December

2, 1992

HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol.

XLI No. 76

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Lush): Order, please!

Before calling Oral Questions, on behalf of hon. members

there are a couple of groups that we would like to welcome to the galleries

today. First, there are forty-five Level II students from St. Clare's Regional

High School in Carbonear; and secondly we have a group of students from Memorial

- students representing the Council of the Student's Union; students

representing the Canadian Federation of Students Executive; MUN student

senators, and students at large.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Oral Questions

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up with

the Premier on some questions raised yesterday in the House about his

government's decision to give a tax break to one Newfoundland company, Fortis

Trust, a subsidiary of Fortis Corporation.

I understand in the comments yesterday to the press made by

his Minister of Finance, the minister said - this is the company, of course,

that also owns Newfoundland Light and Power - the company had come to government

looking for this tax break.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to the Premier that

dozens of other Newfoundland companies in this Province have come to the

government to ask for a break from the burden of payroll taxes and other

business taxes implemented and imposed by his government. I want to ask the

Premier: Why did he not give these other companies a break? Will there be any

break in his upcoming mini-Budget for these other businesses?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I have been aware that this

matter has been under discussion generally for some time. I have not been

directly involved in it myself. The minister tells me, and the former Minister

of Finance used to tell me - he is not in the House; he is not here right at the

moment - the former Minister of Finance, I believe, was dealing with it.

The proposition, as I understand it, and I am not too

familiar with it - the Minister of Finance can more readily answer the questions

than -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: The Minister of Finance can more readily

answer the questions than -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WELLS: The Minister of Finance can more readily

answer the questions than I can, but my understanding is that this trust company

had a high level of capital investment in order to attract security for its

investors and that this placed an inordinate burden on them in terms of the

capital tax by comparison with competitive companies that did not have that

level of protection for the investors doing the same level of business and I

believe this is the basis that the minister explained yesterday. This was not a

tax break for one company, this is to deal with what appeared to be an unfair

and inequitable situation. That has been done in a variety of circumstances in

the past by this government and by former governments in the Province. I do not

see anything particularly wrong with it. We would like to give business tax

breaks to as many companies as we can and in next year's Budget we will see.

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

MR. SIMMS: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, I say to the Premier, he can call it whatever he wants

to call it, it has been referred to as a tax break and I think clearly it is a

tax break. My question was: are you going to give some tax breaks to others,

other than Fortis?

Now, Mr. Speaker, the supplementary. I do not have to remind

the Premier that there are thousands of Newfoundlanders in this Province who

have not had a wage increase over the last two years, are finding it very

difficult to put food on their tables and they also would like to have a break

from the burden of personal income taxes imposed by this government, and in

thirty days time, January 1st, this government will have increased personal

income tax by 6 percentage points to 66 per cent of the federal tax.

I would like to ask the Premier this question: if he thinks

that the tax paid by Fortis Trust is unfair and he is going to change it and

reduce it, will he also be changing and reducing the personal income tax that he

and his government have imposed upon the people of this Province, the wage

earners and the pensioners, who have not had a chance to make ends meet for the

last two years? Why have we not had a response to that kind of a request as

well?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I would like to abolish taxes

and make them illegal, but who is going to pay the Leader of the Opposition's

salary and his travel and other expenses, if we abolish that? Who is going to

pay for that? Who is going to pay the expenses of running hospitals, who is

going to pay for schools, who is going to pay for all the cost of government, if

you abolish taxes? Nobody likes taxes. The difference is with the personal

income tax, it applies the same to everybody.

Now I have just been provided with a note that apparently

explains this tax. The financial corporation capital tax imposes a tax on the

paid-up capital of banks, trust and loan companies operating in the Province at

a rate of 3 per cent. For companies operating in more than one province, a

portion of the companies paid-up capital is allocated to Newfoundland based on

the portion of the companies business done in Newfoundland.

Prior to the amendments in this Bill, each taxpayer was

allowed to reduce their total paid-up capital by $500,000 before allocating to

Newfoundland and calculating their tax payable. When Fortis Trust commenced

operation the company made representation to Government that the existing tax

was prejudicial to them. To qualify for deposit insurance coverage Fortis was

required to have a minimum of $5 million in paid up capital even though, based

on their business activity, $500,000 was sufficient by industry standards. The

act required Fortis to pay capital tax on the full $5 million which gave the

company a tax liability in relative terms far in excess of its creditors. Now,

it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that is not an irrational explanation of it and

that is the basis for the adjustment. It is not as though the income tax paid by

one individual applied differently than others or affected them on a different

basis. If you do that and tax statutes result in that there has been provision

for accommodation before. Frankly I do not see that this is any different.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest

when the Premier said: who is going to pay the Leader of the Opposition's

salary? Well, there are certain former Leaders of the Opposition who found ways

to have their salary paid.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SIMMS: His answer is really what I was trying to get

out of him. I mean who is going to pay for this? Who is going to pay for that?

The question is who is paying for Fortis? It is the government of the Province.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it is also well known that the Premier is a former Chairman of

Newfoundland Light and Power, a company which is owned by Fortis Corporation. I

want to ask him a simple, straightforward question: Did he participate in any

formal or informal discussions with Fortis officials, Newfoundland Power

officials or board members at any time regarding this 3 per cent tax?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I did not. I did not wait until I became

Premier to disassociate myself totally from Newfoundland Light and Power at the

time. When I announced that I was seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party I

also announced my resignation immediately because I thought it was inappropriate

and I sold all my shares. I had a few shares. I did not have very many, but I

sold everything. I immediately disassociated myself with Newfoundland Light and

Power and I have had nothing to do with them since. They are another company

doing business in this Province. A very reputable company, by the way, doing

business on a very good basis in this Province. For the Leader of the Opposition

to now make that kind of inference, pretty small, pretty small.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I am not concerned about whether

the Premier thinks the question is small or not, it is a question that has to be

asked, and that is the point.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SIMMS: It is the answer that the people are

interested in receiving. Let me ask him this: Can he tell us then - confirm, I

therefore suspect - that he participated in the Cabinet decision to bring forth

this legislative amendment, this change, to give this tax break to the Fortis

Corporation. Can he confirm that he was there for that - participated?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I cannot confirm it, Mr. Speaker, I don't

even recall it going through at the time. I recall it being discussed but I

don't recall if I was even present when the decision was made. I will try to

find out; I will take a look at the Cabinet record and let him know. As far as I

know - I don't even know if I was or I wasn't.

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

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that and

I look forward to the answer. I would like to ask the Premier this: Did his

right-hand man, the Minister of Justice, who also had a connection with the same

company as a director of Fortis Corporation, participate in any formal or

informal discussions about this tax before or after he became a minister in the

Cabinet and did he participate in the Cabinet decision, as well?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, there are two parts to the

question so I will let the Minister of Justice speak for himself on the part

about which he would have knowledge and I would not. My right-hand man, to the

extent that one exists ever since I have been Premier, is the Minister of

Finance. He still acts for me in that capacity. Recently, the Minister of

Justice was added to the Cabinet, so I will let him answer the rest of the

question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, it is all in the way in which

you look at it Sir, from where I sit - I who sitteth on the left hand and my

hon. friend from Gander who sitteth on the right hand - but when you look at it

from the other side, it is on the right hand. They do tend to get things

'bassackwards' over there.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me deal with this, because I rather

resent the insinuation. I was a director of Fortis Trust Inc. My family, my

father, primarily, had had interest in this company for twenty or thirty years

and I, if you wish, inherited the directorship. In fact, at one stage, my family

and I - my brothers, my father and I - owned a very large proportion of the

shares of a company called Newfoundland Building, Savings and Investment Limited

which eventually was sold to Fortis Trust Inc. and I assumed the directorship.

Within a fortnight of my acceptance of the Premier's invitation to join his

Cabinet, several months before I joined the Cabinet, I resigned as a director of

Fortis Trust Inc. and since then have had no dealings formally or informally

with Fortis Trust Inc., with Fortis Inc., or any other - with one exception. I

must tell Your Honour this: A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were asked to

take dinner with some friends of ours at the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club. I

must, in all honesty, tell Your Honour and the House that at the table at

dinner, Angus and Jean Bruneau were there, too. Indeed, I sat next to Mrs.

Bruneau - for the whole meal. We spoke with each other, we broke bread together,

and I will confess, as well, we had a glass of wine together.

Now, those are the only dealings I have had with Fortis Inc.

or Fortis Trust. I also had a word or two of social conversation with Angus

Bruneau, whom I have known for many years, whom I am proud to count as a friend,

and who, I think, is one of the finest and most honourable men in this Province.

Let me say one other thing so it is on the record. Firstly,

when this proposal came forward through Treasury Board - and the record will

bear this out - I declared an interest and withdrew from Treasury Board.

Secondly, when it came forward to Cabinet, I declared an interest and withdrew

from Cabinet, and the record will show that. Thirdly, when it came forward in

this House, I declared an interest and withdrew from it.

I am not going to stand for the cheap shots of the ilk of

that from the other side, Mr. Speaker. The record is clear and speaks for

itself.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister of Justice,

that is just too bad if he won't take it from this side of the House. Now, he

did say, in answer to the question, that several months before he joined the

Cabinet, he resigned. Now, we all know that several months before he joined the

Cabinet, the Premier announced he was going in the Cabinet. Will he tell us when

he resigned?

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I don't recall the date, I will

look it up. There was a letter of resignation. What I said was, within a week or

two after accepting the Premier's invitation, I resigned. I did not attend

another director's meeting. I had no dealings with the company. But I confess I

did draw a proportion of the annual fee paid to directors. I believe there was a

retainer paid and they paid so much a meeting, not an unusual arrangement. I

drew part of the year's retainer and the payment for the two or three meetings,

whatever it was, that I had attended up to the point - it was in November,

whenever the Premier's announcement was made. Within a fortnight I had attended

to all these things and I had resigned as director of Fortis Trust Inc., and

have had nothing - I may have some funds on deposit down there, and I confess, I

once bought a spousal RRSP for my wife and invested the money there. It was a

good rate of return, and it is still there. It is a good, safe place to invest

your money, Sir.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Who else is involved, I wonder?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. ROBERTS: If the hon. gentleman from Kilbride wants to

snipe, let him stand and say manfully in this House -

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

I recognize the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, a final supplementary to the

Premier.

Yesterday the Minister of Finance, I think, suggested that

this tax break was to help economic recovery. The Premier alluded to it in his

answer earlier. He talked about helping businesses in order to help economic

recovery. Can the Premier tell us now how much new investment and how many new

jobs are going to be created by this $150,000 a year break to former friends and

colleagues of him and his chief lieutenant there, the Minister of Justice. Can

he tell us that?

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

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, the first part of the leader's question: I was

supposed to have said that this is being done to stimulate economic activity.

That is a totally incorrect statement, Mr. Speaker. The Leader of the Opposition

has a knack of twisting and misinterpreting and so on, and getting his own

interpretations of the statements that are just the opposite of what was said.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this amendment -

MR. SIMMS: (Inaudible).

