March 11,

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS

Vol. XLI No. 6

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Before proceeding to Orders of the Day I would like, on

behalf of hon. Members, to welcome different delegations of students to the

House today. The first one is forty-five Grades V11, V111 and 1X students from

Brigus Academy, Brigus, accompanied by their teachers Syliva Smith, Harold

Stanford, Harold Clark, and bus driver Mr. Frank Bishop.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Also eleven Grades V111 and 1X students from

MacPherson Junior High here in St. John's, accompanied by their teacher Mr.

LeDrew.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: And ten Grades X and X1 students from Grey

River, accompanied by their teacher Stephaine Haines.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Statements by Ministers

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I would like to

announce today that I have formed a Committee to review the adequacy of the

Social Assistance program's response to single parents pursuing post-secondary

educational goals. I believe the formation of this Committee is necessary as a

result of a number of individual and group inquiries concerning the financial

needs of single parents while pursing education. In fact, I have personally met

with individuals and groups at Memorial University and I am satisfied of the

need to explore the obstacles which appear to impede single parents from

eventually becoming independent.

The Committee will be composed of two representatives from

the Department of Social Services and three from the community at large. The

members are as follows: Mr. Terrence Haire, Director of Social Assistance, will

be the Chairman; Linda Hammond, Social Worker Supervisor, will be a member;

Professor Sharon Taylor from the School of Social Work will be a member;

Margaret Ackerman, Director of Single Parents Association and Donna Morrisey,

fifth year university student, will be also be members.

The Terms of Reference of the Committee will be confined to

the exploration of the following areas:

(1) To review the response of the Social

Assistance Program to single parents attending post-secondary educational

institutions; (2) to assess and to consider the implications of not considering

the loan portion of student aid as income when determining eligibility for

social assistance; (3) to determine what impact, if any, changes to present

policies for single parents would have for other groups, i,e., married and

single students who apply for social assistance; (4) to assess the role of the

Social Assistance Program versus the role of the Newfoundland Student Aid

Program in providing financial assistance to students pursuing educational

goals; (5) to prepare a report for the Minister, including recommendations.

Single parents as a group comprise just over 30 per cent of

the total social assistance caseload. This group has unique problems

characteristic only to single parents. It is important, therefore, where

possible and appropriate, that regulations and policies encourage and facilitate

single parents seeking independence of Government assistance. Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Port au Port.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Minister for

the prior copy of the statement. I have to say that the Minister knew about this

problem for a long time now and I wonder why it is he announces a study now,

when he has already been hamstrung by the horrendous Budget that was brought in

here on Thursday. Mr. Speaker, I will say one thing, that the Minister is

finally listening to the plight of the single parents in this Province, and I

think we should thank the Member for Humber East for keeping the issue alive.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, the study is not really strictly

necessary, because most of the terms of reference the Minister mentioned here

now, I think can be answered by any Member of this House of Assembly. The

Minister has called for a study, and the makeup of the people of the study group

is certainly good. But I would say that this study should not take a long time

and the Minister should act on it. The answers to study are very predictable,

and the Minister should act on it as quickly as possible. I would also ask the

Minister if he would make the report public as soon as he receives it and not

keep it hidden. We would like to see the answer to that report in the House of

Assembly.

And, Mr. Speaker, I can tell him that student aid loans and

student aid should not be considered as income. I can tell him that right now.

The Department of Social Services should do everything in their power to ensure

that people who are on social assistance get the very best education possible,

whether it be at university, at vocational schools, or anywhere else. Thank you,

very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Is the hon. Member rising to speak to the

Ministerial Statement?

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of

the House to respond to the Ministerial Statement.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No. No.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair, again, can only put it to the

House to ask whether or not the hon. the Member for St. John's East has the

unanimous consent to speak to this statement. I gathered prior to my rising that

the hon. Member did not. Is that so? Does the hon. Member have the consent of

the House?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No.

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

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

MR. HARRIS: On a point of order. I am not certain who and

what Members may have said no to that; it seems unclear -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: - it seems unclear -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair does not have to know who the Members were. When

the Chair hears a negative, then the Chair can only say that the Member does not

have unanimous consent, because when the Chair hears one single negative, that

is not unanimous consent, so the Chair clearly heard 'no', I do not know where

it came from but I heard no.

MR. BAKER: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker?

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

point of order.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wonder if we could

revert to Statements by Ministers. There is another statement that needed to be

made today and then we could start Oral Questions a little later.

MR. SPEAKER: Do I have the consent of the House to revert

back.

Statements by Ministers

MR. EFFORD: Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as you

are aware, On March 31, 1990, I announced that the Department of Social Services

would redistribute the resources made available to alternative measures programs

within the Province. At that time, Mr. Speaker, at least 95 per cent of the

monies directed to alternative measures programs were allocated to one program,

The Central Newfoundland Youth Focus Diversion Program. As Minister, I never

questioned the quality of service being delivered by the Central Newfoundland

Youth Focus Diversion Program, however, my Department, in association with the

other alternative measures programs were providing an equal service to young

persons in conflict with the law for an insignificant amount of monetary

commitment. The only reasonable option available to me at that time was, to

redistribute these resources to make them available to all the volunteer

programs.

As a result, my officials, in conjunction with the volunteer

community in the Grand Falls area, were required to rebuild the alternative

measures program for this area. This work has now been accomplished.

The Exploits Valley Youth Justice Committee was authorized

under

Section 69 of the Young Offenders Act on September 18, 1990 to provide a

program for alternative measures for young persons in the Grand Falls area.

Not only have we been able to develop alternative measures in

this area, but I am proud to announce that the Department of Social Services has

been able to achieve my original goal in that small operating grants, totalling

$14,950 for fiscal year 1990/1991 and ranging from $750 to $1,750 per program,

have been made available to all volunteer programs who deliver alternative

measures.

If I could just take a moment I would like to identify and

congratulate the following programs for a job well done: The St. John's Youth

Diversion Program, Bay Roberts Alternative Measures Program, Conception Bay

North Alternative Measures Program, Burin-Placentia West Alternative Measures

Program, Clarenville Alternative Measures Program, Gander Alternative Measures

Program, Exploits Alternative Measures Program, Stephenville Alternative

Measures Program, Corner Brook/Bay of Islands Alternative Measures Program,

First Northern Alternative Measures Program, Port Saunders Operation First

Chance Alternative Measures Program, Piccadilly, Happy Valley Alternative

Measures Program, Labrador West Alternative Measures Program and Nain

Alternative Measures Program.

In 1989-1990 fiscal year, these programs accepted a total of

1,035 referrals from young persons in conflict with the law, and it is projected

that for 1990-1991, this number will be even higher.

Also, Mr. Speaker, during the past year, we have been able to

redirect some money for training of volunteers in the vital skill of mediation

and we have also, in conjunction with the volunteers, sponsored the first

general meeting of Alternative Measures Programs. This event from all reports

was very successful.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise you and my

hon. colleagues that as a result of my contacts with the professionals

associated with alternative measures and the volunteers in this Province, and

through my contact in other jurisdictions, I am able to announce that the

volunteers in partnership with my department are leading the country in the

development of alternative measures programs.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MR. HARRIS: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East on a

point of order.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, am I to understand that the

unanimous consent of the House is required to revert, to change the order? If

that is the case, Mr. Speaker, I do not give my unanimous consent to the

changing of the order.

MR. RIDEOUT: To that point of order.

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

that point of order.

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, I realize that the Member for

St. John's East is new in the House - only here a few days - but he has been in

parliament before. The fact of the matter is that some several minutes ago now

the Government House Leader rose on a point of order and asked if there was

consent to refer to Ministerial statements. Now, if the Member had been

anticipating that he was going to refuse to give unanimous consent, that is when

he should have done it. The statement has now been read, the official Opposition

will, as is its right in this House, respond to the statement. The Member cannot

withdraw. He sat on his right some five or six minutes ago, and I would submit

that he perhaps had a right at that time, because we had moved onto another

order of business, but the House agreed to revert and the Member cannot now

stand and argue - having sat on his right to object a few minutes ago - that no

further business under this item take place. It just is not acceptable, Mr.

Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: To that point of order, the Leader of the

Opposition makes a substantive point or substantial point. When we are dealing

with a ministerial statement we are dealing with a unit, if you will, a whole of

a parliamentary proceeding, the sum total of which is that after the Minister

finishes his statement then somebody on the Opposition responds. I would

therefore rule that the point of order is not, indeed, a point of order.

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to make three points in response to the

statement just read by the Minister of Social Services.

The first is that the Minister did not give a copy of that

statement to the Opposition in advance. Now, the proposed new rules, which most

of us expect the House to adopt shortly, will require that Ministers give the

Official Opposition at least fifteen minute notice of statements they intend to

deliver under the heading Ministerial Statements. I actually had trouble even

hearing the Minister read his statement. I was handed a copy just a few seconds

ago, so I am at a disadvantage in responding.

The second point I want to make is, I do not know how the

Minister can do anything to improve youth diversion or alternative measures for

youth, when his Budget is slashing funding for youth correction by $4 million -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Shame! Shame!

MS. VERGE: - by one-third, fully 33-1/3 per cent, from

1991-1992 to what it has been in this Budget year.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, alternative measures for young people

charged with criminal offenses are extremely important. The program that

operated in the Central Newfoundland area, the Exploits Alternative Measures

program, was extremely useful and valuable to young people in that area, and

that should not be eroded. Furthermore, similar programs should be encouraged

and fostered throughout the Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek the

unanimous consent of the House to respond to the statement.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Again, the Member is rising to respond to the Ministerial

Statement. The Chair can only ask the House once again whether or not the hon.

Member has the consent of the House to speak to the Ministerial Statement. Does

the hon. Member have the consent of the House?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No.

MR. SPEAKER: No.

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

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

PREMIER WELLS: I ask Your Honour to advise the hon.

Member that it is important that the House be able to carry on its duties in a

proper way. Maybe the hon. Member thinks the objection to his speaking to every

Ministerial Statement comes only from the Opposition side of the House. I can

say to him quite clearly, it does not, it comes also from the Government side of

the House, because we are committed to treating people fairly here. The hon.

