December

3, 1996

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS

Vol. XLIII No. 45

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

The Chair would like to welcome today to the House of

Assembly forty-five students from the Democracy class in the Queen Elizabeth

Regional High School. These students are from the districts of Topsail,

Conception Bay South, and Conception Bay East & Bell Island, and they are

accompanied by their teachers Mr. Lloyd Johnson and Mr. Fred Wood.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Before proceeding with routine business the

Chair would like to rule on the point of order that was raised by the hon.

Member for Terra Nova yesterday following Question Period. The point of order

related to the question asked by the hon. Leader of the Opposition to the

Minister of Health. The Chair took the question under advisement to review the

Hansard transcript. In this respect I want to draw hon. member's attention to

our own Standing Order 52 which states that no member shall use offensive words

against any member of the House. In addition to our own Standing Order, of

course, I refer hon members to Beauchesne,

Section 481, ` Members, while

speaking, must not impute bad motives or motives different from those

acknowledged by a Member, nor make a personal charge against a Member'. Again

Beauchesne, Standing Order 409, `A question must adhere to the priorities of the

House in terms of inferences, imputing motives, or casting aspersions upon

persons within the House or out of it'.

I want to refer members to the Hansard transcript of Question

Period yesterday. The hon. Leader of the Opposition was questioning the Minister

of Health. The Leader of the Opposition says, `Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your own

Assistant Deputy Minister is a member of that committee and he is involved in

the writing of that report. Now, you are up to your neck in this in a cover-up,

I say to the minister. Will you come clean and table this report?' Again the

hon. Leader of the Opposition, `Minister, you have been involved in this all

along and I say you are involved in a cover -up.'

Clearly, of course, these comments are inappropriate and are

out of order, so I ask the hon. member to withdraw them.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I respect your ruling, that `cover-up' is unparliamentary,

and I withdraw that remark.

Statements by Ministers

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Development and

Rural Renewal.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS FOOTE: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to inform my hon.

colleagues in the House of the pending expansion of Internet services to rural

Newfoundland and Labrador, and of the positive impact this initiative will have

for communities throughout the Province, for businesses, and for the economic

development of this Province in general.

I recently participated in a news conference with NewTel

Communications when they announced their intent to expand Internet services to

300 additional communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador by the end of

1997. This expansion will bring the total number of urban and rural communities

with access to Internet services to 450.

This initiative is an important one for the whole Province,

but especially for rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Currently, residents and

businesses in most rural communities have to pay long distance charges to access

Internet services. This acts as a deterrent to the utilization of this

increasingly important technology in society and business today.

NewTel's initiative will eliminate long distance access

charges and thereby allow more Newfoundlanders and Labradorians throughout the

Province to be placed on a level playing field on the global information highway

through the Internet.

Mr. Speaker, two years ago, one in every ten homes in this

Province had a personal computer. As of May, 1996, one in five homes had a

personal computer. By the end of 1997, thanks in part to this initiative, it is

estimated that one in three homes will have a personal computer. Newfoundland

and Labrador has the fastest growth in Internet use in the country.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS FOOTE: NewTel's initiative will ensure that

Newfoundland and Labrador continues to be a national leader in utilizing modern

communications technology for social and economic advancement. Newfoundland and

Labrador's growth in these services not only leads the country, but also most of

the United States. It will also provide businesses throughout this Province with

the means to participate in the global marketplace by having ready access to

information worldwide. This will improve their competitive position overall. No

longer will location be a hindrance to conducting and succeeding in business

internationally. The technology is available and we are in a position to take

advantage of it and to be full participants in the new economy.

With hundreds of communities online, this initiative will

also make it easier for each of the Province's twenty economic zones to interact

with each other. Each of the zones will become more empowered as they learn from

each other and work towards their common goal of a revitalized economy in every

region of this Province.

In partnership with the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation

of Municipalities, my department has begun to place information on the economic

zones on the World Wide Web. I express government's appreciation to the

Federation for their support in this regard.

Mr. Speaker, we believe in our rural communities. This

initiative will enable them to be competitive in an increasingly global economy

that thrives on information for growth and prosperity. Government applauds

NewTel for its vision and commitment to placing communities throughout

Newfoundland and Labrador on the leading edge of the information economy.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad to rise today to respond to the minister's

statement and I would like to thank the minister for giving me a copy of the

statement just before the House met. Of course, Mr. Speaker, on this side of the

House we also commend this initiative. We know how important it is, especially

for a Province such as Newfoundland with its geography, and Labrador and around

the coasts and all the rural communities. We know it is very important for the

people in general and also for small businesses to be able to tap into this.

I too, have used the Internet in my home and I know there are

a lot of people who have it in their homes and it really contributes to

business, to people in general, through our education process and so on. So we

are, of course, glad to see this happening in the Province. It is positive,

something that should steer us in the right direction. But, at the same time,

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the minister, too, that with Rural Renewal,

that is the main - and I do not want to prejudge her, of course, she is new in

that portfolio - but a lot of people in rural Newfoundland are hurting right

now.

Yes, computers are positive, but the idea of schools, of

hospitals, of roads and so on has to be addressed and it remains to be seen if

this government will respond in a positive way to Rural Renewal in Newfoundland,

Mr. Speaker. That is what we will be waiting on and that is what we want to see,

a bigger statement from the minister about something else positive in rural

Newfoundland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi. Does he have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

The hon. the Minister of Government Services and Lands.

MR. McLEAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased today to table a White Paper entitled

Challenging Responses To Changing Times - New Proposals For Occupational

Regulation . This White Paper examines existing statutes related to

regulation of occupations and contains proposals to promote comprehensive and

consistent practices and procedures.

Government intervention in the regulation of occupations is

justified as a way to protect the public from potential harm. As occupations

grew and practitioners began to deliver services in this Province, statutory

frameworks were established. Unfortunately there has never been a uniform policy

to guide the creation of these frameworks and, as a result, many inconsistencies

now exist.

Mr. Speaker, this White Paper highlights the need to

reconsider these statutory frameworks and the procedures which they have put in

place. The paper outlines a process to determine whether, and what kind of,

regulation might be necessary. It proceeds from the premise that occupations

which are already self-governing should be allowed to operate freely as long as

the public is protected. It suggests changes to promote public accountability

and to ensure the public has access to information about the self-governing

occupations. The paper outlines a new disciplinary model and proposes the

creation of a uniform board to provide an effective and cost-efficient

discipline process for the self-governing occupations.

Mr. Speaker, this White Paper encourages a critical look at

self-governance, puts forward suggestions for change, and asks for public input.

Mr. Speaker, the goals are: to ensure comprehensive and consistent practices; to

improve public protection through the establishment of an efficient and

effective disciplinary mechanism; to engender more public trust in the process

of self-governance; to ensure practitioners are dealt with fairly.

Comments on the proposals contained in this paper are

welcome. Everyone has a stake in the regulation of these occupational services.

Members of the self-governing occupations and the public are encouraged to

provide written comments by January 31, 1997.

Copies of the White Paper are available from the

Communications Division of the Department of Government Services and Lands. It

is also available at government's Internet site (http://www.gov.nf.ca). Written

comments should be forwarded to the Deputy Minister, Department of Government

Services and Lands, Confederation Building or e-mailed to the Internet site.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to thank the minister for a copy of his

statement and a copy of the White Paper sent over just before the House sat. I

did not have time really to review the White Paper itself but from his

statement, it certainly seems logical, it makes sense to do what he is

proposing. It is always government's responsibility to have the public protected

and have regulations review for all associations and groups that are controlled

by government and the self-governing bodies. Of course, it is a given that this

White Paper will be sent to all the groups concerned, and I expect the minister

to listen to the input of these groups and listen to the public who are affected

by these groups. Because these groups are far-reaching within the Province, Mr.

Speaker, and the professional associations themselves are there to protect the

public. I believe overall, Mr. Speaker, I believe overall that it is a good move

and I look forward to positive results. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi, does he

have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the hon.

members of the House of Assembly of the five-year strategy for the fur industry

of this Province. Produced by the Newfoundland and Labrador Fur Breeders

Association, this document is very timely for the industry, as the marketplace

for fur has strengthened over the past few years.

Only five years ago, pelts were sold at an all-time low of

$40 each. However, over the past three years, fur prices have increased by 25

per cent to 30 per cent, stabilizing at approximately $230 for blue fox and $110

for silver fox. While this might represent a peak in the industry, the overall

outlook is promising with major new markets in the Far East, Russia and the

other former Communist bloc countries, as well as a favourable climate in the

fashion industry for furs and fur products.

This five-year strategy is designed to set the building

blocks for a long-term, strong viable industry. It sets out ambitious goals to

raise production from the current levels of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 silver

fox to 60,000 silver and blue fox and 20,000 mink. This is not an unreasonable

goal. The Newfoundland fur industry has a competitive advantage, given the

availability of raw feed materials, favourable climate, proven fur quality,

readily available markets, labour supply and human resources talent. However,

this is the first time that the markets and the Newfoundland and Labrador fur

industry are on track together.

The strategy will make a meaningful contribution to the rural

economy through increased fur production on new and established farms by

focusing on development components such as diversification of species, feeding

locally produced feeds, markets and marketing, research and development,

education and training, and various financial support structures. Ultimately,

this strategy could create 2,000 direct jobs for rural Newfoundland and

Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, a co-operative approach between industry and

government is essential in order for this strategy to succeed. To this end, I

have set up a Core Working Committee made up of representatives from the

Newfoundland and Labrador Fur Breeders Association, the Department of

Development and Rural Renewal, and my Department of Forest Resources and

Agrifoods. This committee will use the forty-nine recommendations in the Fur

Strategy document to prepare an implementation strategy.

Furthermore, the recent announcement by the hon. Ralph

Goodale, Minister of Agriculture and Agrifoods Canada, and myself relating to

the signing of the Canada-Newfoundland Agricultural Safety Nets Initiatives

forms an excellent basis to achieve some of the development goals outlined in

the fur strategy. The agreement involves approximately $6 million to be

administered over a three-year period. This program will be available to the fur

sector as it undertakes this industry development strategy.