MR. BAKER: Well, the hon. Leader of the Opposition can go

back and check transcripts and everything else and he will never, ever find that

that was said, and I hope that he will apologize in the House when he does go

and check the transcripts.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the amendment was to correct

an inequity whereby the $500,000 deduction for paid-up capital, the exemption

that was available to all other companies, was also available to small trust

companies that were setting up. But because of the requirements for security,

even though the paid-up capital necessary would only be $500,000 they could not

take the normal deduction that other larger companies could take. So it was to

make the situation equitable for smaller trust companies as compared to larger

trust companies, so that it would be possible for smaller trust companies to set

up in this Province without an undue level of taxation, up to 30 per cent of

paid-up capital that was required, up to 30 per cent as opposed to the 3 per

cent that was being charged the larger ones. So it was a way of straightening up

an inequity, Mr. Speaker.

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

Capes.

MR. HEARN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the

Minister of Education. In October the minister received a petition from 3,700

students, a quarter of the student body at Memorial, requesting a freeze on

tuition to help students make it through the Winter semester. Isn't it true that

he dismissed the petition with the comment: well, three out of four can still

return? Does the minister want a university where only the children of the rich

and the powerful can get an education?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, hon. members will know, as I

said before, this government treats the University as operating at arm's length

from government. We give the University $120 million a year to run its affairs.

It would be unnecessary intervention to tell them that they could freeze their

tuition. Already Memorial has the lowest tuitions in Canada. At the end of the

day it would do more harm than good to interfere with the University at that

level, Mr. Speaker.

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

Capes.

MR. HEARN: In a meeting with the student representatives

on November 24, actually, the minister questioned whether the provincial grant

and the deferred bursary program was working. Anything that comes out of the

mouths of any of the ministers over there causes alarm. I wonder, what does the

minister have in mind? Does he intend to axe the bursary program, and perhaps

the entire provincial grant program? Taking the lead from the NDP government in

Ontario.

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, some time ago I did meet with a

group of students from Memorial. It was a good meeting, actually, in which we

discussed various problems that they are encountering. I asked them about the

problems with the deferred bursary. It's a system which the hon. member would be

quite familiar with. His administration -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: His administration brought it in. The

deferred bursary, Mr. Speaker, is a system whereby a student grant is approved

and the student only receives a portion of it, but then after the student

graduates the other portion is applied against his loan payments. Now that was

brought in by the previous administration.

So I asked the students if in their opinion this was a good

system or not. Strangely enough, some of the students said yes, it is not a good

system and they'd like to see it changed. Yet in that very same meeting another

student said: no, it's a good system and maybe we should keep it in place. So

like everything that government does there are different opinions and different

points of view. Both of them have the same strength. The students who were

against the deferred bursary opposed it just as strongly as the particular

students who said that it is a good program.

All was involved is the same intent which has been involved

ever since I became a minister of this administration. We want to try to do the

best that we can for people, whether they be students or whether they be

teaching, or whatever they do. We want to do the best that we can within the

fiscal limitations of this Province, Mr. Speaker.

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

Capes.

MR. HEARN: Mr. Speaker, if I were a student I'd be pretty

concerned after just listening to what the minister has said. The minister is

well aware that students are having a real problem having their appeals heard.

Now that 250 students have been told that: your appeals will be dealt with

shortly, can the minister explain why they've also been told: you'll have to

wait until December 16, the last day of regular classes, before they receive

their funding? Does the minister know what's going on? Does he care? Do the

students have to drop out in droves in order to get any attention at all from

this minister and this government?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I know very well what's going on

and I do care very much. The reality is an attempt here again to get up and make

cheap political points without stating the full facts. The reality is there are

not 250 student appeals to be heard. The reality is there are less than 100

appeals to be heard as of 9:00 this morning. Now if the hon. member is talking

about last week, there was an announcement last week that there were 250 appeals

to be heard, but as of 9:00 this morning there are less than 100.

Mr. Speaker, earlier in the week the announcement was that

there was 1,000 students.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I'm giving the facts. Whether or

not people disagree with these facts, I can't take responsibility for that. I

had a meeting this morning with Mr. Snelgrove, the director in charge of Student

Loans, as I do quite frequently, because I am concerned with what's happening in

Student Loans. I have been assured that as of 9:00 this morning there were less

than 100 student appeals.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in fairness I don't want to get up and try

to claim that the Student Loans commission is the best thing since sliced bread,

but there are some facts the public should know.

The deadline for applications for student loans is October

31. Now that was subsequently extended to November 13, and subsequently extended

until November 25. So all the applications that arrived before November 20 have

been dealt with. The appeals have been dealt with, Mr. Speaker; but, in a spirit

of trying to help students, Student Loans is breaking its own rules and

extending the deadline for applications and for appeals. There is not one

application which has not been dealt with, that arrived before the deadline.

Honourable members will know that as much as we are

concerned, and rightly so, for students in the system, students are going to

have to recognize that they have some responsibility too, and they cannot wait

until after the deadline to get their applications in and then expect to get

their loan approved before the students who were there in due time.

So this is a two-way street, Mr. Speaker. Students are going

to have to take a bit of responsibility as well, and that is said in the spirit

that I am responsible for them; but we all have to play the rules right.

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

Capes.

MR. HEARN: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

I suggest to the minister that he met with Mr. Snelgrove

because he knew the students were going to be in the gallery today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEARN: Secondly, I ask the minister if he will answer

the part of the question that he so carefully evaded: When students usually

receive their funding a couple of days after their appeal, why have they been

told that they have to wait until December 16 this year before they will get it?

And perhaps he can tell us: Why are there so many appeals in the beginning? What

is wrong with the program?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I can assure hon. members that

the fact that there might or might not be students in the gallery had nothing to

do with my meeting with Mr. Snelgrove; but I can certainly assure members that

this question is only posed - it is the first time that hon. member has ever

asked me a question in his life.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DECKER: It is simply political posturing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: As I pointed out, Mr. Speaker, every single

application and every single appeal that has arrived at the Student Loans

office, up to and including November 23, has been dealt with. In all cases

students have not received extra money. I am sorry about that. There are rules

which must be played by, but the appeals have been dealt with up until November

At this moment the Student Loans Division is dealing with

applications that came in November 24 and November 25. They have accepted

appeals right up until November 25. The Director of Student Loans advised me

that he has kept people on, working overtime, flat out, and hopefully over the

next few days they will have it all cleared up; but it is humanly impossible to

receive an appeal at the eleventh hour and expect to have that appeal dealt with

in the tenth hour. This is a two-way street and people have to play the rules

properly.

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

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

direct a question to the Minister of Education.

On Monday I asked the President of Treasury Board if it was

true that school boards had not received their funding, their budgetary

allocations, their final ones for 1992-93, and we are now months into the fiscal

year. He said the boards had been advised of the allocations. Yesterday, a

memorandum was sent to all school boards, signed by the Deputy Minister of

Education, which says: We are not in a position, at this point, to confirm the

final budgetary allocations for the 1992-93 school year.

Does this government know what is going on? Was the minister

misleading this House? Or is it another example of the government's fumbling and

incompetence?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, prior to this year operational

grants were given to school boards based on the number of students enrolled in

each school board. It was based on a formula - was it $300 and some odd per

student? If you were in Nain with 1,000 students in your district, you receive

$350 x 1,000. If you were in St. John's, - whatever.

This year the Department of Education, and government,

changed the grants system so that when school boards now receive grants we take

into consideration the cost of heat and electricity. We take into consideration

the cost of -

AN HON. MEMBER: Need.

MR. DECKER: My hon. friend tells me we take need; but the

intent is to make certain that when a student arrives in the classroom, whether

it is in Nain or St. John's or in Gander, whatever, the amount of money that is

spent on the educational program is pretty well the same per student wherever

you live. Now this is a new system that we brought in. It has taken some time to

bring that new system in place, we had to check to see if it was legal. We had

to check with the non-discriminatory use of funds, we had to see if it was legal

and all this, but, Mr. Speaker, every single school board in this Province has

been given in-term financing equal to, or more than, they received in previous

years.

So, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member, if he has found some

special cases there, where there is a problem, then tell me about it. The one

which he quoted in the House last week is certainly no problem because I have

the facts on that one which shows, Mr. Speaker, that they have indeed received

just as much money up to today as they did last year this time, and we are

hoping that as a result of abolishing that curse, which the previous

administration perpetrated for so long, namely the school tax, that we will be

able to get more money for all the school boards in this Province, Mr. Speaker.

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

supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yesterday's memorandum stated that full implementation of the

full grant system may be postponed indefinitely pending an improvement in

government's financial position. Simply put, boards do not have the money they

were promised in March and they are not going to get it. Was not this the

government's intention all along? Was not March's Budget a scam to get boards to

go along with the elimination of school tax?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, is the hon. member quoting from

a National Enquirer, or from what is he quoting?

Mr. Speaker, we have a new grant system put in place as I

explained to hon. members. The majority of hon. members on the other side were

satisfied to sit in their place for seventeen or eighteen years and allow a

system of education in this Province to work where, people living in Conche

received one-third the amount of money that the people living in St. John's

received for education. That is a disgrace and a shame, Mr. Speaker. It is

discrimination of the very worse. This administration is putting in place a

program whereby equal opportunity is made available to the people in Conche and

Croque and Corner Brook and Nain and Goose Bay, Mr. Speaker, where we believe in

treating people equally; we are not going to perpetrate this nonsense whereby we

have, two, three and four different classes of people, as hon. members sat down

and did for seventeen years in this House. Now hon. members are trying their

best -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DECKER: - to jeopardise our intent to put this system

in place; there are a few bugs which have to be ironed out and they will be

ironed out, and the hon. member can shout all he likes -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Order, please!

MR. DECKER: - but we are not bringing back the school

tax.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member I think, is engaged in making a speech, and

although the Chair cannot tell the hon. member what to say, the Chair gathered

he was probably making a speech.

Question Period has expired.

Presenting Reports by

Standing and Special Committees

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Harbour Grace.

MR. CRANE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a report

of the Social Legislation Review Committee in respect of Bill 55, "An Act To

Amend The Law Society Act". Our Committee met last evening and heard

explanations from the Minister of Justice, and we heard from the Law Society and

Mr. Chesley Crosbie, a barrister. And it appeared to the Committee that more

time was needed to ensure that the adequate consultation take place between

government and the persons affected by the proposed legislation. The Committee

unanimously agreed that it would ask the House to delay the passing of this bill

until the spring sitting.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CRANE: I would like to thank the Committee members.

Last evening, we had three substitute members, the Member for Humber West, the

Member for Port de Grave - and the Member for Kilbride is partially a

substitute.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CRANE: Also there were our regular members, the

Vice-Chair from Humber East and the Member for St. George's.

Mr. Speaker, one other comment. The Member for St. John's

East is also a member of that Committee, and because of my arrogance, he said,

when he had to attend another appointment, I would not change the meeting for

him, so he did not get to the meeting last evening.

