May 15,

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS

Vol. XLII No. 24

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Dicks): Order, please!

On behalf of hon. members, I would like to welcome to the

public galleries, twenty Level I students from Queen Elizabeth Regional High

School in Foxtrap, accompanied by their teachers, Mrs. House and Ms. Penney.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Oral Questions

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

MS. VERGE: In response to my questions last week the

Premier essentially said that it was okay to break the law because in doing so

the government got the best deal for the taxpayers. The Premier tried to say

that even if the government pays the approximately $3 million in damages ordered

by the Supreme Court the taxpayers will still come out ahead.

Premier, are you prepared to substantiate your preposterous

claim? Will you commission an independent analysis by a reputable firm comparing

the Trans City deal, your deal, with all the alternatives that were available to

the government?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, let me correct the two

misstatements in the comments of the Leader of the Opposition. First I did not

say it was okay to break the law. The breaking of the law allegation is hers and

not mine. I do not approve of breaking the law. I maintain that what the

government did, did not break the law, but that however is a matter that is

before the Court of Appeal so I will say no more about that.

Secondly, the court did not order the payment of $3 million

damages. The court ordered damages to be assessed. The proponents, I believe,

have claimed $3 million. I think that is the circumstance. There may be no order

at all as to damages. We have to wait and see, so for the Leader of the

Opposition to put the questions in this way is totally incorrect.

What I did say, Mr. Speaker, was that even if there were

damages it may well be that the Province still got a better deal. Even if that

were the case it may well be and the Minster of Finance has the facts and

figures that establishes that.

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

supplementary.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker.

It was the Supreme Court which said the government broke the

law, and the Supreme Court ordered damages to be assessed. The Premier is

correct, when the assessment is done the amount could be different from $3

million. It could be more than $3 million and it could be less than $3 million,

$3 million is the estimate.

Now, I would like to ask the Premier, again: will he subject

his claim that the taxpayers got the best deal to an independent assessment? Now

Premier, I am not asking for another whitewash by the fugitive from justice

sitting to your left. I am asking for the government to commission an

independent firm, a reputable firm, to do a thorough cost benefit analysis, and

specifically to compare the Trans City deal with all the alternatives that were

available to the government, including the opportunities to do deals with other

bidders and of course the opportunity the government had to self-finance. Will

the Premier commission such an independent study?

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in the course of the questions that have gone on

over the last several years, the information has been tabled. All of the

financial information has been tabled. The Leader of the Opposition has, at her

disposal, all of the financial information about these projects that were being

considered. Now, Mr. Speaker, it is all open, it has all been presented. The

hon. Leader of the Opposition has it, the press has it, the people in the

Province, through the media, has it. Everything has been tabled in the House. If

the hon. Leader of the Opposition wants to take that information to one of her

friends who do these sorts of financial analyses and do the analysis, she is

perfectly free to do so, Mr. Speaker. We have been very open about this and have

presented all of the financial information and tabled it in this House.

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

Opposition.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

A questions for the Premier. I say to the Premier the

government was open with Tom Hickman. The government however, according to the

Supreme Court, was not open with the other bidders. Now I ask the Premier, how

can he expect anyone in the Province to believe his claim that despite breaking

the law, despite being ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages the

taxpayers still got the best deal? Isn't the only way he can possibly expect

people to swallow such a notion is for him to produce an independent analysis

comparing the Trans City deal with the alternatives? Why won't the Premier

commission such an independent study?

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I have to repeat again, there is a real problem

here.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BAKER: The Leader of the Opposition keeps saying,

number one, that this was illegal. That is yet to be determined. There is a case

before the Court of Appeal which will be dealt with expeditiously. Mr. Speaker,

she says as well in her question, that the court has awarded millions of dollars

in damages. Now she knows that is not true. Everybody knows that is not true.

Mr. Speaker, there is a problem in the phrasing of the questions and the hon.

Leader of the Opposition repeating these things over and over again that are not

true, I guess hoping that they will be covered in that way. Mr. Speaker, she

should avoid the use of these things that are simply not true in her questions.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question

for the government. I will direct it to the Premier; maybe he is the one

responsible.

With regard the Voisey Bay situation, there has been a lot of

commentary in the media, a lot of commentary from some of the companies

involved, that the project may move ahead sooner rather than later, talking

about mining operations coming on stream in the next few years, and so on and so

forth. One of the things we saw with regard to news coverage of the exploration

phase of this development was trouble with the native peoples of the area with

regard to their claims on the land, et cetera. I guess they would want some say

in the type and nature of development, probably some of the benefits in terms of

jobs, revenues, et cetera.

Just where does the government sit with regard to the native

people on this particular project, either in terms of the project's specific

agreement with the native peoples, or the more general land claims?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, as hon. member know, a couple

of years or so ago we started a speeded up process with the Labrador Inuit.

Those negotiations went fairly well. They developed a proposal and put it to us.

We had suggested otherwise, but they thought it should go that way. We

responded. They have made some commentary, but there has been no formal

response. A short time ago negotiations resumed again.

I met last week with Mr. Irwin, the federal minister

responsible for Indian and Northern Affairs, and it is clear now that the

federal government will be coming back to the table to participate with us, and

we should know, I hope, within a very few weeks the position that the federal

government will be taking. We have talked to them about what needs to be done to

ensure that the matters are fully addressed - that is far as the LIA is

concerned.

We had talked to the LIA also about putting in place an

interim arrangement that would affect the staking of mining claims, or the

operation of mining claims, within the areas that we propose be reserved for the

Labrador Inuit. They did not want that particular one at that time, but you will

recall that in late December or early January there was great concern about the

number of claims being staked in Labrador, so we took steps to immediately

exempt from staking the areas that are commonly referred to as the LIL areas

around the five Labrador Inuit communities in respect of which we had proposed

the Labrador Inuit should have some specific rights, and while they haven't

agreed with our proposition in that regard, they nonetheless appreciated our

stopping the claiming in those areas.

The second part of it relates to the Innu. As a result of the

resolution of the court matters and so on, about two weeks ago, in direct

discussions with Mr. Penashue, he asked that we now agree to a speeded-up

process for land claims with the Innu and I have agreed that we would do that

and put it in place right away. So, steps will be taken and, in fact, are being

taken at the moment to start those discussions. I think both the Innu and the

Inuit and, of course, the government, would prefer to see completion of the

comprehensive land claims before any development takes place.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay, a

supplementary.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

A further question related to the Minister of Development.

Mr. Speaker, the last time the Liberal Party was in power we

managed a major mega project which was Churchill Falls and every Newfoundlander

has his `druthers' about what happened there; when our party was last in power,

we started the ball rolling on Hibernia and we had some considerable concerns

over the last few years as to the Liberal Party dropping the ball that we handed

them with regard to Hibernia and matters relating to Marystown and Argentia

etcetera.

Now, Mr. Speaker, with regard to Voisey Bay, I ask the

Minister of Development what plans the government has to ensure that maximum

advantage is taken out of this development not only in terms of revenues, but in

terms of jobs in the further processing of raw minerals etcetera. Is this going

to be a project that is going to produce the maximum benefit for the people of

this Province, unlike Churchill Falls, before?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the comments he made before

he asked the question, I assume were intended as light comedy, so I won't give

them any serious consideration.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: Of course he is. He knows the difference.

With respect to the question, Mr. Speaker, the whole question

involves a variety of concerns, not just the question of development; it

involves the environment, in particular, it involves the Minister responsible

for IGA, which happens to be me in terms of the aboriginal aspects of it; it

involves Natural Resources, it involves Industry, Trade and Technology, those

departments, in particular, so that in circumstances like this and where this

matter is of such concern, P and P will accept immediate responsibility for it

and will give policy direction on it subject to the broad framework that the

Cabinet establishes. Mr. Speaker, all of those matters have been under active

consideration and will continue under active consideration for some time.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Placentia.

MR. CAREEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question today is to the Premier. Lately, I've heard

stories and rumours that the Province is negotiating with Ottawa to relieve them

of their federal obligations by taking over Marine Atlantic's ferry service to

Labrador. Is it true?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, Mr. Speaker, there are no negotiations

with respect to it. I guess about four years ago we originally talked to the

then-Mulroney Administration in Ottawa, not about the Province taking over those

services at all. What we had originally talked to them about was the idea that

they could reduce their cost and the level of services involved if they joined

with the Province in putting some money into building the road across Labrador

connecting it to Quebec, thereby creating the ability to drive right around the

Gulf of St. Lawrence with the two ferries; and that they would be able to

greatly reduce their ferry expenditure with a service road to some of the more

remote communities on the Southeast Coast of Labrador.

At various times that was up and down. Recently, the Federal

Government has expressed some interest in pursuing discussions along those

lines, but nothing along the lines of the Province taking over the ferry

services in Labrador. No, that is not correct.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Monday, a week

ago, I asked the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board: Had the government

completed their own internal investigation dealing with the Workers'

Compensation Review Division? He said at that time that the Friday before, he

had received it: `I had a look at it, we asked a number of questions, I had a

number of things to be investigated, and there was one question not dealt with.

So I sent it back and asked could we do it very quickly.' And he said he was

expecting a version sometime last week.

My question to the minister is: Why hasn't it been done? Will

it be delayed much further? if so, what time frame can you give us?

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

Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just this morning, I

was notified that everything was completed, that the final report would probably

be given to me tomorrow. At that point in time I will have a look at it, see

what it says, and discuss it with my Cabinet colleagues. So, within a very few

days I expect to be able to table the information in the House.

The basic information was gathered fairly quickly, but one of

the problems was that they had to talk to one of the commissioners who was on

holiday. They finally traced him down in Florida, and that is what took the last

few days, so all the investigation is complete; the report is written and is now

being sort of bound together. The final report is now being bound together.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride, a

supplementary.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me ask the

minister so I am clear - that the report is ready; it has been given to him. He

will discuss it with his Cabinet colleagues some time this week. Can the

minister say that after he discusses the report with his Cabinet colleagues that

he will table the report as it was given to him?

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

Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, obviously when I discuss it with

my Cabinet colleagues I will follow their directions. I follow the directions of

Cabinet. I did not say that I had the report. I looked into it today, knowing

that the House was opening at 2:00 p.m., and was told that the final report was

ready; it was now being bound and would be given to me some time tomorrow, so I

do not have it yet.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride, a final

supplementary.

MR. E. BYRNE: Let's be clear again. What you are telling

me now, Minister, is that you will bring the report to Cabinet, but you cannot

say for sure today in the House that you will table that report as it was given

to you. What may emanate from the Cabinet following that interim report as you

present it could be different from what was given to you. Is that correct to

say?

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

Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, what I said, I will make it very

clear to the hon. gentleman.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I am having trouble hearing the minister.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I said that I hope to get the report tomorrow - the final,

bound version. I will then discuss it with my Cabinet colleagues and follow

their direction. I will follow the direction of Cabinet, and I cannot presuppose

what that direction may be, but the hon. gentleman will know soon enough. It is

very quick, and he will know soon enough.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford -

Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister

of Education and Training.

