Newfoundland and Labrador Hansard — Oral Questions — 17 November 1995 (42nd General Assembly, 3rd Session, Vol. XLII No. 57)
1995-11-17
Newfoundland and Labrador — Debates (Hansard)
November
17, 1995 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
PROCEEDINGS Vol. XLII
No. 57
The House met at 9:00 a.m.
MR. SPEAKER (L. Snow): Order, please!
Oral Questions
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.
MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have questions about the Budget for the Premier or the
Minister of Finance and Treasury Board. Neither of them is in his seat. I wonder
if the Government House Leader can tell me if the Premier is going to be here
this morning.
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the
Premier is at a conference at the University with respect to -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. ROBERTS: I beg your pardon?
AN. HON. MEMBER: The news said 10:30.
MR. ROBERTS: My understanding is the Premier is at the
meeting now, but my understanding may be incorrect. The Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board I understand will be here but, as we all know, the minister does
tend to operate on Corner Brook time which is fifteen minutes behind St. John's.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. ROBERTS: I will ask one of my colleagues to check. I
don't know where the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board is. I understand he
will be here this morning.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a
supplementary.
MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
This is the second day this week that I have had questions
about the Budget, a subject that is very much in the minds of Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians because of the alarming signals coming from the government, the
panic signals, and the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board has not been in
his seat to answer questions. Can the Government House Leader tell us if the
Minister of Finance and Treasury Board is going to be here for Question Period
this morning?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I just did say to the hon.
lady, but I'm happy to repeat it, my understanding -
AN HON. MEMBER: Here he is.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, may I introduce to the House of
Assembly the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a
supplementary.
MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Now that the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board is in his
seat, I would like to ask him about his government's approach to budgeting.
The government has been in office for seven budget years now,
and it is clear to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that the government's
approach to budgeting has been a dismal failure. Seven budget years and repeated
mistakes; spring budgets that are incomplete and misleading; and late fall,
pre-Christmas panic roll backs, cuts and taxes. A pattern has developed. I ask
the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board: Why don't you try a revolutionary
new approach? Why don't you leave well enough alone for this Budget year, for
the four remaining months, and use the next four months to consult, plan - a
revolutionary new concept, plan - and bring in a realistic budget next March for
the next budget year?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board.
MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Perhaps we plan to bring in a revolutionary budget plan as of
the end of this month.
The government's record on budget reductions and financial
controls has been exemplary. Since 1979, the government has reduced the fiscal
demands in the Province substantially, it has streamlined services. I am proud
of the record of this government and frankly, we intend to continue it. I expect
that the Province will be very pleased with the direction that the government
will take at mid-year and at the beginning of the new fiscal year. I think there
will be some very important changes made that will be very beneficial to the
financial future of the Province.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a
supplementary.
MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I ask the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, how can
good Budget decisions be made about critical areas of public policy,
panic-fashion?
The Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs admitted the
other day that, as of a week or two ago, he had no inkling that the Cabinet was
about to make drastic cuts in Municipal Operating Grants. Those cuts were
obviously made rashly, there was no consultation with municipal leaders and the
consequences are just becoming clear.
Now, I ask the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board: Is
this any way to run a Province?
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, get up and answer that, now.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board.
MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I don't know where the hon. member gets the impression that
there is any panic. What we are doing is, proceeding very methodically to
examine all areas of government expenditure. What we said in a very
straightforward fashion to the people of the Province, is, we have no interest
in raising taxes because we think, by-and-large, we have reached the edge of
where people find taxes acceptable.
Secondly, we don't believe there many alternatives except to
look at our expenditure program; and, in doing that, we believe that a certain
amount of restructuring will be necessary. Those decisions are being made in a
very methodical fashion; all government programs are being examined and the hon.
Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs I think - and I will say to
compliment him - I heard him on CBC television last night, he did an excellent
job and a very straightforward job explaining the difficulties he had; and the
municipal leaders with whom he spoke and who were there, both of whom I know,
were quite understanding, and by-and-large, I believe that municipalities are
supportive, although they will find it difficult. But they know that the problem
is one of the general lesson of economic strength in the country, the fact that
previous governments have added incredibly to the deficit and the fiscal demands
to service interest in this country and internationally. So we are left with no
alternative but to try to make ends meet, but at the end of the day, I can say
frankly that I think we will be a better government for it, it will be more
streamlined and we will deliver services more effectively to the public.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a
supplementary.
MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
To the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board: Can the
minister give any assurance or comfort to taxpayers in this Province? The
taxpayers in Corner Brook who are paying a residential mil rate of 13, taxpayers
throughout who are paying a provincial sales tax of 13 per cent, since the 12
per cent is on top of the GST, that their municipal taxes will not go up. Is the
minister not being inconsistent saying that we have taxed people to the limit,
yet he and his government are cutting municipal operating grants by 22 per cent?
Isn't there necessarily going to be an increase in municipal taxes?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board.
MR. DICKS: No, Mr. Speaker. The municipalities face the
same difficulty that we do. What I have said is that as a Province I believe
there is very little acceptance on the government side. Perhaps the Opposition
is more in favour of it, but we do not like the idea of raising taxes. Maybe the
Leader of the Opposition thinks that is an acceptable thing to do in this day
and age but people I speak with, my constituents, her constituents in Corner
Brook, and the people I meet around this Island do not want tax increases. So,
what should we do? Should we increase taxes to pay more civil servants on a
structural basis?
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I believe I heard the hon. the Member for St. John's East
Extern say `cowards.' That is certainly unparliamentary and I ask the hon.
member to withdraw it.
MR. J. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, I apologize and I withdraw the
remark.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board.
MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In answer to the second part of her question I say frankly
that there is no need for municipalities to raise taxes any more than it is for
this government. What we all have to do is look at our fiscal requirements and
if we are not going to meet them with the revenue at hand we can diminish
services, we can look at the structure and the number of people we need, or that
we think we need to deliver the services. Frankly, l think there is room both at
the municipal and the provincial level for a more streamlined delivery of the
services we have.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition on a
supplementary.
MS VERGE: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance says he
does not like the provincial government raising taxes. Is that why they are
making volunteer municipal councillors do the dirty work and raise taxes?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and
Treasury Board.
MR. DICKS: I do not know if the hon. member does not
understand the nature of separate jurisdictions. The federal government has cut
back on provincial programs. The federal government is not making us raise
taxes. In looking at our overall spending program we feel it is necessary, and
believe it is fair, to reduce the level of assistance we have been giving to
municipalities. That has been cut substantially at our end and in a lot of cases
it does not amount to more than 2 or 3 per cent of some municipal budgets in
this Province. I think it behooves the municipalities to look closely at their
expenditures and to streamline them.
What I hear from taxpayers all around this Province is that
they do not want taxes raised, federally, municipally, or provincially. They
want them reduced and they are prepared to look at less people working for
government, both at the municipal, federal, and provincial level, in order to
achieve that social good.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.
MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In Question Period the other day I questioned the Minister of
Natural Resources with regard to Voisey's Bay and the timing of a tax reduction
for the mineral industry versus the finding of that particular mineral find. The
minister assured us there is nothing untoward there and that certain adjustments
would be made in the tax regime because Voisey's Bay was rich beyond their
dreams. I ask the minister, when are we going to get this dream adjustment? If
we compare it to the previous tax level will this dream adjustment bring in less
revenue than before, equal to the previous tax revenues or greater than what we
could have had before?
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.
DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, we've said it numerous times, I
guess I can say it again. The same old question, yes, same old answer. We have
said that we plan to make the appropriate adjustments in this session, we plan
to do that. We are not going to be rushed into doing something until we are
satisfied that we have thoroughly analyzed it and that what we are doing is
right and appropriate for this Province. We will do it when it is right and
appropriate, when we have analyzed it properly. That is when it will happen.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Green Bay.
MR. HEWLETT: Again, Mr. Speaker, the minister refuses to
be definitive, even to lay out the groundwork as to whether or not the money
gotten will be equal to what we would have gotten before or even better, it
could well be less obviously.
Mr. Speaker, in the paper yesterday a spokesman for Inco
talked about his involvement with Voisey's Bay and how that would make Inco
stronger and help drag Sudbury along and so on, so forth. I attended a luncheon
at the mining conference where a gentleman from Inco spoke and he basically put
down the Voisey's Bay thing and put it in the overall context of his world
developments. I would ask the minister, who is running the show here? Is it the
Government of Newfoundland and Labrador or is Inco, in its capacity as a
minority shareholder in this development, really the tail that wags the dog?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Natural Resources.
DR. GIBBONS: There is no question about who runs the
show, Mr. Speaker. This is our resource. It is a resource in the Province of
Newfoundland and Labrador and we run this show and we are going to ensure that
it is done in the best interest of the people of this Province.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek.
MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister
of Social Services. I am sure she is aware of the confidential nature of the
information that her department has on file with regard to the -
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. A. SNOW: This information is very confidential,
financial information, psychological assessments and that type of thing. I
wonder if the minister can tell the House and the people of this Province what
safeguard she has put in place to protect this very confidential information?
Can she tell us what safeguard she has put in place to protect the
confidentially of this?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We take every precaution that we can to ensure that the
information that flows back and forth from head office to the district offices,
regional offices, and the same way back and forth between the offices; however,
there are incidents where a number - and I think I am aware of what the member
is referring to. Any time that there is a mistake made in transferring
information via fax there could be a mistake in punching in the numbers, and I
am certainly aware of any concerns that the member might have.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek on a
supplementary.
MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, I will not say that the
minister is deliberately misleading the House, but would she want to reconsider
what she just stated, that there were people punching in wrong numbers, and that
type of thing is the only breech of confidentiality that has occurred? Can she
confirm that, indeed, information has been sent to a construction company
several times in the last several weeks - several times sent to a construction
company - and officials in her department have been informed of it, and yet this
information continues to arrive at this construction company rather than a
social services office in Wabush?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Yes, Mr. Speaker, thank you.
I am aware of it. It came to my attention yesterday, and
every precaution has now been taken to rectify that situation. It is very
unfortunate, and when I became aware of it I put measures in place to deal with
it.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek on a
supplementary.
MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the minister mentioned that she
did every possible thing to correct this. Will she confirm that officials in her
department published a booklet in June of this year with a fax number for the
Department of Social Services office in Wabush, the incorrect number, that
officials in her department were informed of this months ago and they did
absolutely nothing about it. Because of budgetary restraints they refuse to
reprint a page or correct the mistake in this booklet, and that is why this
travesty of justice has occurred, and that is why this personal, confidential
information has been released to people who should not have it, and that she is
responsible for it because of the budgetary cuts.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I said, the number has now been corrected and, of course,
I would not be able to go through the directory and make sure that every number
is correct. It was brought to my attention, Mr. Speaker, yesterday and it is
certainly being dealt with.
MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member
for Menihek.
