April 11, 1991                    HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS           Vol. XLI  No. 27


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Statements by Ministers

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands.

MR. KELLAND: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am happy to announce the introduction of new regulations for control of off-road vehicles and control of firearms within our Provincial Park boundaries.

The growing popularity of the use of off-road vehicles, including all-terrain vehicles, trail bikes, four wheel drive vehicles, snowmobiles and amphibious machines, has resulted in problems with park environment damages, wildlife habitat disruptions and park user safety. In keeping with the preservation and protection role of the Provincial Parks Division, future use of these type vehicles will now be strictly controlled.

Public use of off-road vehicles may be permitted for specific purposes, for example, wood hauling across park land, based on traditional local use activities and resource management considerations. In addition, limited off-road vehicles use may be permitted in some parks. For example, snowmobiles may be permitted on roads in certain parks which do not have designated cross- country ski trails.

Control of firearms within Provincial Parks has been strengthened by amendment of existing regulations restricting possession and transportation within park boundaries.

In addition to previous regulations on transportation, the amendment provides regulations regarding possession of firearms within parks.

These new regulations are intended to assist park officials in enforcing their mandate of preserving and protecting our Provincial Park lands.

Mr. Speaker, I have the actual regulations attached as an appendix. I will not read these but will table them.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

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

On behalf of all my colleagues we welcome this particular statement by the Minister, in particular as it pertains to our Provincial Parks and the use of all-terrain vehicles. However, I should remind the Minister that he is also Minister of Environment and Lands, which includes the whole Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, not just the Provincial Parks, and we have to look at the abusive use of all-terrain vehicles in parts of the Province other that the Provincial Parks.

I also welcome the news about the use of firearms, or the possession of firearms within the parks. I believe the Minister is on the right track and what the Minister is doing as it pertains to the parks is right. I compliment the Minister on taking this bold initiative. But I would say to the Minister again, look after the forty-seven or forty-eight parks in the Province, but there is also a lot of land out there which is not controlled like our parks and we need to look after the environment there as well. Thank you.

Oral Questions

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

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Speaker, I had a question for the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations. She is not present today, so I will direct my question to the Premier.

On last evening's NTV newscast the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations said with respect to our 22.3 per cent unemployment rate and I want to quote her, `As the Premier said, it is not an easy job and he says it could be five to ten years before we see any results'. Now I want to ask him is the Premier, is the Minister, is the Government really seriously and with a straight face telling the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that the unemployment rate of 22.3 per cent, up a full 5 percentage points since his Government took office two years ago, is going to be the unemployment rate for five to ten years, and that this is the prediction of his Government? Is this what the Premier is telling the 52,000 people who are unemployed in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, that they can wait from five to ten years for any change?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, not at all, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member is totally misrepresenting the position. The comment with respect to five to ten years was a response to a question as to how long it would take for the ERC to achieve its directive and that was from five to ten years - my estimate.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: That is all I am saying. That is what the five to ten years related to.

With respect to the unemployment rate, I ask hon. Members to look at the number employed this year compared with the number employed last year. Look at the numbers. There are more people employed now than there were when the hon. Members last sat on the Government side of the House.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: That is so. Mr. Speaker, the figures are very clear. I have them here and I can table them for the House. The figures are very clear, Mr. Speaker. The number of people in the work force has greatly increased for a variety of reasons; the number of people in the work force has greatly increased and the number of people employed is 1,000 less this year than it was last year despite, Mr. Speaker, the impact of the reduction in the fisheries and the impact of a Federal Government instituting a policy caused national economic recession. Despite that we are performing better than most other provinces in Canada.

MR. SIMMS: You are going to table that, are you not?

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

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Speaker, let me say to the Premier that if this is not the position of his Government, let this year's employment programmes reflect his concerns, which they do not. Now let me ask him again what does the Premier and his Government and the Department of Employment and Labour Relations intend to do for the 52,000 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who are unemployed today? The only employment programme the Department of Employment and Labour Relations had he has cut this year by $700,000. Now does the Premier have no compassion for the 52,000 people? An unemployment rate of 22.3 and he cuts the only employment programme the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations has by $700,000. Does he have any compassion for the 52,000 people who are unemployed, or does he intend to direct these people to the city index, to the food banks, or to welfare, as the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations said last year?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we are in a very, very difficult position this year. We are suffering the affects of a nationally caused economic recession throughout the nation. The increase in Newfoundland in the unemployment rate was a 3.5 percentage point increase from this time last year. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable, but in asking the people of this Province to understand, I ask them also to understand the increase in wealthy Ontario was 4.6 percentage points, a full 1.1 percentage points higher than this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we can go a long way towards solving the problems caused by the former Government when they were here, and we are doing that, but we cannot at the same time solve all the problems caused by the national government piled on top of it at the same time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Speaker, let me correct something the Premier said a couple of minutes ago, and this is from the labour force flash sheet itself. In 1990 we had 186,000 people in the labour force in this Province, in 1991 we have 183,000 people in the labour force in this Province, so how can the Premier explain that? Now, isn't the real message that the Premier is sending to the 52,000 unemployed people in the Province is that you can join the hundreds of other families who have left this Province in droves? You can join them because you have lost all confidence in this Government and this Premier's economic policies to solve the unemployment problem. Isn't that the message that the Premier is sending? Either get out or put up with the consequences because I really did not mean it when I said pack your bags and come home.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the number in the work force is not 183,000 this month, it is 235,000, and in the same month last year is was 226,000 which is up 9,000. The number employed this past month was 183,000 and in the same month last year is was 186,000. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is a significant decrease in the number employed. We understand that, and we are doing our best to cope with it. I am happy to say, Mr. Speaker, that Newfoundland is coping with it far better than any other Province of Canada is coping with it, far better than the national average, Mr. Speaker, we are performing much better than the national average.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) New Brunswick.

PREMIER WELLS: He is quite right, New Brunswick is performing fairly well at the moment in the unemployment area. Mr. Speaker, we have had a tremendous growth, some 9,000 more in the work force than there was in the work force this time last year. That is what has caused the major increase, not as much the loss of jobs as as much the increase.

Now, let's go back again to this proposition. Mr. Speaker, I had to deal with the final point the hon. Member raised about coming home. And the -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: And, Mr. Speaker, let me -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

PREMIER WELLS: - remind all hon. Members that the statement of policy of the Liberal Party was that we would first work to correct the economic problems in the Province in order that our people would not have to leave unless they genuinely wanted to. And then we wanted to make sure that any who had to leave under their regime would have the opportunity to come back if they did. Now to convert this into my promise, 'drop everything and come home', is utterly false, it is an absolute political fraud, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I think "Home On The Range" would be most appropriate. In the absence of the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations I would like to ask a follow up to yesterday's question to the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, that was responded to in part by the Minister of Social Services.

I would like to refer the Minister to the Occupational Health and Safety Act: Rights of workers to refuse to work, particularly Section 43 (1). Which says a worker may refuse to do any work that he or she has reasonable grounds to believe is dangerous to his or her health or safety, or the health and safety of any other person at the work place.

Section A says: until remedial action has been taken by the employer to the worker's satisfaction, and C reads: until an officer has investigated the matter and has advised him or her to return to work.

Now I want to say to the Minister that those employees stayed off work that particular day because remedial action had not been taken. In light of that, would the Minister not agree that the rights of those workers are being violated and that their day's pay should be reinstated and the letters of reprimand taken back?

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, had the employees been asked to return to their place of work where the problem was, the act would certainly have been violated. The workers were not asked to return to that place of work. The three workers in particular: two workers were supposed to attend a CNIB workshop out in the community and the other worker was supposed to take a foster child and bring it to its natural parent. That had nothing to do with the -

AN HON. MEMBER: It is not true.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, that had absolutely nothing to do with the place of work. Absolutely no employees were asked to return to the place of work.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. In light of the response given by the Minister of what the workers were asked to do, that they were not asked to return to the work place, and in view of the response he gave yesterday when he admitted they were removed from the work place because of the fumes, I said two of the employees have been reprimanded or three, then he went on to correct me, because of work outside. He said, social workers do not only have to work in the building.

Let me just say to the Minister, and I am sure he has checked into the matter, but the information that I have is that two of the three workers were not directed to work anywhere else, and, as I say, sat in their cars on the parking lot; and one employee was advised to go to her home and continue work, not by her immediate supervisor but by another co-worker. Now in light of that I would ask the Minister would he not seriously consider reinstating the day's pay and taking back the letters of reprimand, because it is obvious that those workers were quite justified in taking the action they did. In essence, I say to the Minister, they have been falsely or improperly penalized, so would the Minister seriously consider that?

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

MR. EFFORD: Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker - absolutely not. Let me explain again: two of the workers refused to go to the CNIB workshop, there were four workers to attend that workshop, two of the workers attended and two did not. It had nothing to do with the place of work. I will say very clearly, I do not know where the hon. Member is getting his information, I knew all about the problem long before I came to the House yesterday and I have since talked to the executive to make sure I was absolutely right in what I was saying. The other person was suppose to take a child from one foster parent to its natural parent and she refused, she did not do that.

The hon. Members can say what they like, I depend on the executive of my staff to advise me. I have been advised and I knew long before. Will I change my mind, Mr. Speaker, or will we change our mind? Absolutely not.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SIMMS: (Inaudible) you did not listen to your executive before, why would you start now?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Minister should further investigate this matter because there are obviously conflicting reports coming out of this. Knowing a couple of those individuals as I do, I do not think that they would take this kind of action if it was not justified. The Minister admitted there was a fumes problem yesterday.

I would like to refer the Minister to section 47 of The Occupational Health and Safety Act which says that 'No employer or union, as the case may be, shall take any discriminatory action against a worker by dismissing him or her or by deducting any wages, salaries, or other benefits or by taking any other disciplinary action against him or her.' And it goes on, in section D, it says 'because the worker has reasonably refused to work pursuant to his right to do so under section 43', which I referred to.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) under the law.

MR. MATTHEWS: Now, in essence, we have seen a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act here. Again I would ask the Minister, if he is not willing immediately to make a commitment would he seriously investigate this matter further? Because my understanding is that in light of what has happened here, there is some very serious morale problems developing at the office, interpersonal problems, and I would ask him to investigate that with a view to once again reinstating the benefits and taking back those letters.

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can assure all hon. Members opposite that the morale problem at the Marystown office is not nearly as bad as it was when I first went in there as Minister as compared to what is was like under former Ministers. I can assure you that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: Secondly, Mr. Speaker -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. EFFORD: Secondly, Mr. Speaker, I did not make the decision myself to suspend one day's pay or take that action, that was the responsibility of the regional operations Assistant Deputy Minister and his staff. Had I made the decision it would have been a lot more severe should someone refuse to go to work, I can assure you that. But that decision was made by the Assistant Deputy Minister responsible for that.

Thirdly, it had nothing to do with the office in question. The work was outside of the office. Nobody, no staff, was asked to return to that facility until it was corrected.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, the Minister admitted in the Legislature yesterday: I had referred to the first test that was done where it was six times the acceptable limit or level. The Minister when he answered said it was five times. Whether it was five or six it is still a very highly unacceptable level of toxic fumes -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. Member to get on with his supplementary, please.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, I would get on with my supplementary if I was not interrupted so rudely by the Minister of Health, who I believe must have been breathing in some of the fumes. But I say to the Minister, in light of the admission by the Minister, and a further investigation by the Minister responsible for the Act, who I am sure will have some information when she returns, that indeed those levels were too high to be humanly safe to work in that environment, will he not consider my request to him yesterday and today to clear up this matter once and for all? Because he admitted that those toxic levels were too high.

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

MR. EFFORD: I am surprised at the hon. Member for putting the same question four different ways. I mean, he is not going to change my mind. There were no fumes at CNIB, there were no fumes in the foster parents' home, and there were no fumes in the natural parents' home who wanted to see the baby. There were absolutely no fumes there whatsoever. The individuals were not asked to return to the place of work where there were fumes.

Will I change my mind? Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker, and that is final.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Premier and it concerns the special Joint Committee of Parliament on the Constitutional amending process. The Premier knows of course that the Committee was here today and that he had made a written submission to the Committee. I would ask the Premier why was he - although willing to present a written submission to the Committee, and that he was willing to meet with them in private behind closed doors - why was he not willing to go to the Committee and make a public presentation as part of the open Constitutional process which he favoured, as opposed to the Meech Lake Accord which he complained about being behind closed doors.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I did not want to meet with the Committee behind closed doors. I had made no request whatsoever to meet with the Committee in open or behind closed doors. I do not know where the hon. Member is getting his information. I suppose he has got a distorted view of it from within the Committee. I can only say to you, one of the co-chairman of the Committee telephoned me this morning to ask if they could meet with me, or if I could meet with the Committee, and I said: I cannot do it today. If you are through with your work and you want to drop by the House I would be happy to step out of the House and meet with you.

Now I can meet with them in front of all the media out there if they want. I did not ask to meet behind closed doors. That is all I suggest. If the Committee wants to meet behind closed doors, that is up to the Committee. But I certainly did not request it.

MR. HARRIS: Further to the supplementary to the Premier.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is the Premier saying that he did not express that he was unwilling to meet with them publicly, that he, in fact, would meet with them in a private meeting in his office or wherever, but he was not prepared to attend at the committee? That is the question. Was he prepared to meet with them in public? Did he tell them that he was not prepared to attend at the committee this morning or at any time today?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, Mr. Speaker. I prepared at the committee's request a summary of our position with respect to the changes I felt should be made in the amending formula. I prepared it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Will you table it?

PREMIER WELLS: Sure. I will table it today. I will get someone to go up and get it and I will table it. There is no difficulty at all. I prepared that submission and submitted it to the committee. I did not appear before the committee. No other Premier in the country has appeared before the committee. The last committee that was here did not want me to appear before it. Mr. Speaker, there was no need for me to appear before the committee.

As a matter of fact, there may, on reflection, be good reason for me not to have appeared before the committee, but I will leave that to others to judge. This morning, at the initiative of the committee not me - I did not want to meet behind closed doors and I do not now want to meet behind closed doors, and I did not say to the Committee that I refuse to meet with you publicly but I will meet with you behind closed doors. No I did not say that before to the Chairman of the Committee. What I said to the committee is I cannot alter my plans to go and make a formal appearance before your committee this afternoon. That was the request I had from the Chairman this morning and that, of course, leads aside the question of whether or not it is appropriate that I should do so.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With respect to the contents of the submission it appears that the Premier is changing his views with respect to the constituent assembly and now sees it as, perhaps, a last resort as opposed to a proposal that he had. Will he tell the House, instead of having his own personal views which he presents to committees and publicly, is he prepared to start a process involving the people of Newfoundland in this process, someone other than himself or his advisors?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Either the hon. Member is incredibly ill-informed or he is grossly misrepresenting. I have not changed my views with respect to the constituent assembly. My views are exactly the same on that as they were a year ago and six months ago and three months ago and three weeks ago and three days ago. There has been no change of view on that, so I do not know what the hon. Member is talking about.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have asked for a constituent assembly or a constitutional convention to allow for public involvement to keep the politicians out of it. My specific recommendation to them or as a model that they should consider would provide for the election of at least 106 members from all across Canada, six or seven of whom would be from Newfoundland. This is the kind of involvement I want, outside the Government, outside the Legislature. I also suggest appointments by Government and appointments by the Legislature to allow for open public debate. So the hon. Member is incredibly ill-informed or grossly misrepresenting reality.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. I am sure the Minister is aware that three school bus drivers from Happy Valley -Goose Bay have been fired by their employer for refusing to work because they knew the school buses had not been inspected during the December inspection. Is the Minister aware that it was only after those employees acted, as is their right under The Occupational Health Safety Act, that inspections were carried out by officials of his Department and the buses were ordered to stay off the roads until particular parts for some of those buses were ordered?

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

MR. GILBERT: Mr. Speaker, I am perfectly aware of everything that happened in the investigation of the buses in question, and I am comfortable that our Department acted the way they should have.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister for his answer. My supplementary would be to the Premier in the absence of the Minister of Labour Relations. In view of the fact that these three employees have now been proven to have acted properly, and while the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation says he is aware of everything which has developed between these three employees, the school board, the school, the students, the parents and everything else in Happy Valley - Goose Bay, would the Premier undertake to give an answer to the Legislature on whether those three employees have been fired illegally under The Occupational Health and Safety Act which is enunciated by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the representations by the hon. gentleman are completely at odds with what I understand to be the facts, but that does not surprise me; that is not being inconsistent with his representations in the past. Mr. Speaker, my understanding is that the inspections indicated there was no cause for concern. Now whether that is a breach of any act or not, I will have to refer the matter to the Government's legal advisor, the Attorney General, and ask for legal advice on the matter. I can certainly ask the Attorney General to determine whether or not the Government acted illegally, and I can assure all hon. Members of the House if the Government in any way acted illegally we will take steps to correct the consequences of that illegality.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My final supplementary is to the Premier. As the Premier is aware, in December 1990 those school buses were supposed to be inspected. The school buses were not inspected, so is that not against the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador regulations?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware they were supposed to be inspected at that specific time, although that may be the case.

MR. WARREN: I am telling you.