Many parents have been informed that there will be drastic

cuts in remedial teacher service at the end of this school year. In fact, a fair

number of letters have been arriving at my office, and I am sure they have been

arriving at his as well. Why is this happening, and why are these cuts affecting

the very children whose educational needs are most acute and whose potential

cannot be reached without direct assistance from specialized teachers in a small

group educational environment?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: I congratulate the hon. member; the muzzle

has been removed. I did not think it was fair the way his leader had him

confined to the back benches and would not let him ask a question. I am glad to

see that she has had a change of heart.

The hon. member is probably more familiar - he should be -

with the educational system in this Province than the average person. The hon.

member should know that government allocates to the school boards sufficient

funds to deliver education in this Province. Some of that money will be used for

special needs children; some of it will be used for other reasons, and when a

board makes a decision to change its focus on a course it is simply that the

board has weighted all the options and has come to the conclusion that in the

circumstances it is the thing to do. So if the hon. member has a problem with

this, just give me the specific board and I will ask the board how it is dealing

with that. Now, I suppose I could take the weekend Telegram and go

directly from there, but maybe the hon. member knows something other than he is

reading in the papers.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford -

Kenmount, a supplementary.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, as the minister knows - or he

should know - students who have special needs are placed along a continuum of

educational learning. Cuts in allocations have been so drastic that special

education teachers are able to help only those children with the most

challenging of needs. This means that the regular child in a regular classroom

who is not able to cope with a regular curriculum, is left to sink or swim.

Where are the educational reforms that are going to help these children who need

that little bit of extra help to reach their potential?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member seems to me to

be suggesting that special education teachers, special needs teachers, are there

to teach children directly. The hon. member should know that the special

education teacher is really a leader - the classroom teacher is responsible for

every single student, whether that student is physically challenged, mentally

challenged, or whatever the case might be. In addition to that, special

education teachers are made available to assist the teacher deliver his or her

program. If we were to have to put in place special needs teachers to teach

every challenged child in this Province, Mr. Speaker, we would probably have to

put a whole new network of teachers into the system and then take out the

classroom teachers. I don't think the hon. member truly understands the

situation out there. He certainly does not give any indication if you were to

deduce from the questions that he is asking, Mr. Speaker.

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

for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, special education teachers are

assigned on the basis of median school population of a school board. The

minister knows or he should know, the formula is like this; 7.5 teachers where

the median school population is less than 200, seven teachers where the median

school population is between 201 and 399 and 5.5 teachers where the median

school population is more than 400. In other words, as schools amalgamate or

consolidate, schools are penalized because students who have special needs

receive fewer teachers. Why is such a disincentive to consolidation permitted to

exist within his department and when will we see more special education services

in schools as a consequence of consolidation and amalgamation?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, as I already told the hon.

member, if the role of a special Ed teacher was to take a classroom of people

who are mentally, physically or somehow have some extra needs then it would be a

whole new set of teachers for every single classroom in the Province. The

reality is the special needs teacher, Mr. Speaker, is a lead teacher who works

with the classroom teacher. Now I will be the first to admit and the hon. member

probably knows that there are cases in this Province where the special Ed

teacher goes in and takes full responsibility for the people who have special

needs but if we follow our concept of inclusion where all children are included

into the classroom, if we were to follow our -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, can you get some order in this

Chamber? This is disgraceful, every time you get up to answer a question a bunch

of yahoos over there try to shout you down, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member from

Waterford - Kenmount asked a serious question and obviously he deserves an

answer but I cannot get a chance to get it out.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will ask the minister to draw to the end of the answer.

MR. DECKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in this Province we have a concept of inclusion

where all children are included in the classroom education whether they have

special needs or whatever. We recognize that some children need a little bit of

assistance, to address that we put specially qualified teachers into the system.

The formula which the hon. member outlined is the formula that we use and in

most cases it works, Mr. Speaker. If the teachers are deployed properly it works

but if the teachers are deployed and expected to get into the day to day

teaching of the special needs children then they are not deployed properly. The

hon. member, I would suggest, when he was teaching deployed them properly, Mr.

Speaker, he knew how to do it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is to the Minister responsible for Municipal and

Provincial Affairs. Just last week, Mr. Speaker, the minister's colleague, the

Minister responsible for Works, Services and Transportation, commonly in the

last year or so referred to as the terminator, Mr. Speaker, in this case he

tabled Bill 5, a bill that would take away the rights of municipalities in the

Province. Right now under the Municipalities Act, Mr. Speaker, municipalities in

the Province would have to give permission in order for the government, Works,

Services and Transportation, to do roads, to take over roads in their community,

under this bill they will not have a say, Government will tell them what roads

are going to be done and what charge. Would the minister mind telling the House

how many municipalities will be affected by this decision and what the total

cost to municipalities in the Province will be?

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

Provincial Affairs.

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, that is not what we call my hon.

friend the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation out in the bay, `the

terminator.' We have another name for him.

To answer the hon. member, I reviewed the legislation, and

the hon. member being an ex-member of a Cabinet in the previous government

realizes that all bills come to Cabinet and are perused. There were a number of

communities in the Province which were refusing, basically, to take over some

responsibility in regards to roads - particular roads within their community,

short roads within their community - that the government felt it quite capable

of - communities that were quite capable of maintaining those roads at very

little cost, basically, running from one part of the town to the other and

passing over a small

section of road that was snow cleared or maintained by the

Department of Works, Services and Transportation.

I agreed with the decision at the time and I stand by my hon.

colleague's bill. It will help accommodate Works, Services and Transportation;

it will also help a lot of municipalities by being able to provide some sort of

a service, I suppose. Maybe a better service in some cases. We had sections of

roads, for example, that were long distances from the depots. We had one

section

of road up on the northwest coast for example that was thirty-odd kilometres

away from a clear road, and our people would have to travel those thirty-odd

kilometres to plough less than a kilometre of road.

We've asked communities to do that. We are going to make sure

that communities are paid ample funding amounts to offset the cost. So Mr.

Speaker, I can't name every one of the communities that the hon. member has

asked me. I do support the legislation without any doubt.

MR. SPEAKER: Supplementary, the hon. the Member for

Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker. The minister

said in his answer that there are some municipalities in the Province that can

well afford to do those roads that are now being done by the Department of

Works, Services and Transportation. Could the minister tell the House then the

communities that can't afford to do those roads? Will his department make sure

that those roads are not passed over to the communities by Works, Services and

Transportation? The minister knows what communities those are.

While the minister is on his feet, could he tell us what the

charge will be by Works, Services and Transportation to the communities. How

much per kilometre? Will it be $1,000, $2,000, or $3,000, whichever?

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

Provincial Affairs.

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, the member has brought two

separate issues altogether together here. I'm finding it difficult to

address....

Let's take the legislation that came through the House last

fall that now insists on municipalities paying upwards of $3,000 per kilometre.

There was an outcry in the House during the winter session about the cost to

municipalities. I only heard from - I don't know who else, or if anyone else

contacted anyone else - but there was one community in the Province that

complained to me and complained strongly about having to pay the $3,000 per

kilometre this winter past. Just one. With that said, at that time we reduced if

you remember from $3,000 to $1,500 a kilometre, and then next year we will move

into the $3,000.

Let me go back to the other question. Another reason that I

forgot to mention was that over the past three or four years we've gone into

communities and upgraded roads, resurfaced roads, ditched roads, on the

condition that we had word-of-mouth from the councils saying: Yes, as soon as

you do that we will take them over. Some councils have reneged on that promise.

We found ourselves in a situation there at that particular point in time where

we had spent large sums of money on the condition that municipalities would take

over the roads and then finally reneged on it.

We can't be put in a position as a government to be out there

spending large sums of money on resurfacing and upgrading roads and at the end

of the day having municipalities say to us: Now you've got it done we don't want

anything to do with it. That is basically one of the reasons why we brought this

piece of legislation in.

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

Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: Final supplementary, Mr. Speaker. What the

minister is talking about with regards to the Department of Municipal and

Provincial Affairs doing up roads in conjunction with the Department of Works,

Services and Transportation, there is usually an agreement between the

municipality involved and whichever department makes that agreement. If that has

not been done I would say to the minister that that is government's fault, not

the municipality's.

In the Explanatory Note with regards to the bill, could the

minister now tell the House - before there were a lot of municipalities in the

Province that figured this was just for snow clearing last year, the charge of

$3,000 a kilometre - could the minister now tell the House whether this bill

includes everything... snow clearing, the maintenance of roads year-round in

each community in the Province? Seeing that this is retroactive legislation

supposed to come into effect on April 1, could the minister now tell the House

that municipalities in the Province are going to be consulted before this bill

goes through?

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

Provincial Affairs.

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, this government is not, and

especially I, as Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, am not going to

put any extra burdens on the shoulders of municipalities in this Province. I am

not going to do it. The people who represent municipalities in this Province

know I am not going to do it, and they know that this government is not going to

do it. I have no intention of doing it.

Mr. Speaker, if you look back at our record when we did away

with the school tax, we have made available every year since 1989 the

opportunity for municipalities to come in, sit down, meet, and discuss, and talk

to us about what is going on in municipalities in the Province. Mr. Baker and

myself have a meeting scheduled for next week with the Federation of

Municipalities to talk about what they can do to help the government and what we

can do to help them.

I am not going to stand here and listen to that sort of thing

because the hon. member understands and fully knows that this government is not

out to do anything that will harm municipalities in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has elapsed.

On behalf of hon. members, I would like to welcome to the

Public Galleries the Vice-Chairman, Wesley Mercer, and three other members of

the Local Service District of Stoneville in the provincial district of

Lewisporte.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: As the next order of business, does the hon.

the Leader of the Opposition have leave to address the House?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, I am seeking leave to simply

request Your Honour to send congratulatory messages.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. SPEAKER: Leave given.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, this Saturday night past, the

Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council held their annual Arts Awards Ceremony,

and I would like to ask that Your Honour, on behalf of all members, send

messages of congratulations to the four Arts Award recipients and the three

inductees into the Arts Hall of Fame. The award recipients were Liz Pickard,

Artist of the Year; Michael Winter, Emerging Artist; Canadian Airlines, Patron;

Peter Gardner, Arts Achievement. And the three inductees into the Hall of Honor

were the late Maxim Mazumdar - perhaps the message could go to his friend, who

accepted the award; Harold Horwood; and Eric Norman.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, with great respect, I really

don't think it is necessary. I had been scheduled to be present, as I was

present at the last two or three such awards each year, and presented the awards

in the last couple of years or so, but coming down with what you hear today on

Saturday made it impossible for me to be there. I couldn't get a minister on

such short notice - they were all otherwise engaged, or incapacitated, but I

asked the Deputy Minister, Mr. Clyde Granter, and he appeared and represented

the government and offered congratulations to all of the inductees. I don't

object to sending them again, but it is sort of like gilding the lily. It has

already been done. The Deputy Minister was there to do it directly. I have no

objection to doing it, and if the House wants to do it, I won't speak against

it. I just point out that it is unnecessary.