MR. A. SNOW: Will the minister confirm - I will ask again
- that officials in her department were informed of this mistake months ago?
They were informed of it months ago and did absolutely nothing about correcting
this mistake, and that is why, because of budgetary restraints -
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Order, please!
The hon. member is on a supplementary.
The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: It was brought to my attention yesterday and it
is being dealt with. It has nothing to do with budgetary cuts.
MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member
for Menihek.
MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention
that the reason for not correcting the mistake was because of the cost of
inserting an extra page rather than just sending out a telephone call to
offices. Is that correct?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Mr. Speaker, that is utter nonsense.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The
Capes.
MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are
also for the Minister of Social Services. They concern the Vera Perlin Society.
As the minister is fully aware, over the past number of weeks we've made
representation on behalf of the Vera Perlin Society as it tries to find funding
to access another centre. I would like to ask the minister, over the past couple
of hours we have learned that after meetings with the Premier and meetings with
the minister that two directors from her department informed the Vera Perlin
Society that it will receive no funding. I ask the minister: Is this proper for
a minister of the Crown to instruct her directors to pass on the bad news to
this very important society?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to respond
to the question by saying that we have met with the Vera Perlin Society. I'm
very pleased with the work that the Vera Perlin Society has done for the
developmentally delayed people of this Province. However, at this time I have to
confirm that we do not have the dollars to provide the funding to the Vera
Perlin Society to commence work on another facility, a training centre as they
have now.
MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St.
Mary's - The Capes.
MR. MANNING: Mr. Speaker, over the past number of weeks
we have listened to ministers opposite talk about restraint, talk about fiscal
problems that they have had. I would like to ask the minister: Doesn't she
realize that sending these people home - because basically that is what is going
to happen to these people at the end of December - and not allowing people who
are on the waiting list to partake in training is going to cost this government
much more dollars than what it has cost to put them in the centre for training?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess the hon. member
didn't hear the president of the Vera Perlin Society on the radio this morning.
I listened to him with great interest and he said that the Vera Perlin Society
will work on different, I guess, solutions to the problem. One of the solutions
that they talked about was the shift system for the current members of the Vera
Perlin Society. Unfortunately, they do have a waiting list, as do a lot of other
organizations in this Province and, at this point in time, at a time when I have
been asked to look at cuts to my budget, I regret that I am unable to supply the
funds they need.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The
Capes, on a supplementary.
MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I say to the minister, the Vera Perlin Society has no choice
- when you are thrown over the wharf, you either swim or drown.
I say, Mr. Speaker, that you are going to throw these people
out on the street, a cold, callous act by this minister to these people who need
this training.
I ask the minister: Would she, once again, once again, try to
find the funding that is needed to put these people in the proper training that
they need to live normal lives in this Province?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.
MS YOUNG: I take exception to that, Mr. Speaker. We
didn't throw anybody over the wharf - that is utterly ridiculous!
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) thrown over the wharf, is
him.
MS YOUNG: Yes, I agree with you.
Unfortunately, the Vera Perlin Society find themselves in a
position that they are unable to provide the space to the people they serve, and
I can certainly understand the dilemma they are faced with, but we also have a
dilemma that we have to deal with. Even today, we are looking at ways that we
can deal with all of the problems that we have out there around training for the
developmentally disabled. We will do a review of all the dollars that we are
putting into that area and hopefully, the right solutions will be found to deal
with all of the people out there who require the services of our department.
Again, I want to say, that we are very, very, appreciative of the service that
the Vera Perlin Society have provided to the people they serve.
Thank you.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East
Extern.
MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have a question for the Minister of Employment and Labour
Relations; then, I was planning to go to the Premier but he is not in his seat,
either, Mr. Speaker, so I will go to the Government House Leader.
Could the minister confirm that hundreds of workers at the
Hibernia site are working under permit, which means that they are union members
while employed at the site, and once finished, they are not part of the union
anymore, thus not eligible for financial benefits associated with being part of
the union, even though they have contributed significantly to the union?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment.
MR. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As the alternate minister, Mr. Speaker, I will take it under
advisement -
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. ROBERTS: Byrne primus reads the question, you will
read the answer.
MR. AYLWARD: That's right. I mean, that was a detailed
question. We will undertake to get the answer very quickly and get back to him
this morning.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East
Extern, on a supplementary.
MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Does the minister find it acceptable that hundreds of permit
workers, who contributed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars to
the international union pension fund, which is controlled outside this Province,
will not get their money back or receive benefits that their hard-earned money
should have earned them?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment.
MR. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, I won't comment any further
until we get the details so that we can respond with the facts to deal with his
question and I undertake to do that. We will do it as quickly as we can and get
back to the House of Assembly to provide the information.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I have a question for the Minister of Education and Training
and I want to emphasize to the minister, it is a question, not a suggestion, so
he doesn't put a twist on it as he did the last time I stood in my place.
I want to ask the minister: The teaching profession is
rampant with rumour that the government is seriously considering - we call it an
early retirement program for teachers - those with a minimum of twenty-five
years service would be offered a package to retire so that would give the
minister some flexibility to -
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Members can laugh all they like but, I
mean, it is a matter that is taken very seriously by the teachers of the
Province.
MR. TOBIN: It is not like `Roger' with his teacher
pension (inaudible).
MR. W. MATTHEWS: He doesn't care anymore; but, Mr.
Speaker, is the minister considering this to give his department flexibility to
implement his teacher certification program? Because, unless they get new blood
in the profession, I can't understand how the minister is really going to
implement the new teacher certification program.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Education.
MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I am sad it is not a suggestion.
The hon. member will know that the pension funds in this
Province are in a terrible mess today, and whoever would even dream that
government is considering pensioning teachers after twenty-five years, I would
have to tell the hon. member, they are dreaming in Technicolor. There is
absolutely no basis for it whatsoever.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader on a
supplementary.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
It seems as if there is a lot of dreaming on the other side,
I say to the Minister of Education.
AN HON. MEMBER: There is a lot of dreaming over there.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, but they are good dreams, I say to
the minister; they are not the nightmares the minister is going through now on a
daily basis.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, let me ask the minister
this: Right now there is a provision for teachers to take a `thirty and out'
option. Is government considering doing away with that `thirty and out' clause
for the teaching profession, in light of budgetary problems? Or is the minister
hoping to address this in the upcoming negotiations with the NLTA?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Education.
MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, that question would probably be
better answered by the Minister of Finance, but I am not aware of any deliberate
attempt by government to abolish `thirty and out' or not to abolish it, but I
would suggest, and I think the President of Treasury Board could correct me if I
am wrong, that in the upcoming negotiations everything will be on the table, and
after the negotiating period - but I can tell the hon. member, I can reassert,
that, as the hon. member knows, our pension funds are in a terrible mess, and I
think it is more important to deal with it when you are forty-five or fifty
years old than to deal with it when you are seventy years old and then the thing
goes `busted'. That would not be a good thing to do.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for - the hon. the
Leader of the Opposition - the hon. the Opposition House Leader, on a
supplementary.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER: I will get it right after awhile.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much for your vote of
confidence.
It seems the minister, really, has indirectly answered my
question. It seems to me that the `thirty and out' option for teachers in this
Province is certainly on the blocks, I say to the minister. but I want to ask a
final supplementary of the minister, something I asked a few weeks ago about an
alleged situation with the Central Regional College, at the time involving two
people who were supposedly using college vehicles for private use. The minister,
at that time, said it was under investigation. Can the minister report to the
House whether there has been a conclusion to the investigation, and what the
results are?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Education.
MR. DECKER: Yes, Mr. Speaker, we received an anonymous
letter telling us that two people working at the college had used a government
vehicle in an improper manner. We did follow up with an investigation, and in
the case of one person there was absolutely no basis whatsoever. The person did
leave the Province, but he was accused of taking his son or daughter to
university. There was no truth to it whatsoever; his son or daughter did not
attend, but went to the university, I think, two or three weeks before that
event.
In the case of the other person, it seems that indeed the
person did attend some functions on behalf of the college and take his son or
daughter to the university at the time. We did advise the person in charge, the
person who did this -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has asked me a
question. If they want to hear the answer I will answer. If they don't,
(inaudible) outside the House.
In the case of the other person, it was probably poor
judgement as opposed to deliberately doing anything improper. He indeed did
attend some functions on the Mainland, and went in a government vehicle, which
was quite proper to do - it didn't cost any more by doing it that way; it
probably cost less - but it is one of these things which did not look proper, so
I think it was a case of poor judgement as opposed to doing anything which was
illegal or maliciously wrong. The person has since apologized for his action,
and assured that it won't happen again.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Opposition House Leader, on a
supplementary.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
The minister was a little forthcoming in his answer, but let
me ask him this: The person who used bad judgement, poor judgement, two things:
Was it the president or the director, or the principal or the director? And will
the person who used the vehicle for private use be reimbursing the college?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Education and
Training.
MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I didn't say the vehicle was
used for private use. I don't think the hon. member heard me say that.
AN HON. MEMBER: Yes you did.
MR. DECKER: I said - well, if I said that I will withdraw
it, it was wrong. It was not used for private use. The person I am talking about
is the principal of the college for Central Newfoundland. He attended some
functions on the mainland which were quite legitimate functions in his job as
principal of that college. During that visit, he took his son along with him to
attend the university. I just forget the details.
If he had not taken his son along, he still would have made
the visit, still would have done the same thing. So I suppose there is nothing
illegal or wrong about that. However, some people were offended by this and read
some motives into it, of which, certainly on the surface of it, we cannot
substantiate these accusations. But it was a case of poor judgement as opposed
to doing anything deliberate. If I said that he used it for personal use, I
withdraw that. I didn't intend to say that. I think Hansard will show that I did
not say that, Mr. Speaker. He made a legitimate business trip on behalf of the
college and took his son along at the same time.
AN HON. MEMBER: Not so.
MR. DECKER: If the hon. member says that is not so, and
has some proof of that, put it on the table and I will deal with it. But if the
hon. member is making an accusation he had better be prepared to substantiate
it.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Ferryland.
MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have a question for the Minister of Health. The Health Care
Corporation of St. John's experienced a budget shortfall of $1.4 million in the
first quarter. With the second quarter well beyond its point by a
month-and-a-half, I ask the minister if this shortfall has been recovered, and
could he now tell us the fiscal position of the Health Care Corporation after
the semi-annual update?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health.
MR. L. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Health Care Corporation, like any other hospital board,
is given a yearly budget. The fact that they may have had a shortfall of $1.4
million the first quarter does not indicate that that will follow through the
year and that it has to be that situation at the end of the year. Any
difficulties that any health hospital board, including the Health Care
Corporation, have in budgets, they work it out through the year. They are
addressing any budgetary problems they might have. They have not come to me and
said: We need more money. They have said: We are dealing with any problems we
have in a responsible way.