PREMIER WELLS: Well I do not accept that representation from the hon. Member, although he may be right. I have learned by bitter experience in the past not to accept any such representations from the hon. Member because they are probably quite incorrect. I will undertake to have the matter checked and if it turns out that there was any illegality, any action by the Government was in any manner illegal or contrary to the provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, I assure all Members of the House that I will take action to ensure that the consequences of that illegality are corrected.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have questions for the Minister of Justice. How can the Minister of Justice justify spending absolutely nothing on services for victims of crime in the two years the Liberals have formed the Government despite the fact that over the past couple of years there has been a sharp rise in the number of reports of incest, other sexual abuse and other family violent crimes, and despite the fact that many of the victims of these crimes have disclosed them to the authorities believing the system would respond sympathetically, yet the system has let them down badly and in some instances the victims have been traumatized worse by the criminal justice system than by the crime itself? Why did the Minister budget $150,000 for victim services in last year's Budget and end up spending zero?

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am always amused when the hon. Member rises in this House and suddenly discovers that victims exist after April 20, 1989. I think if she is going to be honest and frank before the House she should justify why in seventeen years of the Conservative Government, particularly the four years when she was Minister of Justice, nothing was done during that period of time to address the needs of victims.

Now frankly, Mr. Speaker, I have said from the beginning that this Government intended to address it. In fact, in the current year's estimates we have provided funds for a pilot project for victim assistance across the Island, which will take place in four centres: Eastern, St. John's, Central, Western, as well as Labrador. We expect the positions will probably start being filled in late May. I would query the hon. Member as to where she gets $150,000 in last year's Budget. That figure does not appear to me to be quite accurate. I think what she may be referring to is this year's Budget.

May I just suggest in closing, Mr. Speaker, that this Government has addressed the problem, we have looked at it, and I think in all fairness to the hon. Member it has taken us approximately one tenth the time that we have been in power to start acting on a problem that has been in existence since there started to be crime. Thank you.

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

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, I refer the Minister to Page 227 of this year's Budget estimates for the information that last year he estimated spending $150,000 on services for victims yet ended up spending zero. Now, Mr. Speaking, how can the Minister explain stringing along victims and the public of this Province for the past two years, constantly promising to do something for victims yet doing absolutely nothing, yet in the same two years spending money to add a Director of Public Relations to the Department of Justice, spending money to add another secretary to the office of the Minister, and taking an $8000 a year car allowance, all departures from the past? How can he explain those priorities?

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I find it difficult to answer the hon. Member's question. Because I do not see it as a question, I see it as some venomous out-pouring about some secret rage she has within herself and in that case I do not really sense that it is a question to be answered. She mentioned stringing along victims. Mr. Speaker, I think what is clear is that what we try to do in this Province and what we have certainly tried to do since we have had the pleasure and honour of serving the people of the Province, is to try to identify legitimate needs and to find means within the tax structure of this Province to finance them. Frankly what we have done, Mr. Speaker, at a very difficult time in the Province's fiscal history, my colleagues and this Government have found the money to be able to do so and to start to answer a portion of the legitimate demands for victim services in this Province.

It was not easy to do, and I think reflects favourably on the Government and Cabinet that we did identify that at this particular time. I think if the hon. Member is going to be fair and frank about this, if anyone strung victims along it was the hon. Member herself who, as Minister of Justice, advocated many issues and did nothing for them during that period of time. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Humber East, thime for a quick supplementary.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would say to the Minister that the plight of victims of sexual assault and family violence crimes is not a matter for political gamesmanship.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, a final supplementary to the Minister of Justice. Has not his Government been breaking the law by failing to use the revenue from the criminal code victim fine surcharge that has accrued to the Province since August of 1989 for victims services? Would the Minister explain what he has done with that revenue instead of spending it on victims services?

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am glad the hon. Member has seen the light and finally determined in her second supplementary that this is not a proper matter for political gamesmanship. Obviously she learned something in my first two answers, and I am pleased to respond to her third question which is, perhaps, legitimate.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DICKS: As the hon. Member knows, two years ago -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DICKS: As the hon. Member knows, the victim fine surcharge was -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will remind the hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains, please to - he has been continuously interrupting and I find it difficult to concentrate on the answers, which makes it difficult for me to be able to call when the Minister has answered and, sometimes, when the Member has asked the right questions.

The hon. the Minister of Justice.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In answer to the question raised on victim fine surcharge, Mr. Speaker, the question has been raised before and I will just touch on several points which are relevant to properly answer the question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Speak up.

MR. DICKS: Perhaps if the hon. Members listened they would not have trouble in hearing, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What I said, Mr. Speaker, and the hon. Members were obviously more interested in speaking than listening, was that the victim fine surcharge was introduced in July, approximately a year ago. -

MS. VERGE: July of `89 (inaudible).

MR. DICKS: July 1, 1989. Mr. Speaker, it has not yet been two full years. In any event, the revenue from that programme was not sufficient to generate and provide a victim services programme.

In the initial months of that programme the revenues were $800, subsequently in the first year we realized approximately $18,000. Since then and because of our discussions with the Chief Judge of Provincial Court and others those revenues have increased. But even in the current fiscal year it is not estimated that we will achieve much more than $80,000, which is still significantly short of the approximately $200,000 we will need to run this programme.

What the Government has done, and I think the Government is to be commended for it, is rather than rely solely on the victim fine surcharge programme to finance a victim services programme, we have put in sufficient funds from provincial general revenues to make sure that we are able to get a programme off and running this year.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has expired by a little more excessively than normally, and the Minister was into a long answer and I am afraid I have stop him here.

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, before you proceed to the next matter on the Order Paper I was asked if I would table the submission to the Special Joint Committee. I am pleased to do so,and I have arranged for a copy to be prepared for all hon. Members so that they can have their very own copy of the report.

MR. SPEAKER: Before proceeding to the next item of business, on behalf of hon. Members I would like to welcome to the gallery today Mr. Barry Chubbs, the Mayor of L'Anse-au-Clair and Vice-President of the Combined Councils of Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Notices of Motion

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands.

MR. KELLAND: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, "An Act To Revise And Consolidate The Law Respecting Crown Lands, Public Lands, And Other Lands of the Province". Bill No. 22, Mr. Speaker, by any other name the same bill.

Answers to Questions

For which Notice has been Given

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Lands.

MR. KELLAND: Some days ago, Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Opposition House Leader asked a question with respect to whether or not I knew of any delays in the environmental assessment process affecting the Greenwood Hydro Electric Development in Grand Falls. I have a brief answer I would like to read into the record.

To our knowledge the project has not been delayed by environmental requirements. An assessment of the environmental impacts of this project is presently underway. The decision of whether and under what conditions to allow construction of this proposed development will be made at the conclusion of the environmental assessment. The decision to require an environmental assessment under The Provincial Environmental Assessment Act was made in August of 1990. In October 1990, under the Federal EARP guidelines, a panel review was ordered. Arrangements are presently being made to co-ordinate the Federal/Provincial Environment Assessment processes to reduce overall time, efforts and cost to the proponent, public and governments.

In the meantime, the guidelines for the terms of reference, for the impact statement are under review and the assessment is proceeding. It is expected that the entire assessment process, from April 1991, will take approximately eighteen months. Thank you.

Petitions

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

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition that I have been asked to present by approximately -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, Mr. Speaker. I have a petition I have been asked to present with approximately 1,000 signatures from the Placentia area. The prayer of the petition, Mr. Speaker, which I understand I should read is, `To the Hon. House of Assembly of The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The petition of the undersigned, the friends of MUN Extension, states that whereas MUN Extension has provided and continues to provide an essential service to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; and whereas no other agency is capable of providing that service, MUN Extension should be reinstated. Your petitioners respectfully request that the hon. House take such action as may be necessary to ensure that Memorial University reinstates its Extension Service and that it be funded and equipped to provide the services it has traditionally provided.'

There are approximately 1,000 names on that petition I have been asked to present, from a group of people from the Placentia area. I understand my colleague for Placentia is not present. I do not know what the situation is, but I have been asked by the people to present the petition and I intend to do it. I can say, Mr. Speaker, I fully support the petition of the approximately 1,000 signatories who are asking to have MUN Extension reinstated. Why this Government has taken such cruel and callous action, why this Government has such a vengeance to settle some sort of a debt with rural Newfoundland is beyond most of us. Why do the people of rural Newfoundland have to be attacked day in and day out by a Government which could not care less about the rural portion of this Province? When I look across the House I see Members over there who represent rural parts of this Province and one can only wonder what their position is and why they sit and support a Government that is prepared to attack one of the most vital parts of any Province, one of the most vital parts of any country, and that is the rural way of life.

I am familiar, and have been familiar for many years with the MUN Extension Service. They have done a lot of work in my district organizing and assisting people in the isolated communities of South East Bight and Petit Forte. They have done tremendous work in the Placentia area in terms of a cable television programme that most people in - by the way, probably that is one of the reasons why Government wants to oust the MUN Extension Service, because the service they are providing is letting the people of the Placentia area see the vicious attack this Government is showing and heaping upon the people of Placentia with the closure of the hospital, and then trying to string the people along for two weeks with some sort of a vague promise that we are going to do something, and the Minister of Health again ends up doing what he does best, nothing.

That is the situation, and that is one of the reasons MUN Extension has been downgraded. Two of the main culprits in the downgrading of MUN Extension happen to be the Ministers of Education and Finance. both of whom are very familiar with Memorial University. They come into this House to become part of the Government, appointed to Cabinet, and what happens to MUN Extension? The two Ministers from MUN, what have they done? They have viciously attacked that institution since coming into this House. There has been nothing by the Ministers of Education and Finance but a vicious attack on Memorial University.

And I do not know why they are attacking the institution like that. I do not know if they were overworked when they were over there. I do not know if that is the problem or not. I can tell you neither one of them appears to be overworked here, and there will be nothing left to do by the time they are finished slashing programmes. And it is time for Members in the backbenches over there to stand up and speak for their constituents, but not one over there has the courage.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes we saw your courage, too, when you had to vote on the Economic Recovery Commission.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: We saw your courage. We saw your courage! Yes, we saw your courage.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

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

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, in cluing up let me say that I beg the Member to stand up and support this petition.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I trust the Minister of Education will rise when I finish. I am glad to support this petition of more than 1,000 residents of the Placentia area calling on the Government to do what they can to have Memorial University reinstate Memorial University Extension Service.

This petition was taken up by friends of MUN Extension over the past few days. They first approached their own Member, the MHA for Placentia, requesting him to present it on their behalf in this Assembly. Now after several days of phoning his office and waiting for an answer from him, the Member finally told them no. Then the Member left for the south.

It is very disturbing that the Wells' Cabinet has acquiesced in the University's extinguishing Memorial University Extension Service. I say `acquiesced'. Perhaps their involvement was more active. But to see a Government backbencher, a Liberal Member who is a private Member, who is not in the Cabinet, who is not bound by the rules of Cabinet solidarity, toe the line when it goes against the express requests and the direct interests of the people he is here to serve. Mr. Speaker, talk about a bunch of sheep.

The Member for Green Bay keeps reminding us that this is the Chinese year of the sheep. What is happening in this Province now is very scary. What we are seeing is intimidation of a scale unprecedented since the dark days of the Smallwood era, since the 1960s. At least from the mid-60s on there was a healthy movement to challenge the dictatorial style of Smallwood. In this Province now at the start of the Wells era, which I trust will be terminated at the next election, we see wholesale intimidation. People are afraid, they are scared of losing their jobs. Those who have lost their jobs are scared to speak out against authorities for fear that they may jeopardize whatever slim chance there is of getting rehired or brought back on a casual basis. People still working are scared to challenge the government for fear that reprisals will be directed against them and they will be fired in the next round of layoffs.

Mr. Speaker, we need Memorial University Extension Service now more than at any time since the dark days of the Smallwood resettlement program. An important component of Extension Service is the rural outreach, the field workers who have acted as catalysts who have assisted individuals, municipalities, local service districts, regional rural development associations and other organizations achieve their goals. In the 1960s, Memorial University Extension Service assisted rural communities successfully to resist resettlement.

Now perhaps the real reason the Wells' administration is glad to get rid of Extension Service is that they are afraid that Extension Service will thwart their plan for the finalizing of the Smallwood resettlement program. Because not all of it was implemented in the 1960s; Smallwood was finally checked in 1971-72. The Wells' version is much more subtle, it is not overt. They are quietly withdrawing life supports from rural areas: they are closing hospitals, closing operating rooms, closing acute care beds, closing community college campuses, pretending to substitute in the case of community colleges adult learning centres which will be dependant on federal funding and local initiative, in the case of hospitals, after an indefinite period of renovations and alterations, chronic care centres. In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, more and more people are going to have to give up living in those areas and go to Ontario, Alberta or Kuwait, or wherever in this wide world they can find jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I understand the Premier and the Minister of Education -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, thank you.

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

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to say some of the things I feel today. I have listened to the Opposition in the last few weeks with great interest about what Memorial University is doing to close down rural Newfoundland, and I did not respond.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) you are doing.

DR. WARREN: I would ask for silence from the Member because I am very serious about these comments today.

Mr. Speaker, Memorial has been under attack in this institution by the Opposition from day one, and I did not fight back because I had some commitment to Extension. I worked with Extension years ago and I know what they did, and I knew the number of people employed. So yesterday I said, with all the devastating news I am hearing, and what I just heard from the Member for Humber East, I am going to find out how many people are working in rural Newfoundland with Extension today, because when I worked with them years ago there were dozens, hundreds of people out there. Well, Mr. Speaker, I got it this morning.

AN HON. MEMBER: How many?

DR. WARREN: Let me tell you what is happening, how many people have worked with Extension outside St. John's in the last few months: Four permanent people, one contract person, and three part-time contract people. I could not believe it. There are a total of thirty-three people, including contract part-time, twenty-five of whom are in St. John's. I just could not believe it. One field co-ordinator in Gander, permanent; one field co-ordinator in Deer Lake, permanent; one in Placentia, permanent; four full-time permanent people. In Mary's Harbour, Labrador, one field co-ordinator. He has been on long-term disability, replaced by a contract person in Red Bay - a total of seven persons. Now they have done outstanding work. I am not going to deny what they have done, Mr. Speaker, but I just could not believe the data after what I have heard from the Opposition in the past few weeks. Now I do not have time to give all the details on the persons involved, but I will eventually.

Let me tell you a few other facts, Mr. Speaker. I went and found out what Memorial is doing in rural Newfoundland. Let me just list it because of the devastation they said they have done by closing the extension office.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

DR. WARREN: The Opposition. We have Sir Wilfred Grenfell, including the Fine Arts College, we have first year programs in Salt Pond, Lewisporte, Grand Falls-Windsor, and Labrador City; we have a division of continuing studies with offices in Clarenville, in Grand Falls-Windsor serving rural Newfoundland, in Corner Brook serving the Northern Peninsula, and in Happy Valley - Goose Bay, Mr. Speaker. Memorial operates 160 teleconference systems and I have the places here.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

DR. WARREN: Teleconference systems.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are there any in Labrador?

DR. WARREN: In Labrador - Nain, all over, with courses being offered for rural Newfoundland, 160 they offer today.

Telemedicine and Tetra provide distance education for private sector agencies and public sector agencies. The Labrador Institute for Northern Studies in Happy Valley - Goose Bay, the Centre for Fisheries Innovation, Continuing Medical Education, they work with teachers in rural Newfoundland. We have interns in schools all over the Province; businesspeople, social workers in schools all over the Province. Memorial has $150,000 left this year, I found out yesterday, Mr. Speaker, for art education which they are going to spend on professional and personal development courses in St. John's in the next year.

Mr. Speaker, 39,000 or 40,000 people have graduated from Memorial University and 25 per cent of the students now attending Memorial come from St. John's - 25 to 30 per cent. If we can estimate the number of graduates, perhaps 70 per cent of the 40,000 graduates of Memorial University have come from rural Newfoundland and are back working in rural Newfoundland. When they over there talk about what Memorial is not doing for rural Newfoundland, let them go and find out who this University serves.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please

The hon. Member's time is up.

DR. WARREN: Mr. Speaker, let them find out how Memorial has served this Province. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have the honour to rise in this House and present a petition signed by approximately 11,000 Newfoundlanders. These petitioners say in their prayer as follows: `That as a voter, taxpayer and supporter of the right to a quality health care system I strongly oppose the suggested cutbacks to the health care budget which will force health care facilities to reduce services to the citizens of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I join with the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour in calling on the Provincial Government to consider quality health care as a right of all citizens and as such to be exempt from fiscal restraints that will see a reduction in services.

Now this petition is a petition from individuals from all over this Province: from St. John's, Springdale, Torbay, Northern Bay, Placentia, Hermitage, Harbour Breton, Pouch Cove - everywhere in this Province that you can think of where there are people who are concerned about health care and about what this Government is doing to health care in this Province. And I was very surprised to see the Minister of Health get up and shake the hand of the Minister of Education after that half-hearted attempt to defend the Government's position on this, trying to suggest that the University was to blame for this, whereas the Government in fact is taking the approach and cutting back on health care and cutting back on services.

Now these individuals are concerned about the quality of health care and its delivery in this Province. And these are citizens who know what it is like, because they live in the areas in which the health care delivery is required. There is a large number of people from the area of Placentia who are served by the Placentia hospital, and they are concerned that despite the fact that this Government had said it was going to reconsider, they did reconsider for a few weeks and have finally told the people they are going to go ahead and reduce those services.