MR. SPEAKER: I take it consent is given, and the letter

will be forwarded appropriately.

Notices of Motion

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

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

I give notice that I will on tomorrow introduce the following

private member's resolution:

WHEREAS the Newfoundland Dockyard has been operating in

Newfoundland and employing Newfoundlanders for most of the century; and

WHEREAS the Dockyard has proven its ability to make a

significant contribution to the Newfoundland economy, most recently having

employed more than 700 people in 1994; and

WHEREAS the Dockyard being situated in Newfoundland is

strategically placed in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to take advantage of

shipping and other marine traffic routes; and

WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has a

direct interest and investment in the Dockyard through its $8 million to $10

million investment in the synchrolift; and

WHEREAS recent decisions by Marine Atlantic in managing the

facility have raised serious concerns about the Crown corporations plans for the

future of its operation;

THEREFORE

BE IT RESOLVED that the Government of Newfoundland

management of the Newfoundland Dockyard, to revitalize the operation and

safeguard the jobs it provides by among other things, Mr. Speaker, permitting

the Newfoundland Dockyard to bid on projects all across Canada and

internationally.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Petitions

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to present a petition on behalf of 110 residents of

Green Bay on the electoral boundaries issue. Last week I presented a petition

with 194 names on it, and I have several other petition sheets that I hope to

present over the next little while. The prayer of the petition, Mr. Speaker, is

as follows:

WHEREAS our communities have been in Green Bay for many

years; and

WHEREAS a recent government proposal would see some of our

communities assigned to Baie Verte district;

THEREFORE, we the undersigned, petition the hon. House of

Assembly not to entertain or approve any proposal that would see our communities

removed from Green Bay district.

Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out last week, this most recent

proposal is the fourth in a series by this government to redraw the electoral

boundaries in the Province and this particular one would see the communities of

King's Point, Rattling Brook, Harry's Harbour and Jackson's Cove, Little Bay,

Beachside and Little Bay Islands be assigned to Baie Verte district.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the people in those communities have

nothing against Baie Verte or the surrounding communities on the Baie Verte

Peninsula, but their community of interest there, is in the immediate Green Bay

area; the service centre that they deal with is essentially Springdale and they

do not wish their lives to be disrupted by having to refer politically to the

Baie Verte area which is on a separate peninsula on the map of Newfoundland.

Mr. Speaker, in Green Bay in recent years, there has been a

formation of joint councils and this is something that the local municipalities

are quite proud of. A sense of district spirit, I suppose, for want of a better

phrase, has been growing and the joint councils are active; indeed, today, the

Chair of the joint councils of Green Bay is from King's Point, one of the

communities due to be assigned to the Baie Verte district, so obviously,

assigning these communities to the Baie Verte district would disrupt that

situation.

The petitions that I am presenting were generated from the

activities of the Green Bay Economic Development Association, Mr. Speaker, whose

constitution requires that the membership of the association comes from within

the electoral district of Green Bay. A number of the movers and shakers in that

development association, indeed, the current president, recently elected, of

that development association, is from the area of Green Bay that will be

assigned to Baie Verte district. So again, Mr. Speaker, this particular move

would disrupt some useful, ongoing activity on the part of the Green Bay

Development Association.

Mr. Speaker, when I was in my district on the weekend, one

thing that surprised me in terms of the strength of the reaction, was, people's

reaction at the changes proposed that would see the creation of a new district

called Windsor - Springdale, eliminating the communities I mentioned earlier and

including the rest of Green Bay district and along with that, almost all of the

former Town of Windsor. Most people were utterly amazed at that turn of events,

Mr. Speaker.

Being in the central Northeast Coast region of the Province,

the people of Green Bay are all too familiar with the struggle that occurred,

the tremendous debate that occurred, the money that was spent to bring about the

much touted amalgamation of the Towns of Windsor and Grand Falls to create the

new community of Grand Falls - Windsor. To see the newly amalgamated community

being split down the middle again, Mr. Speaker, in this electoral

redistribution, is something most people find utterly amazing. They can't

believe that government, having gone through the trouble that it went through,

to bring the communities together, would now countenance, in redrawing the

electoral map, changing the situation so that the old border, both the physical

and the psychological border, i.e. the railway tracks, that existed between

Grand Falls and Windsor would again become the separating point between the

districts of Windsor - Springdale and Grand Falls - Buchans.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I have concerns from people in my

district who do not wish to be assigned to another district, in this case Baie

Verte District. They have expressed concerns that I know from the news media are

also being expressed all over Central Newfoundland with regard to the separation

of Grand Falls and Windsor in the redrawing of the electoral map.

Now, when I raised the issue in the House the other day the

Government House Leader indicated the matter wasn't settled.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has expired.

MR. HEWLETT: I hope it hasn't been, Mr. Speaker. Thank

you.

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

Bay.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thought I would rise today in support of the petition that

my hon. colleague has presented here. Of course, it cuts into exactly what he

said earlier, into my district, and basically my district now goes from

twenty-one communities on the Baie Verte Peninsula to thirty-three communities,

which now leads from the Baie Verte Peninsula and goes up to the Trans-Canada

and back down to Green Bay and the Springdale area.

Mr. Speaker, I talked to some of my colleague's constituents

in that area who would come into the Baie Verte District, over the last few

days, and they raise some very, very good concerns. One of the questions besides

being specific to that area, they raised a concern: What was the whole reason,

what was the purpose, what was the rationale, for this change in the number of

seats?

Of course, we hear all over the Province that the real reason

it should be, and what it initially should have been, and I think that every

member supports, is that okay, if we are going to reduce the number of members

in this House of Assembly then let's do it properly. The question has to be

asked: Why, then, wasn't - besides the answer the Premier gave - that initial

forty-four seat independent proposal accepted? If we are going to do it, then

let's go the full distance with it, and let's do what was independent and put

before this House. If not, since that time, since that stopped and everything

else has started, it has been nothing short of a shemozzle. There have been

three or four commissions - we cannot even remember the numbers now - that went

around this Province, at the taxpayers expense - $400,000 I understand, for the

first one - now what is the real saving to this government, or to any

government, when that type of thing was done, the commissions that were done in

this Province?

So before you even look at the specifics of each one you ask

what is the rationale and what is the real purpose that we, as members of this

House, want to see for the reduction in the number of seats? If the reason is

valid, if it is reasonable, if it is responsible, then yes, I think every hon.

member here will accept it, but if it was done to appease certain individuals

and their opinions, then there is something wrong with that.

In this particular situation I don't really think that the

question of urban and rural districts was taken into effect. We keep talking

about numbers. What about the rationale for the number of communities? I have to

deal with now, and I know many of my colleagues on both sides of the House deal

with, twenty-one different community councils, fifteen different fire

departments, twenty-five different organizations. It is totally different and

was not taken into account with this commission, the rural and urban

differences, and that is what these people in Green Bay are talking about also.

Now that I, as their member, trying to represent them, will have to go to

another ten to twelve communities, talk to another ten to twelve community

councils, talk to another ten fire departments, that is what they are talking

about, the logistics of this and common sense. They are saying: Can that member

now represent us the same as he could before? We all know the difference. We

relate to differences over here, and I am sure they do on the opposite side of

the House, that there is a difference with rural and urban.

Now we have to talk about the geography, and it seems never

to be mentioned in any of the commissions, the geography of the districts. I

heard the Member for Fortune - Hermitage express his concerns in the media

lately, and what a ridiculous situation. The Member for Fortune - Hermitage has

to fly to Gander, then fly to Stephenville to go down to the other part of his

district. There is no way you can give me a reasonable answer to the logistics

of that particular Fortune - Hermitage area, the same as with the Green Bay -

White Bay district.

Like all members here, I know we all say it, we will do the

best job we can if the lines are drawn and it is accepted and voted on in this

House of Assembly, but what we have to ask ourselves is, what was the rationale

and the real purpose behind this? If the rationale is there, that is fine and we

will accept it, but we have now gone from fifty-two to forty-eight seats. Was

the purpose fulfilled, that we are going to save the hundreds and thousands of

dollars for the taxpayers of this Province, so that we would have a more

efficiently run government? That should be the rationale, and if it is not then

it is not worth making the move. If it has gone from fifty-two to forty-eight,

that to me is not significant enough to take on this latest proposal that was

seen after two Justices did not see fit to tamper with.

The original document that was done, proposed forty-four

seats. There would have been great changes to many districts in this Province,

and that was significant, fifty-two to forty-four. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I can see

that. Since that commission I cannot see the rationale since what we've now

arrived at is the forty-eight seats. If we were doing it to just satisfy the

perception of people, fair enough, let's do it like that. But if we are doing it

just as a smoke screen, then I have a problem with that, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has now expired.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, there will be an opportunity I

suspect to deal with this matter at greater length in the House, and in that

case every member will have an opportunity to speak and say what he or she

wishes. Perhaps I could say a word or two in the hope that I might allay the

fears expressed by my friends for Green Bay and Baie Verte - White Bay, but in

the realization that that may not, if they are blinded by partisan

considerations, as opposed to coming at it open-handedly.

Our basic theory of government in this Province and in Canada

is responsible government, which means the executive government answers to the

House of Assembly and is responsible to it. The House of Assembly is elected to

determine who is the government and to make laws. Those are the two purposes

which an election achieves. One is to put together the group of men and women

who make the laws under which the people of Newfoundland and Labrador live,

insofar as these are provincial, and to determine which group of men and women,

which group of members, sit to Your Honour's left and form a Ministry. That is

what elections do.

We believe on this side that the basic principle coming out

of those considerations is one person, one vote. We are not here to represent

fire departments or communities or acres or hectares; we are here one person,

one vote. We take the position that the vote of a person in Windsor - Buchans

should be worth no more and no less than the vote of a person in Bonavista North

or in Naskaupi or in Fortune - Hermitage or in any other constituency.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, hon. gentlemen opposite can

shout and bawl all they want but they won't change the facts.

We will go into it in more detail, but the problem with the

report of the commission headed by Judge Mahoney was not with the report itself.

The problem was that we were not prepared to bring a bill to the House that did

not implement the one person, one vote principle. We stand by that. I say now

that any bill we bring to the House will be one person, one vote, and that is

the principle on which we will take our stand, and we will ask the House to

support it.

With that said, I think I can understand the concern of the

people who signed this petition. We shall try to address it and we will come to

it in a fair and rational way, but the basic principle will be one person, one

vote. If a member needs a greater measure of assistance to enable him or her to

discharge the duties properly then we will provide that, but we are not going to

vary the one person, one vote principle.