I am confident that the Health Care Corporation will come
within budget, if at all possible. If not, there will be a more than adequate
explanation given by them, and certainly by us, to the people of the Province on
that account.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
Question Period has elapsed.
Orders of the Day
MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Member for
Mount Pearl.
MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, more or less by way of a point
of clarification and let me be very clear in the beginning, not to challenge
Your Honour's ruling a few moments ago in relation to my friend from St. John's
East Extern. Beauchesne is very clear that no words are deemed to be
unparliamentary in every sense of the word nor are they deemed to be not
parliamentary in every sense. Every circumstance is different, it depends on the
timing, the circumstances, the tenure of the House at the time, how it is said,
whom it is said by and to whom it is said. So there are no hard and fast rules.
Beauchesne is very clear,
Section 486, page 143 of the sixth
edition, it reads here; "There are few words that have been judged to be
unparliamentary consistently, and any list of unparliamentary words is only a
compilation of words that at some time have been found to cause disorder in the
House." I am sure Your Honour would want to say that the reverse is also true.
Words that are deemed to be parliamentary some times may well be judged by Your
Honour to be unparliamentary at other times. I am not questioning the fact that
the ultimate authority is Your Honour and that you may judge at one time that a
word is parliamentary and rule it in order and another time you may rule it to
be unparliamentary and out of order. I just want to, for the record, Mr.
Speaker, so that we know where we sit on this refer to Beauchesne,
Section 489,
it says: Since 1958, it has been ruled unparliamentary to use certain words. In
Section 490, it says: Since 1958, it has been ruled parliamentary to use certain
words.
In the list of words that have been ruled as parliamentary
`coward' appears here in debates of April 1, 1976, pages 12386, 12409 and 12410.
So clearly the word, `coward' is listed in the words that have been ruled to be
parliamentary. Now I don't question the fact that there may well be
circumstances where Your Honour may rule that word or any word to be out of
order,
whereas in general terms, Your Honour may choose to rule it as being in
order. I simply want to say that the practice in this House - we have accepted
many, many occasions Your Honour, the word coward being thrown back and forth
across the room. I don't want to set a precedent by your ruling that would in
time have every word that we use in this House because we could carry this to
the extreme, that every word that we use in this House from time to time might
be ruled unparliamentary and there may be precedents set by Your Honours ruling
that we would be bound with in the future. The rules of this House are, as Your
Honour knows well, that our own precedent governs our Standing Orders -
precedent in this House and subject secondary to that of course, Beauchesne and
the rules and precedence used in parliament in Ottawa, Mr. Speaker.
So I simply want to say, Mr. Speaker, that we have to be very
clear. The context in which a word is said, in this case the word, `coward'. Now
if my friend was referring to, for example, the Minister of Social Services
having her directors advise the Vera Perlin Society that funding was not
available. My minister might say, `that is a cowardly thing to do.' Hardly, Mr.
Speaker, a terrible slur.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member to get to his point.
MR. WINDSOR: I am just about finished, Your Honour.
However, if an hon. member had returned for more and my
friend had said, `you are a coward because you did not go over the wall to
defend your country.' Now that would be a very serious offense and no doubt the
member would have the right to take offense to it. So what I am saying, Mr.
Speaker, is that the context is important.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I ask the hon. member -
MR. WINDSOR: Thank you.
MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order, the hon. the Government
House Leader.
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the
pompous prattle we have just heard.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the rules are very clear, it is
for Your Honour to decide whether an expression is unparliamentary or not. The
rule is very clear. What we had was pompous prattle from the hon. gentleman from
Mount Pearl lecturing Your Honour, which I suggest with respect, is offensive.
Not only that, Mr. Speaker, I suggest with respect -
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I am speaking to a Point of
Order.
AN HON. MEMBER: Sit down, Neil.
MR. ROBERTS: I suggest, Mr. Speaker - you don't know any
ruling, sit down.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The Chair would first of all like to rule on the Point of
Order raised by the hon. member. Let me say that there are occasions when
certain words are acceptable and when they are unacceptable. The hon. member
when speaking was responding to what the hon. Minister of Finance was saying and
clearly he said `coward.' I understand that to be referring to the hon. Minister
of Finance and certainly it is unparliamentary to call anybody in this House a
coward.
MR. WINDSOR: I thank you for your ruling, Mr. Speaker,
and I refer to Beauchesne again.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I also want to inform the hon. members that in our own
Standing Orders, before you get to the point of order, Standing Order 31 says
that the Speaker's rulings relating to oral questions are not debatable or
subject to appeal.
MR. WINDSOR: Is it proper to ask a member to shut up? May
I ask Your Honour that question?
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I did not hear any hon. member say it.
MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. WINDSOR: This is a new point of order, and let me
simply say that I think I made it clear in my submission that Your Honour is the
final arbitrator and I in no way would challenge, or wanted to challenge Your
Honour's right, an absolute right at any time to interpret any word as he might
see fit. I would refer however to Page 147 of Beauchesne and the list of words
that have been deemed unparliamentary. Clearly the word `pompous' is listed as
being unparliamentary and I ask Your Honour to direct the buffoon over there to
withdraw that immediately?
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader to the
point of order.
MR. ROBERTS: If I used an unparliamentary phrase, of
course, I withdraw it without hesitation. It is also unparliamentary to call the
hon. gentleman a bag of wind, and I did not use that phrase either, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the whole point of this is that the hon. member
was challenging your ruling by the subterfuge of raising a point of order which
is specious and I resent that Sir. It is an abuse of the privileges of every
member of this House.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
I understand that the hon. member has withdrawn the
statements he made. Answers to Questions for which Notice has been Given. Oh, I
am sorry; we are at Orders of the Day.
The hon. the Government House Leader.
MR. ROBERTS: John Carter, I say to my friend for Burin -
Placentia West once called an hon. member a quagga, q-u-a-g-g-a. I commend it to
my hon. friend to find out what it is. I would never call my hon. friend a
quagga. It is a word found in the dictionary.
Your Honour, before we get into the orders may I take a
moment to discuss the business of the House because members will be distressed
to know that I will not be here at noon. I have to go at 11:00 o'clock because I
have an encounter with the dentist. The Chair of the Standing Committee on
Government Services sent me a notice and I think it is appropriate to inform the
House that the committee wish to use the power conferred on them by Standing
Order 54.2 sub (1) and that is they wish to consider the Credit Union bill which
was given second reading here in the House the other day, so that process will
take place. I believe several members wish to go into details of the bill and
also, I believe, several members perhaps wish to ask witnesses to come forward,
so that will be dealt with in the appropriate way.
Secondly, may I advise the House that given what I understand
to be the desire of every member on the other side to speak at length on the
Electoral Boundaries bill and given our desire to accommodate them, we will
suggest that the House be prepared to sit late on Monday and Tuesday nights.
MR. TOBIN: We will sit a lot of nights.
MR. ROBERTS: It may well be. What the hon. Member for
Burin - Placentia West is doing is confirming the wisdom of the decision of
those of us on this side to provide him with whatever time he is entitled to
under the rules to give us his comments on that bill, and we shall gladly do
that. What I am doing is advising members of the fact that we shall be asking
the House to sit through the 5:00 o'clock until not later than 10:00 Monday
night and Tuesday night to deal with the bill. We want to give members the
chance to express their thoughts.
MR. WINDSOR: (Inaudible).
MR. ROBERTS: The hon. gentleman - I cannot call him
pompous so I won't - the hon. gentleman who is not pompous is once again
interrupting rudely and, you know -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. ROBERTS: Neil, don't get me into a discussion with
you. Getting into a discussion doesn't help anything.
Now Your Honour, with that said let us go on to the -
MR. WINDSOR: Afraid to debate it openly, aren't you?
(Inaudible).
MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend says I'm afraid
to debate it openly. I would ask him, when he was Minister of Finance, why he
didn't come to this House and ask the House of Assembly to approve the $24
million they had lashed out on Sprung? He was party -
SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!
The Chair has called Orders of the Day. We are now getting
into a debate. I ask the hon. member to get to the orders.
MR. ROBERTS: I regret, Mr. Speaker, that I allowed the
gentleman for Mount Pearl to lead me astray.
Your Honour, would we please call Motion No. 5, which is a
first reading, and then that bill is ready for distribution. I understand it
will be here before the House rises. That done, could we go into Committee, Sir,
and we will deal with the resumed debate on Motion No. 2. If we finish that then
we will go on to Motion Nos. 1 and 4 in that order, but I'm not presuming we
will get beyond Motion No. 2. That is a matter for the Committee and for the
House to decide.
Your Honour, would you first please call Motion No. 5?
Motion, the hon. the Minister of Justice to introduce a bill,
"An Act Respecting The Investigation of Fatalities," carried. (Bill No. 36)
On motion, Bill No. 36 read a first time, ordered read a
second time on tomorrow.
On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of
the Whole, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.
Committee of the Whole
MR. CHAIRMAN (Penney): Order, please!
Motion No. 2.
The hon. the Member for St. John's East Extern.
MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
say a few words on Bill No. 14,
An Act To Amend The Local Authority Guarantee
Act, 1957.
Bill No. 14 basically gives the towns, the municipalities or
the community councils within the Province the right to borrow funds to run
their communities. Basically since this government was elected in 1989 it has
been down loading on the municipalities in this Province, and it is basically
forcing these towns to borrow and to go further in debt. The towns too, now they
are in a position where they find it very difficult to borrow any more money and
so they are looking at, now, cutting services such as street lights within the
municipalities and the towns. Some of the municipalities in this Province today
are basically turning off their street lights. Garbage collection, I would say,
is the next one to be hit. Some towns and cities are collecting garbage,
household refuse, two times a week. That probably will be cut back to once a
week, and possibly once every two weeks.
Snow clearing in the Province, in the municipalities around
this Province, in the towns, last year the funding for the road maintenance and
the snow clearing in the Province was cut. The Department of Works, Services and
Transportation basically told the communities that it would not be responsible
for snow clearing and paying for snow clearing in the Province and the
municipalities, within the towns and community councils, and it cut funding to
the municipalities. So the municipalities are finding it very hard.
Basically, this government has been down loading, as I said,
since it was elected in 1989. Last year the government talked about a balanced
budget and it basically balanced the Budget, or the so-called balanced Budget,
on the backs of the health care in this Province. This year it is looking at the
municipalities for some help in balancing its Budget. The Minister of Finance
and Treasury Board was asked a question this morning with respect to the
municipalities. He said they are not raising taxes in the Province, that there
are three different levels of government in this Province, the municipal,
provincial and federal, and the municipal governments themselves are raising the
taxes, but in actual fact it is a direct result of the down loading and the
cutbacks that this government is forcing upon the municipalities in this
Province.
The towns in this Province that have water and sewer over the
past number of years has seen their debt retirement to the Province doubled.
They have seen their municipal grants cut by as much as 50 per cent and 60 per
cent, so in actual fact they are upwards of 100 per cent since this government
was elected in '89.