Mr. Speaker, I would at this time like to commend the efforts

of the Newfoundland and Labrador Fur Breeders Association and the existing fur

farmers who have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment by remaining with the

industry through hard times and coming out with a proactive strategy exactly at

a time when it is needed. This commitment provides a solid base for this new

strategy to succeed.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, I want to thank the minister for providing me

with a copy of his ministerial statement prior to the House opening. We over

here on this side commend this particular initiative as well, I say to the

minister. When you see the possibility of 2,000 jobs being created in rural

Newfoundland today, with an unemployment insurance level - or an unemployment

acceptance level, I suppose, if you would - greater than 20 per cent, it is hard

for anybody to be negative when you see something positive happening towards

employment.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: The minister goes on to talk about

feeding locally produced feeds, and I commend him for that, and I think he

should take that one step further. It is criminal in this Province today to see

our raw materials taken and frozen here in Newfoundland, and carried to Montreal

and Toronto, and brought back into this Province again to be put on the

supermarket shelves and served as pet food.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: I think we should take this one step

further. In fact, I know of a very reputable fish company that would be willing

to enter into a partnership should such an initiative be put forward by

government or by industry. Let's get to doing what we should be doing to create

jobs. Instead of shipping out raw material, let's ship out value-added material

to go to other provinces like Quebec and Ontario, and the United States, to be

put on supermarket shelves, and try to get our people in this Province back to

work.

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. There are a couple of areas I want to address

with the minister today.

I ask the minister if he can confirm that several doctors at

St. Clare's Hospital have been booted out of emergency room service on a week's

notice?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

If your level of knowledge ever rises to what you are now

looking at, you will be a happy man, and better served.

Mr. Speaker, I am aware that the Health Care Corporation of

St. John's is reorganizing where casualty officers and salaried physicians who

do emergency room services operate from. At the moment we have both salaried and

fee-for-service who come in on occasion to do emergency room coverage at St.

Clare's and the Grace, operating in both locations. I am also aware that the

Health Care Corporation of St. John's is moving to create a circumstance where

essentially salaried employees within the system who are working within the

hospitals will be working in one location, and the fee-for-service doctors who

come in from the community who do some coverage in the emergency rooms will also

be working in a second location. What the hon. member puts forward and refers to

is essentially a reorganization of the usage of physicians within the system as

opposed to what he puts forward to be the case, which is infactual.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the minister

aware that none of the family physicians at St. Clare's site were in agreement

with this decision?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What I am aware of was that the implementation of this new

arrangement was supposed to happen within a relatively short period of notice

being given. I also understand that the doctors who are impacted and who are

affected with the changeover in site location in terms of their workload are

meeting I believe tomorrow with the people at the Health Care Corporation to

arrive at a time frame within which these adjustments will be made from which

they work.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. He didn't answer

the question.

I asked him is he aware that none of the physicians were in

agreement with that decision? Has the minister received a copy of a letter from

a physician who worked at St. Clare's for over twenty years and resents being

dismissed when physicians were told that a meeting would be held to discuss the

options available to them but they were not given the opportunity to do so?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member

continues to ask questions really which are of an operational nature and are the

responsibility in the first instance of the Health Care Corporation in St.

John's and there are sources from which he can get that information but having

said that, I am glad to be somewhat aware of what is going on in the system as

well. I can confirm to you that I did receive a letter from a physician who

worked within the emergency rooms as a fee for service physician who used to

come in on the weekends. I can confirm that he expressed some displeasure and

disappointment as to the short notice that he was given as an individual with

respect to this changeover. I am aware also that the discussion is ongoing with

the Health Care Corporation and the doctors to ensure that everybody is

comfortable with the new arrangement or at least they understand the basis for

which it is being done and the context in which it is taking place and that is

really within the context of restructuring health care within the St. John's

region as the hon. member is well aware, is well underway.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a copy of those letters too. A decision was reached

without the consensus of any of the medical doctors there and there are many

more things in that I say to the minister and you are copying on this letter. I

ask the minister, why is the Grace Emergency Department cut back to eleven hours

a day due to physician shortages you have indicated, when you are dismissing

seven part-time physicians and transferring three more full time physicians from

the Grace to St. Clare's?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member alleges

something again that is factually incorrect. At no point did I indicate any

doctor was being dismissed. The doctors that are working in the emergency rooms

are being moved around from one site to the other. The level of emergency room

service that we are providing at the Grace and throughout all of the hospitals

in St. John's is consistent with the demand, the need, for that particular type

of service. The hon. member will recall that during the summertime the Grace

Emergency was closed down for extended periods of time and quite frankly, based

on the volume of people that they were seeing there, it was quite easy to look

after that volume of people in the other emergency rooms. There was no

difficulty experienced and it worked out very well. I say to the hon. member

that the Health Care Corporation has the responsibility to organize the delivery

of all services in the city, including emergency room service, in a manner that

is appropriate in their judgement and that meets public expectation and public

demand.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When the doctor tells you there are seven dismissed and three

transferred, when your department and the Health Care Corporation indicate it is

closed due to shortage of doctors, that is not a true statement.

Now, I want to ask the minister another question, a question

concerning health care. This government has refused to accept its

responsibilities to home support workers and is trying to make a home support

agency as a scapegoat for government's inaction.

Now, with the minimum wage announced at $5.25 in January

those workers will barely exceed this minimum wage. I ask the minister if he

would move immediately to correct those inequities and to pay home support

workers a decent wage?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, I do not want to reiterate

what has already been put forward by my hon. colleague the Minister of Social

Services on a number of occasions with respect to the issue of home support

workers and how they are being paid. I would remind the hon. member that no

government has, in his recollection, and no government probably ever again will,

have the level of commitment to ensuring that, to the degree we can provide it,

equity as a part of our compensation packages.

Last week this government announced a pay equity agreement

for employees within the public service. It is an initiative that has been going

on since 1989 and we will continue to do what is right and appropriate in terms

of providing equitable and equal, and fair compensation, to everybody who works

for the public purse. The issue of home workers has already been addressed by my

hon. colleague on a number of occasions, and as the hon. member said yesterday

if he has not heard it already Hansard is available in many forms and under many

dates to give you the answer.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition on a

supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is the fourth time we have brought this issue up here in

this House of Assembly. This government did just announce its pay equity for its

own workers, but still you ignore the concerns of the lowest paid health care

workers in this country today, I say to the minister, and that is not

acceptable. Now, will you commit to getting a quick resolution to those

concerns?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Again, Mr. Speaker, in the interest of

time, and so as not to deprive the hon. members on the other side of any time in

Question Period that they should really have available to them to ask a

question, I refer him to Hansard and the answers that have been given by my hon.

colleague.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition on a

final supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I can see why the minister would like to get other members

here in this House on matters. He has not been doing his job in health care.

That is why he wants other members to get up. These concerns have been going on

for six months, I say to the minister, and that is far too long. Many people

have been effected, not just the workers but the health of the people in the

area. Now, elderly people, and I have had calls from them, in need of home

support services and with no family members to look after them are being denied

basic services. Mr. Minister it is your responsibility to do something about it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to get to his question.

MR. SULLIVAN: I ask the minister if he would act

immediately to ensure that the health care needs of the people in this area do

not continue to be jeopardized any further?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, the largest concern that the

people of the Province have about health care is the deliberate campaign by the

Leader of the Opposition, may I suggest for political purposes and to cast doubt

and aspersion on the quality of the health care workers of this Province, be

they doctors, be they nurses, be they other professionals or support workers in

the hospitals of the Province.

Mr. Speaker, by now it is blatantly transparent that the

Leader of the Opposition only has one objective. Having been told already today

that a statement he made yesterday was unacceptable, either in terms of the

rules or in terms of the facts, Mr. Speaker. We have seen a week of allegations,

all the way from asking the Minister of Health whether or not he has checked the

garbage cans in the facilities available within the hospitals, to whether or not

he is personally aware of a $900 million Budget expenditure.

Mr. Speaker, we have health care boards in this Province and

those boards have the responsibility, they are discharging the responsibility,

and when serious matters are brought to the attention of the government, of the

minister, or of the boards, those matters will be addressed, but when the Leader

of the Opposition attempts to solve his political problem by trying to frighten

people about the quality of health care the Leader of the Opposition ought to

re-examine his conscience in this House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the

Premier. It looks like there could be a vote in the House of Commons as early as

today with respect to Term 17. I would ask the Premier to inform this House of

what exactly his government is doing today to actively encourage MPs to support

passage of the original resolution passed in the House of Assembly last year,

and once already in the House of Commons? Has the Premier received any

assurances from the Prime Minister that he will press the members of his

sizeable government caucus to support the original resolution?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member

for this very important question. A substantive question that affects the future

of Newfoundland and Labrador, and more importantly the future of education, and

therefore the young men and women of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a good

question.

I want to assure him that I hope we have a far greater degree

of success in influencing Jean Chrtien and the Liberal Party of Canada in

supporting Newfoundland's legitimate aspirations to reform its education system

than the party opposite had with Mr. Charest and the Tory Senators who defeated

the amendment in the Senate of Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St.

John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, what the Senate does is

well within its right and well within the law. I'm now asking the Premier,

today, in view if the fact that this matter may well come up in the House of

Commons this afternoon, what has his government done today to in fact encourage

MPs in the House of Commons to vote for the original resolution?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, we didn't wait until today.

We had members of the government, the Minister of Education, who is one of the

most persuasive, as we know, orators in all of the land go to Ottawa and talk to

members of the Liberal caucus.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, then we had the very

even-handed Minister of Justice join in that crusade.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, if the member is saying to me

- and I think this is what he is saying to me, and I congratulate him if this is

what he is implying - that after the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, full

members of this federation, mature members, able to make up their own minds in a

referendum say it is time for education reform; if after the Legislature and all

of the parties in the Legislature, and all of the members - and I acknowledge

all of the members - recently said it is time for education reform; if the House

of Commons, and indeed the House of Commons in majority said it is time to

respect the will of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in the Legislature;

if he is saying that after all of that it was ridiculous for the Conservative

Party of Canada in the Senate to defeat education reform, I say the member is

right, and right again and again and again!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St.