Answers to Questions

For which Notice has been Given

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

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, on 30 November, Monday of this week, the hon.

gentleman from Kilbride asked me some questions and I may have some answers for

him. I took them as notice. Your Honour may recall, but if you don't, let me

remind you that he asked me about some ten desks and ten chairs delivered to the

Provincial Courts in Atlantic Place at a reported cost of $60,000, and he also

wanted to know, if these were not in use, could he go to view them. I have some

information here. Here is the story, Sir: Eleven desks have been purchased, one

for each of the eleven judges who sit in Atlantic Place. The desks, I am told -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: If the hon. gentleman can contain his

impatience, all things will be unfolded to him in the fullness of time. Eleven

desks have been purchased, one for each of the eleven judges who sit in the

Provincial Court at Atlantic Place. We also bought one chair; one assumes the

other ten judges already had them. The one chair is the result of the fact that

Judge Hyslop was recently relocated from Gander into St. John's. My friend, the

Minister of Finance, thinks they sat on the Bench, I will let the hon. lady from

Humber East explain what sitting on the Bench means to my friend. They can do

that outside. The total, including the RST, was $36,777.44. The expenditure was

part of a four-year plan approved by one of my predecessors, on the advice of

his then deputy minister and by the Treasury Board. The judges who sit outside

St. John's got theirs over the last -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Just hold on now.

MR. PARSONS: Would the hon. member entertain a question?

MR. ROBERTS: No, Mr. Speaker, I am answering a question.

If the hon. gentleman would just resume his seat we will get on with this.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. PARSONS: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

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

Extern, on a point of order.

MR. PARSONS: I am not sure, but I want to ask the

Minister of Justice: Isn't it true that the chairs to correspond to those tables

came only two months ago?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Minister of Justice.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, the expenditure was part of a four-year plan. The

judges outside of St. John's got their desks on the 13th, and lest anybody

thinks we have ignored the part of Newfoundland and Labrador outside the

overpass, they got their desks and chairs over the last three years. The

purchase implements the last stage of a four-year plan to replace desks for

judges. Now, there are ten surplus desks because until Judge Hyslop was moved

here earlier in the fall there were only ten judges sitting here. There are now

eleven, so we had to buy eleven, I say to my friend from St. John's East Extern

- baby talk, in the words used often in this House before. All ten desks have

been reassigned. One has gone to Daphne Bartlett, secretary to the Chief Judge,

one to Bernice Laughee, a court orderly, one to Eric Penney, a court orderly,

one to Susan Roberts, Director of Traffic Court Services, and let me, in

fairness to the lady, say she is no relation of mine. One has gone to Susie

Fewer, a court reporter, one to Darleen Sellars, a court reporter, one to

Bernice Keeping, a financial consultant, one to Basil Tracey an accounting

clerk, one to Michael Baker, a management analyst, and one has gone for a

student. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am told the old chairs are still in use, as well.

They were put in the judge's library and replaced broken chairs in three

courtrooms. Staff chairs are replaced as needed and are not in poor condition.

The desks previously used by these ten will be disposed of in the usual way by

the appropriate department. If hon. members really want, Mr. Speaker, I have

here a list of the condition of all ten of the previous ones. I will not read it

but let me tell you - for example, Susan Roberts. I know Susie Fewer was using

an old-style school desk, 'very old, and requires proper secretarial desk so a

typing wing can be attached. There is not adequate space for her computer unit.'

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that the answers here should be

brief. I realize the question was a long one. The question was asking about a

number of chairs and where they were put. Maybe it is a question that should

have been on the Order Paper. I ask the minister to please get to the essence of

the question as soon as possible.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. I have given part of it and I

will very briefly give the rest. I have already distributed it to those who need

it. The purchase was made by the Government Purchasing Agency on public tender

at the direction of Chief Judge Luther of the Provincial Court, using funds

approved as part of the estimates. Chief Judge Luther tells me that by his

estimate, the purchase program has been completed at a cost of between 40 and 45

per cent less than the estimates. Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me say that I am

told that the purchases were within the scale of entitlement guidelines that

govern the purchase and distribution of office furniture throughout the public

service. These guidelines were promulgated by the executive director of the

purchasing agency on 16 May 1988, a year before this administration took office,

and they have not been changed since then.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: My hon. friend wants (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The answer is yes, if they are not being

used by either the judge or the person to whom they are assigned.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There are two members standing and there can only be one. The

Chair doesn't know who is up or who is down, but saw two members standing.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, what we have here today is an

admission from the Minister of Justice.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

What is the hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West doing?

A point of order.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, what we have here is an admission

from the Minister of Justice that in a time when people in this Province are

starving and don't have doors to put to their homes, he is spending $40-odd

thousand dollars.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order. Hon. members can't abuse the

House to make points, and the hon. gentleman knows it is not a point of order.

o o o

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

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

a point of order.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is a point of order with respect to questions for which

notice has been given. I wonder if the Minister of Social Services intends to

answer the question which he took under advisement on Friday related to the work

of his department in Bellevue district. He was able to come in on twenty-four

hour notice and mislead the House, on November 5, Mr. Speaker, but it has taken

four or five days now to try to correct the error. I wonder when the minister is

going to be able to tell us whether or not he misled the House on November 5?

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

MR. ROBERTS: To the point of order, Mr. Speaker. I

suspect the hon. gentleman from St. John's East knows it is not a point of

order. I think he is simply trying to take a cheap shot here. The Minister of

Social Services will answer the question as quickly as can be done. He will

answer it fully and completely, notwithstanding attempts by hon. members

opposite to prevent us from answering questions fully and completely, as we have

just seen.

MR. R. AYLWARD: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

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

of order.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his

answer to my question, but it was on only half the question I asked. I also

asked the Premier what happened to the furniture that was replaced in his office

and is it possible to go view that wherever it was stored?

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

I ask the hon. member to take his place, please.

There is no point of order. There are periods for doing this.

If he wants to ask the question there is a proper place for it, not raising it

on a point of order.

Petitions

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present - rather unusual in

many respects, but it is a petition that was put together by members of the NTA

while attending the Canadian Teachers Federation's National Conference held here

in St. John's, and hosted by the Newfoundland branch, just in the last week or

so.

First, I shall tell you that there are 228 names affixed to

the petition, 228 signatories. The prayer of the petition goes as follows:

To the hon. House of Assembly in Newfoundland, in legislative

session convened. The petition of the undersigned delegates attending the

Canadian Teachers Federation 12th National Conference on Women and Education

Towards E Equals Equality.

Mr. Speaker, I should also say that more than half of these

signatories are from Newfoundland.

The prayer says: We, the delegates, were absolutely appalled

by a comment made by the hon. Chris Decker, Minister of Education, during the

opening session at the CTF conference regarding the drain on the provincial

budget for the cost of substitute teachers. We felt that the comment

demonstrated a lack of commitment to achieving equality for females in education

in Newfoundland. Your comment was embarrassing, degrading and insulting, not

only to us, but to our affiliates from all across Canada. Beyond all of this,

your actions portrayed a narrow-mindedness unbecoming a minister of the Crown.

We demand a retraction of this statement because it undermines the

professionalism of the teachers of this Province. Wherefore your petitioners

humbly pray that your hon. House may be pleased to request the Government of

Newfoundland and Labrador to take such action as quickly as possible, and as in

duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.

Now, Mr. Speaker, this is a highly unusual petition in many

respects. I am sure Your Honour would recognize that just by the mere prayer of

the petition. It is rather unusual to use such strong language, I suppose, in a

petition. I can't say that I was at the meeting or the conference. So I only

speak from information given to me by some of those who were there and who were

in attendance.

Now, without getting into the details of it, I expect and

hope the minister will respond to the petition and explain in some way what

transpired. I waited. I wouldn't present the petition on Monday because he

wasn't here, and I wasn't here yesterday, and I wanted to make sure he was going

to be in attendance. Because it is kind of an alarming message, I think, that is

contained in this petition. I know from talking to some people who were there

and know of it that they were highly insulted by the comment that the minister

made. There were also news stories. Your Honour, perhaps, would have seen the

one in last Saturday's Evening Telegram that refers to the situation that

occurred at that particular meeting.

Some people thought the minister was attempting to be

humourous, but they certainly didn't see it as being humourous comments that he

made. They were so riled up that they took up a petition at the meeting, itself,

and they sent the petition over to us, hand-delivered it, to ask if we would

present it in the House.

I can't get into the details of what occurred because I was

not in attendance. I would only be speaking secondhand. But I can say to him, to

the Premier, to the government and to the House, that I assure you, these - who

were in attendance at this conference were highly insulted by the comments that

the minister made. I am sure those in the Legislature who are teachers,

certainly the women who sit in this House, would be highly offended, too.

Because there was an obvious slur in the view of these people who presented this

petition.

Mr. Speaker, I present the petition on behalf of those

delegates at the convention and say to the minister that in the future, for

sure, I would hope that he would be a bit more cautious in what he has to say,

particularly at a national conference, where people from all across Canada come

to a convention hosted by a local branch - in this case of the NTA - and would

like to be able to be proud to stand and say: 'There is our Minister of

Education. We are very proud of him, very proud of the work he is doing' - as

they often used to say about the former minister, the Member for St. John's

North, and they did, Mr. Speaker. And I say that in this House publicly in front

of him. But unfortunately, this minister is not setting that kind of an example.

I hope that in the future he will choose his words much more carefully, and I

hope that the Premier will have a word with the minister and chastise him

properly for it, and apologize to the people from across Canada.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support the

petition of 228 teachers - teachers from Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as

from other provinces of Canada. Mr. Speaker, I join with them in calling on the

Minister of Education to retract his offensive comments at the national

conference last Thursday morning. I go further and call upon the minister to

apologize to the women of the Province and the teachers of the nation.

Mr. Speaker, in front of that national audience, the minister

insinuated that the Provincial Government wasted taxpayers' funds to pay for

substitute teachers to allow the Newfoundland and Labrador delegates to attend

that conference towards equality for women in education. More than that, Mr.

Speaker, the minister demeaned the women of the Province by telling the national

conference that in Newfoundland we have grandmothers on the Northern Peninsula

making swizzle sticks. Mr. Speaker, this reveals the sexist thinking, the

narrow-mindedness of the Minister of Education of this Province.

I join with my leader in saying that the minister's

predecessor, the present Member for St. John's North, while he didn't deliver

the kind of improvements that some of us would have hoped for, at least tried

and at least understands the equality faced by women generally and women in the

teaching profession in particular.

So, Mr. Speaker, I support this petition. I join with the

petitioners in asking the minister to retract his insulting comments and to go

further and offer an apology.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the remarks were made in jest. I

certainly didn't intend to offend anyone and, if I did, I certainly do

apologize, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DECKER: I suppose, Mr. Speaker, it is one of these

cases where people in public life put their foot in their mouth, and I did.

I had a prepared statement which I thought was a bit

patronizing. I was dealing with adults, so I said, I am not going to patronize

you and say, `We will put a committee in place here with five women on it,' or

`We will put a company here with two women on it.' I feel that is patronizing

and degrading to the whole spirit of the women's movement, Mr. Speaker.

