November

2, 1995

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol.

XLII No. 48

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (L. Snow): Order, please!

Before we begin with the routine proceedings of the day, I

would like to take this opportunity to welcome to the House of Assembly, on

behalf of all members, fifteen Level II students from Point Leamington Academy

in the District of Exploits. They are accompanied by their teacher, Ms Donna

White and Mr. Ray Jenkins.

As well, we have visiting the House of Assembly today,

thirty-five Grade VI students from St. Paul's Elementary in the District of

Harbour Grace. Accompanying them is their teacher, Ms Lesley Forward, Wayne

Martin and Geraldine Gaul.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Oral Questions

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

Capes.

MR. MANNING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are for the Minister of Works, Services

and Transportation, dealing with a demonstration that was held at the

Confederation Building yesterday evening by the Newfoundland Association of

Community Living.

Mr. Speaker, I attended that demonstration and was disgusted

to find that these people, many of whom are confined to wheelchairs and many

others who are physically and mentally challenged, had to stay out in the cold

on the steps of Confederation Building to have a small, peaceful demonstration.

The steps of Confederation Building are nowhere close to

Tiananmen Square in China or the streets of Los Angeles, so I ask the minister:

Who made the decision to deny these people access to the people's building, and

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

Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, I have witnessed individuals -

and I have been around this House of Assembly since 1985, but I can't imagine

that anybody would use a situation to make political gains in the House of

Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. EFFORD: First of all, I, myself being responsible for

the security of Confederation Building, I should have at least been asked could

they have permission to come to the foyer of the Confederation Building

yesterday evening at seven o'clock. I knew absolutely nothing about it until

this morning at nine o'clock. And the hon. member, as far as I understand, knew

full-well and he didn't have the decency to make a phone call to see if

permission could be given.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes, on a

supplementary.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Speaker, a personal attack on me doesn't

justify the minister's actions.

I had calls, I say to the minister, from people from St.

Anthony, Corner Brook, Gander, throughout this Province today concerning this

issue. I was talking to people on the steps last night who requested permission

to come into the foyer of the Confederation Building, Mr. Speaker - an

organization. We are talking about human beings here.

As I stood out there last night, Cabinet ministers,

government members, shuffled by as many people shivered in the cold. I say to

the minister, nothing less than a public apology to this association and a

commitment from this minister that this type of callous act will not happen

again will be only satisfactory. I ask the minister for that today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The apology should come from the individuals who organized,

or other individuals who knew about the planned demonstration in advance. All

they would have had to do was have the respect of security for this building,

knowing full well that the doors of this building are locked in the evening for

security reasons, and that you cannot have them open to the general public

coming to and from at any time. A simple phone call would have given an

indication that I could have given permission to a group of people who wanted a

demonstration. I will not take second place to the hon. member opposite, in

working with the disadvantaged people in this Province. I have a record that I

will stand up with anybody in this Province in working with them.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

A supplementary, the hon. the Member for St. Mary's - The

Capes.

MR. MANNING: Mr. Speaker, I say to the minister, the

phone call did come requesting permission for that group to go into the foyer of

the Confederation Building. The phone call came and they were denied access. I

ask the minister again: Who denied it? And will you apologize for what you did?

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

Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, I will say to the hon. member

opposite and all hon. members, and all people in this Province, I did not

receive a phone call.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. EFFORD: As minister responsible for the security of

this building, I have given strict orders that this building be locked after

7:00 in the evening! Anybody who wants access to it must ask permission,

otherwise, they don't get in.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: You couldn't give a reply to it because

you were gone to a cocktail party.

MR. EFFORD: I was going to what?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation

on a point of order.

MR. EFFORD: An hon. member opposite just shouted across

the House to a minister and said that that minister was to a cocktail party when

he should have been in doing his work in his office.

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

MR. EFFORD: Yesterday evening.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

There is no point of order. I would remind hon. members that

points of order during Question Period should be left until the end of the

period.

The hon. the Member for Ferryland.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Health.

In this House last Monday in response to my questions regarding cutbacks under

the Enriched Needs Program the minister said that there are three populations

served by that program and I quote, `It is not only the seniors but it is the

mentally and physically challenged.' We have not yet indicated a move to put in

place limitations or revised policies with respect to the other two groups. I

ask the minister, when do you plan to apply a cap to the other two groups, that

is the mentally and the physically challenged?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The member correctly describes the answer that I gave and the

facts are essentially the same. We have developed or redesigned the program for

Enriched Needs that supports the seniors in the community who live at home. We

are in the process now of doing essentially the same type of exercise to address

the programming needs of the developmentally delayed and the physically

challenged. While I cannot give him a definitive date as to when we will have

new policies and new capitations, if that is what evolves from it, in place, I

can indicate to him that we are trying to do it in as timely a fashion as we can

considering the fact that we have to consult with these groups, as we have

already done substantially and considering also that we want to make decisions

that will meet their needs and also keep us within the $20 million budget that

was put in place this year to address the home support needs for these two

populations. One of the factors, I should point out, is that there are other

programs in Social Services that also deliver various types of services to those

two populations that are unique to them alone.

Whereas the seniors is more of a

homogeneous group in terms of the services they need, the other two populations

have services provided to them that are over and above home support or enriched

needs. So that is part of the circumstance we are working through.

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

Ferryland.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In today's

Telegram a Miss Howell who is physically challenged said, home support

services are an essential part of disabled living. The Executive Director of the

Newfoundland Association of Community Living, Miss Neary, called on government

to maintain home support services for these people and not force them back into

institutions. Now, will the minister assure this House that the mentally and

physically challenged will not be the next victims of his callousness?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, thank you.

I think, if I were to again remind the hon. member that an

indication of a callousness that this government has toward those and others but

particularly this population is the fact that we have permitted a growth in a

budget that started seven years ago from $300,000 to a budget of $30 million

delivering home support services to these groups. If that is an indication of

callousness then we accept that charge with delight but I also have to point out

to the minister that growth in that particular program is disproportionate and

is completely inconsistent with the increase in the number of people we are

serving and the type of services that it was originally intended to provide. The

program was never intended to make the person's home in effect another

institution. There is not much benefit in taking people from one institution and

creating, in effect, another institution, or institutional environment in which

they are placed.

The circumstances are that we have put a budget of $20

million in place, and we are comfortable and confident that we can provide the

appropriate services within that budget, and we are setting about to do so.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a question for the Premier, a question about ethics in

government, a question about the Premier's ethical standards for his government

and his ministers. Does the Premier permit his ministers to use their

ministerial positions, their ministerial offices, to solicit funds for the

minister's district Liberal associations from businesses that are regulated, or

financed, by the minister's departments?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: The Leader of the Opposition knows the

answer to that. She knows we changed the practices in 1989 and this is not

acceptable.

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

supplementary.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier indicates this is not acceptable. I have a

question for the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture. Did you use your

ministerial position, and direct your ministerial staff, using the Department of

Fisheries, Food and Agriculture stationary, to solicit funds this summer for the

St. George's Liberal Association from fisheries and farming businesses that are

regulated or financed by your department?

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

Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: No, I did not.

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

supplementary.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The supplementary is to the Minister of Fisheries, Food and

Agriculture. How does the minister explain these documents? I have a set for the

minister and another set for the Premier. A fax cover sheet on Government of

Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture

stationary, indicating that the fax was sent by the Minister of Fisheries, Food

and Agriculture, the sender's name, Gail Parsons, another, the same, the

sender's name, Gerry Reid, executive assistant, covering a letter from the

District of St. George's Liberal Association soliciting funds for the St.

George's District Liberal Association, signed by Gerry Reid, executive assistant

to the minister, referring to the minister, and a fund raising barbecue in

Jeffrey's, and then a separate date, a later date, a thank-you letter to a

donor, signed by Dr. H. W. (Bud) Hulan, Minister. How does the minister explain

these documents that were received by businesses that are regulated by the

minister's department?

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

Agriculture.

DR. HULAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I do not know the documents to which the leader is referring,

but I will certainly take it under advisement and look into the whole matter.

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

supplementary.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a supplementary

for the Premier.

I have just asked one of the pages to give the Premier copies

of the correspondence to which I referred. I draw the Premier's attention to the

covering fax on government stationery, sent by the Minister of Fisheries, Food

and Agriculture, and then the letter signed by the Minister's executive

assistant with an advertising contract soliciting $1,000 for a centre page, $750

for inside cover pages, $350 for a full page, et cetera, and then a thank-you

letter from the minister himself, saying: Thank you for the contribution you

made through your advertisement in the District of St. George's Liberal

Association booklet. The annual barbecue and fund-raiser was a tremendous

success and was attended by many people -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS VERGE: - including Premier Clyde Wells.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that she is on a supplementary and

there is no -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

A

preamble is permitted on the main question, but

supplementaries should have no

preamble. I would ask the hon. member to get to

her question.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question to the Premier is: Will the Premier fire his

Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture for having breached the Premier's

ethical standard which he indicated in answer to my first question?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I will answer the last question first. No,

I will not fire the minister at this time on the request of the member. I will

take a look at this. As I read these things, they are written not on ministerial

stationery but on stationery of the District of St. George's Liberal

Association.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

PREMIER WELLS: That is alright; I will take a look at the

whole thing, and when I have had a chance to take a look at the whole thing I

will deal with it, but I will not deal with it in this precipitous way.

I should say, for the benefit of the House, I have

endeavoured, ever since I have been Premier, to make sure that these practices

that were commonplace prior to 1989 were stopped.

We've largely been successful except that I'm aware that

members of the House do this on a consistent basis. I've seen the letters. As a

matter of fact, they've come back returned. Sent out of the Opposition office.

There are all kinds of them. So this is not an unusual - but we've tried to stop

it. That doesn't make it right. I will take a look at the situation and when

I've assessed the whole situation I will advise the House what I'm going to do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I ask the Premier, when

he investigates the conduct of his Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture

will he find out to whom the minister's solicitations went? Will he find out

that requests for funds for the St. George's District Liberal association went

to fish plants that are on the blocks, that are waiting nervously for the

minister's decisions about licensing, about licence cancellations? Will he find

out that letters asking for money for the St. George's District Liberal

association went to farmers, who are more beholden than ever on the provincial

department since there have been federal subsidy cutbacks?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I will do an assessment of

this. I should tell the House what this is. These are blank pages, incidentally,

entitled: Dear Sir or Madam. They appear to be sent from an address - 62 Halley

Drive in St. John's is the return address on them.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WELLS: Just listen. I know members would like to

make something out of nothing. Let me take a look at what it is. I just draw the

House's attention to the fact that this is not what the Leader of the Opposition

had represented it to be. It is a blank letter not addressed to anybody in

particular: Dear Sir or Madam. Now, I don't to whom it was sent, if it was sent,

or whether or not it was sent at all, and I don't know to whom it was directed

or if any were sent to anybody or not. This is all a bit of a witch-hunt that

the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would like to start. Unfortunately for

her, Mr. Speaker, I don't respond to that kind of proposal.