John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: I would indicate to the hon. Premier,

Mr. Speaker, that he ought to do a head count. When he does the head count in

the Senate he will find out exactly why perhaps we are in the predicament today

that we find ourselves in.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for

the hon. Minister of Education on the same matter. Hopefully the minister will

not need to fall back on a contingency plan, but that begs the question, and the

question is: Did the government in fact develop a detailed contingency plan to

allow certain education reforms to proceed promptly if Term 17 were to fail? Is

the minister prepared to say what those contingency measures are?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, only the Official Opposition

in this regard would plan for defeat. We plan for victory. We are going to go

forward with education reform.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for

the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women. Some of the 125 home care

workers from the Southern Shore who have been fighting for justice for six

months are in the House. The government's attempts to wash its hands of this

dispute is nothing short of a scandal. Will the Minister Responsible for the

Status of Women tell the House that she and her government are prepared to

recognize its role as employer, the same as it does for hospitals and nursing

homes in the Province, and sit down and try and negotiate a deal?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleagues have spoken

to this issue many times over the past number of weeks. The Ministers of Social

Services and Health have both referred to this particular issue in the context

of the employer in this situation who is not government, and in the context of

the kinds of funding capacity that the government has to allocate to this

particular aspect of its services. We have explained and the ministers have

explained, time and again, that, they were very difficult choices that this

government had to make in this current Budget, and in doing so, it had to ensure

in allocating resources to this and to many other areas, that it was

distributing its resources as best as it could under the circumstances and

ensuring that the majority of people would be able to access the services that

it needs from this government.

We will continue as a government to provide the resources

that we have provided in the Budget that are available to us and to ensure

through the departments that they are allocated fairly and justly; but in the

instance of this particular service, government, in this case, is not the

employer and it is being administered through the other boards.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi, a supplementary.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister knows that this is a very necessary public

service being performed by public sector workers.

What I want to know, Mr. Speaker, is, how can she and the

other women in the Cabinet and indeed the entire Cabinet, not react with shame

to the fact that they have allowed this situation to continue and are continuing

to let these women be treated as second class citizens when they know that women

who perform the very same jobs as these women, in a nursing home, get paid

almost twice as much? How can she let that go on without being ashamed of

herself and her government?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I would have to acknowledge on

behalf of my government that this is a very vital and a very necessary service

to the Province as the member has indicated, and this government has certainly

recognized that and continues to.

I would also like to recognize however and acknowledge, that

in the past eight years, this particular Budget item has grown from the sum of

$700,000 to $30 million, and it is at this point that the government has had to

make choices within its total Budget allocation in order to wisely and prudently

distribute its resources amongst the services that are all very necessary to the

people of this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier likes to talk about education reform. I want to

ask the Premier, will you confirm that during the election campaign, that your

brother and another high-ranking Liberal met with Mr. Gerry Fallon during the

election campaign and an agreement was reached not to make this an issue during

the last election?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: No, Mr. Speaker, but I suspect that at the

rate the Leader of the Opposition is going, he will be withdrawing two days in a

row.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a

supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, our caucus was informed by Mr.

Gerry Fallon that he met with two individuals and agreed not to make this an

issue in the campaign, I say to the Premier. We saw the framework agreement

after.

Will the Premier now stand and indicate that he had no

knowledge of anyone meeting and to keep this secret during the election

campaign?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, the desperation of the Leader

of the Opposition is obviously directly relevant to his position in the opinion

polls and obviously, the lower he goes the more desperate the questions become.

Mr. Speaker, in the last election campaign, representatives

of the Liberal Party met with representatives of every single interest group

that we could possibly meet with to consult on the preparation of the Liberal

Red Book and to ensure, Mr. Speaker, that in going forward with a platform that

we had actually consulted in advance.

If the Leader of the Opposition and his party had done a

similar exercise with respect to the fishery, they would not have brought in a

foolish fisheries policy, promising a $75 million expenditure to open every

single fish plant in the Province when everybody knows it cannot be done.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: That is manipulation. That is manipulation,

that is what that is.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions are to the Minister of Social Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair has recognized the hon. the Opposition House

Leader.

MR. H. HODDER: My question is to the Minister of Social

Services.

In a recent Ministerial Statement, the minister noted that

changes to adoption laws, procedures and regulations, are being considered by

government. It now takes years for adoptees or birth parents to access

information. In fact, the department has downsized its staff allocation of

one-and-one-half units to handle all the requests for information. What changes

does the minister intend to introduce to streamline access to information for

both birth parents and adoptees?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The points that have been raised by my hon. colleague are

points that are of concern to the Department of Social Services.

As I mentioned in my statement, we are in the process of

reviewing our adoptions legislation. We are looking at trying to address the

backlog - we openly admit there is a backlog - but I will come back to the issue

of choices in a department that services the children of the Province. We have

to make choices, and right now our priority is on delivering front-line services

to children and trying to deal with the backlog as it arises. Through this

summer, in particular, we allocated some summer help to one of the very few

departments within my program area to help address the backlog. It is a concern.

We are looking at it more thoroughly through program review, and we are hoping

that we will, at the end of the day, change how we even deliver the adoption

services in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader, a

supplementary.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Madam Minister, we all welcome greater openness in the

adoption procedures in this Province. The most progressive legislation in Canada

today is that recently adopted in the Province of British Columbia. Will the

minister indicate today that she will be following the same general principles

as followed in that Province when they changed their adoption procedures and

regulations?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MS J. M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would not confirm anything at this point in time. As I

said, we are in the process of program review. We are in the process of

receiving a document from our social policy advisory group. We are thoroughly

investigating the open adoptions issue, and how we deliver adoptions in this

Province. I cannot conclude how we will do that service, but we will look at it

in a very thorough, comprehensive way, and report in an appropriate way when it

is completed.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader, a

supplementary.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Given the complex nature of the adoption process, the general

willingness of society to be more open about adoptions, the need for respect for

the legal rights of all involved, and the sensitivity and compassion required,

will the minister today state her intent to publish a White Paper for

consideration by the House and by the general public prior to the tabling of any

legislation here in the House?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MS J. M. AYLWARD: At this point in time, Mr. Speaker,

until we identify the direction in which we are going, and get the

recommendations from the various groups that are involved, I will not commit to

submitting a paper, but I will commit to thoroughly reviewing the existing

legislation seeking ongoing public input, as we are doing through the policy

advisory committee, through our own program review, and through any other means,

particularly in dealing with children who are looking for their birth parents,

and also birth parents who are looking for their children whom they gave up for

adoption. We will do it in a very comprehensive way, and when we have come to

some conclusion as to how we are best able to address it, we will bring it back

to the House.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are again for the Minister of Finance.

Yesterday, I asked questions of the minister, some very

specific questions regarding the HST, and in particular, the unanimous consent

needed to decrease the provincial share, the PVAT with this HST. Mr. Speaker, I

got two answers. During Question Period, the minister said no, and after

Question Period, the minister said yes. I would like for the minister to clarify

today which is correct.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do not think the hon. member understood my answer. What I

said was that for the four years that the agreement endures, we are party to it,

we can neither increase, nor do we intend to decrease it.

What we have also agreed to is that should it extend beyond

the four years, we would include the mechanism whereby changes can be made. One

of those change is that if we wish to decrease there will be unanimous agreement

of all the participating provinces.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for

Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Mr. Speaker, that adds to the confusion

again. Because it is in Hansard for anybody to read, and I encourage the

minister to read it afterwards to see what he did say in two different answers.

I asked a second question. To add to the confusion, my second question also had

two contradictory answers. I asked if the Federal Government could unilaterally

raise their portion of the HST, known as the CVAT, as the minister knows,

without the consent of the provinces. I did not ask if it was 1 per cent or 5

per cent. I just asked could they increase without the consent of the province.

Could the minister tell us that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and

Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I gave a lengthier answer during the interval that we have

called Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given. I referred the

member to the text of the Act which is now before the House, printed and

distributed, and the answers that he seeks are in

section 14, first of all with

respect to an increase, and

section 15 with respect to a decrease, and the

mechanism for the Federal Government is in the sections between 20 and 28. The

hon. member does not believe or understand the answers I gave him, so I suggest

that he read it and draw his own conclusions. I outlined in some detail

yesterday, Your Honour, and to go beyond it at this point seems meaningless.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for

Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the minister I did

read the Act and that is why, I guess, the minister felt a little guilty

yesterday and got up after Question Period, after the press left, to give the

right answer. It is in black and white in the Hansard and the minister can read

it afterwards.

Now, I will ask the next question of the minister. This new

tax, the HST, will more than double taxes on such things as electricity, heating

fuel, children's clothing - basic necessities. I am sure the minister would

agree to that. The minister knows that people on low income in this Province

spend a large portion of their disposable income on these basic necessities. Is

the minister telling these people, the poorest people of this Province, that

they will be hit the hardest by this GST in disguise, which is now called HST?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and

Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: No, Mr. Speaker, that is not the case. The

analysis we have done using the Statistics Canada analysis of what people at all

income groups spend their general monies on indicates that there will be tax

savings at all levels. At the level of someone earning at little as $10,000, or

whose gross income is in that amount, they will save $180 in tax per year.

The hon. member can focus on a few items across the broad

spectrum of things people spend money on that may result in a tax increase. But,

by far and away, the vast majority of goods, and I am sure, in excess of 90 per

cent, that people spend their money on, will have a tax reduction of 25 per

cent. So in the general weighting of things there is a very substantial

advantage to taxpayers. It is a decrease of over $105 million. The hon. member

may contort, twist and construe it how he likes, but you cannot contort a tax

decrease into a tax increase. I commend him for his efforts, I admire his

energy, but not his conclusions, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Can the minister inform the House as to the status of the Atlantic salmon

stocks? Have those particular stocks increased since 1992, and if so, to what

extent?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and

Aquaculture.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell the hon. member

how much the stocks have increased, but certainly, according to the latest

scientific information, the stocks are starting to rebound. The information is

encouraging, but we look forward to the future to make sure they are increasing

to the numbers that we can be satisfied to provide a recreational salmon fishery

that can build the economy in this Province to the way in which we want it to

build.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has ended.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, during Question Period the

Leader of the Opposition asked a question and in asking the question made an

allegation which I responded, in part, to. With leave, Mr. Speaker, I wish to

give a full response to the question that was raised with respect to the

allegation regarding Mr. Fallon.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. the Premier have leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. SULLIVAN: If I have an opportunity too.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I wanted to remind members -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Does the hon. the Premier have leave?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: I would be delighted to give him leave if I

have an opportunity to respond, since it is outside of Question Period.

AN HON. MEMBER: Sure.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave, the hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, during Question Period the

Leader of the Opposition got up and made an allegation which was entirely

unfounded and which the Leader of the Opposition, had he bothered to check at

all, even the minimal amount of checking, would know was unfounded; but I have

to assume that that investigation was not done.