It is quite clear that this Government is responding not to the plan they say they have for the health care in this Province but, in fact, to budgetary measures and to fiscal restraint. And they are going ahead and reducing those services despite the fact that the people of Newfoundland need those services, those in the areas where they are cutting back in particular, in the Placentia area, in the Baie Verte area, in Burgeo and the south coast, where people are now expected to have to travel to Stephenville to receive attention, or to Corner Brook. There are areas all over this Province where this Government is cutting back on the quality of the health care system, and the citizens of Newfoundland are joining together to answer this Government and tell them that they are opposed to this, that they want them to change it and they want them to exempt such basic services as health care from the Government's fiscal plan.

Now we know there is a difficulty with Medicare and there is a threat to Medicare because the Federal Government in Ottawa, the current Progressive Conservative Government, has a policy that was begun by the previous Liberal Government in cutting back on transfer payments for established programmes financing in health care and post-secondary education. That is a programme that must stop. What we need from this Government is leadership to take that cause not only to the people of Newfoundland but also to the people of the rest of Canada, and insist that the Federal Government do something about that issue, but on their own home front, not to cut back on health services.

Now this petition makes reference to supporting the Newfoundland Federation of Labour. There were some comments in this House in the last few days, from this side of the House, a concern that there was not a sufficient number of people in the House to please certain hon. Members, and they complained about that. In fact, one hon. Member went so far as to suggest that he might even vote for the Government's Bill 16. Well, 11,000 signatures do not just pop out of the air. Obviously there are people around this Province who are engaging in debate and talking to others about what this Government is doing and are bringing matters to this House by way of petition for the consideration of the House and for the consideration of the Government.

I ask the Government to consider the views of these 11,000 people who want their voices to be heard in this Government and ask them to change their minds, change their approach, and restore those services they have demonstrated a willingness to cut.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I thought the Minister of Health would stand and support the petition but I do not think he was even paying attention to it. We have a petition now laid before the House with 11,000 signatures.

MR. HARRIS: Eleven thousand signatures.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I stand and support that petition which was presented by my colleague for St. John's East, because the whole Province, the District that I represent, the District that every man and woman in this House represents has been affected by health care cuts. And I, unlike my colleague for St. John;s East, was not surprised when the Minister of Health shook the hand of the other slasher, the man who cut the education system, who underfunded Memorial University so they cannot do their job and then talked about Memorial University not being able to do it. There has never been such action taken before, Mr. Speaker, in this Province.

I want to ask the Minister of Health, in supporting the petition, whether or not he would show some concern, as he has shown no concern for the people who work in this Province, it is obvious to all of us that this Government has no concern for people who work in this Province. I read in The Globe and Mail where the Minister of Finance from New Brunswick said, it was unconscionable to do what was done in Newfoundland.

AN HON. MEMBER: Unconscionable.

MR. TOBIN: Unconscionable to do what was done in Newfoundland. Unconscionable: Their Liberal friends in New Brunswick and the same thing in P.E.I. They would not hear tell of what happened in Newfoundland. This Government has no concern for workers in this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: No compassion. Not an ounce.

MR. TOBIN: Now I want to ask the Minister of Health if he would show some concern for the sick and the suffering people of this Province who need health care services, and provide them with that type of service. We have not seen it since this Government came into office.

What has happened, Mr. Speaker, in Placentia, what has happened in Bonavista, what has happened on the Burin Peninsula - St. Lawrence and Grand Bank? Every hospital in this Province either has been closed or cut back, and yet the Minister of Health shakes the hand of the other slasher, the Minister of Education. No two people have attacked rural Newfoundland more than these two gentlemen, who are attacking the vital part of this Province, the two who service health and education.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shocking.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, we have never had, we have never seen and we cannot afford the ultraconservative right wing views of this Administration. And it is time for this Government to look after the health care and the other social needs of the people of this Province.

If it is unconscionable to take such action in New Brunswick, why would it not be unconscionable to take such action here? That is the question that has to be answered. What do they expect from the sick and the suffering of this Province? How many people have to die, Mr. Speaker, because of the actions of this Government, how many before they will come to their senses and put in place the right funding system?

AN HON. MEMBER: There will have to be thousands.

MR. TOBIN: How many people have to die due to lack of adequate services because this Government is closing hospital beds, because this Government is closing down hospitals? Yet there is not a whimper, Mr. Speaker, from the backbenches over there. As my colleague pointed out, there are signatures there from Harbour Breton. Not a whimper, Mr. Speaker, from the Member for Harbour Breton who obviously supports this. What about Port aux Basques? Where is the Member from there, who said: I want to support the Government. Well there were signatures on that petition as well I would suspect from Port aux Basques area, as well as the Placentia area. And it is now time for the Members opposite to take a stand to support the people who sent you to this Assembly. You were elected by your constituents to represent their best interests and supporting the closure of a hospital in Port aux Basques, supporting the closure of a hospital in Placentia, supporting the cutbacks of all the other health care facilities in this Province is not in the best interest of your constituents. It is time now to stand up, and it is time for the Member for Bell Island to take a stand as it relates to the drastic action that has been taken against his constituents, the Member for Bonavista South, the Members throughout the Province who have been sent here, Mr. Speaker, to represent the best interests of their constituents. How can the Minister of Health justify closing hospital beds? How can he justify the action that he took in Placentia?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I support the petition and I hope the Minister and his Government will change their minds.

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, I am indeed pleased to speak to this petition and tell the 11,000 people who signed this that Government will take their petition and we will read it and we will reply to the first name on the petition and hopefully he will see that it gets around to the remainder of the people in the Province who signed the petition.

I would like to refer the hon. Member for St. John's East to an article which appeared in the weekend Telegram by a former NDP Member of this House, the hon. Peter Fenwick. Mr. Fenwick has a tremendous grasp on the health care system of this Province, and it is unfortunate that the hon. Member for St. John's East is not listening to Mr. Fenwick, because he probably would be able to advise him much more maturely than he is being now advised on the health care needs of the Province.

Mr. Fenwick said that it is quite obvious that the health care system in this Province needed to be reorganized for the last ten or twelve years. When this Party was in Opposition and during the election we saw the need to reorganize the health care system. Hon. Members quite often quote from our policy manual which we used during the last election, but they always conveniently ignore to read the most important paragraph of our policy. We talked about the health policy, how important it was to maintain hospital beds for our people, and we stand by that today. But we recognized that unless the health care system was restructured and unless it was streamlined, we realized that the Province would not be able to afford it.

One of the telling paragraphs was, and I am reading directly from the policy manual: we can however provide our health care service in a less costly but more efficient manner. We believed this when we were in Opposition, we believed this during the campaign, and we believe this today, and we are standing by it.

Now because of the fiscal problems which we inherited, because of the fiscal problems which are caused by the recession, because of the fiscal problems which are caused by the freezing of the transfer payments - especially the transfer payments for health and education - it has become necessary to accelerate our plan to restructure the health care system of this Province. We started to restructure on the Burin Peninsula in Year 1. But because we were overtaken by the recession and the previous Administration had used up all our taxing room, had used up all our borrowing capacity - we accelerated what we had to do, what we intend to do in health care anyway.

Now, what we are finding in our attempt to restructure the health care system - and ultimately save the health care system and Medicare - that there are people in this very House who would try to obstruct what we are doing. In this very House! I do not want to say any names, but they are not on this side of the House. People who are trying to spread half-truths, who are trying to fearmonger, who are trying to make people believe that what we are doing is somehow unnecessary. The hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West gave evidence of what I am saying when he said: this Government closed hospitals in Newfoundland.

This Government since it has been in power has never closed a hospital, not since 1989 when we were elected. We have not closed a single hospital.. We have changed the roles of some institutions and made them more appropriate to do what they are meant to do or what they are already doing. Now, if you want to talk about closing hospitals, let me take hon. Members on a tour around this Province: let me take them out to Come By Chance, where they closed a hospital; let me take them up to Northwest River, where they closed a hospital; let me take them out to Markland where they closed a hospital; closure after closure after closure - what we are doing is restructuring.

We are having a difficult time doing it because hon. Members on the other side of the House, for eighteen years were bent and determined to totally obliterate the health care system of this Province, and they came that close to putting us in a position where we could not have saved health care and universal Medicare. That is how close they came. And we got here just in the nick of time. And it grieves me today when I see the hon. the Member for St. John's East, who is a new Member in this House, aligning himself with a bunch of dinosaurs who for eighteen years were totally irrelevant to what should be done in the health care system.

So it gives the people of this Province only one hope for the future, and that is not fair democracy. The only hope they have is to support this Party, and that, Mr. Speaker, is not good for democracy.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Orders of the Day

MR. BAKER: Order 3, Mr. Speaker.

On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.

Committee of the Whole

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

AN HON. MEMBER: Question?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Question?

MR. SIMMS: No, Mr. Chairman.

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

MR. SIMMS: We are not quite ready for the question, not by a long shot, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, back to Bill 16, back to the Committee stage of Bill 16, the clause by clause review, a stage in the Parliamentary process where clause 1 is the clause that is debated for all time and the debate is fairly wide-ranging, and Members, particularly Members on the Opposition side of the House, will have to use every possible opportunity it can to try to bring to the attention of the Government what it is doing in terms of wrecking labour relations in the Province, and what it is doing with respect to bringing in such draconian legislation as Bill 16. That is why Members on this side of the House are continuing to debate this particular piece of legislation. It is unfortunate that, admittedly, we do not make much more indentation into the Government's minds collectively over there. It is very unfortunate. Since this debate began Members opposite have failed to participate.

MR. GRIMES: That is not true.

MR. SIMMS: It is true, I say to the Member for Exploits. I have listed every person here who has debated. Since this debate began, on second reading stage, for example, there were two Members, I think, that participated on the Bill in principle. That was the President of Treasury Board and then the Member for Eagle River. And then on one of the two amendments that the Opposition proposed, one which was to delay the Bill for at least six months, and then another one asking for a delay at least until the Government had an opportunity to call in the unions and maybe see if they could find some other options. On those two amendments there were only two Members in total on the other side who spoke to the amendments. So, I say to the Member for Exploits if he considers that four from the Government side is an adequate number to be debating this particular piece of legislation, which Members opposite have in the last couple of days publicly stood up and condemned themselves, and said: it is a terrible piece of legislation, we do not want to bring it in, we hate it. Yet nobody over there gets up to try to explain why, or to try to defend it. Debate is suppose to be back and forth. The Opposition has a responsibility. I am sure the Member for Exploits would agree that we have a responsibility to stand, to question, to debate, to argue and to criticize.

AN HON. MEMBER: To present alternatives.

MR. SIMMS: To present alternatives, which we have done on many occasions. I am glad the Member for Exploits has raised that very point because that is the topic of my first fifteen minutes today. That is what I want to discuss today. I have to say at the outset though, because of the fact that Members opposite are not participating, are not debating, are not listening, are not responding to criticisms, I have to say today that I find myself in agreement this morning with some comments I heard by Fraser March, the leader of the largest public service sector union, NAPE, who was on the radio this morning making some comments about some of the comments that have been made in the Legislature in the last couple of days.

I heard what Mr. Curtis had to say, I have no problems. Mr. Curtis is entitled to express his opinion. I think he understands the frustrations we are undergoing as well, I think he understands that. But Mr. March, made, perhaps the most relevant comment today when he said, words to this effect, I do not have the quote in front of me, but I believe he said: what is going on in the Legislature is for the most part, irrelevant.

I find myself unfortunately and regrettably almost agreeing with what Mr. March had to say and that is regrettable, that is unfortunate, but, in view of the response that the Government is providing in debate on this bill, I have to suggest that he is probably quite correct.

The Government is not prepared to get up and defend its actions and explain a little more clearly and in more detail, the reasons for bringing in this legislation. Members opposite have stood in the House over the last couple of days, I am not sure if the Premier was here, but Members opposite stood and said this is a terrible piece of legislation; they have said that, but then they very quickly sat down without going into much more detail, so, regrettably, I believe Mr. March's comments are fairly accurate and representative and that is very unfortunate for the process and very unfortunate for the system.

The Member opposite talked about alternatives; now, Mr. Chairman, we have had over the last couple of weeks exchanges in the Legislature during Question Period, periodically in debate, about this whole question of alternatives and about this specific question that the President of Treasury Board has raised from time to time when he said that he, not he alone but he and the Premier I believe, invited unions in just prior to the Budget to discuss options and alternatives, and, my understanding of what the President of Treasury Board has said, and Members opposite can correct me if I am wrong, my understanding of what he had said is that they called in the unions, they asked them for alternatives, none were forthcoming, I think he has said that outright, none were forthcoming; the unions were not co-operative in that regard.

We finally narrowed it down and said, well, look, be specific, were there options discussed? Yes, and he takes the credit for the options that were put forward and the options are options to avoid having to have further job losses as I understand it, further to the 2,000 I guess the Government had already decided it was going to undertake, and the options to having further job losses were, two specific ones that I remember and recall in the House: the unpaid leave of absence for a two week period, I think, which would have provided $50 million or something in that area, that is what the President of Treasury Board has said; another option was a wage freeze.

Now those are two options that we have been able to extract from the President of Treasury Board, which were discussed at those meetings just prior to the Budget, with union representation. Now in The Evening Telegram yesterday there is reference to the President of Treasury Board and what he said in this debate, and he said, a couple of days ago, that we discussed with the unions these alternatives, these options. There was one union, you remember the comments, there was one union that said the most palatable thing for them would be more layoffs, more job losses, the President of Treasury Board said that, the Member for Bonavista South will recall. The newspaper report yesterday goes on to quote the President of Treasury Board, Mr. Baker, as saying, or at least implying that the rest of the unions indicated the most palatable alternative or option for them was a wage freeze.

Now, I do not know if the Premier or somebody can clarify for this House and for the Province, if indeed the Government House Leader is saying that. Is he saying that in those discussions with the unions that led up to the Budget, a week before, is he saying that all of the options, two of which we recall, a wage freeze and the two week unpaid leave of absence as examples of the options, out of all of those options which were discussed, one union said: the best option for us is layoffs, more job losses, he did say that. But then it is implied in his comments, and I do not have the quote in front of me, unfortunately, that the rest of the unions said: the most palatable option for them would be a wage freeze. I would like to know from the Premier, from the Member for Bonavista South, whomever may speak on this issue next, whether or not, that is a fact. It is a very important question and it is a very important issue that needs to be addressed.

I certainly would like to know, because it is not the impression I am getting from talking to people with whom I talk, so if the Member for Bonavista South, or the Premier or somebody who speaks on this, can tell us that, we would be very appreciative. It is a very important thing that we would need to know and I am not sure he heard everything I said. I would hate to have to repeat it all but I will because it is important.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is not necessary, I heard (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Okay. The President of Treasury Board is saying, or implying at least, that in the discussions the President of Treasury Board and the Premier had with the unions leading up to the Budget, that week or so before, yesterday it is reported in the newspaper, in an interview for example, and in this House he said: one of the unions said job losses or layoffs would be their option. One union, he said, said that. He said that in the House. And he implies that the rest of the unions said the most palatable option for them was a wage freeze.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Well, yes, if you read the quote in the newspaper from yesterday. Perhaps I can get - no, it was in yesterday's Evening Telegram. Perhaps I will get it for the Premier and I will read it to the Premier a little later on as soon as I get a copy of it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Well, the Minister may not have a copy of it either but I will show -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Okay, well, that is precisely the reason why I am raising it. Because it implies there - well, whatever it implies, the Premier can tell us, maybe, if he is going to speak. Did the unions agree with the option of a wage freeze as being the most palatable option to them? That is the question I guess in essence. Because that is what is implied in the interview yesterday, to put it in a nutshell.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the other point I want to raise is this whole question of not putting this issue out for discussion and consideration in a forum which would provide an opportunity to people who are going to be affected by this legislation, to express their views and opinions, i.e., the Legislative Review Committee. And if the Premier is going to comment I would like to hear him explain to the House - perhaps he could do so, we would appreciate it - why the Government is not prepared to put this piece of legislation, or why they were not prepared to put the piece of legislation, out to a committee for a couple of weeks. To give those groups that are going to be affected by the legislation, but particularly groups who are going to be affected by the draconian measures outlined in the legislation. I do not mean the wage freeze itself, I mean the legislation itself, the unprecedented move of breaking collective agreements and that kind of thing. I mean, those are pretty serious and drastic measures.

So, why the Government would not have put the legislation out to a committee, as it does with all kinds of other pieces of legislation, not nearly as serious, I suppose, in terms of ramifications, but they do it with all kinds of other pieces of legislation. They could have put a time limit on it, had a committee look at the matter for a couple of weeks and make some recommendations back to the Legislature. But it did not, it has decided not to do that, and that is in fact why we moved the second amendment on second reading, because of the fact the Government publicly said it would not put it out.

I do not know if it is too late now in the Government's mind to still do that with a time limit on it of a couple of weeks or something like that. Perhaps it is. I am sure it is. In the Government's mind it is. But realistically, what is the reason for it? Is there any major reason? Since the legislation says, I believe, it is effective April 1, what is the reason, what would be the urgency of waiting until the end of April to deal with the bill or pass the bill or whatever, as opposed to trying to ram it through now with night sittings and no legislative review process being involved.