The President of the NTA, when he introduced me, made

reference to the fact that there were 140 teachers there today. Mr. Speaker, we

are going through a budgetary process and, yes, it (inaudible) these 140

substitute teachers at twenty-five dollars a day for three days, about $75,000.

Now, Mr. Speaker, this is the same group who, the day before, got up and said

that the Premier of the Province was wasting money because he flew executive

class at a cost of fifty dollars more than an ordinary ticket. Mr. Speaker, I

thought it was in order to make a joke. Well, obviously, I put my foot in my

mouth and offended some people. I am sorry for that, Mr. Speaker. It won't

happen again. But I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SIMMS: Just on a point of order. I may have misled

the minister on the contents of the petition. There were 140 teachers at the

conference. However, only one-third of them, about thirty-five, were from the

classroom that required substitutes, not 140.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. member used the opportunity for a point of

clarification.

Orders of the Day

Private Members' Day

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, this is Private Members' Day,

so the motion stands in the name of the hon. gentleman from Port de Grave - it

is number 8, Sir.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Port de Grave.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

On most occasions when you stand in this hon. House of

Assembly to speak, it is usually done with great pleasure. You put forth the

ideas and the concerns of constituents across the Province, and especially in

your district, and you take great pleasure in doing it.

It is not with great pleasure that I speak on this particular

motion I have on the Order Paper today, it is with great necessity, because I

believe what is taking place in our Province of Newfoundland and Labrador today,

is going to have a great effect, and what has been happening in the past is

going to have a tremendous effect on the future of this Province.

I speak specifically about the moratorium - the so-called

moratorium where we are supposed to be doing something about the revitalization,

in a commercial viable way, of the fish stocks.

Now when I speak today about this motion, I am not talking

only about codfish. I am talking about all species of fish in and around the

coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, on the Grand Banks, inside and outside the

200-mile limit. My motion, Mr. Speaker, reads as follows:

WHEREAS the huge seal population is having a devastating

effect on the fish stocks off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

That is the big part of the question. That is the issue. That

is the point, the problem, of what I am talking about. In order to talk about

this, and in order for all hon. members of this House of Assembly, and all

members of Newfoundland and Labrador who have any interest in the fishery

whatsoever, and the future of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, we must

first accept the fact that we have a very serious problem at hand. Unless you

accept that there is a problem, you will not be able to come up with a solution.

You must first accept the problem.

To date I do not think most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians

are dealing with the problem of the seal population as we should. I think there

are reasons why it is happening in that manner. I think that the animal rights

activist groups have frightened us; have made us become complacent; have scared

us back in a shell, and have done a lot of things that we should have faced up

to possibly in 1984.

When I am finished today giving you some facts and figures

about the seal population; about the effect it is having on the fish stocks

around our coast; about the effect it has had on the Province of Newfoundland

and Labrador in the past and the present, and the effect it will have especially

in the future of the Province, I think we all will take a different attitude to

the things that we should do in order to solve this devastating problem.

There are a number of areas about which I want to speak

today, and I hope I will have enough time to briefly touch on them, and the

other speakers will also touch on them. It is not enough to call for a seal

hunt. What we are asking for is a continuation - an increased seal hunt - not

the way it was carried out in the past; not the way fishermen used to go out and

kill young seals, or hunt whitecoats. We are asking for an increased, mature,

seal hunt. That is what we want to do; but not just to go out and kill seals for

the sake of killing. That would be the absolute last resort.

There are millions of people starving in the world. I have

been told over and over and over and over that the seal meat is a very, very

high protein food. Picture people starving, with no food, picture 8 million

seals in the ocean with a valuable high protein meat. Does it make any sense to

have these 8 million seals destroying the fish stocks, and visualize 8 million

starving people in the world who could survive off that vast quantity of seal

meat?

Now that is the context in which we have to address the

problem. We have to look at what is happening around the world - the world

politics that is being played by a group of people.

I found it very interesting just two nights ago to sit down

and watch the evening news on CBC television, where they actually showed, over

in Australia, they are now killing off 5 million kangaroos. One truck was

completely filled, racked up, kangaroo after kangaroo after kangaroo, and no

animal activists there. The question is, why? If there are 5 million too many

kangaroos in Australia, and we have several million too many seals in the ocean

around the coast of Newfoundland, why is it that the animal activist groups are

focusing on the seal hunt here in Newfoundland? It is very simple. It is greed

on their own personal parts to raise money, and they are raising multimillions

of dollars at the cost of the survival of the life of every individual in

Newfoundland and Labrador as we have known it for the last 500 years.

They will not go over there and take a picture of a kangaroo

and try to get the emotions of the Hollywood multimillionaires stirred up

because they know they cannot do it, no more could they do it for the animals

that are killed in the plants of Ontario to provide us with meat; no more are

they doing it for animals or birds or anything else killed anywhere else in the

world. They are using the emotions of the seal pup, the tear in the eye, telling

lies to its fullest extreme, creating human hate, hatred towards Newfoundlanders

and Labradorians and we are laid back as individuals taking it on the chin and

saying: we had better not upset the animal rights groups, they may continue to

do this more and more. They may embargo all fish imports into Europe.

Well I will ask you a very serious question?

AN HON. MEMBER: What fish?

MR. EFFORD: What fish indeed, if the seals continue

devastating the fish stocks out there; the northern cod, the caplin, the squid

and the herring and the mackerel and the shrimp, what will we have left to sell?

Now the big study that is taking place in this Province is supposed to answer

the question: Do seals eat fish? Now that is the question that they are asking;

that is the question our government in Ottawa is asking, they are spending

hundreds of thousands of dollars doing research - do seals eat fish? We have to

realize first of all that seals do eat fish.

I made a joke about it, speaking a few weeks ago. A friend of

mine, who I met recently, Mr. Young, owns Kentucky Fried Chicken: I wonder if

that is where he made his money, selling Kentucky Fried Chicken to seals,

because it is just as silly as asking: do seals eat fish?

I want to quote you some numbers. We have 8 million seals in

the water. Just think about the jobs, we have probably 20 to 25 per cent

unemployment in the Province today - I want to give you an example before I

quote some real statistics. Let us say there are 8 million seals in the water,

use the minimum number; let us say they only eat one pound of fish a day, some

species, whether it is cod, herring, mackerel or whatever, that is 8 million

pounds of fish a day; multiply that times 365 days a year, you have 2.9 billion

pounds of fish. Think about what I just said, allowing them to eat only one

pound of fish a day, 8 million seals would eat almost 3 billion pounds of fish a

year, and we wonder where the fish have gone?

We have the so called moratorium, and the only people who are

not allowed to fish are the Newfoundlanders. It is like having a box of matches

in the front of a kitchen table and you have four children and the mother wants

to go out and hang out the clothes, so she takes away one child and leaves the

box of matches and the three children because that day she does not want the

house to burn down. The same thing is taking place in Newfoundland today and we

all agree with it. The only people who are not fishing today and destroying the

stocks are the Newfoundlanders. The foreign fleets are out there, the Canadian

fleets are still dragging other species of fish; the Nova Scotians are still

fishing out there and the seals are still there and we are still studying to see

if the seals eat fish. Can you imagine for a second, just take a quick thought,

how many jobs would be created if the seals were not devastating the stocks the

way they are - 3 billion pounds a year.

Now we know it is not all cod and that is where we get

confused. Every time we talk fish in Newfoundland, people think it is cod.

Shrimp is a very valuable fish stock; flounder, turbot, caplin, squid, herring;

the last time I saw any squid in Conception Bay was 1980. There has not been

enough squid in Conception Bay since 1980 to bait a trawl and that is because of

two factors. Number one, the seal population, number two, the foreign fleets.

Last year Canada gave Japan alone a quota of 132 million pounds of squid to be

caught on the Georgian Banks and what the Japanese did not catch, the seals ate

and we do not have any squid in Newfoundland. It used to be a way of life in the

Fall, for the fishermen and their wives and their sons and daughters to earn

money, for the sons and daughters to go to school, to go to university or

whatever, catching squid in the fall of the year. It was a way of life for

hundreds of years. It exists no more in the Province.

We are afraid to face up to why and what the real cause of

the problem is. We are afraid to deal with it because we're afraid of the

activist groups in Ontario or in some other part of the world, because they

might get upset and they might put on a hate campaign, or they might put on a

publicity campaign that will hurt the fish stocks. Hurt what fish stocks?

We have nine fish plants in the district of Port de Grave.

Today there is not one fish plant open. That represents at least 1,500 to 1,700

people. The spin-off factor would be another 3,000 people. In other words, what

I'm saying is if we used our brains and we realised about the affect it was

having on the stock then we'd have done something about this five or ten years

ago. I could have an extra 3,000 to 4,000 people working in my district.

Multiply that times all the coastal communities around Newfoundland and

Labrador. We would not have an unemployment rate.

Nevertheless we allowed it to happen over the years. We're

all at fault. Not only Newfoundlanders, but all people in the world caused this

problem. The belief in what was happening. The falsehoods spread by the animal

rights groups. Now the issue comes down that the seal population has increased

to such a magnitude, Mr. Speaker, the question is: what do we do?

Some will say - and sometimes I get angry and emotional

enough to say it - let's go out and kill them. I realise that's the last resort.

There are many things we have to do. My first question would be to the federal

government. We have a possible industry swimming around our shores and we cannot

even get support from the federal government of this country to go out and to

promote and to develop a product - a very valuable meat food product - and we

could have a plant here in this island canning that meat and saving millions of

starving people in the world. Our own Marine Institute up here. How many people

realise that our own Marine Institute have developed the seal meat into an

additive food product, in white powder form? Because you have to realise that

many people in the world cannot digest seal meat the same as Newfoundlanders and

Atlantic Canadians and people from Russia.

Take the people dying over in the Third World countries, in

Somalia, for example. If they can't digest the seal meat, and we've already

developed this additive product that can be added to the food that they can

digest, just think about the millions of lives it would save. The protein

additive product. That's developed. That's not: maybe it is going to be done,

that's not: maybe it will be done ten or fifteen years down the road. The fact

is, it's done. But the political will is not there to do it.

I live in a fishing community. I enjoy the ocean. I was out

this week in Conception Bay. I was amazed at the number of seals that are in

Conception Bay this time of the year. I never saw it before in my lifetime.

Conception Bay now is full of seals. They are on the Grand Banks, no matter

where you go on the Grand Banks. I was talking to a fishing captain this week

who was out on the Grand Banks, inside the 200-mile limit and out around, he

said he never saw in his lifetime, the last year and this year, the number of

seals that are out there. Talk to the foreign captains. They haul up their nets,

and hundreds of seals are mixed up in with the fish in their nets. Never known

before. The fact is the seals are an over-populated species. We have not had a

hunt for the last eight years. If you don't have a hunt, the population is going

to increase.

Now I just gave you some numbers which I used as an example.