Mr. Speaker, I want to refer to a statement issued on July

10, 1996. The statement is released by the Catholic Education Council and it

reads as follows, and I will read the statement: Gerald Fallon, Executive

Director of the Catholic Education Council takes exception to news reports from

some media outlets suggesting that there was some form of secret deal during the

last provincial election between the Liberal Party Leader, Brian Tobin, and

representatives of the Roman Catholic people respecting Term 17. There was no

such deal. The Liberal Party made no commitment, other than that made in the

election campaign Red Book, which was that there would be consultation with all

parties, including the representatives of the denominations on the education

reform agenda after the election. `There was an understanding, it says here,

`well known among Catholic and Pentecostal people and the Liberal Party that

Term 17 would not be an election issue. Mr. Fallon's comments to the Senate

Committee were merely intended to explain why the status of Term 17 was not an

issue during the election campaign.' That is July 10.

July 9, is a statement issued by my office saying, and I

quote, `Premier Tobin has called upon - this is the day before - Gerald Fallon

of the Catholic Education Council to correct the public record on a statement

attributed to Mr. Fallon during the Senate hearings in St. John's on Tuesday.

Any suggestion that the government had any kind of deal with the Catholic Church

or anyone else with respect to the process of education reform prior to the

election is totally false. The consistent position government held was that we

would consult all of the affected parties and at the end of the day, education

reform would proceed.' That position was part of our Red Book platform and it

was part of hundreds of campaign speeches by me and by other spokespersons.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I understand the Leader of the Opposition

is feeling a little embarrassed by the position of the National Conservative

Party Leader, Jean Charest, who voted against this in the House of Commons, and

by all of the Conservative members of the Senate. But to once again today be

making a false allegation, Mr. Speaker, does not help the cause of promoting

public debate in this Province and I would ask him to withdraw.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

No, and I am sure the Premier should be a bit embarrassed

that a Liberal controlled Senate could not pass this resolution, and the House

of Assembly with his own colleagues -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I asked for time to respond to statements

the Premier made. I was given leave to do that. Anything the Premier said - Mr.

Speaker, my comments will not go outside issues that the Premier raised here

today.

Mr. Fallon was asked a question by a Caucus colleague of

mine, in Caucus, if he met with people from the Liberal Party and agreed that it

would not become an issue during this campaign, and he said yes. In fact, the

day of that statement, Premier, he called you and told you who it was. You know

as well as I do.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was it? Who was it?

MR. SULLIVAN: I am not going to name -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I did not say Mr. Fallon told us who it

was. I said he told us he met with two. I ask the Premier: Will he confirm that

it was his brother and one other whose name I know, who met and agreed to keep

it secret during the election campaign? Then we saw the frame work agreement. We

saw the famous -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I gave the Premier an opportunity. I

listened to the Premier.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: I asked for an opportunity. I gave the

Premier the courtesy of his statement and I am only addressing statements the

Premier referred to.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SULLIVAN: Since that election we saw a frame work

agreement of backtracking by government, and when they got their knuckles rapped

they turned around and went back to where they were before. That is very

significant on what was reached during the campaign. The Premier can sit in his

seat, when he knows fully well that what we are saying is true?

PREMIER TOBIN: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Premier, on a point of order.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, in the interest of all

members of this place, not abusing the privilege we have, which is the privilege

of immunity, if there is any suggestion in any of this debate - and I know it

would be inadvertent on the part of the Leader of the Opposition, he would want

to join me in saying this - surely you are not saying now that Mr. Fallon, in

his statement, has lied to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. I accept his

public statement and I would ask that the Leader of the Opposition does the

same.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

Answers to Questions

For which Notice has been Given

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and

Aquaculture.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the House of

Assembly my hon. friend for Bonavista South asked me a question as to how much

money was spent on the St. Lawrence fish plant since June of this year. In June

of this year electrical repairs were done to the tune of $7866 and in August we

spent $210 on an ammonia leak. Those were the total expenses this year, Mr.

Speaker.

Petitions

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Mary's.

MR. J. BYRNE: Cape St. Francis, I say to the Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

AN HON. MEMBER: Mr. Speaker, I know the resemblance he

has to the former member for Cape St. Mary's, so I understand it completely.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is what happens when you have a previous administration

changing electoral boundaries and putting names on them that people are not

familiar with.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition, a very

serious petition, I say to the Minister of Education, and I can read the

wording, Mr. Speaker.

To the hon. House of Assembly of Newfoundland in legislative

session convened. The petition of the undersigned residents of Pouch Cove,

Newfoundland has seventy-six signatures, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS we the citizens of the town of Pouch Cove have lost

confidence in the ability of the town council of Pouch Cove to effectively

govern the town as demonstrated by the 1993 financial audit in which $18,000 was

misspent, and the 1995 financial audit in which $16,000 is unaccounted for, and

WHEREAS the town council has adopted a very uncooperative

attitude towards the taxpayers, residents of the town, and have demonstrated

total insensitivity to the concerns of the taxpayers, residents,

WHEREFORE your petitioners humbly pray that your hon. House

may be pleased to request the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to

instruct the Auditor General for Newfoundland and Labrador to undertake a full

and comprehensive investigation into the practices, policies, finances,

administration, and all aspects of the town council of Pouch Cove.

Mr. Speaker, I present this petition here today on behalf of

the people who signed it.

Mr. Speaker, as the minister knows - and as he has been kept

well informed of this situation - in 1993 there was a police investigation by

the RCMP in the town of Pouch Cove and there was upwards of $18,000 misspent.

Shortly after that, in the Fall of 1993, there was an election and a new council

elected. Then the people of the town were expecting proper procedures and

policies to be put in place to prohibit this sort of thing from happening again.

Then in January of 1996 the assistant town clerk at the time was dismissed

because of irregularities found in the bookkeeping of the town. A police

investigation was then called by the town council of Pouch Cove, and rightly so.

Immediately there was a police investigation. The report was inconclusive - I

believe it was in September - and the town council requested that the RNC

further investigate. A report recently came in which was again inconclusive, Mr.

Speaker.

In the meantime, the town manager was dismissed. At the time

the town manager was dismissed, there was a lot of concern in the town as to who

was being investigated. Was it one person, two people, was it a councillor, more

than one councillor, all councillors or everybody involved? There was a lot of

confusion in the town, and subsequently there was a committee formed and a

public meeting held. There were something like 300 people who showed up for that

meeting. The people were genuinely concerned and they asked that the committee

go forward, speak to the minister, or representatives of the minister, and see

what they could discover with respect to the monies that were missing in the

town of Pouch Cove.

Further to that meeting, the people on the committee felt

they were not getting the cooperation of certain people within the town council

itself, and they called another public meeting and basically the same thing was

done again. The committee had some research done themselves and presented it to

the public at the time, probably another 300 people, but they could not come up

with any conclusions.

Recently, this past week, last Thursday night, I believe, the

town council itself, with all the councillors there, the representatives of

their legal counsel, the Town Engineer, Keith Warren from Municipal and

Provincial Affairs was there, their auditors were there and there were about 300

to 400 people there. There were two police from the RNC who had done the

investigation, and the meeting was quite hot and heavy, let me tell you, Mr.

Speaker. I was there, I attended the meeting. But the people really did not get

what they wanted. They did not get the answers and possibly why the police

report was inconclusive, Mr. Speaker, was the fact that the procedures and

policies that were put in place, were not complete enough to allow the RNC to

get to the bottom of the problem.

Now, the people at that meeting, close to 400 people, I would

think - the media was there, Mr. Speaker. And everyone who spoke - and almost

everyone spoke, called for the resignation of the council. But the council

really did not want to resign at that point in time because they felt that they

had done nothing wrong.

Mr. Speaker, what these people are calling for now - and

really, to get to the bottom of it, is a legislative audit done by the Auditor

General, Mr. Speaker, which could very well vindicate a number of people whom

the finger is now pointed at, and I think, really, that nothing less than a

legislative audit would be acceptable to the people of the Town of Pouch Cove.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say that this petition I

present here today, has seventy-six signatures but there is another petition

coming, let me tell you, with hundreds and hundreds of names on it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. J. BYRNE: In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, there is a

petition coming in the next day or two, with, I would say, upwards of 800 to

1,000 names and the population of Pouch Cove is only 2,000 people, including

children. So that would lead you to believe, Mr. Speaker, that there is an

overwhelming support in the Town of Pouch Cove for a legislative audit, and

obviously, there is very little faith and confidence in the town council of

Pouch Cove. Hopefully, if we get a legislative audit, it will -

AN HON. MEMBER: A legislative audit?

MR. J. BYRNE: An Auditor General's investigation would

actually get to the bottom of this and vindicate certain people who should be

vindicated, and point the finger, Mr. Speaker, at the people who are guilty of

incompetence within the town council itself.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to support my colleague, the Member for the

District of Cape St. Francis in his presentation of the petition on behalf of

the citizens of Pouch Cove.

I have some familiarity with Pouch Cove, having married into

a Pouch Cove family. So, Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the appropriate minister

that the difficulties in Pouch Cove are not unlike the difficulties in many

other municipalities in this Province. And it goes to show that the procedures

and practices that are followed in many municipalities need to be reviewed more

often by the Auditor General or by some other comprehensive auditing system than

they are at the current time.

Mr. Speaker, the people of Pouch Cove have had some great

frustration in the past four or five years, frustration brought on by missing

funds or misappropriated funds, and it is hard to find out exactly what happens.

In themselves, you cannot say because their funds are missing that someone

indeed has broken the law. You cannot jump, you know, from A to B. you might

say. It may just simply be that there are improper or inadequate at least,

accounting procedures in place.

So, Mr. Speaker, I think the message to the government from

the people of Pouch Cove is that, they would like to see a proper audit carried

out, a legislative audit that would examine, not just the bookkeeping

procedures, but whether or not all of the expenditures and the procedures

followed in Pouch Cove do comply with the legislation contained in the

Municipalities Act.

Mr. Speaker, I support the petition. I could not support the

part where it says that they wish to call upon their town council to resign

because I have difficulty with that. Because the town council of Pouch Cove have

been found guilty of nothing. They have not been found in a court of law to have

done anything wrong, and therefore, I have difficulty saying to them: We are

going to call upon you to be dismissed from office. However, the people of Pouch

Cove have every right to call upon the government to do a legislative audit, and

I would support that part of the petition, and recommend it highly to the

Provincial Government.

