Hon. John M. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. It concerns The Globe and Mail, which calls itself Canada's national paper. On April 27, 1984, The Globe and Mail ordered its distributor in Winnipeg to stop distributing The Globe and Mail to communities in the constituency of Kenora-Rainy River, particularly the communities of Sioux Lookout and Red Lake. They cut it off, not because people were unwilling to pay the price of 85 cents a paper, but because the many advertisements the paper carries had no relevance in Kenora-Rainy River.

I would like the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to take under advisement the possibility of a prosecution of The Globe and Mail for having ordered its distributor not to distribute its paper in a way which is common throughout the rest of the country, which order is totally discriminatory against communities in my constituency and other small communities throughout Canada.

Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate

Affairs): Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate the gravity of the situation, though many would not, coming from that part of the country where communities are remote and are not served by newspapers. This is a very important source of information. I can guarantee the Member that I will certainly look into the matter.

Mr. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):

The Bank of Canada as well.

Mr. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):

As the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands (Miss MacDonald) points out, the CBC and whatnot.

Mr. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):

Yes, the National Film Board. The issue that we are dealing with is not to question corporations, whether we should have them or not. We are going to have them. Her Majesty's Official Opposition likes them, supports them and uses them. We are not talking about eliminating Crown corporations. We are talking about bringing them under some form of parliamentary control. That is an entirely different matter.

Listening to the speeches of the Hon. Member for Mississauga North (Mr. Blenkarn), Winnipeg-Assiniboine (Mr. McKenzie) and other Members over there, I say, my God, there is no way one would know that that subject was being debated in the House of Commons. They talk about how evil Crown corporations are, how rotten Crown corporations are, and how destructive Crown corporations are. It is difficult to remember a time in the House when Members opposite have actually opposed in as rabid a fashion as they are opposing this Bill the establishment of any Crown corporation that we now have. The reason is simple. Crown corporations are a pragmatic response by governments in Canada to the peculiarities of the Canadian psyche, Canadian geography and our economic system.

If we want to do certain things, we have to mobilize capital in a big way. If we are going to mobilize it in a big way, normally we have government involvement. Take for example, the CPR. The CPR is the bastion of what the Conservative Party says is right about the free enterprise system. If one looks at the way in which the CPR is put together, one finds that it is the original Crown corporation put together by a 19th century government. Who was it that financed CPR? The CPR could never have built those railways had it not been for the funding that Sir John A. Macdonald's Government provided. He did not take equity. He took debt, and he provided grants. By and large, that is what Crown corporations are all about. The issue is not whether we will have Crown corporations. We are going to have them. We will have Crown corporations with the full support of the House of Commons.

What is the issue? Obviously the issue is how to bring them under control. How do we provide parliamentary control? How do we provide parliamentary input into control over and above that control which we now have and over and above the

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control which the Government has through the Cabinet to the Cabinet committees? That is what this Bill is about and that is what the subject of debate ought to be. The last two times the Bill has been debated, those issues have never been touched in a serious way by Her Majesty's Opposition. Instead, we have had catalogues of complaint about this, that and the other thing.

Let me give a few ideas, for which I take no credit. They were discussed in the special committee that looked into parliamentary reform. One issue that we examined in a very real way was the question of Crown corporations. How can Parliament get its finger on Crown corporations in a way that will be seen to be useful and effective? We have two problems.

First, you do not want to take Crown corporation inspections and investigations out from under the committee of the House of Commons that has relevance in that area. It would not make much sense to set up a special committee on Crown corporations, have the committee look at Air Canada, and not have the Transport Committee look at Air Canada as a Crown corporation as well. You cannot look at air transport in Canada unless you look at Air Canada. The consequence is that we have to find a way to look at Crown corporations in a way which would make some sense with regard to the role which they play in our economic system and in our governmental system, as well as look at Crown corporations as a vehicle in themselves.

We talked about how to accomplish this duality. How could you look at a Crown corporation as an instrument and an institution to see whether we had gone too far or whether the Crown corporation had expanded too far? How do we look at the issue of whether the time has come to sell a Crown corporation or parts of it? What is the time to split them and re-combine them in different ways?

The House of Commons by and large has shown very little interest in those subjects. The House of Commons is an extremely reactive body. It is not a leadership body. We have never really had debate in terms of asking about Crown corporations in this way. Even the debate that we have had so far on Crown corporations has never really dealt with those questions.

Let me outline some possible hypothetical solutions which have to be tackled, probably in the new Parliament, if we want to get a grip on Crown corporations. First, we should set up a special committee of the House of Commons directed toward looking at Crown corporations as Crown corporations, not from the point of view of their activities. I believe that can best be done by the various standing committees that have an operational interest in a particular field. For example, the Transport Committee should look at Air Canada, the Energy Committee should look at Petro-Canada, and so on. You can run down the whole gamut in that way.

I believe it would be worth while to have a special reference to establish a special committee to look at Crown corporations so as to examine at least two matters that trouble me about Crown corporations. The first matter is the enormous variety of Crown corporations. If you look at the recent list of Crown

May 14, 1984

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corporations published by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray), you will not find any common denominator as to what is and what is not a Crown corporation. There are Crown corporations that involve the last post fund to Petro-Canada, to subsidies of Petro-Canada, to Air Canada and so on. One of the first things we need to know is what is a Crown corporation. The Crown corporations in which Members of Parliament are most interested at this point are those that intervene in some way in the economic affairs of our country.

The second question that has to be looked at in such a committee is the impact of Crown corporations in monopoly situations, such as Northern Power Commission, Northern Transportation, and Air Canada, CP Air policy, and the Petro-Canada situation with respect to the other oil companies. We have to examine the role that these companies play where there is a competitive factor. Then we have to look at Crown corporations from the point of view of where we have a monopoly operation. Canadair and Air Canada are classic examples. We also have to provide some guidelines as to the risk that we ought to take in our Crown corporations. When you go into business, establish a new corporation or buy someone else out, you take on some very real risks. Nobody can foretell the future. It means that each Crown corporation is up against its own form of risk.

We do not debate those issues in the House of Commons, mainly because we do not provide ourselves the time to do it. We in this place probably manage our time in the most incompetent way of any legislature in the world. If Members are interested in these very real points of policy, then we have to provide time to debate them. In addition, we have to find a mechanism which would force us to pay attention to the facts or the problem in front of us, instead of wandering all over the map, as we do now.

This is why I suggest that we set up a special committee to examine the question of Crown corporations. This should be examined from the three points of view I have mentioned. The committee should spend some time trying to develop guidelines it expects the Government to follow in terms of the creation of Crown corporations in the future. Also, when it examines Crown corporations, there should be guidelines for this examination both on the floor of the House and in committee. If we were able to agree on a platform and pay attention to that when we come back after the next sequence of elections, we would have served everybody very well and this debate might have been of some use after all, after having gone through 79 speeches.

Hon. John M. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):

Mr. Speaker, we have now had 78 speakers on this Bill. Bill C-24 is designed to try to deal with some of the problems of Crown corporations and to try to provide an accounting system for the House of Commons to get some control over them. What fascinates me in terms of this Bill, for which the Opposition has called, is the Opposition's determined opposition to the House of Commons getting control over Crown corporations.

I certainly understand the ambivalence of members of Her Majesty's Official Opposition. It is because when they were in power they were in power they were one of the most enthusiastic developers of the concept of Crown corporations. In point of fact, if we look back in history at people who put together

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Canadian National Railways, we find that it was neither the Liberals nor the socialists. It was the Conservative Party.