Member is a single member of the House, and if he has the right to speak to

every Ministerial Statement, so does every other Member on both sides of the

House. I would ask him to put the interest of the public of this Province first

and let the House get on with its business in an orderly way, and stop this

silly grandstanding after every Ministerial Statement is made.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: I take it, Mr. Speaker, that that was a point

of order. It sounded much more like a lecture. I have taken the comments of the

hon. the Premier into consideration, but I also ask him and Members of the House

to recognize that although I may well be a single Member of the House, I

represent a political party that has sat in this House before, that is a major

national party and that it has a point of view to express to this House and

seeks to do so.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, very, very, briefly: we had

this debate a few days ago and I am not going to carry it on for very long, but

the Member must realize that the Government and the Official Opposition, and a

third party, if and when there is a third party in this House, follow a set of

rules. The Member at the moment is here as an individual, and when his

predecessor, Mr. Fenwick, was here as an individual he was recognized as an

individual Member of the House, the same as backbenchers, private members on

this side, and private members on that side, but when Mr. Fenwick had another

colleague elected and had two Members here, I believe the Speaker at that time

recognized the right of that group to have about half the time that the Official

Opposition of the day had in responding to Ministerial Statements. When the

Member gets to that position, if he ever gets to it, the situation will change,

but we will have to wait and see. At the moment he has no more standing in this

House than the Member for Green Bay or the Member for St. John's South. He might

belong to a political party, I am not denying that, but he has no more standing

in this House than any other private Member and he cannot continue to take the

House on his back, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: To that point of order. In the last minute

what we have had is hon. Members commenting on a point which is clearly the

rules of the House and to comment on the rules of the House is clearly a point

of order. There is a responsibility and a duty on all hon. Members to follow the

rules of the House, and when hon. Members know the rules of the House and

flagrantly break them then, of course, they can be charged with a breach of

privilege. I advise all hon. Members about the necessity to follow the rules of

the House.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, a point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I rose to ask and seek the

unanimous consent of the House and that is clearly within the rules of this

House, that one can rise to seek unanimous consent. If it is denied, and denied

it appears by both sides of the House now, well then that is a ruling that I

have to accept, but to suggest that to seek the unanimous consent of the House

may be a breach of the rules, I would ask the Speaker to make a ruling on that

isssue - that seems to be the point that was made by the Leader of the

Opposition and the hon. the Premier.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member knows Your

Honour's ruling in this House a few days ago was clear. Your Honour ruled that

the Member as a private Member of this House does not have the right to respond

to Ministerial Statements. What the Member is doing by rising when every

Ministerial Statement comes in is questioning Your Honour's ruling. Now, we are

pretty reasonable people in this House, Mr. Speaker, and if there happened to be

a Ministerial Statement some day regarding the Member's constituency, in this

House in the past we have dealt with that and allowed the Member, whoever it

might be, in this case the Member for St. John's East, to speak and rise by

unanimous consent. Now I can tell the hon. Member on behalf of this group here,

and the Premier can speak as Leader of the other group, that is the only time I

am prepared to give him unanimous consent from this side of the House, when it

is a matter affecting the hon. Member's constituency. We did that in the past

for Mr. Fenwick when he was here, and out of courtesy, responsibility, and

respectability for your constituents we would do it again, but you are not part

of an official group in this House and you have no right to rise on every

Ministerial Statement and make a statement on behalf of the political group you

are part of. You just do not have the right under the rules of this House.

MR. SPEAKER: I allowed the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition to comment further, because the Member for St. John's East did. But I

clearly want to say again that the position of the Chair is that there are rules

respecting who has a right to respond to Ministerial Statements. Unfortunately,

at this particular time the Member for St. John's East does not.

Oral Questions

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, almost a year ago I rose in

this House in response to the 1990-91 Budget and in my comments at that time I

said that the Minister's Budget was a fraud. That has been proven correct over

the past year. In fact, we found out within a couple of days that the Minister

had information he did not give this House as it related to Federal transfer

payments and so he, I believe, deceived this House. The question, I guess, in

people's minds today is, based on the Minister's track record, can we trust him?

Can we trust the Budget that was brought before this House last Thursday?

The question I would ask the Minister now, Mr. Speaker, is

why is the Minister hiding the Salary Details? Is the Minister suggesting to us,

as I heard him on a radio program suggest, that it was a last-minute thing? Is

the Minister saying that some 3,000 public servants will lose their employment

on a last-minute decision of this Government? What is he trying to hide from the

people of Newfoundland and Labrador? Has he not, in fact, been planning for the

last six or eight months to have such layoffs? And does he not at this point in

time know where those layoffs are?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, (inaudible).

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am answering because

the questions come under Treasury Board, not under Finance.

There were a number of questions, but first of all I will say

that what the hon. Member is saying is simply not true. Decisions were not made

months and months ago. We have gone through a very torturous and difficult

process and examined all aspects of Government very carefully before we made

decisions, and the very last decision we made, when we found we could not come

up with the amount of money, we could not do things that would give us a

satisfactory financial position, the very last decision we made had to do with

the wage freeze. That was made a matter of days before the Budget date, and that

was the very last decision we made, which gets back to the original question of

the salary details.

Once that decision was made we were pretty ready to go. Once

the decision was made on the salary freeze, we now have to back and re-do the

salary details for all individuals. That takes some time. I can assure the hon.

Member that when it is available, it will be made public.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, it is clear, obviously, that

the Minister of Finance cannot even have the trust of his own colleagues in

Government. He is not even allowed to answer a question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WINDSOR: I am embarrassed for the Minister of

Finance, Mr. Speaker. If I were Minister of Finance and the President of

Treasury Board or the Premier refused to let me answer the first question after

the Budget was brought down, I would be totally embarrassed. I think I would

have to resign out of self-esteem.

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

The Member is up on a supplementary.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am on a

supplementary question, and I will get on.

I would say to the hon. the President of Treasury Board,

first of all, I was not relating to the wage freeze. I asked about the layoffs -

the 3,000-plus layoffs in the public service. Is the President of Treasury

Board, Mr. Speaker, therefore telling me it was a last-minute decision, that

they have no idea which people will be laid off? The freeze is something that

could be done very quickly. I say to him, in this age of computers it does not

take very long to adjust the numbers. And I might also add, Mr. Speaker, they

had a week's delay; they waited another week after the Federal Budget came down,

under the guise that it was going to change. Will the President of Treasury

Board therefore tell me, Mr. Speaker, will he now confirm that there will,

indeed, be 2,500 people laid off in the public service? And do they know who

those people will be at this point in time?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There will be 1,300

full-time people our estimate is, and a combination of part-time/temporary of

about 700, for a total of 2,000 affected by the layoff. And there will be an

additional 500 unfilled jobs that will not be filled, giving a total of 2,500

positions that will be affected. I will say to the hon. Member that within the

immediate Government structure, particularly in the management level, certainly

we know, and these people have been notified and are being notified. That is

being taken care of, and we tell the people affected first before we tell

anybody else.

In terms of unionized workers and the people in the hospital

sector and so on, that depends upon the bumping procedures that are in place in

union contracts; it depends upon how the hospital boards are specifically going

to respond to the amount of funding they have been given, so that the final

individual effects will not be known for some time.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, I thank the President of

Treasury Board for confirming that there are 2,500 positions which will be

eliminated within the public service. Will the Minister also confirm that based

on a very conservative multiplier factor of 1.5 that will mean about 5,000 jobs

in the private sector, as well? So really what we are talking about here are

8,000 jobs gone in this Province, Mr. Speaker. That is what we are really

talking about.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Shame! Shame!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: No, Mr. Speaker, I cannot confirm any such

thing. It is interesting to see how 2,000 becomes 8,000 so quickly. I suppose by

next week he will be talking about 20,000.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

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

President of Treasury Board this, or the Minister of Finance, or whoever the

Premier allows to answer. Why is the Minister playing games with public servants

in this Province? For the last six to eight months, every public servant has

feared for his or her job. Since the Government did not say they would, but

indicated strongly that all departmental budgets would be frozen, obviously

there would be freezes. Why is the Government still continuing this cruelty? Why

were some people, in the mailroom for example, notified while the Budget

document was being read in this Chamber that they were laid off? Why are people

in the Department of Transportation now being that they will have to wait until

Wednesday before they find out, and other people being told they will have to

wait even longer?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, the public service in this

Province is very diverse and under the control of many masters. The procedure is

being done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. I suppose, as I indicated

a moment ago, the final effects will not be known until all the avenues open to

employees through the collective agreements have been exhausted. The final

position will not be known for some time. We do have certain rules and

procedures that we have to follow in doing such a thing. So I would like to

assure the hon. Member and the public servants, and the people in the Province,

that we are proceeding properly and at some point in time, obviously, we will

know the full effect. But we are proceeding properly. Things will be done as

quickly, efficiently and as properly as they can be done.

MR. SPEAKER: The Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A question for the

Minister of Finance this time, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has made a tremendous

number of references over recent days to the level of federal funding that is

Budget, Mr. Speaker, quotes a figure of $1.37 billion as total transfer payments

in fact, should be $1.41 billion. In fact, those numbers came from the officials

who gave us the briefing prior to Budget Day. Will the Minister tell us where

that $40 million is, the difference between the figure he has in the Budget and

the figure that we believe is, in fact, the real one? And, again, is he not

misleading us by $40 million?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have

learned to be very careful about using the figures of the hon. Member who, a few

minutes ago, suggested that there were 2,500 layoffs which escalated to 8,000.

But I will check out his numbers and see if, in fact, he was so briefed and if

so, what is the explanation.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the

Premier. Why did the Premier sign collective agreements over the last few months

and up to just a few days ago agree to large public service wage increases when,

for at least the last several months, he knew the fiscal situation and had

absolutely no intention of honouring those contracts? Has not the Premier been

dishonest in dealing with public employees?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: To begin with, Mr. Speaker, I have never

signed a collective agreement yet, the Government did. So, then, the question

should have been addressed to the Minister responsible, the President of

Treasury Board.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WELLS: Now, as to the balance of the question,

Mr. Speaker, the Government negotiated the collective agreements it has been

negotiating all along, in good faith.

A very, very short time, a very short time before the Budget

was brought down, the Government came to a conclusion as to what in all

probability would have to be done in order to deal with the very serious

financial situation that the Province finds itself in.

One of the first things we did was speak to four of the major

unions - not all of the unions - the four unions that have the greatest number,

to tell them some of the concerns that Government had and what some of the

prospects would be. So they knew very shortly after we knew what we were

thinking about, or what could have to be done in order for the Government to

balance its budget. And there was no collective agreement signed after the

Government had made its decision, none whatsoever.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, the ruthless rollback is saving

the Government about $150 million in the next Budget year. Does the Premier

expect anyone to believe that that was a last-minute decision and that he did

not know about the rollback when he agreed to large wage increases for public

employees?