My friend for Green Bay plays old-fashioned politics. He is

really about a 1920s politician, in many ways. One of the things he is good at

is getting little petitions up and bringing them here - I don't mind that, that

is fine. He doesn't need to do any more since he was allowed to ask a question

today, now that the Opposition have completely changed their tactics. They had

one week under the new Leader. She blew it literally, figuratively blew the

whole thing; now they've completely changed their tactics. That allows my friend

for Green Bay to ask questions. I'm delighted that he does. I'm also delighted

that he raises petitions. I encourage him when he goes home this weekend to get

some more so we can deal with the matter again then. Thank you, Sir.

Orders of the Day

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

MR. ROBERTS: Your Honour, my friend for Ferryland was

making such an excellent speech on Friday when he adjourned the debate that we

should give him the opportunity to follow it. He has about three minutes left?

MR. FUREY: Three.

MR. ROBERTS: I would say to my friend for St. Barbe that

three minutes of my friend for Ferryland is worth thirty-three of my friend for

Humber East. Your Honour, would you be good enough to call Motion 1 please, the

Budget debate?

MR. SPEAKER: Motion 1, the Budget debate.

The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am just delighted to have a few minutes to address some

vital areas in the Budget. I touched on a lot of areas in different departments

and how it is a fake Budget in terms of getting it balanced. The Government

House Leader - or I guess, the minister without portfolio, is it? He has a new

title now, `edmandering'. What he has done with electoral boundaries is called

`edmandering' now, not gerrymandering. All the trouble started, I say to the

Government House Leader, when he travelled out to Clarenville on the

thirty-second meeting of public hearings on the commission. The minister went

out on behalf of Cabinet to make a recommendation to the commission after

spending almost $250,000, `Oh, we don't want forty seats anymore. It doesn't

look too presentable. It is going to hurt a lot of our lives. Eleven seats are

going to be lost. We will go out and recommend that you look at forty-six now as

opposed to forty and let's work down,' is what the minister stated out in

Clarenville with thirty-eight meetings. If that was the intent of government

they should have given a direction to the commission in the beginning to have

forty-six seats rather than forty seats.

They gave them a mandate and then they changed the mandate in

midstream. Now, what should be done, I say to the minister, is you should put -

forty seats is enough in a Province our size, 570,000 people, forty seats is

enough. Manitoba has fifty-seven with a million people, Saskatchewan has around

sixty with a million people, and we have to have twice as many members per

capita as anywhere else across the country.

AN HON. MEMBER: `Roberts', you should be listening to

this.

MR. SULLIVAN: We are over-governed and representation is

not effective enough. You can put 100 members in and it is not going to improve

that. I say, go with forty members and do like the commission was looking at

initially and let the public tell the commission, not me or you or anybody else.

Politicians are all wondering about their seats being lost and seats gained. We

shouldn't have anything to do with the process whatsoever. It should be done by

an independent judge, go out with his forty proposed seats and listen to what

the people around the Province are saying. That was what was happening for the

first thirty-one meetings until the minister went out to Clarenville and told

them to do differently. Let the people dictate it. Nobody has a divine right to

have a seat. You are put there by the people, the seats should be put by the

people based upon impartial - and the House of Assembly should just rubber stamp

it, pass it and have seats established around this Province. Now, the `one

person, one vote' applies only in forty-six districts. In the other two

districts it doesn't apply. They are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

The Government House Leader and the Premier are talking out of both sides of

their mouths.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: That's right. If there is going to be `one

person, one vote' take the entire population of this Province and divide it

equally down into forty seats and it doesn't matter about the geographic

boundaries. How can you promote one thing and do something different? Now, that

is what this government has been doing for some time. Whatever government did

it, I don't agree with it. It should be done on a completely impartial basis. We

should slice out a lot of seats here, forty members is enough. When we have a

job getting fourteen in here - we could have called a quorum counted at least

ten times last week. Why do we want fifty-two when we can only get twelve,

thirteen and fourteen members in here? Maybe we should look at twenty seats. We

might get more effective government probably.

AN HON. MEMBER: Maybe three.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, maybe three. No I don't agree with

that. I think we should have about forty seats based on our population in the

Province. Look at Ontario, look at Saskatchewan - much of Saskatchewan is rural

area. The two largest cities in Saskatchewan combined only make up 35 per cent

of the population, and Saskatchewan has far fewer seats. I think there are

sixty-some for a population of one million.

If you look at Manitoba, 60 per cent of the population of

Manitoba is in the city of Winnipeg and they only have fifty-seven seats and a

population of one million. This Province is (inaudible) thinks we are

overworked. We are not overworked in this Province, we are underworked. As

members, we have to be more accountable to the people of the Province. We have

to get out and do the work and then you won't have to be wondering: am I going

to lose my seat, or am I going to gain this or gain that. If you go out and work

and deserve to have it you will have no problem when the next election comes

around as to whether or not you are going to be re-elected. So that is the

answer, I say, to people across this Province, in setting boundaries.

Now, I would like to touch on another area. I don't see the

Minister of Works, Services and Transportation there - but the illogical

approach that this government is using, the Minister of Health used one the

other day and the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation used it, too.

This past winter, with all the snow and ice on our highways, you would think

that much more money would be needed in the budget for snow and ice control and

still this government spent over one million dollars less this year then they

spent three years ago with no major restructuring to create efficiencies there.

So they said, We have better snow and ice control than we ever had before, and

they took away $1 million. I mean, it is absurd! Everybody in this Province

knows that we had the worst snow clearing and ice control we have had in the

history of this Province, and anybody who has driven on the highways around this

Province knows that. We have seen not only the snow and ice control, but we have

also seen the maintenance of our highways and byroads falling down around our

ears.

Then the Minster of Health gets up - and I read in The

Evening Telegram , which was wrong: I said to the minister in Question Period

on Thursday that there was $500,000 cut from the dental program, less put in by

this Province this year, and he said, `I would like to correct the Member for

Ferryland' - it was carried in The Evening Telegram - `I would like to

correct him and tell him that is not right.' Well, I would like to find out

where it is here. I read through it and there is $500,000 taken from the program

by this Province. The Federal Government's contribution is the same. There is

very little difference, from $350,000 to $400,000. They sliced $500,000 out of

the dental program for children across this Province.

First of all,he tries to tell me I am wrong, and then he gets

up and tries to tell me, on the next question, that `We have improved services

by doing it.' That is when I was led to ask, Why not eliminate the whole

program, and give us a tremendously improved service across the Province? Let us

cut out all money and we will have utopia here in the Province, I say to the

minister. I mean, the logic they are using there - to cut back costs and think

we are getting improved services.

You are not fooling the people who are driving on the

highways, and I can tell you, you are not fooling the parents of kids in rural

Newfoundland who are making the choice of whether to bring their child to the

dentist, buy groceries, or pay for some other needed expenditure at home. It is

just not going to happen, I can tell them. In this Province, we have struggled

for years to get a reasonable level of dental service. We have succeeded - in my

area we have succeeded in getting a reasonable level of dental service, and on

the South Coast. I spoke with a dentist today on the Northern Peninsula. All

over this Province we have improved dental care and the oral health of children

in this Province, but now we are slicing back a program.

In Newfoundland now, and I use as an example, there is a $41

fee for an extraction, whether you are in a rural or urban area. What is

happening in rural areas is that $24 comes back to the dentist from MCP and the

remaining $17. is absorbed in the rural practice. They don't charge a balanced

fee schedule. They are absorbing that into their dental practice. The cost of

overhead in running a dental practice is about 60 per cent. They are only

getting 60 per cent back from MCP so they are providing the service to kids in

rural Newfoundland at cost.

Now, in the city here they do a balanced schedule. They

charge the parent for the balance between $41 and $24, the extra $17.00. It has

gotten to the point in rural Newfoundland right now where dentists are not going

to be able to maintain and absorb the cost of providing dental care for twelve-,

ten-, five- and six-year-olds and so on around this Province now, so it is going

to cause dentists - I spoke with a dentist in the last couple of days, who now

works one week out of a month in an urban area and three weeks in a rural area.

He told me it is at the point now where it is not going to be practical anymore,

and they are going to start looking at going to an urban area where they can do

a balanced billing and so on, and be able to generate a reasonable level of

income.

We are putting this financial squeeze on moving dentists out

of rural Newfoundland. This government has put the squeeze on moving doctors out

of rural Newfoundland. Health care in rural Newfoundland today is in shreds.

Compared to ten years ago, just look at the Bonavista Peninsula and the Burin

Peninsula. The consolidation has gutted health care in rural Newfoundland today.

They are trying to tell us that by cutting back dollars in

the system it is giving us better health care. That is absurd! It is just crazy!

There are long waiting lists occurring across the Province. We have waiting

lists for people to get heart surgery. It was up to 120, just the active list,

and an infusion of $800,000 served a temporary purpose in bringing it down to a

reasonable level. Then they do nothing again and it gets up again, and you have

to jump up and create a fuss again to get a few more dollars to bring it down.

Do they not realize that if you get it down and maintain it

at an acceptable level most of the operation procedures they are doing are not

at a critical stage. You would enable people to have a healthier lifestyle, less

recurring cost in the system for that, and it is of better long-term benefit for

individuals and less costly in the long-term to our system.

Now, people have to start realizing that there has to be a

shift in the preventive and promotive aspect of health care if we are going to

ever reduce costs in the health care system in the future. There are many other

areas in health care which need to be addressed; I haven't seen the ones being

addressed here; there are 60-some per cent of nursing home beds here in the City

of St. John's which need to be replaced; they are outdated, they don't meet the

needs, they are not adequate for somebody to be able to retire and live in

dignity during their last few years. They are completely outdated and there is

no concentration of effort made to plan ahead for the next twenty years in

long-term care in the Province and there is no commitment by this government to

do something about it.

In fact, I haven't seen any commitment by this government to

enhance or accelerate an economic agenda for this Province. In Question Period

today a member asked, I think, the Premier and the Minister of Industry, Trade

and Technology: What's happening down in Voisey Bay? I think it is very

important for this Province to be able to take initiatives to ensure that we are

going to have a demand, companies coming in to develop our resource, that the

jobs are going to stay in this Province whether it is in smelting operations and

so on, there has to be a return on our dollars here in this Province. We have

spent too long and too many years exporting our resources when we should be

exporting the product of our resources out of this Province. We have to maximize

jobs here, the government has to be tougher on it. They weren't tough enough on

Hibernia and the Marystown area, the weren't tough enough in being assertive and

aggressive enough in setting demands on companies there, that you have to

develop to the maximum extent the resources here in this Province.

We have to realize that, because if not, we will continue to

be a `have not', we will be more of a `have not' than we are today if we don't

get control of the economic agenda here in our Province. Now this government has

done nothing to address the fishing industry in terms of the processing sector.

