Newfoundland and Labrador Hansard — Statements by Ministers — 20 November 1997 (43rd General Assembly, 2nd Session, Vol. XLIII No. 34)
1997-11-20
Newfoundland and Labrador — Debates (Hansard)
November
20, 1997
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS
Vol. XLIII No. 34
The House met at 2:00 p.m.
MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!
The Chair would like to welcome to the gallery today on
behalf of all the members, seven students from I. J. Samson Junior High School
in the District of St. John's Centre. These students are accompanied by
teachers: Ms Iris Goulding, Ms Myrtle Guinchard and Parents: Ms Hilda Senior and
Ms Susan Hatcher.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Labrador West.
MR. CANNING: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to read a
statement. Do I have leave?
MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.
MR. SPEAKER: By leave.
MR. CANNING: Members and colleagues, I wish to advise you
that on October 4, 1997, during recess of this hon. House, Mary Hodder, MHA for
Burin Placentia - West was awarded the prestigious Adrian Badcock Achievement
Award.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. CANNING: This is the highest award presented by the
Canadian Paraplegic Association and honours Adrian G. Badcock, the first
quadriplegic lawyer in North America. He was also a past Chairman of the CPA and
an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. The award celebrates life achievements
and significant contributions to individuals for working toward their community
by leading through example.
As we know, Mary has given endlessly of her time and talents
in helping others and has overcome the challenges of living with spina bifida;
she has also been diagnosed twice in her life with cancer, fought the battle and
twice defeated it. She is an inspiration to all those who know her and we extend
our sincere congratulations to her for having received this very auspicious
award.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It is a distinct pleasure of mine to be able to stand today
and to share with all members of this House the congratulations that are passed
along to Mary. I have known Mary, and I call her by first name because of our
family connection, and I have known of her great work in Marystown and
throughout all of the Burin Peninsula. If you want to know what this lady stands
for, you only have to go by the Health Sciences Centre when someone from her
district is there, and you can know that she is not only a person who, shall we
say, represents her constituents when she is in here in the House, but can find
her around, not only in the community, but also in this greater area in St.
John's when the cause is needed.
Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure and I say from my family,
which is also her family, this distinction gives us great family pride and it is
very well deserved.
Statements by Ministers
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Human Resources and
Employment.
MS BETTNEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise today to ask hon. members to join with me in
celebrating National Child Day.
Today is a special opportunity for governments, community
groups, teachers, parents and children to work together to create environments
where all children can grow and develop to their fullest potential.
On this day in 1989, the United Nations adopted the
convention on the rights of the child. The convention is important because it
addresses various aspects in the lives of children and youth.
Children deserve to live in a healthy happy environment. Mr.
Speaker, we are working with all of our partners to ensure that the children of
our Province have access to all of the things that will give them a promising
start in life.
I am pleased to update hon. members on the Provincial School
Nutrition Fund announced one year ago today. Since the program was launched,
twenty school nutrition programs received assistance, ten of which were new
programs. Altogether, almost 2,000 children have been fed one nutritious meal a
day on a daily basis as a result of this initiative.
Mr. Speaker, because of the continued need of children and
the tremendous success of this program, I am very pleased to have been able to
announce earlier today, that my department will be contributing an additional
$125,000 to the Provincial School Nutrition Fund.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, this will enable even more
children to take
part in having a nutritious meal each day directly through this
initiative.
In making this announcement, I want to acknowledge the
efforts of the School Children's Food Foundation, Petro Canada and the many
volunteers throughout communities and other groups and organizations that have
made contributions to this program and I would like to note that Susan Green,
the executive director of the foundation and Barbara Hopkins, the acting chair,
are in the gallery today.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to share this
information with the members of the House of Assembly today in observation of
National Child Day.
I am very optimistic about the future of programs and
services available to our young people. In the new year, I will be introducing
the new Child, Youth and Family Services Bill in the House of Assembly and this
will replace the current Child Welfare Act. This new legislation will allow a
transition from a crisis-based model to one which balances prevention and early
intervention with protective services and crisis intervention. A continuum of
services for children and families is now being developed in partnership with
the community.
The National Child Benefit, Mr. Speaker, is another ongoing
initiative which will greatly improve the services for our children. In
Newfoundland and Labrador, between $10 million and $12 million annually will be
earmarked to help children in low income families. With this funding, we will be
introducing a number of programs aimed at assisting children and families. Our
first priority is child care services. Specifically, my department is looking to
expand regulated child care services to include infants ages zero to two.
Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge all of the groups and
organizations that worked on this year's National Child Day activities. I extend
a special thank-you to the Association of Early Childhood Educators of
Newfoundland and Labrador, the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association,
Newfoundland and Labrador Chapter, Canadian Heritage, the Community Services
Council, the City of Mount Pearl Parks and Recreation Department, LISTEN Inc.,
the Newfoundland and Labrador Human Rights Association, and the Newfoundland and
Labrador Teachers' Association.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I would ask now that I have
distributed these blue ribbons which you see me wearing here today. I just came
from a luncheon where people were gathered to honour children, and I would ask
members of the House to join me in wearing a ribbon today to help celebrate and
honour National Child Day.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's West.
MS S. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I welcome the
statement by the minister today. I love the colour of the ribbons.
While I and my colleagues on this side are pleased to join
with the government in celebrating National Child Day, I am still disturbed by
the plight of children in our Province today, and by the decisions of this
government affecting children.
I do welcome the statements that the minister has made. I
cannot tell you how necessary they are, and how expeditiously I hope they are
implemented.
Yesterday we witnessed the Minister of Human Resources and
Employment, speaking for herself and her colleagues in health and education,
effectively dismissing the concept of a universal school lunch program even
though we know there are children in Newfoundland and Labrador today going to
school hungry. I talked about the fact recorded in the Williams Royal Commission
report and the Canning Special Matters report that 40,000 children in
this Province live below the poverty line, and many more live very near to the
poverty line.
No matter which department of the government we look at, the
concerns and best interests of children are not the main priority. In Education
we see cuts in the classroom, cuts to extra-curricular activities, cuts to
programs, and the closing of schools. In Human Resources and Employment we see
the claw-back of the child tax credit from the poorest of our poor, and once
again, with absolutely no consideration of the impact of this action on the
children.
The problem with this government is the lack of focus. The
House of Assembly Select Committee on Children's Interest recommended last year
in a comprehensive report that the government establish one office to refocus
attention on our children. Where is the legislation setting up the office of the
child advocate? Where is the action on the Select Committee's recommendations?
Who is minding the children?
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. member's time is up.
Does the hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi have
leave?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi
Vidi.
MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am happy to join with the minister and the Member for St.
John's West in recognizing National Child Day and the anniversary of the
international Convention on the rights of the child.
It is very disturbing to note as well on this day that child
poverty in this Province has increased by 50 per cent since 1989. The responses
the minister outlined are totally inadequate. The additional $125,000 for the
school lunch program will not do anything to change it from a pilot project and
rather tentative program. There are still only thirty-two of over 400 schools
that have a school lunch program in this Province.
There are, as the Member for St. John's West pointed out,
40,000 children in this Province living below the poverty line: by definition,
not receiving an adequate diet. The Newfoundland Dietitians Association has
pointed out that people on social assistance cannot possibly afford to have a
nutritious diet.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).
MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, rather than heckling from over
there, if this ministry and this government are serious about child poverty and
children's issues, we will hear more from them than what we are hearing so far.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. member's time is up.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
For the past decade or more the Government of Newfoundland
and Labrador and the sealing industry have focused efforts on the rebuilding of
our seal fishery. We have made considerable progress in revitalizing the
industry to the point where the export value of the 1997 harvest approximated
$20 million. This success has been made possible by dedicated efforts to
identify new markets for a wide range of products based on our policy that there
must be full utilization of the animal.
The Province remains fully committed to a revitalized seal
fishery based around three key principles:
i) a sustainable seal harvest based
around solid science, ii) full utilization of the animal; and iii) humane
harvest practices with zero tolerance for inappropriate harvesting practices.
Our overall objective is to ensure that the seal resource is fully developed for
the benefit of sealers, other industry workers, and communities with a
dependence on this important economic activity.
Apart from this, Mr. Speaker, we also fully recognize that
seals are having a major impact on the recovery of our Northern cod stock and
other fish stocks. From this perspective, seals have to be managed as an
integral part of the marine ecosystem and not in isolation from well-defined
predator-prey relationships.
It was only this June past that the Scientific Council of the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization concluded that the harp seal
population is consuming approximately 110,000 tonnes of Northern cod annually,
the greater percentage of which is juvenile cod less than 40 centimetres in
length. The Council concluded that the expanding seal populations may be
hindering the recovery of the Northern cod stock.
In recent weeks, Mr. Speaker, the International Fund for
Animal Welfare began its annual propaganda circus against the seal fishery. This
campaign is based on misrepresentations of the facts, and as in previous years
is grossly misleading.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: That is what I said.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: Typical, Mr. Speaker, of the Opposition.
In recent weeks, Mr. Speaker, my department, in concert with
the Canadian Sealers Association and the sealing industry at large, is closely
monitoring the activities of the IFAW. Already, we have made representation to
the media and such advertising governing bodies as the Telecaster Committee of
Canada to have misleading ads cancelled.
However, we have no intention of giving the IFAW a publicity
platform around which its propaganda campaign will be given any legitimacy
whatsoever.
Mr. Speaker, the Province, in its continuing efforts to
revitalize the seal fishery, will not be side-tracked by the mischievous actions
of some organization whose stated objective is to end the commercial seal
harvest.
We fully intend to continue expanding solid market
opportunities so we can increase the economic benefits from the seal fishery.
Such efforts include my recent mission to Asia, a significant portion of which
was devoted to developing markets for seal products.
I am happy to report to the House that as a result of our
discussions in Korea, their importing restrictions on seal products may be
changed. In fact, changes may be made to allow shipment of seal oil to Korea as
early as January coming.
The market for our seal products in China is exceptionally
promising. Since I came back just a few days ago, one major company we met with
has already sent me a proposal for discussion purposes. Considering the enormous
population of China, and the fact that we have already made some inroads there
with our seal products, further expansion of our market share there will be a
tremendous boost for our seal industry. In Japan, we have also had very
encouraging interest from companies exploring market opportunities with us,
particularly for seal oil importation.
At the same time, Mr. Speaker, we continue to address the
issue of misinformation spread by the multi-million dollar advertising campaign
of the IFAW. I have written publications such as The Globe and Mail
newspaper, and TIME and Maclean's magazines, and am arranging for
speaking engagements outside the Province both to correct the glaring
inaccuracies in the IFAW ads and to present an accurate portrayal of our seal
fishery and what it means to our coastal residents and the economy in those
communities.