AN HON. MEMBER: A good question.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I expect all people of

objectivity and integrity to believe it, yes.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last Monday, in this

House of Assembly, in answer to a question I posed, the Premier said calmly,

firmly, with determination and with a look of sincerity on his face, and I

quote: "the Government commitment to pay equity remains as it was." Well, three

days later, on Thursday, the Government made it clear that pay equity was being

rolled back at a cost to just women in the health care sector of over $25

million. How does the Premier expect anyone to trust him or believe him anymore?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: It is very simple, Mr. Speaker, because I

was completely accurate in what I said. We are committed to pay equity. We are

committed to pay equity, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, with absolute

certainty, that we will implement pay equity immediately it is agreed upon. We

will implement it immediately. What we did, Mr. Speaker, was we undid the

improper undertaking that the former Government gave, which they were prepared

to give; so long as it was down the road, in the future, they would agree to

anything, and that is exactly what they did. They got us into a $2.1 billion

pension mess, and everything else they did has gotten us into a similar kind of

financial situation. They aggravated it seriously, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WELLS: Our commitment to pay equity remains.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What was the Premier

doing two years ago, going around this Province promising to introduce and

enforce pay equity legislation, promising to build universities in every part of

the Province, promising to open all kinds of new hospital beds? How can anyone

believe him anymore?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I am satisfied to have my

credibility measured with that of any Member sitting on the opposite side of the

House and accept the verdict of the people of this Province or of this country.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) I dare you.

PREMIER WELLS: We will, indeed. We just might.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is also

for the Premier. For a long time in this Province, we have been subjected to the

fairness and balance theory, and we just heard a little bit more of it. We have

been led to believe that no matter where we live in this Province, no matter

what our occupation, we are all supposed to be treated fairly. Mr. Speaker, I

ask the Premier to explain the fairness and balance in last week's Budget.

Assuming that all the draconian measures were necessary - I do not think they

were - why have the Premier and his Government chosen to put the vast amount of

the pain of paying for this provincial problem on the backs of a very small

minority of Newfoundland people, namely our workers, through wage freezes and

rollbacks? If this is to be a fairness and balance run Province, why are not the

affluent in this Province, the Premier's lawyer friends, his former corporate

executive friends, the professionals in this Province, the most affluent, the

most able to pay, why have they not been asked to take their fair part of the

burden of solving Newfoundland's health care and education problems?

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

AN HON. MEMBER: Light and Power (inaudible) profits.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the Government's policy

decisions on the Budget were based on a judgement of the financial situation in

which the Province finds itself, most of the adverse aspects of which were

caused by reductions in federal transfers, to the tune of about $180 million

impact on the Budget this year. Some of the financial situation we are in was

caused by improper management by the former Administration, which put the

Province in a serious financial position.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: Answer the question, boy. All that is

needed is, why are the rich not paying?

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, in the two prior Budgets of

this Administration we increased the income tax in each year by, I believe, one

percentage point; we increased other taxes and everybody - we put in place a

payroll tax that is paid directly by all those corporations of which the hon.

Member is speaking, and so on. That payroll tax was imposed-

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we do not want to devastate

the economy of this Province by taxing us into oblivion, driving all capital

investment out and destroying the whole economy. We are operating on the basis

of fairness and balance, and that is precisely what we did.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the

Minister of Health. It being a supplementary, I do not need a

preamble, or not a

very long one. The Minister of Health has said since Thursday's Budget that the

cutbacks in the health care system of over 900 people and the permanent closure

of 438 acute care beds is part of a restructuring plan, in his own words, that

began when the Liberals took power in 1989. Mr. Speaker, I would like the

Minister to explain to me, to other Members of this Legislature, and to the

people of the Province, what kind of a planning process allows for, in 1990,

funding for health care to increase by 11.3 per cent, the opening of fifty-five

acute care beds and the announcement of new positions, then in 1991, one year

later, there is a minuscule 3.6 per cent increase, a closure of 438 beds and the

lay off of almost 1,000 people. Will the Minister please explain to the people

of Newfoundland that plan? Or, maybe even better, will the Minister tell the

truth and say that in effect there is no health care plan in Newfoundland?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the answer is quite simple. This

Administration is trying to clean up a mess, a mess that was left by the

previous Administration, a mess that was exacerbated by their Tory friends in

Ottawa. By the year 2004, this Province will be totally on her own with our

health care system; we will have to pay for all of it ourselves. Mr. Speaker,

because of that, it is necessary for us to begin a restructuring program which

will put in place an efficient health care system, a health care system which we

as a Province can afford. It has been extremely difficult, because we inherited

such a mess of a lack of organization in the health care system, but we are

trying our best to do it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have heard the hon. Member on the radio,

or somewhere, accusing me of saying that we have a better system now. Mr.

Speaker, the word `better' is a value judgement. But we are working toward a

better system. It is difficult to do it. This mess which we inherited we are

trying to clean up, and his friends in Ottawa are trying to make worse. But we

are trying to straighten out the mess we received, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, let it be known that the Minister

did not answer the question; he did not comment on a plan that was partly there

last year and there this year.

Mr. Speaker, another question on the health care system.

Hospital and nursing home boards in this Province are anxiously awaiting their

version of this Budget that came out on Thursday. Is it true that those

statements, those budgets for the hospitals and nursing home boards, were ready

on Thursday but had to be redone and the figures changed because the Minister of

Health and his professional advisors did not know that there was to be a wage

freeze in the health care system? Is the Minister of Health and his officials

part of the health care planning process?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, in former years after the Budget

was announced it would take two to three weeks for hospital boards to receive

their budgets. This year because of the freeze that has been imposed in certain

sectors we are making every effort to get the budgets out faster than the two or

three weeks which it took in previous years. Most of the hospital boards will

have their budgets delivered to them by courier this afternoon and a few will

not receive them until tomorrow or the next day.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

About two thirds of the thousands of Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians who are going to lose their jobs over the next several months,

because of the Budget which was brought down in this House last Thursday, about

two thirds of those people, those thousands or however many it might be, live,

work, and reside in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Now, Mr. Speaker, in the

60s we saw a Liberal Government who first took away the teacher, then took away

the nurse, and then took away the doctor. I want to ask the Premier, Mr.

Speaker: why is the Premier placing such a burden on rural Newfoundland and

Labrador today? Two thirds of the people who lose their jobs will come from

rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Is it because this Liberal Government is

setting out on a track to finish the job began by the Liberals in the 60s?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, this Budget was not directed

at rural Newfoundland or urban Newfoundland. There will be a substantial number

of people who will be laid off who live in St. John's, who live in Corner Brook,

who live in Grand Falls and Gander, and other urban areas of the Province. There

was no decision to change it here or there because it affects rural Newfoundland

or that it affects urban Newfoundland. The decisions in the case of health care

were made solely on the basis of an intelligent, dispassionate assessment of

what was best to provide this Province with an adequate health care system,

within the limits of that which it can afford. Now, I know the Leader of the

Opposition is not used to planning on that basis and it may be more difficult

for him to understand. He may think we operate on the basis of political

motivation but we do not, we operate on the basis of good management for the

Province.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, the Premier was right,

dispassionate is the word, there is no doubt about that. Let me ask the Premier

what message he is sending to all those laid off teachers, nurses, and other

professionals around this Province - those highly trained Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians? Where are they suppose to go now to get a job? Do they have to

join the Premier's son on the Mainland? The Premier promised to bring

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians home. What kind of message is he sending to

thousands of people out there who are now facing starvation and unemployment,

and who are moving out of the Province again, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, if this Province were sitting

on pots of money and we could say 'we do not have to worry about repaying it,

here is a job for everybody,' we would do it. We would do that, but

unfortunately the Government is not in that fortunate position. Our objective is

to restore viability to the economy of this Province and enable the private

sector to generate the economic activity that is necessary to provide full-time

jobs for our people. Now, I know the former Government had a different approach.

Their objective was to create all these make-work and part-time jobs and let the

economy slip and the full-time jobs decrease. That is precisely the effect of

their policies. That is exactly what happened. Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, the

people of this Province rescued themselves from those policies and put in place

a Government that would change that and restore the economic viability of the

Province. Now, it is not going to provide answers overnight and I do not have an

answer for the person who is going to be laid off tomorrow or the next day. I

greatly regret that, but, Mr. Speaker, we are working on restoring the viability

of the economy of this Province and we are confident that in the end we will do

so.

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

MR. RIDEOUT: Mr. Speaker, in other words the real change

that the Premier promised the people of this Province was a fraud, nothing more

and nothing less.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. RIDEOUT: And, Mr. Speaker, the Premier had no message

for the thousands of people who are going to be laid off. Does he have any

message for the thousands of young Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who are

training to become teachers, doctors and nurses, and so on, in this Province

today? What message does he have for them? Is this message: as long as there is

centralization, rationalization and recyclization, go to the mainland and look

for a job? Is that the Premier's message?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, Mr. Speaker. The message of the

Government is, that we are going to have need in the future for more nurses,

more doctors, more engineers, more people who go to all of the schools, more

teachers. But we will not, Mr. Speaker, bankrupt you young people by causing you

to pay taxes beyond that which you can bear by maintaining in place a system of

Government that the Province cannot afford.

Now, the former Government -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the former Premier stood in

this House, I believe, and said, 'in a few years it will be 1934 all over

again.' Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, the people of this Province put in place a

Government that would avoid that happening and we are in the process of doing

it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister

of Finance. We heard in his Budget Speech last week that there would be 1,300

permanent jobs in the public service lost, and in addition another 700. We are

hearing the Member for Mount Pearl refer to 3,000 plus. We have had reference in

the Budget Speech to 10 per cent of the management and executive positions. Can

the Minister of Finance give us an accurate figure? Tell us whether or not the

management and executive positions are included in the 1,300. Can he give us an

accurate figure? Does the Government know or does the Government care how many

people are going to lose their jobs?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The figures in the Budget are accurate. We might want to

clear up a point about the management. As I understand it the 10 per cent

management and executive: some of the management are in the 2,000 -most of them

are - but there may be some that are not. So, to continue, Mr. Speaker, the

2,100 figure that some people are throwing out is an exaggeration. The 2,000 is

a much closer figure.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the Minister does not know the

answer really, I suppose, to that question, but the Department of Social

Services was not given any increase in his Budget. In his same Budget documents

he recognizes that there will be a 5.7 per cent increase in the consumer price

index projected for the current fiscal year. Can he tell the House how he

expects the poorest of our people living on social assistance will accept this

nearly 6 per cent cut in the ability of their social assistance payments to make

ends meet?

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, we have increased the payments

to people who receive social assistance by $8 million. Part of that is a fuel

allowance to people who will be affected by the cost of fuel, and that cuts in

in the winter months - six months - so that virtually almost all of the people

on social assistance will be receiving an increase in their social assistance

payments.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, to suggest that the people who

are living on social assistance - can he tell us how many of the people who are

living on social assistance, who have to pay this basic 6 per cent cut in all of

their payments, how many of them are going to be protected by the $50 a month

increase in fuel allowance, when we know already that there is a 30 per cent

increase in the cost of fuel for this Province?

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, as Minister of Social Services I

would be one of the first people to admit that people living on social

assistance are not receiving enough money. There is only one answer to that and

that is guaranteed income, and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador cannot

afford a guaranteed income. That has to be implemented jointly between the

Province or by the Federal Government singly.