Also, I think the Provincial Government should now be looking

at the circumstances that evolved in Conception Bay South, and looking at what

is happening in Pouch Cove, to a message that says that all is not well in

municipalities in this Province. When we have two major municipalities that have

encountered difficulties, I think it sends a signal that the Province should be

doing more, that the minister should be aware of the fact that we should be

looking closely at the bookkeeping, the auditing practices and the financial

procedures in municipalities in this Province.

With these comments, I support the petition. However, as I

said before, we must be careful how we proceed, that we do not hurt the

reputations of the duly elected councillors without adequate research and due

cause.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Orders of the Day

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 2.

Motion, the hon. the Minister of Education to introduce a

bill, "An Act Respecting A Provincial College," carried. (Bill No. 47)

On motion, Bill No. 47 read a first time, ordered read a

second time on tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, it seems that I am missing a

minister again.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Yes I have. I am looking for the Minister of

Works, Services and Transportation. She is outside with the media. Maybe, if the

hon. gentlemen want to, we might do

An Act To Amend The Freedom Of Information

Act And The Privacy Act. Or we could do

An Act To Amend The Labour Standards

Act.

An Act To Amend The Labour Standards Act, Mr. Speaker, Order

No. 11.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour

Standards Act". (Bill No. 26)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and

Labour.

MR. K. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This amendment is a follow-up to a report on labour standards

that was done in the past year, and would see a couple of changes made to the

Labour Standards Act.

"Clause 2 of the bill would amend the Act by adding

subsection 8(1.1) which would allow an employee with more than 15 years of

service with the same employer to take 3 weeks paid vacation per year or 6%

vacation pay." That is a change there to the benefit of the worker.

"Clause 4 would expand entitlement to bereavement leave to

include leave upon the death of a grandchild." So it would expand bereavement

leave provisions for workers covered under the Labour Standards Act.

These are two amendments that are being brought forward at

this time. Further amendments are being considered, and a further discussion of

the labour standards report is underway. These two are ready now. We are looking

at some other provisions. The Labour Standards Act covers working conditions in

the Province for workers, and I would like to introduce it to the House of

Assembly for further debate.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to speak to the legislation, the amendments to the

Labour Standards Act. These amendments provide that a person with fifteen years

of continuous employment - it must be continuous - is entitled by law to three

weeks vacation and, furthermore, bereavement leave if the grandchild dies.

Mr. Speaker, what I find very interesting about this bill is

that it is necessary. There are those who think that the private sector must

work out its own arrangements, and that the government regulation: keep away

from the workplace; keep away from business; keep away from free enterprise; do

not put any restrictions on people in their hiring because we are going to scare

away employers; we are going to scare away, frighten away, business; the rugged,

rampant, capitalists of the United States who can go to Georgia or come here are

going to go to Georgia because they have no laws. They say that we have to keep

our standards low.

Mr. Speaker, what is very interesting is that this government

feels that it must legislate, must legislate, that someone is entitled to

bereavement leave because their grandchild, a grandson or granddaughter, has

died. It is a sad, sad, sad commentary on the state of life in Newfoundland at

this time, or the attitude that employers still have.

Mr. Speaker, if that is the state of the law in this

Province, and employment in this Province, I think the minister had better have

a good, long, hard look at all labour standards and make sure that every part of

the contract of employment is regulated far better than it is.

Let's see some better rules and regulations for wrongful

dismissal. Never mind letting employers sit down and look at the Labour

Standards Act after they are going to throw someone out the door and say: Well,

the Labour Standards Act says I only have to give you one week severance pay

here; or if they are there for two years, I only have to give you two weeks

notice. That is the minimum. In fact employers, and lawyers for employers, have

gone to court and argued that the minimum standard of the Labour Standards Act,

of one week or two weeks, is also the maximum, that the government has

legislated that you are only required to give one week, or in some cases two

weeks, notice.

Mr. Speaker, the fact that this minister is bringing in this

legislation is an admission and acknowledgement by government that there is a

need, and a great need, because obviously the minister feels that there are

employers in this Province so callous and so mean-spirited, and so ignorant of

the needs of families and people, that they would deny -

MR. TULK: Mostly private law firms.

MR. HARRIS: I have talked about law firms. Law firms

employees are not treated very well in many cases, I say. They should get out

and get organized, join a union.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Employees of law firms, yes they should.

MR. TULK: Law firms?

MR. HARRIS: Join unions, yes.

MR. TULK: Yes, I agree.

MR. HARRIS: Collectively bargain.

MR. TULK: Have they got a union down at your?

MR. HARRIS: That is not my job.

MR. TULK: Oh, that is not your job!

MR. HARRIS: No, no. Employers do not impose unions on

people. It is a choice of individuals to collectively bargain.

What is wrong, Mr. Speaker, is that there is a way in which

employees can fight for collective rights. They can join a union. They can

bargain collectively. They can sit down and negotiate collectively with their

employer. Sometimes there is uncertainty as to who the employer is. The health

care workers who are up there in the House are being manipulated and abused by

this government who is trying to pretend they are not the employer, that the

Minister of Social Services, turning to sick people, old people, and disabled

people, and pretending that they are employers, making them fill out forms to

Revenue Canada which they cannot read, in some cases cannot see, pretending that

they are the employers.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about labour standards here now

and the fact that government has required to impose that someone, as an

employer, must give three weeks vacation after fifteen years of continuous

employment, that the law must impose an obligation on people. The law must

impose an obligation on employers to give someone time off to attend a funeral

of as close a relative as a grandchild.

I think, Mr. Speaker, anybody who sees this legislation and

sees that this is regarded by government as a necessary improvement to the

Labour Standards Act, so necessary they are prepared to bring it in on a

piecemeal basis as opposed to part of a general review, is a sad commentary on

the state of attitude towards employment, towards employees by employers of in

Province.

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister can tell us why he feels it

is so important, at this time, to bring this in right now before Christmas

without it being part of an overall review?

MR. TULK: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to be bated by

the Government House Leader, who is trying to get me off track. I am not going

to be bated by him.

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister really should tell us why

it is he is bringing this in, piecemeal at this time, without looking at the

whole of the act and bringing it up to par with the modern employment standards

and making it easier for people to have claims brought to the Labour Standards

Board and dealt with. Some of these reviews have been going on for some time,

Mr. Speaker. Why isn't he bringing it all in and letting us debate all the

changes and fixing up all of the problems with the Labour Standards Act?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The other side of the House want to indicate to the minister

that we are in general agreement with the amendments and that, as my colleague

to my right here has said, it is a -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) to your right, but read it to your

left?

MR. H. HODDER: Well, to my right.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) to your left. He pretends to be.

MR. H. HODDER: He is to my right.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, he is to your right. (Inaudible).

MR. H. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, the point has been made that

in 1996 we need to have a piece of legislation brought forward in this House

that would do two things; it would assure that those people who have fifteen

years of continuous employment with the same employer shall be permitted to have

three weeks paid vacation per year, fifteen days. Mr. Speaker, we would totally

agree with that. In the absence of taking that particular vacation, there is

provision in

Section 3 for them to be paid 6 per cent of their gross salary.

Mr. Speaker, in themselves, these particular amendments are

very important, because we have to remember that we, as legislators, have to

stand up for the ordinary person, the little guy. It is the person who is out

there in the community, who finds today that he needs this piece of legislation,

that I have great sympathy for; the fact that we have people who are important

in this Province in 1996, who must look to this piece of legislation to have

three weeks vacation every year after fifteen years of continuous employment.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the difficulty I have with that is a

definition of the word `continuous.' Therefore, all seasonal employees will not

get vacation because if they are off for some period of time that will not

count. If you happen to have an employee who is not employed for some time,

maybe two weeks, two months - and I have known instances where employers have

said that in year number seven, you were off for two months. Fifteen years

arrived and they would not be able to qualify. The sad commentary is that we

still have employers who are that picky with employees. That is a sad reflection

on our society.

Also, Mr. Speaker, we have to keep in mind, as well, that

when we have to put in legislation to say that upon the death of a grandchild we

will guarantee the right of a grandparent to have bereavement leave, what does

that say about our Newfoundland society? What does it say about the people who

are in big business? What does it say about we, as a Newfoundland community,

where we traditionally prided ourselves on sharing and being involved in

outreach when families go through these kinds of tragedies? Now we have to put

in law that a grandparent is, by law, given the right to have bereavement leave

when their grandchild dies.

Mr. Speaker, I support the government in putting it in here.

I say to the government that it is, again, a step in the right direction. We

look forward to a comprehensive review of the labour laws and the Labour

Standards Act. However, I say to the Government House Leader, that we look

forward to that, because this is not the only part that needs to be reviewed. As

far as this goes today, we believe that this is a positive thing, good for

employees who need this kind of legislation, but a sad reflection that the party

opposite, as the government, find it necessary to bring in these kinds of

amendments right now.

Mr. Speaker, with these comments I will yield to my colleague

for the District of Kilbride.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: The hon. Government House Leader says: What

do you have to say for yourself now? Mr. Speaker, this is essentially -

AN HON. MEMBER: This is unbelievable.

MR. TULK: They have four people on that side who have to

stand and say we support this.

MR. E. BYRNE: I want to make a quick point, that is all.

I'm not going to reiterate the comments that have been raised by other members

on the issue, but just to say that this is a quick house-keeping piece of

legislative business that came as recommendations to the department in terms of

bereavement leave, and we support it. That isn't the issue. The Official

Opposition certainly supports the amendments as have been put forward here.

As I just said to the minister in my initial discussion with

him on the piece of legislation, with respect to other recommendations, a whole

body of recommendations that refer to the department by the labour standards act

review, that this should be, and I hope that there is a longer or more

substantial body of information coming, or legislation coming, that acts upon

those recommendations, because they are important.

A quick commentary, Mr. Speaker. I see no problem in

supporting this piece of legislation. I suggest we move it quickly and move on

to other issues that are of contention.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, having heard the hon. gentlemen on

the other side, except for the attack of the sole NDP member in the House, the

voice of labour in the House, that ultraconservative from Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi, having heard the comments from the Opposition House Leader, and the

comments of the Member for Kilbride - he was, as is usual with him, very

forthright and very straightforward - Mr. Speaker, I move second reading.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Labour Standards

Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on

tomorrow. (Bill No. 26)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Order No. 9, "An Act To Amend The Urban And

Rural Planning Act". (Bill No. 35).

Motion, second reading of a bill,

An Act To Amend The Urban

And Rural Planning Act", (Bill No. 35).