I'm going to quote you some numbers out of the Seals and Sealing in Canada:

Report of the Royal Commission. Done in 1986. Just listen. I'm going to read you

a short paragraph: seals consume large quantities of commercial fish in Canadian

waters and consequently cause a reduction in the catches of fishermen. On the

Atlantic coast roughly - just listen - roughly 5 million tons of a wide variety

of fish are consumed.

Five million tons. That's a year. That was done in 1986 with

the seal population then. Can you imagine how many million tons, with the

increased population, the seals eat six years later - six years later? Nobody in

this country is willing to deal with the seriousness of the problem. Everybody

is saying: Oh, Efford, you do not know what you are talking about, the seals do

not eat fish. Oh, Efford, the people are saying, you are going to create a

disturbance and the animal rights groups are going to come on with a big

publicity campaign. Go back in your shell and lie down. No, Mr. Speaker, I will

not. I will not crawl under a rock, I will not do anything other than stand up

for what I believe in. And the fact is, they can come out with all the

scientific research they like, the fact is, Mr. Speaker, that we have a very

serious problem.

I spoke yesterday to a Captain from Marystown who left

yesterday afternoon and went out to the Grand Banks and prior to going out we

had a conversation on the phone about a letter I had received, Mr. Speaker,

about a letter I had received from a concerned person about the seals and the

affect they were having on the stocks and listen to this: Dear Mr. Efford, I

would like to help you in your efforts to show the affect that seals are having

on cod fish, not only northern cod but the Grand Banks cod as well. Now I

understand what he was saying, he said: Last winter while we were fishing on the

Grand Bank's we filmed seals chasing the nets, as the nets came out of the

water. And that is a common occurrence on the Grand Bank's but at the end of it

was the thing that really surprised me, he did not sign his name. I do not know

who he is. He wrote me a letter and he did not sign his name and this is what I

am talking about, people are afraid.

AN HON. MEMBER: Of what?

MR. EFFORD: This gentleman is afraid, he is an employee

of a fishing company and he is afraid of losing his job. Politicians are afraid

of losing votes if they get the animal rights activists groups up against them.

Somebody else is afraid of losing, we are all afraid and that tells exactly what

is happening here, Mr. Speaker, that is telling us exactly. I talked to the head

of FPI just two days ago. I asked him for the film that he has in his office on

seals actually eating fish. He said no, John, I cannot give it to you. As much

as I would like to give it to you, I cannot give it to you. He said everything

you are saying is right but last year I made one comment in the public press

about seals eating fish and two weeks later he told me he had in excess of

80,000 letters from across the world in his office. Devastating effect, 80,000

letters, that is what he said, that is what he told me. My question to him was:

Sir, I understand you are afraid that you will not sell your fish

products?.....if the seal population continues to devastate the stocks the way

they are you will not have any fish products left to sell. He said: you are

absolutely right, but I have to answer to my shareholders.

This is the problem that we are facing. This is exactly what

is happening. We all admit that there are too many seals out there and yet

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who want to go out and kill a seal to eat, are

not allowed. You are not able to get a licence to hunt a seal just to eat unless

you held a seal licence for the last number of years. I have one, I always had

one and I always will have one, and let me say this on record in the House of

Assembly, licence or no licence, I would shoot them. I believe in this strong

enough, I would shoot them. I do not think it is right for a Newfoundlander and

Labradorian not to be able to kill a seal. There is something wrong, when they

are destroying our very existence, and you want to go out and hunt a seal to

eat, that you are not allowed to.

I had a letter from a person today who asked me to help them

get a seal licence, I cannot help them, it is a federal law. We do not make the

decisions here in the Province, the great people up in Ottawa, the bureaucrats

decide that. You live in the community of Port de Grave or Summerford or

Twillingate or some other small coastal community around Newfoundland where your

father, your grandfather and your great-grandfather was allowed to go out and

hunt a seal in the Fall of the year or in the Winter, because you wanted a nice

flipper dinner, now it is not allowed.

So there are many, many problems, Mr. Speaker, with what is

facing us but the thing is - now I want to speak to you today in my first twenty

minutes, Mr. Speaker, to get the point across that we must first admit there is

a real problem out there. One, we understand the seriousness of the problem the

effect that the seal population is having on the fish stocks in our coastal

communities, the fact that it will not allow the fish stocks to return as a

renewable commercial resource, that is one of the major factors. When we admit

that problem then hopefully we will just not be paying lip service to it, it

will not be falling on deaf ears like it has for seven or eight years, then we

will all take up the fight. When we all believe it is a major problem, when we

all believe it is having a major affect on our fish stocks, then we will all get

our energies together and we will strengthen the fight and do something about it

in a proper, humane way. Not barbaric like the animal rights groups portray.

Newfoundlanders were never like that. That was a total lie, that picture the

other day, that was wrong.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. EFFORD: That is right. They are the people who were

in the pictures. That was not a Newfoundlander in that picture. That person

never, ever existed. Imagine a Newfoundlander going out back in the 1500 or

1600s with a baseball bat.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

Extern.

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, I suppose it is not a very

pleasurable moment for me either. Being a Newfoundlander at heart and knowing

what went on out there years ago and knowing the lies that were spread in the

past eight or nine years, the only way you can describe it is despicable, so I

rise today in support of the hon. Member for Port de Grave. The hon. Member for

Port de Grave brought this resolution to the floor of this hon. House and

rightly so. He comes from an area that I know quite well. In fact I knew a great

number of people down there. They were good fishermen who years ago came out to

Flat Rock, Pouch Cove, Torbay, and those places with the first long-liner that I

had ever seen. I am talking specifically about the Pettens. They were from Hibbs

Hole and at one time Uncle Abe built me a boat, a thirty foot trap skiff and it

was a credit to him. Those were good fishermen and they plied their trade well.

If the fish were not in Port de Grave they were not about to sit idly by home

and let that be a part of their life. They went farther afield in search of the

resource that was rightly theirs.

In many instances, too, Mr. Speaker, we talk about the

fishery and what is going to happen to the fishery. People come every day and

ask me what is the new fishery going to be? What are they talking about, a whole

new fishery? Mr. Speaker, I would be less than truthful if I did not say: I do

not know. I do not know really if the stocks can rejuvenate enough in the next

couple of years to have any type of a fishery. I do not know. But I have to say

to the hon. Member for Port de Grave that we, too, where I came from were deeply

involved in the seal fishery. My father supplied a lot of the bats, the stabber

poles and flag poles that went aboard the Bowring ships, even to the baskets

that some of the hon. members here would not know anything about. They used

baskets on those ships years ago to move the rocks from the hold. The ships were

all loaded with rocks going out and when they killed the seals the rocks came

out and the fat went back in the holds. They used those baskets. The reeds that

you see on the sides of the river were taken and woven into baskets. People made

a buck out of it even then so there are parts of that resource that today seem

hidden.

If the seal hunt went on the same as it was years ago there

would be many people employed, even in supplying the boats, if we had to retain

the old seal fishery. Mr. Speaker, you might say, what do you know about it?

Well, I spent three Springs to the ice as an ordinary sealer. I will not turn

around, I will face up to reality and say I killed thousands. For the Brigitte

Bardots and the Hot Lips Houlihans, those who are supplying the money to Green

Peace and those other activists, it makes me sick. I am going to explain to the

hon. House what a farce this is.

I went to the ice, and there is no way to kill a seal unless

it is out. Can you take a knife that can take the hair from your arm or your

hand, and have that knife in your hand, and that seal going mad on the ice? You

would not be left with a finger. We used the gaffs, and I will tell you what the

gaffs were made of. They either had to be dogwood or spruce. The gaffs were

about six feet in length, with a gaff on the end. Everyone that ever saw any

fishermen or any fishermen's boats have seen this gaff. It has a spear on the

end, and the spear helped the sealers get over the ice. The round part of the

spear used to help them travelling on the ice. Lots of time you had to haul pans

toward you, or haul a seal out of the water or whatever. Those little seals was

hit with that gaff. There was no way there was life in the seal. There might be

life in the muscles of the body, but the seal itself was dead, and there is no

other way you could skin the seal. You were not skinning one seal a day. You

were doing, perhaps if you were good at it - and I suppose I was not bad - you

could skin 125 a day. These were the amounts that we would do per day.

So as far as the inhumane -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Well perhaps the Minister of ITT would not

know what I am talking about, and he should know, as the Minister of ITT. He

should be responsive to whatever I am saying.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: I want to say to the hon. House, I do not

want to be strayed away, because it is very important to me - very, very

important to me - and very important to a great number of Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians.

Mr. Speaker that hunt, at that particular time, was in no way

inhumane. Now I know that no matter how much I talk up here today, we are never

going to see a whitecoat hunt again. I do not think we will - not in the

foreseeable future. Not that there should not be, but we will not be allowed;

and I have to agree with the hon. Member for Port de Grave saying that it is not

because of the seal hunt; it is because of politics. The hunt was never

inhumane. It was just the same as working at anything else.

I remember being down off Battle Harbour and we went into

seals, hundreds of thousands of them. Yes, we killed the whitecoats; and someone

asked me one day if I ever saw anything in the stomach of the whitecoat. No,

because all the whitecoat ate or drank was milk from the mother seal, and lived

then on the land.

What people do not understand is that when the whitecoats are

born they are very, very small, and we often waited - we would go up to the

seals and you would hear them all night long. A couple of people would go out

and take in a seal and weight it, and the seal perhaps would be eighteen or

twenty-two pounds or whatever. The skipper would say: No, they are too small. We

will have to wait.

We often what they called 'burnt down'. We just stayed there

and waited and the seals would grow - especially if you had a shower of rain or

wet snow - the seals would grow unbelievably over a few hours. Then it was

everyone out to try to get what seals they could; but I never did see anything

inhumane on the ice floes. I never did, and I have to be truthful.

When we think about those people making money, we just do not

seem to be able to get our message out. We do not seem to be able to explain to

the people of the world. We do not have the money, it seems. We do not have the

facilities at our hands to be able to get out and say: They are lying. They are

telling lies.

The hon. the Member for Port de Grave said it right. Can you

imagine a sealer from Newfoundland going out with those boots on? Or that suit

on that he had? And with a baseball bat? It is erroneous. It is unbelievable.

But there are people who have millions of dollars, don't know what they're going

to do with their money, will look at the little seal that cries and say: this is

where I'm going to put my money to protect that little seal. Why don't they

protect the little calf? Why don't they go down to the abattoir and protect all

the animals? Why don't they, like the hon. member said, go over some place and

protect the other animals that are being killed?

They can't do it. Because you don't have the psychological

affect the little seal has when he turns over on his back and starts to cry.

When Noah and his ark, if we believe in the past, if we believe in what they

said in the Bible, when Noah's ark left there were animals on board. Animals of

all description for the welfare of the people. Here we are in Newfoundland -

because I suppose we're so small in numbers - not being able to go out and kill

the mammals that were put there for man's use and benefit. It happens nowhere

else.

To see people unemployed now - not saying that the seal

fishery would give full employment, no. It wouldn't. But it would subsidize, it

would help the people who don't make that much money in the summers, or

whatever, to be able to go out and go to the ice and apply themselves to this

type of work. There's nothing wrong with it. Clean, good, hard work.