This government has also, since '89, this past year, looked
at education reform, and is looking at saving dollars within the education
reform. They had the referendum on that, wasted basically $2 million. The bill
has gone through the House, or the resolution has gone through this House, to be
sent to Ottawa. I remember the Premier saying on a number of occasions that that
would go through the House of Commons before this Christmas, and it is not
likely to go through the House of Commons this spring, and maybe not the winter,
so that is another $2 million that this government could have had to help
balance their budget - $2 million of the $4 million they are looking for from
the municipalities.
The municipal operating grants have been restructured since
this government has come in, which has a negative impact on a lot of the towns,
and somewhat a positive effect on a few of the smaller municipalities - I will
give them that - but this year, with the 22 per cent cut that this government is
putting on the towns within this Province, it is a very hard, a very harsh, move
and the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs has actually stated that
the grants to the municipalities may end in the near future, maybe in the time
of the mandate of this government.
When this government was elected they campaigned on a number
of issues, and I think one of those issues was the support of the municipalities
in this Province, but since they have been elected they have been cut, cut -
every year they have been cut - and now they are getting to the point where the
towns are going to have to become completely self-sufficient, so that brings up
another question. If the towns do become completely self-sufficient, and they
are getting no grants from the provincial government at all, or the Department
of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, then what autonomy will be given to these
towns? What autonomy that the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs
have at this point in time, what autonomy will be passed on to the towns
themselves? If they are getting no revenues from the provincial government,
should they be required to follow the regulations that are brought in by the
Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs?
Another down loading that the municipalities have had since
this government was elected is the roads component of the grants. When this
government took over in 1989 the towns themselves were getting as much as $2,200
per kilometre per year. Now that has been cut down to as little as $60 per
kilometre per year, which has had a very, very negative impact upon the
municipalities within this Province.
When I ran for council back in '86, I ran to become a
councillor and ended up as mayor of a small town, and I was quite proud to be
elected as mayor of a small town in this Province. I basically contributed
thousands of hours, volunteered thousands of hours, to the municipality that I
lived in, and was pleased to do that. Actually, I was the first mayor and we
ended up with a nice town, a town that was in the black, that did not have any
debt. When I was running to become elected to council, I ran on the campaign
that we should stay away from water and sewer, and some of the people in the
town, and some of the people in the neighbouring towns, thought I was crazy not
to be going after water and sewer funding, but my point at the time was that it
was too heavy a burden, too heavy a debt, and the cost per unit to install water
and sewer in this Province was just outrageous, and it did not make any sense to
me whatsoever. Now, I ended up getting elected and there was no one near me with
respect to the number of votes that I got in that small town. It proved out in
the end that it was a wise decision that we would stay away from water and
sewer. Some of the towns in this Province now are cursing the day that they went
after grants to get water and sewer - not grants, but loans.
Down in my district, in Flatrock, for example, that town
borrowed between $400,000 and $500,000 to put water and sewer in their town.
They put in basically a kilometre or two kilometres of pipe in the ground to
service the town. Not one house is serviced at this point in time, and they are
paying back a debt retirement of somewhere around $35,000 a year, and they are
not servicing one house, so you can see the foolhardiness of installing water
and sewer in these municipalities when they didn't have the tax base to support
it. Now, Mr. Chairman, with the cuts to the municipalities this year, I had
basically made up my mind, before I was elected to the House of Assembly back in
'93, that I was not running for council again in the upcoming elections for the
municipalities, and the reason why I made that decision, was the fact, that I
thought that the down loading on the municipalities in this Province was too
drastic, too hard and I could see the effects that was having on the
municipalities.
Now I say, that the Minister of Municipal and Provincial
Affairs basically, has the attitude that the towns are not paying enough for the
services, that their mil rate is not high enough and are not collecting enough
taxes, Mr. Chairman, but you know, if you go across this Province today, and
look at the people in these towns and you look at the unemployment rate, some
people say 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 50 per cent maybe, Mr. Chairman, the money
is just not there and there is no point in raising taxes if you have a mil rate
of five mils, seven mils or eight mils, whatever the case may be or ten, and
raise it by two or three mils, if a town now, is collecting basically 70 per
cent of their taxes, if a town is collecting 80 per cent or 60 per cent, if you
increase the mil rate, all that is going to happen is that you will have some
people who can afford to pay their taxes but you will end up, in the long run,
losing more money than you are actually collecting at this point in time because
the money is not there to be collected and increasing the taxes is not going to
help any of them in any way, shape or form, so I would say to the Minister of
Municipal and Provincial Affairs, that he should take a serious look at what he
is imposing upon the municipalities in this Province.
Tomorrow I believe, in St. John's there is a meeting of the
Federation of Municipalities where we will see a number of councillors coming in
from across the Province to discuss this very drastic step by the provincial
government and I would suspect from what I am hearing there will be a number of
resignations put to the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs tomorrow.
You will see many councils, maybe not tomorrow, you will see some, but in due
course before the next general municipal elections in this Province, Mr.
Chairman, you will see a number of the provincial municipal councils resigning
and not running again because they find it too hard. These people now,
basically, having to take the brunt for the provincial government. This morning
I sang out across the House the word, cowards, actually it wasn't the word
coward and a word that I should not have used according to the Speaker, and I
accept that, but, Mr. Speaker, the towns in this Province are finding it very
hard by the imposition of the down loading of responsibilities of this
government to the municipalities.
Just to get off the topic of the municipalities, Mr.
Chairman, this government also has hit the health care services in this Province
very hard over the past number of years. Now, I understand that they are trying
to balance their Budget and they have a very serious problem on their hands and
I believe that a lot of these problems have been created by the mismanagement of
this government. This government is in a situation now where they are in a
crisis management situation; they go from crisis to crisis and try to solve that
because of their poor planning.
The hospital care cuts in this Province have been very
drastic and whenever the Minister of Health is questioned on this topic, he
basically responds by saying: Health care in this Province is improving. Now,
Mr. Chairman, if there were any words that have ever been spoken in this
Province that are not accurate or basically tell the actual situation, those are
the words; that health care in this Province is improving, and I mean, I have
personal experience of this, Mr. Chairman.
In January of '90, I was in the Health Sciences Centre for
very serious surgery. I was again in there in February of '94 for the same
surgery and I could see a major, major difference in the health care services in
the hospital now. Personally, I have no complaints with respect to the service
that I had from the doctors or from the nurses who treated me in the hospital,
but I can tell you that the nurses themselves were overloaded. They were
overburdened with what they had to do, they were certainly understaffed and at
times now, Mr. Chairman, if you go to the Health Sciences Centre, you will see a
nurse, from what I can gather and my information has told me, one nurse for as
many as twenty patients.
Now that is just impossible for an individual to handle. I
mean just for the -
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. J. BYRNE: Pardon?
MR. SULLIVAN: There are some with thirty patients.
MR. J. BYRNE: The Member for Ferryland says a nurse in
there has to take care of thirty patients. Now, this is just physically -
MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) sick leave.
MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, I know - that's just physically
impossible, Mr. Chairman and now, they are getting to the point, that if there
is a nurse who phones in sick or takes the day off they do not even replace that
individual. Again, complicating the problems. Even just in general cleanliness
of the hospitals themselves, you can walk through the hospitals and see that
they are not as clean as they once were. In actual fact, now we have patients in
hospitals who have to make their own beds, Mr. Chairman. So the down loading of
the health care in this Province is becoming very drastic. The Minister of
Health can say what he wants but the health care in this Province is not
improving by any stretch of the imagination.
Now when we are talking about down loading, Mr. Chairman,
again the government is trying to save money. Well it is getting to the point
now where they are gone beyond down loading to the municipalities but they are
actually down loading to the families in this Province. Now, Mr. Chairman, I
know - again I have personal experience where there have been people in my
family or associated family who have been sick, they have gone to the hospital
and they have been sent home much too early. Very much too early and it is
basically left to the families to take care of them. Now the families want to do
their best and they do do their best in most situations. Most people care about
their own but there is a point in time where these people cannot do what needs
to be done. So again, the government is looking at home care in this Province
and it may be a good idea. There are some people who will question that. It
depends on what you would put in home care but the health care cuts in this
Province are very serious. I believe that the government should really take
another look.
There are two areas, as far as I am concerned that should not
be cut as drastically as other areas - I can see areas being cut of course but
the health of our population and the education of our population is all
important in my mind, Mr. Chairman. The education of our young people is all
important because that will tell the future of what is going to happen to the
people in this Province.
Mr. Chairman, I have had people say to me that this
government has no heart. That seems to be the general trend that is going around
now, that this government has no heart and I would have to agree with that. I
have made the comment to people, when they tell me that, that this government is
like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz. Now I believe the tin man in the Wizard of
Oz was looking for a heart. He had enough sense to know that he needed a heart
but this government, Mr. Chairman, does not have enough sense to know that they
need a heart. We have to have compassion in government and this is abruptly
pulled out of government in this Province. It was pulled out and not very
delicately either, Mr. Chairman, there was no scalpel used. When this government
was elected in '89 all compassion for the people in this Province has left
government.
This is a finance bill basically so I know we have a latitude
on what we can speak about but basically in the Emergency Employment Program
that was brought in last year, we hounded, we begged and we fought and we
finally got an Emergency Employment Program brought in by the Minister of
Employment and Labour Relations. He opposed us tooth and nail. He opposed the
government, he opposed the Opposition, he opposed the public who were begging
for an emergency employment program. They brought in an employment program of $5
million and they set the criteria to qualify for that - it was almost
impossible, Mr. Chairman. I know there were communities in my district that
actually sent back money because they could not get people to qualify because of
the strict qualifications for the Emergency Employment Program.
Now we have people out there this year and we asked for it
again and the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations stood on his feet and
point blankly said no. There was a resolution brought to this House to bring in
an Emergency Employment Program, members on this side of the House voted for the
resolution but I believe everybody on the opposite side, the government side of
the House, voted no to the resolution to bring in an Emergency Employment
Program into this Province. Now again, I find that to be a very heartless move.
There are people out there, Mr. Chairman, in this Province today, and I
mentioned this before, who do not know where their next loaf of bread is coming
from or their next pound of butter and that is a very, very serious situation. I
believe that this government is largely responsible for that very drastic, very
serious, very hard situation in this Province today.
For some reason or other, I really don't understand why this
government and members opposite do not comprehend the situation out there today.
Members opposite have to be getting the same calls that I am getting. They have
to be getting the same calls that the members on this side of the House are
getting, Mr. Chairman, but they don't seem to understand. If they do understand
they certainly are not prepared to do anything about it, and they should.
If you drive around this Province today you have to wonder
what is going to happen to the rural communities. If you take a drive through a
number of the communities you have to wonder, you have to see, that the
out-migration is certainly visible at this day and age. Last year I believe
there was somewhere around 12,000 people who left. In the past three years, from
what I can gather, there have been 16,000 people leave this Province. Over and
above what has come into this Province.