Secondly, there are 9,900 single parents who will be

receiving the supplement to their income with their first child being treated as

an adult. The $50 fuel allowance: the majority of the 9,000 single parents whose

heat is not now included in their rent will also be receiving that. So, that is

approximately - well not approximately - that is $105 a month that they will be

receiving extra. There are also several thousand other people who will be

receiving the fuel allowance for six months of the year. All of those people who

are now on social assistance who are not getting the heat supplement from the

Newfoundland and Labrador House Corporation, and the people on the coast of

Labrador who are already receiving that, all other people on social assistance

will be receiving that amount of money.

MR. SPEAKER: Oral Questions has expired.

Notices of Motion

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on

tomorrow ask leave to introduce a Bill entitled, "An Act Respecting Restraint Of

Compensation In The Public Sector Of The Province."

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Further Notices of Motion.

The hon. the Member for Pleasantville.

MR. NOEL: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on

tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following motion:

Transport Canada proposals to recover from users certain costs associated with

air and marine transport services; and

WHEREAS these cost recovery proposals will place increased

financial burden on users of transport services in Newfoundland and Labrador and

other remote economically disadvantaged regions of Canada, and

WHEREAS as a result of such additional financial burden air

and marine carriers may no longer be financially viable in providing services in

thin and relatively financially distressed markets such as Newfoundland and

Labrador, and

WHEREAS lost of transportation services will surely further

reduce economic development prospects in Newfoundland at a time when the

and health services, and put a ceiling on equalization payments which

restrictions have reduced the financial flexibility of the Province to address

economic development concerns.

THEREFORE

BE IT RESOLVED that this House request the Federal

Minister of Transport to abandon the present cost recovery proposals, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this House urges the Federal

Minister of Transport to consider the relative hardship to be imposed on remote

economically disadvantaged regions of Canada by any future cost recovery

proposals.

Thank you.

Petitions

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

West.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

I have a petition that I would like to present on behalf of a

group of parents who have children attending Christ the King School in Rushoon.

I would like to say, first of all, if I may to the Member for Pleasantville: I

am surprised that you are not up today standing on your feet calling for the

resignation of some of the Ministers over there who are inflicting a lot more

hardship on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador than what was in your

resolution.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: Because the real issues, Mr. Speaker, are the

cutbacks that have taken place in this Budget. The drastic cuts that have taken

place in this Budget, in the Department of Education with the layoffs, the

teachers who will be affected, the numbers of students that will now be jammed

into one classroom, Mr. Speaker, the cut backs in the health system, the people

on social assistance getting a 6 per cent reduction. That is the bread and

butter issue for the people of this Province and the cop-out such as the action

just taken by the Member for Pleasantville, Mr. Speaker, does absolutely nothing

except show up the weaklings in the Opposition who are trying to come to the

defence of some useless and uncaring Ministers in this system. That is what we

are seeing here today. That is what we are seeing here, a weakling trying to

defend the actions of the close down of schools and hospitals throughout this

Province. That is what we are seeing here.

Now I have a petition to present on behalf of the people from

Placentia Bay in my District who have a genuine concern, Mr. Speaker, about the

future of their children in this Province, who are concerned about the cutbacks

in education, who are concerned by the fact that the Minister of Education could

not and obviously did not convince his colleagues in Cabinet of the necessity to

at least maintain the status quo in education. Instead of that we have seen a

reduction. We have seen children, Mr. Speaker, in Christ the King School in this

settlement of Rushoon, as well as a lot of other children in rural Newfoundland

who will be graduating from high school and will not be able to attend

university because of the actions of this Government because, Mr. Speaker, they

have made post-secondary education in the coming few years an education for the

elite, for the Premier's lawyer friends who can afford to send their children to

university and a few more, but the ordinary

Newfoundlander, Mr. Speaker, under the savage attack we have

seen in this Budget towards education will not be able to afford to send their

children to university. And even if they could afford to send their children to

university what would the future for these students be, Mr. Speaker? Teachers

are being laid off and nurses are being laid off. What does the Minister of

Education, and others on the other side, suggest they do? Now, instead of going

to the mainland after you get your education you will have to go to the Mainland

to get your education because you will not be able to afford to get it home. A

couple of weeks ago, in Rushoon, Mr. Speaker, I met and spoke with a few

classes, as I have in other schools, I spent Friday doing it. The teachers,

parents, and students are concerned, and are pleading to the Minister of

Education and to the Government not to do anything that will have a negative

effect on the education system. Now, I understand from being around my district

this weekend that in terms of layoffs in the school boards, in terms of the

teachers that are going to be laid off there are classrooms - in fact, I know of

one in particular where there is one teacher who has thirty-four students, I

believe, in this situation, and there will be more. Let me say to the Minister

of Education that it is 1991, and it is not back to the days when there was one

room for every class. It is not back to the days when there were two classes in

every room. The Minister should realize that and do something about it, because

it is not in the interest of education. Our best resource is the youth of this

Province and if we are going to advance into the technology that people talk

about, to the technological era that is suppose to come upon us, it has to come

with trained, competent, capable Newfoundlanders, and they are there, Mr.

Speaker, all they need is the opportunity to be able to do it. The actions of

this Government, and the Minister of Education can say what he likes, the

actions of this Government has cast doom upon the future of Newfoundlanders. As

you look across there and you see people who profess to be from the educational

system, how in all conscience, Mr. Speaker, can the Member for Bellevue, for

example, who comes out of the post-secondary system support a Government that is

gutting this system, and is killing the future for young Newfoundlanders in this

Province? How can the Member for Exploits, who used his position as President of

the NTA to get into this Assembly, not be concerned about the teachers, not be

concerned about the students, but concerned about no one only himself. That is

what we have in this system. The Member for Conception Bay South, the hon.

Minister was not much better. Until such time as people are prepared to take a

stand and do what needs to be done, all the work of the former Minister of

Education and others in this Province will not be able to stand the test, Mr.

Speaker, will not be able to stand because of the actions of this Government.

The Minister of Education knows full well that he needed a 12 per cent increase

in funding. A 12 per cent increase in funding was needed in order for the

educational system to maintain the status quo that they had last year, and they

got less than 3 per cent, I believe. Now, that means there is going to be

basically -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I do not know if the hon. Member heard me but back some time

ago I told him his time was up.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, thank you, and in concluding I

would like to place this petition on the table of the House and ask the Minister

to consider it, not to make the cuts in Education and let the people of Rushoon

and indeed all the people throughout Newfoundland live in peace, knowing that

their children can have an education in this Province.

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

MR. POWER: Mr. Speaker, I would like to support the

petition so ably presented by my friend from the Burin Peninsula. Having taught

school down in the Burin Peninsula for one year - down in St. Bernard's - I say

to all those persons on the Burin Peninsula who signed the petition and to

others in the Province who are concerned about education, that these are very,

very sad days for education in this Province.

They are sad because the education system is deteriorating.

It is getting worse on a daily basis. Not only is the education system getting

worse but I am afraid that having, as a modern society, spent so much time

trying to encourage young people to get educated - because that is where the

future of the world is, that a lot of our young students in school are going to

be saying to their parents who are nurses or health care professionals, to their

parents who may very well be teaching in the school system, they are going to

fling up their arms and say: what is the point of getting educated, why should I

really bother, and when that goes out of the young people in this Province, Mr.

Speaker, then I think we are going to be a long, long time trying to solve our

economic problems.

One of the most unfortunate parts of this Government in the

last two years, is that they seem to wander from place to place, they react to a

crisis from year to year but they simply have no focus, they have no direction,

they really have no vision. They say all the right things but they do not do any

of the right things. When the Minister of Education gets up he is going to

expound all the wonderful theories of education as he did at the university, but

what he has to realize is that he is not at the university as a professor now,

he is here as the Minister of Education, responsible for the direction of all

the young students in this Province.

When I see what is happening in this Province in Education,

when I see the silly arguments made by the Premier; on one hand that economic

development, diversification is going to be the life-blood of this Province,

that is what is really going to save us. Then I see the Minister of Finance

saying we are cutting back on Education, we are cutting back at the university,

we are cutting back at post-secondary, we are laying off teachers - the two

things do not jive. If the Premier reads it all, and I am sure he is a very well

read person, he knows what is happening in the world; if he looks at what is

happening in the Pacific rim countries where there is such tremendous

development taking place, read any other economic material they put out and all

the economic material says: the higher the amount of money spent on education,

the higher your employment rate. The more money you spend on research and

development, the more money you put into education, the more jobs there are down

the road. This Province, this Government, this Premier and his Ministers do not

seem to know that. The Minister of Development is scrambling to get money for

Enterprise Newfoundland. The Minister of Development should be scrambling to get

money for Memorial University, Cabot, Marine and Fisher Institutes and our

community colleges, that is how the Minister of Development will ultimately

solve his problem.

This Government is still focused on how many fish you can

catch, how many trees you can knock down, how many tourists you can bring in,

when in reality, the only real resource we have, the only one which really

matters, the only one that will make a substantive change in the future

direction of Newfoundland - which the Premier always talks about - in the

long-term, the only resource that really matters is our brain power, the amount

of brains that we

develop or leave untapped and undeveloped.

The future of our students in this Province is, as I say,

very sad and getting worse every day. Teachers are talking about working to

rule; the few good teachers that we have in this Province are the many who do

extra work, extra curricular after school, in the evenings, and on Saturdays and

Sundays, they are now going to be forced, because of the wage restraints and

rollback programs of this Government, to not be allowed to do that by the

association who represents them. Education can only get worse, it cannot get

better under those kind of circumstances, and all I say to you, Mr. Speaker, in

supporting the petition, that anybody who is a parent, a teacher, a student;

anybody who is a caring person would have to say, that in this Province in the

next ten years, the next five years, there is going to be a severe cutback in

the quality of our education and that can only bode very poorly for all of us,

including the Premier and the Minister of Development, who seem to think that

you can develop this Province by putting a few dollars into Enterprise

Newfoundland, and that is simply just not the way to go. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

DR. WARREN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would support one

or two things that the hon. Members have said across the House. We believe that

education is vital to the future of this Province and we cannot have a world

class economy in this Province without a world class work force, and we cannot

have a world class work force without a world class educational system. We all

believe that. We believe that education is the best investment a society can

make, but I think everybody including those in Education realize that these are

very difficult times in this Province.

This was a tough, and as my hon. friend the Minister of

Finance said, a severe Budget. I think the people realize that. I met with

people from all parts of the educational system over the weekend and most of

them realize that these are tough times; let me assure you, Mr. Speaker, that

any negative impact from the Budget will be softened by a number of things.