Newfoundlanders were prone to that type of activity.

I was speaking to a fisherman today. Again, the hon. Member

for Port de Grave brings up a good question. What do the seals eat? Seals eat

fish. What else are they going to find in the water? I know that you find weeds

and kelp and all this but I have never spoken to a fisherman - especially the

fishermen who went after the old seal - who ever found any kelp or any weeds or

anything in their stomachs. What they found was fish.

The other thing about it, is not alone do they find mid-water

fish. I spoke to a gentleman today from Bauline. He told me last Spring over in

Conception Bay that they brought ashore some seals. One seal had twenty herring

in it. The other seal that they opened had five flounder. Now flounder is a bed

of the ocean fish. Deep down. You see flounder just a few inches above the ocean

floor. So that will tell you -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Yes. That will tell you that, Mr. Speaker,

not alone do the seals eat the mid-water fish like the caplin, but they eat also

the groundfish. The fish that we have, the bottom fish. Today even for the

fishing boats to go after flounder they have to go farther and farther. That

fishery is almost a thing of the past as well. So he also told me that, he said,

there were numerous small fish in it. Tom cods. In one of the insides, when they

opened the insides. Also caplin. He said: old caplin. Old rotten caplin were

found in the intestines.

So what we're looking at is an overall way. We're looking at

it with an overall picture in mind. I'm not sure - and like I say, I didn't see

it when we were at the whitecoat hunt - but what I am saying, if all those

seasoned, old, adult seals are out there, I'm positive, I'm sure, that if there

was an investigation into what their eating habits are, certainly it would turn

up that a great number of them eat a great amount of cod. There's no doubt at

all about it.

I was also speaking to a gentleman who was out on the Virgin

Rocks. He told me last year when he used to have the right to put down a few

nets to catch tuna, they were also allowed to catch a few fish for bait. Mr.

Speaker, he said there was nothing to it to catch 150 seals at a time; it was

hard to get the nets down, there was such an abundance of seals. He said he

never saw anything like it, they were just as thick as the codfish were a number

of years ago out there. So, Mr. Speaker, what brings the seals to the Virgin

Rocks? There is only one thing for which the Virgin Rocks were known and that

was cod - fish, not turnips, not cabbage, it was fish. That is what the Virgin

Rocks were known for and that is why those seals are there at the Virgin Rocks.

It is because of what the seals prey on, and that is our fish.

Mr. Speaker, I brought in a resolution that never came before

this hon. House. I brought in a resolution pertaining to seals and the way that

I thought the industry could progress because I am not sure, Mr. Speaker, that

we can ever go back again to the old seal fishery. Because those influential

people do have the money to put up, to stop whatever they want to, that they

think is discriminative, or whatever. Those are the people who have the money,

and I am not sure if we can ever beat them, and go back to the old-time fishery.

But there is a fishery out there, a fishery of the older

seals, that we can partake in, and it is viable. Mr. Speaker, what are we

talking about? We are talking about the whitecoat; that is the only one they are

against, the only one they can apply themselves to, the only one they can

expound on, the only one they can put their money on; they are not worrying

about the old seals. So, Mr. Speaker, why can't we have a seal fishery? Why

can't we have a seal fishery?

Mr. Speaker, once the whitecoats go to the water - and I

might add, for the hon. gentlemen across the way, for people who don't know,

that when you were out there sealing for whitecoats, after the whitecoats grew,

then you didn't want to see rain, you wanted a few fine days, because as soon as

the whitecoats were wet, they went to the water, but as long as they remained

dry, then they stayed where they were and were easy prey. So after they go to

the water, you have beaters out there, you have bedlamers, you have the mature

old harp and the mature hood, and I suppose the young hood would be the same as

whitecoats, but the mature hood and, Mr. Speaker, if we don't eliminate some of

them - there are eight million out there now, and if they are eating millions of

pounds of fish and we don't do something about it, what is going to happen down

the road? Everything we have is gone. I mean, our fishery is gone. They say

there is nothing in the Gulf now, down on the Northeast Coast there is nothing.

If the seals only contribute to 20 per cent of that decline, then that is enough

for us to have a seal hunt; regulate it, Mr. Speaker. We are not taking about

the whitecoats.

The other thing I am disappointed with - and I think the hon.

the Member for Port de Grave will agree with me - I saw that advertisement in

the Globe and Mail, we all saw it, a false thing right from the start. It didn't

portray anything. There was no talk about a new seal hunt, as such. It was just

a money-maker. Well, I am surprised and disappointed that the Premier of this

Province, who gained some credence across this great country, when he was up

there speaking about unity and Meech Lake and whatever, did not spend the

$15,000 in buying a couple of pages in the Globe and Mail and just telling the

Canadian people and the American people, to send their donations to a worthy

cause.

We have all types of worthy causes out there. We have

children starving to death; we have the AIDS problem; we have the cancer

problem; we have the kidney problem, we have problems everywhere, so why

couldn't the Premier do it? I think it would have served a great purpose. I

think, having seen the Premier's signature at the bottom of those pages, people

would start realising: This is not an issue. We are not going to send our money

to those fanatics; we are not going to send our money to those liars. We are

going to put our money - alright, if we want to donate for Christmas, we will

send our money to a charitable organization that can help the people, that can

help the children of the world.

I am at a loss as to why the Premier didn't do it. But then

the Premier is the Premier and I guess, perhaps, he has his own feelings about

it. I want to say to the hon. the Member for Port de Grave and to the rest of

the House, as well, that in speaking to that fisherman from Conception Bay I was

told they spent two nights out looking for herring this week. All they found was

two-to-three-inch herring, perhaps four-inch, at the most - small herring that

were no good to anyone.

It is funny. When the same fisherman opened the seal last

spring down in Bauline he found twenty full-sized herring in the seal, but when

he went out with all the technology that they have today - and he has a good

boat; there were two of them out, in fact - and with all the technology they

have they couldn't find one herring that wouldn't get caught in the seine, that

would mash in the seine.

So, Mr. Speaker, there isn't much -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. PARSONS: Just to finish up?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: What did he say?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, I think, any Newfoundlander and

Labradorian who has a feeling for this, and a feeling for Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians in general, could go on for hours and talk about this situation. I

say to the hon. gentleman from Port de Grave, it is a good resolution. We can

blame the feds and we can do what we like. I think that perhaps all of us, in

some way, are to blame. I think we let it get out of hand in the first place. We

were subdued, we were trodden on by the elite of this world, who have money and

who can be convinced by sinister people that there is wrongdoing being

perpetrated by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. I say to the hon. House, with

all sincerity, that it is a lie. There was nothing wrong with the seal fishery

and it is too bad that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have to suffer because

they are not able to participate in it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

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

Bay.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SMALL: Mr. Speaker, I guess it is very fitting today

for me to rise and speak to this motion, being a sealer, I guess, for each and

every year from 1972 up until 1991. I guess, I gained a bit of knowledge over

those years in the sealing industry. The sealing issue has been a very emotional

one since the early 1970s, at which time a great debate went on over the harvest

of our whitecoat seals.

Delegations went all around the world. It started down in the

U.S. first, because that was one of our largest markets for beater seal fur. A

beater seal is a seal that is about eight weeks old. That resulted in the

American Government bringing in a law against the import of all seal products

into the U.S. Then it moved from there over to Great Britain and Europe. Now,

some of the things that were said about our seal hunt, I have to agree with the

animal rights group, were true. But a lot of the things that were said were very

false.

Anyway, it ended up in the demise of our seal fur markets.

They completely dried up. That continued until the early 1980s. Then, there was

a battle going on between our inshore sealers and our offshore sealers. The

allowable catch in those years, the early 1980s, was 160,000 seals. I think we

had about six offshore vessels going out, and we had a very large number of

inshore sealers going out in long-liners; but the allocation was divided up.

There was 100,000 for the offshore ships, and there was 60,000 for all the

landsman sealers, and in a very short time the landsman amount of quota was

taken.

Then a battle developed between the inshore and the offshore,

and I was one of the people who started to set up our Sealers Association. I was

President of our Baie Verte Development Association,at that time, and it took us

a year to put that conference in place; but during that year we lost our

markets, and it developed into setting up our Canadian Sealers Association to

try to save our seal hunt - to try to save what we had. We worked at that for

years and years and continued to have a seal hunt. And we continue to have a

seal hunt today, but it is a small-scale seal hunt, carried on only with the

help of government funds.

We have about 60,000 sealskins now, in Ontario made into

leather, and I, personally, have gone to all parts of the world with this seal

leather. I have been in Hong Kong, I have been in Morocco, I have been in

Germany.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have been everywhere.

MR. SMALL: I have been everywhere.

We took some sealskins over to Germany to have them made into

fur, because the people over there were among those people who had the greatest

experience with the development of seal fur. We had them tanned in Germany, and

we didn't sell one sealskin in Germany. We had to bring them back to Baie Verte

again, and the sealskins are now in storage in Baie Verte, and you just can't

give them away.

We have been working with the Department of Fisheries, both

levels of government - the Federal Government and the Newfoundland Government -

and the Marine Institute, and we have done everything with seal meat that you

could possibly think about doing. Last year we thought we had a market for seal

meat over in Taiwan, and we bought a large quantity of seal meat, with

government funds, and that seal meat sits today in Hong Kong and is not allowed

to go into Taiwan, because when we went over there last year trying to develop a

market, Greenpeace was there the next day and the papers were full of: Canada is

starting up a large-scale seal hunt. And that seal meat sits today in Hong Kong,

in storage, and is not allowed to go into Taiwan. So there is the problem. The

markets are just not out there.

Now, whether there has been enough done, or enough funds have

been committed to it, or the right people were involved in it - but we have a

sealing company out in Dildo - a Norwegian company, Carino -and they were, I

guess, one of the biggest markets for seals in the world. And it has come to the

point today where they cannot even give away sealskins. With all the knowledge

they have about the markets, and where to look for seal markets, they cannot

give away the seal fur - the skins.

What I would like to say is, before we start up a large-scale

seal hunt, we must develop our markets. Now, whether there has been enough done,

that can be debated, but we must develop our markets. We must make seal meat

into something that is not called seal meat, maybe. The Marine Institute and the

University have made it into a powder, like John said, and maybe that can be

used as an additive to the diet in Africa for the starving people.

What I am saying here today is that we have a problem with

seals. I have seen them increase over the number of years that I have been

sealing, and I have been out in boat where, when you got up in the spar, as far

as the eye could see, there were seals everywhere on the ice. A number of years

ago, you didn't see seals turning up until January, but they have increased in

such large numbers that now they are arriving in October. You can go down to

White Bay in the month of November now and there are herds upon herds of them.

So, they have increased, and then they multiply, and it goes

on, and if we don't develop a market, we have a very serious problem. Something

must be done to curb the imbalance in the system. Sealing needs to be promoted.