Next week, both the Premier and I will be speaking at the
International Conference on Sealing here in St. John's. We are proud to host
this conference and avail of this opportunity to focus attention on one of the
healthiest mammal populations in the world, and how this vast renewable resource
allows people in our coastal communities to continue to pursue their livelihoods
with dignity.
I have asked my federal counterpart to ensure that his
department acts in a timely fashion to provide current and accurate information
on the sealing industry to its embassies, news media, and other audiences. For
its part, government, and my department in particular, will, whenever necessary,
challenge the IFAW campaign to ensure that there is a balanced perspective on
the seal fishery.
The industry is expanding and is providing a measure of hope
to individuals who have seen their lives shattered by the collapse of the
groundfish sector. Our objective is to work with the Federal Government and all
sectors of the industry to ensure that its full economic potential is realized.
Mr. Speaker, the misguided activities of the IFAW will not weaken this resolve.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We, over here, welcome the minister's press release today,
and I compliment the minister for taking the initiative to go to places like
China and Japan and Korea. Korea is a place to which we were not allowed to ship
any seal products up until now. There is a little bit of hope there that we may
be able to get into that particular market.
The minister has already proven that he is a born salesman in
his other life. Mr. Speaker, when he came on t.v. a few short weeks ago and he
took a few seal capsules, he created a run on seal oil capsules comparable to
Voisey's Bay, I say to the minister. The reason that was created was because
people realized that it is a good product and it has the capabilities of
employing Newfoundlanders. In my own particular district, there is activity
going on right now where there are some good things happening in the seal
industry. There is optimism, and hopefully, that will continue.
Mr. Speaker, the minister talked about the seals consuming
110,000 metric tonnes, that is, 243 million pounds, of fish, I say to members
opposite. I tell you, the plant in Port Union would love to have part of that,
so that people could get back to work.
I have heard the minister on radio talking to people in the
IFAW, saying that they should be ashamed of themselves and counteracting the
arguments that they have been putting forward, and this needs to be done,
because if there was ever a slur campaign against Newfoundlanders, it is
happening with the IFAW. So, I urge everybody to take
part in that.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. FITZGERALD: But the one thought I would like to leave
with members opposite, is to look inside yourselves and see if it is
conscionable to accept money from the IFAW, for political campaigns, like your
cousins up in Ottawa did. Shame! This should never be allowed to happen and we
should never accept money from a disgraceful organization like the IFAW.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi
Vidi. Does the hon. member have leave?
AN HON. MEMBER: No.
MR. SPEAKER: No leave.
Further statements by ministers.
The hon. the Minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods.
MR. K. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
On behalf of my colleagues, the Minister of Justice and the
Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, it gives me great pleasure today
to inform the members of the House of Assembly and the citizens of our Province
of a national award that has been bestowed upon the Newfoundland and Labrador
Special Olympics.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics has been
awarded the distinction for having the top per capita Law Enforcement Torch Run
in the world. The 1997 torch run raised $117,500 for the Newfoundland and
Labrador association. This award was recently presented to our provincial
association at a ceremony in Portland, Oregon, in the USA.
Mr. Speaker, this award is a major accomplishment, not only
for the athletes in the Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics, but for
members of our provincial civil service who assisted in the organization of the
event and ran in the torch run. This includes the conservation officers of my
department, members of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, wardens of Her
Majesty's Penitentiary, Provincial High Sheriff's Office, Highway Enforcement
Officers of the Department of Works, Services and Transportation, as well as
officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Department of Fisheries and
Oceans, Military Police and Parks Canada.
Mr. Speaker, these funds will greatly assist the Special
Olympics organization to continue to provide quality sport and fitness programs
to the Province's athletes who have a mental handicap.
As Canadians, we are to be doubly proud of having two
provinces take first and second place in this honour. I would also like to
congratulate the Province of Ontario, which placed second in this event, and the
United Kingdom for receiving third place.
The contribution that these employees, our employees in the
civil service, have made to Special Olympics certainly shows their dedication
and commitment to the athletes and to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Mr. Speaker, this torch run commenced on June 8, 1997 in Port
aux Basques and concluded June 13, 1997 at the opening of the Provincial Summer
Games in St. John's. In addition to this, there were several torch runs held in
other areas of the Province; Labrador West, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Nain and on
the Burin Peninsula, to name a few. This entire effort is a great accomplishment
for all who have contributed to the event.
Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to pass on their
congratulations to the Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics and the
provincial employees in our civil service, who deserve a great deal of praise
for getting involved in this event.
Today, in the House, we have Mr. Mike Walsh, executive
director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics, and Mr. Doug
Noseworthy of the Newfoundland and Labrador Special Olympics. They are here in
the gallery today.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay
South.
MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to say to the minister, we did not receive a
copy of his statement. We wish we had. But I, too, would like to join with the
minister in congratulating the group for doing the torch relay, and for the work
that I know a lot of the wardens and a lot of the police officers in this
Province put into such an event.
When you have people with special needs and you are able to
assist those people... and my friend from Labrador, when they host their Winter
Games - I am sure there will be provisions made for these very special people as
well, as we did in Conception Bay South when we hosted the Newfoundland and
Labrador Summer Games, as they did in Harbour Grace and as they did in Mount
Pearl.
We too, Sir, would like to join with you today in
congratulating the people in our Province, the various associations, who make
these things possible. Hopefully, we will always be able to support such
initiatives. Thank you.
MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. the Member for Signal Hill -
Quidi Vidi have leave?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi
Vidi.
MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to join with the minister and the Member for
Conception Bay South in commending the organizers and individuals, almost all
public servants, mentioned by the minister, who gave of their time to make this
event successful. It is important to recognize the work that is done by public
employees above and beyond the call of duty and in their time. We have a very
fine public service, and their efforts in this particular regard being
recognized internationally is a wonderful commendation by itself. I would like
to join in commending them to Members of the House and to the public.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture
and Recreation.
MS KELLY: Mr. Speaker, as I announced last week in a
joint presentation with Hospitality Newfoundland and Labrador, our Province has
just experienced what is undoubtedly its most successful tourism year on record.
On the strength of our Cabot 500 Anniversary Celebrations,
1997 has become a benchmark year in terms of future tourism growth. The success
of this year goes beyond traditional yardsticks of non-resident visitation and
tourism expenditure, in that we have also achieved unprecedented awareness of
Newfoundland and Labrador throughout the world.
But, as we have all experienced this year, the Cabot
celebrations were really about spirit and pride in our Province, our culture,
our heritage, and ourselves. In celebration of this wonderful anniversary year,
last Saturday night at Corner Brook's spectacular new Canada Games Centre a
multi-act program of entertainment and special effects was staged in true
Newfoundland and Labrador style.
It was called "The Fire Still Burns," after the finale song
written by Ged Blackmore of the Folk of the Sea, and the evening featured
performers from throughout our Province, such as The Ennis Sisters, the Blues
Brothers, Meshikamu from Sheshatshiu, Labrador, and 500 young people from the
Five Hundred More Youth Congress and the Provincial Student Leadership
conference; and 3,000 enthusiastic concert-goers.
Mr. Speaker, it was a wonderful finale to our Cabot 500
Anniversary year, and a highlight of what we have to celebrate in the very near
future, such as the 1999 Canada Winter Games, our 50th Anniversary of
Confederation with Canada, and the Viking Millennium.
Thanks to the sponsorship of NewTel Communications,
PetroCanada, and CBC Television, the program will be presented tonight in a
two-hour feature concert on CBC all throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. The
show will begin at 7:30 p.m. Newfoundland time, 7:00 p.m. in Labrador.
I encourage all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to tune into
this special program tonight. Thank you.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay
South.
MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
First of all, I would like to thank the minister for a copy
of her statement. I appreciate that, Minister.
I would like to, first of all, congratulate the people who
made the Cabot celebrations the success they were. I am sure the minister will
agree that these celebrations were certainly successful, and over and above, I
guess, any area where the Matthew went, the celebrations were tremendous.
In areas where they were not, I do not think we had the desired effect that
maybe we all would have liked.
I can only say to the minister that I trust that your
department, Minister, will build on what we have created in 1997 and that your
government will realize the tremendous benefit of what we can do in this
Province of Newfoundland and Labrador when we put forward our own Province and
we bring people in here that we can send out of here at the end of the day with
fond memories of what this Province could do.
Also, Mr. Speaker, while I am on my feet, not only do I wish
to thank the many corporate sponsors because - as the minister well knows and I
certainly well know of - without any event in this Province, without the backing
of good corporate sponsors, then, in this Province I think all of us, in any
sport or any endeavour in this Province would be truly lost.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. member's time is up.
MR. FRENCH: So I would like to congratulate - if I might
just have a minute, Mr. Speaker?
MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?
AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.
MR. SPEAKER: By leave.
MR. FRENCH: I would like to congratulate the many
thousands and thousands of volunteers in this Province who gave so freely of
their time this summer. I am sure, Minister, as we get on to the Canada Winter
Games and to the city of Corner Brook, they have built a tremendous facility
over there and I am sure at the end of the day when we host that very
prestigious event, that building will certainly be used and it will be of great
benefit to the West Coast of this Province.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Human Resources and
Employment.
MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce today a
change in policy for persons who were receiving a social assistance supplement
to earnings immediately prior to a labour dispute.
For more than twenty years - actually since legislation was
passed in 1975 - social assistance has not been provided to individuals, who
voluntarily and collectively withdrew their services from the workforce through
strike action. This policy has included individuals who had been locked out by
their employer through negotiations, and also clients who had received a social
assistance supplement to earnings.
After reviewing this policy, I am announcing today a change
with respect to clients who receive these earning supplements. These individuals
will now continue to be eligible to receive social assistance supplements. This
is consistent with this government's current policy of encouraging individuals
to seek employment and to reduce their dependency on social assistance.
Mr. Speaker, in announcing this change in policy, I want to
reinforce that government will not be making up for income lost due to strike
action for those individuals who were not receiving social assistance prior to
the strike action. This change in policy only affects those who are receiving
social assistance supplement to earnings prior to the strike action.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.
MR. E. BYRNE: I applaud the minister for responding so
swiftly to an
article that appeared in the Evening Telegram today. Up
until 1:45 today, officials in her department could not confirm that this policy
change was going to take place. The
article in the Evening Telegram
today, and I am responding because the individual involved in the
article
certainly is a constituent of mine. What I can say to the minister clearly is
this, that you have responded quickly. You should be congratulated for
responding quickly, and hopefully the message today gets out; and please,
Minister, once Question Period of the House sits, ensure that this policy is
communicated directly to all people within your department so that anybody who
finds himself in this situation will not have to go through the stress and
strain that a constituent of mine had to go through within the last week to ten
days.