First of all, education did get an overall increase, even

though we have a frozen salary Budget - an increase in educational funding. We

have a 3 per cent increase and in some cases - elementary and secondary - we

have up to 5 per cent, even with the freeze.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, over 90 per cent of all the positions

that are going to be eliminated in the elementary and secondary system are due

to declining enrolments. They would have gone anyhow, only 90 per cent of the

positions. And let me tell you one other thing, Mr. Speaker, we are losing 3,000

students in this Province this coming year - 3,000 students. We have gone down

35,000 in the last few years. Declining enrolment is the major reason for any

cuts in the number of teachers.

And one other thing, Mr. Speaker, in order to protect the

student, in order to carry out our 'student first' strategy, nearly half of the

positions that are going to be eliminated in the elementary and secondary system

next year are going to be at the school board offices. Now, that is tough for

school board offices, but in order to protect the classroom nearly half of the

positions that are going to be eliminated in education next year are going to

come from school board offices, and I have talked with the boards about that

over the weekend.

Here are a couple of other facts, Mr. Speaker: Monies will be

coming in from school tax dollars next year, perhaps 10 per cent overall, so

that will help soften the blow. We have not cut the school tax equalization; we

have increased school transportation; we have increased many other areas of

education; we have not cut the student assistance program, it is going to be the

same as last year. We have increased student aid for students at the university.

Where was the hon. Member for Ferryland when for the 10 years or 15 years he was

over on the other side he did nothing to improve the student aid program in this

Province, nothing for scholarships. We, last year, made dramatic improvements in

scholarships and in student aid to help more Newfoundlanders go on to

post-secondary.

So, Mr. Speaker, even though it is a tough, severe Budget, we

think that we have done a number of things to soften the blow, particularly for

elementary and secondary education. I must admit that the post- secondary system

is suffering a little more in this Budget than the elementary and secondary

system.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Orders of the Day

MR. BAKER: Order 2, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Committee of Supply. This is the Budget

debate.

The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to rise and

address the Budget brought down by the hon. the Minister of Finance on last

Thursday.

Mr. Speaker, if I were to try to put into one word the main

difficulty we have with this Budget document, I would have to say that the one

word is trust, or the lack thereof, and we do not have any reason to trust the

Minister's Budget, nor do we have any reason to trust the Minister or this

Government, Mr. Speaker.

Last year we had a Budget document that we addressed here in

this Chamber for some six weeks, and I will not go over all the things that were

said then, but we spent a great deal of time pointing out what we thought were

the weaknesses in that Budget document. We spent a great deal of time pointing

out why we thought that the document was a fraudulent document, and I think one

thing that can be said is, that we have been proven correct. We have been proven

absolutely correct. The Premier finds that amusing. I assure the Premier that

the people of Newfoundland and Labrador do not find it amusing at all. They do

not like being mislead by the Premier and his Government in this House of

Assembly.

There is nothing at all amusing about it. There is nothing at

all amusing about a Government that deliberately projects a $10 million surplus

and then watches it slip away to a $117 million deficit, nothing at all amusing

about it, Mr. Speaker.

This Budget document we are addressing now, Mr. Speaker, I

say to you, is a similar document; it is another masterpiece in deceit. It is

similar to last year's document. I think, however, that it is a serious attempt

to try to tackle the problem with which the Government is faced. Now the first

piece of deceit, Mr. Speaker, in some of the statements that have been made by

the Minister of Finance and the President of Treasury Board over the past couple

of weeks is that now we are facing a $215 million deficit. What we were facing,

Mr. Speaker, was a $10 million surplus. That is what we were talking about from

last year, which ended up as $117 million deficit because of the incompetence of

this Government and their lack of any kind of an economic plan.

The $215 million figure, Mr. Speaker, was fabricated by the

hon. gentleman opposite. It is a bogeyman, it is a flag sent up to try to make

the people of Newfoundland and Labrador believe we have got such a serious

situation we have to take these drastic measures, and I am not saying this

Government is not faced with financial difficulties.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, at a time when these Ministers

were saying we have $215 million deficit, it was about a month, I think, before

Budget Day, they started playing with those numbers. Mr. Speaker, having been

involved in preparing, I think, eleven Budgets, I can tell you that a month

before Budget Day you are normally faced with $400 million deficit. When all the

departments come in with their wish lists, you normally sit down after Treasury

Board has gone through the first analysis of it, the Treasury Board officials,

and you are looking at $400 million deficit. Then it was referred to Treasury

Board. I do not know if that was referred to Treasury Board by this Government,

because I understand that the committee system of this Government does not work

the way it did previously. There may not even be a committee system of any

substance; most of the work is done by the Premier himself, Mr. Speaker, a

one-man show over there.

But in our day, Mr. Speaker, Treasury Board was the Committee

of Cabinet charged with the responsibility of handling financial expenditures in

Government. Treasury Board would go through the estimates of all the departments

very, very carefully and would apply certain cuts in negotiating with the

various departments. And when it finally came to Cabinet, about a month before

Budget Day, you were probably still looking at a $400 million deficit unless you

did certain things, which was to say no, you cannot have this new program, no,

you cannot have that one, no, you cannot expand on programs that you want to

expand on, you cannot have this new addition over that one, or you must cut back

on this one, or, this program is no longer effective. It is not a good use of

Government funds, so we will eliminate that program or cut back on it. So you

start cutting and slashing and talking to the departments. Invariably we called

in the ministers and the deputies and senior assistant deputies and senior

management people, particularly on the financial side, and gave them an

opportunity to defend their estimates and tell us how they thought they,

perhaps, could cut back, or why they needed an expansion, as the case may be.

And when you went through that exercise, Mr. Speaker, then

you probably got down to $100 million to $200 million, and that was about the

level of projected deficit that the Minister of Finance and the President of

Treasury Board then jointly brought to Cabinet as a whole, and Cabinet as a

whole made the final decisions. And they made the tough decisions: they decided

if there would be wage freezes, as we have seen here; they decided if there

would be massive layoffs, as we have seen here; they decided that there would be

tax increases, or increased borrowing, or which programs would be eliminated.

These were the painful decisions.

So what this Government was saying, Mr. Speaker, a month ago

was that we are looking at $215 million deficit. We have to make some painful

decisions. So we have to reduce that figure down to something that is

manageable. Because they knew, Mr. Speaker, that they could not possibly come

into this House with $215 million deficit. They knew they could not come in with

another $117 million deficit, as they ended with last year. They had to bring it

down. They are on record as being very proud of the fact that the first Budget

they brought in, in 1989-90, they had a $4 million surplus. That was our Budget.

The Budget was just about complete when Government changed, and they made very,

very few changes to the Budget that we had prepared. In fact, they brought it in

very quickly, so that was essentially a PC Budget with a few changes made to it.

And last year they were able to come in with $10 million

surplus. And we told them, and we told this House at the time of the Budget,

that that was not a realistic figure. That $10 million surplus was not real, it

was window dressing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell us about your budget, now.

MR. WINDSOR: Hon. gentlemen would love for me to tell

them about my budget. I would be happy to tell them about my budget. I would be

happy to take the whole document and go through it and show them all the

positive things we did in that budget.

AN HON. MEMBER: You were right on!

MR. WINDSOR: Yes. There were no tax increases in it,

either, and I was right on! What was the variance at the end of the year? I do

not have it here in front of me, but the 1989 Budget would give it to me. I can

get it. I have it here under my desk. I bet you I was not very far off at the

end of the year from my projections. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I was not off by

$127 million, as this Government was. Not only that, that was in the first six

months that they were off by $127 million; the middle of August I believe it

was, the Premier had a press conference and admitted that at that point -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: The end of August? Somewhere in August. The

middle of the fiscal year, not even six months into the year, the Government

admitted that we were right. That was the second time they admitted we were

right. We told them $50 million to $60 million during the Budget Debate, and a

week or two after the House closed, in June I think it was, they announced the

Opposition was right, it does look like it is going to be $50 million or $60

million. By that time, we were looking at it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) the Opposition was right.

MR. WINDSOR: The Opposition was right, yes. By that time

we had had a chance to look at some of those numbers and refine them more, and

had some more information, and we said, `Ah, it is more like $100 million.' It

was not very long after that that the Premier came out and said, `You are right.

In fact, it is probably going to be $120 million.' And he was right!

Government took some measures, I understand, over the past

number of months. As we talk about 2,500 persons in the public service to be

laid off, we do not see how many were eliminated over the last six months to try

to keep that deficit down to $117 million. It may well have been $130 million or

$140 million, if Government had not taken some action. So there were probably

400 or 500 jobs lost in the last six months. These were the fairly easy ones

that one could eliminate, or some positions that just were not filled. A lot of

that, I would suspect, was by attrition; the position was vacant and it just was

not filled. Those are the relatively easy cuts to make. Well, now we are down to

the tough cuts, $215 million, a fictitious figure - real but fictitious; real,

in that if this Government did not make any decisions at all, they would

probably have to come in with a $215 million deficit, but fictitious in that

there is nothing real about it, in that it simply is playing with numbers during

a budget process. The Minister could just as easily have said we are going to

look at a $400 million deficit, and scared people out of Newfoundland

altogether.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) telling the truth.

MR. WINDSOR: He would not have been telling the truth.

I would say, if you had talked about what your deficit looked

like a month before, you were looking at $300 million or $400 million, before

you made certain cuts internally.

So, Mr. Speaker, the problem this Government was faced with

was not really in cutting the deficit from $215 million to try to balance it,

they were talking about the $117 million deficit they had at the end of last

year.

We are talking now, Mr. Speaker, in this Budget, of trust.

Who, indeed, can trust this Government? It is clear from the comments that were

made over the past weekend, and I took great pleasure, I must say, in listening

to some of the comments made by various representatives, leaders, the President

of the Nurses' Union, and I quote: "The fact that the collective agreement has

been broken destroys our sense of trust in the collective bargaining system, for

what it is worth." These are the nurses of the Province, Mr. Speaker, who were

deceived into thinking that times for nurses and health care in this Province

were on the upswing. My colleague, in his question a few minutes ago, very, very

well, I think, put forward the fact that all the increases were announced in

last year's Budget: all of these positive things in health care, more nurses

allocated, more hospital beds open, in last year's, in the Minister of Health's

new plan to reorganize the Department of Health. Well, what a plan, Mr. Speaker!

It did not last very long. One year later, we are closing down 360 acute care

beds.

AN HON. MEMBER: Four hundred and thirty-eight.

MR. WINDSOR: Four hundred and thirty-eight altogether,

with the other seventy-eight which are being converted to chronic care. It is

just incredible! And we are going to see massive layoffs in the health care

sector. That is a wonderful plan, I say to the Minister of Health. That is a

wonderful plan, that will bankrupt the Province in no time. So, Mr. Speaker, the

Nurses' Union are not particularly pleased.