Now, you talk about seals eating fish - during my years, I

have seen a lot of fish in seals, different kinds of fish. I remember killing a

seal one morning in April and I took 108 caplin out of one seal, besides the

ones that were partially digested. I have that on video up at the Marine

Institute. The figures that 'John' was talking may be a bit high, in my view,

but I think there are around 6 million seals now. Now, there is a period in the

year when seals do not eat any food. From March up until the end of May the

seals mostly spend their time on the ice molting. They starve themselves down

and there is not enough blubber left on the seals to keep them afloat when you

shoot them. So, there is a period when they eat very little food, but for the

rest of the year they must eat food in order to stay alive, and it is fish. I

have seen them come up in the middle of the winter in White Bay, flicking a live

turbot in their mouth.

We have been gillnetting in Labrador in the month of August

when the hood seals have been around. Now, a hood seal goes in much deeper water

than the harp seal and they feed mostly on turbot, and we have taken turbot out

of the seals in August. So, they are eating a lot of fish.

At this time of year, when our seal herds move up from the

North, there is a small fish that moves up with them called Arctic cod and, to

my knowledge, I don't think that fish ever grows any more than that. You can go

down to Wild Cove, now, where I live, and see that stuff in schools around the

wharves. Now, whether the seals feed on that all summer-long when they move up

North, I don't know, but I know, when the seals move up, that little fish comes,

too. So, I think that is one of their diets. Maybe that is enough talk about

what seals eat.

What bothers me most is what I saw in our Newfoundland

newspapers last week, two full pages leading people to believe that we were

going to kill 500,000 seals this year. There were never 500,000 seals killed

since I have been old enough to remember. There won't be 100,000 whitecoats

killed this year and there won't be 1,000 whitecoat seals killed, because it is

illegal today to kill whitecoat seals. Still, for all that, some people can use

our Newfoundland papers, that our school children read, to say that this year

there may be 500,000 baby seals taken in Newfoundland. Now, there must be some

laws in our land that can stop that kind of thing from going on. I mean, there

must be some laws. If I were to go out tomorrow and say that 'Rick Woodford'

over there, was going to kill 500,000 seals this year, 'Rick' could take me to

court the next day, because that would be wrong. So, what I am saying to the

world - it is a very emotional subject - but I think we can tell the people of

Canada and the world, the truth, just tell them the truth, that there will not

be any whitecoat seals taken this year, it is illegal. I think we can tell the

truth to the world, and don't let Newfoundlanders be portrayed as barbarians.

That's one thing we can do. But the other thing, I think both levels of

government, if they're going to do it, they have to commit a large amount of

money in order to develop our seal fishery. When you say it, you have to be

prepared to do it. We can't have a seal harvest now unless there's a large

subsidy. Because it's very costly to go out and kill seals, it's very

time-consuming, and you need a lot of money to do it. So if we're going to

develop our seal fishery first we have to develop our markets. Then we have to

be prepared to put some dollars there to harvest the seals.

So I'm going to finish up now and agree with John that we

have a very serious problem and we must tell the world that these are lies that

those people are telling. Just tell them the truth. We don't want to go on any

big campaign getting them all worked up, because we saw it in the 'seventies

when we fought it all over the world. It didn't work. We lost. We lost our

markets down in the US, we lost them over in Europe, we lost them in Britain.

Because it was an emotional thing.

We just have to tell them the truth. The truth prevails at

all times. So I'm going to say to our governments, both levels of government:

make up your mind. If we want to continue our seal hunt we have to make up our

minds to do it, and put some dollars where our mouth is. Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains

and the hon. the Opposition House Leader rose at the same time. I presume the

hon. the Opposition House Leader is going to speak?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: What's that? No, it's just that we have so

many who want to speak on this. If the member has a commitment outside the

building and if he really wanted to speak I would have given leave to him to go.

He can have five minutes of my twenty.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I

appreciate my hon. colleague for Grand Bank giving me five minutes. I hope I

will not be any more than five minutes.

MR. DUMARESQUE: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: I want to say, Mr. Speaker, and I don't want

to be interrupted by the young man from Eagle River, because this is too

important an issue to be interrupted. I want to give credit to the Member for

Port de Grave for bringing this resolution forward. I want to also say that I'm

surprised that the Minister of Fisheries, who sat in the opposition a number of

years ago, who demanded the government do something about our seal fishery, and

as soon as the minister got in government he hasn't done one thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. WARREN: The Minister of Fisheries. The present

Minister of Fisheries hasn't done one thing to address this seal problem that we

have in this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: What are you talking about?

MR. WARREN: Hasn't done one thing, Mr. Speaker. I say to

my hon. colleague for Port de Grave, it's high time - it's time in fact, we as

the elected members in this Legislature, should be much more vocal than we are.

There are only just two or three saying anything. We should be much more vocal

than we are. The Member for Exploits hasn't said one thing yet in the last four

years. He hasn't said one thing about the seal fishery.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: Exactly, Mr. Speaker. There's a minister in

the Cabinet who's not going to say anything about it. He's not going to say

anything about it.

I want to say something else. We're talking about how serious

the seal population is. Up in my district now, up in my district this past

summer, the seals were as far as a mile up in the rivers. The seals were up in

the rivers after the salmon and char. Not only is it destroying our codfishery

and other species, but now one of the lucrative fisheries on the Labrador coast

is being destroyed because the seals are so plentiful.

We can do more than just have a small cull. I think the time

has come for us to tackle this head on, tackle those advisory groups who are out

there preaching propaganda. For some reason the media gets all sucked in with

it, they get all taken in with it and at the same time all kind of money is

being spent by these groups to promote this particular undertaking by Greenpeace

and by animal rights groups. I just want to go on record, Mr. Speaker, on behalf

of the people on the Labrador Coast. They want to see this seal problem attacked

head-on I say to my hon. colleague for Port de Grave. I fully support what he is

doing today. It is unfortunate and maybe time will not allow us today to get

ministers of Cabinet to stand up and speak. I think the Minister of Fisheries

should have been here, and if not some one else from Cabinet should get up and

really put some teeth to what the member is asking for. We should join forces

because this is going to affect not only fishermen and fish plant workers but

everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador. Everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador

is going to be hurt and it has been continuing now for the last nine or ten

years.

I believe my hon. colleague can remember back probably seven

or eight years ago when there was a big picture. K-tel Products came out with a

stuffed seal for a Christmas toy. I think we can all remember that. In fact at

the same time I got a front page headline with a picture of a seal there, where

I was condemning the action taken by K-tel for having a stuffed seal for

Christmas and showing the barbaric nature of what was happening. I want to say

to my friend for Grand Bank who has some wise remarks to make, as he always

does, that we ought to get together on this issue. I just listened to my hon.

colleague for Baie Verte and my friend for St. John's East Extern who I am sure

know more about the seal fishery than all of us here combined. I say to my hon.

colleagues that the gentleman has been off sealing. He has been involved with it

since he was sixteen years old and I say we can all learn a lesson from a

gentleman with such calibre as the Member for St. John's East Extern.

I support the motion. I congratulate the member for bringing

it forward and hopefully this government will act in a wise and prudent manner.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

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

I am pleased to rise and speak as well to the resolution

brought forward by the Member for Port de Grave. Similar resolutions have been

brought to the floor of the Legislature before and I guess vigorously debated. I

just want to make reference before I start to the Member for Baie Verte - White

Bay who had a resolution as well before on the seal fishery, that was

inadvertently left off the Order Paper. The clerk is now taking care of that but

I want to recognize the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay for having put forward

a motion back in March, I guess, that was left off. I guess it was much along

the same lines as the one from the Member for Port de Grave.

There is a fair bit of concern amongst members in the

Legislature about the impact that the seal population is having on our fish

resources, I guess, which is better than saying our cod stocks. It is quite

interesting to see the kerfuffle that developed within the last two weeks by the

International Fund for Animal Welfare with the advertising campaign that they

took up. They thought there were some high profile people in the Province that

were promoting a seal hunt. They indeed singled out the Member for Port de Grave

for doing that. They put the blame on him and said that was the reason they had

undertaken the advertising campaign. I do not tend to agree with them on that.

Yes, the Member for Port de Grave has made some statements about it but other

people in the Province have made some statements about it. It is a concern for

all of us who have any concern for the Newfoundland fishing industry, who have

any concern for the people employed, or were employed in the Newfoundland

fishing industry. We are all concerned about various factors that have caused a

decline in our fish resources.

It's been very popular you know, Mr. Speaker, to blame the

foreigners. No doubt the foreigners have a lot of blame to share and to take.

But it has not all been foreigners. Our own domestic fleets, both offshore and

inshore, have caused some of the problems with our fish resources. It's so

popular in times of crisis and in times when your own people are doing bad to

attack someone from outside your Province or outside the country, and we're

talking foreigners.

So I say, I know. I come from an area where we have a mixed

fishery. We have relied on the deep-sea fishery for years. We are the part of

the Province that pioneered it. A technology that has been called into question

by many people, the impact of trawler fishing. But a lot of damage as well has

been done by some of the gear and the technology used by inshore. So we're all

part of the blame as to why we're today in 1992 so concerned about our

Province's most traditional and historic industry, the industry that has the

biggest impact upon the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador. So I think we all

have to take part of the blame as to where we are today.

Then we've got to look at solutions to remedy the problem, to

hopefully regenerate our fish stocks. There is no doubt in my mind that seals

have impacted negatively upon our fish resources. Seals, as other members have

said, and I listened very closely to all three members, particularly the Members

for St. John's East Extern and Baie Verte - White Bay, who have been active

sealers. They have been involved in the industry. Like anything else, you learn

most about it through experience, by being involved in it.

It's fine for me to have my opinions about something that I

haven't been involved in. I can read about it, I can listen to others. You learn

most from being involved in something directly yourself. That's why I listened

so closely to both gentlemen. I enjoyed what they had to say because it's

first-hand experience.

As I was saying, there's no doubt in my mind that seals are

certainly a significant contributing factor to the decline in our fish

resources. Why I use the word fish resources, is because as the Member for Port

de Grave said, there's a big debate, and there's money being spent now, looking

upon, researching about the diet of seals. What do they eat. There are those who

say they eat a lot of cod, there are those who say they don't eat very much cod.

There are those who say they eat caplin, there are those who say they eat

turbot, there are those who say they eat shrimp, and on it goes. But there's one

thing that if you look at everything that's been researched or written or said

about it is that seals eat fish of some species.

They either eat cod - whether it's a scattered bite here or

there - they eat caplin, they eat shrimp, they eat (inaudible) I believe it is.

There's a number of species of fish that seals eat which are part of the food

chain which members have alluded to. If you take pieces out of the food chain

it's like taking a link out of the chain on a bike. It comes apart, and the bike

doesn't go. You can't ride the bike without the chain. It hooks on the sprocket

and it all works. So if you take pieces out of the food chain it has to impact

somewhere negatively. I think that's really what's happening. That's one of the

things that's happening with the seal population.