I would like to have an answer to those particular questions, and in particular the original question. I believe the Premier may have a few comments, I hope, to make on the bill.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: (Inaudible) it was in the paper (Inaudible) best of my knowledge, the hon. Member's suggested implication from it is totally unwarranted and totally incorrect. Mr. Baker was quoted as saying: we laid out for them the options before us, and asked them, which would be more palatable. I would say there is a variation on that, that may be the way the hon. Minister would have said it. My recollection is, we said to them: we would like you to give us some idea of how we could deal with this which would cause the least adverse consequences to your membership. And we were honest enough with them to say, in fairness to the unions now, we also said to them: even though you recommend something our overall Governmental considerations may not make it possible for us to implement what you recommend. So we told them beforehand. But we wanted to have their advice as to how we could do this with the least possible impact. Is that a fair assessment? The President of Treasury Board nods his head. Now that is a fair assessment of what he is saying.

Then, when the hon. Member for Grand Falls goes on to say: only one union chose more layoffs rather than the wage freeze, Mr. Baker said, declining to name the particular union. My recollection is that that is correct. But the implication that the hon. Member draws from that, that all the others chose wage freeze - well, if he wants to impute that to the unions, that is up to him. This hon. Member did not say that and did not imply that. But if the hon. Member for Grand Falls wants to impute that let him go to the union and do it and deal with the union. But the hon. the President of Treasury Board certainly did not imply that. What is there is quite correct.

Mr. Chairman, we had a very difficult problem and I am satisfied from everything that I have heard, from all the responses that I have gotten, from the reaction of the public generally, I am totally satisfied that the vast majority of the people of this Province accept the Government's Budget as the only appropriate thing to do in these circumstances. Now, many of them do not like it. Perhaps most of the people in the Province would prefer not to see education or health cutbacks. I do not suggest that they welcome these reductions in the public service generally. I do not suggest that they welcome it. But I say to all hon. Members of the House that clearly the very substantial majority of the people of this Province support the Government's decision and the position we have taken in the matter. I think that that is clear.

Now I also recognize that the leadership of the various unions involved, the people who were directly laid off as a result, communities where a hospital may have been reduced in size or where there was a substantial change in a community college or something of that nature - I can understand those communities' reaction for two reasons: The reduction in the public service that would otherwise be available and the employment and economic impact of the reduction. So I fully understand and appreciate the fact that people directly affected will make strong representation.

The media will give it a great deal of attention. But they have given virtually no attention to the extent to which the Government's Budget proposal is endorsed by a very clear and substantial majority of the people of this Province. But I highlighted the extent to which there was some opposition to it, some substantial demonstration here and there. That is essentially what the news media have done. And I understand the news media doing that. It is not very exciting for the news media to say that the Government's position is widely endorsed throughout the Province, and that is an end of it. What are they going to do then for the rest of their news? So I understand their position on it as well.

I even understand what the Opposition has done. I have read in the newspaper and I have listened to the Leader of the Opposition being interviewed, and listened to the hon. Member for Kilbride, saying: why should we get all uptight if the unions are not demonstrating and up in the gallery? Why are they not demonstrating? You are provoking! The Opposition has ceased to put the interest of this Province ahead of their own Party's political interest. And they are provoking or trying their best to provoke demonstrations, to the point of not acting in the House, or putting on this charade that the Member for Kilbride went through the other night, to try and provoke interest and get people stirred up to demonstrate.

But, fortunately, it backfired and the unions quite properly criticized the hon. Member for his improper action. Now that is what I am confident Mr. March was talking about when he said the House of Assembly was irrelevant. He has been watching what has been happening since the Budget was brought in. He has been watching what the Opposition did in two and a half weeks of shilly-shallying about Interim Supply. Interim Supply is normally put through on a debate that takes a couple of hours or so. But the Opposition sat for two and a half weeks and held up the ordinary working of this House, in order to put on this political demonstration in the hope of trying to provoke and promote dissension in the Province.

They are not putting the interest of the Province ahead. No wonder people are saying the House of Assembly is irrelevant. It has been largely the Opposition who has been speaking and they are judging it by what they hearing from the Opposition. And I can only agree with Mr. March that the House of Assembly is largely irrelevant, bearing in mind what has been said here in the last three weeks. And that is why they feel that way.

Now just in case hon. Members have any doubts about it, I will now give them the running total on sitting time. As of the end of March this year, in the twenty-three months - a little less - that we have formed the Government we have had 168 sitting legislative days of the full Legislature sitting, for a total of 590 legislative hours. Now in addition to that, Mr. Chairman, we have had another 142 hours of Legislative Review Committees sitting in less than two years, in twenty-three months.

Now let me tell you about the similar twenty-three month period from the Opposition when they formed the Government. They sat for only ninety-one days.

AN HON. MEMBER: How many?

PREMIER WELLS: Ninety-one. Two hundred and eighty-nine and a half legislative hours of the full Legislature. No legislative Committee sittings at all.

Now, Mr. Chairman, this is the performance of a Government that is trying to ram things through. It is no wonder Mr. March says the Legislature is largely irrelevant. It is. They sit and listen to drivel repeated after drivel after more drivel, the same thing over and over and over again. No wonder people are bored silly and they leave. I look up at night and there is not a single person sitting in the gallery. No wonder they conclude it is irrelevant. With this kind of a performance it is completely understandable that they should conclude that it is irrelevant.

Mr. Chairman, just to update you and bring us right to the minute, if you look at it you will see that the total sitting of the full Legislature and the Legislative Committees in terms of total hours sitting considering House business has been 763 hours and 42 minutes, right to this point in time - 763 hours compared, Mr. Chairman, with 863 hours for the former Government in the whole of their last term.

AN HON. MEMBER: In their whole term?

PREMIER WELLS: In their whole term.

AN HON. MEMBER: No kidding!

PREMIER WELLS: In the whole term they had 863 hours.

MR. MURPHY: It must be wrong.

PREMIER WELLS: In the whole term, they had a total sitting time of 863 hours.

Mr. Chairman, it is no wonder people look at the Legislature and say it is irrelevant. They have had to come and sit and listen to the hon. Members opposite just hold up Government business, and that is essentially what they have done. And they wonder why we use closure. We have used closure at least a half dozen times, if I recall, and I will say to the House and to the public of this Province we will use closure a half dozen more times this session or a half a dozen more times next week if it becomes necessary to get the Government business through and to stop the Opposition from interfering with the orderly running of the Province. We will do whatever is necessary, because that is our responsibility as a Government.

Now, Mr. Chairman, that is why we have taken the position we have. Now listen to the hon. Member stand and piously ask today would the Government just consider waiting another two weeks to hear other alternatives? Mr. Chairman, it has been over a month since we brought down the Budget and any union, any Opposition, anybody who has wanted to put forward alternatives has had an open opportunity to do so. And the unions have had an invitation since we brought in the Budget, and we told them at the time, in the meetings we had in the week or two before the Budget was brought down, they could come at any time and make any kind of suggestion they had. But going right back to last October they were invited to make these suggestions. And the hon. Opposition House Leader stands now and with great piety and feigned concern: Would the Government just sit now, would the Government just sit on it for a couple of weeks and give people time to make presentations?

No, the Government will not any longer delay the orderly management of the business of the people of this Province. And we are confident we have the support of the people of the Province in what we are doing. If we do not have the support of the people of this Province, I am equally confident they will tell us so during the next election and so they should. But I have complete confidence that we do indeed have their support and that we are doing that which is right for the Province. Fortunately for the people of this Province, we came along just in time. We were prepared to act without thinking how will people think about me? Will somebody fail to vote for me or refuse to support me if I do this?

We have not put narrow-minded political considerations ahead of the interests of the public of this Province. We have put the interests of the people first, and we will continue to do just that in the next few years that are left in this mandate and in the next few mandates I hope the people will give us. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to say that is the first time I have heard that speech from the Premier. It is a rather new approach. And I have to commend him. It is a nice try. It is not a bad try to try to pump up the troops over there, to try to pump up the troops who have been pretty depressed and down over the last few weeks. The Premier needs to come into the Legislature every once in awhile and try to give a bit of a rousing address, and twist words and use the ability he has and has used so well in the past to camouflage the real issues, the real questions, and spend half his time talking about the number of sitting days, the number of sitting hours, and then rush out. After he has made his big speech to rouse the troops, he gets up and he leaves.

Now I have to say to you, that in itself speaks for itself in my view. This whole issue of whether the majority of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians agree with the Premier's position is one that will not be answered for another couple of years, or year and a half, or whenever it is going to be. So I know the Premier thinks in his own mind, because he has become a legend in his own mind, that it is clear, to use his words, that the majority of people agree with the Premier. Well, I have to say with respect that it is not clear. It is not very clear at all, not by a long shot, that the majority of people in Newfoundland and Labrador agree with the Premier. In fact, I would venture to suggest and say that in due course you will see that the majority of people in this Province do not agree with what this Government has undertaken in its Budget. But we will have to wait and see.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) polls say.

MR. SIMMS: Members can do all the polls they want. There is only one poll that counts and he knows that, the Member for Exploits. I am afraid he will not be around anyway after the next time, so he will not have to worry about polls. He will not have to worry about polls in Exploits, let me tell him.

MR. BAKER: You will not be around (inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: No? I can assure the Government House Leader that my chances of being around are much better than his are in Gander. That much I can tell him.

Now the Premier tried very hard to twist once again a question I asked in the absence of the Government House Leader, a very legitimate question. He tried to turn it around and twist it and suggest that we in the Opposition were making some kind of allegation about the unions. Now, I mean, that is so much hogwash it is not even funny. I asked a sensible, reasonable question, based on an article in yesterday's newspaper which featured the President of Treasury Board's picture and a quotation. Now if it is incorrect, then I would expect the President of Treasury Board to stand and indicate that it is incorrect. And if it is not being read properly by myself, then I do not mind him telling me. That is why I asked the question. I do not mind him telling me that I am misinterpreting what was said in this article. But I ask you again, Mr. Chairman, and I ask the President of Treasury Board, if he is interested in responding to it. The article the Premier quoted from quotes the President of Treasury Board as saying, `We laid out for them the options before us and asked them which would be more palatable. Only one union chose more layoffs rather than the wage freeze Mr. Baker said,...'

Now I think it is reasonable for one to assume and to interpret from that that one union chose more layoffs but the rest of the unions involved chose the wage freeze, and I simply asked the question is that a fair interpretation, is that an incorrect interpretation? Now the Premier has stood in his place and said `No, it is absolutely an incorrect interpretation.' Well that is all I asked. I asked the question but the Premier then tried to turn it around and suggest that we were attacking the unions or making some allegations against the unions, which again is a bunch of nonsense and hogwash which the Government always tries to use in defence of its indefensible positions, particularly with respect to the Budget.

Mr. Chairman, the Premier made some reference - of course it is hardly worth responding to, but I suppose I might as well - to the galleries being empty and implying that the galleries have been empty for the last two or three weeks. Well let me remind Members of this Legislature that the galleries have basically been empty for the last couple of years, since this Government came to power. I do not know why. It never was the case. There always were a lot of people who had an interest in the House of Assembly and its proceedings. There always were people who sat in the gallery. But these days, and for last couple of years for some strange reason, there have not been very many, except from time to time when groups come in.

MR. FLIGHT: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: No, he is talking about the last couple of weeks I say to the Minister of Forestry. He is not listening to what the Premier had to say. I am very surprised at that. Naughty, naughty! You will be rapped on the knuckles for not listening to the Premier. But, Mr. Chairman, I sure the Minister of Forestry, if he was prepared to be honest, would have to admit that in the past years, prior to him being part of the Government, the galleries generally had a fair number of people, particularly on days like Opening Day, Throne Speech Day.

One thing I have noticed in the last couple of years is that there has hardly been anybody in the gallery, particularly on those major days. So that is a bunch of nonsense the Premier gets on with there today. He did not say anything about the bill. He said nothing about the bill. He talked about the number of hours the House sat, the number of days the House sat compared to what they sat five years ago or ten years ago or whatever, he talked about how the public all support him, everybody is in favour of everything he is doing, but he did not say one thing in defence of this action, the introduction of Bill 16, and that is very unfortunate. But, again, if Fraser March is correct and if the Premier is correct and if everything that is going on in here is irrelevant, then it does not matter much what any of us say and that is regrettable. I do not really buy it. I said earlier that I find myself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand I kind of think that what Fraser March had to say might be correct, might be accurate, and I often think that from time to time. But on the other hand, being a parliamentarian and having been around in the process for a long time, I have a bit more faith in the people, and I have a bit more faith in the parliamentary process. I would like to think that people who are interested in knowing what is going on in the Province and what is going on in the politics of the Province would find out what is going on and would know what is going on. Hopefully that is the case rather than the other.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, today in the Legislature I want to touch on one thing, and the Minister of Forestry can respond for me, since he is anxious to speak and say things and offer interjections.

Today the Minister of Environment tabled an answer to a question I raised a few days ago with respect to the Greenwood Hydro Electric Development in Grand Falls. I ask him seriously if he can confirm for me what this answer really said. He says in the answer, `An assessment of the environmental impacts of this project is presently underway.' Down on the bottom he says, `It is expected the entire assessment process, from April 1991, will take about 18 months.' Then he says back up on top, `The decision as to whether and under what conditions to allow construction of this proposed development will be made at the conclusion of the environmental assessment.' So can the Minister of Forestry confirm then for me - or am I reading that wrong? That is quite possible - that the decision on construction of that hydro electric project will not even be made for another year and a half; the decision as to whether there will be a project even will not even be made for another year and a half. Is that what that answer means? Because if it is, it seems to me it is completely at odds with what the Premier said back in December of 1989 when he announced in this House the closedown of the number six paper machine in Grand Falls. And in an effort to try to offset that negativity, he announced at the same time the company was going to begin an hydro electric project, and that the likely starting date, target date, was in August or September of 1991.

Now everybody out there understood that the project was going to get underway this Summer, late Summer or early Fall. Can the Minister confirm for me that that was the understanding? That is what people out in the area have been asking. I presume they have asked him, because they have certainly asked me. I would expect they would have asked him as Minister of Forestry and Agriculture.

Now what we have, in fact, is the confirmation that that is not the case and the earliest time the decision will be considered as to whether there will be a project will be in another year and a half. Hopefully, the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture will get up and answer that question. I did not want to raise it in Question Period, I wanted to raise it in debate. I know the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture is concerned about it and I know the Member for Exploits is, because I have discussed the matter with them. We are all concerned as Members representing that area, because we were looking forward to something getting underway this Fall; the creation of some jobs even if they would be short-term, and in particular, of course, improving the viability of the mill and the operation of the mill in Grand Falls - Windsor for the future. I hope those three matters I have raised will be addressed by the President of Treasury Board or the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture, whoever might wish to participate in the debate. More than likely what will happen is that nobody will, as usual.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: I want to have a few words in this debate as well. I noticed the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture was not going to respond to the questions posed by the Member for Grand Falls. I think Bill 16 is probably the most regressive piece of legislation this House has ever seen. I have gone through some notes here and I have looked at some of the statements which have been made over the past few days dealing with this Bill, and one can only wonder what this Government is up to, what its plans are, and what the President of Treasury Board is trying to do with the people of this Province when this Government decides to close hospital beds, to eliminate care for the sick and suffering in this Province, to close down schools, to do all these things and at the same time turn around and give the Newfoundland senate, Dr. House, $44 million.

There is no doubt about it that this Province is part of the recession, and there is no doubt about it that Government has to make decisions which are probably not easy decisions to make, but one must realize that when Government has to face these decisions they have to spend their money wisely. In my opinion the Economic Recovery Commission is doing absolutely nothing and has done absolutely nothing in this Province. I think it has created sixty-eight jobs. It is time for the Premier to disband the Economic Recovery Commission, to let the Minister of Development look after that responsibility, and do something constructive for the people of this Province.

When you talk about people being laid off, fired and everything else, today we had the Minister of Social Services stand in this House and what he said was not true. What the Minister of Social Services said was not true, Mr. Chairman. The social workers lost a day's pay - and the Minister said he would even make it worse, he will be twice - the Minister of Social Services got up in this House today and said one social worker was told to go to a foster parent house and bring the child from one house to another house and that is not true. The social worker was never told to do it. The social worker was told to go home and make a phone call. It is time that Minister stopped playing games and be honest with the House and stop trying to put the social workers in the position that they are in. When someone who has worked for this Department for over twenty years, gets a day's suspension because they stayed out of an office because of the fumes there, it is ridiculous. Probably what the Minister is saying in this House is what he is being told, I do not know. If that is what he is being told he is not being told the truth. And I can say to the Minister of Social Services that probably saving a day's pay may be something he could use for retroactive pay for some of his buddies, and the Minister of Social Services knows full well what I am talking about too, and I understand a lot of others around know what I am talking about.

But, Mr. Chairman, this Government has to change their priorities. If the money is not there to do all the things that they would like to do well then they are not spending their money the way that they should be spending it, because the Economic Recovery Commission in this Province is not working.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! I apologize to the hon. Member. It being 4:00 o'clock, under our Standing Orders, I have to announce the questions for the late show.

The first question: I am not satisfied with the Justice Minister's response to my questions about services for victims of crime - the hon. the Member for Humber East.