The President of the Federation of Labour, he said,

`Residents of the Province feel betrayed about the Budget contents, since the

Wells Government campaigned on promises of good labour relations and a new era

of Government.' Well, this is wonderful labour relations, Mr. Speaker. This is

wonderful labour relations. This is double cross. That is what this is. This is

wage roll back, days after collective agreements were negotiated with labour

unions in this Province.

The national representative of CUPE says, `Once you sign a

contract it is legal and binding on both parties. Basically what we have just

been told by Government is, Sorry, our end of the contract does not hold up any

more. And we can do what we please.' Because Government has the power of coming

into this House of Assembly with a piece of legislation, which I believe was

just introduced by the President of Treasury Board.

So they will go out there and they will negotiate. And what

is really sad about it, Mr. Speaker, what is really sad about this whole

process, is that Government put on the poor mouth during the negotiating

process. Time and time again they said to these unions, during the negotiations,

`Look, we are in difficult times. We do not have a lot of money. We cannot

afford to give you large increases. So you have a choice, you either accept

lower levels of increase or we will be forced to layoff some people, some of

your membership.' The unions in many cases, not wanting to see members laid off,

accepted lower negotiated increases than otherwise would have been the case.

Well, what did Government do? They froze their increases and

they laid off the people anyway. Now, Mr. Speaker, how can those unions have any

confidence in this Government? How can their word be taken? And not only their

word, but their signature on a piece of paper?

Pensioners, Mr. Speaker, we know are being ignored. The

President of the Public Service Pension Association said he personally believes

that Government has no respect for pensioners. That is a mild statement if I

ever heard one as it relates to this Government, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Boswell, who is a great political scientist and a public

commentator said, `Reading through the Budget documents I get the sense of a

work in progress, the Budget is curiously incomplete. Now Mr. Boswell I do not

often agree with, I have to say here, but he certainly got his finger on the

pulse this time. The Budget is incomplete. The Minister of Finance put his new

tax reform proposal in the back of the Budget. He did not announce it in the

Budget, he slipped it into the back pages as a White Paper. A good idea I say to

the Minister of Finance. Major tax reform, such as he is proposing, certainly

deserves such a White Paper and the kind of debate that a White Paper will

generate. Everybody in this Province shall have an opportunity to assess the

impact on them, either personally or corporately, and to make their views known

to the Minister, either directly or through their elected representatives in

this House.

So I applaud the Minister on putting together that document.

And there is a lot of information in that

section of the Budget document

relating to the analysis done by the Department of Finance (inaudible) very

helpful in looking at some of the moves the Minister was considering, and I will

say more about that later.

The Police Association have just negotiated a contract. The

President of the Police Association says, `They cannot be trusted.' Once again,

from a union leader, that word `trust' comes out - they cannot be trusted. The

President of the Nurses' Union says, `When a contract is signed and then broken

through legislation, how can the Province expect to be trusted?' Once again the

word `trust' comes into it.

The President of the Teachers' Association says, `Their

action makes a farce of collective bargaining.' How true, Mr. Speaker. Of course

my good friend and colleague, Mr. March, the President of NAPE, a good friend

who is becoming a very close friend I will have you know, we are onside on this

one. He says, `Government has declared war' - now he really has summed it up -

`Government has declared war on the labour unions and the working poor of this

Province.' That is really what has happened here. Government is in for hard

days. The President of Treasury Board has my deep sympathy - I have been there.

I went through difficult times and, I say to the President of Treasury Board,

had he been a little tougher, which is not easy to do, had he taken the same

approach I took when I sat in his office, he would not be in the position he is

in today. He will have to admit that I told him a year ago that he was

abdicating the purse strings of this Province to independent arbitrators, and

there was his mistake. Our legislation is there if you have to have it as a last

resort. You did not have to give binding arbitration to all those groups. There

were groups you gave it to voluntarily. The essential services do have binding

arbitration legislation: Police, firemen and prison warders have binding

arbitration, but other components do not, and they do not because they are not

considered essential in the sense of not being responsible for life safety. Mr.

Speaker, the Government, as I recall, voluntarily, under pressure of

negotiations, gave some of these unions binding arbitration rather than get

involved in potential strike situations. None of us like strikes, Mr. Speaker,

but somehow we have to deal with that whole area of collective bargaining as it

relates to Government.

Binding arbitration has the advantage of putting it to

independent arbiters. If we had some legislation that says the independent

arbiter must consider the ability of the Province to pay it might be a little

different, but independent arbiters do not and this is what happened to them. I

am starting to get into the area of why a $117 million deficit. We can go

through the Budget documents and see what happened over the year. The Government

might like to say it is all because federal transfers have been cut back and

Government received less than it had expected last year. They still received

considerably more than they received the year before, but they did receive a

little bit less than they expected. You did not hear very much from them the

year before that, when late in the year they picked up an extra $50 million, I

think it was, in federal transfers. That is the only reason they had a $37

million surplus. They had predicted four and they finished the year with a $37

million surplus, in spite of having made a special contribution to pensions that

year of $21 million, and, if I am not mistaken, they also paid the interest on

the loans for the Marystown Shipyard up front, another $4 million as I recall, a

couple of years ago.

MR. POWER: No contribution to pensions this year.

MR. WINDSOR: No contribution to pensions. Well, they have

a standard contribution in there. but they do not have that special contribution

of $21 million. My friend for Ferryland is quite correct.

MR. POWER: It was a priority last year.

MR. WINDSOR: It was a priority, and it was a good thing

to do, something to do quickly. Otherwise, they would have had a $58 million

surplus showing last year. They certainly did not want to do that. They did not

want to have a $58 million surplus because they would have had to pay it the

following year, and instead of a $10 million surplus, they would have had a $10

million deficit. (Inaudible) making certain payments now that you can make to

come in within Budget, it is wise management of money, or otherwise deferring

payments until the following year, if there is an advantage to that. People do

that in business, you decide which year it is most advantageous for your budget

to make that payment.

And Government is no different. So I have no problem with

that. But when you are talking about the overall financial performance of

Government for a year, it is important to recognize, in fact, just, what

happened here.

Mr. Speaker, through all of these quotes I gave you, and

there are others I could quote, but in all of them the word `trust' comes

through, or the lack of trust. The word of this Government cannot be trusted.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know why any of us are surprised about that - I do not

know why any of us are surprised. The Premier made it very clear prior to his

election that when he got in office, he would decide whether or not he would

honour loan guarantees issued by the previous administration.

Now, Mr. Speaker, a loan guarantee is a solemn bond of the

Government to accept the liability for a debt on behalf of a third party. It is

the Government's word in writing, it is a commitment, a legal binding contract

that if a company that received a guarantee was not able to make good on the

loan, then Government would make good on the guarantee and would pay up that

amount of money. And the Premier made great fun talking about the loan

guarantees given in relation to the Sprung Greenhouse - it is always their

whipping boy, the Sprung Greenhouse - and he said, `We will not honour them.' He

very quickly found out, after the election, indeed he will honour them - indeed

he will. If he ever wanted to destroy the financial credibility of this

Province, if he wanted to destroy our credit rating, that would be a way to do

it; turn us into a banana republic, don't honour the loan guarantees, have it

made known in the financial community that a signature by the Premier of this

Province or the Minister of Finance, a loan guarantee approved by this

Legislature, is not worth the paper it is written on. He soon found he could not

do that, but he wanted to.

And the second example we had, Mr. Speaker, of the Premier's

trustworthiness is something for which this Province will bear the shame forever

in this nation. I refer to the Meech Lake Accord. We all watched - we all

watched with some enthusiasm as we saw our Premier sign a document with all

other Premiers and the Prime Minister of Canada known as the Meech Lake Accord,

or an undertaking that the Meech Lake Accord would be brought before every

Legislature in this Country and voted on by June 15, I believe.

MR. RIDEOUT: June 23.

MR. WINDSOR: I thank the hon. the Leader of the

Opposition.

MR. RIDEOUT: I saved you just in time.

MR. WINDSOR: He just came in in time.

June 23 was the deadline. An undertaking was given, signed by

all eleven first Ministers, that every Legislature in this Country, the

Parliament of Canada and all ten Legislatures, would be asked to vote. Not that

they were committed to approve - no Premier can commit a legislature to approve

- but that they would be given an opportunity to vote. The people of the

Province would be given an opportunity to speak through their elected

representatives.

And the Premier went further than that, Mr. Speaker. He came

back and he said, `I really want to know how the people of this Province feel

about this, and I am going to ask all Members of the House of Assembly to go

across this Province and speak with the people. We are going to make funds

available, make extra resources available to the Members to hold meetings across

this Province and assess the views of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador on

this most vital issue, probably the most vital issue that most Members of the

House of Assembly are ever going to be asked to vote on.' And I say, Mr.

Speaker, with a great deal of pride, I was proud of every Member of this

Legislature in that debate. Never in my sixteen years in this House of Assembly

have I seen every single Member of the House be so involved in one particular

piece of legislation, spend so much time talking to their constituents and

getting the pulse of their constituents as to how they should represent their

constituents.

We spent a lot of time, Mr. Speaker -

AN HON. MEMBER: Speak for yourself. You did not vote.

MR. WINDSOR: - we spent a lot of time doing that and we

came back to this House and we had what I believe was the finest debate ever

held in the House of Assembly - bar none. We have had cases where three or four

Members on each side made tremendous speeches, there are many examples of those.

We have seen many examples of individual speeches that will go down in the

history books. But never in the history of the House of Assembly, that I am

aware of, was a debate entered into by every Member of the House with so much

passion, with so much research and so much conviction, and in the final hour,

what happened, Mr. Speaker? The Premier broke his word! He broke his word to

this House and to the Members of this House in not giving us an opportunity to

have our voice heard. Win or lose, Mr. Speaker, it does not matter, it is a

democratic Chamber, win or lose. Members of this House should have been given an

opportunity to have their voices heard; they should have had an opportunity to

speak on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people whom we consulted in that

process, during the Meech Lake debate.

The people of Newfoundland had a right to have their voices

heard across Canada, 'aye' or 'nay', we had the right to say no. We had the

right to say no, we will not agree to the Meech Lake Accord, even though all

other provinces might have agreed to it. But we were not given that right, Mr.

Speaker, and the Premier did not have the right to say no on his own, and that

is exactly what he did by refusing to let that motion come to a vote in this

Legislature; the Dictator spoke on behalf of all Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians and so, Mr. Speaker, there is no trust in the Premier any more -

AN HON. MEMBER: Part of the big lie.

MR. WINDSOR: - that is what we are hearing. How could the

Premier expect to be trusted. Now, Mr. Speaker, there is a third one, which was

the Budget of last year, and I do not need to speak about that because it has

been proven clearly and conclusively. The Minister of Finance admitted that

within a couple of days of bringing down the Budget document, he had evidence -

not only evidence - I mean he was notified by Ottawa that transfer payments

would be somewhat less than he had previously been advised, I think it was a $35

million or $40 million difference, he admitted that here in this House. Yet, Mr.