MR. EFFORD: We know that. What do you suggest we do?
MR. J. BYRNE: I have all kinds of suggestions to the
Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.
MR. EFFORD: We know all that.
MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, you know all that stuff. Why don't you
do something about it? I would suggest to the Minister of Works, Services and
Transportation that that government over there is elected to do something about
it, to come up with the ideas. You people are the people who are getting paid to
come up with the ideas to solve the problems in this Province. What the problem
is here now is that they are like a vacuum. They are sadly lacking in any
creative idea to create jobs in this Province, to keep people in this Province.
I believe that there is actually a plan afoot to help reduce the population of
this Province.
Since 1989, Mr. Chairman, this government has brought in a
number of policies that would certainly lend a hand to, or help, the outflow of
people out of this Province. I can get into a number of them. We don't know what
the results are going to be for this year with respect to out-migration. We
don't know what will be next year or the year after. I think that basically the
government has a plan afoot to balance its budget by maybe, in a number of
years, getting 100,000 or 200,000 people to leave this Province and it would
have less people to be responsible for.
I think that the plan with respect to basically the nineteen
economic zones, again, will end up being maybe nineteen counties. They are
forcing the municipalities to cut the services in their towns. What will end up
happening is you will have many of the councils, as I said earlier, resigning,
many of the councils not running for re-election. Then the amalgamation issue or
the regional government issue will be much easier for this government to put in
place because it won't have people who are too opposed then. It won't have
people in place to oppose its moves, its cold-hearted moves.
By doing that, by reducing the number of towns in this
Province, of course the government will save money. That gets back to their
balanced Budget again. The balanced Budget, the so-called smoke and mirrors
budget of this government. The Minister of Finance and Treasury Board himself
said that it was a smoke and mirrors Budget last year. So were the government
being honest with the people? That question begs to be answered and asked.
MR. EFFORD: What's your suggestion? You haven't given one
suggestion (inaudible)!
MR. J. BYRNE: My suggestion to the Minister of Works,
Services and Transportation is that when he was in Opposition he wasn't shy in
pointing out the faults of the government of that day, and he didn't have any
suggestions. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation stood on his
feet yesterday, Mr. Chairman, and whenever he gets on his feet he talks about -
I hate to bring up the word - cucumbers and pickles. That is all he seems to
harp on. What he didn't mention, and I was planning on getting into that, was
the Trans City situation which the Member for Kilbride stood on his feet
yesterday, said, what was it, $42 million? The Hydro, $10 million.
MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).
MR. J. BYRNE: Same thing, what has spring got to do with
it? Ten years ago, Sprung. Then we have $50 million, $60 million, $70 million
spent by this government at this point in time. I should stay away from the
remarks of the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation because he is only
trying to distract me, and he is doing a good job, Mr. Chairman. He is doing a
good job with distracting; that is all he is good for.
Back to the balanced Budget and the smoke and mirrors Budget.
This government at this point in time - and the minister is quite aware of this,
but I don't know if the back benchers over there are as well aware as the
minister - but it is struggling now to balance its Budget again with its $60
million so far. It is looking at cuts and more cuts.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. J. BYRNE: Again I'm going to be distracted. I say to
the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation that the government - half
the people on this side of the House were not in that government, they had
nothing to do with it. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is
part of a government over there that has been in place for six, going on seven,
years now, and all they can do is blame the previous government. It is a tired
line and he doesn't realize it.
He has been in government for six or seven years - in
government itself, I don't know how long he was in Opposition. It was the
previous government, I believe the Liberal government, defeated back in the
early 1970s, in power from 1949, for twenty-one or twenty-two years, who created
the problem we have today.
Now, I know the Minister of Works, Services and
Transportation would love to have $800 million a year into the coffers of this
Province, and if the previous, previous administration, the Liberal government,
had not signed the Lower Churchill deal, we would have $800 million flowing into
our coffers at this point in time - that would be $800 million per year - and
they talk about $22 million over seventeen years, no comparison at all.
This government has said it is in crisis management. And the
morale of the employees in this Province, and it goes through every
section of
government, every government department - the employees are becoming completely
demoralized. I was hoping the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs would
be here this morning, because I know of people in his department - and it is
happening in other departments but I can name people in his department - who are
sitting at their desks crying because they don't know what is going to happen to
them in this Province.
MR. EFFORD: Who? Who is crying?
MR. J. BYRNE: Employees of the Department of Municipal
and Provincial Affairs are actually crying at their desks because they don't
know what is going to happen to them. That is the type of situation that this
government has brought the people of this Province to. It is actually completely
demoralizing.
The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation said he
would like to have some recommendations. Well, the biggest one I would like to
pass on is to the Premier himself, and that is this: They should not be so
negative. I have yet to see the man stand in his place in this House of
Assembly, or in public, and say something positive about Newfoundlanders. I have
yet to hear him say anything positive about the economy. There are always
qualifications with respect to anything he says.
Also with respect to recommendations, this government is not
standing up for the people of this Province. Everything that comes down from
Ottawa is, `Yes, Prime Minister; yes, Prime Minister; yes, Prime Minister'. We
have the transfer payments that are being cut cold-heartedly. It must be the
former government that is in Ottawa also. Liberal times must really be hard
times. We have the Premier and the ministers of this government taking
everything sent down from Ottawa, `Yes, Prime Minister; yes, Prime Minister;
yes, Prime Minister', and then we have everything that is going on in this
Province, we have the ministers on that side of the House, everything that the
Premier says, it is, `Yes, Premier; yes, Premier; yes, Premier'. What they
remind me of - I think back in the 1960s and 1970s the cars used to have a
little dog in the back window, and the head used to be constantly moving up and
down, up and down; it used to be going up and down all the time. This government
reminds me of that little dog: `Yes, Premier; yes, Premier; yes, Premier' - they
will not take him on - to everything he says. And we saw an example of it
yesterday when we met to discuss the cuts that are coming in this Province.
We know that cuts are coming to the UI. Some major changes to
the UI system are coming in this Province, and we have asked the Minister of
Employment and Labour Relations to speak up on behalf of the people of the
Province, but he squeaks up, he whispers, and he says nothing to Axworthy, the
Minister of Employment and Labour in Ottawa, HRD, whatever the case may be. He
is not saying anything. He is just accepting, accepting, accepting. We need
somebody to stand up and pound his fists and say, `We are not going to take it
anymore'.
We had jobs leave this Province, towed out of Marystown. We
heard the Premier say: Well, that's all we can do; we have to accept it. We saw
the situation in the dockyard with Marine Atlantic; now, we have to accept it -
we have to accept everything. I say we don't have to accept it.
We have cuts coming to TAGS. We have people being laid off
right, left and center from TAGS, let go, and what do we have over here? We have
the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture, who doesn't even know that
fisheries is a part of his district, a part of his responsibilities. I ask him a
question and the answer I get is: It is under review and we are going to check
into that.
As a matter of fact, there shouldn't be a Department of
Fisheries, Food and Agriculture; there should be a Department of Fisheries in
itself. I have to say that I am not a fisherman and I have never fished in my
life. The most I know about fishing is from when I grew up in Torbay, going over
to Tapper's Cove, getting a fish from the fishermen and bringing it home.
Now, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation was a
real spokesman for the fishermen in this Province when he was in Opposition, and
I didn't hear any constructive comments made by the minister at that time - all
he did was complain, complain, complain. I think I am going to get him on his
feet this morning. I do believe he will be on his feet this morning.
Now, as I said, the Minister of Works, Services and
Transportation stood yesterday and talked about the $7 billion of debt that was
left by the previous Administration, and he talked about the cucumbers, $22
million, Mr. Chairman, but he didn't mention anything about the government
before that bringing in rubber boot factories. Where are they today? How many
millions did that cost us? Chocolate bar factories - he didn't get on his feet
and preach about the chocolate bar factories that were brought in. Where are
they today and how many millions did that cost the government and the taxpayers
of this Province? I believe there were also orange juice factories brought in,
or they tried implementing them in this Province. When he was on his feet the
other day, I didn't hear him say anything about that. He talks about a debt of
$22 million compared to billions of dollars yearly by the previous
administration.
It is a farce. He didn't mention the $10 million that they
wasted on Hydro when they were advised against it, Mr. Speaker. He didn't
mention the $2 million on the referendum. He didn't mention the Cabot
Corporation. He didn't mention the patronage appointments of this government,
which have gone into hundreds and hundreds, Mr. Chairman. That is costing the
Province millions and millions of dollars. He didn't mention the patronage with
respect to the rental of office space throughout this Province. In less than a
year after they were elected they were putting people in buildings in this city
that were owned by known Liberals, taking them out of other buildings and
putting them in those. He didn't mention that. I can name them. He knows, Mr.
Chairman.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. member's time has elapsed.
MR. J. BYRNE: By leave.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Does the hon. member have leave?
The hon. member doesn't have leave.
MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).
MR. J. BYRNE: He spoke on this, Mr. Chairman. He spoke
yesterday on this.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I remind hon. members that, in Committee
stage, a member can speak more than one time to the motion.
The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.
MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin my speech I just want clarification on the
time because I understood that in Committee you go ten and ten back and forth.
And do I have ten minutes or thirty minutes?
MR. CHAIRMAN: It has been the custom of this hon. House
for the last number of years that by agreement members have spoken ten minutes
back and forth, but such agreement was not arrived at, at this time, so we are
reverting to the Standing Orders which allow hon. members thirty minutes. If it
is the wish of the House to limit it to ten minutes, then the Chair will
entertain that.
The hon. the Opposition House Leader.
MR. W. MATTHEWS: I understand, Mr. Chairman, that most
members who have spoken have utilized their thirty minutes. The hon. minister
has spoken before, so I don't know if he used his thirty minutes or not. If he
has, then I don't think the minister can speak, but if he has used less than
thirty minutes, then I have no problem with him using what is remaining. You are
right, we did not make an agreement. Usually in Committee on finance bills we
agree to ten and ten but we didn't do that this time.
So, I have no problem with the minister using up whatever
time he has left from his thirty minutes, if that is the case.
MR. DECKER: You can't go thirty, thirty, thirty!
MR. W. MATTHEWS: Oh, no, you can't go thirty minutes,
thirty minutes, thirty minutes, I say to the Minister of Education, I mean, we
would be here forever. Do you want to get the House closed for Christmas?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I remind the hon. minister that when he
last spoke to this he spoke for a total of six minutes, so if he wishes to use
up the other twenty-four minutes, he may do so.
For the benefit of hon. members, the Chair was reminding
members that previously there had been an agreement by members that at Committee
stage, hon. members would speak for ten minutes, but that arrangement was not
made here at this sitting, so members were allowed to speak for thirty minutes.
The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation
has spoken in this debate, on one occasion, for a total of six minutes. The
Chair has recognized the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.
