the technological change occurring in the railway industry through the introduction of diesel power in an industry which had been dominated by steam. We had the spectacle, unfortunately it was necessary, of railway workers lying down on the railway tracks at Wainwright and Nakina, transfer points from the West, because the diesel made those points redundant. The trains no longer had to stop there.

In the Freedman Report Judge Freedman said that workers who were affected detrimentally by the introduction of technology should have a right to negotiate that change. In 1968 in the House we introduced a compromise which said in effect that workers should at least have the opportunity to negotiate the detrimental impact of technology. We recognize that we cannot prevent technology, nor should we. However, if we are an employer or a government we have a moral obligation, if not a legal one, to do everything in our power to minimize the negative impact of technology. This was true in the airline industry when we brought in something of which we all approve today. In the reservation section, which was not computerized, there was fear and concern on the part of the workers that these computers would do away with their jobs. I had the Minister of Labour move in to prevent a strike in that sector.

1 am glad, Mr. Speaker, that the NDP has raised this important issue of technological change. It is something in which I have been particularly interested in my years on the Treasury benches and since. It is the reason the Liberal Party introduced into legislation the obligation of the employer in the federal area to negotiate change. It was the fundamental reason behind unemployment insurance. We recognized that even in times of great prosperity technological change would create hardships and the loss of jobs for people who had a right to presume after 20, 30 or 40 years that their jobs would not disappear. It is the reason the Liberal Party brought in additions to proposed assistance to the textile industry which make it obligatory under law to provide a pension to workers who have been linked to the textile industry for 30 years, have reached age 55 and are without work. The Government

financed, with no strings attached, the modernization of the textile industry. Eventually that feature was made part of the shoe industry as well.

I am not going to dwell on the wrenching effects of changes in the pulp and paper industry which make one-industry towns redundant. I would like to suggest that in the eighties major work stoppages in our key industries will be an exception rather than the rule. Based on history, because of technological change, productivity will improve. I would also like to say, for a reason which I would like to develop in the time remaining, that we will see a tremendous increase in management, labour and government joint committees. In other words, Mr. Speaker, I believe that the adversarial concept which dominated the relationship between management, labour and government in the past will gradually be replaced by a more realistic relationship. I do not believe that that change in relationship between management, labour and government will be the result of legislation. It is too simplistic a solution. I have heard it mentioned here in the 20 years I have been here. Like other people in the House, I have participated in seminars in no less than 14 countries in the world. You cannot borrow other people's labour legislation. You cannot legislate that type of co-operation. I am certain that the future bodes well for the country and that we will have increased labour-management consultation because technological change has been going on since before the turn of the century. Each time major innovations are introduced into the country, they have a dramatic effect on the social mores of our nation. Perhaps what is more important at the moment, it has a dramatic effect on the characteristics of the work force.

A few years ago, Mr. Speaker, just before the recent recession I did a lot of reading on the make-up of the work force, as did many other people. What effects did the growth of technology have on the work force? In the early part of the century it took two-thirds of the Canadian work force to produce the goods that all of us needed or wanted. Today it takes little more than one-third. Perhaps my figures are slightly out of whack, but I believe in the United States it is one-third. The one fundamental change that technology has created in this country is to change the characteristics of the work force. Only one-third, as opposed to two-thirds a few decades ago, is producing. The two-thirds who are not producing goods are producing services; government, education, health, law, leisure and convenience. The service sector has become the fastest growing sector of the economy. Industry no longer dominates this country. The largest group in the labour force is no longer the blue collar worker or the semi-skilled worker; it is the white collar worker. He now outnumbers the blue collar worker by more than five to four.

As we look to the eighties and technological change, it is significant that the fastest growing category within the white collar workers group is the technical and professional worker. Of the technical and professional workers the college trained group is growing twice as fast as the total remaining work force. Among scientists and engineers the group rate is tripled.

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Knowledge rather than skill is becoming the base of the economy and work force. For this reason workers are more mobile and more independent of their labour leaders and co-workers. They can move and bring their knowledge with them. They are very independent, resourceful, responsible and mobile. That all adds up to a new social framework in the economy, the work place and the work force. No Government legislation forged that change any more than Government legislation will force management, labour and Government to sit down and iron out the problems if one or more of the partners do not want to co-operate. Today three out of five workers are in the service industries and the bulk are knowledgeable workers rather than semi-skilled. This situation evolved because the creator of this new structure was technology itself. Human society created technology and now technology is remoulding society. This adds up to the fact that where the adversary system is badly needed in a free industrial society or economy it does not work nearly as well in the half free service economy which we have.