The second question: I am dissatisfied with the answer to my question by the Minister of Justice concerning RNC policing - the hon. the Member for Kilbride.

The third question: I am not satisfied with the answer from the Premier re schoolbus safety - the hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When the Minister of Education stood in this House and said there were going to be 200 layoffs in post-secondary education, if my memory serves me correct that is what the Minister of Education said. That Minister, Mr. Chairman, has the habit in this House lately of not being honest, of not telling the truth, and it is time for that to change as well.

When I look down in my own District and see the people who got laid off in the Eastern Community College, and I am sure Mr. Chairman knows some of those people as well, people who have been in the vocational school since it was opened basically, people like Mr. Walsh and Mr. Coady and others, when you look at the numbers of people who were laid off and kicked out of the post-secondary education system by this Minister, it is regrettable.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: And I do not know why this Minister of Education continues to fire people from the post-educational system. People who have made a very valuable contribution, Mr. Chairman, to our education system in this Province over the years are now unemployed.

Then he talks about saving money, and we look at this Bill 16: because of the position that Government finds itself in. Well then why in the name of God do they not leave the Eastern Community College Headquarters alone and let it stay in Burin instead of, for political benefits and gains, pushing it someplace else. Why is all of this happening in a time of restraint? What benefit is it to this Government, Mr. Chairman, to take revenge out on the Burin Peninsula, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have one large building down there, Dodge Building is the name of it, that was leased for five years, five years is the lease on that building and what is going to happen is this Government is going to pay five years for a vacant building. I believe the lease runs out at the end of 1994.

I know the Minister of Education and others are checking the lease to see if there is any way they can get out of it, or break it or re-assign it, but that cannot happen. They have a lease on that building for five years and they are willing to waste the money of this Province, the taxpayers money. They close hospital beds, the sick and the suffering cannot get services, they cannot be taken care of by the medical people in this Province, and yet the Government has a five year lease on an Eastern Community College Headquarters in Burin and they are going to leave that vacant and move the headquarters to Clarenville. Does that make sense, Mr. Chairman, I submit it does not.

We talk about cutbacks in the health care system, the elimination of a hospital at Grand Bank and St. Lawrence on the Burin Peninsula and what that has done. The Marystown Shipyard: I understand they were in and had a meeting with the Premier last week. As a matter of fact, I spoke with the President the next morning after he met with the Premier, and with the union executive and, Mr. Chairman, there is no hope, there is no hope for the future of that yard and it is now time for the Government to start doing something, to create employment so that people can make money and spend money.

This year, we will see approximately 300 people leave Marystown Shipyard and go to the mainland to receive enough stamps for their Unemployment Insurance. We were in a recession in 1982, but the Government of the day built supply vessels on speculation, Mr. Chairman, and sold every one of them. Now with the Hibernia development taking place, with all the barges that are going to be needed on that site, why does not the Government take the same type of action and start a programme of building barges and selling them to the oil companies, let the oil companies buy their barges made in Newfoundland, not bring them in from overseas, not tow them from overseas. Let them buy their barges here and have them built at the Marystown Shipyard.

I will ask the Premier and his Government to consider a plan whereby barges can be constructed on speculation and sold. There is no confidence left in the economy of this Province. I had the opportunity over the past week or so, to speak to some business people throughout the Province who were telling me that they are experiencing the worst time they have ever had in business, the confidence is just not there and there is nobody in Government who cares enough about the problems they are experiencing, and yet we have the Economic Recovery Commission getting $44 million.

Today I looked at a letter in the paper, it is in a cynical fashion I guess, where some Government employee wrote to the Premier and told him that he should have been taking their money long ago, they should have been freezing their wages long ago, not freezing their wages, rolling back, because there has been a 6 per cent inflation rate, they are getting a 6 per cent cut in their wages and yet they turn around and give the Newfoundland 'Senate' $44 million, one has to wonder where are the priorities of this Government.

They eliminate the construction of the ferry for Fogo Island, they eliminate sending a better ferry service to the people of Bell Island, they take one of the ferries from Bell Island out of the system for six months, they close down programme after programme in the vocational school system throughout this Province, they close down various programmes offered by Memorial University. MUN Extension: the Minister of Education said he worked for MUN Extension at one time. Well, Mr. Chairman, MUN Extension must have a different role now than it had when he worked there, because, the number of people who worked for MUN Extension is not what is important -

AN HON. MEMBER: He said they had hundreds when he was there.

MR. TOBIN: - yes, hundreds, they needed hundreds if they are all like him, they needed one for every person and I am not sure it worked then; they needed hundreds if they were all like the Minister of Education. What the field workers are doing is what is important, the numbers of communities they have been assisting throughout this Province, the numbers in rural Newfoundland. I know several times they went down to isolated communities in my own constituency and helped people, good friends of mine, Mr. O'Keefe who is in the Placentia area, was a very valuable member to the rural parts of this Province and in particular my own district over the years, and the Minister of Education says well, it is only five or six or seven or eight, whatever the case may be, big deal! Well I say to the Minister of Education that it is a big deal, that these people have done a tremendous amount of good in rural Newfoundland. They do not need hundreds. The people who are working for MUN Extension possess such knowledge and skills of handling the needs of rural Newfoundland that unlike the Minister of Education they do not need hundreds. They can work throughout this Province, and I do not know why they are subject to such attacks. I know in our own area in the Burin Peninsula we have never seen such an economic down-climb so fast. We have never seen it. We have hospitals closed in Grand Bank and St. Lawrence, and we have the mines gone in St. Lawrence.

Mr. Chairman, I do not know if it is in order for the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture to be whistling in the House. I do not think he should be doing it.

MR. FLIGHT: I was not.

MR. TOBIN: Oh, yes you were. You sure were whistling in the House.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. TOBIN: The Minister of Social Services should be careful. I want to say that I am concerned about what is happening in my own area, in my own district on the Burin Peninsula. I am concerned about the state of the Newfoundland fishery, and I am sure the Minister of Fisheries is concerned as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time has elapsed.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, I want to speak about the legislation, Bill 16, and specifically about the provision of the legislation to do with pay equity. I have spoken a number of times in the debate so far about the issue of fairness, and the pay equity provision. I think on a number of occasions, it has been pointed out to be particularly unfair to the women of this Province. What the Government has said on the issue of pay equity is that they believe in pay equity and that they are going to implement it this year. And what the Premier has said, and the President of Treasury Board has said is: what we are doing merely is eliminating the retroactive portion of that pay equity. Well, Mr. Chairman, by eliminating the retroactive portion of the pay equity agreement what the Government is doing is taking a particular view about women in the public service whom they have agreed, they being the Government and not this particular administration of the Government, but the Government has agreed in writing in a solemn contract that they in fact were discriminating against. What they have done is two things, number one they have expressed some sort of view on retroactivity that they find distasteful, retroactive payments are distasteful, and the second thing they are trying to say is that they cannot implement these pay equity agreements retroactively even though they have agreed it is discriminatory against women. Well, Mr. Chairman, if that was their view, and it was a consistent view that the Government had about retroactive provisions, I wonder if they could explain what standard was applied when the Government and Treasury Board made retroactive payments in December 1990 to the Chairman of the Social Services Appeal Board, when retroactive payments were made through the Ministry of Social Services to the Chairman of the Social Services Review Board, I understand totalling some large thousands and thousands of dollars payable retroactively to the Chairman of the Board and to another individual. I understand that if this is a principle that the Government has about retroactive pay that perhaps they would have applied that then. In December 1990 the Premier was well aware, and certainly the President of Treasury Board was well aware of the financial circumstances of the Province. They were telling us in the House that they were talking to the unions about this in October, telling them how constrained they were and how they were going to have to do certain things, so why is it that in December 1990 the Government could see fit to make retroactive payments to a Chair of a Social Services Appeal Board who just happens to have been a campaign worker for the Minister of Social Services? Just happens to be, coincidentally, I suppose, and these retroactive payments were made not only to the Chair but to another campaign worker of the Minister of Social Services as well. Now, do we have a double standard here, is the Premier really aware of this type of activity? Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he was not at the Treasury Board meeting or the Cabinet meeting when this was approved.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: If he is not, I do not see him paying particular attention to what I am saying here today. But I hope he is listening because he should be aware that retroactive payments were made to certain political appointees of the Minister of Social Services and maybe others, and perhaps the President of Treasury Board can enlighten us on this. I understand that throughout 1990 there was a review being conducted -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Listen to what he is saying.

MR. HARRIS: - by Treasury Board of some numerous number of boards that the Government made appointees to over the course of that year. I do not know how many. Perhaps 150 or thereabout, boards that the Government makes appointees to. And I understand that the Government was reviewing these boards to see whether or not they ought to increase the remuneration for people serving on these boards. It may well be that the remuneration was inadequate for the services performed, I am not suggesting that. What the Government has done is reviewed these boards. Perhaps the President of Treasury Board can tell us how many of these boards were reviewed, when the decision was made to upgrade them and how many of these board members and board chairs received retroactive pay for the year 1990? Or was it just a special case to look after the Minister of Social Services and his particular needs for his board chair and other members? Is that something that was done especially for them? Or was it something done for all boards whether the appointees were appointed by this Government or by previous Governments?

Now, Mr. Chairman, what it appears here is that there may be a double standard at work, that this Government is not applying the same standards to public servants who come under collective agreements and who they sit down and make written formal agreements with. They will not honour those agreements. They are prepared to bring legislation here to take those away. And then for other types of appointments that they do not have agreements with - they do not have agreements with other types of individuals but yet they are able to make retroactive payments there. So I wonder if the Premier or the President of Treasury Board could enlighten us as to whether this was a policy of this Government up until Bill 16, whether it was the policy of this Government to make retroactive payments or whether that was a special case made for other reasons that he may be able to explain.

And I wanted to bring that up, Mr. Chairman, because it is a very important point about the public service and about Bill 16 because we cannot have the Government applying one standard or one rule to public servants who are covered by collective agreements, and another rule to people that they appoint. And I say it most sincerely, I am not here to make any political points or make problems for anybody, but merely to ask whether or not this Government has a double standard it is applying, and whether they can explain to the Members of the House and to the public what exactly is going on.

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

MR. PARSONS: I would like to have a few remarks, Mr. Chairman, as it pertains to this Bill 16. Mr. Chairman, I rose in my place on Tuesday night and spoke about Bill 16. I do not see my friend across there now from St. John's South. But I was listening to the Member for LaPoile and he said the cause of this bill, this shameful bill being introduced in the House was, in fact, the fault of the Federal Government because they reduced transfer payments and I suppose EPF financing to the Province.

When I rose I said in defence of the Federal Government, as far as I am concerned the Federal Government did give the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador sufficient funds. And as for Newfoundland and Labrador reneging on their commitments to the labour force, the Government in Ottawa had very little if anything to do with it. They knew quite well long before they signed those agreements that money would not flow from Ottawa like they wanted it to. Then I was interrupted, Mr. Chairman, and said, `Well what about the free trade situation?' Seeing that the Premier today again stressed the fact that some of the discrepancies in our financial situation were caused by the Federal Government and their not giving us sufficient funds to run this Province, then I want to return to what I said the other night.

Taking into consideration Bill 16, from what the Premier has said and what the Member for St. John's South and many Ministers have said, it was partially caused by the inaccuracy of the Federal Government in funding our needs. The Member for St. John's South called out and said, How about free trade? - and I was about to explain why I thought free trade was the greatest thing that ever happened to Canada. Then it sort of got a bit unruly, not to take anything from the Deputy Speaker, because he did his best, and I played a role as did Members on the other side, and I never did get a chance to say what I intended to say. So I want to do that right now. Someone called out and said I had read something in the paper down in St. Petersburg. Mr. Chairman, that is not true. What I read I read in the Evening Telegram, and what it said was very simple, that a block of senators and congressmen from the United States who disagreed with free trade with Mexico said they had already been burnt once by the agreement with Canada and that Canadians were faring off far better than their American counterparts. That is the point I was trying to make but they would not give me the chance to make it. It was not from any foreign paper, it was from our own paper here in Newfoundland.

And certainly if this Bill 16 is caused by payments we did not get - supposedly that is the cause of it in some respect, a great percentage of it as far as the Member for LaPoile and the Member for St. John's South are concerned. Mr Chairman, I just want to straighten that out, to clarify it.

The funniest thing about this Bill 16 is that eveyone who gets to their feet on the opposite side, on the Government side, are saying they do not like this Bill, but when the vote is called they all vote `aye' for the Bill. If you do not like something, how can you agree with it? It amazes me. The Minister of Social Services made a big joke the other day - his Chairman of the Social Services Appeal Board rose from $250 a day to $350.

AN HON. MEMBER: Retroactive?

MR. TOBIN: Retroactive, yes, Mr. Chairman, remembering he has a day in advance to get ready to go to the meeting. I explained when I was speaking here the other day about a gentleman who was going to lose his house and who worked in the Minister's Department. That is where he worked, in the Department of Social Services. And there is the Minister who had to lay off this gentleman but finds it within his heart to increase his Chairman's per diem from $250 to $350 a day. I am surprised at that Minister, that this type of a thing is allowed to happen and go unnoticed. I do not know if it is factual or not, but I have also been told there were many layoffs in the Minister's Department, and I have also been told that there were twelve or fourteen temporaries hired on by the Minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. PARSONS: I am not sure whether that is true or not. I have heard that the Minister has hired twelve or fourteen people within his Department, temporary people, and I would like to find out from the Minister where those people came from. Where did they come from? Are they from Flatrock? St. John's? Are they from Torbay? Pouch Cove?

MR. R. AYLWARD: (Inaudible) Upper Island Cove.

MR. TOBIN: Bay Roberts.

MR. PARSONS: From where?

MR. TOBIN: Bay Roberts.

MR. PARSONS: They are all from Bay Roberts. I am sure the Premier - he cannot. It is impossible! You know the Premier and I do not agree on everything, in fact we disagree on most things, but I am sure he would not sit in his place, and I am sure he is listening -I think about twenty-four people were laid off in the Department of Social Services - more than that, is it not? At least that amount - and the Minister then hires back fourteen people from his own district on a temporary basis.

MR. R. AYLWARD: (Inaudible) Whitbourne.

MR. PARSONS: Mr. Chairman, I am wondering where the Premier is coming from with this fairness and balance? I mean, if that is fair, we are all wet. We might as well go home.

Then we have the Minister of Justice, a Member of Cabinet, a Member partially responsible in his own part for this Bill 16. He increases the fees of the Legal Aid lawyers by $10 an hour, from $45 to $55 an hour. Mr. Chairman, there are an awful of people in this Civil Service, or had been in this Civil Service, who would gladly work for $10 an hour just to retain their jobs, to keep their homes, to keep their cars. But the Minister of Justice: to me it comes across that everything that comes out of that office should be fair and equal, representing the Justice Minister well. So how can he stand in this House every day and watch the elite of Newfoundland and Labrador get an extra $10 an hour which does not mean anything to them anyway. There are many people just getting $10 an hour who have layoff slips. Mr. Chairman, is that fairness and balance? It is not in my estimation.

I would like to ask the Premier, and some of those days I suppose I will get around to it. During the time of this de-escalation, during the time of the layoffs, how many people have been hired by the Economic Recovery Commission in high paying jobs? We are talking about $65,000 to $100,000 a year. How many people have been hired there? I said the other night that there was a way out of it and I will say it again now. What are you going to offer as a solution? What are your recommendations?

My first recommendation is very simple, that you disband the Economic Recovery Commission and put that $44 million into hospitals, into education and let the men and women who were duly elected by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador do their job, not bring in some commission. I have no time for commissions. Because as I have said over and over in this House, I lived through an era of commission. I did not like it then and I do not like it now. I think it is a shame. I think the Premier was irresponsible when he brought it about, and I think it is time for him to decide now that it was a mistake. Come clean with the people.

MR. DOYLE: It is not only a shame, it is a sham!

MR. PARSONS: It is a sham, and a scam, you name it, Mr. Speaker.

I mean, how many people have been hired by Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador?

MS. VERGE: Several Liberals, former campaign managers, former candidates.

MR. PARSONS: Several Liberals, absolutely, former campaign managers, former candidates. And I see the Premier every day standing in his place, especially in Question Period, and defending this, saying this is the ultimate, this is what has to be.

MS. VERGE: They are outside the public tendering process, outside the Public Service Commission.

MR. PARSONS: Outside the public tendering process, outside the Public Service Commission. You do not have to do anything. You do not have to apply.

MS. VERGE: Exempt from Freedom of Information.

MR. PARSONS: Exempt from Freedom of Information. There is something I just cannot read at all.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. PARSONS: Yes. Mr. Chairman, this is what I call the essence of patronage.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Indeed it does, a new dimension to it.

I mean, there is no way that anyone can avail of the opportunity as it comes open to the rest of us through the Freedom of Information Act. These people cannot be tested, they cannot be checked on. Their books - we cannot look at what is happening, how much money is being spent in those areas; and the Premier just sits there and says, `Well, you know, this has to be. The Economic Recovery Commission, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador is a great help to small business, a great help to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, a great help to get our people back to working again.' Well, Mr. Chairman, I do not see it.

I said to the Minister of Education today, as we came across the corridor, when we get cuts in education -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: I will speak to that on another occasion.