Thank you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
Oral Questions
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My questions today are for the Minister of Health. On May 14,
the health minister in the House announced a plan to reduce the wait list for
cardiac surgery by sending fifty people to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, at a
rate of two per week from June to December. Now, I ask the minister, how many
people have been accommodated to date? Where have the surgeries been performed
and what is the total cost?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As was announced, we were going to send forty people out of
the Province. To date we have sent twelve to Halifax and thirteen to New
Brunswick. Nova Scotia, similar to Newfoundland, are experiencing difficulties
with keeping up with the number of cardiac surgeries that are required. They
have encountered some difficulty. In a response to keeping the commitment we
made, we then contacted a hospital in Ottawa, the Ottawa Heart Institute, where
we have made arrangements for patients to travel out of the Province to go
there, doing two a week. We had one done Tuesday and another done today, and we
will be meeting our deadline and numbers as we have indicated.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a
supplementary.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I informed the minister that there have been thirty done to
date, and two per week for the next month in Ottawa, which would give us
thirty-eight in total.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SULLIVAN: I say to the minister, that is not fifty
unless it is a new form of math.
When the Minister of Health -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: I will get to that shortly, I say to the
hon. member.
When the Minister of Health made her announcement last
spring, there were 220 people on the wait list. Today, it has grown to 240
people. Obviously, the Minister of Health's initiative has failed to reduce the
numbers.
Now, will the minister admit that the wait list today is at
an all-time high, and that we are falling further and further behind, while we
are sending two people a week to Ottawa; and, I might add, exporting expensive
health care jobs to Ontario, we are, in this Province, cancelling two a week on
average because there are no ICU beds to accommodate these people. That does not
make sense, I say to the minister.
When is the minister going to provide a permanent solution to
the problem we are facing today?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, we are working on the
commitment that we gave. I think we need to look at it very realistically. My
hon. colleague speaks about giving jobs away. You cannot have it both ways.
Right now, if we are trying to address the issue in the short term, we made a
commitment to send the people out of the Province and we are doing that. When we
approached Nova Scotia, who did the first numbers that we asked them to do, they
did them quite agreeably, but they, too, have had difficulties, because they are
having the same challenges as the whole country is having in maintaining
surgeries and keeping up with the numbers that are going on the list every week.
I think it is a credit in many ways to the medical profession
and to the advancements that we have made that cardiac patients are being
diagnosed much sooner than they were before, and they are being put on a waiting
list for surgery. Many of the patients on the waiting list are elective. To date
we have 200 patients on the waiting list. We are putting an average of eleven on
a week and, as my hon. colleague knows, we are working on making renovations
complete at the Health Sciences Centre. They are on target. This is not new.
I know this is the usual fall issue that comes up with my
hon. colleague, but we have not changed our direction. We committed to send the
people out of the Province, and we will send the people out of the Province to
have the surgery done. Our goal is to do them in-Province. We have renovations
that are ongoing and will be completed on schedule. We will increase the number
of surgeries after Christmas.
We made commitments and we will continue to pursue those
commitments when we look at dedicated beds at the Health Sciences Centre, but
neither my colleague nor I do triage for cardiac surgery patients, and the day
it comes into this House, when we cannot count on physicians to do the type of
triage, we are all in big trouble.
I trust the physicians; I trust the triage. We are putting
the money in place. We are making the changes to ICU, and there will be added
beds available after Christmas, as indicated.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a
supplementary.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I spoke with an individual today who has been driven out of
this Province at his own expense, and he had to make his own private
arrangements in another part of this country. It is a sad commentary on equal
access to health care, when an individual has to make arrangements on his own
because he is afraid that he will have another heart attack if he has to wait
for government to do something about it.
I ask the minister: With cancellations in this Province last
year, last month, this Fall, there has been an average of less than nine done
per week. That information is provided to me by the Health Care Corporation, and
I receive it on an ongoing basis. At the same time in this Province, I say to
the minister -
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I want to remind the hon. member that he is on a
supplementary and there should be no
preamble needed. I ask him to get to his
question.
MR. SULLIVAN: While there are less than nine being done
per week, and the list is growing at eleven per week, I say to the minister, how
do you plan on reducing the waiting list when it is growing faster than the
number of surgeries being performed?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to respond to some of the comments before my
colleague got to the question.
With respect to public funding, Mr. Speaker, as long as we
live in a publicly-funded health care system in this country, we will always
have waiting lists. It is a function of public funding. It does not matter, Mr.
Speaker, if you live in Newfoundland or if you live in British Columbia, there
will always be waiting lists and the day we lose our waiting list, Mr. Speaker,
is the day we come into a privately-funded health care system, and God help us
all at that point.
The next point I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, is that,
politicians do not triage, physicians triage, and if somebody comes into the
hospital with a head injury and is dying, certainly the person who is waiting
for an elective surgery would be cancelled to meet those needs. I would not
interfere with those types of triage arrangements and neither should this person
across the House. We are working to meet our guidelines; we are working very,
very hard with the Health Care Corporation as a tertiary-care centre in the
Province doing cardiac surgery.
We are, certainly, as I have said, reached the point in
health care where we have such capabilities. We are doing much early diagnosis,
and that is good, Mr. Speaker, but I can say right now, anyone in this Province
who wants to go outside to have heart surgery can do it, but unfortunately, it
is at great cost and in this country we have waiting lists because we are in a
publicly-funded system, and God help the day when we lose it.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a
supplementary.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Four years ago, the list was 100, today, it is 240. There is
a cap on physicians spending, there is a cap on expenditure in health care, the
list has gone up from 100 to 240 in four years, Minister. The government is not
putting enough money to address the problem.
Now, I get calls, numerous calls from people in their late
30s and early 40s and the problem -
MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, a point of order.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. TULK: The hon. gentleman has been warned a number of
times by the Speaker that he is not to engage in debate when he is putting a
supplementary question but rather, to put the question. I ask, Mr. Speaker, that
you bring him to order or name him.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
To that point or order, again, I want to remind all hon.
members of the House that, Question Period is not a period for debate and I
refer hon. members to Beauchesne,
section 409, paragraph 1 which says: "A
question must not be an expression of an opinion, a representation, an argument,
nor debate.
"The question must be brief. A
preamble need not exceed one
carefully drawn sentence. A long
preamble on a long question takes an unfair
share of time and provokes the same sort of reply. A supplementary question
should need no
preamble." I ask hon. members to keep this in mind when they are
presenting questions.
The Chair said, and I quoted from Beauchesne, if the hon.
member was listening, that a long
preamble on a long question takes an unfair
share of time and provokes the same sort of reply, so I ask hon. members again,
to keep this in mind when they are presenting questions and answers in the
House.
The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I ask the Minister of Health: What does she propose to do for
a person whose sick benefits have run out, whose EI has expired, who cannot get
Canada Pension disability. The problem can be corrected, but he cannot get
surgery because the Province will not permit it, he is too far down the list.
People suffering from stress from their illness and from the shortage of money -
what does the minister propose to do, and say to those people here in the
Province today?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I would like to ask the member across the House a question.
Is he proposing I interfere with the list? Is that what you are proposing?
I do not triage cardiac-surgery patients. It is the question,
Mr. Speaker, he is asking: what am I going to do? I am not a doctor, I do not
triage cardiac-surgery patients and the day a politician triages cardiac-surgery
patients, Mr. Speaker, we have lost it.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a
supplementary.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I will tell the minister what I propose, with leave of the
House, before I move to my questions.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to get to his question.
MR. SULLIVAN: The same as I told the previous (inaudible)
minister and the same as cardiac people who fought you for the past several
years.
There are twenty-five people in the hospital today waiting
for heart surgery, people who are too sick to go home and another 215 waiting
for a call that may never come.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SULLIVAN: Yesterday -
AN HON. MEMBER: Mr. Speaker. (Inaudible).
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SULLIVAN: Come on. (Inaudible)!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to get to his question.
MR. SULLIVAN: What is the minister going to say to the
person that I spoke with, who said in mid-September that they were told they
would have to have their surgery in two weeks, who is still waiting today? That
person is not one of the twenty-five who is in hospital too sick to go home. I
ask the minister: What is she going to do to deal with a problem that is running
out of control here in this Province?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Let me refer for my hon. colleague to what we are doing with
respect to cardiac surgery in the Province.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Well, if you knew what I was doing, why
are you asking the question? I would like to answer the question if I could.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We have put money into the Corporation to allow for
renovations from fourteen to seventeen beds, which will be made available in
January. There is an additional - of the $30 million to the Health Care
Corporation, which the Opposition on the side of the House criticized, $5
million of that is going for cardiac surgery. In addition to that there will be
two extra cases done. I would like to compliment the medical community which has
increased its expertise in diagnosing the cases for which cardiac surgery are
required.
I have outlined what we have done. We have sent patients out
of the Province but I will reiterate, I do not triage. Physicians will triage
based on need, and they set the priorities for surgery as they see fit.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to conclude her answer.
MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.
MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
For some time, the Opposition and the critics have talked
about the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board and its lack of action in
enforcing the principles outlined in the Atlantic Accord, with respect to the
protection of jobs and the elimination of importing people to this Province
where skills already exist.
I ask the Minister of Mines and Energy today: Can he, as the
minister, taking the initiative and the lead on behalf of government, confirm
that they are about to appoint new members to the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore
Petroleum Board, with a mandate to ensure that local preference policies are
enshrined and protected? Can he confirm that?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.
MR. FUREY: Yes, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for
Kilbride.
MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the lack of action, not only
by the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board, but the lack of action by
this government, is paramount and evident. In the Terra Nova assessment panel's
recommendations, I asked in this House last year, prior to those recommendations
coming out, this question, which I will ask of the minister. Has government
moved to put together a list that would show clearly what jobs are required,
what skills presently exist, and the most important question, what skills do not
exist? Are we putting training programs in place so that Newfoundlanders and
Labradorians can take advantage of those opportunities? Can the minister respond
to that, please?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.
MR. FUREY: Yes, Mr. Speaker, that is ongoing amongst a
number of departments, Education, Human Resources and Employment, and my
department.
MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for
Kilbride.
MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, it is very odd that the
minister today says it is ongoing without providing any details, when last
Spring in this House of Assembly, he laughed at the very suggestion. So let me
ask him again - more detailed: If you say a number of departments are going on,
what is going on? When will the time frame be put in place? In view of the fact
that you are enjoying making public announcements lately, can you announce the
time frame for such action, and when will that be made public?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.
MR. FUREY: Mr. Speaker, if I did not know any better I
would think the hon. member was running for something in the next number of...