I heard the minister on a fisheries broadcast a couple of days ago, the Minister

of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture stating that now - yes, after three years -

we now realize we have to do something to deal with the processing overcapacity

in this Province, and, I couldn't be right about what I heard the minister say

and he is not here now to respond -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Oh, yes, the minister is here. I heard the

minister say and maybe, when he gets an opportunity to speak on the Budget he

might respond. I heard him say: `Now, we are going to go along with the federal

- what were supposed to be industry renewal board, they are called harvesting

boards now - he said: that board now, the recommendation of that board is now

going to deal with processing reduction in this Province; and he stated that

they are going to recommend to a joint Provincial and Federal Government, who

will jointly decide the processing and the harvesting reduction.

Now,we know the Federal Government is responsible for

harvesting, Provincial for processing, but that's what the minister stated,

unless he made a mistake. I cannot see this Province turning over to the Federal

Government board, responsibilities to reduce the processing sector unless they

want to abdicate the responsibilities to do something about it. They have

abdicated for three years and have done nothing, so now he is going to turn it

over to a board, so that the Federal Government is going to have an equal say in

what is reduced. I say the Province has the responsibility to take a lead now

and to get on with it.

There are too many people out there today, several thousands

of people across this Province, who don't know what the future holds for them,

and they want to be told: your community is going to have a future or your

community is not going to have a future, and that is not too much to tell people

who, after three years sitting around receiving a TAGS package, want to go to

work. I can tell you, the majority of people in this Province, I can tell you

the majority of people with whom I speak in my district, want to go to work.

Many people on this TAGS package left the Province

altogether. Families have left the Province and have gone to work in Yellowknife

and in Alberta who are receiving these benefits, because they want to work

twelve months of the year, they want to have a steady income and they want to be

able to have and utilize a work ethic they have been used to following all their

lives.

Now, I hope the minister will address some of these things.

There were a few other things he touched on also that I was surprised with. I

won't go into too much detail on them, but I was surprised with some of the

things happening there. It was new to me, and I haven't seen it anywhere else.

AN HON. MEMBER: How about `Uncle Tom's Cabin'? He wrote

the book. `Uncle Tom's Cabin,' is it?

MR. SULLIVAN: No, he has a lovely house up there in Tors

Cove. Some recent renovations there make it look like a really comfortable

normal residence now. Even if he doesn't use it, it still looks like it is.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: He has improved - oh yes, it was good, it

was enjoyable.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: I won't tell you, no. He didn't say

anything to me that wasn't complimentary, I can tell you. Good supporters of

mine there, I can tell you. He asked me: Is it true that Mr. Murphy lives up in

Tors Cove? I said: I refuse to answer that on the grounds that he mightn't be

happy with my response.

AN HON. MEMBER: A while ago (inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Did he? Okay, well, that is beside the

point. That has nothing to do with the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, since I've been speaking for about sixty minutes

on the Budget now, in case anyone hasn't noticed, I think I'm going to take a

break. I think I managed to get in forty-five minutes on Friday. Some other hon.

members here want to speak and add a few comments to it. I will sit down now.

Anybody who missed my speech on Friday, I ask them to go back and read Hansard.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There being no speakers from the government side, I will have

a few words to say in this Budget Debate.

My colleague, the Member for Ferryland mentioned a few

moments ago in his remarks that we were overgoverned or something to that effect

in considering the number of seats we have in this Assembly to represent the

people of Newfoundland and Labrador. When I was in the Premier's Office in

Peckford's day,we had a standing joke among those of us who were on staff which

went something to the effect that some guy with a three-piece suit and a

briefcase shows up at the reception desk and says: Hi, I'm from Ottawa, and I'm

here to help. That was a standing joke with us, because government, be it

federal or provincial, at times is considered somewhat of a nuisance in people's

minds.

When the Member for Ferryland mentioned about us being

overgoverned, something came to mind that occurred in my district over the

weekend. I don't know if we are overgoverned or undergoverned or just stunnedly

governed. We had a situation where I attended the opening of a number of social

housing units sponsored by a local volunteer committee in the town of Robert's

Arm, the project being funded, I guess, and technically put together, in

concert, the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation and Canadian Mortgage

and Housing Corporation, CMHC. Between the two of them, with the volunteer

organization, they, a while ago, opened a group of seniors' homes, and most

recently, eight units of social housing. All concerned, I suppose, are very much

to be congratulated. A number of jobs were created in the construction phase,

and obviously, an ongoing social need was met. And the volunteers who serve on

the local committee are to be commended for a job very well done.

Mr. Speaker, these housing units, being sponsored by the

federal and provincial housing corporations, of course, are done to a certain

provincial if not national standard. At the opening, we were standing on paved

driveways to each of the housing units. The street that the housing units are on

is called Berg Street in Robert's Arm. It is a street that has been on the list

of the local council for quite a number of years to get some pavement. The

government of Premier Wells has not seen fit to give any pavement to the town

council of Robert's Arm under the 60-40 cost-sharing program. So it was ironic

that on Friday past we opened a bunch of well-done housing units, complete with

paved driveways leading onto a muddy street, a gravel street.

The locals were utterly astounded. Because what they want

from the minister is not that the paved driveways be taken from the housing

units; what they want from the minister is municipal paving on Berg Street in

Robert's Arm. The level of commentary from the regular residents of Berg Street

who have been there for quite some time is: Only government could do something

as stunned and as galling as to open a bunch of units - sponsored by government,

badly needed units, I will say - but to provide paved driveways leading to a

gravel street.

The other ironic thing about that particular incident is that

I understand the minister couldn't make it for personal reasons, but the Federal

Government was represented by a politician, not the local MP at all, but the MP

for St. John's East, Bonnie Hickey, who was the federal attendee in Green Bay.

It was the first time I had ever met the lady.

MR. REID: It was quite an honour for you.

MR. HEWLETT: Yes, a great honour for me, as the Member

for Carbonear points out, the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Where George Baker was I don't know. There

was an official program printed for the situation, no mention whatsoever of

George Baker, the actual local federal MP, so one has to wonder. I am sure the

Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs had other duties and matters to

keep him in a different place, but one has to wonder why the Federal Government

would be represented by an MP from St. John's at a local function on the

northeast coast.

So, it was a real eye-opener in two regards. Obviously Mr.

Baker, the brother of the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, must be in hot

water with Prime Minister Chrtien and the Federal Government, because federal

minister Dingwall was represented not by the local MP but by Bonnie Hickey, and

the locals could not get over the fact that we had paved driveways leading to a

gravel street, which was not only ironic, I suppose, but to locals who have been

living on that gravel street for the last several years, somewhat galling as

well.

I have written the minister on the matter, not from the point

of view, as he shouted across the floor a few moments ago that he might come and

tear up the driveways, but a more positive approach would be that he might come

and pave the street. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if we are overgoverned or

undergoverned, but the people on Berg Street know that they are governed. That

is not necessarily a good verb in their mind right now.

A couple of other issues, I have presented a number of

petitions in the House with regard to electoral boundaries in the Province, and

I have some more to present. I was asked to do this by the Green Bay Economic

Development Association and by the Joint Councils of Green Bay, two

organizations which have done good work in the area and have seen a sense of

unity, a sense of community, come to the various towns in Green Bay, only to see

that potentially disrupted by a significant change in the electoral map.

It is unfortunate that towns in the northern area of Green

Bay would be transferred to Baie Verte district and that sense of community be

disrupted. It is not something the locals are pleased with, and the communities

that are left in Green Bay district are not pleased to lose their friends and

neighbours to an adjoining electoral district either, so they have had me

present these petitions. I have discussed it with both organizations, and

indicated that I will present petitions over a series of days in this House so

that certainly through the volume of talk on the issue, if not the substance,

their concerns will be amply brought forward before this Assembly, and

hopefully, some members on the government benches will see fit to get brave

enough to break ranks and maybe we can stop this business of the current

electoral map which has basically been rigged politically by this particular

government.

They put a commission in effect with a degree of independence

to review the situation and bring back a recommendation, and that is what they

should have gone with. If they couldn't live with what the commission came up

with, then the other option, of course, is to leave the status quo as is, but to

get the commission to revise from forty to forty-four, then brief us in

Opposition on a forty-eight seat proposal before Christmas, only to have a

totally different forty-eight seat proposal come before the House now after

Christmas is political manipulation at the extreme, and one has to wonder why

people regard government in a cynical light. There is a degree of cynicism among

the population at the best of times with regard to government. What we have seen

occur in this Assembly over the last little while only reinforces that, with

regard to electoral boundaries, one, and the other that comes to mind right off

the bat, Mr. Speaker, is the Trans City scandal. We have a government now that

basically says it fumbled the ball in the handling of the tendering process but

it is good that they fumbled it in that they have saved us a ton of money.

Now the Premier would want us to believe that, through

ineptness, some of his ministers - obviously not himself because he would never

admit to being inept under any circumstances but obviously some of his ministers

have been labelled as being inept by the Premier in the handling of this

particular matter. The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and the body politic in

general does not regard it as being inept, Mr. Speaker, they regard it as a

cynical exercise of power on the part of the Wells administration. The editorial

content of the weekend news paper pretty well confirms that the press core in

this Province has basically established that the handling of the hospital

contracts was breaking the rules, it was illegal, it was done wrong and the only

thing that the government has in reply now is: Thank God we did it the wrong way

because we saved you a ton of money!

Now the Leader of the Opposition today put it to the Premier

and the Minister of Finance: prove to us that you saved a ton of money, and all

we got were vague evasions. We would like an independent committee or a

commission to do a quick study on the numbers involved and to put the Premier to

the test. Prove to the people of the Province that even though they broke the

law they did save a ton of money so that there would be some small measure, some

minute measure of redemption in the way they handled this thing insofar as they

saved the taxpayers some money but so far, Mr. Speaker, I would not hold my

breath on the government coming forward with any sort of independent study on

the financial merits of the deal. Certainly they refused consistently to give us

any independent study on what went on outside of what was forced into the courts

by aggrieved parties. So therefore I am not optimistic, Mr. Speaker, that they

are going to want to prove to the people of the Province, who think that this

matter is scandalous, that at least as some saving grace, as some small measure

of redemption that there were some savings to the taxpayers involved. It is easy

to make a claim that you are doing everybody a favour by breaking the rules, Mr.

Speaker, but so far they have been somewhat reluctant to so prove.

With regard to Voisey Bay, Mr. Speaker, I raised some

concerns with the hon. the Premier earlier in Question Period today. This, by

all accounts and by all that one hears in the media, is going to be a relatively

large project, a Hibernia type mega project involving resource values in the

billions of dollars, Mr. Speaker. As I pointed out in my

preamble to my question

to the Premier, the last time the Liberal Party was in power and handled a

project of this magnitude was the Churchill Falls project. At that particular

time they went for a short term burst of job creation and did not have the

foresight to build into the contractual arrangements or any sort of

understanding or acknowledgement of the notion that inflation exists.