Mr. Chairman, the Premier reneged on Meech Lake, he reneged on permitting us to vote on Meech Lake, he reneged on the nurses and their money, he reneged on the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, he reneged on the firefighters, hospital workers, school taxes, civil servants. People have been victimized, pulverized, and they are petrified and, Mr. Chairman, the only one I can draw a comparison with -

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, it is 4:30 p.m. The Late Show is scheduled to begin now, so I wonder if the Committee could rise and report progress.

On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again, Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

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

MR. CHAIRMAN (Barrett): Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole have considered the matters to them referred, wish to report some progress and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, report received and adopted, Committee ordered to sit again, presently.

Debate on the Adjournment

[Late Show]

MR. SPEAKER: It being 4:30 p.m., we move into The Late Show.

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a crying need for the Department of Justice to expand the criminal justice system to provide supports for victims of crime, particularly victims of incest, other sexual assault and other family violence crimes.

Now this need has been better and better documented in recent years. Last year, the Hughes Commission hearings, televised in this Province, brought home to people the extent of the trauma experienced by child sexual assault victims and made people more aware than they had been before of the need for the system to respond sympathetically and supportively.

Mr. Speaker, many victims with the false belief that the system had improved have come forward and disclosed crimes, even crimes that were committed many years ago, and many of those victims have been sadly disillusioned; they have found that the criminal justice system has victimized them worse than the perpetrator of the crime itself.

Yesterday I had a call from a woman whose daughter was the victim of incest. She has been waiting for three years now, since her report to the authorities, for that case to go to trial in Supreme Court in Gander. The daughter, her mother, and others affected, are really at their wits end now. The mother told me that they do not know, really, what is going on. The daughter had to travel to Gander recently for what was supposed to be the trial, but when she got there she found there was yet another postponement. She said there has been a succession of Crown attorneys and nobody in the Justice Department or the Crown Attorney's Office is giving them straight information about what is going on, how much longer the trial will be delayed, and just what more this girl is going to have to go through.

Mr. Speaker, there is no excuse for the Wells Administration having failed to put one cent into Victim Services. In their first year in office they turned in a current account surplus of $60 million. In the second year in office they began with a promise to institute programs of assistance for victims, and they included $150,000 for Victim Services in their Estimates. When the year ended, we found that they had spent exactly zero. They budgeted $150,000, they spent zero.

Last fall, after a year-and-a-half of excuses and promises to act soon, the Department of Justice ran ads in St. John's newspapers, inviting St. John's organizations to submit proposals for an ad hoc pilot project for victim services in the St. John's area. Now, Mr. Speaker, I faulted that approach, first of all because it was intended to serve the St. John's area only, when I know about grave needs in other regions of the Province, secondly, because it was for only a pilot project when the need for justice system support for victims has been documented over and over again and, thirdly, because it represented a lack of seriousness in the approach to meeting victims' needs. Instead of the Department of Justice, itself, expanding its staff and offering victim services on a regular, permanent basis, the department was prepared to put this out to some community organization. Well, Mr. Speaker, we would not think of contracting out to volunteer community group services for offenders and we should not be doing it for victims.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. Member's time is up.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will try to respond to the points made by the hon. Member. Let us start with the assumption that there are victims because, indeed, there are, but victims of crime are not a recent phenomenon. We have had victims ever since Cain slew Abel. I would say that the hon. Member's tenure as Minister of Justice was certainly marked by a singular lack of disposition about doing anything about the problem, herself. I think it is rather hypocritical to stand in the House of Assembly and fault another Government, as this hon. Member did, and say that the Wells Government did nothing for one-and-one-half years, while refusing to offer any excuses, herself, for seventeen years of failure of her previous Administration to address the problem, particularly during the four years in which she held the office of Minister of Justice.

I find that people who come proselytizing before the people of the Province, and suddenly waking up some morning stricken on the road to Damascus by lighting, and suddenly discovering victims as if they had not existed before, have no credibility in this House and, to some extent, I am not sure that I need even address that issue, as raised by the hon. Member. If she is so serious, if she feels that $150,000 is an inadequate response to the problem, why is it that for four years, she did not put one plugged nickel into victim services? So when she stands here and decries our Government for failing to do something about it, I am appalled that she would take that attitude that is so politically self-serving. Rather, she should be standing here, thanking this Government for taking a step that is well-measured toward an appropriate response, as a Province.

Now, the second problem the hon. Member has, is in identifying what we are trying to do. Her whole task in this House seems to be to focus on a narrow group of people who are legitimate victims. She focuses on a particular group and a particular type of crime.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I say to you that if we are going to have a victim program, it must be a broadly based one. We just cannot make it a focus for one particular group that is victimized by one particular crime and, in doing so, we are approaching on that basis.

The third point she made that is incorrect is, she said that the Department of Justice was prepared to offer service only to St. John's. That is inaccurate, and she does not have knowledge of the type of program that was envisaged by the department; and what she is relating it to, is an ad that appeared in The Evening Telegram, seeking a proposal for St. John's. Our program, as I indicated in the House earlier today, was have a broadly based one in the regions where we will be hiring people. In St. John's, because of the nature of the community, we were looking for contractual service. What we will be doing in the other regions, where it is more broadly based, is having people available who will co-ordinate with community groups.

So, the fact is, and the hon. Member either did not know it, or did not refer to it, that the program, as we envisaged setting it up last fall, was not a singular program for St. John's, but one of general application for the Province, and that particular ad appeared only because of the type of service we required for St. John's.

Mr. Speaker, may I just say in closing that I am proud of this Government and the fact that it has chosen to address the whole question of victim services and the victim program in a very short time frame, in fact. We have not even been in office for two years; we took immediate steps to assess what would be an appropriate program, we fund it within a reasonable period of time, and for any member of the former Government, particularly a member who held this portfolio, and failed to respond to what she now says is a legitimate need, I suggest she has absolutely no credibility and the whole question deserves no further answer.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed in the Minister's -

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

MR. R. AYLWARD: -last answer, Mr. Speaker, because I know some of the people who worked with the victims and they know different than what the Minister just said. I am surprised that he would treat such a serious question in that manner. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, I have another question. The Minister will remember that last Friday, I believe it was, I asked him several questions on the new contract that was signed, or signed under duress, I would imaging, or proposed under duress, with the Newfoundland Constabulary, Mr. Speaker. The Minister will remember that he blackmailed the Police Association into signing an agreement that I am sure they would prefer not to have signed, by threatening and passing out notices of laying off nineteen staff members, while they were still in negotiations. But, Mr. Speaker, a part of that new agreement which is a major escalation in the amount of guns that are around - I feel it is. I know when we were there there were some police vehicles which had guns in them as they patrolled the city, some, but right now we have under this new agreement all the vehicles to be armed with firearms.

One of the reasons, I believe, that the Minister is allowing this is because he has forced the Association, against their better judgement, to have Constabulary members around this Province on foot patrol and in some shifts in their vehicular patrols to be doing these patrols single-handedly. I am sure that any expert in policing anywhere in this country right now would suggest that it would be much safer both for the public and for the police officers themselves to have all the shifts and all the patrols done by at least two people.

What I think will happen now - and I am sure the officers will be considering this - that when they have to answer calls on their patrol, I would expect and I would hope that the Constabulary for their own officers' sake will be very cautious on entering on their own, situations that are potentially dangerous for, I guess, both the public and the officer. And they will have to wait now for more backup. It will take more time to get more vehicles and patrol people to the scene of any calls that the Constabulary will have. And I doubt very much that this is going to save any money as the Minister said.

But we know from the Police Chiefs Association - who had a meeting here a year or so ago - that, I believe, in their report they mentioned something to the effect that with Hibernia coming on stream, Newfoundland will be ripe for crime. I believe these were the words that were reported they said. And yet we have the Minister responsible for policing in this Province signing an agreement with the Constabulary people that will see some forty less positions, I believe is the figure, over the next three years. In three years I guess if the Police Chiefs Association in Canada are close to being correct, over the next three years I guess the Hibernia situation will be heating up very much, and we will be reducing our policing in this Province rather than at least keeping it as it is. But probably what we will have to be doing is increasing it.

I hope they are wrong but they are certainly experts in their field. They have experience from other areas that experienced such large developments. So I would say that they are probably correct in what they have assumed. I would ask the Minister if he could review the decisions. One of the areas where the police officers are going to have extreme trouble - and I guess it must be one of the hardest situations for them to respond to - is when a police officer or more have to respond to family violence.

It must be a very difficult situation because when you go in that door, if you have to beat it down, if there is no answer or if it is open, when you go in that door you do not know what is going to be facing you; hopefully, it will be two people who have tried to calm dowm in the meantime just by the police being present there, but, I would expect that most often the police have to go in to a very hot situation, I would say might be a way to explain it Mr. Speaker, and now, with the decrease in the number of people patrolling, I guess it will take a little longer to get back up there so that more than one -

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

The hon. Member's time is up.

MR. R. AYLWARD: - officer will be able to go in to assess the situation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In response to the hon. Member's question, the hon. Member for Kilbride, I would like to say several things.

It is interesting to note first of all, that his opening comment is that we have blackmailed the association. It is an interesting attitude on labour relations when you work collectively with an association, which is in effect a union, when you are able to achieve an agreement between the two that somehow prevents layoffs and I think in a very effective manner that still preserves the essential nature of policing and in fact will lead to an enhanced professionalism in the force, that this hon. Member terms that type of productive negotiations blackmail.

I would think that if you coupled that with his comments on Bill 16 and his comments on the lack of labour presence and how that affected his attitude, that tells us a wealth as to his attitude on labour relations in the Province. So if the hon. Member considers that blackmail, I suggest to him that, that form of blackmail would do much better and would have done much better for the former administration in terms of their dealings with the unions in this Province. So, obviously, it is not blackmail, Mr. Speaker, it is something of which, as Minister and being part of that process, I am particularly proud and I am very glad that the association was so productive in helping us come to this resolution which avoided layoffs.

The hon. Member's points are not very clear. He talks first of all about security and he now says the experts in the country speak about patrols being safer to be done by at least two people. When he rose in the House the other day, I think the experts were the sociologists here in Newfoundland; now he seems to have expanded our variety of experts but I notice they are no better defined than sociologists - eminent or otherwise - in the Province, not that they do not have some expertise. But in suggesting that the experts in policing are the police, and the RCMP patrol this Province and police almost twice as many individuals as the RNC and they do so with one person patrols, obviously his point cannot be correct, because the RCMP are in no greater danger nor are they a greater safety hazard than the RNC. So obviously one person patrols are themselves nothing and have no bearing on the question of safety.

He does say we are going to save money. Well, we will see in the estimates. But I would like to add, and I say with some pride, that this is the first year in which the Department of Justice did not require a special warrant. I want to commend the officials of the Department who were able to achieve that in difficult financial times.

He mentions, as well, the difficulty in responding to family violence, and that is a proven fact. Most police officers will tell you that. And he says or suggests that there will be a decrease in the police response. I would like to inform him that the maximum number of vehicles we could have on the road with two person patrols were fifteen at night. And on many occasions we were not able to put that number on the road because of the two person requirement, and we were often down to ten or twelve. As a result of this we will, in effect, be able to put eighteen vehicles on the road. So we will be enhancing the response time rather than diminishing it.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, this is a very positive and productive measure. I think the Association itself will support it. In fact, this will not only enhance security, but also the professionalism of the force in the long term. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

MR. WARREN: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. When I sent my note to the Speaker today I said I was concerned about the answer the Premier gave me in respect to a question I asked him. Now for some unknown reason the Premier is not in his seat. And it is interesting to note -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation can be quiet for a minute - it is interesting to note the comments the Premier made today in response to my question. This is not the first time I have put a question on the Late Show and the Premier deliberately stayed out of the House. This is the second time the Premier -

MR. BAKER: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. WARREN: - deliberately stayed out of the House and therefore -

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

The hon. the President of Treasury Board on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The purpose of the Late Show is for a Member to express dissatisfaction with an answer received and to elaborate on the reason why he is dissatisfied and then listen while the answer is given. It is also improper to continually refer to and harp on the presence or absence of a Member in the House, especially when the Member then goes on to speak at great length about deliberate absence and so on. Mr. Speaker, that is totally out of order and I would ask Your Honour to look into this matter and advise the hon. gentleman that he cannot make such references.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

To that point of order the President of Treasury Board is quite correct that it is unparliamentary to refer to the absence of any Member in the House, and I ask the hon. Member for Torngat Mountains to withdraw it.

MR. WARREN: Thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker. I am sure I have no problem with withdrawing the word `deliberately' but I must say I find it quite unusual that on a number of occasions since this Government came to power the Premier, when he was requested to be on the Late Show because of a question I posed, he refused to attend. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I have no alternative -

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member is disregarding totally your instructions. He is continuing to say the same thing over and over again. I point out to Your Honour that that is not the purpose of the Late Show to start with, and I request that Your Honour advise the hon. Member to obey your instructions.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

To the point of order raised by the hon. President of Treasury Board, I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the remarks without qualifications.

MR. WARREN: I withdraw, Mr. Speaker, whatever I said. However, as my question was directed to the Premier for the Late Show I have no intention of debating it further and listening to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation respond. I withdraw my question.

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

MR. GILBERT: Mr. Speaker, we might as well use the time in view of the fact that the -

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

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I think Your Honour might want to recess the House to check this out, but I have a funny feeling if a Member stands up and serves notice that he is withdrawing his question for the Late Show, then there is nothing further to debate.

MR. BAKER: To that point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: To that point of order, the hon. the president of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: I agree with the Opposition House Leader. I did not understand that is what he was doing. He had already spoken for three minutes, and I understood he was simply not proceeding. He at no time said he was withdrawing the question, Mr. Speaker, as far as I know.

MR. RIDEOUT: To that point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. RIDEOUT: With two points of order from the Government House Leader and what has transpired since the Member sat down, three minutes have not passed on the clock yet. But the Member did say clearly as he was taking his seat, `I am withdrawing the question.' Now the question has been withdrawn and there is no question before the House, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

Yes, the hon. Member did withdraw the question. There is no question before the House at this point in time.

It now being Thursday, with no further debate I guess we will put the motion. It is moved and seconded that this House do now adjourn? Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt that motion?

All those in favour of the motion?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: I declare the motion lost. This House now stands recessed until 7:00 p.m.


 

April 11, 1991 (Night)      HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS        Vol. XLI  No. 27A


The House resumed at 7:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Lush): Order, please!

AN HON. MEMBER: Order 3.

MR. SPEAKER: Order 3, Committee of the Whole on a bill, "An Act Respecting Restraint Of Compensation In The Public Sector Of the Province". (Bill No. 16).

On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of the Whole, Mr. Speaker left the Chair.

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

Is the House ready for the question?

The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just want to have another few remarks on Bill 16. There are no labour leaders here again tonight I see, not a soul. But I did accomplish one thing by making the point, Mr. Chairman, I got the Premier on his feet today to try to justify breaking agreements with public servants in this Province.

Mr. Chairman, I had not planned on getting up here so quickly tonight, I do not have my notes in order.

MR. SIMMS: That is not true (inaudible) to start off.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I did want to get up here and start off, but I get so much pressure from my own colleagues here to watch my comments. I would like to say that in the last week or so I had a meeting with the President of the Nurses' Union, who are very concerned about what is happening to health care in this Province and are very concerned about the consequences of Bill 16 and what it is going to do to the nursing profession in this Province, Mr. Chairman.

We have about 3,800 nurses in the bargaining unit in this Province, as I understand it, Mr. Chairman, and from the union's point of view, or from what the union President told me, we have a very large group of nurses who feel extremely betrayed because of what the Government is doing in this Province with Bill 16.

Mr. Chairman, the nursing profession - we should be trying to encourage our nurses to stay around this Province. They are very educated people. There are some 200 nurses, I understand, coming out of the nursing schools every year in this Province, and this year, the option for the nurses who graduate in this Province will be recruiting programmes in Alberta, in Ontario and in Florida. Those are the only opportunities they seem to have, Mr. Chairman. They do not have the opportunity to stay around this Province, because the 600 or so nurses we presently have in the system are being laid off.

Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Health suggested to us that in accordance with the Budget and a part of Bill 16, the schools of nursing will be combined. The four schools of nursing, I believe, we now have, St. Clare's, the Grace, the university, and Western Memorial Hospital, will be combined to make one school of nursing. I found it rather surprising that the membership, the nurses union themselves, the people who provide the nursing services in this Province, have never been consulted on whether or not this would be a good move. I understand the Minister had some discussions with the people who operate the schools of nursing, but they did not consult with the nurses' union on whether or not this might be a good move.

Mr. Chairman, the nurses see the Budget and Bill 16 as being a great disadvantage to the rural areas of this Province. I guess, anyone in the Province who hears what the Minister of Health said about health care, especially in Placentia, Baie Verte and other districts, will know there is going to be a drastic down-grading in health services in this Province.

The nurses do not disagree with rationalism, but they disagree with the speed of this Government's move in rationalizing, and they definitely disagree with the approach the Government is taking in health care. It is their opinion that what the Government is doing with health care will be a total violation of the Canada Health Act, which is based on five principles, but the major violation that we are now going to bring into our health system in this Province is the violation of accessibility.