They are either eating cod, which I believe - we all know

they're consuming some cod. How much is debatable. But they are consuming other

species that cod feed on, so that is like an undernourished child. It doesn't

grow and mature to the stage where it can reproduce or spawn so it's having the

same affect upon our cod stocks. So yes, I believe sincerely that seals are

eating fish resources. They are impacting very negatively upon our fishing

industry.

The big question is: what do we do about it? It's a big

debate. I think there has to be some way found to diminish, to decrease, the

seal population. There has to be some way, sensible way found, as the Member for

Baie Verte - White Bay has said. You can't go out there and wholesale slaughter

and get everything all out of whack. There are days and then there are moments

when I say to myself, when perhaps my better judgement evades me, when I say;

why don't the federal and provincial governments hire a couple of boats on the

quiet or get the armed forces, or why don't they go out and unknowingly to

anybody - hopefully unknowingly to anybody - make away with some of those seals?

But then I come back to reality, I come back to what the implications of what

would be left of our fishing industry would be if such a thing happened, if

people found out about it and it went worldwide. I think it is important that we

keep whatever is left of our fishing industry today.

There are those who are promoting shutting down the entire

Newfoundland fishery. I concur with shutting down, say, the Gulf or the

southwest coast fishery. I concur with shutting down some areas, yes. But to

eliminate the total fishery, I think - looking at what is happening in this

Province right now with the anticipated mini-Budget within a few days, can you

imagine what a crisis, financial and economic, we would be in in this Province

if our fishery was shut down in its entirety. We would have to leave. We would

have to pack up and leave this Province, because there is nobody going to bring

in enough aid packages to keep us all going. It is important that what is left

of our fishery, that is not further damaging stocks or that stocks can sustain,

that we keep it going. I guess one of the few small motors left in the

Newfoundland economy is the bit of the fishery that is left.

We have to find a way, I say, Mr. Speaker, to get back to a

state where our fishery can recover, where thousands of Newfoundlanders and

Labradorians can be employed in the harvesting of fish and in the processing of

fish. There is no question, something has to be done with the seal population.

Mr. Speaker, looking at the member for Port de Grave's

resolution where he says, "THEREFORE

BE IT RESOLVED that this House of Assembly

condemns the falsehoods" - this is very important, I think and it is something

that I raised a week or two weeks ago - "that this House of Assembly condemns

the falsehoods being spread by the animal rights extremists and supports the

resumption of an environmentally sustainable seal harvest off the coast of this

Province." Now that, to me, seems very reasonable and that is why I asked the

Minister of Fisheries last week - I think it was last week - if the Government

of Newfoundland and Labrador was going to in any way develop a campaign to

counter the falsehoods that the member for Port de Grave raises, the falsehoods

being spread by the IFAW, because that is what it was. It wasn't true, they were

falsehoods.

Now, again you have an argument. Does the Government of

Newfoundland and Labrador read these ads, know they are false and say: Well, I

really didn't see that. I know it is false, but I really didn't see it and we

are better off keeping our mouths shut, or do we undertake, initiate, an

advertising campaign to counter some of it? I thought the member for Baie Verte

- White Bay made a very good point. I think he said, both governments should

tell the truth and stick to the truth, give the facts. Give the facts is what

the member said, and I think that is important.

I was disappointed last week when the Minister of Fisheries -

and I went to the Premier afterwards - I was disappointed that they didn't even

seem to seriously consider undertaking a campaign to counter some of these

falsehoods that are being spread by the animal rights activists. Because, as I

said then, if you can't count on the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador,

the government most responsible and closest to the people of Newfoundland and

Labrador, to take action to counter falsehoods that are being spread by this

group, that are impacting so negatively upon our most important industry, and

consequently -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: What is wrong? There is a disturbance on

the other side. I have a job to recognize it, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, having said that, someone needs to counter it. I

say to the member for Port de Grave that I think the House of Assembly should

condemn the falsehoods. We, as elected members of the people of Newfoundland and

Labrador, should certainly condemn it. As well, I can support, without any

reservation, the resumption of an environmentally sustainable seal harvest.

MR. ROBERTS: That is the key word, sustainable.

MR. MATTHEWS: Certainly it is the key word, and that is

why it is worded the way it is. I have no doubt why the member worded his

resolution the way he did, "Environmentally sustainable seal harvest off the

coast." Going back to what the member for Baie Verte - White Bay said: He said

that he had some problems with some of the things that happened in the past that

were relayed to the world that he himself had concerns about. Here is a man who

was involved in it himself. So I respect that, moreso than I would for most

members, I respect what he had to say.

AN HON. MEMBER: He gave a great speech.

MR. MATTHEWS: He did. It was an excellent speech.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Well I was here listening to him and

watching him. He made a good speech.

Having said that, those are the concerns that I have about

it. I commend the Member for Port de Grave for bringing it forward. I commend

the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay for having put a similar motion forward

before. We are delighted to have the chance to debate it.

You see, what happens to most Private Members' Resolutions is

that they come here and they are debated, and the people who take

part in them,

for the most part, are very sincere about it. They are concerned about it. The

Member for Port de Grave is concerned about it. The Member for St. John's East

Extern; the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay; I am concerned about it. There

are others who are concerned about it who maybe will not get a chance to speak,

but once we finish today, that is where it stops. That is where it stops, and

all I am saying is that I hope - because the Member for Port de Grave calls upon

the House of Assembly - all fifty-two members of us here - to condemn the

falsehoods that are being spread.

I want to join with him in calling upon the House of Assembly

to do that. I think we should. Someone should send out a message after this, by

the way, from this House of Assembly - we should not let it stop here - and say

that we do not agree with the advertising undertaken by the IFAW. It does not

seem like anyone else is going to take up the cause. So as a House who really

controls its own destiny and that, I think really we should send out a message

from this Legislature that we do not take too kindly to that kind of falsehoods

being spread about Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and about the way we behave

and so on. I think we should take it up. I commend the member for bringing it

forward, and I tell him that I strongly, strongly, strongly support his

resolution.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. CARTER: Mr. Speaker, I rise as well to support the

resolution so ably presented by my colleague from Port de Grave. I think it is a

very timely resolution, especially in light of some of the activities we have

seen in recent days from the animal rights people - advertising campaigns that

in most cases, as the Premier has pointed out, are fraudulent, and obviously

geared with a view to raising money for their own use rather than protecting the

seal population.

Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt whatever about it, in the

minds of most reasonable people, that the exploding seal population is having a

very detrimental effect on the cod stocks and other species in our waters.

The harp seal diet, we are told, consists of twenty-seven

species of fish. Caplin is the main food source, accounting for about 35 per

cent of their intake. Based on the current population statistics it is estimated

that the seal herds consume 1.9 million tons, or 3.8 billion pounds, of

harvestable seafood a year. I repeat, Mr. Speaker, based on the best statistics

available, and this has been supported by certain scientific research, for

example done in Iceland, where in my view at least, their research capabilities

far exceed those of Canada, and they have estimated that the five seal species

around the world, in the North, Northwest, Atlantic, consume approximately 1.9

million tons of harvestable fish per year. Mr. Speaker, we all know, as a

Province, what we could do with that kind of volume.

It is known, Mr. Speaker, as well that the harp seals

normally spend four to five months a year in the NAFO areas, 2J+3KL and 3 No of

course which are waters adjacent to the Labrador Coast and to the coast of

Newfoundland. They spend three or four months of the year congregating in that

area, and given the estimates of reduced caplin stocks in the 2J+3K area, it is

apparent that the seal herd prey upon cod and other species even more

significantly now than what they did in past years.

I am amused when I hear Canadian scientists report their

findings on studies they have undertaken into the diet of seals when they say -

in fact I was in Fredericton, New Brunswick, last week to a ministers' meeting

and it came to light there that they cannot seem to find very much cod in the

stomachs of seals. Well of course the reason is obvious. We cannot find cod

either. Our fish plants are closing because there is no cod, so the fact that

there is not to much cod maybe in their stomach's speaks for itself, the cod

just are not there even for the seal's to catch.

It is becoming obvious too, Mr. Speaker, that the seals

presence in our waters are now taking on longer periods and it is increasing

rapidly. Mr. Speaker, in order to gradually accelerate the growth of the annual

seal hunt efforts are being undertaken through product development, market

research initiatives by our department and by the University, by the Marine

Institute and the federal government, this will eventually result in necessary

expansion of the hunt - efforts to satisfy market demands. A lot of effort is

being put into finding, seeking out new ways of better utilizing the animal and

to that I might add, Mr. Speaker, that it is the belief of our department and

people who are engaged in the seal industry that Canada must find a market for

the entire animal. Then and only then will we be able to properly prosecute the

fishery without interference from the animal rights and other such

organizations.

Our work, Mr. Speaker, in recent years and months have

included efforts in marketing seal meat in Taiwan, Japan and mainland China and

other Asian centres. Ongoing research into seal meat oil and blubber

constituents continues as well as efforts toward the preparation of animal feed

products from lower grade materials and by-products. The scientific research

which has been accomplished has been extremely positive and technical efforts

are being used as promotional aides in marketing initiatives in the Far East.

Ongoing efforts for example, Mr. Speaker, in leather research

and marketing coordinated through Northern Research Development Corporation,

especially in the Asian marketplace appears to have great potential. I know for

a fact that a number of companies with strong Newfoundland connections are now

in the process of identifying markets for example in Japan for seals where they

have undertaken certain market studies and there appears to be at least signs of

a good market development for seal oil which, from what I am told, contains

certain very valuable medicinal properties, I think it is called 3M or Omega

oil. Which is supposed to be a good preventive for cholesterol and other such

heart problems.

I am told as well, Mr. Speaker, that the University through

the efforts of the research department there, have identified areas where maybe

meat products can be developed that would more than likely find their way into

the third world countries and other Asian countries. So, Mr. Speaker, it is

quite obvious that given a chance the seal industry in Newfoundland can, I

believe, become a very lucrative industry. It is going to take a lot of hard

work, a lot of cooperation on the part of all sectors of the industry and both

governments but I believe once we do that then we will be on our way to

realizing the true potential of the seal.

Let me for a moment, Mr. Speaker, outline some of the

initiatives taken by my departments over the past year or two. Since 1988 for

example approximately $4.2 million have been spent by the government to promote

the sealing industry. Seventeen products were initiated during 1992, a total

commitment from the Province in that regard was $910,000 almost $1 million and I

think the federal government contributed a like amount so altogether last year -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. CARTER: Pardon? Last year as you may recall, even

though there is a TAC of 186,000 seals, last year the landsmen hunt in northern

Newfoundland accounted for a harvest amounting to roughly 60,000 seals.

Unfortunately, we have not had as much success with the leather as we had hoped

but again that is no fault of ours and no fault of the sealers but it appears

that the market for seal leather right now is not very good, consequently a lot

of the pelts that resulted from the harvest last year are still in storage

waiting for a market, but hopefully, Mr. Speaker, before too long a market will

be found. It might be of interest, Mr. Speaker, to point out by the way, that

the chairs on which we sit in this House, the leather is that of seal skin, and

I do not think anybody can doubt or ques