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

Opposition.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Premier

indicate that the cover sheet is a Government of Newfoundland and Labrador form

with Department of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture printed across the top, and

an indication from a fax that it was sent on a Minister of Fisheries, Food and

Agriculture fax? Will the Premier on checking find out and report back to the

House that these letters indeed were addressed to businesses that are regulated

by the Department of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture, and that the names and

addresses were deleted at the explicit request of the businesses for fear that

if their names were revealed to the Premier and the minister they would suffer

reprisals?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, when I have something real to

deal with I will deal with it. If this person has a complaint, come and see me

and I will deal with it. I'm not prepared to make decisions condemning anybody

or criticizing anybody on the basis of blank pages with different fax numbers,

posted different ways. This one happens to be on the side, that one happens to

be on the top. Whether it is fake, whether it came from the same source, whether

it dealt with that or another topic, I don't know. I will take a look at it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Why should anyone trust

the Premier's investigation of his minister? Will the Premier tell us what kind

of an independent investigation he is going to set up so that the people of the

Province can have some confidence in the findings and the outcome of the

investigation?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: When I get a valid complaint that appears

to have substance, I will deal with it. I will not go and cause witch-hunts to

be held merely on the basis of somebody putting in a fax sheet with a print

across the top on this page but the fax sheet printed down the side on the other

page. These two could not possibly have been sent at the same time.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition on a supplementary.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, a supplementary to the

Premier.

Will the Premier not pause and examine the correspondence I

have given to him, and confirm that there are two sets of correspondence, each

consisting of a solicitation, on government letterhead, sent on the Minister of

Fisheries' fax, and then later a thank-you letter from the minister.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, what I just pointed out was

that I do not know how valid, if at all, these are. Now they may be accurate, I

do not know, but I am not prepared to act on the basis that they are merely

because the Leader of the Opposition has made these accusations. She has made

accusations in the past on many occasions that have not been substantiated. Now

I just point out that on this first one she gave me - I have not had a chance to

read them or to look at them; they were just delivered to me now a few minutes

ago - I do point out, however, that on this first fax the Minister of Fisheries

and the fax number is across the top. On this second page of the same fax it is

down the side. Now I do not know of any fax machine that at the same time prints

the name and address across the top on one of the sheets of the same fax, and

down the side of the other.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition on a supplementary.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, a supplementary to the

Premier.

I trust the Premier will get an independent investigator to

examine all relevant aspects of this transaction, the position of the fax

printout not being the most important.

The thank-you letter from the minister indicates that the

Premier, his wife and his mother-in-law attended the St. George's Liberal

Association fund-raising event for which the money was solicited. Will the

Premier indicate whether he, in fact, was at the function, and whether he saw

the booklet containing the paid advertisements from the businesses that are

regulated by the minister's department?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I am happy to confirm, Mr. Speaker, that

along with a lot of other events, district Liberal associations fund-raising

events and other things throughout the past year, I was at the one in St.

George's. I am going to another one tonight, and I will go to another one on the

weekend, and I will go to another one next week. That is part of my

responsibility as Leader of the Liberal Party, and I do this on a regular basis.

I do not recall seeing any specific books or particular books or advertising or

anything on that occasion. As a matter of fact, I was only there, I think, about

an hour or so, if I was there that long, because I had another function to

attend at the time, as I recall. I do not recall seeing any booklet.

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

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

for the Minister of Education and Training.

On September 13th I wrote his deputy minister with regard to

a school in Green Bay, Valmont Academy in King's Point. I have a constituent, a

teenage girl, who used to attend that school but finds it impossible to do so

because of the air quality in the school. I understand a study was done with

regard to air quality. Nothing has been forthcoming since my letter to the

deputy minister. I wonder if the minister would look into this. The girl in

question right now is studying at home with a tutor on a full-time basis because

she cannot go to the school. I would ask the minister to look into it with a

view to improving the conditions at the school so that this particular girl

could go to school.

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I will gladly look into

that matter for the hon. gentleman.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is also to the minister responsible for Education

and Training.

The government commissioned a study that suggested maybe an

approximate $8 million in cuts in school busing in this Province next year. The

study incidentally was done in my district in June during the exam season.

The proposed cuts in Western Labrador is approximately

$330,000. Parents in Western Labrador, Lab. City and Wabush are concerned that

the proposed changes in our area are totally unrealistic. Can the minister

confirm that children will have to walk to school from everywhere inside the 1.6

kilometre radius from the schools during the next fall and spring busing season?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman is quite

right. I did make public a document which shows that we can save between $8

million to $10 million in busing. As the report pointed out, there will have to

be some major changes. For example, one of the changes will have to take place

in the overall reforms of education where we are going to consolidate schools

across denominational lines as opposed to within denominational lines.

The specific case that the hon. gentleman is talking about,

that will be dealt with, with the board in the area and hopefully we will be in

a position to have only one board over there as opposed to the two that we have

now, and I would hope that we could save that amount of money, but if saving

that puts unnecessary hardship on the students of the area, we will not be doing

it; we will be looking at every single part of the question, Mr. Speaker. We

might even be able to save more than $300,000 in Labrador West but we will look

at every single board on its own issue. I could tell the hon. member that the

estimates made in that document are conservative. I firmly believe that we can

make even a more liberal savings than the report suggests.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek, on a

supplementary.

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, can the minister also confirm

that the government is considering a triple-busing policy, and inclusive in that

policy, will have four stops within a mile in Western Labrador which will

probably have children leaving their homes about an hour before daylight during

the winter busing season. Can he confirm that, that is going to be the policy

for next year?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I can tell the hon. member that

that policy is in place now. In many places throughout the Province, triple bus

runs are quite common especially in a confined area like Labrador West where

there are very small distances and fairly large numbers of children.

As for the four stops within the mile, Mr. Speaker, that's a

policy which has been in the Department of Education for the last twenty years.

We haven't made any changes to that; it is just that there were some cases where

the policy was not being enforced and we have been getting reports that -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Yes, of course. We have been getting reports

to us that buses have been stopping practically at everybody's driveway and this

is where some of the busing contracts have gotten totally out of control, so

there is nothing new about the policy of four stops within a mile. That has been

there ever since the hon. gentleman's party was in power and it seems to be a

reasonable policy, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Menihek, on a

supplementary.

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, yes indeed, the minister is

aware that the busing in Labrador City now and Wabush, makes more stops than

what the average is on the Island or what they use as a norm here in this part

of the Province but, Mr. Speaker, it was done for a specific reason, because of

the extreme climatic conditions of Labrador. Now he is unaware of that of

course, but I will point that out to him.

Now, will the minister reconsider this proposed policy and

take into consideration the extreme climatic conditions of Labrador and put the

children's fate first?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Yes, we do that, Mr. Speaker. I think it is

between November and April we make special provision for parts of Labrador. We

do provide busing inside the 1.6 kilometres in special cases and we do consider

the climatic conditions of Northern Labrador, Mr. Speaker, that is already being

done.

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

supplementary.

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, will he also consider changing

the bus stopping, having more than four stops within the mile, because right

now, they do not stop at every driveway, they stop in consideration of the

children, they put the children first, not the almighty dollar that the minister

is trying to save on children's safety?

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

Training.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member must know that

we certainly do put the children first. The top priority in the whole education

debate that we are having now is for the sake of the children and our future,

the Royal Commission, Our Children, Our Future. I do not know how more specific

than that we can be.

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that if the hon. member had such

consideration for the children that he would stand in his place a few days ago

and vote against the reforms we are trying to bring in, so quite the contrary.

We do not have to take second place to anybody in this Province when it comes to

putting the children first. Now, if there is a specific case that the hon.

member is talking about, with our usual openness, our usual caring, our usual

goodwill toward people, we will certainly look at that, however, we have to look

at the whole Province, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Question Period has expired.

Petitions

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

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

relevant to the department served by the Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation. It is a petition from Little Bay Island signed by the teachers

at the local school. It says;

We the teachers at H.L. Strong Academy, Little Bay Islands

hereby petition the hon. House of Assembly to reconsider the upcoming changes in

ferry schedules affecting Little Bay Islands and Long Island during the next two

weeks. The revisited schedules will negatively affect our education system by

the following; delayed departure for early morning trips will prevent us from

attending in-service; changes to the ferry

schedule will not permit us to attend

government's meetings with regard to the Williams' Commission Report and the

schedule does not allow for school board personnel to visit on the usual

schedule.

The prayer of the petition also goes on to say, Mr. Speaker,

that we have experienced negative affects of a combined service in the past and

we are not prepared to consider them even as a part of government's future

plans. We feel that this is only a temporary measure for government's hidden

agenda to cut services to outport areas. I guess the last

section of the prayer,

Mr. Speaker, is what is most relevant and most on the minds of the people in

these two island communities in my district. A couple of years ago the

government, as a budgetary measure, in the Budget Speech itself announced the

combining of the separate ferry services for the two islands for six months of

the year during the summer months. That was a very unfortunate experience both

for the islanders and for the government. There was much protest,

demonstrations, even police involvement and so on and the entire affair turned

very sour, I think, in everybody's mouth.

We have coming up now for the next two weeks a sharing of

services. Again, one ferry serving two islands with the other ferry being tied

up. The following week after that the other ferry running and the other one

being tied up but the bottom line is one boat serving two islands for a two week

period. That is an inconvenience in its own right with regard to the citizens of

those two particular island communities but I think what they are more concerned

about, Mr. Speaker, that if the government does this as sort of a test case or a

dry run, once the ice is gone during the winter season that the government may

be indeed reconsidering instituting one ferry for both islands during the summer

months in the upcoming budget year. I guess their reason for putting this to my

attention and to the attention of the House today is to get some sort of

reaction from the minister as to why they are doing this in the short term and

some assurances that the government, his department, will not be doing this in

the longer term next spring. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Orders of the Day

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

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't know where

the Minister of Finance is for the moment. I am sorry the Minister of Finance -

we were going to call a bill which stands in his name.

MS VERGE: He is out counting the temporary staff.

MR. ROBERTS: Could be, such as the temporary Leader of

the Opposition, perhaps.

Your Honour, in the absence of the minister, I will introduce

the bill. I don't know where the minister is and I can only tell the House I

spoke to him a moment or so ago and he -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Would you be good enough to call Order 8,

please, Bill No. 12, the Gasoline Tax Act amendment?