Speaker, he refused to tell the people, he refused to tell this House. I do not

know, Mr. Speaker, if it is not an abuse of the privilege of this House. That

Minister was in possession of information which directly and materially affected

the Budget that we were debating in this House, and he kept it from us. He

refused to tell us, not only the Minister of Finance, I suspect every Minister

over there knew that. I suspect the Minister was not so foolish as to keep that

to himself. I suspect he ran to Cabinet the first moment and said: boys we have

reassessed the transfer payments for this year and we have $35 million less than

we have in the Budget, it was even before the debate started; it was just before

the debate started, because we had the Budget Speech and then we had a break, I

do not know, Easter break or something; it was ten days later before we started

and it was during that period that the Minister was formally notified by Ottawa.

AN HON. MEMBER: In writing.

MR. WINDSOR: I might be unkind in suggesting that the

Minister knew verbally before he brought down his Budget but I cannot prove

that, but I suspect that, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. The

Minister of Finance now says that I am exaggerating, well, I refer the Minister

of Finance to, not his Ministerial Statement, I believe it was the Premier's

Ministerial Statement that admitted it, I think the Premier had to come up and

try to cover up for his poor old Minister of Finance and admit that he had

misled the House, so, Mr. Speaker, how can he be trusted.

I do not often refer to somebody from Quebec, but the

Minister of Inter-Governmental Affairs of Quebec, Mr. Gil Remillard, says and I

quote: ' Mr. Wells refused to honour his own signature.'

That is about as clear as you can make it. He refused to

honour his own signature.

MS. COWAN: (inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: That is absolutely true I say to the poor

old Minister of Labour.

AN HON. MEMBER: We know the difference, boy!

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, so you do.

MR. WINDSOR: I say to the Minister of Labour I will bring

her a tape of the Premier signing his agreement, his solemn undertaking to bring

that motion to a vote in this Chamber, and the Premier did not honour that

undertaking.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: And she can shake her head all she wants.

She cannot change the facts. She may not like them. They may be embarrassing to

her, but she cannot change those facts.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: This Chamber was not given an opportunity,

and so there goes the trust.

So we have no faith in the Minister, we have no faith in the

Premier or his Government. Government has shown, Mr. Speaker, that they are

totally incapable of properly estimating. If you want an example of that, Mr.

Speaker, the Minister of Finance brought in a tax measure last year -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Interesting. He called it a health and

education tax. And he said: we have to bring in this tax because we have

problems in the health care sector, in the education sector, we have to give

them more money. This was the great drive in the Budget last year, 1.5 per cent

payroll tax. He said: it is only a small amount it will not impact on business

and industry. We find out now, Mr. Speaker, that that payroll tax amounts to 53

per cent of the provincial corporate tax paid in this Province. That is how much

it amounted to. That is the little Liberal impact that it will have on business

and industry. The Minister told us: I will get $15 million this year. How much

did he get? $28 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: Almost twice as much. He did not even know

how much money he was going to raise. He did not know the impact on business and

industry.

AN HON. MEMBER: He was right on the button.

MR. WINDSOR: He was right on the button. That stupid

comment from a stupid minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: Someone should have given him a

calculator for Christmas.

MR. WINDSOR: Fifteen million dollars he said I will get

and he got $28 million. And he said annually, because it was only six months of

the year, he applied it the first of August, annualized I will get $25 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is what he said.

MR. WINDSOR: What does his Budget say this year? This is

the Minister's Budget, $42 million. That is how much he is going to collect this

year, additional, from business and industry.

AN. HON. MEMBER: Subtract the $14 million that has to do

with intergovernmental transfers.

MR. WINDSOR: That had to do with what?

AN HON. MEMBER: Intergovernmental transfers.

MR. WINDSOR: Intergovernmental transfer. What has that

got to do with the payroll tax?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, I heard the Minister on open

line, I do not often refer to open line shows, but I found it amusing.

AN HON. MEMBER: He did not know his salary.

MR. WINDSOR: I was on this morning, one caller called in

and said, the Minister was on and we asked him his salary and he did not even

know his own salary. He could not answer the question.

AN HON. MEMBER: He did not want to tell it was $85,000.

MR. WINDSOR: And when he was asked a question, he tried

to answer it today, he stumbled over it today. He looked at the Minister of

Social Services to bail him out, and the Minister of Social Services said you

are on your own, sink or swim. Because the Minister of Finance did not even know

what the implications were of the $50 fuel allowance that was introduced in the

Budget. He was asked a question: does it apply to fuel? Does it apply to

electricity? I do not really know, boy. The Minister of Social Services will

tell you. I am only responsible for the Budget. How do you expect me to know

what is in it?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: And he was asked by a gentleman of the

implications of the eye examinations no longer being covered. And he was not

sure which eye examinations were covered now and which were not. The Minister of

Finance did not know that he had just cut out all eye examinations; and he calls

me stupid because I look in his Budget and see a figure of $42 million and I

look in last year's Budget and see one that says it should be $25 million. Who

is stupid, I ask you?

AN HON. MEMBER: Be nice, now! Be nice!

AN HON. MEMBER: Be nice! How can you be nice with that

kind of incompetence on the go?

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is, we

are faced with a serious, serious financial problem - I do not underestimate

that. The $215 million deficit he talked about a month ago was a bogeyman. That

was something put up there to scare people. I was not impressed with that, but,

yes, we have a deficit problem. The question is, why do we have a deficit

problem?

MR. MURPHY: Because of seventeen years of Toryism.

MR. WINDSOR: We have a deficit problem because of the

incompetence of that Minister. I remind the Member for St. John's South, we

handed him a surplus two years ago. We handed him a surplus of $4 million and,

in two years, they have run that to a $117 million deficit. That is performance,

Mr. Speaker, and all we hear from people like the Member for St. John's South

is, 'Oh, but look at all of the debt.' In the last two years, we have had the

largest borrowing program of any years in our history - the two years since this

Government came to power. That is really tackling the deficit problem. What a

wonderful economic program that is. Over $600 million, this Government borrowed

last year.

They may be exasperated a little bit, too. I just spoke a few

moments ago about the Premier's actions as it relates to Meech Lake. Well, there

is such a thing in this country today, Mr. Speaker, thanks to one Mr. Wells and

Mr. Wells alone, called the Meech Lake premium. This Government and almost every

Government in Canada are paying 1.5 per cent more for their borrowing than they

would have had Meech Lake gone through.

MR. NOEL: Prove it! Prove it!

MR. WINDSOR: Go talk to the economists. Go talk to the

money markets. I know they will not understand them, but the facts are there. I

can quote them and I can show you documentation - 1.5 per cent more; and 1.5 per

cent on $600 million that this Government is borrowing this year is $9 million a

year more. There is where $9 million is going. Out of his $117 million deficit,

$9 million of that is extra debt cost, because the Premier of this Province

broke his word to the people of Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WINDSOR: There is where their problem comes from, Mr.

Speaker. We have a $117 million deficit because this Government deceived the

people of this Province last year with their Budget, deceived the people of this

Province into thinking that everything was hunky-dory: What a great Government

we are, we have a $10 million surplus: when they knew they did not have it. When

they set the scene in this Province, Mr. Speaker, of heavy collective

agreements, when they said to the union negotiators: We have a $10 million

surplus, boys. Come and get it. That is what they said: Come, get it. Then, they

turned it over to independent arbitrators to let them deal with it. The

independent arbitrators said: Government is not in a bad position; they have a

$10 million surplus, so we are not too bad, we are doing very well. Thank you.

That is a surplus two years in a row. This Government is so proud of it.

So, the majority in this Province, any union member who came

in, I would have, had I been out there, I would come in with a very positive

attitude, saying: Government is not in bad shape. We have come through a number

of years of deficit budgets and now we have a surplus. What a great time to

start negotiating. We have taken some pain over the years - of course, they have

- taken some pain over the years, and now we can start to make up a little bit.

The President of Treasury Board turned tail and ran and said: I am not taking a

strike. Do not think I am going to do what Windsor did. I am not coming up the

steps of Confederation Building with 500 people standing around me. I will send

it to an independent arbitrator - he will bail me out: He bailed him out with a

25 per cent increase over two years, which set the stage for all the rest of the

collective agreements. He bailed him out.

Then, the Government went back negotiating and started

passing out money, hand over fist. Ah, Mr. Speaker, but they knew they were not

going to honour those agreements, either. They knew they were going to come in

here with a piece of legislation and overrule themselves, Mr. Speaker. They were

only playing games with the unions in this Province. They had no intention of

honouring those agreements either. That is the bottom line, Mr. Speaker. That is

what we are into here. It has been nothing but one big charade for this

Government since they came into power. So now we are indeed faced with a deficit

situation, because this Government chose not to deal with the problem last year.

They tried to cover it up and make it look rosy. They looked at their Budget

through rose coloured glasses last year and tried to fool the people of this

Province into thinking that we had a surplus when they knew it was not true.

Now, Mr. Speaker, that is going to have far-reaching implications for this

Province, very, very far reaching implications. What are the options for the

Minister now then? Let us assume for a moment that he is faced with that $117

million deficit. How does he deal with it? How does he turn that around? He

knows, as we all know, that there is some difficulty caused by the fact that

transfer payments from Ottawa are not growing as quickly as we would have

otherwise predicted.

MR. POWER: They are growing.

MR. WINDSOR: Oh, they are growing. People out there are

saying: we are not getting as much money from Ottawa. Ottawa is cutting back.

They are not really cutting back, but just not giving us as big an increase as

we had thought we were going to get. That is a big difference from what you are

doing with the public service, when you have given them something, when you have

awarded them something, signed a contract and then you are cutting it back to

Canada is saying: you are going to get a lesser increase. That is not rolling

back the 7 per cent increases that have been awarded to 4 per cent. Saying:

boys, we cannot afford it but we will give you 4 per cent. The cost of living is

going up by 5.7 per cent. We cannot give you the 7 or 8 per cent that you might

have negotiated but we will give you 4 per cent. That is what the Government of

debt service ratio but we have a 35. They have a bigger debt problem by far than

the Province of Newfoundland has, so they are saying we have to deal with that

or pretty soon we will not be able to give the provinces anything. None of us

liked it but at least they are honest and up- front about it, and trying to do

it with a little bit of compassion. Did we see any compassion with this Budget?

No, not one ounce of compassion. What really frightens me is that the Minister

of Finance stands up and says: we really did not know what we were going to do

with salaries until the last day or two. Now, either that is a total admission

of helter-skelter or not knowing where they are going, either it is an admission

of that, or it is an admission of absolutely not caring about the workers in

this Province. They have all floated their problem onto the backs of the public

service. There are a number of options that a Government can take when you are

faced with a deficit. You can increase your borrowing. God knows they cannot do

that. We have the highest borrowing program in the history of this Province this

year. They told us some time ago - we had meetings with the money markets. We

had meetings with the credit rating agents, and our fiscal agents, to determine

how much can we can borrow, and they are borrowing the maximum they can borrow.