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce for debate

on second reading, a bill, "

An Act To Amend The Urban And Rural Planning Act".

The proposed amendments to the Urban and Rural Planning Act

are designed to speed up the plan amendment approval process, to introduce fees

for the lodging of appeals and to clarify the purchase notice provisions.

The approval process with respect to the process amendments

will be speeded up by reducing from one month down to fourteen days, the notice

period required for a proposed public hearing. If the hearing does not have to

proceed because no representations are being made, cancellation can be carried

out by staff in consultation with the municipality, so avoiding ministerial

approval for this routine matter.

With respect to the appeal board fees, presently the costs of

operating the appeal process are borne by the Province and not the users of the

system. It is proposed that a fee be introduced which will be retained by the

Province to defray costs associated with operating the system and this fee will

be paid by the losing party of the appeal. The proposed fee is in the order of

$100 per appeal.

In the third area, the purchase notice provisions, the

proposed amendments to

section 124, purchase notices are designed only to

clarify the present wording of that section. There is no substantive change, and

concern has been expressed in the past about the ordering of the current

section

and its lack of clarity in the options available for the minister to accept or

reject a purchase notice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say a few words on Bill 35 which

amends The Urban and Rural Planning Act.

I have to ask the question: What is going on in this

Province, Mr. Speaker, today? What is going on in this House these days, and

what, Mr. Speaker, is going on in Cabinet, these days? That is the question that

is going to come to light very soon, I would say, because each bill that is

going through the House this week - just look at each bill. The Lands Act, what

was going on there? It is giving more powers to the minister.

MR. MATTHEWS: Good governing.

MR. J. BYRNE: No, that is not what is called governing, I

say to the Minister of Health.

Then, we had the Expropriations Act, Mr. Speaker, and what

was going on with the Expropriations Act? What was the main theme, what was the

main thought, what was the main idea of the Expropriation Act? Give more power

to the minister, that is what the main theme, the main idea was. Then, we had

the Fish Inspection Act.

Not only do members on this side of the House agree with

this, but people in private industry in the fishery agree, that the main theme

of the amendment to that Act was to give more powers to the Minister of

Fisheries and Aquaculture. And now, we have another bill before this House of

Assembly, which amends the Urban And Rural Planning Act, and what does that do,

Mr. Speaker? Exactly the same thing; it gives more power to the minister.

MR. TULK: Is that right, `Jack'?

MR. J. BYRNE: The Government House Leader is over there

saying: Is that right, `Jack'? Is that right, `Jack'? Is that right, `Jack', and

he sounds like a broken record. That is right, `Jack', I say to the minister.

That is right.

MR. TULK: Okay, `Jack'.

MR. J. BYRNE: Okay.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) Jack.

MR. J. BYRNE: I will do that, I will.

Mr. Speaker, this bill gives more -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I will ask this: Minister, are you a man of

your word?

MR. TULK: Yes.

MR. J. BYRNE: You are?

MR. TULK: Oh yes.

MR. J. BYRNE: Definitely?

MR. TULK: Yes.

MR. J. BYRNE: I will see you tomorrow and you will have

an answer for me.

MR. TULK: Oh yes, (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: A positive answer.

MR. TULK: I didn't say that.

MR. J. BYRNE: You committed.

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) answers.

MR. J. BYRNE: You committed, you said you would do it.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I stood up as I usually do to speak for

five or ten minutes on a bill, and the Government House Leader continues to

interject and I'm up here thirty-five or forty minutes, or a half-hour, because

he continues to interject. If he wants me to be up for half-an-hour, please feel

free. It is no sweat to me.

With respect to Bill 35, there are three basic problems with

the bill. First, it gives the minister new power to impose fees for appeals.

Now, we had the Minister of Finance this year bring down a new Budget with no

tax increases, Mr. Speaker. That was the main idea of the Budget. That was what

all the praise and all the talk was about from that side of the House, no taxes,

and what have we seen ever since?

MR. TULK: You must be gaining a reputation for talking.

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, a good one. You need not worry.

The bill gives new powers to the minister to impose fees for

appeals, as I said, another tax grab, Mr. Speaker. And not only does he have the

power to impose fees but he can also set the rate or the amount, how much the

fee will be. What is this fee for, Mr. Speaker? If I have an appeal to the urban

region planning board, if you want to refer to it as that, and I want to appeal

it, now I have to write a cheque to someone to have the right to appeal.

My basic rights are being taken away from me as an ordinary

Newfoundlander, and when I say me, I refer, of course, to other people in the

public, in the Province, in the municipality, and what have you, we have a

situation now where I would have to write out a cheque to appeal a decision that

I feel was made in error against me as an individual within the Province. The

minister can do that. Not only now do I have to write out a cheque to that

person, but this bill, also, from what I understand, gives the council the

authority, depending on the town council, to also charge a fee.

When the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs gets on

his feet and explains what is going on with this bill, at the end of debate on

third reading, he will maybe alleviate my fears and say it is not the case. But

he will have to prove it to me, Mr. Speaker. From reading the black and white of

the bill, it certainly appears that, in actual fact, for me to appeal a refusal

or even a condition - if I apply to build a house somewhere and I get the land

approved and the town council sets down a condition of the approval and I want

to appeal the condition of the approval, I now have to write a cheque to have

that right.

That in itself is a tax grab. I want to go back to what I

said earlier, that the ministers were bragging and talking to the media, and

every chance when he gets on his feet, the Minister of Finance says there are no

new taxes this year. But what have we seen, Mr. Speaker? Every time we stand in

this House of Assembly to discuss a bill, we see new taxes going in, hidden

taxes in the form of fees and permits, and what have you.

Now, this bill also gives the minister the power to set an

even shorter period of notice for public hearings on a municipal plan, which

gives citizens less time to respond to these plans and gives council less time

to prepare. From memory when reading the bill - and I do not know if I will get

into the actual details - I think the time was a month. If a town adopted a town

plan, they had a month. They gazetted it for one month and then they put it in

the local paper and got response. Now, that is being cut back to fourteen days -

fourteen days to respond to a town plan. It really is not a lot of time.

Somebody could be on holidays and come back to find their town plan has been

adopted. It might affect a piece of property right the middle of a town that

could be zoned for anything at all and you would not be able to have input into

it, Mr. Speaker. So that is a major concern.

Also, this amendment gives the minister new power to use his

own discretion in deciding whether to purchase land from a landowner who claims

to have been hurt by a municipal plan or a zoning change. Now, previously, if a

town plan was in place and an individual made an application to, say, build a

house or put in some sort of commercial development, or what have you, and it

was refused by the municipality, the individual could then apply to the town and

have the town put in what they call a purchase notice. Then the town could be

required to purchase the land, but now the minister may have the right in

himself, or herself, to say, no to it, to automatically refuse it.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. J. BYRNE: The purchase notice, the minister can say

no to it. As a matter of fact, previous to this amendment going through, if the

purchase notice was refused, of course, there had to be conditions and

explanations as to why it was refused. Now the minister can say: No, that is it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: That is the truth. Those are the facts.

The problem with bills going through this House of Assembly

is the fact that the Government House Leader is over there making comments all

the time, and I can lay dollars to donuts that the minister never looked at one

of these bills. He is making comments right, left and centre, and he does not

know what he is talking about. Then he tries to mislead people - I am not going

to say mislead; that is not true - he tries to get people off their train of

thought.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I am talking about you now.

MR. TULK: Me?

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes.

MR. TULK: I am not doing that.

MR. J. BYRNE: I was talking about you that time, I say to

the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: You were?

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, yes, definitely. That is what I am

saying; you should be paying attention, I say to the Government House Leader.

As I said earlier, there are two types of fees being

introduced here - not one, two - for me, for you, for anybody sitting in this

House of Assembly, or anybody out of the 600,000 or 700,000 people in the

Province. Any property owner, any landowner in the Province can end up paying

two fees to have an appeal heard that he doesn't have to pay now.

Also, now we have an administrator. Someone appealing a

decision of an authorized administrator under this act must also submit a fee.

That is what I spoke to earlier with respect to the town or the urban region

planning group or the town council in itself.

Another point, as I said earlier, is the current act is being

reduced with respect to the time and notice for public hearings. That, in

itself, could be a contradiction within this amendment. I think, if the minister

was here, on third reading we would probably have to introduce an amendment to

this, and a very good amendment, too, because of simple logistics. What is

happening now is that basically the time frame says fourteen days but it should

read fifteen days because there are varied amounts of time. If today I have

notice of an appeal, or

an act that is going to be put in place in fourteen

days' time, how am I going to actually have the time to respond? The bare

minimum would be fifteen days, I would imagine, and probably twenty-one, so that

is something that is going to have to be looked at.

MR. TULK: Sing a Christmas carol (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: The Government House Leader asked me to

sing him a Christmas carol. I am letting you know, I know my own limitations;

let me tell you. I hope you do. I cannot sing. I cannot carry a note.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) sit down.

MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: If you knew your limitations you would

sit down right now.

MR. J. BYRNE: Not likely. I am only getting going now, I

say to the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Well, you don't know your limitations.

MR. J. BYRNE: You are getting irritated now. There you

go; that is what I am here for.

Mr. Speaker, under the current act the objective was to file

a list of objections with the council at least five days before the hearing. So

if I have problems with the act, or with the new plan going through, I have to

at least - pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: What bill are you doing?

MR. J. BYRNE: The Urban and Rural Planning Act.

I can tell you, I can get onto the St. John's urban region

planning regulations which were put in place, and I can talk a long while on

that. I don't even need notes. I can get on to that. I might get on to that yet.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I can if I want to, yes. I am not sure I

will, but I might. If you guys keep interrupting me, I may go an hour; I am not

sure. It depends on how I feel, I say to them.

Mr. Speaker, I as an individual, or you as an individual, if

we wish to appeal now, under the current act, I have five days to lodge an

appeal. I have to give notice of five days to the municipality. Now that is

going to be reduced to two, forty-eight hours. Can you imagine me walking into a

council office in St. John's, or Torbay, or Flatrock, or Stephenville, or what

have you, and with forty-eight hours notice come in with a list of concerns that

I wish to appeal, and give it to the councillor, or the town clerk, or the town

manager, on, say, a Thursday morning, the office closed Friday, and the appeal

is going to be on Monday, say; what time does the town have to properly review

the concerns, to properly do an investigation into the concerns, to properly

deal with all the different governments that they may or may not have to deal

with?