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

Gasoline Tax Act". (Bill No. 12)

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, this act is very

straightforward. What it does is it changes the Gasoline Tax Act to make it

consistent with our other tax acts by making it payable as a fixed amount of 3.5

cents per litre rather than as a percentage. For the benefit of my learned

friend from Burin - Placentia West I will repeat. All the gasoline taxes at the

pumps throughout the Province are now calculated as a certain number of cents

per litre, be they for gasoline, diesel or what have you. The only exception to

that was the gasoline for the operation of seagoing vessels or boats which up to

this point in time have been calculated as a percentage of the cost.

Because that varies somewhat from time to time, and for ease

of administration and calculation, it is now being changed so that it will be

calculated as a number of cents per litre - 3.5 cents per litre - rather than as

a percentage. It is revenue neutral, it doesn't yield any additional amounts to

the Province, and I would recommend it to the House for consideration.

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

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are things I

would like to ask the minister. First of all, I really don't understand. I don't

know how long ago it was - maybe fifteen years ago - that the previous

administration changed the system from this fixed-rate system to the percentage

system. The rationale for doing that at the time was first of all that you

didn't have to come in with a bill every time you wanted to increase your

revenues, alright, because you are now going to have, in this case, 3.5 cents

per litre. In five years you might want 4 cents or 4.5 cents or 5 cents a litre.

Everything is relative from an inflationary point of view.

So we changed it about fifteen years ago, I recall, to the

percentage basis, which did two things. It eliminated the need to come to the

House every time you wanted an increase, which you would have to do now. You can

do it in a budget or you can do it at any time by introducing a bill. Secondly,

it eliminated for government the embarrassment of increasing your rate. As the

price of gasoline or diesel fuel went up the amount of revenue you received

automatically went up with it. But you kept it in perspective because everything

was relative because it is a percentage basis.

I for the life of me don't understand why this government has

now changed it back. It seems to me to be a retrograde step. From government's

point of view, both financially and politically, you are better off having it on

a percentage basis. Because you get your increases automatically as increases

are approved for the price of fuels; or as the petroleum companies increase

their rates, so too increases the government's take from a tax point of view,

unless the minister can give me some other reason, I don't see the rationale for

it.

Secondly, in the amendment it says: "...other than pleasure

craft...." Would the minister like to explain why the distinction between

ocean-going vessels other than pleasure craft? Is there a tax rebate for vessels

that are loading - do I recall that there is a rebate of taxes for vessels that

are up taking fuels and going outside of the country or outside of the Province,

or is there a higher tax for those? I don't recall now which one it is. Maybe

the minister could clarify that. Other than pleasure craft, I assume that is

just local craft in and around the Province. How about commercial craft in the

Province, ferries and tour boats and this sort of thing? What tax do they pay,

or is there a rebate available to these craft? Perhaps the minister can give us

that information.

While we are talking about gasoline, maybe the Minister of

Natural Resources would like to tell us what controls this government has in

place and how close the monitoring is on gasoline prices in the Province, As you

travel around this Province there is an incredible variance in the rates being

charged for gasoline. I know it is a free market system and the companies are

entitled to charge what they will. From a consumer point of view, surely the

Minister of Natural Resources must be looking at this on a regular basis to

determine whether or not the rates for gasoline being charged in the Province

are fair rates, or whether or not we are unduly paying high rates for gasoline.

When you consider - and I don't have a card with me, but we

do get it on a regular basis, a report on the fuel rates, a survey that is done.

I find it very interesting to see the base rate - the tax rate obviously is a

function of a government policy in the various provinces - but the base cost for

the fuel companies doesn't seem to bear any consistency. It doesn't seem to be

in relationship to the location of the Province or the degree of difficulty or

the cost of shipping fuel to that particular province. It seems to be sort of

haphazard. Very difficult indeed to try to determine a rationale for those

prices. I'm just wondering, what work has been done to determine whether or not

the rates that the petroleum companies are charging in Newfoundland, are fair,

are consistent across the Province, with the exception of additional

transportation costs that might be involved, obviously, in getting to the more

rural parts of the Province? How do we justify the same rate being charged, for

example, for Come By Chance petroleum where they have no transportation costs

here? It is refined here in the Province versus gasoline that is being

transported in from outside the Province. I would be interested to hear exactly

just how the minister rationalizes some of those things, Mr. Speaker?

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

MR. HARRIS: I have a few comments on this legislation. I,

too, was wondering, along with the Member for Mount Pearl, why one would change

to the 3.5 cents per litre, or a per litre charge as opposed to a percentage.

Obviously, any increase would be transparent if there was an increase in the

tax, but it matters not one way or the other. If you are going to claim 5 per

cent of the total cost of gasoline it matters not whether you say it is a per

cent or you say it is so much per litre, and if it goes up five or ten cents a

litre you add another cent or two to the tax.

There may be administrative reasons for it and perhaps the

minister can explain it. It might be easier to collect, or easier to administer,

and that may be the reason. I would not necessarily want to encourage government

to have a system that would automatically increase taxes without the people

knowing about it, but it seems that there may be administrative inefficiencies.

I would like to ask, either this minister or the Minister of

Natural Resources, perhaps this minister because it has to do with trade and

commerce within the Province, what is the latest rationale of government, or

what studies have government done, to see a justification for the kind of

gasoline prices being charged in this Province as compared to other provinces?

From time to time, and I do not know if other members receive this, but I

receive in the mail once every several months a publication of some national

petroleum organization which compares gasoline prices, taxes, transportation,

marketing, and other costs throughout the country.

It does not seem as if taxes are the problem in this

Province. The per litre taxes in this Province seem to be for the most

part in

keeping with other provinces. Some provinces are higher. I believe Quebec is

higher and Alberta is probably lower. We are not on the high end or we are not

on the low end, we are somewhere there in the pack, so taxes are not the cause

of the high gasoline prices in Newfoundland. Yet, I recall that recently I was

in Halifax this summer and I had a car which I filled up with gas and the gas

price was fifty-four cents a litre in Dartmouth. I got on the plane and came

home and filled my tank later that day, or the next day, and paid 60.9 cents per

litre for gasoline. That is a difference of six or seven cents per litre between

Halifax and St. John's.

Now, I do not know if there is any justification for that,

the gasoline products that seem to be transferred back from one company to the

other. You might get your gas at an Esso pump but it may well be Ultra gas, or

vice versa, or it might even come from Come By Chance. There seems to be a lot

of transferring back and forth and you are essentially dealing with the same

product, yet as the Member for Mount Pearl has said, there is not a uniform

price in Newfoundland that is sort of justified by saying transportation costs

and distribution costs in Newfoundland are generally more expensive so we will

spread it out and charge the one price for everybody.

That does not sound to me like the kind of thing that an oil

company would do in any event. They being a competitive beast and not being

particularly regulated by this government, as I understand it, one would think

that they would try to keep their prices low where they can afford to do that,

for competitive reasons, and one would certainly expect that the market in the

St. John's area, by delivering petroleum products here, would be no different

than in Nova Scotia or Halifax. There are refineries nearby here as there are in

Halifax, and there does not seem to be any real explanation. If you look at

those charts that are put out, the increased cost to Newfoundland seems to

relate what is called marketing. They have this figure called marketing, and

there is more money spent as a percentage of the litre price of gas on marketing

in Newfoundland than elsewhere. Now I do not know what that is. Perhaps the

Minister of Natural Resources has people who are monitoring this.

There is an inordinate difference, I would say to the

minister, of something in the order of 8 per cent difference in gasoline prices

in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and I do not know what the explanation for it

is. I do not see transportation as being a big cost. There are no pipelines

going to Halifax. The gasoline is transported by tanker, and we are always being

told that bulk transport by water is the cheapest form of transportation in the

world, and one would think that delivering gasoline to Newfoundland would be

only marginally more expensive than delivering gasoline to Cape Breton or to

Halifax or other parts of Atlantic Canada, or P.E.I. for that matter. It is a

related question, because it has to do with the tax and the price of gasoline as

is influenced by factors such as taxes. Perhaps the Minister of Natural

Resources can tell us, when was the last time his department looked into this

question, and what is the current explanation, or are we being ripped off? Is it

just that we are being taken advantage of, because you don't see much price

difference from one company to the next; they all seem to maintain the same

prices, give or take a few tenths of a cent. Are we being ripped off? Are we

being taken advantage of because the government is not prepared to be active in

this area and put its foot down? Perhaps the minister could answer those

questions in response, and explain why it is that it is advantageous to have a

cents per litre tax as opposed to a percentage tax.

MR. SPEAKER: If the minister speaks now he will close the

debate. The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Just on a few issues raised by the hon. Member for Mount

Pearl, and the Member for St. John's East, the first issue, I believe, dealt

with the change in policy from a percent to a fixed price per litre.

Essentially, as the Member for St. John's East suggested, this is one of

administration and also certainly in the budget process. I think the change

initially from a fixed amount to a percentage amount was at a time when gasoline

prices were rising and expected to continue to rise. They have stabilized

substantially and, as members can appreciate, they fluctuate from time to time,

but in addition to that we cannot always predict that they will increase. While

the hon. member says, yes, we lose the benefit of an increase should one occur,

we also would run the risk of a decrease should one occur.

Secondly, in terms of our tax planning, we can probably

predict with relative certainty what the number of litres to be consumed in this

particular part of the economy would be. It is more difficult for us to predict

from time to time what the amount of gasoline prices will be either on a

worldwide or, certainly, his second issue, what is charged in Newfoundland. So,

all things considered, it was felt that from the point of view of physical

certainty, knowing what the consumption was likely to be, we may as well just

have a fixed amount of 3.5 cents per litre.

The additional item, from an administrative point of view, as

members can appreciate, once you get into percentage calculations and you get

variations of a tenth of a cent per litre, you get into very small amounts that

make it difficult for companies and individuals who are selling - these are

often small companies as well - to make that calculation and submit it. So in

the interest of ease of administration and our own budget certainty we felt that

the change was justified and for that reason we bring it to the Legislature for

consideration.

The second concern that is identified, I believe, by the hon.

Member for Mount Pearl, was: Why, other than pleasure craft? I am told that the

sea-going vessels were the only ones where we retained for some period of time

this whole aspect of percentage calculation. I do not know when it was done. All

I know is that at this point there seems to be little rationale for retaining

it. The pleasure boats, I suspect, at this point in time, are subject to the

same cent per litre calculation as other areas of consumption of gasoline.

Whether or not there is a rebate for seagoing vessels or boats I don't know for

certain, I suspect that there may be under the federal transportation subsidy

arrangement which often provides subsidy for the cost of goods. What bearing

that would have on the calculation of our taxes as a percentage or a fixed

amount, I think has little or no relevance. So I don't think it really, in the

end, has much to bring to bear as to whether or not we should accept or reject

this particular motion.