People are guaranteed by the Canada Health Act equal accessibility to health services in this country, and by closing hospitals like Baie Verte, it would be impossible for the people in that area to have a reasonable, accessible health system. Mr. Chairman, that is one of the main concerns of the nurses' union in this Province. They feel that we are putting the whole system in our Province in jeopardy.

The Government keeps asking for alternatives and what other people would have done or would do if they had to make some of these decisions. I do not think the alternatives are very hard to find. Mr. Chairman, there are small alternatives, and if you have a lot of small alternatives you will make a reasonable saving.

Newfoundland Information Services - I was talking to a construction worker in the Goulds in my district a little while ago. I asked him what he thought Newfoundland Information Services provided for him as a construction worker and the purpose of having a Newfoundland Information Service in this Province. And he asked me, what was Newfoundland Information Services and what did they do in this Province, because he had no idea.

I said, the main thing they did last year was they spent $513,000. He asked, 'On what did they spend it,' and I actually could not tell him. I said it was to hire a few highly paid public servants, or spin doctors, as I call them, political flunkies, maybe, but, Mr. Chairman, very highly paid public relations persons. He asked, `Do we have to close hospital beds in this Province in order to hire public relations people?' I said I did not think it was necessary, but obviously the Province must think it is necessary, because this year they increased the Budget again over what they had budgeted last year.

Now, in 1989, two years ago, when this Government took over, the Budget for Newfoundland Information Services was around $168,000. One of this Government's priorities is to increase Newfoundland Information Services from $168,000 to $513,000 spent last year. And, at the same time, their other priorities will be to close 450 hospital beds and to fire 2,100 public servants, that we know of. We know these figures are wrong, because the Minister of Education, himself has been out at least 60 per cent on his projections. I would expect that the Minister of Health is out probably a similar amount.

I am pretty well confident, knowing his record in his department, that the Minister of Transportation, will probably be out in his estimates - because he has been out in many estimates that he has made to date - especially when he presented yesterday in this House of Assembly a roads programme with sixty-eight new projects. At least sixty-three of them will go to Liberal districts, and his only argument is that we were there for seventeen years and the Liberal districts, at the time, got very little money, so they need a lot more money from now on. And the Member for Bellevue agrees with that.

Now, when you look at the projects and the districts that got money, that are Liberal districts now, twenty-five of the projects go to districts that were, for most of the last seventeen years, Tory districts - for most, but not all, not up until 1989; they were, at least half of that time, Tory districts. So you wouldn't expect they would need a lot of money, if the minister's argument holds true.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

There is altogether too much conversation. The general noise level is too high. The Chair cannot hear the hon. member. I wonder, if hon. members have to confer or meet, could they do so in an appropriate place.

MR. BAKER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the President of Treasury Board, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the fact that I believe the hon. member is taking advantage of this House, in that he is not even talking about the bill under debate.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. BAKER: He, I believe, is talking about some list that has nothing to do with the labour legislation or the wage freeze or pay equity, and these are the things we are supposed to be talking about. So the member is being totally irrelevant to the debate. Mr. Chairman, I suggest he be reminded of this, and I also suggest that perhaps if he were relevant and saying something worth listening to, everybody would listen to him.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. RIDEOUT: To that point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, to the point of order.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly, to that point of order. The Government House Leader is doing nothing but trying to disrupt my colleague, who is making a fine speech.

Quoting page 206 of Beauchesne, paragraph 693: the debate "on Clause 1... is normally wide ranging, covering all the principles and details of the bill."

Now, Mr. Chairman, what have we seen in this House since debate began under this procedure? We saw the Minister of Development get up a couple of nights ago and spend fifteen minutes talking about the record or the lack thereof of the NDP Government in Ontario. We saw the Premier get up today and spend fifteen minutes talking about minutes, seconds, hours, and days of House sittings, going back almost before Confederation. So the mood, mode, and precedents have been set, and my colleague should be allowed to proceed to talk about whatever he likes to talk about, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

To the point of order. Actually, there is really no point of order, but I ask the hon. member to continue and get to the point he is trying to make with regard to Bill 16.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your ruling and I will try to make the argument and relate what I am discussing now to Bill 16. One quite easy way to relate to Bill 16 is to say that the $25.5 million that will be spent on these road projects will have to be administered in some way or other by public servants in this Province, and the public servants in this Province certainly are being affected drastically by this Bill 16.

Mr. Chairman, if we do not have enough public servants in place to administer the $25.5 million, we will have other occasions, such as what happened last year in the Ossokmanuan bridge, when we throw away $1.3 million on the slip of a pen or by not presenting contracts for people on time. And that, Mr. Chairman, could have kept open the Placentia hospital and it could have saved the Port aux Basques hospital; it could have looked after the Old Perlican hospital and it might have kept the clinic open in Come-by-Chance.

Well, Mr. Chairman, if we have a slip up, if, on every $6 million in this contract, we lose $1 million out of the $25 million-or-so, we will have another $4 million or $5 million lost this year because of public servants being blamed for the incompetence of the administration of this Government. Now, Mr. Chairman, I think that would be very relevant to Bill 16, which is going to claw back -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Already?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Chairperson. Yes, that was a rousing speech by our colleague, the Member for Kilbride.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS. VERGE: He has made many sensational speeches here lately.

MR. SIMMS: Certainly sensational. Did you hear that, Bob?

MS. VERGE: Mr. Chairman, if this Bill 16 really were just about restraining spending by the Government, if it were about controlling wages of public employees, then I do not think we would still be here objecting to it. But what it is really about is breaching collective agreements that the Government negotiated or put out to arbitration and that the Government signed. It is about reneging on contracts and it is about discriminating against women. And it is because of those objectionable aspects of this bill that we are still here vigorously opposing it, hoping that perhaps the Premier and his henchmen will have twangs of conscience and realize that, as difficult as circumstances are, there is no excuse for breaking faith with their employees or the citizens of the Province. There is no excuse for penalizing women.

Mr. Chairman, the fact that we have economic difficulties is not disputed; why we have the economic difficulties, perhaps we can debate, and I would submit that the Wells Administration has contributed to the present troubles through their poor management over the last two years. Now, the Premier and his followers over there keep saying that they inherited a crushing amount of debt from the previous administration. Now, we have illustrated that when the 1989 debt is related to provincial production, to GDP, and when it is related to earned income, it is actually a much lower and more manageable level of debt than what the Smallwood administration left in 1972. When you allow for inflation, I say to the Member for Pleasantville, and when you compare apples and apples, when you compare the 1972 debt with the 1989 debt, you see that the 1989 debt represented a mammoth improvement on the part of the two PC administrations which managed the Province in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Nevertheless, Chairperson, the 1989, 1988 and 1987 debt of this Province were well known. They were facts documented in the government publications, in the Budget documents that were distributed in each of those years, and, presumably, the current Premier, then serving with a $50,000 a year salary supplement as Leader of the Opposition, read those documents. So the current Premier and other Liberal candidates in 1989 knew all about the Province's debt when they made their campaign promises to build universities in each region of the Province, to open more hospital beds, to operate hospital beds to meet whatever demand existed, and to create more jobs so that mothers' sons could come home from the mainland and so some poor mother on the St. Barbe coast would get on her knees and kiss the Premier's feet. Because that is what the Premier promised when he said if he were elected there would be real change. The real change that he pledged was more spending on health and education, more hospitals and hospital beds, more universities and university campuses, more community colleges, more services for the people. And he also promised pay equity.

Mr. Chairman, what a betrayal! In the space of two years, the Premier has gone from ignoring all the economic warning signals, from disregarding all the advice to restrain spending, from putting aside the report of the Senior Expenditure Review Committee which had worked over the last couple of years of the 'eighties, spending recklessly, offering 20 plus per cent salary increases to nurses whom he said had a special case, to other public sector workers, up to a week before his Minister of Finance brought down the Budget, to abruptly put on the brakes. He cancelled the agreements for pay and benefits increases in 1991-1992, wiped out the oral, written and contractual promises for pay equity retroactive to April 1, 1988, closed hospitals, closed hospital beds in the regional hospitals that he wants to serve wider catchment areas, closed community college campuses, turning them loose to the locals and the feds, and basically saying that he had no choice.

Well, the Premier and the Government had lots of choices. They could have managed prudently over the past couple of years, they could have been honest and up-front with their public service unions, they could have had frank discussions with the unions aimed at saving public service jobs. They could stop wasting $44 million a year on the Economic Recovery Commission, supposedly to create jobs, and redirect that money into preserving jobs and preserving vital services. They could cut out the waste that is being perpetrated in the name of public relations, in the name of protocol, in the name of aggrandizement for ministers. There are many options that the Government could choose other than the reprehensible features of Bill 16, the reneging on contracts and the penalizing of women.

Another option, of course, for the Government is to restrain spending in a more gradual way, to develop a medium to long-term plan for managing the affairs of the Province. Perhaps the most glaring deficiency of all, apart from integrity, on the part of the Premier and the administration, has been a vision or a plan. The Premier and the Government have lurched from one extreme to the other. They have swung from the extreme of promising to build new universities, or university campuses, in each region of the Province, two short years ago, to under-funding the one university we have to the extent that the university has had to sever Memorial University Extension Service, the university's arm in rural parts of the Province.

Chairperson, the discrimination against women that is inherent in the rollback of pay equity is not only unfair but, in my opinion, as I have said before, amounts to a contravention of Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Now, so far, the Premier has ignored my letter and my statements, the opinions of union leaders and of legal advisors to unions, and the Premier, who holds himself out as a great constitutional legal authority, is persisting in forcing this discriminatory measure on the people of our Province. Chairperson, I am confident that if the Premier persists and proceeds to recklessly disregard legal advice, he will one day, and I hope it is one day soon, be checked by the courts, because the Premier, as high and mighty as he has become, is still not above the law and when the courts have a chance to rule on Bill 16, I am confident that the courts will strike down, will render null and void, the discriminatory features of this legislation. There is only one way around that kind of court ruling and that would be the use by the Government of the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution and the Premier has given us assurances that he would never use the notwithstanding clause. Of course, earlier, he had expressed his distaste for the Government of Quebec's invoking of the notwithstanding clause to enforce the sign language law which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled was unconstitutional. Consistent with that, when I asked him in this House a week or two ago, he did promise that he would never stoop to using the notwithstanding clause. I do not know if we can really trust him, Chairperson, because he has violated promises and even written contracts before. He violated his promise to enforce pay equity. He violated his collective agreements with the public service unions to provide for wage and benefits increases in 1991-92 and to provide pay equity adjustments back to April 1, 1988. So, a mere statement in the House of Assembly that he promises never to use the notwithstanding clause may not be worth much, and that is the sad reality of how this Premier, and this Government, have deteriorated. They began with high hopes on the part of the electorate. I would think all the people of the Province, even the 48 per cent who voted PC and the 5 per cent who voted other, in other words, the 53 per cent of the population who did not vote Liberal in 1989, even they held out hope for this new real change administration, because we all want the Province to prosper. We all want, at least I hope we want, injustices eradicated. We want inequities removed, or at least narrowed, but now, after two years, Chairperson, people have lost hope. People are discouraged in a way I have never seen before in my lifetime. The unemployment record is 5 per cent higher than it was two years ago; more and more people every day are giving up on making their future in Newfoundland and Labrador and making plans to leave for prospects elsewhere, and, Chairperson, the people who are leaving, by and large, are people who are bright, talented, energetic, people who can get jobs elsewhere. So, we are losing now, among our most able and dynamic people, people who would be able to help our Province prosper.

Among the inequities that exist in the Province that are being widened instead of narrowed, are the gaps in well-being between the rural and urban parts of the Province. Chairperson, this Administration is turning its back on the rural areas; I have said before, they seem to be withdrawing life supports from some rural centres such as the Baie Verte Peninsula and the South West corner of the Island.

They are closing whole hospitals and, in the case of the Baie Verte Peninsula, they are going to close a hospital and, over an indefinite period of time, renovate the structure and convert it into a chronic care centre; well, Chairperson, the architect's plans are not even done for that conversion. God knows how long it is going to take, I would estimate at least two years if not three years. In the meantime, there is no hospital service, acute or chronic, for the 10,000 people on the Baie Verte Peninsula.

Now, they are expected to travel all the way to either Grand Falls or Corner Brook for procedures as routine and ordinary as childbirth. Chairperson, the members opposite, instead of apologizing for the state to which they have reduced this Province, instead of expressing dismay and concern and regret at the decisions they are taking, are actually bragging about the choices they have made.

The Minister of Health smiles as he meets a delegation from Placentia, as he tells them that he is abandoning their hospital and rejecting their sensible proposal for continued operation of acute care beds there; the Minister of Health is actually telling people that he is going to improve the health care system, albeit spending -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MS. VERGE: - less money, albeit closing hospitals, albeit shutting beds.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Chairperson.

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

MR. POWER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few comments to make on Bill 16. I am here to talk to the Member for Pleasantville about his meeting last night, where he was somewhat harassed by some of the members of NAPE and CUPE, but he tells me they weren't too bad; they were reasonable and questioning and voicing concerns and, even if they were reasonable and polite, they were still very upset about the lack of trust between this Government and labour unions, between the betrayal, the breaking of collective agreements and those kinds of things and I am sure that all the members of the Liberal caucus will see those kinds of questions -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: You cannot hear me?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: I would not want one of my constituents not to be able to hear me, whatever else, in any form! Is that okay, now? These microphones are not the best, sometimes.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. POWER: Well, when I am preaching to the converted, sometimes it does not matter if you are heard or not, I suppose.

Mr. Chairman, on Bill 16, obviously, the labour unions in this Province are going to harass, in certain forms, the Liberal members of caucus, ministers and the Premier; they are going to get their point across, and even though my good friend from Kilbride has, I guess, ruffled some of their feathers in the last day or so, the reality is that labour unions will protest in their own format, in their own fashion, in their own time, and I am sure, that knowing some of the leadership of NAPE, in particular, they are not going to let this thing just slide by and allow collective agreements to be broken, allow wage rollbacks and freezes to be done to them without them having some input.

I know that when we, as a Government, imposed a wage freeze without breaking any collective agreements back in the mid-1980s, certainly, we paid a price for not dealing with the unions in the fashion they chose or would like to have been dealt with. We paid a price for that, and I am sure the Liberal members opposite, in due course - I think the unions have changed their process somewhat and instead of being very vocal and having one large protest on one given day and then having it forgotten about, now they are a little bit more deliberate and will take a much longer term approach to this. And certainly, one of their objectives to change this Government and convert it into a different government after the next provincial election is one of their main objectives. You will see them doing that in many different ways over the next little while. Some of it may not be that exciting, it may not make the front pages, but over time, I am sure they will be able to nibble away at some of the support labour gave to this Government in the 1989 election. That support will not be there for this Government in 1993 or 1994, whenever the election is held, and some members opposite will lose their seats because of the way they have dealt with labour. Obviously, that is a problem they will have to deal with, I guess, from our point of view in the Opposition.

Again, listening to the Premier today, you would almost think there is no function for an Opposition in this Province anymore. He seems to think that if we talk too much and keep the House open, we are only doing it to be belligerent, to prevent normal legislation from taking place when the Premier talks about what we did on interim supply or talks about Bill 16, the fact that we have held up some of this legislation. Well, that is the function of an Opposition. Simply because it does not suit the Premier's purpose or the minister's purpose in any given day and they would prefer to be doing other things and travelling throughout the Province or the country, those things are not our concerns. Our concern, as an Opposition, is to do the best we can to represent the people who are not happy with any particular piece of legislation, to make recommendations for change, to suggest different ways for doing things, and certainly, with Bill 16, we can make a lot of suggestions on how to change that type of legislation.

We suggest, as did the news article yesterday in "The Evening Telegram", that maybe there was a better way of negotiating with the unions. I know that in some of the union shops in this city when this was being discussed late last fall in the hospital and nursing home sector, a lot of the nursing home people were trying to find ways to prevent layoffs. They even said in some shops, they would actually take two or three weeks without pay, actually take a rollback themselves voluntarily so that their co-workers would not lose their jobs. That, obviously, was never really negotiated with the Government, or if it was, it was never considered fully. It just gives some credence to our arguments and the arguments of the labour movement that this bill was not very well thought out, that there were substantial decisions made by Government without due input from any of its own back bench, from any of the labour groups in this Province, and those are the kinds of things that allow governments to make mistakes.

The questions that I asked here in the Legislature one day about the contract of the service employees in the hospital and nursing home sectors - we never did get a satisfactory answer from either one of the ministers as to why that was going to happen. But, in effect, you have food service workers in some hospitals receiving a wage increase on April 1, they are going to receive another wage increase on November 1, and their counterparts, who do exactly the same, identical jobs in other hospitals are not receiving an increase. That is not fairness and balance. That is not the way a labour act should be drafted or designed. I just think it was an oversight, something the Government rushed into, did not have very well planned or thought out and ended up making a mistake. Those mistakes do get made in government sometimes, and in that case, government has to be man enough or not so proud as to be able to stand up and say, `Yes, we made a mistake, we have to bring in some amendments. Yes, we have to rectify the situation.'