He can stand in his place and simulate outrage and pretend to be angry, but we
have answered these questions clearly in the House many times.
MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for
Kilbride.
MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Mines and
Energy is clearly out of touch when he talks about simulating outrage. Last year
150 electrical instrumentation personnel came in from Calgary, while 150
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who were skilled, who were ready to go to work,
did not get a chance.
Let me ask you once again. What will government tangibly do
to ensure that the principles of the Atlantic Accord are protected, and that
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians get first bang, not only at the jobs, but at
the industrial benefits that should be associated with the resource that belongs
to us?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.
MR. FUREY: Mr. Speaker, the record is quite clear. There
were millions and millions of person hours at the Hibernia site. Newfoundland -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. FUREY: Yes, and I thank John Crosbie. John Crosbie
did a superb job when he was in Ottawa constructing the funding to do it and I
give credit where is it deserved and he deserves some credit in that regard.
But, Mr. Speaker, Newfoundlanders got tremendous
opportunities. I think the hon. member is down-playing it. He should be very
proud of the workforce and the terrific construction activity at Bull Arm.
Millions and millions of person hours of work were given to Newfoundlanders.
Hundreds of contracts were given to Newfoundland companies. Tremendous
technology transfer happened. So, I say to the hon. member, he is engaging in
simulated outrage. He is an angry young man and he wants to be leader.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's South.
MR. T. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My questions today are for the Minister of Environment and
Labour.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, the Atlantic Cartier was
charged with eight charges today. Last year, approximately 2,500 oily sea birds
were washed up off Newfoundland shores and an estimated 25,000 others were
damaged by surface oil that almost certainly came from bilges of ships, which
were going through Canadian waters, the shipping lanes just off Newfoundland.
This year we have seen more of the same and we are pleased to see that the
Canadian Coast Guard has charged the Atlantic Cartier .
I ask the minister, in view of the critical importance of our
environment to our world-renowned seabird sanctuary, to our tourism and fishery
industries, that we stop these events from happening in the first place.
What measures is the minister proposing to his Federal
Government counterparts that will protect us from oil leaks, oil spills and
illegal bilge pumping?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and
Labour.
MR LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
There is no doubt about it, that many of the ships that go up
and down the Newfoundland coast do discharge the oil, but it is very difficult
in a sense, I guess, for anyone to be able to pinpoint the number of ships -
there are hundreds of them that go up and down the coast - to be able to say
which one did or did not do it.
Obviously, we are working with the Canadian Coast Guard and
Environment Canada to see what we can do to monitor it more closely, but it is a
practical impossibility to pinpoint who does this from time to time.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's South, a
supplementary.
MR. T. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I am pleased to see that the Canadian Government arrested the
Atlantic Cartier , Mr. Speaker, for the offences of this nature and I
trust that the minister will urge the Federal Government to enforce the highest
possible fines.
I believe we must look for new ways to stop these offences
from happening in the first place, and the risk of a high fine may not be
enough.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to get to his question.
MR. T. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The risk of a high fine may not be enough to deter ships from
leaking their oil bilges. Will the minister therefore press his federal
counterparts to force all shipping companies whose vessels have been convicted
of bilge-pumping and all shipping companies whose bilge records are deficient,
to report to the Canadian Coast Guard immediately, every time they enter
Canadian waters? And will he target the offenders and ask the Federal Government
to impose long probation periods, so we can prevent this type of activity from
happening in the future?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and
Labour.
MR LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Yes, we will do that and do it expeditiously, and I will
contact the federal minister to see if it is possible to do it.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's South, a
supplementary.
MR. E. BYRNE: Make another suggestion, `Tom'. They have
not done anything yet.
MR. T. OSBORNE: They have not done anything yet, Mr.
Speaker.
Just last year, we saw how disorganized and confused all
levels of government were with the oil leak on the South Side in St. John's.
With Hibernia, Terra Nova, the transshipment, the Argentia smelter, and so on,
the local traffic off our shores is going to increase tremendously in the
upcoming months and years. What is the minister going to do, on a provincial
level, to kick into high gear the measures we need to ensure that our
environment is protected from this type of activity in the future? It is too
late once an Exxon Valdez type of situation happens. I ask you what you are
going to do to prevent this type of activity from happening in the future.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and
Labour.
MR LANGDON: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I want to tell the member that we are constantly in
consultation with the oil companies that will be working in the Placentia Bay
area. I have also met a number of times with the North Atlantic Refinery
Company. They have a process in place that can be of most help as well.
Obviously, we want to make sure that the utmost is done to
protect the environment. The environment is pristine and we want to keep it that
way, and we want to impress upon the big oil companies and big industry to work
in consultation with us and the feds in a harmonized way to make sure we protect
our environment.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.
MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
My question is to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
Mr. Speaker, I understand by the minister's own admission
that he and his entourage just returned from a globe-trotting excursion,
visiting companies in Japan, China, and Korea. The minister has indicated that
one thing on his agenda was to explore the potential for marketing dried squid.
Would the minister inform Members of the House of Assembly,
and the thousands of Newfoundland fishermen who are eagerly waiting to sell
their squid, if he was successful in his sales pitch, and, if so, when can they
expect to sell the thousands of pounds of squid that are presently sitting in
their fishing sheds.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: I should say (inaudible) sit down.
Mr. Speaker, what I did say before I went on the Asian tour
was that I would look at and see where the possibilities were, or if there was
any market potential for fish products - and, in particular, squid - in Japan,
Korea or Asia. I did not say at any time that I would guarantee or sell for any
company or any fisherperson in Newfoundland any of the products they had in
their sheds. What I did say was that I would look and see if there were market
opportunities.
I found out very clearly that there are market opportunities,
in particular in Japan, but the one thing that Newfoundland fishermen must do is
adhere to quality products, because I tell you, if we continue harvesting and
processing the quality of products that we have in the past, the future of the
Newfoundland fishery, not only in squid products but in all products, looks
very, very dim.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, a
supplementary.
MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, nobody would disagree with
the minister's comments. In fact, I have received suggestions myself that we
have a cull on squid which is not present in the sale from fishermen to buyers
today.
Would the minister today confirm that while our own
Newfoundland fishermen sit idle and unable to sell their squid, foreign
countries have been issued licences by his cousins in Ottawa to fish 33,000
metric tons of squid inside our 200-mile limit? Minister, 33,000 metric tons
means over 70 million pounds of fish going into the same markets that we would
pursue ourselves.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is wrong in one
thing. It is not 33,000 metric tons; it is 35,000 metric tons.
Secondly, he asked me would I confirm it. He must have heard
my interview on The Fishermen's Broadcast, because what I said on The
Fishermen's Broadcast was about the question he just asked; so he knows very
well that I know about the fishing by foreign trawlers in our zone.
We have made representation to DFO to change that. I have
said very clearly that of any fish that can be harvested by Newfoundland
fishermen, nothing should go outside to any foreigners, whether they are the
Japanese, the Faroese or from any country in this world. Newfoundlanders should
have the first opportunity where they have the ability to harvest.
MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for
Bonavista South.
MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, the minister confirms that
this is happening, even in greater numbers than I have put forward here today.
Mr. Minister, now that you know, would you inform the House
what you have done in consulting your federal cousins to stop this practice
immediately and allow our own fishermen to enter the markets and sell the squid
that they have gone out and caught, dried and have presently in storage? What
have you done, Minister?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: It is quite obvious that the hon. member does
not do much research on his questions or in finding out the answers before he
asks them. Because while Japan had a quota this year of 35,000 tonnes, they did
not harvest any squid in Canadian waters because they had an over-harvest in
their own country. They exported squid from their own country so they did not
need to harvest in this country the quotas they had here.
What have I done? I have made very clear representation in
writing and in meetings with the federal minister. And it was not - probably the
hon. member should also check - it was not our federal cousins in Ottawa who
made this rule. Probably you should check back and see if it was your federal
cousins who gave away the fish, the hon. John Crosbie.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member
for Bonavista South.
MR. FITZGERALD: I ask the hon. minister: Who increased
the quota inside the 200-mile limit? Would the minister answer that question?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: Yes. The first question: Who was there when
the shop was sold? The second question: Who was there when the quotas were given
to the foreign countries? Our cousins in Ottawa are taking away the foreign
quotas as we are Canadianizing the turbot of an Ob area. So we are giving back
to Newfoundlanders what Newfoundlanders deserve. We are trying to create an
atmosphere where Newfoundlanders have an opportunity, not like his counterparts
when they were in government in Ottawa, who gave away everything.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Bonavista South.
MR. FITZGERALD: I ask the minister if he would consult
with the Premier of this Province today, who was the federal minister in Ottawa
- if he has consulted with him, and ask him to go back to his cousins in Ottawa
in order to take away the quota that he increased when he was the federal
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, let me ask the hon. member a
question for all the people in Burgeo who are unemployed today: Who gave the
quota to Nova Scotia?
AN HON. MEMBER: Nobody over here.
MR. EFFORD: John Crosbie.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.
MR. SHELLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
My question today is for the Minister of Education.
Mr. Speaker, this was a letter just sent today to the Premier
from students of (inaudible) Collegiate, on behalf by the way, of students in
Elwood. If anybody has been watching the news lately these students - what none
of us want to see - are out of school in the last few days. One of the big
concerns, Mr. Speaker, being a former teacher, coach and a person who took
part
in extracurricular activities in school, is that these students feel betrayed
today and are very confused about what is going on in this Province. I would
like to ask the minister: What is the status of substitute teacher days? Is it
going to be available so that these students can go back to school feeling that
their extracurricular will be there for them this year?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Education
MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I was very disappointed when I heard a couple of days ago
that the students, primarily in the Deer Lake area, had left school over this
particular issue. Hon. members in the House might recall that it was a matter of
some considerable contention at the opening of school a year ago. In September
of 1996, I was travelling the Province on a public consultation and a number of
the schools throughout the Province were closed because students were protesting
with respect to the fact that some of their teachers were not being released to
accompany them on activities, sporting and otherwise, that were a large part of
the extracurricular part of their program in the schools.
We had some meetings last year and it was agreed that the
budget for substitute teacher days in the Province - in the budget that was
announced and became effective April 1, 1997 - would be increased, even though,
Mr. Speaker, I think all of us know that again, regrettably there are a little
more than 400 fewer teachers in the schools this year. There are more substitute
teacher days available this year than there were last year, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to quickly conclude his answer.
Question Period has ended.
MR. GRIMES: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Not only that, I think the
NLTA, its members, the president of the Association, the school board, will all
acknowledge that the total numbers of days that are prescribed in the teachers'
collective agreement for substitution for extra-curricular activity are fully
available -
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. GRIMES: - to teachers this year and there is no
reason why the students should be out of school. It is most unfortunate.