Thirdly, the other question that was raised was the high

rates for gasoline. It is a perennial issue and one that this bill does not

directly deal with, of course. I will just make a few comments seeing that it

was raised. The Province did consider - when I held the Justice portfolio some

years ago in conjunction with my friend, who was then the Minister of Energy and

now the Minister of Natural Resources, as to whether or not we should implement

a system to monitor and control prices. The conclusion at the end of the day was

that it wasn't worthwhile, that where it does exist in Nova Scotia was probably

the one we most closely examined. It hasn't worked very well. They, in fact,

have discontinued it, the reason being that any time an application had been

made, it was made as a result of a rise or decrease, and because these petroleum

prices change very quickly, by the time that would be gone through, another set

of factors would come into play. We believed at the time, and it is still our

conclusion, that competition is the best element that would regulate prices.

One of the reasons, therefore, that I think you see a

variation and higher costs in rural Newfoundland - there are several for them; I

think the first is that there is less competition. Secondly, many of these

stations have very little throughput and, of course, the amount that one would

have to charge per litre to maintain sufficient cash flow to justify having a

gas station there to start with is necessarily higher on the mark-up basis than

it would be at a major urban station where you have a lot flow-through in the

area of sales. Thirdly, what adds to the cost - I think transportation, frankly,

does not add that much. I am told it is probably between a cent to two cents per

litre of gasoline coming to the Province other than what it would be, for

example, of a shipment to Nova Scotia. But in rural Newfoundland there is an

added factor in that, the distribution point is often far from the location of

service station. This is a factor in other provinces as well, but given our

geography, I think it is more significant. This is not to say that I endorse or

justify the prices at retail, I would like to see them much lower, to the extent

that they might be held down by some sort of regulatory regime. I don't think it

would be responsive enough to the type of market that would justify the

administration that government will have in terms of (inaudible) in the

fundamental cost to taxpayers.

All things considered, even to the extent that may be an

issue, I believe it is an issue for another day, another department and another

piece of legislation. That being said, and hopefully having addressed the

concerns of members who have spoken, I move second reading, Mr. Speaker.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Gasoline Tax Act,"

read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole House on

tomorrow. (Bill No. 12)

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, would you please call Order 9,

Bill No. 17, my friend, the Minister of Finance's bill.

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

Control Act". (Bill No. 17)

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Essentially, this bill is fairly straightforward. It amends

the sections of the Liquor Control Act that impose penalties for breaches of

that act. As you read, subsection 2 indicates that where a person is convicted

of an offence under subsection 1, the court may order that person pay a minimum

fine of $250. That is an increase from a fine of $100 and it increases the

maximum to $500 or in default, to imprisonment for a minimum term of two days

and a maximum term of seven days. These are increases from the current levels of

fine of $100 or two days in jail for first offence and a fine of $150 or three

days in jail for each subsequent offence. The

section 80 that is referred to

makes it an offence to carry open liquor in a motor car. These penalty sections

are always a matter of general public policy and it was felt that in this case,

the consumption of alcohol on the highways being a matter of some concern to the

public, it was appropriate to increase the penalty

section from $100 at a

minimum to $250, and $150 to $500 - increasing it essentially by 250 per cent to

indicate to the public that we view this sort of behaviour with disdain and that

a more substantial penalty was warranted.

Again in subsection 2 we are amending

section 124 of the act,

and also increasing the penalty there to $500 minimum and a maximum fine of

$1,000, and default terms for a minimum of three months and a maximum term of

twelve months. In other words, if a person didn't pay the fine that was levied,

the judge, in his or her discretion, could impose a term of imprisonment not

less than three months to a maximum term of twelve months. This refers to a

prohibited sale of alcohol. The original ones were substantially lower than

that. The maximum fine previously was $500 and the maximum imprisonment term was

three months. So, essentially, the fine has been increased by $500 at the

maximum level and the maximum term of twelve months.

Why these were chosen, Mr. Speaker, is a matter of art rather

than science. I'm sure hon. members might suggest another term as being

appropriate. In the end, all these do is set up parameters for a sentencing

judge who will consider the sort of penalty that the Legislature has imposed as

exhibiting the general tenor of the offence, and whether or not a more or less

substantial penalty should be imposed. In the end, these would give to the judge

some indication of that, and that judge would, in turn, exercise a discretion,

having regard to the circumstances in which the offence took place, to tailor a

sentence that would be appropriate both to the offender and to society at large

to deter other people from doing it.

Other than that, I don't know that there is much else I can

say about the bill. It is, I think, fairly straightforward and I would be

interested in hearing the hon. member's comments as to the appropriateness of

the penalties sought. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As the minister has indicated, the bill is fairly

straightforward from the (inaudible). (Inaudible) it announces more revenue for

the Province, longer jail terms if - I doubt that there are too many people who

don't pay the fine and take the jail term instead, but nevertheless. It is

simply an increase in the fines for those two areas.

I wanted to ask the minister a question of definition of

`motor vehicle'. That is the one that interests me here. What is the definition

of `motor vehicle'? Perhaps if we had the whole act before us, we would see it.

As I understand it, the laws relating to alcohol, certainly the consumption of

alcohol, in motor vehicles apply equally to snowmobiles, boats and all-terrain

vehicles. I think I might have related last year to this House the fact that the

police now, the RCMP in particular, are now starting to impose these laws on

snowmobilers.

I was aware of one gentleman in the Grand Falls area last

winter who was back in the country up near Mount Peyton on his snowmobile, had

had two or three drinks, certainly wasn't intoxicated, but he had two or three

drinks. And two RCMP officers rode up on snowmobiles, stopped him and gave him a

breathalyser. I guess he failed the .05 per cent and was forced to leave his

snowmobile in the woods and was taken back, lost his driver's licence - because

you lose your vehicle licence even if you are picked up on a snowmobile or an

all-terrain vehicle or a boat or anything else - for twenty-four hours, had to

pay whatever the fee is to get his driver's licence back, and had to get

somebody else to go up and get his snowmobile in the country and bring it back.

I say to you, an RCMP officer would have to be on a pretty

fast skidoo before I would leave my machine up in the country overnight. He had

better be able to handle a machine pretty well and be on a powerful machine;

otherwise, all he would see is taillights. I would be hard-pressed to stop, I

think, and leave my machine back up in the country unprotected overnight like

that. This is what happened, and there are many cases of that.

I know laws are put in place for good and valid reason, and

obviously, persons who are heavily intoxicated are a danger to themselves, if

nobody else, back in the country, and I'm not defending that. But if we are at

the point now where you can't go up and bore a hole in the ice, sit there and do

a bit of ice fishing in the afternoon and have a little bit of a toddy in your

tea to warm you up, for fear that the R.C.M.P. are going to come along; and I

will give you another case where a couple of snowmobilers were up again, it was

near Mount Peyton, my friend has been there once or twice, Mr. Speaker, and they

were stopped having a lunch and they had the little flask sitting on top of the

seat of their snowmobile, like you would, and the R. C. M. P. officers came

along and confiscated it. They weren't intoxicated but I think they were fined

or had a warning ticket or something; I don't recall exactly what the penalty

was, but that's taking it to the extreme, I would suggest.

I don't argue with the law, and it basically is to a point,

Mr. Speaker, that I have been wanting to find an opportunity to say, for a long

period of time, you know, we make laws in this Assembly, that's our role, we are

elected to pass laws, to make the laws for the Province. RCMP officers or police

officers generally, their role is to apply those laws, but we make laws on the

basis that those who are applying the laws are going to use some common sense

and that's where it falls down, not always do the police use good, common sense

in applying the laws, and many times they do. I have seen many cases, too, where

police officers will say: Well, get up - you have had a couple too many; take

your time now you are only going right there. Go ahead, I will keep an eye on

you. I mean, they will do that if you are not too far over the limit, if you are

borderline or something.

Obviously, if somebody is completely intoxicated, then in the

public good and for their own good, they should be taken off the road; I don't

have any argument with the law per se. But sometimes, in the application of the

law, the officers become a little over-exuberant and I think that's what is

happening. I would like the minister to give us that definition. I mean, if

somebody is out in his boat, if the Speaker is out in his boat next summer and

he is not unknown to have a beer in his hand when he is going out the Bay of

Exploits, or something a little better perhaps, it is not unknown for the

Speaker to that, I say, is he literally breaking the law? And I think he is, but

I doubt that there are many boats that leave Lewisporte and head out the bay,

that there is not a toddy or two being had en route, and strictly speaking, if

boats are included here, then they are breaking the law.

Now I know you can't write a law that says, you can't do this

but you can do a little bit of it. All I am saying, I guess, is that there needs

to be some discretion applied here. And I am suggesting, too, that there has

been a little bit of over-exuberance. The Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation wants to get me going.

The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, Mr.

Speaker, is largely responsible for this whole attitude of the police since he

put in his silly .05, and the police are laughing at it and saying, you know,

how can we possibly, we haven't got enough force in Canada to enforce that

foolish rule.

AN HON. MEMBER: Motor vehicle inspection -

MR. WINDSOR: Pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: Motor vehicle inspection (inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Motor vehicle inspectors (inaudible). So,

you know, Mr. Speaker, if these kinds of laws - when I say that the officers

should apply the laws responsibly, then the laws also should be made

responsibly, too. The laws should be made responsibly not something as foolish

as the legislation the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation brought in

last year, which has done absolutely nothing except make a fool of the Minister

of Works, Services and Transportation, but then he is very adept at doing that,

anyway.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I am not going to waste my time with the

Minister of Works, Services and Transportation today, he is not worth the time

of the House. Those are the questions I wanted to ask the minister. You know, I

can't argue with the rationale for increasing the fines, it is a deterrent, I

suppose. I don't know when these fines were last changed, I don't know how

quickly they have grown but perhaps - I don't know how sale of alcohol fines

have increased. I don't know what that is going to do to the Burin Peninsula,

Mr. Speaker. The fines on the sale of alcohol have increased from a minimum of

$500 to a maximum of $1,000.

This is going to be a major blow to the economy of the Burin

Peninsula, I would say, a major blow, but it is an interesting question. We have

had the question raised lately of the sale of alcohol in various stores and

there is some pressure to allow supermarkets, for example, to sell beer and wine

and perhaps even spirits. In many parts of Canada, and certainly in the United

States, anybody who has had the good fortune to take a holiday in Florida, you

can access alcoholic beverages pretty well in most drug stores and supermarkets

and corner stores, certainly beer and wine. I am just wondering, maybe the

minister would like to tell us, is there any consideration being given now to

including - we have beer now in pretty well every corner store and every service

station. Are we looking at including some wines in that as well? From the

minister's point of view it is a great revenue generator, and increases the

example? What impact will that have on some of the present retailers? Some of

the supermarkets are open now twenty-four hours a day. Would the minister be

considering allowing supermarkets, the Sobeys of the world, for example, who

have twenty-four hour stores in some locations, some of the larger urban

centres, would they be allowed to retail beverages all night? Is that something

that the minister is considering?