Now economists have been around for many centuries, Mr.

Speaker, and inflation is not a new subject but with regard to Churchill Falls

there was no provision for the effects of inflation that most economists are

trained about in school. Indeed, a sixty-five year contract actually saw the

last number of years have a deflationary clause built into the contract and that

the price actually drops in the last one-third of the contract. Because of

variations in energy prices caused by international oil crisis, this Province

was robbed of literally billions over the last number of years with regard to

the Churchill Falls project. We got the immediate short term jobs. Obviously we

have some jobs to maintain and run the project but we lost a fortune on

revenues.

When the PC Party was last in power we were presented with

the reality of the Hibernia oil find and then began a battle royal with the

federal government of the day under one, Mr. Trudeau, so that we, as a Province,

as a people, would have the right to number one, dictate the type of development

that would be involved, and number two, have the right to charge certain

royalties so that we could accrue certain financial benefits to the Province.

The Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador at the time

when they were in Opposition, as is the case now that they are in government,

were in bed, in sync, in whatever with the federal Liberal Party. They advised

over and over again: Sign a deal with the federal government which gives you no

power, which gives the federal government the right to give you money if they

see fit, but that is all.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. HEWLETT: By leave. You get your money from the feds

by leave, and you get no power to have to a say over the development of a very

important resource.

That battle went on for a number of years. There was

absolutely no give in the government of Pierre Trudeau whatsoever. He was a

centralist by nature. Certainly a far cry from Joe Clark's concept of the nation

as a community of communities. So the battle went on until the waning years of

the Liberal Administration in Ottawa when one Brian Mulroney, who was Opposition

leader at the time, saw that there was some political merit in repairing the

damage and dissension in the country caused by the acrimony of the Trudeau years

by setting an example of how federal-provincial relations could be done.

The government of the Province of the day, the Peckford

Administration, managed to cut a quasi-deal with the Opposition party of the

day. Once they won the federal government, with a lot of hard work in addition,

managed to get a deal from them which gave us the right to have a veto power

over the mode of development, gave us the right to charge royalties, gave us as

well a $300 million fund to help prepare some infrastructure for us to get

involved in the project in a meaningful way.

It is rather unfortunate that the price of oil wasn't through

the roof or isn't through the roof right now when this particular project comes

on stream, because if it were the case then we would certainly have the power to

charge off considerable royalties to the provincial treasury. But the inflexible

Liberal Party of Canada at the time would not see fit to share Hibernia with the

people of Newfoundland and Labrador. The kowtowing Liberal Party of Newfoundland

and Labrador didn't have the stomach or the guts to stand up to the Liberal

Party of Canada and stand with the PC Party at the time in the House of Assembly

and put up a united front to make some reasonable demands of the national

government. Getting a decent deal was much delayed, thanks to Liberals both

locally and nationally. Now we have the local Liberal Party in power, the

federal Liberal Party in power, and we are presented with the Voisey Bay

project.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: The royalties on Hibernia and all of those

final details were actually arrived at in the early years of the Wells

Administration. The right to charge royalties was what we fought for and

obtained. The extent to which you have maximized the benefits from Hibernia is

something that the Wells Administration has to answer for.

We have not been pleased in Opposition - and many people in

many parts of the Province have not been pleased - the way the Wells government

has maximized the opportunities afforded it under the general principles of the

agreement put forward by the Peckford Administration in concert with the federal

government of the day. We are highly suspicious, Mr. Speaker, of not only the

ability but more importantly the inclination of the Wells Administration to

maximize the benefits from Voisey Bay to this Province.

The last time the Liberal Party was in power they sold the

shop, to borrow a phrase with regard to Churchill Falls. Recently on the Grand

Banks the federal minister of the Liberal party representing Newfoundland sold

the shop to the Spanish. Now we have that minister representing us in Ottawa, we

have the Liberal Party in power down here with a very suspect record in fighting

for benefits for Newfoundland under Hibernia, about to go forward now and try

and cut some sort of deal with regard to Voisey Bay.

Mr. Speaker, there are two outstanding matters in that

regard. The native peoples obviously have a stake in this matter that will have

to be dealt with before there is any significant development. Then, in general

be dealt with.

With regard to the native peoples, I sincerely hope that the

assurances the Premier gave earlier here today that there will be accelerated

process, hopefully under the general umbrella of a land claims agreement, that

will establish everybody's territory, everybody's rights with regard to this

development. Obviously native peoples want some say over acquisition of jobs;

they want some say with regard to revenues, and I think very important for

native peoples, from everything they have said in the news media, they would

like some say - as Newfoundland demanded in the case of Hibernia - over the

nature, the style, the mode, of development so as to minimize any negative

impacts on their culture and way of life. I sincerely hope that these matters

can be dealt with adequately so that the project can go forward.

Once that is out of the way the project can go forward; make

no doubt about it. Then comes the next thing, and this is where we have major

concerns with regard to the Wells' administration, with regard to the Liberal

Party, based on historical precedent. We have general and real concerns with

regard to not only the ability of this government to maximize the benefits in

terms of secondary processing of raw ores, et cetera, but the inclination, more

importantly. If you are not so inclined to fight for your people, then your

ability to fight for them is somewhat irrelevant, and the Wells' administration,

in dealing with big projects, big companies, has been notoriously slack. It has

been very laissez-faire; it has been very hands off. If you happen to be with a

big company, this government has a tendency to say: Thy will be done, and that

is not good enough for the people of this Province. It was: Thy will be done to

the Rothschilds with regard to the Upper Churchill, and now we have a situation

where we have a tremendous mineral find just barely in the beginning stages of

potentially being found, from everything that has been said, and we have to make

sure - and we in this House have to ensure, I suppose - that the government

maximize the benefits in terms of jobs, revenues and processing.

I have a gold find in my district and this summer, as I

understand it, they are going to do some underground mining, take out a bulk

sample, ship it off to somewhere on the mainland to mill the ore and just see

what are the practical realities of mining this gold find. I am told that if

that works out well, in all likelihood we will have a gold mine in the King's

Point area. There is some considerable talk on the local scene as to whether or

not there will be any or much milling of the ore on site, given the tonnage of

reserves available, et cetera.

What we are dealing with in Labrador is obviously a much,

much larger find, resource estimates valued in the billions of dollars - I have

heard numbers like $15 billion kicked around - so obviously the economics are

probably there to have some considerable processing of ores, milling of ores,

the smelting of ores in the local area, and we would be remiss in our duty if we

stood here in this House and saw raw ore being shipped at tide water in the

Voisey Bay - Nain area, onto large ore carriers, and see it further carried up

the St. Lawrence Seaway to the smelters and mills in the Quebec - Ontario

region, or in the central northeast part of the United States.

If the right people talk to this administration, if the right

people whisper in the right ears, we stand a danger of losing the maximum impact

of this particular development.

We saw, in the case of Hibernia, the government basically sat

still and let the Hibernia Management and Development Corporation take the work

out of Marystown and ship it off to the mainland. We have seen a very weak

sputtering on the part of the Minister of Development with regard to the

Argentia thing: Oops! You stepped on my toe. Let's discuss it. When you step on

the toe of a Newfoundlander, a little more than: Let's discuss it should be in

order - a good swift kick comes to mind. Unfortunately, so far all the kicking

that this particular administration has done seems to be in their own rear end

lately because of all the mistakes they have made.

AN HON. MEMBER: Kickbacks, (inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: There is another word that goes with kick,

yes, kickback; I have heard that word before.

AN HON. MEMBER: Watch the old chicken (inaudible) watch

the finger-licking good talking about that.

MR. HEWLETT: It is hardly a valid comparison, Mr.

Speaker, a minor battle in the trenches over five or six delegates in a given

riding in the Province as compared to billions of dollars worth of revenues and

benefits that could affect the well-being of the Province for decades to come.

The Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs really belittles the debate

that we are in if he wants to make a comparison of the two.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs

can talk about chicken, he can talk about my severance package till the cows

come home, and heaven knows if we had a major farming or cattle industry in this

Province, I would probably have some considerable concerns about the cows coming

home because, no doubt they would box that matter as well, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: My friend from Ferryland is right. The

Liberal Party is going to know all about chickens in the next year or so when we

have an election because the electoral chickens will be coming home to roost.

The Member for Windsor - Buchans is over every second day of the week now

sniffing around me, wondering whether or not he is going to run in Windsor -

Springdale or whether he has the nerve to take on Mr. Mackey in Grand Falls -

Buchans, so, Mr. Speaker, you know, the Liberal Party doesn't need to send the

Member for Carbonear to take me on although he might be missing his seat in his

neck of the woods maybe because the minister is related by marriage to a former

constituent of Green Bay so it is quite possible I could have the Member for

Windsor - Buchans and the Member for Carbonear out in Green Bay or whatever

semblance we have, Green Bay - Buchans or Windsor - Springdale fighting it out

for the Liberal nomination in an effort to bump me off in the next elections.

The minister seems to be concerned with regard to my capacity

to achieve re-election. Mr. Speaker, I will deal with that in due course. The

minister is a part of a government that in general is going to have problems

getting re-elected because of its record over the last few years. This was a

government that was elected to bring home `every mother's son'. In British

Columbia now, you are tripping over every mother's son; prior to that it was

Toronto, after that it was Alberta and now -

AN HON. MEMBER: Peckford is in BC.

MR. HEWLETT: Yes, even the former Premier has had to go

to BC to find work, Mr. Speaker. British Columbia is where it is happening in

Canada these days and it is literally thronged with Newfoundlanders. These are

the same Newfoundlanders who, number one, shouldn't have had to leave because

obviously, things were going to improve tremendously under the Wells

Administration; they should have been still back here and they should have been

joined by all their friends and neighbours and cousins from Ontario and Alberta

who had left in years and decades earlier in a mad rush to come home but what we

have, Mr. Speaker, is a government that acknowledges in the ways of Parzival

Copes that we have 100,000 to 200,000 excess people and what we are into right

now, Mr. Speaker, is resettlement through misery.

I was at a graduation the other night in my district, Mr.

Speaker, and one of the Island communities came to me and the principal of the

school said: You know, we have lost another two teachers this time and we lost

some last year and we are losing some again next year in all likelihood. It is

an Island community where the ferry stops running at night so once they start

losing enough teachers to ruin the local school, obviously, the people are going

to have very little choice but to move.

That is what we are into with regard to this administration.

They have simply acknowledged that they are not up to the job, and that jobs

cannot be created sufficient enough to maintain people and their families here

in this Province. Just go to British Columbia, go to Alberta, go to Ontario, and

you will find out where the people are, and unfortunately they are going to be

joined by many thousands of others unless the trend is stopped.

Mr. Speaker, I will close with a comment that I used to make

in the early years of this administration when I spoke a sentiment that I myself

believe, and now only recently have the Newfoundland people, and indeed the

Liberal Party of this Province come to believe in, and that is: All's well that

ends well.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek.