MR. EFFORD: They can try to delay, Mr. Chairman, but they
are not going to stifle this minister. I have things to say and I am going to
say them - provoked again by the hon. the Member for St. John's East Extern, who
is now going to leave the Chamber because he is afraid he might get some
knowledge passed along, some good information.
Mr. Chairman, I take exception to some of the comments coming
from -
MR. TOBIN: `John', I have to leave now (inaudible).
AN HON. MEMBER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for St. John's East, on
a point of order.
MR. HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Works, Services
and Transportation unfairly commented on the presence or absence of a member in
the Chamber. He accused the Member for St. John's East Extern of leaving the
Chamber because he was speaking. That's unparliamentary, Mr. Chairman, and he is
not allowed to say it. He is not allowed to comment on the absence of a member
from the Chamber and he should withdraw those comments.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services
and Transportation, to that point of order.
MR. EFFORD: It's too bad, Mr. Chairman, that the hon. the
Member for St. John's East wasn't listening. What I said, very clearly was, that
the hon. the Member for St. John's East Extern was now leaving the Chamber
because he didn't want to get some good information for his next speech.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair will rule on that.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!
MR. TOBIN: As usual (inaudible).
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!
The Chair has noticed that recently there are a number of
hon. members in this Chamber making reference to the fact that members are not
in their places, and I remind all hon. members that it is unparliamentary to do
so.
If in fact, the minister, as he has stated, made reference to
a particular issue, that the member was leaving because he didn't want to hear
something, that is not unparliamentary.
MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to say to the hon. the Member for St. John's East, it
is too bad that he doesn't obey all the rules of the House. He tried to have me
obey one that I didn't break.
Mr. Chairman, the Member for St. John's East Extern stood for
thirty minutes and talked about the position of the Province today. He talked
about this government not doing anything. I say to the hon. member that he
hasn't been listening. He has been sitting in this House of Assembly for the
last couple of years, but he hasn't been listening very clearly.
AN HON. MEMBER: He will never be back again.
MR. EFFORD: I don't think he will get back again because
I believe now, that the people of St. John's East Extern see the error of their
ways. We have major financial problems in this Province; we have -
AN HON. MEMBER: Obey a rule you didn't break.
MR. EFFORD: Typical lawyer, a typical lawyer, trying to
get me to obey a rule I didn't break.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!
MR. EFFORD: All I hope, Mr. Chairman, is that the hon.
member doesn't send me a bill for that.
Mr. Chairman, we have some serious problems in this Province
and you could stand, whether it is ten minutes in Committee or whether it is
twenty minutes or thirty minutes, is not the issue, but if you stand, day after
day, in speeches on all the bills and you are saying the same thing over and
over and over again, pointing out that we have problems. We know we have
problems. We know what the massive debt in this Province is, we know that it has
to be dealt with, we have been making some major, major decisions to deal with
that, very unpopular with the electorate, very unpopular with people who are
affected by them, very unpopular with those who have to give up something, but
the decisions that are in the best interest of this Province have to be made.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) same speech (inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: Well, I have to give the same speech that I
gave yesterday, because the hon. members keep repeating the same speech that
someone in their office writes over and over again. I mean, it is nothing new,
but if they keep giving the same speech, then I have to keep going back telling
them what they did for seventeen years and what we have to do to correct the
situation, it is as simple as that. It is just as simple A, B, C, D, E, F, G, no
different. Just as simple as the alphabet that you have to keep repeating it
over and over so they will understand that we have a problem.
Now, what do you do with a $7 billion debt? Do you let it go?
Do you keep expanding it? Do you let it grow and grow and grow? I would not mind
if one member opposite stood up, if one hon. member opposite stood to his feet
and took five minutes and made some good suggestions about what you should do to
straighten the books out, to balance the books. What is the right thing to do?
We are making those decisions. We are making the decisions that are necessary to
balance the books and government has to get its House in order. We have been
getting our House in order for the last two or three years. It is very difficult
with what we took over. It is very, very difficult and it is very, very
difficult when you start taking things away from people.
Now one of the reasons why I wanted to get up for a few
minutes and talk about it is that the hon. member spoke about Trans City because
I brought up about the cucumber farm yesterday. The hon. Member for St. John's
East Extern is more familiar - even though he was not in government with the
cucumber farm - then probably a lot of members are today because he lives out in
the east extern where Robin Bay dump is located, where the cucumbers were grown
and trucked out there and dumped that which was not given out for cattle feed.
They were dumped out there. So he said, `Well what about the Trans City?' Well
the difference is that the cucumber farm, the $27 million was spent and it just
disappeared, except the memory but the Trans City contractors built hospitals.
The hospitals are there. They were not dumped in Robin Hood Bay, they were not
destroyed, they were not burned, they were not closed up, they are the buildings
and the facilities are there. It is two different things altogether.
If you want to get into contracts about who got contracts on
a partisan decision then I can tell the hon. member about the former Minister of
Finance, who at the time, while he was in Cabinet, while he was in Cabinet had
rented accommodations to the government of the day to the tune of $500,000 a
year, which is still being rented, $500,000 a year income while he was a
minister in Cabinet. We want to get talking about who got what. You see? So, Mr.
Chairman, it is very simple, you cannot compare what happened with the cucumber
and the pickle factory to contracts of building hospitals. It is two different
scenarios altogether but the fact remains we do have a major financial problem;
we do have to deal with it and in order to deal with a massive debt in this
Province we have to make some hard decisions. It is going to impact very
clearly, Mr. Chairman, it is going to impact on the lives - I guess I may as
well go to the full extent and say every Newfoundlander and Labradorian, it is
going to impact on everybody's lives.
People's expectations will have to change, people's way of
life will have to change, people will have to seek alternative employment, job
opportunities, be more creative, more businesses will have to be started up by
individuals and yes, some people will have to leave the Province. I don't think
that has been a great change over the last - before Confederation, long before
Confederation people left, always ever did.
I can remember hearing my father tell me the story of when he
was eleven years old his father went to Boston to work, took him on the boat and
went to Boston. People always had to do that. There will never be enough work -
I should not say never, never is a long time - traditionally there has not been
enough work in this Province for all the people. That is the natural way. We
have all, perhaps most of us here in this House of Assembly, at one time or
another had to go out of the Province for work but there is nothing wrong about
that. There is nothing that people find: well this was something that was
started in the last few years. It is wrong. It has always been there. We would
like to have the perfect situation and everybody living in the Province, not so.
So the fact remains that we do have people leaving the
Province. They keep referring to the outward migration and that has caused, the
increase in that has caused, very simply, the closure of the fishery. Now there
is nobody in this House of Assembly and nobody in this Province who would like
to see the fishery come back any more than I would. The district that I
represent, the mainstay of the economy is the fishery. We have $18 million worth
of boats tied up in Port de Grave, most of the year, $18 million worth of long
liners. That is besides the small boats, beside the small thirty-five foot boats
and under. Luckily most of those boats are still fishing part-time of the year.
Not as much as they would like to, but the species that they are allowed to
catch do give them a reasonable standard of living. Big investment, $1 million,
$1.5 million in the boat, hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, in the
diversifying in the new type of fishery, but at least they are willing to try,
to make an attempt.
Now the hon. Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs is
being blamed by the Opposition for down loading on the municipalities. I talked
about it yesterday. I gave an example of communities in my own district which
have obtained monies from the government to put services in, water and sewerage,
which are paying less than $150 a year per household. It is quite clear that you
can't get a multi-million dollar service from the taxpayers of this Province,
from the government of this Province, and not have the responsibility of paying
a reasonable fair charge for those services.
For the most part most people of this Province believe that,
are willing to do their share, once the system is put in place and they can do
it. So when you tell a small council out in the area that you are not paying
enough taxes, that you have to get your house in order, that is the
responsibility of the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs to do that.
It is not a matter of down loading. It is making sure that everybody gets their
house in order and everybody pays their fair share; then collectively in the
Province, we all work together for the common goal of trying to get the
financial order of all of this Province in order.
I don't see anything wrong with that. There is an attempt
being made to do it. Standing to your feet and saying that this government is
not doing anything couldn't be farther from the truth. We are doing what we have
to do to get our financial house in order.
MR. HEWLETT: Why didn't you do it at Budget time?
MR. EFFORD: Pardon?
MR. HEWLETT: Why didn't you do it at Budget time? Why did
you come in with that big false Budget?
MR. EFFORD: It has always been done. There were major
steps taken the last Budget, there were major steps taken the Budget before,
there were major steps taken the Budget before that. But now, due to the drop in
the revenue, the economy of this Province, the job opportunities, due to the
transfer payments of Ottawa, due to the reorganization of the whole national
agenda, the financial agenda of the federal government of this country, which
is, the numbers I am hearing, three-quarters of a trillion dollars owed by the
taxpayer of this country. People are looking at us that we are the sole
proprietors of this Province. We are only elected by the people of this Province
to administrate their affairs. We don't owe the debt. Every man, woman and child
in this Province owes that money, that $7 billion. Every man, woman and child in
this country owes that three-quarters of a trillion dollars. It is common sense.
The hon. Member for Waterford - Kenmount knows that he is
only playing a political game when he gets up and asks the question as a critic.
It is an Opposition's responsibility to do that, I guess, that is the way he is
looking at it. But he knows full well if you have a massive debt you have to
deal with it. If a council out there is not imposing enough taxes and the
organization needs to be changed, the restructuring needs to be put in place, it
has to be done. You can't keep borrowing the money. People's expectations can't
keep growing. We can't keep handing out monies we don't have.
It is like your own son and daughter. They ask you for a car.
I can't afford to buy you a car. Change your expectations. They ask you for a
bike. I can't afford to buy you a bike, I don't have the money. You change your
expectations. You tell them no, the money is not there to do it. You don't have
to be a genius, you don't have to be a rocket scientist, all you have to do is
use some good, Liberal common sense. That the Tories for seventeen years never
had the ability to use.
The hon. Member for St. John's East Extern made another
reference about the former governments and chocolate factories. When the
governments changed in 1972 the total provincial debt was less than $1 billion.
Think about it. At the end of that term the total provincial debt was in excess
of $7 billion. That is a major problem.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: Yes, I point it out in debating here in the
House of Assembly, because they keep standing up and saying we are not doing
anything to deal with the problems in this Province. We have to keep telling
them: Yes, we are dealing with it, but you caused it and we have to take the
responsibility of correcting it.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. EFFORD: Yes, that is what is going to be said, and as
long as you keep saying it, we will keep saying it back. That is the point we
are trying to make. You caused it; we will correct it - $7 billion. Seven
billion dollars is a lot of money.
MR. ROBERTS: Look what they did to the pension funds.
MR. EFFORD: There is another example. What happened to
all of the pension funds? The money is not there now; it is not invested. There
is not enough money in most of the pension funds to be sustainable in the
future.
MR. ROBERTS: Peckford's bad decisions will be like the
albatross in the years to come.