I am also tempted to get into it, but I am going to save it

for another day, the Liquor Licensing Board and some of their activities. I have

a good story to tell the minister about the Liquor Licensing Board, but I will

do it in another forum, I think, because -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: The Liquor Licensing Board, yes, I had an

experience with them. The minister might like to have a look at them, and he

might like to talk to the Minister of Tourism and the Minister of Industry and

see if - I can give him some examples where the Liquor Licensing Board may very

well be seen as an impediment to development in this Province, let me tell you.

Anyway, that is another story for another day, a part of a larger story that I

want to tell the House at some point in time.

Mr. Speaker, with those questions, maybe the minister would

like to deal with that for us.

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

Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

One of the things that I find interesting in the debate from

the hon. member opposite is that after the number of years that they were in

government, and for all of the things that they messed up, it is strange now

they have all the right answers, and all the ideas now that all the years they

were in power they didn't implement one of those ideas, and no matter which

minister brings things on this side, they have all the right answers.

I want to deal with a part of this bill, because the member

just made a statement that the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation

made a fool of himself when he brought in the .05 legislation. For a member of

this House of Assembly, what an irresponsible statement for anyone to make.

I just want to take a couple of minutes to give you some

statistics on how the .05 regulation is working. Nobody ever said when we

brought in those rules, that you couldn't drink liquor, that you couldn't drink

beer, that you couldn't drink wine, or whatever you chose to drink. Nobody ever

said that people should stop drinking, that people should stop socializing, that

people should stop going to parties. Very simply, what was said was very clear.

While you are operating a vehicle, a motorized vehicle of any sort, you should

not be under the influence of alcohol, whether it be .05, .06, .07, .08,

whatever it is. While operating a vehicle, you should not be under the influence

of alcohol.

Statistics have proven, in the first eight months of this

year, there have been 30 per cent fewer alcohol-related accidents - 30 per cent

this year - 40 per cent fewer convictions under the .08 Criminal Code of Canada

charges because of the .05 legislation. Now, you will ask the question, `How

could that possible happen?' Well, under the .08 - Criminal Code of Canada,

there is a tolerance of 1.2, and if the RCMP or the Royal Newfoundland

Constabulary stopped you and you had .08, .08.5 or .09, they could not charge

you because of the tolerance. With the .05 legislation, they can automatically

take your licence right on the spot. In other words, they are not only taking

the people who have .05, .06, .07, .08 and .09, you see, they are taking those

people off the road right on the spot, which they could not do in the past.

As a result of that, you are now controlling drinking and

driving. I have said a hundred times over, that an individual under the

influence of alcohol, while operating any motorized vehicle, is just as much

danger to the general public as pointing a twelve gauge shotgun or any weapon at

somebody. You are not responsible while you are under the influence of alcohol

and you are operating a mechanical machine. How many times have accidents been

reported and when it has been investigated, the individual was not in control of

himself or herself while operating that vehicle, which caused the death of

somebody?

All we are saying to people is that you have to be

responsible. Here are the reasons why and it is simple to understand them. The

one thing, Mr. Speaker, that you can be proud of, is that the most responsible

people in following the law of safety driving on our highways, drinking and

driving, are the youth. The hardest people to deal with are the middle-age

generation. The young people are adhering to the laws to highway safety. What

they will do is have a designated driver or they will get a taxi cab, whatever

they can do to avoid actually owning and operating a vehicle while under the

influence of alcohol, but try to change the middle-age people; they do not want

to adapt to change.

The only way you can do it is to bring in the laws, increase

the fines, and make it such a deterrent that they have no alternative.

Statistics proved during the first eight months this year that there were fewer

fatalities, fewer alcohol\injury-related accidents, fewer motor vehicle

accidents, and fewer charges under the .08 Criminal Code of Canada, and for

that, Mr. Speaker, it was a responsible thing for this government to do.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Carried.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

No, it is not carried, I say to the Government House Leader,

as much as he would like to have it carried.

MR. ROBERTS: The story of my life.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: The story of your life. I know, you are

always disappointed.

MR. ROBERTS: Almost persuaded.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Almost.

MR. ROBERTS: That's (inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, I sure do. David Houston, `Almost

Persuaded.'

First, I want to say to the Minister of Finance that I have

had a strong lobby from the Burin Peninsula, that they really don't want me to

speak in support of this legislation. They have lobbied to ask my support in

having the Liquor Control Act abolished altogether, I say to the minister. They

would like to do away with it altogether, and as my good friend and colleague,

the Member for Mount Pearl said, this is going to be devastating to the economy

of the Burin Peninsula. But, having said that, it is in a light note. We are on

a finance bill so it is pretty wide-ranging debate.

I listened with interest to the Minister of Works, Services

and Transportation who believes so strongly in what he did. He really believes

what he did was necessary and I can appreciate that, but the minister could have

taken the same provisions under point .08. He didn't have to reduce it to .05.

He could have done the same thing with .08 and I think he would have had the

same results. Now, no one supports or encourages drinking and driving. There is

no doubt about that.

MR. CAREEN: The minister is interested in points because

he has points on his shoulders.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, you know, the minister believes in

what he did, but on a curious note to the minister, I wonder if he was geared up

this morning with that little bit of white stuff we had? When I looked out my

window this morning, I wondered how many cars were going to be off the road, and

I wondered if some of this new money, that the Minister of Finance is trying to

get by increasing those fines, if some of that is going to find its way to the

Minister of Works, Services and Transportation?

MR. EFFORD: A lot of it.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: A lot of it, the minister says. Now,

does the minister know that now or is he hoping? I am wondering if the minister

is optimistic that some of this money the Minister of Finance is going to get

here will go to his department, and we will see safer conditions on the highway,

we will see more snow-clearing and icing equipment, more modern equipment? Maybe

we will see the wingmen put back.

MR. EFFORD: Not a chance.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Not a chance, he says. Well, I say to

the minister, if I were him, that I would not be too cocky.

MR. EFFORD: Well, I am here.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I know you are here now but you may not

be here tomorrow. He may join the old scud missile himself, the Minister of

Fisheries, Food and Agriculture. He may be joining the old scud missile who is

gone now, flying low, trying to find his target before he strikes. He may be in

the same position as the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture; he may not

be here tomorrow noon, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MR. EFFORD: Why is it you people just like destroying

people's lives?

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, we don't enjoy destroying people's

lives, I say to the minister, but I have to ask the minister quite sincerely,

since he is the one who brought up about destroying people's lives, why isn't he

more responsible when it comes to snow-clearing equipment and icing in the

winter, if he cares so much about people's lives?

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, sometimes you do, and there are

other times you deserve to be criticized, I say to the minister. The minister

knows full well - I called him last year after giving a road report to Bill Rowe

on the way down over the Burin Peninsula highway when things weren't all that

pleasant. He remembers very well.

What I was going to say to the minister is, you know, he

seems pretty convinced that the actions he is taking with the snow-clearing

equipment, particularly the flyers, where he has removed the wingmen, that he is

convinced what he is doing is right. I'm not convinced that what you are doing

is right, I say to the minister, and I want to say this to you very sincerely. A

lot of the people who are out on this snow-clearing equipment are out sometimes

eighteen, twenty, twenty-two hours when conditions are bad, by the way - the

minister I'm sure knows this - continuously working. Oftentimes in winter they

get four and five hours sleep and they are back at it again. They have to go

back in. They have to try to keep the roads open and keep them iced and so on.

And they get tired and they get sleepy.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, I'm telling you, I say to the

minister, it is very real. I know operators who have been out twenty hours

straight. They get tired and they get sleepy. And when they have a buddy there

with them in the truck it helps them stay awake.

MR. EFFORD: What?

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes. The minister doesn't want to

listen, you see. The minister doesn't want to listen to what I'm saying to him,

but it is real, I say to him. They get tired and they get sleepy; they get

fatigued. Sometimes the wingman keeps the driver awake or vice versa, I say to

the minister, if you've been out twenty hours. If you are up at 4:00 in the

morning and don't get in bed until 4:00 the next morning, you get tired, you get

sleepy. And having that other person there besides using the wing blade to clear

the snow, keeps the driver awake, and the driver keeps the wingman awake. But

now, with only one person in that machine, do you know what you are going to

find, Minister? They are going to refuse to stay out that long. They aren't

going to stay out for eighteen hours or twenty hours straight because they are

concerned about the safety of the public and they are concerned about their own

safety.

MR. EFFORD: All we will do is put somebody else on then.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, I say to the minister, that is his

attitude. Put someone else on it. I hope the minister is right and I hope I'm

wrong, Mr. Speaker, but if we have a harsh winter this year, my prediction today

is that this minister is going to be taken to task.

MR. EFFORD: Oh, you can be (inaudible) if you try.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I won't try, I will. I'm giving the

minister fair warning today, Mr. Speaker, that if anything happens on these

highways this year as a result of those wingmen being removed from those trucks,

that minister is going to have to answer. I only hope that nothing happens to

any pedestrian, nothing happens to any motor vehicle, or the driver or the

passengers, or to the operators of any of those machines, I say to the minister.

I just hope and pray that nothing happens to either one of them, because if it

does, this minister is going to have to answer.

I just wish that the minister was a little more... I don't

want to say conciliatory, but not quite as strong about it. Because when you are

overly strong on an issue it is kind of hard then to back off a bit.

MR. EFFORD: I don't back off.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, I saw that today again, Mr. Speaker,

when the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes asked the minister about the

situation last night outside the door here, when we had forty or fifty mentally

and physically challenged people, some of them in wheelchairs, who were very

cold and shivering out there, who wanted to come in.

MR. EFFORD: There was no need of that.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, there is no need of it, I say to the

minister. And there was a request made, by the way, to -

MR. EFFORD: Not to me.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, not - I mean, every group that wants

to come in the lobby of the building shouldn't have to call you. You have people

paid, you have security people, you must have a Chief of Security, or whatever

the name is you have on them.

MR. EFFORD: They have been given strict orders: Do not

let people in after hours.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, then, it is you who wouldn't let

them in.

MR. EFFORD: I didn't get called.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: It makes no difference whether you got

called or not. What you are telling me now is that you would not let them in.

MR. EFFORD: I said that today! I left strict orders for

nobody to (inaudible)!