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the

opportunity to stand and speak for just a few minutes.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. A. SNOW: We have had a lot of discussion here in the

House about what this government has been doing to the finances of this Province

since they brought down their Budget a month or so ago. While there was a lot of

praise from the other side of the House with regard to what they have done -

what they appear to have done with the Budget, is a big difference, a tremendous

difference. It brings to mind something that has been said about the Leader of

this particular government. This was quoted in The Atlantic Progress .

This is an Atlantic Provinces magazine issued to businesses about business

matters, and one of the quotes they state here in grading the Premier - they had

an

article in this magazine grading the Premiers of the Atlantic Provinces.

MR. FUREY: Is that Frank magazine?

MR. A. SNOW: The minister responsible for ITT asked me if

it was Frank magazine, Mr. Speaker. I am not sure if it is in reference to `the'

Frank magazine. Maybe he is clairvoyant. Maybe he is telling us what's to be.

Maybe he knows that Frank would undoubtedly be interested in publishing articles

in the future about who may be the next Premier will be, so he knows that is the

type of magazine that would be interested in what that particular Premier would

be involved with, if you will, or has been involved with. Maybe Frank magazine

will be down to do an interview with the next leader of the Liberal Party, which

will be the next Premier, because after the leadership is going to be held this

fall we are going to have a new Premier. Maybe the Frank magazine people will be

down doing an interview then and it would be quite interesting.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I was speaking about this business

magazine and they were quite frank in what they said about the leader of this

government, and really it says a lot about this government and how it behaves.

Their quote about the Premier was, `Clyde Wells is concerned with image and

public perception, but there is often no real substance beneath the veneer of

the position or the program'.

Atlantic Progress , March 1995, where they rated the

Premiers of each province with regard to what the business people of this

Province, and the other three Atlantic provinces, felt that the particular

provincial governments were doing in their individual jurisdictions. I do not

believe they are up for an EDGE grant. I do not think they are, although they

are right on the leading edge with regard to assessing what is going on in

Atlantic Canada, and indeed here in this Province.

Really, that is exactly what this government has been doing.

They are all concerned about perception, smoke and mirrors, and nothing to do

with the actual reality, and that's in the Budget. That is what the Budget was

about, Mr. Speaker. That is what people are saying, exactly what the business

leaders in this Province and in Atlantic Canada are saying about this

government. In other areas, whether it is with regard to programs that the

government have instituted or what they say and what they do with regard to the

gerrymandering that is going on with the redistribution or the reorganization of

the seats.

They talk about one vote, the importance of votes being equal

throughout the Province. How it would be unconscionable to have one vote worth

more politically than somebody else's vote. That they always have to be equal,

the urban and rural vote equal. Yet they say that and then they say: We are

going to have seats designed in Labrador where you might have a population of

2,000 people in a seat, and they are going to have one member. Those particular

votes could be considered four "Newfoundland" votes. Eagle River probably has

5,000 or 6,000 people, so what are they worth? They are worth three Newfoundland

votes.

Again it is a reinforcement of what this Leader does, has

done, and is perceived to have done, when they say that they are doing things

and yet they go and do the opposite. That is exactly what happens with this

government. It says one thing and does another. It is going to be friendly to

the employees and it runs over them with a bulldozer.

I've just been passed a discussion paper on the Labrador

caribou hunt. One of my colleagues has asked me if that pertains to the Mealy

Mountain caribou. The Mealy Mountain: Not to be confused with a meal to give

anybody. Mealy Mountain is a geographic area, not something that one eats. This

Labrador caribou hunt discussion paper is something that is very topical in

Labrador and I'm pleased to see that the government has responded to correct

some of the problems that have been associated with the hunt.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Pardon? Oh, I've had the opportunity to

participate as an individual in the hunting. Now I'm pleased to see that the

government has issued a discussion paper and it will be addressing some of the

problems.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Good. I haven't had the chance to see it

yet. The member undoubtedly must have had some input and has seen the product of

it. I know that a lot of people in my district will participate with the

committee to offer suggestions as to what should be done. It is something that

contributes a lot to the economy in my area. I come from a mining area that

probably produces more - not probably, it undoubtedly does produce more economic

wealth than any other electoral district in this Province in the economic wealth

contribution to the Province and indeed to the whole country, Mr. Speaker.

The caribou, we feel, can also add more economically to the

Province if it were properly developed in our area. We have certain attributes

within the area that can help promote, foster and develop greater access and a

greater exploitation as in participation in and make use of - when I use the

word exploitation I use it in that manner rather than take advantage of, in the

sense of abuse. I don't mean it in that manner, I mean it in a manner of

participating with and developing in a proper fashion. We feel that properly

managed, this can have a greater economic impact on the Western Labrador region.

And if it is better economically for Western Labrador and doesn't withdraw

things from other electoral districts in this Province, it undoubtedly would

have a positive economic impact on the whole Province, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: You get some what?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, to get back to what I was

talking about how - I happened to be listening to the former Minister of

Justice, the present Government House Leader -

MR. SULLIVAN: The minister without portfolio.

MR. A. SNOW: Is he a minister without portfolio?

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, he has no portfolio.

MR. A. SNOW: Anyway, in response to a petition so ably

presented by my colleague, the Member for Green Bay earlier, he responded to the

petition and talked about how important it was and how proud he was to be a

member of a government that was going to support this equality of votes in the

regions and yet we all know that in the thirty-second meeting that the Electoral

Boundaries Commission had -

MR. SULLIVAN: And $200,000 later.

MR. A. SNOW: - the thirty-second meeting and $200,000

later they were given direction from the Member for Naskaupi, Mr. Speaker, that:

`We can't have this, we have to change that. That is not fair.'

MR. SULLIVAN: We want to have a Liberal focus now.

MR. A. SNOW: We want to have a Liberal focus as in, I am

sure, capital L, Liberal.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Because that is gerrymandering to the nth

degree, that's why. If you look at it, that's exactly what has occurred. Some

people have suggested that the new nomenclature, the new meaning, the new name,

the new expression, the new phrase is `eddymandering' now, not gerrymandering,

because of the redefining of the seats called -

MR. SULLIVAN: We could give it another name. Everything

has to center around `Ed'. Maybe `Ed' will call it `me-andering'.

MR. A. SNOW: That is a new acronym, `me-andering'.

Mr. Speaker, this is another reinforcement of the theme I was

talking about where this government is more concerned with public perception

than they are with reality.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: I will leave that one for you to take. But

anyway, Mr. Speaker, again what I am saying is that the theme of this particular

government, that surrounds this government, is that they are all concerned about

the image, the veneer about smoke and mirrors. There is no substance to it. And

that has been the hallmark of this government since they have been elected in

1989, when they got back in power, Mr. Speaker. In my particular district,

people have been saying this time and time again.

This government say they are going to do everything and yet

they do absolutely nothing. They do the opposite, whether it is regard to some

of the economic things - the people who operate businesses in Labrador know, in

Western Labrador specifically, in my district, that this government is concerned

about public perception, and they know there is no real substance beneath the

veneer or position of the program. They know that, because they have seen what

has occurred locally. They have seen what has occurred with regard to the sales

tax, what has occurred with regard to the payroll tax, they have seen the

difference in the tobacco taxes in Western Labrador, or down in Southern

Labrador, in the border situations in this Province. They have seen what has

occurred there, how the government say one thing and do the complete opposite.

They say that they are concerned about what business can

compete on an equal footing with businesses from another area, so what do they

do? The previous administration, and supported by this administration, had a

policy of a tobacco tax rebate to businesses. It wasn't a new idea, a new

concept, dreamed up by the previous administration. It has been something that

is ongoing in this country for years in border situations with regard to

provinces, between provinces, the border situation between Canada and the U.S.

When there were drastic differences in the shifts in taxes they would adjust

taxes in border situations, especially in Quebec and Ontario, and along the

Quebec - Ontario border, or the Ontario - United States border, or the Quebec -

United States border. When we had the imposition of the 7 per cent GST, we saw a

tremendous amount of cross-border shopping in Central Canada, and it had a very

negative impact on central Canadian businesses, retail businesses specifically,

because people were rushing across the border to avoid the tax.

What corrected that, the self-correcting thing that occurred

after, was the devalued dollar. Once the dollar went down, the 7 per cent didn't

matter, so people came back across or stayed on our side of the border, so to

speak, to spend their retail dollars specifically over in Canada - in Central

Canada, in Quebec and Ontario.

In the tobacco tax - gasoline tax wars, we have seen other

provinces adjust their provincial tax in border situations. In areas where you

would have shared borders, like we have seen in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit,

places we have seen down near Plattsburgh and Sherbrooke, down in the eastern

townships of Quebec, we have seen those areas being isolated out with regard to

gasoline tax, and allowing them to compete on a level playing field, allowing

service stations to put in a tax that would allow these businesses a lower tax

in their particular jurisdictions, and allow these businesses to compete with

the other businesses that had lower taxes, and this did allow the two businesses

to compete on a more level or a level, playing field.

Now, the previous administration in this Province decided to

lower the tobacco tax, or use a tobacco tax rebate system. Through the

wholesalers, they could find out exactly what tobaccos were being purchased -

there was only one wholesaler in my district, and probably only two in the other

border situation in this Province - and they used a rebate system on taxes. They

would rebate the tax to the retailer on what the retailer sold, so this allowed

a Newfoundland or a Labrador businessman to compete with the Quebec businessman

on an equal footing. Now, to the government's credit, they continued along with

the policy of doing this until there was a drastic shift in the amount of

dollars in the tax.

When the Federal Government decided a year or a

year-and-a-half ago to lower drastically the federal portion and ask other

governments, i.e. provincial, to lower their taxes and they would lower an

equivalent amount federally, we saw a drastic lowering of taxes in Quebec. So a

person could leave Newfoundland and go up to Quebec and purchase a carton of

cigarettes for - I believe the price is somewhere around $21, $22. That same

carton of cigarettes in this Province would cost about $57 to $60. We knew then

that people would be influenced to go to the Province of Quebec and purchase the

cigarettes.

At the same time they are up there, because it is such a

tremendous saving in this, they would also be able to purchase gasoline at a

lower rate because the gasoline tax in Quebec is lower than the gasoline tax in

this Province. Again, they have adjusted the gasoline tax in Quebec going

outward from populated regions so that it is lower in the rural areas of Quebec

than it is in the urban areas, and especially in the border situations. That is

what they have done in Quebec. The Quebec gasoline tax in Fermont, Quebec is

lower than it is in Montreal. That is what they do in Quebec to allow the person

in the outer regions, in the hinterland of the Province, they say - to allow

them to compete with the borders around in Ontario and down on the New York

border, the Vermont border, and up in the Labrador region. They lower the taxes.

So we see a tremendous difference in the amount of gasoline tax being collected

in Western Labrador and the amount that is being collected elsewhere.