I accept that, they are, borrowing far too much more than they should. They talk

about our great debt, talk about our great problem that we left them. Sure, we

left them a debt but have a look at Page 9 of the Budget document, if I recall

correctly, deficit as percentage of gross expenditures and you will see. Here we

were in 1984, a very high point, after two or three years of serious national

recession. We were in serious trouble because we had to borrow during the

recessions of '82,'83, and '84. We had to borrow heavily, and we had some wage

freezes and things of that nature that we had to implement. Wage freezes by the

way, Mr. Speaker, slightly different than what we are talking about here. We

told the people what we were going to do, and we said it would take effect the

end of your existing contract. We will honour every contract that we have in

place. Not once was the signature of our Government not honoured - not once.

What we are seeing here are collective agreements that are being rolled back.

You can call it a freeze if you want to. It is no more a freeze, Mr. Speaker,

than the sunshine is. It is a rollback by any stretch of the imagination.

Increases that were awarded have been rolled back. A one year hiatus, I say to

the Minister of Forestry. He could have implemented at the end of the current

contract and said: at the end of this contract you will go for one year without

an increase and then we will start negotiating again. That would have been half

honest, but that is not what they did, Mr. Speaker.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in 1984 we were up to just about a 15 per

cent deficit as a percentage of gross expenditure in the Province - 15 per cent

of our gross expenditure for the year was servicing the debt. We came into this

House, and we did it publicly on television, and we said: we have a serious

problem. We have to deal with our deficit. We cannot allow it to continue. As I

recall it was around an $80 million deficit at that point in time, and we said:

this is not satisfactory, and we are going to have a five year plan. We will

have a five year plan to eliminate that deficit and we are going to have to do

certain things in the interim, certain very painful things. We made those

painful decisions, and we made those cuts, and we had a plan. I recall meeting

then with the fiscal agents and the credit rating agency and showing them our

plan saying: we have to borrow $80 million this year and we do not like it, and

we will probably have $50 million next year, $30 million the following year, and

$20 million the following year, but in 1989 we will bring in a balanced Budget.

Well, Mr. Speaker, have a look at what we did. In 1989 we delivered to the

present Minister of Finance, who delivered my Budget, we delivered him a $4

million surplus in 1989. On target, Mr. Speaker, with our five year economic

plan - a $4 million surplus. That is what we delivered to this Government two

years ago.

Now, Mr. Speaker, where have we gone from there? Is there a

five year plan for this Government? There is not even a one year plan, Mr.

Speaker. Less then six months after the Budget was brought down last year the

Minister of Finance admitted: I was off by about $120 million or $130 million.

Sorry about that.

AN HON. MEMBER: He should have resigned.

MR. WINDSOR: Bigger, Mr. Speaker, a greater variance than

we have ever seen in the history of this Province. Nothing has ever come close

to being that inaccurate. Never have we had a Budget that was so inaccurate as

last years Budget - never. So, instead of carrying on with a surplus situation

over the $10 million that they brought in and they said they were going to have

and say: whoop - we slip to a $117 million deficit, and now we are facing a $57

million deficit only because we are going to destroy the lives of 3,000 or 4,000

public servants, not to mention the impact on the private sector, the jobs that

will be created in the service sector because of these number of jobs. Now, Mr.

Speaker, there is a lot of people and a lot of families that are going to suffer

because of it. But what were the options? We talked about borrowing, and said

well: we could borrow I suppose but I guess $600 million is a fair piece of

borrowing. Can we afford to borrow any more?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: And the answer to that, Mr. Speaker, I

think, is no. I think they have borrowed the maximum they could have this year.

They might have gotten away with another $50 million. They might have. But they

have to convince the money markets again of why we had a $120 million deficit.

We had figured we would have a $10 million surplus, a whole bunch of things

happened, we will talk about those. A whole bunch of things happened and we have

slipped from $10 million surplus to a $117 million deficit. Could not do

anything about it. Got out of control on us. They could have come clean and

said: boy, we just did not have a handle on it. Things did not happen the way we

thought.

They could have said that a lot of it was of their own

making. You know, when you say that times are tough, when you say that the

economy is in a recession, when you say that the Government is going to have to

cut back, and you ask departments to tell you what implications there would be

if their budget were frozen for a year, when you ask them how many layoffs they

would have to have to accomplish that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Because this Government destroyed the confidence of the people of this Province,

destroyed the confidence of the investment community and private enterprise. We

have seen a tremendous slow down in investment in this Province over the past

twelve months, because who would invest in such an uncertain climate?

AN HON. MEMBER: The same thing is true all over the

country.

MR. WINDSOR: It is true all over the country, and not as

much as here.

We saw a great slow down as evidenced in the amount of retail

sales tax brought in. We saw a great drop in consumer confidence, a tremendous

weakening of consumer confidence. Certainly you have 15,000 public servants,

none of them who knew whether or not their job was save or not, because we were

also doing layoffs.

AN HON. MEMBER: Thirty thousand.

MR. WINDSOR: Thirty thousand public servants. The hon.

gentleman corrects me and he is quite right. Thirty thousand people in the

public service, all of whom could honestly say: I am not sure if I am going to

have a job next year. Because the Premier also made it clear: you see,

previously when everybody looked at cutbacks most people in the public service

could say: well I am okay I have seniority or I am in management, I am a senior

person and if there is going to be cutbacks it is usually at the bottom, it is

usually the last person hired, the lower end of the scale is where you get your

cutback, simply because even if you laid somebody of at the top you get bounced

up through the system anyway. That person would bounce their way down. So it is

always the person at the bottom end of the scale that ultimately would be

replaced.

And the Premier went on television and made it very clear we

are going to have cutbacks and it is going to be throughout the public service.

There will be management and executive people laid off. We are not just going to

be laying off the lowest person on the totem pole. So that meant that 30,000

public servants then were afraid of their jobs, and they stopped buying. Now,

Mr. Speaker, this is not my theory. This is not something that I am fabricating.

I am telling you I spoke with hundreds of Newfoundlanders in the last two to

three months, in particular, who said: boy, the public service, some of them in

uniforms, some of them with Government uniforms on, in positions that require

them to wear a uniform in the Department of Public Works or the Department of

Forestry or the Department of Health or Transportation or whatever, some of them

walked up to me in a shopping centre and said: Mr. Windsor can you tell us when

they are going to make a decision? I am scared to death to buy anything because

I do not know if I will have a job next week or next month.

Literally, and I say this in all sincerity and all honesty,

Mr. Speaker, literally hundreds of Newfoundlanders have asked me the question,

When will we find out? And I ask the Minister of Finance today, how long is he

going to prolong this agony, even now that he has announced how many layoffs

there will be? People in this building today, upstairs, downstairs and in the

other wing, are wondering, am I going to get the pink slip tomorrow? Or on

Wednesday? Or on Thursday? So even just from those 30,000 people, certainly the

consumer confidence was destroyed.

As a result of that, even the Minister's own projection of

retail sales tax were not realized. They were not realized and well they might

not be, because things slowed down; most people did not have any less money to

spend, they had the same amount of disposable income as they would have

otherwise had, but they are saving their money, they did not have the

confidence. Go talk to the automobile dealer or talk to the real estate dealer

and you will see the implications.

MR. FLIGHT: (Inaudible) recession.

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, I say to the Minister of Forestry, who

said, is some of that not related to the national recession? of course it is -

of course it is. But if you are looking now at what is happening today in

economic circles, every economist, every forecaster will tell you Newfoundland

is the bright spot in Canada; Newfoundland is the bright spot because Hibernia

is coming in. The great development in Canada today is Hibernia, and so many

jobs will be created.

AN HON. MEMBER: A Tory development.

MR. WINDSOR: A good Tory development. So many jobs are

going to be created, so much investment is coming into Newfoundland because of

the Hibernia development, Newfoundland is going to be the bright spot. And we

should be building on that. This Government, in its Budget, should be out

saying, `this is going to be a good year. There are opportunities here.' And

there are opportunities here. As I said in debate last week, I see them every

day; there are lots of opportunities out there for private enterprise and they

are all afraid to move or are unable to move - afraid or unable. They do not

have the financial wherewithal to make that step.

(Inaudible) the last time that there was a euphoria about oil

and gas, when Government at that time constantly said, get yourself ready but be

careful. Make haste slowly - make haste slowly. I have to quote the former

Premier, Mr. Peckford. How many times did he say to us, make haste slowly; yes

there are opportunities coming, but we are not there yet. And I recall when I

was Minister of Development, in fact, we put together a plan to develop some

offshore servicing sites, some new ports, and we had people come in with

proposals. I went back out after we studied all those proposals and we announced

what our programs would be. And how many of those businesspeople looked to me

and said, you are stopping it. Why are you stopping this? We want to go ahead.

And I said, because you are not yet ready. And they cursed me that day. But I

can tell you most of them have come back to me since and said thank you, you

stopped me from making the worst business decision I could have ever made in my

life. I was ready to go and make a huge investment, and you stopped me. Thank

goodness you did. Because we would have had a lot more companies bankrupt than

are going bankrupt even now.

Mr. Speaker, that confidence is not there. Retail sales tax

is down because this Government has destroyed the confidence. And they had an

opportunity in this Budget to turn it around. Economic forecasters were saying

it is going to be a good year in Newfoundland, growth in Newfoundland better

than anywhere else in Canada. Not a great year, but some growth.

MR. BAKER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: I am glad to see the Government House Leader

is listening.

MR. WINDSOR: We will come to it. We will come to it.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible) is at it again.

MR. PARSONS: He is learning something. I am glad you are

sitting in your seat. You are learning. It is a hard (inaudible), it is going to

be difficult, but you are learning.

MR. NOEL: You need to learn how to listen.

MR. PARSONS: You all are learning. I am delighted that

you are all over there. You are learning.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, when hon. gentlemen are

finished their bantering back and forth. It is all very pleasant.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: It gives me a break, my vocal chords a

little rest.

Mr. Speaker, Government had an opportunity with this Budget

document to change around the feeling in Newfoundland, to put some confidence

know where we are situated there. As the President of Treasury Board and the

Minister of Finance said, no great implications there; maybe $10 million or $15

million in the federal Budget, nothing too serious, nothing that in the overall

schemes of things could not be dealt with, recognizing the problem the

Now I have to say to you that I am not as content with the

the slowdown in the growth of transfer payments hurts provinces like

Newfoundland more than it does the more affluent provinces of Canada. I would

differently. But having said that, it is another issue for another time. We all

that plan, Mr. Spea