MR. EFFORD: And who has to take the responsibility? The
people of this Province. Unless this government makes the right decisions, the
suffering in this Province, by every citizen of this Province, has not yet been
realized. Unless we can do something to correct the financial situation, unless
we can make the right decisions to correct the pension fund...
Let's talk about the teachers' pension fund. What about it?
The member this morning asked: Would we consider dropping back the age of
retirement twenty-five years? In the present teachers' fund, if the rules that
are in place now continue, by the year 2005 it will be bankrupt - by the year
AN HON. MEMBER: 2003.
MR. EFFORD: Well, is it 2005? The Minister of Finance is
not here. It may be 2003; that is even worse. Who has to correct it? The problem
is there; it has to be corrected. Are you saying we should turn our back on it,
and we should go out and borrow more money and forget about it? How silly. That
is the way you would do it. That is the way they would do it. That is the way
they did it in the past, and that is the way they would continue to do it. That
is the reason why you are sitting over there on the Opposition side with your
arms folded, because the people of the Province woke up. The people of the
Province came to realize that this cannot continue on.
I will tell you, I talked about it to a couple of my
colleagues this morning. For the most part, as hard as the decisions are that we
have to make, for the most part most people in this Province accept it. I am
serious; they accept the fact. They talk, and realize, and understand, as hard
as it is, that we know we cannot continue spending the way we spent in the past.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Going on into bankruptcy will solve nothing for
anybody. They understand that there are some hard decisions that have to be
made. They understand it. It is no good turning back and going over and
repeating what we did in the past. There is only one alternative.
AN HON. MEMBER: What is it?
MR. EFFORD: Get your financial house in order for the
future.
AN HON. MEMBER: How do you do that?
MR. EFFORD: Very simple; reorganize the whole system.
Change people's expectations, for one thing.
AN HON. MEMBER: Oh!
MR. EFFORD: Be honest with people. Tell people what you
can do for them. Tell people how much money they can expect to receive next
year. Do not keep misleading and blindfolding people with the wrong information.
It is a simple fact of getting your financial house in order, being directly
responsible for what you have to do, and telling the people the true facts.
I tell you, the majority that this government got in the last
election will be minute to what we get in the next election. Now I realize that
my margin of victory can only go up a very few percentage points and I will have
it all, but I have no doubt in my district, in the next election, even my margin
will increase, and that is because the people in my district, like all the rest
of the people in the Province, realize that we are working and the decisions we
are making are for their best interest, for the future of this Province, for the
children of this Province, for the generations to come, that the best interests
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).
MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Humber Valley.
MR. WOODFORD: By leave, Mr. Chairman. Does the member
want to finish his speech?
MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chairman has recognized the Member for
Humber Valley.
MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When everybody was
here saying `how great thou art' I thought they were talking about the Minister
of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, but it must have something to do with the
Member for Port de Grave.
I would like to make a few short comments on this Bill 14. I
might make it half-an-hour. After listening to a number of speakers now on both
sides of the House concerning this piece of legislation, this particular bill,
there are all kinds of insinuations being made, accusations, I suppose, being
flung back and forth across the House.
AN HON. MEMBER: Even (inaudible) a statement or two, as
well as insinuations.
MR. WOODFORD: A few statements of which probably some
were false, some were true.
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) paralegals (inaudible) Lynn
Verge here this morning.
MR. WOODFORD: It could be they are referred to as
para-leaders.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!
AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).
MR. WOODFORD: Mr. Chairman, the bill comes to the House
every year because it is an annual thing. The Department of Municipal and
Provincial Affairs gives permission to municipalities around the Province, or
guarantees loans for them at a number of banks, or whatever banks they deal with
around the Province, to do specific projects in their municipalities.
But, Mr. Chairman, I would say, the underlying problem with
all municipalities, with anything today that has anything to do with the economy
in this Province, any occupation, whether it be a construction company,
agriculture, the fishery - well, the fishery is a little different, I suppose,
because of the quota system and because of what happened in the groundfish
industry. But the bottom line is that people are just not working. If you have
nobody working, you have nobody paying taxes. You have no revenues - you have
nobody spending money at stores, you have nobody buying cars, nobody buying
fridges -
AN HON. MEMBER: And government gets no (inaudible).
MR. WOODFORD: - and government gets no revenue. There is
no RST, no GST, no income tax. In order for government, any government, to get
revenue there has to be - more specifically, the Federal and Provincial
Governments, because the municipalities are more limited on what they can
collect in the form of taxes. But federally and provincially they can collect
income tax, RST, they can put all kinds of fiscal regimes in place to collect
revenues. Municipalities are limited to some extent by the municipalities act in
what they can and cannot do.
As I said, the bottom line is that people are not working,
and when people are not working they can't spend. They can spend for the
necessities of life if they are drawing UI for a certain period of time, or
social services. They can live from day-to-day, week-to-week. But for the extras
they need, in order to stimulate an economy or to bring extra revenue into a
province or into a country, in order for government departments to put monies
back into the municipalities, the money is just not there.
Whose fault is that, Mr. Chairman? We have heard references
this morning going back to 1971 when the debt in this Province was $1 billion. I
don't have to tell any member of this House what the inflation rate was in 1971.
I don't have to tell anybody in this House what the interest rates were back in
1971. I can just come ahead to 1981, ten years later, and ask what the interest
rates were in this Province and in this country. They jumped from 8 per cent or
9 per cent overnight to 23 per cent and 24 per cent.
Now, Mr. Chairman, you put that alone, that one specific year
or two years, on to that $1 billion and start extrapolating as you go along.
There is no trouble to find out where at least half of that particular debt, the
total debt, came from, no trouble at all. Anybody who knows anything about
finance, about business, about running a fiscal regime, regardless of what it
is, there is no trouble to tell where a large amount of those funds came from.
Mr. Chairman, time and time again, I have stood in this
Chamber and said that the people of this Province will suffer forever and ever
and a day if we get up, day-after-day, blaming governments, blaming each other
for the mistakes of the past or whatever. You can't talk about a government in
this Province or a government in this country that haven't made mistakes, that
haven't made bad decisions, whether it is leadership, whether it is by a certain
minister in a government department or whatever; there have been bad decisions
made throughout our history, and it is always the person who stands today who
has to pay the price for those mistakes. And it's the way it is today. We have
had seven years since 1989. I can point back just a few months ago to bad
mistakes by the government opposite, and I am sure if government changes next
year, or in eighteen months, which it will, I will be able to stand on that side
of the House and say the same thing.
AN HON. MEMBER: No you won't.
MR. WOODFORD: I will be able to say: Well, the minister
had the opportunity to do that, the minister had the opportunity to do this, and
he didn't do it, he didn't avail of the opportunities.
We stood in this Chamber up in the old House of Assembly, I
think it was in 1989 or 1990, when the legislation was brought in dealing with
Enterprise Newfoundland and the Economic Recovery Commission, and we said at
that time that it was a waste of money. We had the old Rural Development
Authority there that looked after loans for small businesses in the Province,
looked after it well. The repayment schedules and the delinquent repayment
schedules of people in the Province weren't as high as they are today.
Enterprise Newfoundland today is something, someone said, like 40 per cent, but
I would say the 40 per cent only has to do with people who are probably not
paying at all. I would say it is closer to 70 per cent, because some people are
making a payment here and a payment there, and most banks and institutions today
don't include that with a so-called delinquent account. Because if you are
paying anything at all, they will usually put the principal on the end of it,
and just pay your interest as you go, just extend your time for payments. So I
would say, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador today is between 60 per cent and
70 per cent delinquent payments in this Province. That, in itself, doesn't have
all to do - that is not saying that the people who got the money shouldn't have
gotten the money, and it is not saying that the people who got the money didn't
run their businesses right - that is not necessarily true - but it probably will
come down to the way the economy is, the general feeling and the general working
of the economy in this Province today, and the attitude. There is a terrible,
terrible attitude out there today.
When people saw the Premier of the Province come on a couple
of months ago, speaking to the Board of Trade, and saying that we have a tough
two years ahead of us, whether it is true or not, that doesn't augur well for
anybody who is about to invest in this Province. It does nothing to help a
business in this Province try to extend or hire an extra man or woman, or
whatever, in municipalities throughout this Province.
We can go on, like I said, and blame and cast aspersions on
other people and on other governments, but we have to take the bull by the horns
and do something about the attitude in this Province today, and that comes from
leadership; that comes from the government of the day; that comes from the
Premier of the day. And leadership doesn't always mean that we have to cut, cut,
cut, cut, cut. Most people in this Province today would not survive if they
weren't allowed to make a payment on a car, a payment on a mortgage adjusted to
the amount of income they have, a payment for a holiday, a payment for children
going off to university or whatever. They couldn't survive, for instance, on
$1,000 or $2,000 a month if they had to go out and pay for those things
overnight. That's the way the economy works; that's the way the nation works;
that's the way people survive, because they get loans, they mortgage, they
amortize. That is how people survive, how communities survive, and how
governments survive.
As for municipalities in this Province, as far as I am
concerned today, the die is cast. The die is cast for municipalities in this
Province, whether we like it or not. This weekend, you will see mayors
resigning. It is not going to solve the problem. It won't solve the problem at
all. The minister will go out as he did in the past, with councillors, and so
on, and he will appoint people in those communities to do what has to be done
under the Municipalities Act.
Well, then, I say to the minister, that one of the things
that will have to be done within the next twelve months in this Province is,
amendments will have to be made to the Municipalities Act to accommodate a lot
of municipalities in this Province, that just cannot operate under the
restrictions of the Municipalities Act today. They can't move, there are only
certain things they can tax; they have an equalization component, a local
revenue component, they have a per capita component, they have a formula for
repayment on capital debt that they have to live with under the Municipalities
Act, period. They have to have their budgets in by December 31st, period. They
can't go to the bank and get a loan unless it is guaranteed by government. They
are restricted.
They are restricted in what they can do with regard to a
business coming into their community. They are restricted under the municipal
plans in their communities. If they need an amendment, they have to go to the
minister and it takes months and months and months by the time the bureaucracy
in this Province gets it through the system. One of the first things the
minister had to do, and it started last year, but I don't see it working, was to
arrange for offices, putting the work of different government departments in the
one office, sort of a central station whereby they can put out some of the fires
rather early so people can survive in this Province.
It is not happening, Mr. Chairman, and it is not going to
happen if we have people in those departments who want to justify their
existence. People in those departments who don't want - some of those, the
Department of Health, treading on their turf in the Department of Environment;
someone in Environment doesn't want development control telling them what to do.
Someone in highways doesn't want development coming in and telling them: That's
not right. We have to get clear of the system we have, if not, I can assure you
that businesses in this Province and municipalities in this Province, Mr.
Chairman, are out the door. They are finished, they are going to throw up their
arms in frustration and say: `Enough is enough', we just can't take any more.