This government, when they changed the legislation to lower

the gasoline tax in Eagle River, in the Blanc Sablon region -

AN HON. MEMBER: That is in Quebec.

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, I know, and to compete with Blanc

Sablon, to allow the people in L'Anse-au-Clair, the businesses there, to compete

with the businesses over in -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: That will come, Mr. Speaker.

This government saw fit to lower it in one district and

wouldn't lower it in another electoral district. They wouldn't lower the

gasoline tax as much in my district. It is not the same,

whereas in Quebec it is

exactly the same. The taxes collected in Blanc Sablon are the same as the taxes

collected up in Fermont, Quebec.

I argued in this House that the people in Western Labrador

should have the benefit, the businesses should have the benefit. This government

parrots - the Premier goes up and talks about all they are doing for business,

all they are going to do for business, yet, he does absolutely nothing.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen businesses suffer in Western

Labrador and it means a loss of revenue to the Government of this Province.

Because Newfoundlanders are going up, people in Western Labrador are going to

the Province of Quebec, to purchase other goods. They are buying their

groceries, they are shopping in the bars up there, they are buying things other

than the big tax difference items. But they are influenced to go up there by the

large ticket items or the large tax savings items.

The sales tax itself that was raised recently in the most

recent Quebec budget - the sales tax went from 6.5 per cent to 7 per cent. There

is still a 5 per cent difference just in the sales tax on these commodities. So

you can see there is a tremendous difference. This government says they are

going to do things for business, and yet when the Premier was in the district

last week, and met with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and the

town councils, he talked to the people up there, and what did he say?... Oh, we

will have to have more enforcement. I am told that he suggested that they are

going to have more enforcement, we are going to bring down the strong arm of the

law. We are going to arrest these housewives out shopping for groceries in

Fermont and who happen to buy two packs of cigarettes, they are going to throw

them in jail. Throw them in jail, he says, if they have two packages of

cigarettes that were purchased in Fermont, but that is silly, Mr. Speaker.

What they should do is, increase the tax rebate system to

make it equal. It falls in line with the policy that the government agreed with

but again, as we have seen before, as this magazine says, this government is

concerned with public perception not about reality or position or the program;

they are not concerned, they have no real substance. They are only concerned

about public perception of what's occurring and it is quite evident by their

actions. That is the opinion of the business people from the country, from

Atlantic Canada and the message is getting out there that -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes b'y. The Minister of Finance and

Treasury Board would like to have a copy of that article. He must be gearing up

for the leadership campaign that we are hearing so much about over there now so

he is going to need that. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Green Bay spoke earlier

in this debate and he talked about the opportunities for development in this

Province, and wondered what is going to be happening with one of the stars on

the horizon and that is the development in Voisey Bay, and, Mr. Speaker, we have

to be concerned with what is happening in Voisey Bay.

I live in a mining area of the Province and recognize some of

the problems that can be associated with a mining industry; I also recognize as

a lot of people in Western Labrador recognize, the tremendous benefits that

accrue from the mining industry. The mining industry throughout the country has

had a tremendous impact on the development of our country and I guess really, it

has had a tremendous influence on the development of our Province but, Mr.

Speaker, along with this development, of course there are some associated

problems and from a developmental perspective, we have to be more aware of some

of these problems.

As I said, I come from a mining area, I have lived there all

my working life, I have been there for over thirty years now and I recognize the

economic contribution that area makes to this Province and the people there

recognize the importance, economically, that Western Labrador is to this

Province; they recognize and sometimes feel angered and disappointed by the

amount of contribution and the lack of attention that this Province and all

previous administrations, not just the Liberal government, but the previous

Conservative government, paid to the taxpayers in that particular region.

Mr. Speaker, we have to be concerned to maximize the benefit

of all the residents of this Province out of this particular resource. We had

another resource in Labrador, the Hydro-Electric Development, we squandered that

one, we gave that away; we threw that away. We get hardly any positive economic

impact to what we should be getting and compared to what other provinces

receive, we get nothing, absolutely nothing from Churchill Falls, comparatively

speaking to what the Province of Quebec gets. We get $25 million or $20 million

as a Province, so-called gain from it

whereas the Province of Quebec get about

$750 million and what they refer to as economic rent from Churchill Falls.

In my own district we find that the Province of Quebec, if

you talk to people who live and work in Western Labrador, they will tell you

that Sept Iles, Quebec has derived a greater economic impact from the

development of the Western Labrador ore deposits than Labrador City and Wabush

have; and we are seeing a lot of people in this Province today investing money

in the stock market, Mr. Speaker, in Voisey Bay. Because of the Voisey Bay ore

discovery, we are seeing people in this Province investing their hard-earned

money hoping to make a dollar.

We have to be aware as a people, as a government - we haven't

heard a peep out of the government, not a peep, not a word. We haven't heard a

word about what is going to happen up in Voisey Bay. Are we going to have a

smelter? Are we going to force these people, or are we going to be like another

former premier of this Province who said: If there is going to be a concentrate

or a pelletizing plant in Pointe Noire, Quebec, over Wabush, it will be over my

dead body. That is what the former Premier Smallwood said. It will be over my

dead body if it goes to Pointe Noire, Quebec.

Mr. Speaker -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, Mr. Speaker. It may have been a good

trade at the time but that was put down there in the early 1960s. The pellet

plant should have been in Western Labrador for the economic gain would have come

to this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave!

MR. A. SNOW: By leave?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: All the leave he wants, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Menihek, by leave.

MR. A. SNOW: I just need a few minutes to clue up, Mr.

Speaker.

We have to ensure that we have as much value added to that

resource as possible. As humanly possible, we have to ensure that we add as much

value to it. Don't buy any song-and-dance that we take a few jobs today and

develop it, and let all the value-added be added somewhere else in another part

of this country. Don't buy it. That is what we did with Churchill, that is what

we did with the iron ore in Western Labrador. We allowed them to add the value

in other parts of this country. Don't buy it here in Voisey Bay.

Not very often does a province or a people get the

opportunity, a second kick at the cat. How many opportunities in our lives do we

get the opportunity to have a tremendous method of career development or of

investing money? We are getting another tremendous opportunity to develop a

resource. We failed in the fishery. We didn't treat the resource properly. Let's

call a spade a spade. We didn't develop it properly. We took frozen cod block

and shipped it out of this Province and shipped thousands of jobs with it.

Somebody else in another part of the country or another country added a few

mushrooms, a little bit of cream and a cauliflower, sent it back here to a

supermarket, and charged us ten times the amount. We set up a little fish plant

in every village in this Province, took it in, cleaned the fish, froze it in a

cod block and shipped it out. There was no value-added. Very little value-added

to that product.

The same with the iron ore. Most of the jobs in the Iron Ore

Company of Canada in Western Labrador are in a pellet plant. That pellet plant

produces the best pellet in the world. It is a value-added. We added value to

the concentrate. The previous Liberal government allowed Wabush Mines to put

their pellet plant in the Province of Quebec. We lost jobs. We lost the

opportunity. I say to this government: Don't you dare allow another company to

come in here and develop a resource and let the benefits from that resource go

out of this Province. Ensure that there is as much value added to that product

that is going to be mined - and it is going to be mined, we all know that - as

much value as can be humanly possible added to that product using all our

resources. Including the people, our hydro.

That is what we have to do. We can't allow the same type of

development that occurred with our other resources. We cannot allow this silly

attitude that because it is in Labrador we have to take it from there and bring

it down to the Island and process it, like we did with the linerboard mill, to

go into Central Labrador, take trees, cut them down, bring them out, and ship

them down to Stephenville, because that is where it should be, because they have

a Cabinet minister down there who is powerful. Don't make those stupid, silly

mistakes. We have to base our decisions on economics.

The other principle that we have to base it upon, and you

have to keep it in mind, it is a lot better for somebody to leave this Island of

Newfoundland and go to work in Labrador than it is to leave this Island, or have

to leave Labrador, and go to British Columbia.

We have to ensure that we do this properly. We are probably

not going to get another chance in this generation to screw up another resource.

We are getting another chance this time in Voisey Bay, so I implore this

government to do it properly. Just don't think that because there is a lot of

money there we will take the money and that's it, and we can do whatever we want

with money. Don't use that principle of a few jobs today and forget about

tomorrow. That is the mistake that we made in the fishery. That is the mistake

we made in the development of the mines in Labrador. We should have more jobs in

Western Labrador. Even though we contribute more wealth to this Province than

any other electoral district in this Province, we should be contributing more.

We would like to contribute more, but because of previous deals made by previous

governments, Liberal governments and Tory government, but mostly Liberal

governments -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes it was.

Mr. Speaker, we have to ensure that with this resource we do

it properly, that we don't treat it the way we did the fishery, we don't treat

it the way we have treated the iron ore in Western Labrador, we don't treat it

the same way we treated the Churchill Falls arrangement where we were satisfied

with a few construction jobs because we had a few unemployed truck drivers and

grader operators left over from the building of the Trans-Canada Highway across

the Province, so we will put them to work in Labrador in the Churchill Falls

hydro development, that is what we did, forget about the future.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: It is true, and you know it, and what

bothers me is that we have people with such short-sightedness still sitting

around the Cabinet table, and no idea or concept whatsoever of how it should be

done. We have to have more public debate about it. We cannot allow a development

like this to occur and have no public debate.

AN HON. MEMBER: We are going to do it right.

MR. A. SNOW: It had better be done right.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Well, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you one

thing. It had better be as good a debate as we had on the so-called giveaway, or

the sale, of Newfoundland Hydro. That is what we have to have, because

otherwise, if we had not had a public debate about Newfoundland Hydro it would

be sold today; it would have been given away. Paul Desmarais would own it, or

somebody else -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: There would have been more shares owned in

Westmount, Quebec than there would be in Newfoundland,

whereas today we own it.

AN HON. MEMBER: You would have bought shares.

MR. A. SNOW: I don't live in Westmount.

Mr. Speaker, we have to ensure that we have public debate

about what goes on in Voisey Bay so that we can do it properly, so that this

area of the Province can contribute even more than what it contributes today to

the whole financial picture of this Province.

Mr. Speaker, those are just a few remarks that I wanted to

make.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Employment and

Labour Relations should be more concerned about how many jobs we can get out of

this.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: I stand by what I said about Churchill

Falls.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: I do know what I am talking about.

That is the attitude. The minister responsible for Employment

and Labour Relations feels that the government of the day did a good deal on

building Churchill Falls and the principles they used.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame, shame!

MR. SULLIVAN: Hydro Quebec is the richest corporation in

Canada for the last ten years.

MR. MURPHY: Don't get on with foolishness now.

MR. SULLIVAN: Hydro Quebec is the richest corporation and

the most profitable corporation in Canada for the last several years.

MR. MURPHY: We could have put the flour in bags and

brought it somewhere, I suppose.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, there were those fellows who

brought the bags of light into the house where