The minister, when she stood on her feet and introduced this

bill - I haven't even gotten to that yet, have I? - talked about speeding up the

process. In actual fact it may, from this perspective alone, actually extend or

lengthen the process.

Now the minister, under this new section, under the new

amendments, Mr. Speaker, now has the power to reject a purchase notice on his

own. He does not have to give any reasons why and (inaudible) reference to any

conditions as to why he was rejecting a purchase notice. That, from my

perspective again, goes right back to the question that I asked when I stood up,

what is going on with this Cabinet?

MR. GRIMES: Who writes that stuff (inaudible)?

MR. J. BYRNE: Ourselves, we prepare our own.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: This is only parts of it, only parts.

MR. GRIMES: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I say to the Minister of Education, I never

cease to amaze you. There you go, and further things to come.

MR. MATTHEWS: Jack, why don't you help your leader with

his questions?

MR. J. BYRNE: Well my leader is well capable of taking

care of himself, I say to the Minister of Health. Now there you go, can you

believe that Minister of Health, what he is saying there? He wants me to take

care of my leader and when he was over answering questions today and the other

day when he was over answering questions, who got up to answer the questions, I

say to the Minister of Health? To the Minister of Health, who got up and

answered your questions? Who protected you? It was the little fellow from

Labrador. The little fellow from Labrador had to stand up and take care of that

great big man right there, the big Minister of Health. So he is over there now

with the audacity and the nerve to say, `Who rights my leaders questions and I

should protect him.' Well how two-faced can a person be, I say to the minister?

It is like - I won't get into that.

Now this new act will give the minister, Mr. Speaker, the new

discretionary powers to refuse expropriated land compromised by the municipal or

other plan. He has the authority, himself, no one else, to say, yes, no,

whatever. He can have all kinds of recommendations from the staff. He can have

all kinds of recommendations from the planning group. He can have all kinds of

recommendations from the town council and he can come to them and say - for

whatever reason, it could be political maybe, political, Mr. Speaker, that no,

that is it, forget it, out the window, no. The minister seems - and here is the

point, the minister seems especially anxious to spell out that he has the power

to reject a purchase notice and that such a decision means that government is

not liable to award compensation to the land owner. Why is he so anxious to

spell this out? Now we are getting to the crux of the matter. It just hit me,

Mr. Speaker. We have all these -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, now we are getting to the crux

of the matter on what is going on. I asked a question when I first stood, why

are all these ministers getting extra power or extra authority that they do not

have at this present time? We are looking at the Expropriations Act, the Lands

Act, basically the Municipalities Act, Urban and Rural Planning Act, Mr.

Speaker, and the Fish Inspection Act. Well what is going on in the Province

today, I say to you, Mr. Speaker? What is going on in the Province today, Mr.

Speaker? Well we just had an announcement out in Argentia of a smelter going out

there. I wonder could it have anything to do with that? We have a transshipment

site coming to the Province. Good news, great news, I commend it, great stuff.

All kinds of jobs, wonderful, Mr. Speaker. I am hoping actually, I am hoping, if

things work out, that we will get people coming back to the Province. As a

matter of fact, I am hoping to get relatives to come back to the Province

because of that situation out there and if I am fortunate enough that will

happen.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, that is the type of things but now with

all these changes to the act is it because of something going on behind the

scenes that we don't know about? Now I don't want to cast aspersions on anybody

or what have you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. LUSH: (Inaudible) boring speech.

MR. J. BYRNE: We all have to pay our dues, I say to the

Member for Terra Nova. I have been here sitting in this seat here on a number of

occasions and when yourself got up to speak on a number of times, let me tell

you, Mr. Speaker, I had to fight to keep my eyes open. So I am only paying back

retribution. Pardon?

MR. MATTHEWS: We got the same kind of (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I am glad to hear it, Mr. Speaker. Well

here is a solution, no problem, when I sit down in another thirty or forty

minutes why don't the Minister of Health get up and give one of his elaborate

speeches and keep us all amused? Amused would be the right word because when the

Minister of Health gets up to speak on questions in this House of Assembly in

Question Period, let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, there is no shortage of words

from him, and repetition, and boring repetition. He is gone now, thank you.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Are you going to leave soon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: We are going to do your motion tomorrow.

You had better save your voice.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Anyway, Mr. Speaker, this bill that is

going through the House of Assembly today is very questionable, from my

perspective. There are a few notes here.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have notes on it?

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes. Just a few quick notes when the

minister was speaking, that is all. I will find them. Here they are. The

Minister of Works, Services and Transportation who introduced the bill for the

Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs stood in her place and read out a

short few words, almost as short as the few words the Minister of Environment

and Labour read out when he introduced his bill. She said: The whole intent of

this bill is to.... What? Let me see if I can make out my own writing here. To

speed up the application process, Mr. Speaker, for individuals within the

Province, within a given zoning I suppose.

From the very comments I made earlier obviously that may not

take place. It very well may be the intent, but it is certainly not going to be

the result of this legislation going through the House. She talked about

reducing notice to individuals. Notice with respect to a new plan being adopted

by a municipality. Also, giving notice from a month down to two weeks, and from

five days down to two days if I want to go in and make an appeal. I don't know

if that is going to speed up anything. Because it may be the intent to speed it

up, but, as I said earlier, if I want to make an appeal and I only have to give

two days' notice, and I have a list of problems that I want to be addressed, and

all these problems have to be addressed (inaudible) Departments of Works,

Services, and Transportation, Municipal and Provincial Affairs, Health,

Environment and Labour, and they are only going to give two days' notice? How

can it be? How will that speed up the process? I don't know.

Another thing too is that the minister mentioned something

about if there are no presentations there are to be no hearings. I suppose that

makes sense. I can agree to that. That makes a bit of sense, I suppose. She

talked about fees defraying costs. We had a situation here, I think it was

yesterday, under the Expropriation Act, where the minister now, or the PUB, can

set rates for people who wish to appeal their expropriation of land that is

being expropriated from them. Of course, from what we can see the amount the

individuals would have to pay could be unlimited.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I know. I'm only referring to the common

trend that this government is doing with respect to all the bills that it is

pushing through the House of Assembly, I say to the (inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I am, I'm doing the best I can, and let

bygones be bygones, let me tell you that. That is why I'm so nice to you.

The minister mentioned that there is $100 appeal. Is that

$100 per appeal?

AN HON. MEMBER: Not for (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Actually, I wish I had a few more, I say to

the Government House Leader.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: That is a good point the Government House

Leader brought up then. That was a fact, that he talked about surveyors charging

fees. The Minister of Government Services and Lands today made a ministerial

statement, presented a White Paper that I even agree with the minister on, that

it was probably a good idea to review the different associations and to get some

kind of a common trend throughout those. I agree with him.

In that, of course, groups listed, are engineers, lawyers,

nurses, architects, surveyors, and what have you. Therefore all these acts that

are going through - self-governing bodies, as we refer to them as, professional

bodies. Never hurts to review and keep things in line with the modern day, I say

to the Minister of Government Services and Lands.

But there are a lot of concerns with respect to this bill,

let me tell you. What we will do, when we get in third reading, we will address

many of them, in due course. The act itself - Yes, I'm just skimming this here

now, Mr. Speaker, it will just take a minute. Yes, just one point here.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: No, I have all kinds of notes made. I was

just reviewing them to see that I hadn't covered them already. If I was over

there I would not have too big a smile on my face if I was sitting in your

chair, I say to you. I would not have too big a smile on my face after the

smelter went to Argentia and we have three members from Labrador. Three?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, three members from Labrador and the

smelter goes to Argentia. Just think about that, now. That is a good point. Here

we are, seven PC members here on the Avalon Peninsula, and three members from

Labrador, and the smelter going on the Avalon Peninsula. My sonny boy, that is a

good question.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we will be addressing this bill

further in committee stage. I think I have pretty well said what I want to say

today on this bill. I hope that a few members on the opposite side will get up.

Maybe the Member for Humber Valley, the former critic for municipal affairs, may

want to say a few words. I suppose if he gets on his feet he will disagree with

everything I say; that would not be unlikely.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: Do you want me to get up?

MR. J. BYRNE: You can; it is up to yourself. The Minister

of Education can refer to it. I am sure there are other people on this side of

the House who are just waiting for me to sit down, to get up to speak to this

bill.

In conclusion, I thank the House for the indulgence and I

look forward to speaking on this bill in third reading.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I rise again today to speak on this particular piece of

legislation, "An Act To Amend The Urban and Rural Planning Act". In particular,

I wanted to draw reference to a couple of the clauses that are contained in the

explanatory notes, and to say as well that there are some good sections to this

particular piece of legislation.

Clause 1 of the bill amends the current act "...to add to the

requirements for making an appeal to a board established under

section 8, the

inclusion of a required fee for the appeal."

Mr. Speaker, when we start talking about people having to pay

for the right to appeal, we are again placing significant numbers of our

citizens at a decided disadvantage. In other words, what we are saying is that

if you have a perceived injustice which you, as a taxpayer and as a resident of

a province, feel is an injustice, then if you want to have that addressed you

had better be able and willing to pay a required fee. That seems to be unfair.

It seems to be unjust.

We have difficulty with the fact that we are saying that if

you want to have justice done that you have to be willing to pay for it.

Therefore, in clause 2 we have the amendment which says this "...would add a new

section 8.1 to the Act to establish the payment of fees for appeals and the

means of repayment of fees where an applicant is successful."

What that really says is that people have to be very, very

sure that they are going to be successful. So, if there is any shadow of a doubt

then the applicant for the appeal will lose his or her money.

As far as the publication in the local paper is concerned,

that is a positive thing. When we find that you have to publish in the

Gazette the notices required under the Urban and Rural Planning Act, this is

a significant bit of a nuisance to municipalities, and it is also a nuisance to

the ordinary individuals, given the fact of the publication

schedule of the

Gazette itself.

Clause 3, saying you have to publish in a local paper, is

quite okay. That is a positive thing because the idea that somebody who is,

let's say, living in Twillingate has to, when doing an appeal, publish the

notice of their appeal in the Gazette really doesn't make much sense.

Therefore, we accept the fact that publication of the notice done in a local

paper is quite okay. In many cases that would be more meaningful, because I do

not know great numbers of people in the Province who rush out every day to buy

the Gazette but they do buy their local papers so, publishing in the

local paper, the notice of an appeal is indeed a positive step forward.