The adversary today is often the society or the government bureaucracy rather than the employer. Therefore, the knowledgeable worker, in looking for a new type of society, can see that it is being moulded. Perhaps the recession has hidden the degree to which we have changed. I was looking back with particular interest at 1972 and saw that the change has been quiet and dramatic yet almost unobtrusive. It is evident only now as the recession ends-the buzz word is technology-that we are realizing that there has been a subtle change in social patterns in society and in the make-up of the workers.

The Government should take time and re-analyse the characteristics of the work force. The average worker today will follow the union leader only if the union leader makes sense. The worker is a fairly independent individual. The new emphasis on technology, dramatic as it is, is simply accelerating that change which I have been talking about. Thirty per cent of the present products for sale in this country were totally unknown 20 years ago. New products mean shifts in material, manpower, plants and population. It means problems in urban transportation and it means that regional industries are left behind. New priorities are set up, credit is allocated and people are trained.

Directly or indirectly, public funds support half of the country's scientists. Out there is that huge challenge of coordinating research.

Technology as I see it does not ask for a planned co-operative; it asks for a new society that plans and co-operates. This means a new working relationship between government, business and labour. Labour understands that. The knowledgeable workers, who form the majority of the workers today, understand and appreciate that that working relationship is important to their future and to the application of their knowledge. They understand that government and business should sit down, and plan our future. They expect their labour leaders to understand that. The day has long passed when workers in an

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industrial union were hauled out on May Day for some strange philosophy. However, if the worker is pushed far enough- doctors are a good example-he will strike and Fight for what he thinks is right.

Therefore I believe that labour has come to recognize its stake in productivity. That was evident in the six and five program when it was accepted by the labour movement quietly, with the usual ritual, but the average knowledgeable worker, the member with college education who goes to work with his knowledge and not necessarily with his tools and who makes up three out of five members in the country, understood the relationship between inflation and wage settlements. Those workers more than anyone told their leaders to get with it. They were telling their labour leaders to sit down with management and government to plan future productivity and how to divide the profits that will come to the country as a result of that planning.

Management can no longer ignore the workers because Canada's consumers are more knowledgeable today of private enterprise and public offerings. They are more prone than ever before to be participants in the industry through such things as pension plans. They demand that as well of the employer, which is very evident in the approach taken by Chrysler, as we have mentioned.

Technological change and equality brought about by education are pushing our institutions toward a genuine economic partnership. Eventually, long term mutual goals will override short term self-seeking goals. 1 suggest that this will lead to self-regulation by the managers of capital whose thousands and thousands of investment decisions based on private profit are vastly superior to those of a central planning board.

In the 1950s when I worked for a large corporation, we were expected to conform and dress in acceptable fashion, to punch a clock, to think in terms of corporate values and to subordinate family life to corporate needs. This has changed. The success of Whyte's The Organizational Man was its obituary. The new society's need to educate people in many disciplines underwrote a new declaration of independence.

[ Translation]

Mr. Mackasey:

What 1 do know is that, Mr. Chairman, you are in a very difficult position as are all Hon. Members of the House. You have before you a point of order raised by the Hon. Member for Beauharnois-Salaberry, which alleges in general terms that some Members of the House entered after the vote had begun. Of course I would remind the House that it was not necessarily to vote, their coming into the House. I do not agree that the solution to the problem is for a notice of motion to be presented and for Members to rescind the vote which took place earlier. That would make a mockery of the House and end forevermore the effectiveness of this place. We have fought for too many decades to eliminate that type of challenge to the Speaker. However, I am afraid there is no way around your dilemma, Mr. Chairman. Your dilemma cannot be put on the shoulders of Members of the House. Your dilemma is that at six o'clock you must pass judgment on a point of order. It will then be up to the House to agree or disagree with your ruling.

Mr. Maekasey:

I will speak to the point of order. The point of order is that some Members entered the House after the vote had begun.

Mr. Mackasey:

I remind the House that the dilemma we are in is not the fault of the chair or of the officers at the Table. The whole issue is one of integrity.

Mr. Maekasey:

The solution that the Member be challenged by the Leader of the Opposition and asked is unfair, frankly. If a Member is prepared, when asked, to say that he entered into the House illegally, he should have the sense of integrity to volunteer that information. This is why I say it is a question of integrity. I am afraid that only you, Mr. Chairman, can render the decision.