MR. SPEAKER: Presenting Reports by Standing and Special
Committees.
MR. MERCER: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.
MR. MERCER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise today on a question of order. In yesterday's session
of this hon. Assembly, in a line of questioning from the hon. the Member for
Conception Bay South to the Minister of Health, as recorded in yesterday's
edition of Hansard, there are certain statements made which I would like to
reiterate and ask for a ruling on from the Chair.
The hon. gentleman opposite has made reference to, in
connection with the senior citizens home -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. member is on a point of order.
MR. MERCER: The hon. gentleman opposite, in speaking to
the construction of a personal care home in the Corner Brook area, has made
reference to statements like, and I quote, "blatant, blatant, blatant patronage
of $500,000" that was given to two individuals. Then he proceeds to name those
individuals. I will not do that because that is, in essence, my point of order.
Not only has the hon. member opposite not yet presented any
shred of evidence, any shred of proof to substantiate his claims, he has now
dragged into this debate the names of two ladies. Their only offence is that one
of them happens to be the wife of a Liberal Party worker in Western
Newfoundland. Is that an offence, Mr. Speaker? Can someone who is associated
with someone who is involved in political life, just because he or she happens
to be the spouse of that individual, be now accused of political patronage?
Therefore, I ask that in accordance with Beauchesne,
section
493 (4) that you, as Speaker, caution the member to exercise much greater care
in making such statements about persons who are outside of the House and who are
unable to reply on their own behalf.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay
South, to the point of order.
MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I will not take the valuable time of the House to repeat the
names. What I said yesterday, I stand by every single word of it. I am really
glad that the member from the West Coast finally got off his chair and got up.
It clearly shows that he, like the rest of them, does not know what he is
talking about. All he has to do is go to Lark Harbour, talk to the lady out
there where your buddy was from Ottawa, with Mr. Johnson, when this lady asked
for the $500,000.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. FRENCH: Call her! Call her yourself, boy, do
something as a member for the West Coast.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to take his seat.
MR. FRENCH: (Inaudible) a load of garbage!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
The hon. member is -
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
I asked the hon. member to state his objection on this point
of order, and not to debate the issue.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The Chair will - is the hon. Opposition House Leader raising
a point of order?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The Chair will take the point raised by the hon. the Member
for Humber East under advisement and report back to the House.
The hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I wish to rise on a point of order relative to the
administration of the Public Tender Act,
section 8(3) and (10).
Section 8(3) is
regarding an award to someone other than the preferred bidder, and subsection
(10) is regarding an award without tender.
There is a requirement in the Act that when there are
exemptions to be made to the Public Tender Act, the Minister of Works, Services
and Transportation has a responsibility to communicate to the House
documentation as to why these exemptions were made. I say that the rules are
quite clear. It says: If the House of Assembly is then in session, within thirty
days after receipt of notification of the awarding of the contract by the
government-funded body, or if the House of Assembly is not in session, within
thirty days of the opening of the next session. I wish to bring to the attention
of the hon. Speaker, the fact that the last report we have of the tabling of the
exceptions to the Public Tender Act, was last tabled on March 26, by the former
Minister Bettney, and that was for the months of November and December of 1996
and January and February of 1997. I note that Minister Bettney was the minister
until May 8, 1997 when Minister Matthews was then appointed to that particular
position. We should point out that the House has been opened this session for a
great numbers of days and on the last day the House sat in the spring which was
May 20, fifty calendar days had passed since the end of March.
The Act states that the heads of government-funded bodies
must inform the minister of referred bid or rejects of non-tendered work and
presumably to do so without delay and the minister, when the House is in session
has thirty days after receiving that information to table it in the House. The
former minister was able to table the February exceptions to the Public Tender
Act by March 26, just twenty-six calendar days after the end of the month. So
why can't the current minister not find himself in position to table the March
exemptions within fifty days at the end of March which would have been May 20,
and even before the transfer of ministers on May the 8, we note that
thirty-seven days had passed with no sign of the tabling of the March exemptions
to the Public Tender Act.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say that, while we cannot say that the
minister has indeed breached the Act with respect to the exemption documents for
April, May, June, July and August, in September, since the House is not in
session during those months, we have to note that it is still reasonable to
conclude that the minister must have received all the information from the
department heads about all of those particular months and will, or should have,
by this time, compiled that particular information.
The minister had two days in September and so far, four days
in November to table these documents in the House, but he has failed to do so.
It is reasonable, I say to the minister, to ask: Why these documents have not
been tabled as required by law? Were there delays in getting the information
from the various Ministers of the Crown or, from the heads of the various
departments within the various government agencies? Have the documents been
printed and is the minister concerned about the accuracy of the documents, and
we want to know, Mr. Speaker, when does the minister expect to release these
documents as required by law?
MR. SPEAKER: Is the hon. Minister of Works, Services and
Transportation responding to the point raised by the member?
MR. MATTHEWS: Yes.
MR. SPEAKER: Okay.
MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The hon. member is partially correct in asking for these
things. In September of course, they were not required. Monday I was out of the
House; Tuesday and Wednesday, I was here being crucified unjustly, Thursday I
have the documents with me and I hereby table the documents that the member
wants, and I not only table, Mr. Speaker, March and April but I also table
documents relating to May, June, July and August so you have them in lots of
time.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
AN HON. MEMBER: You have until Christmas to table it.
MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, but in the interest of sparing the
House another long speech by the hon. member asking for things in the future, I
want to spare everybody that grief and anguish and I am going to table them
early along with those that should have been tabled two days ago.
The hon. Member for Waterford Valley is not entirely wrong;
he is only partially right. Here are the documents.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
To the point of order, I just want to remind the hon. member
that the point that he did raise was really not a point of order and there is no
- We are governed by the Standing Orders, Beauchesne and the Common Standing
Orders, the administration of a department or
an act governing the department is
within the jurisdiction of that department and not -
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
When the Chair is ruling on a point of order, I expect
members to be silent.
The Chair is not responsible for the administration of a
department or the act governing that department, so there is no point of order.
The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.
MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I guess, procedurally what you are getting at is that, I
should have asked leave of the House to present these because this is not the
appropriate time and if that is the complex, then I ask leave that I could table
these.
MR. SPEAKER: The Chair has call Presenting Reports By
Standing and Special Committees, but the hon. member rose on a point of order.
Notices of Motion
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.
MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I hereby give notice that I will on tomorrow table the
following private members resolution:
WHEREAS resent scientific estimates suggest that the
population of harp seals currently exceed seven million animals;
AND
WHEREAS the seal population is known to feed on other
fish and marine life in the ocean;
AND
WHEREAS scientific research is beginning to demonstrate a
link between seal populations and other marine species including cod and caplin;
AND
WHEREAS a leakage between the size of seal populations
and the reduction of cod stocks is readily apparent;
AND
WHEREAS the livelihoods of thousands of Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians is being challenged by the reduction of cod and other
groundfish stocks;
AND
WHEREAS the seal population has long reached the size
where it can sustain a greater harvest;
AND
WHEREAS this industry has the potential to employ
hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who conduct the harvest in a humane
fashion, utilizing the seal carcass to the full extent;
THEREFORE
BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly direct
the provincial government, to request of Ottawa, an increase in the total
allowable harvest of harp seals to a number that can be borne by market
opportunities;
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the House of Assembly direct
the provincial government to speak up for those who are involved in the seal
hunt, as well as all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians by challenging the fallacy
put forward by the International Fund For Animal Welfare, rather than passing
the responsibility for protecting our interests to the federal government in
Ottawa, who have consistently failed Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in this
regard.
Orders of the Day
MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, Motion no. 2.
On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of
the Whole on Supply, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.
CHAIRMAN (Oldford): The hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Last day we were having a very enthusiastic debate on Bill
no. 28 and today, we want to return to that because this bill which is supposed
to give us information on why the government needed to spend $75,700,000. We
have been debating it now for the last two days, this is the second day on it
and we certainly have not gotten the kind of answers yet that we should have
because the real issues in this Province today are what we have been talking
about since this House opened, the issues concerning municipalities, the issues
concerning health care.
Today in this House we listened to the Leader of the
Opposition put forward questions to the Minister of Health relative to the
health care services in this Province. In particular, the comments of the
minister relative to cardiac care in this Province were very, very
disappointing.
Mr. Chairman, we say to the minister that the people of this
Province have established their priorities, and they have said to all of us,
both to government members and to members on this side of the House as well,
they have grave concerns about their health care system.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say that the doctors who are serving
this Province are doing exemplary service, and we compliment them. But all too
often when I read reports of what is happening in Bonavista, we find out that if
you are living in Bonavista and you want to go to see your family doctor, if you
call up Dr. Chris Randell, you will be told, `We are sorry; we cannot take any
more patients'. That is happening in all parts of the Province. In fact, the
Minister of Health would be surprised - or she should be surprised; she might be
just informed - if we were to take a look around this Province and do a list of
the communities where you cannot get a family doctor.
Mr. Chairman, I have family members of my own who are
practising in rural Newfoundland. A brother of mine is in the medical business,
and he practices in rural parts of the Province. I can tell you that rural
medicine is not easy to practice because of the tremendous strain it places on
doctors. But it is also self-evident and very disappointing that if you live in
certain parts of this Province and you have a family member who has need to see
a doctor, and you call up to the doctor - you are in Bonavista - and you are
told, `No, it is no good for you to come up to our clinic because we are not
taking any more patients'. You are told, `Sorry about that. Your nearest access
to a doctor might be to drive to Clarenville'. Now, is that satisfactory when
you have a small child, you are living on the Bonavista Peninsula, and you are
told, `Well, you may go to the clinic or you may go to Clarenville, but there
isn't any family doctor who is going to take you on to his patient list because
his list is completely full'.
That is the kind of health care service we have in some parts
of the Province, and yesterday when we were talking about rural Newfoundland
some people on the other side of the House would not even consent to a private
member's motion which said we should be concentrating more and helping more by
way of giving additional services, additional assistance, to municipalities in
the rural parts of the Province.
Mr. Chairman, I say to the Minister of Health, look around
this Province. If we were to do a map of this Province and we were just to show
those communities where you can get access to a family doctor and those
communities where you cannot get access to a family doctor, then perhaps many,
many people in this House might be surprised, because in many, many parts of
this Province today family doctors are either not there at all because they have
moved out and moved to other parts of Canada, or other parts of Newfoundland and
Labrador, or if they are there we note that their patient listing is completely
full and you cannot get access at all, requiring parents and senior citizens to
travel considerable distances to be able to get help for the very simplest of
medical problems, anything ranging from an ordinary head cold or some other
minor things that beset us from time to time. That is totally unsatisfactory.