When we are looking at clause 4 and reducing the publication

notice from one month to fourteen days, I really do not see any great difficulty

with that because for the most part, people who are going to be affected by the

appeal will have already known that the appeal would be coming up and that the

people making the appeal would indeed notify for the most part those people who

are affected, so fourteen days appears to be okay with the exception of course,

and I notice that the minister may, on rare occasions, extend them and then we

are looking at a major development with a lot of legal complications that might

be extended.

Mr. Speaker, with these couple of comments, and again, I go

back to my initial comment that the intent here is to transfer the expenses of

the Province on to the backs of ordinary Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and

that in itself seems to put a dollar value on justice, a dollar value on

people's rights, therefore I have difficulty with that, because a lot of

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who feel that they might be disadvantaged by

the decision of a bureaucracy might be reluctant to take on that bureaucracy and

the old saying that: `you can't fight City Hall' may be true because in many

cases people feel terribly intimidated.

They feel that the bureaucracy, be it the provincial

bureaucracy, be it a municipal bureaucracy, whatever it is, ordinary people feel

that when you take on the bureaucracy, you are taking on the lawyers, the

accountants, the city managers, you are taking on the people in the planning

divisions, the city planners, the municipal planners, the engineers and all of

these people who are very, very highly educated, therefore many people feel

intimidated and that certainly is to be expected and so we have to keep in mind

the position of many ordinary people. They do not have money to go out and pay

$1,000 a day to some high-powered lawyer or an influential lawyer or well-read

lawyer or a learned friend, as the former House Leader would say, but these

people know that there has been an injustice put upon them.

What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that this bill has the

potential, the real potential of denying to ordinary Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians, access to a just cause that they themselves have interpreted to be

unjust. In other words, they feel that they have been wronged and now they have

been told, if you want to take that through an appeal process that now there is

a dollar value placed on it and if you go and you spend your money and you lose,

therefore you are going to lose your money as all the costs would be borne by

you and only when you are successful, will you be able to have those costs

returned.

Now we recognized that municipalities and government have

expenses but, is it reasonable to expect ordinary people to have to pay their

taxes, they pay for the bureaucracy, the citizen who lives in Gambo or Mount

Pearl or Cartwright, wherever they are, these people pay their taxes, they pay

for the bureaucracy and now when they come to the bureaucracy and say: we feel

that what you have done is not right. Now if you want to challenge us you have

to pay us again. There is something wrong with that. People should be able to

approach their civil servants - and you are a public servant when you are in the

bureaucracy - and put forward their case without having to say I am going to do

this, I am going to put up $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 to put my case forward and if

I don't win my case I am prepared to lose it all. There is something wrong with

the philosophy and in a way this procedure is really another way of being a tax

grab. It is similar to the measures taken by the minister, she wants to go

relative to Crown lands because people will have to pay this money. People who

feel that they have been wronged will have to pay this money because if not they

will lose property, they will lose their inheritances by way of land or whatever

and so they will have to pay this money.

So, Mr. Speaker, the parts of the bill that I have mentioned

that changes some of the notices and that kind of thing, there isn't any

difficulty with that but the real sting here is when we are saying to ordinary

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to give us pay for the appeal process. That is

better I suppose than in Social Services with home care where they said no, we

are going to make the decision. We are going to cut it back and you don't have

any appeal at all but it certainly sets a tone for this government that they, in

the last few days, an Appropriation Act was along the same line. It is taking

away the rights of the ordinary and as Steve Neary would say, `the ragged arsed

artillery in Newfoundland and Labrador.' In other words he talked about the rank

and file, the people who are the little people in society, you might say. Not

little in terms of their value but little in terms of their impact on decision

making. So these are the people who are being negatively impacted by these kinds

of measures. I would call upon the government to reconsider because if it is not

good enough to happen to somebody who is next door to you, then it is not good

enough to happen to anybody.

So, Mr. Speaker, with these comments I will yield to any of

my colleagues who wish to make a comment and if not then I will leave it to the

Government House Leader to follow along with the procedure.

MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. the Minister speaks now she will

close the debate.

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I move second reading on the

amendment to The Urban and Rural Planning Act.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Urban and Rural

Planning Act," read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole

House on tomorrow, by leave. (Bill No. 35)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, second reading of a bill, "An Act

To Amend The Freedom Of Information Act And The Privacy Act." (Bill No. 39)

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The

Freedom Of Information Act And The Privacy Act". (Bill No. 39)

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the explanatory note pretty well

says all that can be said about this bill. It would allow information regarding

the criminal history of a person to be released to the public where it is in the

public interest to release it. Now hon. members will recall that a few weeks ago

government issued a policy about the release of information on high risk

offenders. The policy is in place now where if a high risk offender is about to

be released from a correctional centre anywhere in the country and it has been

determined that the likelihood of that person re-offending is very high, then

information can be made available to the public. Already there has been one case

in Newfoundland and Labrador of a person returning to the Stephenville area, in

which extreme measures were taken. The person's picture was actually posted, and

there was full disclosure made.

We believe there is a possibility that we could have a

problem with our own Freedom of Information Act unless we change it. When we

made the information public about the person in the Stephenville area, that was

done under the federal Freedom of Information. It was not done under the

Newfoundland Freedom of Information.

What we will be doing is changing subsection 10(2) of the

Freedom of Information Act by deleting the word "and" at the end of paragraph

(d), by deleting the period at the end of paragraph (

e) and substituting a

semicolon and the word "and" and by inserting immediately after that paragraph

the following: (

f) information regarding the criminal history of an individual

which, in the opinion of the minister or his or her designate, it is in the

public interest to disclose.".

That, we believe, is a very worthy amendment to the Freedom

of Information Act, and I would highly commend it to the members of this House.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Mr. Speaker, I have just a few comments.

I recall the protocol regime that was put in place by the

hon. the minister several weeks ago. I remember, at that time, making a comment

publicly that generally speaking it was positive legislation and one which I

think is generally well received by people in the Province. The only question I

had, or raised at the time, was the perhaps certain vague language that may have

formed part and parcel of it, particularly where there is discretion given to

the law enforcement bodies. That use of discretion can sometimes be, I suppose,

abused, and that sort of uncertain wording was one area of concern that was

expressed by myself, and indeed another member on this side of the House. In

principle, we can certainly, I think, share the minister's view that the

legislation was indeed well received.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to this particular bill, Bill 39,

it raises civil liberties issues. It gives the minister, as well as any of his

designates, unlimited power to access criminal histories and to release any

information that, again, in the opinion of the minister or the designate, is in

the public interest to disclose. So we have those words, `in the opinion of the

minister or designate'. Again that suggests, I would submit, a wording which is

again uncertain, somewhat vague, and perhaps potentially subject to abuse. That

is why I indicated by saying at the outset that it raises a civil liberties

issues and one, I am sure, that certain proponents of civil liberties issues

would be somewhat concerned about.

Secondly, we also have the reference in Bill 39 to the

wording, `in the public interest', and we have to ask what is meant by, `in the

public interest'. We often hear reference to that term in various capacities

within the criminal law; however, it is often not clearly defined. So again we

have two uncertainties. We have what is in the opinion of the minister or his

designate combined with what is in the public interest. And those two

uncertainties, I would suggest, lead to some areas of concern to those

individuals concerned with the topic of civil liberties.

Mr. Speaker, the bill does several things. It allows someone

to make a freedom of information request for information on the criminal history

of any other person. Presumably, the minister or his designate would review the

criminal history documents and form an opinion about the merits of releasing it.

Again, I refer to that use of discretion by the minister or his delegate, in

determining what in his or her opinion is considered to be worthwhile releasing.

It also allows the minister, Mr. Speaker, and again his or

her designates, to have access to the criminal histories of individuals. No

reference has been made with respect to this legislation as to when the minister

may obtain this information or under what circumstances, so again the criminal

history of an individual, it seems to be arbitrarily, may well be reviewed and

portions of it selected for a particular use. It puts no limitations on the

searches for criminal history information, so again there is wide discretion, it

seems to me, Mr. Speaker, where the minister can search indeed any aspect of a

criminal's background, and again one has to ask the question: Under what

circumstances, and in what manner, and for what reasons can that search be

carried out?

Therefore, it puts no limit on the release of when the

minister can obtain the criminal history of an individual. It puts no limits on

the kinds of criminal history. So, is there again a certain type of criminal

background that the minister may want to release? It puts no limits on how the

criminal history information is released. How is this information forwarded? For

example, is it forwarded by registered mail, is it forwarded by fax, it is

forwarded by telephone conversation? So what are the limits, or what are the

limitations, what are the protections out there for those individuals who

obviously are entitled to confidentiality with respect to certain backgrounds?

It puts no limits on the reasons for releasing the information and it does not

make an individual's definition of opinion, or public interest, subject to any

standard or regulatory body. The minister or designate is answerable to no one,

and again, I am sure, as I mentioned earlier, an issue such as that specifically

would be of grave concern to civil libertarians.

The question has to be asked, Mr. Speaker: Why is this new

power being requested by the minister? Does not the existing Privacy Act give

the minister the ability to publish information deemed to be of public interest

without violating the privacy of an individual as defined in the Privacy Act?

The minister referred at the outset to the protocol, and as I have indicated,

that is generally well-received and people have no difficulty with that, but

again where is the line drawn? How is the discretion used? Will the civil

libertarian interest of an individual be overstepped by an over-zealous minister

or minister's designate?

Mr. Speaker, I do not plan to make any further comments with

respect to Bill 39 other than to in

summary indicate that the spirit of the

legislation is generally well-received. However, we must be mindful of the

discretion given to the minister, and we must always be concerned about the

possibility of a minister overstepping his or her bounds with respect to civil

libertarian issues.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi

Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to speak on Bill 39, "An Act To Amend The Freedom Of

Information Act And The Privacy Act." The issue before the House of this Act is

one of a particular interest. There also seems to be a lot of interest in the

Freedom of Information Act lately, certainly at university circles. The

controversy seems to be around the cost of compliance and the cost imposed upon

people for compliance. The Freedom of Information Act seems to be a valuable

tool. It seems to be more effective than asking questions in the House, for

example, or putting questions on the Order Paper, such as the question I put on

the Order Paper in July of this year. In July of this year, I put a question on

the Order Paper asking the Minister of Social Services, and the Minister of

Health, to indicate what policy changes have taken p