MR. W. MATTHEWS: There you go, now we have the answer. If

I recall, the minister, today, said -

MR. EFFORD: Oh, you'll check Hansard now.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I have Hansard coming now in a minute, I

say to the minister. It will soon be in to me now, not only to check what this

minister said, but to see what the scud missile minister said, to check out what

he said.

MR. EFFORD: Who?

MR. W. MATTHEWS: The scud missile, the low-flying scud

missile, who has gone around the East Block and the West Block, now, trying to

zero in on his target. He has gone to wing, I say to the Minister of Works,

Services and Transportation.

I thought the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation

today said - now perhaps he said he did not get a call; perhaps that is what he

said, `I' did not get a call requesting to come in, but I tell the minister, as

the Member for St. Mary's - The Capes said, that indeed, a call was made, as I

understand it, to -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, it's your Chief of Security. I am

sorry?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No - John who?

AN HON. MEMBER: John (inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, maybe it was. I thought it was

somebody else. Anyway, there was a call made and it was denied, on strict orders

now, I hear, from the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, that no

one under any condition is to get into that lobby after 7:00 p.m. Now, why would

that provision be put in place?

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: There is no problem, I say to the

minister. I don't promote rowdy demonstrations, or dangerous... I am concerned

about the safety of members here.

MR. MURPHY: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I am. I am concerned about the building.

I am very concerned about the safety of the Premier of the Province. I can

understand why they would tighten security a bit. I can understand why people

would be concerned about the safety of the Premier and the ministers, the way

thing are going in this Province today, I say to my good friend, the Minister of

Employment and Labour Relations. If I were a minister, I would be concerned,

too, about my safety.

MR. MURPHY: I can't run.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I know, that is why you have to have

such strict security regulations, I say to the minister. I can understand that.

They must feel awfully insecure when they go out into the night now. At 5:00 it

is dark when we finish here, and they have to go out through that door under the

cover of darkness. I would say the Minister of Works, Services and

Transportation feels pretty insecure.

I want to ask the Minister of Finance, when he gets up - I

don't think the Minister of Finance is listening to me.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Because it is directed to him, I say to

the Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Direct it to me and I will answer it.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, no, I am not directing it to you;

you might give me the answer. I don't want the answer, I want to ask someone who

can't give me the answer.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) what you already know.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, no. I have a feeling that the

Minister of Finance and the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island now are talking

about the Cabot Corporation. I would say they are having a little chat about the

Cabot Corporation.

MR. ROBERTS: Not a bad subject.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Not a bad subject at all these days. I

would say the Minister of Finance now is going to withdraw funding from the

Cabot Corporation.

MR. ROBERTS: Why would he do that?

MR. W. MATTHEWS: There is a lot of suspicion about that,

I say to the Government House Leader. Over the last couple of days I happened to

be listening, in the morning, to CBC Radio when I was driving to work here. I

must say, it was interesting stuff. I see the Minister of Tourism over there. I

heard the Minister of Tourism on -

MR. ROBERTS: I was here at the office. You were only

driving in.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, you were here a few minutes before

me, I say. You know that. I called you yesterday morning, or the morning before.

You said, `You are up early', and I said, `Well, you must be up early because

you are already in there but I am only on my way.'

MR. ROBERTS: `Loyola' left (inaudible) car outside.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: It is an old trick that one of my former

colleagues used to use, I say to the Government House Leader. Every time I would

go by Confederation Building, or go out the main entrance to get in my car, this

colleague's vehicle was always there, and I would say: How diligent that

colleague is - it was a minister of the Crown - always on the job, until I tried

to arrange a few meetings with that particular minister, mid-morning or

mid-afternoon, and he was never available, so it was a neat trick. I guess the

vehicle was left there to give the impression that he was on the job. That is

not the case of the Government House Leader, because I know he is here. I speak

to him in the morning.

MR. ROBERTS: Whether I accomplish anything is another

story.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well, that is debatable but I would say

the Government House Leader keeps himself pretty busy.

But, on the Cabot Corporation, it was quite interesting, I

say to the Government House Leader, the last couple of mornings, to listen to

the story on the Cabot Corporation. And the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island,

now, is over there making out he doesn't hear me. He was over there - I heard

him this morning, actually, talking about some concerns he had with getting

information. The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation was on reacting to

a request - Freedom of Information, that they weren't given information, and the

Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation was very concerned this morning that

the information wasn't given. I wonder how sincere the minister really was? How

sincere were you this morning when I listened to you talking about this request

under the Freedom of Information not being given? You made the people believe

that you were concerned about it. The public doesn't know the minister as well

as I do, Mr. Speaker, because I could see right through it. Once he hung up that

phone he laughed to himself: I got rid of him again, he said. I could see right

through him, Mr. Speaker, it is amazing.

MR. EFFORD: He sounded sincere enough.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Oh, anyone who did not know the minister

- well that is like the 7,000 or 8,000 teachers in the Province when he was

President of the Newfoundland Teachers' Association, Mr. Speaker, he had them

hoodwinked until he got out on the steps out there and broke down, he wept

openly. All the people of the Province saw him cry because he couldn't get any

more for the teachers of the Province. He used up a full box of Kleenex. He

broke down and the tears ran down his face and he said, `I can't get you any

more, I'm sorry.' What did he do then? He walked in here and became a minister,

and he froze their wages and rolled back their wages and he asked, `Well, what

choice do I have?'

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) - they've been crying ever

since.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: They haven't stopped crying since - the

minister - unbelievable!

MR. SULLIVAN: And he got his fingers rapped in Central

Newfoundland for what he said.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) the best pension.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Who? Got me the best pension?

MR. SULLIVAN: MHAs got the best one in the country.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Be quiet. Excuse me, could you be quiet,

please?

The member is not recognized, Mr. Speaker. There are some

things I would prefer the member not talk about.

AN HON. MEMBER: Especially now.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Especially now, especially at this stage

in my life. There are some things I would rather not talk about.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Talk about losing delegate's support.

That's why the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation is being the way he

is. He is being so smooth and so sincere, appearing to be sincere, saying yes,

`I am so concerned that this information was not given.' And he has given the

orders, Mr. Speaker, not to give the information.

MR. MANNING: Can we get a tarpaulin for the new Speaker?

MR. SULLIVAN: Don't be insulting the poor new Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I would like to welcome the Member for

LaPoile to the Chair. I would like to welcome you there, he looks good there.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Call them to order, Mr. Speaker, they

are not listening to me. I hate speaking when no one listens to me.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, to that point of order, if I

may? I would agree with my hon. friend that perhaps not everybody in the House

is listening to him at this moment but I would remind him that the Charter of

Rights and Freedoms prohibits cruel and unnatural punishment, so I suggest his

point of order has no merit to it.

MR. SPEAKER: No, there is no Point of Order.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: A good ruling, there is no doubt about

that.

I have a question for the Minister of Finance. I want to ask

the minister, when he gets up: I am just wondering what - obviously, he must be

able to project what extra revenue will be derived from increasing the fines

that he is proposing here. He must have some idea. They won't get much from my

area of the Province, I say to the Government House Leader; he has all the money

cleaned up down there with his increase in fines.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Grand Bank. Well, I used to be, I say to

the Government House Leader. I used to be a regular customer there, yeah.

MR. ROBERTS: Now you have seen the light.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, no. I am not saying that but I am

not going to tell the Government House Leader now what I bought or didn't buy at

the liquor store, but there are some things you know you couldn't get elsewhere

so you had to go to the liquor store. You couldn't get it all you know, Mr.

Speaker, you had to go and get some things at the liquor store, but I just

wonder if the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board could tell us how much

revenue he hopes to derive from the increase in fines and would he consider

giving it to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation so we can have

some good snow-clearing equipment this winter, some good ice control.

AN HON. MEMBER: Put the wingmen back on.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Well I asked the minister you know and

he dug in again, wouldn't hear tell of it, not while he is here, he said, not

while he is here, he won't replace the wingmen and I told him that if anything

happens -

AN HON. MEMBER: That won't be long now.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: What, before something happens?

AN HON. MEMBER: It won't be long before he goes, to put

the wingmen back on.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: But I never thought about that, I never

thought about that, Mr. Speaker.

I don't know if anyone else on this side wants a few words,

it is a wide range of debate as you can tell, not very restricted. That ought to

be relevant. I see the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology is over there

smiling, happy -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Oh, the Minister of Employment and

Labour Relations told you a dirty joke. Oh yeah, I see.

I wonder if the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island has

filled him in on his concerns about the Cabot Corporation, I say to my good

friend and Member for Mount Pearl. I was telling him about the program CBC radio

has done the last two mornings on Cabot.

MR. WALSH: Is this dj vu because I feel I have heard

this already?

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, you probably heard more about it

than you want to hear, the way you squirmed this morning on the radio,

squirming.

AN HON. MEMBER: He was very polite.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, I must say you were very direct

actually, I have to tell you. I thought you were very direct; you answered to a

point which I liked. You weren't like the Minister of Tourism, Recreation and

Culture who pretended to be sincere that he was very concerned because this

information wasn't given under freedom, but I would say he gave the order not to

give the information. That's the difference in the two members, and then it was

quite interesting to hear Mr. Moores call in this morning, Mr. Doug Moores. I am

sure the member heard him defending the corporation, a great defence of the

corporation this morning, very articulate, very eloquent, very, very articulate,

very eloquent but here we are now, we are increasing fines, yet, we have an

organization in this Province, a corporation that is accountable to no one.

A corporation that is accountable to no one, I say to the

Minister of Finance and Treasury Board and here he is now, increasing fines,

going to drag more revenues into the provincial coffers and we have a

corporation in this Province that has a budget or is going to spend something

like $17 million, accountable to no one; don't know how they are spending their

money, where they are going, not going to leave any legacy whatsoever, as I

understand, nothing is going to be left behind, $17 million going. Hopefully we

will have a big celebration, a great year, we will have lots of people coming

back to the Province, our own people are away and people from outside the

Province who will be first time tourists whom we will get back after, we hope we

do that but they should be accountable to someone, I say to my -

AN HON. MEMBER: Good for hospitality homes.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Good for hospitality homes, the Member

for Mount Pearl says and I know there is no conflict of interest in his

statement there, I know he is very sincere, Mr. Speaker, but they should be

accountable to someone, they should be. I am not suggesting they are doing

anything wrong but at least, be accountable; they should answer to someone so I

hope the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board will tell me how much money he

projects he is going to derive from this -

MR. WINDSOR: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: The Economic Recovery Commission.