When we look at this particular bill, we see here that we are
approving about $7.4 million under the Department of Municipal and Provincial
Affairs. The explanations the minister gave me as a result of my questions the
other day, I want to thank him, because of the twenty questions that we have put
forward on the Order Paper thus far and of the questions that I have asked here
in the House, the only minister that has given me an answer - and I monitor all
of the answers received as a result of the questions placed on the Order Paper
and the questions asked - the only minister that has thus far taken the time and
directed his staff to forward an answer to a question for which notice was given
and which questions were asked, was the Minister of Municipal and Provincial
Affairs and I thank him for that. I thank the minister for doing that because we
have put forward thus far in this session, as of today, we have placed twenty
questions on the Order Paper. I have not received - twenty questions on the
Order Paper as of today and I say to the Government House Leader we are going to
be putting forward questions every single day.
Mr. Chairman, we know that the ministers over there have a
political responsibility, a moral responsibility, not necessarily a legal
responsibility but they do have a responsibility to be answerable to the people
of this Province. So, because we cannot get all of our questions on Question
Period, we are putting forward the extra questions we would like to ask by way
of putting them on the Order Paper.
Mr. Chairman, I say to the Government House Leader that we
will continue to put the questions there and I am hoping that the Government
House Leader will see reason to encourage his colleagues in Cabinet to respond
to those questions because this is what democracy is all about. When we put the
questions forward then we expect, in reasonable time, and I would be the first
to say to the Government House Leader that the four days we have had thus far,
that really is probably not sufficient time for some of the questions that we
have put forward there. It would take several days to have them prepared I am
sure because, you know, the minister needs all the time that we could afford him
to be able to get his answers ready but we expect the Government House Leader to
prepare the answers. Not only that, we look forward to the fact that these
answers will be typed in and form part of the Hansard. When the answers come
there they will all form part of Hansard and we look forward to having these
answers in print. So, Mr. Chairman, I say that -
MR. TULK: (Inaudible).
MR. H. HODDER: Well I have written the questions rather
slowly to accommodate the Government House Leader because I know he doesn't read
very fast.
Mr. Chairman, I want to say to you that we, on this side,
have some very serious questions about expenditures. We have serious questions
are put out by this government in order to make things, I can't say better, to
make things more difficult because I have not heard from one person in months
and months who has anything to say positive about what is happening in this
Province as the result of the government actions.
In fact, we have ministerial statements that are weeks and
weeks old. We have ministers making statements on things that happened forty
years ago. As well we have the fact that the Premier likes to have a little
positive news. Sometimes he goes out and if he does not have anything positive
at all he creates it. He creates the news and hopefully that it will unfold like
that, sometimes it does not. Of course we want to talk about - I think it was
Lynn Verge who put it quite clearly when she said that the Premier was all fluff
and no stuff. We want to see some stuff from the Premier. We have seen all the
fluff. We have seen all of the theatrics. We know that the Premier went to his
drama classes on a regular basis. We know that he went to his elocution classes
elocution in French
One of those days I will arrange for the Member for St.
John's East to ask his questions in French so that the Premier can be
accommodated and he will be able to practice Canada's other official language.
Of course, we do have at least one member on this side who is fluent in the
other language.
Of course, the Premier in practising his theatrics, in
practising his elocution, in doing his drama, people of this Province are
saying: That isn't what we want a premier for. We want a premier for more than
the theatre. If you want to get involved in the theatre, then of course you
could go down and practice with the LSPU Hall or the Arts and Culture Centre. We
want somebody who is going to be around here, and as Lynn Verge said, we want
some stuff. We've seen all the fluff, now we want to see some of the stuff.
Consequently we are short on stuff. We have a surplus of
fluff, and so between the fluff and the stuff we want to go and say to the
government: The people of Newfoundland and Labrador want some real action. They
want some real decisions. They want to see the Premier of this Province handle
the real issues. As we all saw last night when watching CBC Television, we saw
the feature last evening called the brain drain. What was so dramatic was to see
the mechanical engineering class at MUN, to see I think 102 students, and then
they just began to use the magic of the camera and they began to take their
pictures away and to see how many were left in Newfoundland and Labrador. How
much more of a reality check do you need?
Of course, then we had people here yesterday in this House
who stood up and said: No boy, there are no problems out there, no problems in
rural Newfoundland. We aren't even going to stand and say to the government: You
had better do something about rural Newfoundland and about rural municipalities.
There are no problems. We are in this little catacomb here. We pretend that the
real world doesn't exist out there. We have to go and say to the government
members: It is time to check reality. Last night when we watched CBC Television
we saw some reality. We saw it every night this week, and we are going to see it
again tonight in their presentation. That is what is happening in Newfoundland
and Labrador.
Consequently I say to the members opposite, while we have
some explanation for this $75 million - and we aren't saying that that money was
all spent improperly. We aren't saying that at all. What we are saying is that
we should start to address the real issues that confront Newfoundlanders and
Labradorians every day. Last night we saw, as I said before, the program showing
our young people. Many of our rural communities are becoming senior citizens'
residences in all too many ways. We see our school population just being
decimated year after year because our young people have no choices. They are
being obliged to move away.
Almost everybody in this House has nieces, nephews and
children who are obliged to move out of this Province. That is very sad. It is a
very sad commentary on the way we have handled our resources. It is a sad
commentary on our management of our resources. It is a sad commentary on our
people policy, our economic policy, our social policy, and to a certain extent
on the way in which we have lowered our expectations for ourselves in terms of
what we expect from ourselves and from the Province.
I want to, before I just take my seat so the Leader of the
Opposition can again share with us in eloquent manner the real realities of his
district, the historic District of Ferryland, I should say that the District of
Ferryland - yesterday while you were out of the House, some people, this group
opposite here, tried to say that Ferryland was not a rural district. They said
there were only two rural districts on this side of the House. They mentioned
Bonavista South and the District of Baie Verte.
They were saying yesterday I say to my colleague, the Member
for Ferryland - members on the other side of the House yesterday pretended that
the District of Ferryland is not a rural district and it is one of the districts
in this House that is called by that name since 1832; the only district in this
House that has not changed its name since we had an elected Assembly is the
District of Ferryland. It has been consistently called that in every House since
we have had a Parliament and we are in the forty-seventh session of Parliament
now and this is the only district that has, since 1832, carried the same name
consistently and been represented by some of the very great leaders of our
Province and it gives me great pleasure now to be able to let the Member for the
District of Ferryland let people know, on that side of the House, that his
district, while a small part of it might be urban, the great, great majority of
it is rural, and you welcome the chance to tell them the realities of Ferryland
district and what is happening in that district and to assure them that in the
Ferryland district we do have people who daily try to cope with the trauma that
is inflicted upon them by this government opposite.
CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and
Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: When you sit down in your seat in this
honourable House of Assembly and you listen or you try to listen to debate on
particular bills, this bill, Bill No. 28 is a bill, "An Act For Granting To Her
Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Additional Expenses Of The
Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 1997 And For Other
Purposes Relating To The Public Service.
I just heard the hon. member opposite stand up for ten,
fifteen minutes, speaking about a bill of such importance - ten minutes, was it
- speaking to a bill and I do not know if he made one reference to what the bill
- made representation or one reference to the bill in any manner whatsoever.
MR. TULK: (Inaudible) ask any questions?
MR. EFFORD: I do not think he asked one question. I do
not think he understands this, the bill, at all but he goes on, he is so full of
himself and so caught up in his ability to do things in the House and to be the
leader, I think that is it, leader No. 2 focusing on what is going to happen
next March. I think that is the idea, focusing on next March. The story is on
the street, quite loud and clear of a couple of people who are grasping at the
bit, Mr. Chairman -
MR. H. HODDER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to let the hon. minister know that if I should
decide to run, I will call a press conference and do that. If I decide not to
run, I will take his example and call a press conference and say: No, I do not
intend to run. So, I am weighing all of the information, looking to my good
friend over there and one of those days, you might even see a press conference
called to say that I am not going to, but you might not see that either.
CHAIR: There is no point of order.
The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
MR. EFFORD: Did you see the eagle and the buttons
bursting when he stood to his feet?
MR. TULK: Who paid any attention to whatever he got?
MR. EFFORD: There you go, who would pay attention?
Mr. Chairman, rural Newfoundland is important as any urban
centre in this Province but I do not think any of us should be separating
Newfoundland. I get upset when I hear people talking about Canada. I hear people
talking about people moving from Newfoundland to Canada, the out-migration of
Newfoundlanders. I mean, this country is so small in population but so great a
country, I do not know why we should be upset or why there should be a problem
in anybody's eyes with people moving to and from this country, at free will to
find employment anywhere in this country.
If we had to live, Mr. Chairman, under the conditions that
people have to live in other parts of the world and the type of living they have
to live, we could not even begin to understand, in the worst case scenario, what
those people in other parts of the world have to live compared to the people
here in Canada. A great nation of Canada and try to separate, in a small
province a population of 550,000, try to push one group of people against
another. This migration of people moving to and from this Province has been
happening since this Province was first settled. My
great-great-great-grandfather went down to the United States to work because of
the poor conditions in the fishery in the Province back in those days, in the
1800's. It has been going on and it will continue to go on.
Will rural Newfoundland survive? Yes, Mr. Chairman, rural
Newfoundland will survive. Will Newfoundland be here 500 years down the road?
Yes, it will be here, but it has to improve and the one thing that has to change
in this Province has to be the attitudes of people.
If I have ever seen anything to be an anchor around our necks
that is not allowing us to move forward in this Province, is the attitude of the
people of this Province. We have to change our attitude. The attitude in
particular of what is being displayed from members opposite. People are
listening to the type of debate that is going on here in this House of Assembly.
People listen to it and how do you expect the people to change and to improve
their attitudes when you see it being displayed here day after day.
Mr. Chairman, we have to begin solving the problems, but
first we have to admit that we have a problem and I am willing to say that our
greatest problem in this Province, as I just said, is the attitude of the
population of the populous of this Province. Changing our attitudes, focusing on
what the initiatives, the resources are in this Province and developing those
resources to the best interest of the Province and the sooner we get down to
that, the sooner we move forward into the future, the sooner we will become a
`have' Province and not be dependant as we have been for the last 100 years or
the last fifty years in particular on the Canadian government. We have a lot of
resources and it is time to develop them to a positive step and to move forward
and develop the attitudes that we should have here in this Province.
CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just heard the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture stand
in his place and say that the Opposition House Leader did not make one reference
to the bill. He did not talk about any questions, any details of it and he stood
up himself for ten minutes or whatever and he made not one reference to it
himself.