And it is true - members opposite may not admit it, but it is true.
Back in the early 1970s when I was a mayor in the community
of Cormack, and for five years on the Federation of Municipalities representing
small towns in this Province, both in the Province and outside the Province,
when I sit around the table in another jurisdiction in this country and hear
mayors, like one who just quit yesterday, Mr. Harcourt, the Leader of the NDP, I
sat around the table with him many times as a small town representative from
this Province, the hon. minister was there and several other people who had been
federal Cabinet ministers over the years, and I heard some of the things that
were said at that time and I stand, representing a community of 760 people, and
those people were from the hundreds of thousands, they didn't have a clue, not a
clue as to what was happening even in their own offices.
I will never forget the time in Ottawa when I questioned a
certain mayor who went on to become a federal Cabinet minister in this country,
on some of the things that were supposed to be happening in her office and she
could not answer the question, and you know why? not because she wasn't capable
of absorbing the information, not because she wasn't capable if she had absorbed
it or knew it to be able to deliver it, but because the councils in those
jurisdictions were run by bureaucrats. They had their engineers, they had their
town managers, they had their city managers, they had their legal experts, but
in the small municipalities in this Province, what did we have to do? You had to
be the engineer, you had to be the tax collector, you had to be the dog catcher
- everything under the sun, under the Municipalities Act, you had to do it. You
had to deal with your staff, you had to deal with everything in those small
communities and they didn't have a clue what was in under the act, whether it be
a city act, whether it be a municipalities act governing smaller towns or what
have you. The same thing is happening in this Province today but the only thing
about it is that the mayors and councillors in larger municipalities in this
Province today are starting to see what is happening. They are starting to see
that they need the smaller municipalities. They are starting to see that they
need to be on top of what is happening in their departments, the same thing as a
minister. The minister got a job to control everything that is going on in his
or her department but if they lay down the law and say that I am firm, this is
what I need, this is what I want, this is what I expect from their staff, then
nine chances out of ten, 90 per cent or probably 95 per cent of the cases the
staff who work under the minister will make sure that that particular work is
done and will make sure that they won't so called 'screw-up' and they will make
sure that their minister or their mayor or whatever is protected.
Mr. Speaker, the municipal operating grants in this Province
since 1989 have been gutted. They have gone from $2,000 per kilometre for road
components down to as low as sixty-nine, now back up to $500. The other grants,
the whole structure of municipal operating grants has been changed, changed
completely. I had a mayor I was talking to this morning from a small community
in this Province who, all of a sudden last winter, because of the $3,000 the
Department of Works, Services and Transportation was charging for snow clearing,
they took it upon themselves to do it. It cost $12,000 last winter.
AN HON. MEMBER: To do what?
MR. WOODFORD: To do their snow clearing themselves. This
year they tendered it. They tendered the same thing this year for their snow
clearing this winter. The lowest tender they got was $48,000. They just cannot
afford to do it. They have been just told by the minister that they are cut 22
per cent which is equivalent to $25,000 from this municipality who has to do up
a budget before December 31. They are owed $108,000 in the community itself.
They cannot collect because there is nothing to collect, nobody working in the
community. A handful of people working in the community. A few people on the
TAGS program, a handful on UI, the rest on social services and they cannot
collect. What can they do? Just put yourself in some of those people's shoes and
just put yourself in a position that some of those people have when they sit
around the table after a hard days work, a bunch of volunteers trying to look
after municipalities in the Province and they just throw up their arms and say,
what can we do? It is alright to say that municipalities must take more
responsibility for the running of their towns and cities of this Province. Yes,
no question, they have been doing it for years, taking responsibility, but when
they got a certain amount of funds - they are told at the beginning of one year
that they have a certain figure to work with all throughout the next and then
all of a sudden someone tells them that they do not have it, what do you do?
An analogy I would like to draw here, Mr. Chairman, is this,
if most members in this Chamber - I don't know about most but probably a fairly
high percentage I suppose - got mortgages, cars or payments somewhere to some
financial institution in the Province - there are not to many here in this House
who can afford to go out and buy a car, write a cheque for $20,000 or buy a
house for $100,000. There are not too many, there are a handful. If you got
$2,000 a month coming in, your payments are $1,500, you got $500 for groceries
and a few dollars to pay the light bill. All of a sudden the bank manager calls
you and says: I want $1,700 this month or I want $1,800 this month. What do they
do? Now if they have a choice to come in and extend their mortgages or extend
their car an extra year they may be able to pick up enough dollars to cover it
but if they do not have any choice whatsoever, their income is stable, it does
not fluctuate at all up or down and they got no room to move and the bank puts
the squeeze on him, what happens next? They lose their homes, they lose their
cars or they lose whatever the payment was supposed to be made for they have no
room to move. Municipalities in this Province today have no room to move.
The larger centres, I will say, there is no question, if they
put their mil rate up because of the high value of their appraisals, their
properties, after the appraisals are done their properties are appraised at a
fairly high market value and then when they put up the mil rate half a
percentage point, or a percentage point, they usually collect a fairly
substantial amount of dollars, but in a smaller municipality in rural
Newfoundland the property values are set. Most of them are $25,000 or $30,000
and there are very few in those municipalities that go beyond $75,000, $80,000,
$90,000, or $100,000.
They can put the mil rate up to fifty if they like but they
cannot collect any more unless they put up the minimums for poll tax or the
basic minimums for a property in the community, and how can you justify that
when you have probably 80 or 90 per cent of the community on UI, social
services, or something? There is no infrastructure. They have no businesses
where they can attach an extra mil or half mil on a commercial rate. They have
absolutely nothing to fall back on only the people and the residential
properties in that particular community. There is absolutely no where to go.
Now, the example I just gave about this one particular
community this year in a squeeze and what they are going to do about it, I will
say the minister will have resignations passed to him tomorrow. I know of three
that will be passed to him tomorrow. I just pity someone in those particular
communities if they accept an appointment by the minister to take control of
those communities. I would not want to be the one walking into a store or post
office, or walking into a general meeting in those municipalities, after seeing
an elected person quit out of frustration, go in and say: boys, I am sorry the
mil rate has gone up an extra one or two, and you are paying an extra this on
garbage collection, an extra this for street lights, and so on when they could
not get the funds before. I pity those people.
Now, if they are foolish enough to accept it, I suppose, you
should not have any pity because there will be no pity from the people in those
municipalities. There is no compassion by the Department of Municipal Affairs,
absolutely no sympathy, no sympathy at all from anybody in government today for
the municipalities in this Province. The only thing they could hang their hat on
were the municipal operating grants. Because of the gutting of the other system
over the years this one at least, they thought, might be stabilized but now it
has gone down some $11 million. The minister has already stated that he not
finished.
People said it was because of monies that were spent in the
past. Sure, it is because of monies spent in the past. People asked for services
and in most cases they got them. People should be afforded the right to at least
good, clean, healthy drinking water in this Province. It is like the fishery,
year after year, after year, fishermen and politicians, some of them sitting
across the House today, screeched and bawled for more quotas, extra quota. I
remember in the election campaign of 1989 when John Crosbie was going to cut the
total allowable catch for northern cod, groundfish, and so on in this Province.
There was an outcry from some members opposite that it should not be done and
that it should not be touched, but at the same time today we hear people
opposite say, well you should not have done this a few years ago, or you should
have done it this way.
Hindsight is 20/20, Mr. Chairman. If we all had it there
would be no need for elections in this Province, absolutely none. The minister,
his officials, and his Cabinet colleagues are going to have to take heed or else
they are going to have, I would say, a bad, bad mess on their hands in the next
year to eighteen months. Because it is not only the smaller communities that are
hurting. The larger communities and the cities now are starting to hurt more.
For a mayor, Mr. Chairman, in this Province - and I will say
this publicly - to come on a television or publish in a paper, or anywhere else
in this Province, any of the news media, to sit down and accept a cut of 22 per
cent for the municipality should not be allowed to serve in that capacity. He or
she should not be allowed to serve in it. If there is one mayor in this Province
today to stand up in the media and say that he or she will accept the 22 per
cent to the municipalities, he or she should be booted out! He or she doesn't
deserve the position. I don't care who he or she is, if he or she is a Liberal
or PC or what he or she is. Get the hell out. He or she should be standing up
for the people. The same as today in this Province today, the Premier in this
Province today.
The federal government is gutting Newfoundland systematically
day after day. UI, health care, education. You could go on. Municipalities, CN
Marine, the ferry service. Newfoundland today is gutted and there is not a word
said about it. Absolutely nothing. Airports in the Province going to close,
nothing done, no responsibility. Who were we elected to represent? We were
elected in this Province to represent the people of this Province, and
regardless of who is in power in Ottawa you should take them on. We should take
them on. But we are not doing it.
I remember a few short years ago previous to the fall of
1993, it was the spring of 1993, when the federal government said there would be
a shortfall of $32 million to $33 million in equalization payments to this
Province. There was all kinds of criticism. There were ministers going off to
Ottawa, the Premier was off to Ottawa. Today? We've been gutted, we've been
almost left on our own down here, and there is not a word. There is absolutely
nothing said.
Members have to remember that within the next year, eighteen
months, I say to members opposite that they will have to face the electorate in
this Province. I can assure you that the concerns and grievances and everything
else that is going on in this Province today are not going to be forgotten.
People today remember. People today will be asking questions. They are more
tuned into what is going on. They are asking questions they didn't ever before
in this Province. Students today who are being told: Yes, get an education, get
your Grade XII, get out and go to some post-secondary institution, keep on going
- what do they do it with? The parents only have x number of dollars for income.
They go for a loan and they are told that: The parent is on the threshold. You
are making $40,000, $50,000 a year. Although you have a mortgage, although you
are paying for a car, although you are paying for this or paying for that, every
dollar you have coming in is going out, but the student is not allowed to get a
loan. Just because of that.
What do they do? The banks today have some programs out where
they are offering $5,000 for an undergraduate student. Big deal! All you have to
do is pay the interest on it. Sort of a line of credit. Come on in, sit right
down. What else do they do? The parent has to sign. For a graduate student it
might go up to a maximum of $20,000. Come in. The banks in this country today
have every individual in this country right by the tail. I could say something
else. Because they are squeezing them. Every time they squeeze them they are
hurting.
When I look in The Globe and Mail and I see 29 per
cent in corporate profits for last year, when I see banks going down to St.
Helena and setting up a bank where there are 5,000 people, when I see big
corporate buddies in this Province going off to (inaudible) are writing off a
$300 million loan in Mexico, when I see them writing off $200 million to Russia,
and when I look around this Province and every time you go in and get your bank
statement: $4 for this, $6 for that, $8 for that. If you haven't got any money,
if you are on social services or UI, don't come in, don't talk to me. The banks
in this country, Mr. Chairman, have a lobbyist in Ottawa who does nothing else
only lobby the federal government so it won't make any changes to the bank act
that will be detrim