MR. WINDSOR: They are on the budget of the Minister of

Industry, Trade and Technology and they answer to him.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Oh. Is that right? Oh, but they are not

answerable to anyone either, then? They are not answerable to anyone either

then. The Economic Recovery Commission, I say to the Minister of Industry, Trade

and Technology, they are in his budget but they answer to the Premier. Could the

Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology explain how that happened? I see the

minister is trying to ignore me over there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Oh now, I would say to the Government

House Leader, I wouldn't get too flippant like that. I know he puts up a big

front, feels confident, but deep down inside he is a very worried gentleman, the

Government House Leader. They are all very worried people over there, on very

shaky ground, that group of people over there. Not much security in the front

benches of the government these days.

AN HON. MEMBER: I would say over half are going to be

retiring (inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: You will soon see an exodus of them now.

Right behind the Premier. As soon as the Premier goes there will be a trail -

you would think it is the Pied Piper. They will all be going behind him. A big

exodus of the House. I say there will be more by-elections in the next twelve

months in this Province than any twelve months before in our history, I say to

my friend the Member for Bonavista North looking over at me quite curiously when

I start by-elections and things. He looks over as if wondering if I know

something. Who has he been talking to you? I can see the look on his face. There

are going to be a lot of by-elections within the next twelve months. There is

going to be a mass exodus from the government benches, a bolting, leaving of the

sinking ship. There are going to be a lot of them go.

What new faces are going to be over there inside of twelve

months? Then of course, inside of twenty-four months there are going to be all

new faces on that side.

MR. SULLIVAN: No, on this side.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, well, but the faces will be new to

that side, I say to my friend. There will be a few faces that were over on that

side before that will be back there. A few faces from this side will be over

there that were there before, but not too many. I can go through the whole line

of them there in the front. There are a lot of them who won't be running again,

will be going, especially if the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board gets too

sharp with his pencil. Gets cutting a little too deep, whittling away at things

that a lot of us are sensitive to. I would say you are going to see a lot of

people going to see Mr. Speaker. I have a feeling they will be going to see Mr.

Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: The Member for Bonavista North muttered

something as if: I won't be one, or something.

AN HON. MEMBER: Running for cover.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, running for cover. Protection of

the chair.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I don't know if I'm going to get to the

point today, I say to the Government House Leader. I might never get to the

point. Are they invoking closure? Has the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board

heard what I've said?

MR. DICKS: Not a word.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Not a word. He is honest. At least the

Minister of Finance and Treasury Board is honest.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: I know. I heard the minister's

explanation. I'm just wondering if he has any idea how much money he is going to

derive from the increase. Nothing from the Burin Peninsula. As I've said, you've

got out of the Burin Peninsula what you are going to get. Fines have been

increased, horrendous fines, taking people's property, homes, vehicles,

snowmobiles, boats, motors. There is nothing left to take on the Burin

Peninsula, so you aren't going to get much money from them.

I wonder are you going to give the Minister of Works,

Services and Transportation a few dollars from your new revenues to improve the

snow clearing and icing of the roads and put the wingmen back to work? That is

the big question, Mr. Speaker. Or is this now a big increase trying to - I don't

know when it is coming into effect. When is it coming into effect? Could the

minister tell me when it is coming into effect, he hopes to have it into effect?

Is he going to get it in now within a few days, trying to reduce that big

deficit? Over $50 million now.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Yes, way over, the minister says. It was

amazing to watch the minister in a couple of days though, right? He didn't quite

know, didn't know what the deficit was going to be, and then the Member for

Mount Pearl kept at him, and he was going to release it later in the month. Then

I watched the news last night and then the - more than $50 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, more than. Out of control,

ballooning. The deficit was ballooning, the news said. I don't know if the

minister can confirm that but the -

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No, I can't. I wouldn't know where to

look for that. Look under P? Would you look under P for that? I do not have a

dictionary.

MR. ROBERTS: (inaudible) under `p' of any kind.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No doubt, looking for the definition.

Mr. Speaker, I think some of my other colleagues here are

chomping at the bit because they have some very important things they want to

say about this.

MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. Minister of Finance speaks now

he closes the debate.

The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Mr. Speaker, in response to the comments of my

friend for Grand Bank, the Opposition House Leader, first of all let me just say

that before introducing the bill I asked the Department of Finance to carry out

a financial analysis to see its impact on the Burin Peninsula and I am pleased

to say that it will not result in the total bankruptcy of the businesses on the

Peninsula but it may substantially effect the economy overall.

Mr. Speaker, there were a few points raised. I think my

friend for Mount Pearl asked about how much more revenue we would get. That

would be a very soft figure and I think it would be offset to any extent by the

cost of keeping people in jail in default terms. It is not seen, of course, as a

revenue raiser and I am pleased to say that it hopefully will not be a great

impairment to the public.

Speaking of impairment my friend for Mount Pearl asked about

the definition of motor vehicles and immediately encouraged my friend the

Minister of Works, Services and Transportation to re-enter the chamber and

listen intently in what he had to say about the problem with skidoos being

over-policed in the Central Newfoundland area. There is no doubt that it is

sometimes an inconvenience for people who may have had a few drinks to be

brought to a police station and checked, but that is the type of society in

which we operate. A friend of his, or an acquaintance, at least apparently lost

his license for twenty-four hours, and I think the intent of his question was

whether or not the liquor laws applied to certain types of vehicles, and the

answer is, of course, yes, they do, motor vehicles or anything, I presume with a

motor in it.

There have been court cases as to whether or not it can

actually move from one point to another. Certainly, the view of the law is

expansive rather than narrowing that definition to give full effect to the

liquor laws, but certainly at this point in time it includes snowmobiles,

skidoos, ATVs and the rest of it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DICKS: I yield to you.

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

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the

minister.

I just wanted to point out to him that it has been brought to

my attention that recently there was an incident in Halifax where a gentleman in

a wheelchair was actually arrested but the judge had the good sense to let him

go. Again, that is the point I am making, this is carrying things to the

extreme.

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

Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Many things have happened to me in this House before but I

greatly resent the Member for Mount Pearl stealing my thunder. I was going to

carry on to point out that the law is very expansive and in fact there was a

case, if I can believe what I read in the paper, that a man in a wheelchair was

arrested for impaired driving last spring and recently fined $300. I suppose for

operating on the highway. I guess in that case he was operating under several

disabilities, one being impairment.

I just wish to point out that the .05 law, of course, is not

affected by this. My friend the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation

brought it in with a great degree of enthusiasm, that was less well received by

the hospitality industry, I am told, and I leave others to judge its merits. I

might add as well that boats are considered motorized conveniences and ones that

are subject to our general liquor laws as well.

Other than that, Mr. Speaker, I think I have just outlined

the impact of the new increases in fines and in default periods. Other than that

I just recommend it to the Legislature for approval and move second reading.

Thank you.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Liquor Control Act,"

read a second time, ordered referred to a Committee of the Whole on tomorrow.

(Bill No. 17)

MR. ROBERTS: Order 10, Bill No. 15.

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

Financial Administration Act." (Bill No. 15)

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

Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There are two essential clauses to this bill. The first

allows the Minister of Finance to remit, or forgive, taxes payable, or to

approve settlements in amounts of less than $5000. I believe the current amount

is $1,000. It was thought expedient to increase it at this time because there

has been some passage of time since the early amount was set. Things being what

they are, $5,000 probably is a more reasonable amount to allow a minister to

exercise his or her discretion.

I will point out that this does not include interest

penalties that might also accrue with respect to taxes that are considered to be

due and owing. In fact, the minister from time to time remits penalties and

interest that exceed this amount, so this affects really only the base amount,

and in effect the minister exercises discretion over much larger amounts in the

nature and way of interest and penalties that may have accumulated.

The second is a more arcane, for general public purposes

aspect of public financing, each year the Province contributes to a fund a

portion of its budget each year in what is called a sinking fund. What that

does, in effect, is set aside an amount each year to redeem bonds that the

Province has issued in prior years. Most of our borrowing is the issuance of

twenty to thirty year bonds from major lenders in North America and elsewhere in

the world, places such as Switzerland and Japan in recent experience. A portion,

when we pay our interest, we also set aside a certain amount. That amount right

now is in the vicinity of $1 billion that is kept invested by the Province from

time to time. It is invested primarily in securities which are the bonds of

conservatively managed investment vehicles since we need to ensure that those

funds will be on hand to redeem our bonds and obligations as and when they come

due.

The words that are to be deleted are `at maturity of that

issue'. What that in effect does is allow us, should we have an excess of funds

in the sinking fund beyond our obligations to redeem the debt in respect of

which those funds have been set aside, to bring those back into general revenue.

In other words if we have a bond, for example, of $100 million that is coming

due in the next little while, we have set aside funds and our accumulations on

it now yield us a figure, for example, of $102 million when we need only $100

million, we would then have the right to take those funds out prior to the bond

in respect of which those monies have been set aside becoming due. In the

current fiscal year a budgetary figure in excess of $40 million was realized

from a surplus that had accumulated in the sinking fund. What this does is

provide for the right to government, in any given year, to remove any excess

funds from the sinking fund in order to make more efficient and better use of

those funds for general public purposes.

That is the intent and effect of

section 2 of this, which is

an amendment to

section 40 of the act. I believe it is a reasonable thing to

allow a prudent government that is acting in the best interest of the Province

to do so from time to time, and I would commend it to the Legislature for

consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There are three points that I want to make in this particular

piece of legislation, the first one being I think the minister said that the

first clause increases to $5,000 the minister can write off. That is not the way

it reads, and I am not aware there is any amount at the moment that the minister

can write off. I am under the impression that there is no provision in the act

for a minister to write off anything, not even $5.

AN HON. MEMBER: On the recommendation of Treasury Board.

MR. WINDSOR: I beg your pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: On the recommendation of Treasury Board.

MR. WINDSOR: On the recommendation of Treasury Board,

exactly, but this is now the minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, no.

MR. WINDSOR: It is still upon the recommendation of

Treasury Board, this one is?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, okay, but at the moment there is no

provision to write off any taxes, except uncollectible amounts. When they are

deemed to be uncollectible

AN HON. MEMBER: The same thing.

MR. WINDSOR: No, when they are deemed to be uncollectible

then the Cabinet can write them off, or Treasury Board writes them off, I guess.

AN HON. MEMBER: Treasury Board.

MR. WINDSOR: Treasury Board. Treasury Board then goes to

Cabinet. It is done by Treasury Board, but Treasury Board Minutes go to Cabinet

for approval afterward, ratification, so this is really giving the minister a

power that ministers have never had before. I am not concerned about giving this

minister or any future minister power, because from an administrative point of

view it probably makes a fair bit of sense. My concern here is opening up the

floodgates.