I say for the ministers information, when the bill was
introduced I asked the Minister of Finance questions on every single one and
other ministers stood in their place. The Minister of Industry, Trade and
Technology, I think, the Minister of Health in one instance, stood in her place
and answered questions. The Minister of Finance had to rush off to a commitment
and I just about got of them completed except one, but there are some things
other then the specifics I ask and where the money was being spent.
Why do we want $10 million up front in a fund? He indicated
that $2 million went to entice call centres here. It is tremendous to see
business come to our Province. We are lagging far and far behind in getting even
high tech industries, even call centres or any type of business to our Province.
We have made some progress. We have made some attempts, I will admit it. I must
say, in the high tech field, we are started, but call centres - I was at a
meeting in Nova Scotia in September and listened to a company, the telephone
company in Nova Scotia, whatever - I forget the specific name of it, who
mentioned that they had about 3,500 call centre jobs in Nova Scotia. I think we
are working on what, 100, a 100 and some. This one is suppose to bring us at
peak, up to 180 jobs, we announced here with Bay Portrait Studios, I think it
is, starting off and gradually building. I am not sure where they are now, they
are probably getting up around 100 now, I am not sure, but they are suppose to
get up to 180 at maximum.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, but this one is 180. There is one
other, I think, both together would be in that range, but right now there is not
that many jobs there. Thirty-five hundred in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is
gone so far ahead, miles ahead.
I mean, we have not had an aggressive - we had a nice looking
picture by the Premier, I am not sure with the former minister in The Globe
and Mail , $75,000 photo opts, nice pictures in The Globe and Mail .
They do not bring business to our Province. Just sticking a picture there.
I was in Washington two years ago, after the former Premier
had spoken to a group in Washington and what happened, to speak to the business
people, was a hastily call together group that he could speak to and I asked the
consulting group there, the person who attended that and said, there was no
follow-up, there was no direct after affects, I gave him the name and number of
the current Minister of Mines and Energy at the time, that was back a couple of
years ago, he was industry, trade and technology. I said, you go in and give a
speech and you run off. I said you should be pursuing more directly and focus
maybe less - try not to spread yourself over the whole map but zoom in on areas
where there is the greatest potential and start to develop and - drive home in
there and try to develop an industry getting off the ground.
Other areas, I will use other examples today of what we need
to do. There were announcements made - take aquaculture for example, a recent
announcement of $4.5 million in three specific areas of research and that is
fantastic. There is one mentioned, Bay d'Espoir, the Ocean Science Centre and
the Marine Institute I think it was - the other three announcements of $4.5
million into research and aspects of aquaculture so we can put good product out
on the market today but where money is needed is in the initial stage. We have
out there today I think 110 people with licences for aquaculture. We have
numerous other developmental licences out there but we need to put dollars into
the person that is starting, is learning the business, who is getting out there.
We need to develop it and grow it from the bottom up, not necessarily just a few
focused ones. We need to help diversify the industry, not reach too far but
reach a certain distance and help build it up and help direct products into the
market.
MR. TULK: You are not reading my (inaudible)?
MR. SULLIVAN: No, not at all. I don't have anything that
you said on it because if I read what you said on it I would not have anything
to read, I say to the minister. I have not seen it. No but actually, anything
that comes out over the wire, announcements, when I get them I read all of them.
I will do an exam on it if you want me to.
MR. TULK: (Inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: No, not at all. If the minister just
happens to agree with me in certain instances, I take great pleasure in that I
say to the minister. Both of us must be right or both of us must be wrong I
guess.
Actually, we need to move it in line with market conditions.
It is silly to go out there and throw it out because any product that you are
putting on the market today, it is not just a matter of producing that and
getting it. There is a matter of meeting the market demands in a realistic
fashion and that applies to the sealing industry. The same thing with the
sealing industry on markets, growing with market conditions so we can make sure
that we have a market for our products, whether it is mussel farming, steelhead
trout or whatever it is, there must be proper growth. We are only in the
embryonic stage of development in some of those industries out there.
New Brunswick started with just a few million dollars, a
salmon farm industry into over $100 million. I am not sure of the exact figure
but there are $100-and-some million today to the economy of New Brunswick. Here
in our Province I think we are looking at about some $6 million, I think, in the
announcement released. A little over $6 million in this Province and if you look
at market value probably $8 million. So we are a long, long way from developing
but we have a start and it is important that we have to diversify -
MR. TULK: You have not addressed the real problem
(inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: No. Well what is the real problem, I say to
the minister? Well one of the problems basically is that we need to develop our
research in line with the growth of an industry. That is very important. We have
seen what happened with offshore cod here. When the moratorium was announced
here in this Province they decided we don't have a fishery now so we don't need
to research. That is when you need to research. That is when you need more
intensive research, more surveys looking at the ocean, and other methods to try
to find out exactly the migratory patterns, to find out the size. They use that
as an avenue to chop it. Now when it is vulnerable and it is on its knees, it
needs that support, that extra infusion to get it back. The number of jobs in
this Province depending on the spin-offs from our basic fishing industry that
brought people here to this Province hundreds of years ago, the spin-offs here
in the urban area is unbelievable, supply companies for plastics, for packaging,
for cardboard, the supply of nets and gear and the people working in cities
here. Cities grow up, supply bases around fishing here in this Province, as they
grew up around farming communities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. In
this Province they developed around the fishing industry, and tremendous jobs.
We are facing a difficult time, not only from the people
directly affected with the change in industry here in the Province, but people
who indirectly depend on that for jobs. One less worker in a family. When two
worked here in the City, somebody lost their job in a supply company that
supplied those industries there. So we have had a shrinking base here in our
Province. We have less people employed in our Province than we had in 1989. We
had about 208,000 people roughly back then, and 188,000 people, 189,000 people
employed now.
We have had drastic numbers of reductions in employment here
in our Province, very much so, from a decline in the fishing industry, whose
true importance hasn't really been realized because of that tremendous number of
spin-off jobs that developed from it, and here in the cities, in the malls, and
you name it, all over. It is all a facet of how our primary industries are doing
here in our Province.
At the same time, we are seeing a difficult time in rural
Newfoundland. We are seeing a tremendous down-loading. People who are struggling
to survive in rural Newfoundland with a declining tax base. The businesses have
vacated those communities. The people have vacated those communities and then
gone elsewhere. In Trepassey, for example, sixty and seventy or more houses
closed up. A thriving town. In 1991, stats showed it had nearly 1,400 people.
The 1996 stats showed it is down to below 1,000. Today it is about 800 people.
Less than 800 people in a town of 1,400 people in seven years, almost a 50 per
cent reduction. Houses left vacated, being sold. For $3,000 you can buy a house,
$6,000 and $8,000. You can buy a house that would have cost $40,000 or $50,000
just several years ago.
They are the realities of people every day. I spoke with
people last week who are moving out for a job in Ontario. I spoke with a person
who has moved in this week to a job, fortunately, to land with a job here in the
City. There is an exodus; it is going out of those communities every single day.
How does a community that had 800 people working in one industry in a town of
1,400 people - they came in from everywhere -, how do they keep the water and
the sewer system, the lights going, the fire department? How do they keep their
services supplied?
People on social assistance. People have incomes. They can't
afford to pay their water bill. The towns don't have dollars to be able to pay
their bill. People getting their lights shut off because they don't have
dollars. They are the realities every single day. People living in rural
Newfoundland particularly, and some in the City. There is a share of problems
here in urban parts in the Province, but they are the realities we deal with on
the telephones every single day of the week. There isn't a day passes, I say in
this House, that we don't deal with anywhere from one to twelve or fourteen
really serious cases of people crying out for help of this nature, not counting
the whole plethora of other types of problems we are dealing with.
We have municipalities going to be reduced, starting in
January, 20 per cent on the budget going into those towns. Another 20 per cent
in 1999, another 20 per cent in 2000. We have gone from nearly $50 million - it
will be down to about $15 million by the year 2000 given those towns. You take
$35 million out of rural Newfoundland towns. What does that mean? It is going to
cost more to live in rural Newfoundland to pay for the few services you have
than it is to have the full array of services in an urban area.
Where are people going to move? Where are they going to go?
They will vacate their properties. They will say: Take it, confiscate it, and
they will move on. Because their kids have moved on already and there's no one
left. There is no one left in many of these towns. A community in my district,
400-and some people, sixty-four people left in one year. What we have seen on TV
in the last few days is only a part of what is happening in Newfoundland and
Labrador today. We have lost 16,000 people on the census. That is a net loss of
people. Stats Canada says we are going to lose another 40,000 in the next
decade, putting us down to close to 500,000 people.
We have turned the clock back in the history of our Province.
We have opportunities to move forward and we have passed up on those
opportunities. The current government and former governments didn't do what was
right to protect the long-term interest of the Province. They did what was
politically expedient and the best possible thing to get a result in the
Province. They weren't the best decisions, and we are all paying the price
dearly.
It is tremendous to see a company, IOC, with hundreds of
employees - 1,500 - going to be around for another fifty years, with which the
Minister of Mines and Energy was so enlightened this week, but we do not get
hardly any return on that iron ore. In jobs, yes; in income tax it is
tremendous, but as a resource return to put into royalty revenues... Voisey's
Bay, where nothing is earmarked yet, we hope it is going to happen. Hibernia, it
is tremendous offshore. We did sacrifice some royalties to get jobs, but we are
only going to get $6 million to $10 million a year on that initially. It will
increase later on, as you get beyond the cost recovery stage, because of the
two-tiered tax, but we are not getting big dollars out on the Hibernia field. We
did get a lot of jobs, close to 6,000 at Hibernia, and not all Newfoundland and
Labrador jobs, I can assure you. We have been too content in this Province to
take jobs at all costs, and to hell with revenues and other things that built
Alberta into the Province it is today, not only on jobs but on revenues from
royalties, from funds - they have an Alberta Heritage Fund.
We are living in an area that has a wealth of opportunities.
We have minerals in this Province. We have fish in our oceans - we did have a
large amount - we have less now, but there are other species there that are
profitable, that are adding significantly to the employment level here in our
Province and to the wealth of our Province. We have forests in the Province. We
have a host of minerals. We have water power, and we have water - fresh water.
Out in the world today there are eighty - more countries are threatened by a
shortage of water. They are facing problems because of a lack of water, and
people have the foresight now to go out and try to take water out of Gisborne
Lake in this Province, back in a tanker and fill it up, and sail up the St.
Lawrence, bottle it somewhere else, ship it away, and what are we going to get
for it?
We should demand, in our legislation, like British Columbia
did, that no water be shipped out of this Province in bulk, that jobs are going
to be provided to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, or we let it flow into the
ocean.