I know when I had the privilege of occupying the minister's

seat there were many people who came to my office wanting to have amounts

written off. I have to say, it was a great comfort to be able to say: I am

sorry; there is no provision in the act for writing anything off. The minister

is really making a rod for his own back here by opening it up this much so that

now he does have that flexibility, with Treasury Board approval, as my friend

points out quite correctly. But if somebody came in with an amount of $800 that

was owing and the minister recommends it to Treasury Board they are going to

approve it, most likely, unless it is something really outlandish but I don't

see the difference here. That is there now; the House Leader indicates to me,

that Treasury Board can write it off, government can write it off but to this

point in time it was kept on the books for many years before it would be written

off.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, that is right. We have debts here on

the books for many, many years as collectibles that may never be collected but

there are some that somewhere down the road, that person collects, wins a

lottery, gets an inheritance or something. The principle always being that

people - let me say this, I've said it before, let me say this to the minister,

my experience is that people don't mind paying taxes as long as everybody pays

their taxes fairly and equally. The problem people find in paying taxes is that

there are loopholes, there are those that are getting away, there are those who

are playing games and not paying their fair share of the taxes. If everybody is

paying fairly and equally then, assuming we are spending the money properly,

then people don't object too greatly to it but it is the unfairness and the

inequality that is of concern to people. So I would be concerned here, Mr.

Speaker, that this is giving the minister a power that he may not want. He would

probably be much better off without it because the doors will open very quickly

and there will be lots of people lined up looking for amounts to be written off.

On the other hand, there have been cases, I had them myself, when there were

items before you that were really just a nuisance and it made all kinds of sense

- and it needed to be written off, more of an anomaly than anything else.

With respect to Clause 2, Mr. Speaker, all this is, is

putting into law now what the government did last year, that they did not have

the legal authority to do last year, which was to transfer money from a surplus

of a particular sinking fund to current account and this is what they did last

year. They transferred $70 million - if I am not mistaken, if my memory serves

me correctly - $70 million from the sinking fund surplus and that was on the

recommendation of everybody. We went through that debate. So this now changes

the law. They had to come in with a special bill last year to do that. Now this

bill says that sinking funds, surpluses can be transferred on a regular basis.

We don't have to wait until the maturity. I am not sure of the wisdom of that. I

suspect now we are going to be taking little bits and pieces from every sinking

fund, whatever it might be this year, technically in surplus. Do we have a

guarantee that that surplus will remain next year? If the variance of interest

rates is not possible that next year we might be in a deficit position and

therefore we will have to replace what we took this year. That is something that

I would be concerned about.

The question here, Mr. Speaker, is that money was allocated

in capital account to pay off those sinking funds and now you are going to take

it back and put it in current account. I have the same concern with the sale of

capital assets, Mr. Speaker, the sale of Crown corporations. The minister now is

in the process of - and he is going to tell us very soon about the sale of the

Holiday Inn buildings, the Hotel Building's Corporation and he is going to

realize some money. Now all of the money that went in there went in on a capital

account. It was a capital expenditure that was put in there yet he is going to

sell these buildings and he is going to take the money and put it into current

account. It would seem to me if the expenditure -

AN HON. MEMBER: No, we don't have current account.

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, you do but if it was already spent on

capital and it is being gained back from the sale of capital, it would seem to

me to make sense to put it - I realize you can put it in current - but it would

seem to me to put it into capital. It is going to balance the budget either way

unless you took it and applied it against other debt.

MR. ROBERTS: That would be really balancing the budget.

MR. WINDSOR: That would be making sense, if you have

built up a surplus but it is a way of - I mean I call this the cooking the books

clause because that is what this does. It allows the minister to play with

surpluses and sinking funds now. This is giving the minister a new oven, a new

microwave that he does not - it does not take him so long now. He does not have

to bring in a special piece of legislation every time he has a surplus and he

wants to take it out. Now he can do it at any time, take that surplus out of the

sinking fund and apply it to his current account and this is what he is going to

do. This is why he is so anxious to get this bill through today, I say to the

Opposition House Leader. Well he wants this through because he has this big

deficit that he has to deal with now over the next week or two. He is afraid to

tell us what it is. He knows what it is but he is so embarrassed by it that he

is now changing the law here so that he can slip out little bits of other

sinking funds, now he does not have to wait.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, no, no.

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, last year he had to come in with a

special piece of legislation to do it but now he won't have to because this

changes the law so that he can do it at any time. We don't have to wait until

the sinking fund matures.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I just wonder if the hon. member would -

MR. WINDSOR: Absolutely, sir.

MR. SPEAKER: - give me permission to inform the House of

the questions that we have for the adjournment debate at 4:30 p.m.

The first question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer

provided by the Minister of Education and Training re: my question on Memorial

University's budget. That is the hon. Member for Kilbride.

The second question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer

provided by the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation re: my question

St. Mary's - The Capes.

The third question is: I am dissatisfied with the answer

provided by the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board re: my question about

budget projections. That is the hon. Member for Mount Pearl.

The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've just about

completed what I wanted to say, but the point is here that that is what this is

doing now. It is giving the minister an opportunity when he gets into trying to

decide how he is going to deal with this growing deficit that has been building

up there that he is so afraid to tell us about. This is just one of the ways, I

suppose, that he is going to find a few million dollars to try to make that look

a little better. I hope when he gives us his statement he will tell us if there

are any changes in the amount transferred from sinking funds over what was

budgeted and what now actually is being proposed by the end of the year.

I say to the minister, we will be watching at the end of the

year to see just how much was transferred from the sinking funds, to see when he

comes up with his final revised budget at the end of this fiscal year, when he

comes in with his new budget. We will see what the new estimate is of how much

is going to be transferred.

That is all this is. It is giving the minister a microwave so

he can cook the books any time at all in a few seconds all during the course of

the year. He doesn't have to wait for his budget. He can shove his numbers in

the new microwave, the piece of legislation here, and cook up some numbers very

quickly and transfer a few dollars from the sinking fund and try to eliminate

the embarrassing deficit that is going to grow. From a government that said

there would be no new taxes.

AN HON. MEMBER: Never said that.

MR. WINDSOR: That is what they said in the Budget. I will

never forget the former minister standing in his place immediately opposite. He

was so proud to say that this was a budget with no deficit, no new taxes, no

increases of any kind. Then on the next page he said: But we are going to have a

$20 million dividend from Newfoundland Hydro. Now that is not a tax on people.

That is cooking it, isn't it?

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) federal money for the ferry

service (inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Yes, (inaudible) just going to borrow from

the ferry service, when we had one minister commit that the money was going to

be put in trust for the people of the South Coast. That is the kind of trust you

get from this government, right? In one hand, out the other just as quick as you

can get it. Gone. Fast. Quick as a wink, Mr. Speaker, spent. In trust. That is

how good it is. Unfortunately nobody trusts this government any more, and that

is why. How can you trust a government? One minister says: We will put it in

trust, another minister said: Sorry, I just spent it.

AN HON. MEMBER: They should set up a (inaudible) trust

fund.

MR. WINDSOR: That is right. Their idea of a trust fund -

we found out some letters (inaudible) the Minister of Fisheries, Food and

Agriculture this afternoon, that is their trust. That is how he is building up

his trust fund.

Mr. Speaker, we will see how the minister deals with that

when he comes in with his great statement now sometime next week, hopefully. We

will see what he does with the revenues that are generated from Hotel Holdings.

Of course, he won't get those for a little while anyway, so that is not going to

help his immediate problem, I wouldn't think. I will stop there, Mr. Speaker,

that is (inaudible).

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

Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member

is right with regard to the first provision. There is no provision for the

minister to write off taxes under the Financial Administration Act. The minister

does have power in the Retail Sales Tax Act to write those off. But

section 19

does provide for the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, which is of course the

whole Cabinet, to meet and decide and to write off those taxes.

The member suggests that it is better off for the minister

not to have that discretion. I agree with him to a point. It invests the person

who is the Minister of Finance of the day with the task of trying to

discriminate as between taxpayers and which ones should have a write-off in what

circumstances. I think that it is a sound thing to do provided there is a set of

criteria established that is equally applicable to all taxpayers. If there is

something I've tried to do since I've been in Finance it is to discern in this

particular area, where we now already have jurisdiction such as in retail sales

tax, remissions for penalty and interest, to make sure that the decisions we

make are comparable and fair to all taxpayers and that frankly is not always

easy, and in many cases you have to refuse to remit taxes because those have

fallen into a category that is presently allowed even though you think there may

be some merit to what people are saying and I think, the thing about any of

these sorts of remittances is a whole element of fairness and the fact that

every person will be treated similarly in the same circumstance, but having said

that, I do believe that in these circumstances it is fair for the government to

retain a right to (inaudible) taxes, and ultimately it just depends on where

that authority is vested. At present, it is in the Lieutenant-Governor in

Council. I think it is probably not advisable to have the Cabinet consider tax

remissions under amounts of $5,000 and less and that threshold seems to me

appropriate, therefore I would recommend it by legislation to this House.

With regard to the sinking fund, I think the hon. member was

making a case that government could finagle the books in some way, take monies

out, balance our books this sort of thing. I would point out that, first of all,

the Auditor General audits the books of the Province each year. The minister and

the department, the government are all accountable for transactions of this

sort, were the government of the day to act contrary to fiscal policy and do

something that was not warranted by the current state of the sinking fund, then

that would be unveiled and revealed by the Auditor General.

I suspect that any Minister of Finance, if it were the hon.

member, myself or others would not be party to such a - I am trying to think of

a neutral term, I wouldn't say fraud - but such an improper tactic, such an

indefensible -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: No, and I know the member wasn't but -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: I think the hon. member is suggesting that

perhaps a decision to take it at the time might seem right and then

circumstances, whether it be falling interest rates or currency exchanges may

dictate that that later looks to be not the right decision to make. But the two

points that had to be made was, first of all, if one acts imprudently,

inadvertently doing actions that are not, later defensible, the Auditor General

will very quickly pick that up and I think government would be loathe to act in

that fashion.

The second thing of course is that, the more general point

being the government's books are all one and the same whether you distinguish

between capital and current, your rating agencies consider your total

obligations not only your current account deficit but also your obligation to

pick up your past debt, the millions and billions of dollars in fact that the

Province has issued over previous years and the fact that you have set aside

provision for that. It is the same thing with pension funds, so when the fiscal

state of the Province is looked at, the assets which the Province holds, liquid

and fixed are held against the debt, so even if one takes it out of the sinking

fund and applies it elsewhere, all that you do is, you reduce the debts and the

assets accordingly. It is just a matter of how they are accounted for.

I do share his concern that one shouldn't take from your

future debt provisions and your debt retirement funds, monies to finance your

current account but I think it would be apparent in the general view of the

books of the Province what the total financial position is. In the end, I don't

think that would form any significant danger although there may be disagreement

from time to time as to what a prudent amount to subtract from the sinking fund

is.

I should say as well that the Provinc