The response I heard from government is that it is flowing
into the ocean anyway. Well, let it flow. You need one to turn on the tap going
to the tanker, one to turn it off on the other end, and that is all you get in
the process. It should not happen. I would sooner see nothing done with it,
leave it there, than see hundreds of potential jobs lost all over the Province.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) bring it back here,
(inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: Bring it back. These little bottles of
Perrier or Evian water, one proposal is calling for the equivalent of 27 billion
bottles of that a year - 27 billion bottles. What do you pay for a bottle of
that?
AN HON. MEMBER: $1.50.
MR. SULLIVAN: $1.50. Twenty-seven, so that is $40.5
billion a year in that volume.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. SULLIVAN: How much does our Province take in in taxes
in a year? In every revenue source in our Province in a year, about what? $1.9
billion, I believe, approximately. We will soon find out the exact figure here;
$1.829 billion.
MR. J. BYRNE: What is that for?
MR. SULLIVAN: Less than $1.9 billion we take in in all
revenue sources here, and we are going to ship out the equivalent of tens of
billions of dollars of water that is now... The United Nations and the World
Bank have commissioned studies to investigate the severe shortage of water in
the world that is threatening the health and the economy of many nations today,
and we are going to turn on a tap and let it sail out.
Our party has a position on water policy. We have looked at
it. We have looked at numerous areas -
AN HON. MEMBER: Okay, what is your suggestion?
MR. SULLIVAN: We have already articulated them in public
many times, I say to the member, many times.
AN HON. MEMBER: Say it here in the House.
MR. SULLIVAN: We have said it here in the House. I will
say it at the appropriate time. Where is your agenda? Where is the government's
agenda? Ours is out there. Government has no policy on it. Oh, they said, the
environment - the act governs that. It does not. Government should have a policy
on water because it is becoming a very important commodity in the future, and if
we don't see the light today we will have it sold before it is too late. Those
are the types of decisions we have to be looking at. We have to be looking at
decisions that are going to serve the long-term interests of our Province.
At the same time today in this House of Assembly, I talked
about health care. The minister tells us we are getting our problem fixed. Now,
let's look at it. We are sending two a week to Ottawa, at about twenty grand or
more each. We are cancelling two a week here in our Province, there is neither
bed to put them in when they have their surgery. The list was 220 before we
started to send them away. It is 240 today. The list is getting longer. There
were 100 on the list four years ago. There are 140 more people on a waiting list
for cardiac surgery, longer. Two and a half times as long as it was four years
ago, and what are they doing? Working on it? They have been working on it since
I came in this House.
There is one solution. I've said it before, I will say it
again. I told the former minister who got fired from the job, and I will tell
this minister now who has been put in the job, who will probably end up getting
fired again when the heat comes on, the problem is you need a separate intensive
care area for cardiac patients. The surgeons are in there waiting to do the
work, the nurses who are specialized are there, the staff is there -
CHAIR: Order, please!
MR. SULLIVAN: - and they are not - space to put a person
in after they operate, they don't have it.
CHAIR: Order, please!
MR. SULLIVAN: Isn't that a sham?
CHAIR: Order, please! Order, please!
It being 4:00 p.m., I have to announce the questions for the
Late Show.
MR. SULLIVAN: Yes. I will say, Mr. Chairman, I will sit
down, and I will get back on this topic again tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIR: The questions for the Late Show are:
I'm dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of
Municipal and Provincial Affairs re my question on cutbacks and down loading by
the Province that negatively affects municipalities. That is the Member for
Waterford Valley.
I'm dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Premier re
my question on government's refusal to bring forward a new TAGS program. That is
the Member for Bonavista South.
I'm dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of
Human Resources and Employment on a comprehensive school lunch program. That is
the Member for St. John's West.
The hon. the Member for St. John's South.
MR. T. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. T. OSBORNE: Yes, nobody on that side is prepared to
get up and debate this bill. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of reasons I would
like to stand and debate this bill today. Because of the cutbacks in the Budget,
the cutbacks to a number of areas in our Province. You can span it over any
area, any department, represented by any member of this House. You look at the
Department of Health, and there is more coming. Just recently the seniors' home
in Gander, the seniors out there had to be humiliated into fighting and doing a
petition and setting up a protest outside the home, and blocking traffic even,
to fight to get their kitchen reinstated.
Is this the way we as Members of the House of Assembly are
going to treat the seniors of our Province, the people who have built our
Province, who have made the Province what it is, who fought for us in two wars,
put their lives on the line to ensure we had the freedom we enjoy today? Is this
the way we are going to reward these people? It isn't the way we on this side of
the House would reward the seniors of our Province. If the members on that side
of the House could have gotten away with it, that is what they were planning.
The rental rate increases to Newfoundland and Labrador
Housing. Just another example. Senior citizens are affected there. Seniors on
fixed incomes, on pensions, old age security, forced to give another 5 per cent
of their cheque away in rent. That is a 20 per cent increase for some of those
seniors. They are forced to give another 5 per cent of their cheque away in rent
to Newfoundland and Labrador Housing. Other people on fixed incomes. The working
poor, the people who can least afford to pay this rental rate increase, are
being forced to pay the rental rate increase because the members on that side of
the House have seen fit to put those people on the line.
I mentioned in questions just yesterday that for most of the
chartered banks in our country, 30 per cent of your gross income, your gross
debt service ratio, 30 per cent is what they calculate your mortgage payments
on. That includes your taxes, which people in housing do not have to pay. It
also includes your utilities, light and heat, before they look at the other
bills that you have, your other commitments - car payments and so on. They will
only go to 40 per cent of your gross income; they will go to 40 per cent
including your car payments, your credit card payments any other bills you may
have. Mr. Chairman, some of the people who have to face this rental rate
increase if it goes ahead, will be paying far in excess of 30 per cent for their
heat and rent, and that is unacceptable to the people on this side of the House.
That is unacceptable.
There is one example - and the minister mentioned yesterday
that we did not take into consideration the heat supplement, but we did take
into consideration the heat supplement. If those people were on social
assistance, Mr. Chairman, they would be given the heat supplement on social
assistance, as well. So the heat supplement is taken into consideration, and one
example that I have faxed through to the minister, to which he has not
responded, shows that this particular family is paying almost 37 per cent of
their gross income for utilities and rent, not including their other bills.
As far as the bank would be concerned, they would be high
risk, so much so, that the bank probably would refuse to give them a mortgage
based on 37 per cent of their gross debt service ratio going out for heat and
utilities alone. So the working poor are being forced to either eat less or move
out, because in some cases they cannot afford the 5 per cent increase from 25
per cent to 30 per cent of gross income to be paid in rent.
If you look at any area - Municipal Affairs again: just last
year I remember they cut $10,000 in the operating grants for Bowring Park, which
is a regional park, and they downloaded that on to the City of St. John's, so
that the City of St. John's would have to bear the full cost of operating
Bowring Park. Mr. Chairman, $10,000 is not a lot of money when you look at the
overall provincial budget, but yet, the Provincial Government cut that $10,000
grant to Bowring Park, a grant that had been put in place since the 1930s
because of the fact that the Provincial Government at the time, made
arrangements with the City of St. John's to operate the park as a regional park.
At the same time they signed that agreement, Mr. Chairman,
they are given another $10,000 in lieu of the City of St. John's agreeing to
pass over the right to collect for motor vehicle registrations on vehicles that
were operated within city limits, the people living within the city of St.
John's. And the Province, now, collects far in excess of $10,000 a year. It is
multiplied many, many, many times over what the Province collects from motor
vehicle registration for people living within the City of St. John's, yet they
reneged on that original agreement and cut that $10,000 as well.
Further reduction of municipal grants, Mr. Chairman, which
caused the degrading of services operated especially in the smaller
municipalities, the Province has even threatened to cut out grants unless the
municipalities agreed to pay back some of what they owe. Newfoundland Power, in
a couple of cases, has actually cut off street lights and cut off the lights to
fire halls, because that municipality owed Newfoundland Power so much money
because of the downloading by the Provincial Government on to the
municipalities. The municipalities cannot bear the additional costs and the
out-migration further decimates the smaller municipalities most especially. I
mean, there are areas such as Trepassey which has seen a great reduction in the
number of people living in Trepassey over the past year.
You see on the TV program now, all this week: Leaving Home ,
I believe the program is called, talking about the hardships endured by families
throughout this Province, the fact that the Provincial Government is supplying
less to the people of the Province, providing very little in the line of job
creation and these people have to move out of this Province. We all have
relatives who have left Newfoundland in search of gainful employment elsewhere.
I have relatives living in British Columbia and in Alberta who have had to leave
this Province because they cannot find work here and they call me almost every
month and say, `Tom, I cannot wait until you guys get in government, so we can
get back home.' They cannot wait for us to get in government so that they will
move back home, and that is a fact. I am sure that all the members on this side
of the House get phone calls from our relatives living away.
MR. TULK: (Inaudible).
MR. T. OSBORNE: That is right. There was a suggestion
just a couple of nights ago on the program Leaving Home , Mr. Chairman.
There was a suggestion that the Provincial Government should get into the
manufacturing of U-Haul vehicles, and they would make a fortune, because they
are driving people out of the Province; and it is a vicious cycle. The more
people that leave the Province, the educated people, especially the brain drain,
the educated people who are leaving our Province in search of work elsewhere -
the government are driving away the people that are most capable, sometimes, of
finding work as engineers or doctors or lawyers or what have you, these people
are leaving the Province. The more of those people that leave the Province, the
more people that are here that have to rely on social benefits - it is just one
big vicious cycle.
The Province cannot afford to keep up the social benefits.
They are providing less in operating grants to municipalities. They are
providing less services, less subsidies, less job creation. The more people that
move away and even the less the Province can afford to provide and the more
people that move away, the harder it is for the Province to provide, yet they
are not doing their job today. They are not keeping people here right now, they
are not providing employment. They are not providing adequate health care. They
are not providing adequately for the students, especially those attending first
year post-secondary institutions, who cannot afford to attend post-secondary
institutions. As a result, some of these students, especially single parents,
who have been forced to apply for the maximum student loan before they will
qualify for any social benefits to help them get an education and get through,
so that they will not have to continue relying on social benefits - the
government penalized these people even further last year. You look at the lack
of government subsidies to help provide doctors in rural Newfoundland. There are
some communities now in rural Newfoundland that do not have adequate medical
attention, that do not have enough doctors to provide adequately for the number
of people living in those areas. In some cases, the Province is actually
subsidizing to have doctors flown in to certain areas, on certain days of the
week, because they cannot find a doctor to stay in that area on a re