I know, in some of the hospitals in this Province, we are getting calls saying, `Look, how come those workers are getting a raise and I am not getting a raise?' A lot of them are saying, `Where is the fairness and balance this Government talked about?' Again, certainly, in the hospital sector that I am getting to be fully aware of, there are so many letters passing through our office, some of them signed, some of them not signed, some of them signed by a large number of people. I saw one the other day, a letter from ten or twelve nurses in a neonatal unit at one of our hospitals here, who are extremely concerned about the quality of health care, who are simply saying they are understaffed now and the kind of work they do has not been done. Some of it is preventive and some of it is very, very important when you have young children being born with some kinds of diseases and now they are not going to get the correct kind of care. That is not why a lot of those persons in the labour movement who voted for this Government in 1989, voted for Government. They voted for Government to get better health care, better services and, in effect, it is getting much worse. Certainly, in Bill 16, when you look at some of the things that have happened - I saw a letter the other day from someone in the Springdale hospital about a program that was there for handicapped adults and that is now being moved to the Old Perlican hospital. Those kinds of programs are going to make it very, very difficult for some of those persons to be able to get good, adequate health care fairly close to home, and they are now going to have to be travelling all over the Province. It just makes it very, very difficult on families, and on the individuals, obviously, who are sick. It is not the right kind of system. There could have been a better system. As I mentioned, in at least one nursing home in this city, there were serious discussions between members of the staff that they were actually willing to do three weeks of work for no pay, absolutely no pay, simply so that everybody would keep their jobs. Of course, it was not just the jobs that many of those nurses and nursing assistants were concerned about, it was keeping the quality of care. That is the point that is very important and that is being lost in some of this. There are alternatives that could have been taken other than Bill 16, but the President of Treasury Board, the Minister of Labour, and the Minister of Finance were not interested in listening. They were interested in making decisions, they were interested in the bottom-line, interested in saving a certain number of dollars to give them a certain magnitude of borrowing programs, so that their fiscal agents down in the United States, in New York, would not cut back our credit rating. But there was a better way to do it. There was a way to do it with consultation, a way to do it with negotiations, and there was a way to get the workers of this Province to share the workload, to share the concerns they have for sick people without necessarily doing all the damage, but this Government decided to do it the simplest and easiest way which was to use the force and the power of their majority in this Legislature to do exactly what they want. That is a very, very serious problem because it has never been done before in this Legislature, certainly not in the sixteen years I have been here, and now that it has been done once how often can you do it again? Who, really, is going to believe the President of Treasury Board when he gets up and praises up a certain group in this Province, saying, `They really deserve the wage increases, we are delighted to have this settlement, we are delighted to sign these agreements, we are delighted to solve this labour problem,' knowing in their hearts and souls that maybe six months or twelve months from then, they will be here in this Legislature having their wages rolled back and having completely destroyed an agreement that was duly signed and negotiated. That is one of the problems that the President of Treasury Board and the Premier and other ministers have not considered. How do you bargain in good faith anymore? How does anyone trust this Government to be able to live up to their word? There was a day in Newfoundland when you did not have to have anything in writing. You made an agreement between honourable people, you shook hands, and that was it. The deal was done and was lived by, the terms and conditions on both sides, and that was all that was to it. But now, even when you get something in writing, when you get a Minister of the Crown, or several Ministers of the Crown, signing labour agreements, all of a sudden the signatures do not mean anything, and that makes it very, very difficult on our labour unions. As I said, the labour unions will certainly make this Government pay a price in due course, and if they are not surprised with the degree of protest so far, they will be surprised with the degree of protest by public sector unions before their mandate is up.

Mr. Chairman, just let me say a couple of other things about Bill 16. There are parts of it that are simply unfair. The food service workers that I just mentioned, who are getting increases this year, and their counterparts who are not, how do they live with part eight, the notwithstanding clause of this bill? - copied from the Constitution in part - but the `notwithstanding any other act', these persons are never allowed to catch up, they are never allowed to make up for what they lost this year. There are going to be some food service workers in some of our hospitals who are always going to make more money. Every two weeks when they get paid, they will have more money to take home than their counterparts in certain other hospitals. It is very unfair. And if it is unfair, then an amendment should be brought in to make sure that is rectified and that those workers, in particular, should be allowed, somewhere down the road, to catch up on the money they have lost.

Section 9 of the Act, prevents any agreements from being retroactive. Section 9 (1) and Section 9 (2) says nothing can be retroactive. Section 10 of the Act goes on to say that this bill was retroactive to March 31, 1991. It is so inconsistent that it defies logic, but then, all of a sudden, because the Province is in some need, because the Province has fiscal problems - and I would be one of the first to acknowledge that we do have some very serious fiscal problems in this Province. We have serious problems with a lot of people spread out over a lot of areas, who demand and require certain services, and we do not have all the money to do it. But I still think there is a better way to do it than the very arbitrary way in which this Government did Bill 16, and somewhere along the way, it should be changed. If it is not changed, as I said, then labour unions in this Province might as well give up collective agreements.

Now, I said the other night, although it does not get much attention and nobody listens, I really begin to wonder if this Government is not very anti-union and does not believe that unions are the source of part of our economic problems. It is a very commonly held belief of many small "c" conservatives in this Province, many of the business people who support, in a financial way, the Progressive Conservative Party. They support the Liberal Party, or certainly did in some reasonable way in the last election campaign. They probably do not support the NDP, but certainly support the two major parties in this Province. And you could not believe the number of persons who have said to me over my political lifetime, `When are you going to do something with the unions? When are you going to stop the unions? When are you going to take control away from them and give it back to the entrepreneurs and business people?' I have a funny feeling that maybe the Minister of Finance, the President of Treasury Board and maybe the Premier are listening to some of those very key industrialists and entrepreneurs we have who are saying, `Boys, take on the unions, do something with them and that will make Mr. House's job a lot easier in developing new projects in this Province, creating new employment.' And if that is the objective of this Government, if that is why part of Bill 16 was not discussed fully with the union people, why it was a very arbitrary, one-sided decision, then, I say to this Government, they are definitely on the wrong path. It is not the right way to go. We have to find a system in a modern civilized world of dealing with our unionized people. Unionized assistance is simply a coming together of persons with common needs and objectives, and if you do not do it, then, as I said, our society will not be better, we will have a lot more work stoppages, a lot more labour problems in our society which could only mean less productivity, make us less competitive and cause us to have higher unemployment rates.

When you look at the abusive power in Bill 16, when you look at the fact that this Legislature is rolling back something, which should never have been allowed to happen, the bargaining in bad faith, not dealing with unions up front, not looking for alternatives to laying off these vast numbers of people, I can only remember the article in a paper from New Brunswick that said one of the reasons they had wage roll backs was so that they would not have such large amounts of lay-offs. They would not do what was done in Newfoundland; however, with Newfoundland in the middle of a recession, we have to take the worst of all sides of it.

I guess my concluding remark, Mr. Chairman, at least on this part of the discussion, is what I have said many, many times, that Bill 16 is an unfair piece of legislation, but it is required because the Budget, itself, was such an unfair document that took such great strains to make sure that all of the political, all of the public, all of the fiscal pain had to be on the backs of the workforce of this Province. That was wrong, the Budget was wrong and Bill 16 is wrong. One comes after the other, and I just hope that somewhere down the road, the President of Treasury Board changes his negotiating pattern or we are going to have a lot of labour unrest in this Province. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to take a couple of minutes to finish what I was saying about how this Government decided on the roads contract for this year. I argued there a few minutes ago the relevance of deciding this, because within Bill 16, the administration of the roads contracts, obviously, will be the responsibility of the people who are having their wages rolled back and their pay equity taken away from them, with no opportunity to make up for the rollbacks in the future. I wonder is that going to so decrease morale that not enough attention will be paid to these contracts for $25.5 million, that will be left.

But the Minister argues that most of the sixty-eight projects, except for five or six, I believe, are going to Liberal districts, because the PCs were in power for seventeen years and there was never any money spent in the Liberal districts; yet, when you go over the list, Mr. Chairman, you will find that twenty-five of the sixty-eight projects are in districts represented for many of those seventeen years by PC members. So, obviously, if we were as politically blatant as the minister says, these districts would not need a big lot of money. Furthermore, if you want to look at the districts that were represented for the full seventeen years by PC members, you will find that twenty-three of the projects are in those districts.

So the minister's argument that he had to spend all of this money in the Liberal districts because they were neglected for seventeen years kind of looks pale when you see, out of the sixty-eight projects, forty-eight that are all in Liberal districts now which were at least part or most of the time over the last seventeen years, Tory districts. And it was into these that we were pumping the money.

Now, I see that the District of Harbour Grace had a couple of projects here. I understand, and I congratulate the member for getting the work for his district, I have no problem with that. He worked very hard at it, I am sure, and he convinced the minister that it was necessary. But if there were a district considered or accused quite often of being a very political district while the PCs were in office, I guess Harbour Grace would be the district that got a lot of money while the PCs were in power. I know, Upper Island Cove and that area got quite a bit of money during that time, and yet, we have projects going into that district at this present time.

Mr.Chairman, I wonder was Benoit's Cove ever represented in the past seventeen years by a PC member? I wonder was King's Cove in Bonavista Bay ever represented by PCs for the last seventeen years? - probably all of the seventeen years that we were in power, I would say. The district of Bonavista South was represented by Tories. So, using the minister's argument again, that district should certainly never get any money, no more money than the districts of Kilbride or Grand Falls. But we have a project here for upgrading and paving of a road in the King's Cove area. So the minister's arguments ring fairly hollow when you do an in-depth study of the projects that are being announced. Summerford, I would say, was represented for most or all of the seventeen years by a PC member. It happens to be in the Premier's district now, I believe. So it is understandable why Summerford is going to get three kilometers of paving on the main road this summer, because it is a part of the Premier's district. It has nothing to do with being represented all these years by Liberals and never getting any money.

MR. SIMMS: How about Windsor?

MR. R. AYLWARD: Here is Harvey Street in Harbour Grace, Route 70, three kilometers. That is one for Harbour Grace. There are more in the Harbour Grace area. Now, here is Hopeall. I think Hopeall is in the district of Trinity - Bay de Verde. Hopeall, as far as I know, was represented for quite some time by Jim Reid. So, obviously, they must have had some money put into there if it was represented by PCs. I am not sure if that was for the full seventeen years. Before Mr. Reid, I think Fred Rowe was there, and they only got half of it. So maybe it is not totally unjustified that Hopeall would get new concrete on its bridge.

MR. SIMMS: Represented now by a fine member.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Well, yes. If any member on that side of the House deserves to get money to represent his district after being completely gutted by the redesignation of his hospital, the member representing Hopeall should have had that money. And he should get more money, enough to keep his hospital in place.

I did not look at the district of Bellevue. I know that district was only represented by us for a little while, although quite a bit of money went into it in the couple of years that the member sat on the Tory side of the House. But I will not even go into that district because maybe they do deserve some money.

Mr. Chairman, Abraham's Cove, still a Tory district, is one of the few that is going to get money; replacement of Bailey bridge over the Codroy - now, Mr. Chairman, this is one that the member for Codroy might listen to. The argument goes right to pieces when you look at this project here, when the minister says that the monies were given out because the districts were never represented by PCs and they never received any money for the past seventeen years.

Now, I see one here for replacement of a bridge on the Codroy River. Mr. Chairman, in the time I served in this House, enough bridges were being built in that area to span half-way across Bell Island or probably a bit further and I don't say they weren't done on a political basis, I don't argue that at all, but you cannot say this one is not being done on a political basis because there was more pavement, more black top, more concrete poured in that district of Codroy, while -

MR. SIMMS: They were saying it over there, they said it (inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: - Oh, yes, they would accuse the minister at the time that he was getting all the money for his own district. Mr. Chairman, that was one I did not even have marked, so right now we have forty-nine out of sixty-eight projects that are in former Tory districts.

MR. SIMMS: How much in Eagle River?

MR. R. AYLWARD: And if the Member for Burin - Placentia West wants to paint something on my back, maybe he should get something else to paint it on with, Mr. Chairman. I cannot turn around. There is nobody up in the galleries again tonight, as I complained every time I spoke. There is still nobody up in the galleries to see anything on my back.

What other districts might we have? - Campbellton. Now, I know Campbellton was represented at least on two occasions, there was a minor gap in the seventeen years that Freeman White was there, but Campbellton was one of the districts that certainly was represented by PCs for most of the time, so there should not be any great reason to be spending money in that PC district even though it is represented by a very capable member now. The member, I am sure, worked extremely hard to get this money, and I am sure he did not go to the minister and say this district was neglected over the last seventeen years because it was always a Liberal district, it was not, Mr. Chairman; he went to the Minister and said: I have to have some work done in my district to save my political hide, that is what he said, plain and simple.

Every member over there says that to every minister, and that is the answer that should be. So, he wound up with repairs to two bridges on route 340 at Campbellton - which are necessary, I do not disagree that they are necessary. They had to be done and he worked hard to get them done. I think he might have worked very hard.

Do we have any more, I wonder? Isle aux Morts Road. Where is Isle aux Morts?

MR. SIMMS: In the LaPoile district.

MR. R. AYLWARD: In LaPoile. LaPoile was represented part of the time by Tory members, but not the whole time. I think, over the seventeen years, Steve Neary was there for a while. Al Evans was there for quite some time, as was Cal Mitchell, so it was only a little gap, and we built new hospitals in that area. We spent a lot of money in the LaPoile district when I was in Cabinet, and Isle aux Morts has money approved for approximately 3.3 kilometres of resurfacing this year.

Mr. Chairman, we have `replacement of guard rail' in various locations in Bay of Islands. Now, I wonder was Bay of Islands ever represented by a PC in the last seventeen years? I know Luke Woodrow was there for quite some time, and I know Ted Blanchard was there for one term, so, Mr. Chairman, the only reason we would be spending money in Bay of Islands is because it is another project for the Premier's district, to keep him happy for a while.

There is another here for Island Pond Brook, Carbonear. Carbonear was represented, I know, for some time, by a PC member. I do not know who was there before - oh, yes, Rod Moores was there for a while. Maybe there was not a big lot of money spent in that district until Milton Peach took it over. I am not sure, but there would be good reason why it would not be spent in that district, Mr. Chairman.

Perry's Cove Road: Now where is Perry's Cove Road, I wonder? What district would that be in? Oh, that is in Victoria, Carbonear, another for the Carbonear district, Mr. Chairman, that will get some money. Maybe they deserve it.

Mr. Chairman, the new bay road and Grenfell Heights are up for grabs. I am not sure in which district they are, maybe the district of Exploits, it could very well be. I know it was announced by the Member for Grand Falls, because the Member for Exploits is always very slow off the mark.

MR. SIMMS: (Inaudible) promised (inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: Yes, and the Member for Grand Falls delivered. He, unlike the Premier and the Cabinet, delivers on his promises. He does not make idle promises, and he got that. That district again was represented for most of the seventeen years by a PC member. So, there would not have been a great reason if we had put all the money that we said we did, into it.

Spaniard's Bay: The town of Spaniard's Bay has so me money - 6.4 kilometres, Country Road. Again, the Member for Harbour Grace has done a good job for his district. Mr. Chairman, this is another project where certainly, that district had to be represented by Liberals for the past seventeen years. But, Mr. Chairman, there we see another project.

I do not know if the members opposite went over - St. Phillips was represented by both Tories and Liberals for a while, so maybe three kilometres of road might be justified, the Tolt Road, which is in the District of Mount Scio, as far as I know.

Mr. Chairman, there are other projects, considering the minister's argument, that should not have had any money spent on them this year.

Placentia: Spend money on the lift bridge in Placentia. That is probably very necessary, but, as far as I know, Placentia was represented for quite some time by Bill Patterson, so, if the Tories spend all their money in Tory districts that would be an area where you would not expect money would be needed, because it was spent for seventeen years in that district and the Minister suggests that you do not need to spend money in Tory districts. That is why there was very little money spent in the districts represented by these MHAs.

Yet, Fogo was a Liberal district for the twelve years I was in there, except when Beaton Tulk was knocked off by a much more powerful and better member for the district, who even got some money out of the miserly Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. But, Mr. Chairman, if you take the minister's argument fully, the Member for Fogo should have had ten times the money. I do not know if there was a big lot of money spent in Fogo district while we were there because we were not spending money in Liberal districts but the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, I give him credit, did spend a little bit of money in Fogo. He had to put up a show somehow, so what he did was pick an area - I do not know if you could find an area in the Fogo District that voted heavily Liberal the last time. I visited there at one time and I did not see very many Liberal signs.

AN HON. MEMBER: Lumsden.

MR. R. AYLWARD: No, he did not spend it in Lumsden. But he tried to find an area that voted Liberal to spend the money.

Now we have another project here for repairs on a section of road in the Codroy Valley. Mr. Chairman, another area, again a second project in the Codroy area, the district that had the most transportation spending that I know of in the seventeen years of Tory government. Certainly, in the four or five of the years that I was in Cabinet, there was a lot of money and a lot of pavement and a lot of concrete put in that district. So that district certainly should not have had money.

Bridgeport, Moreton's Harbour, represented by Tories and Liberals over the last years, might be reasonably justified. Another here is New Melbourne/New Chelsea. That area was again represented by Jim Reid, I think. It is in Trinity - Bay de Verde. Mr. Reid was a very good member at the time, so I would imagine there was no need for money to be spent in that area. Yet, we have, and rightfully so. The member representing the area worked hard and needs all the help he can get, because the Premier took away his hospital. He is going to have to spend a lot more money out there to smooth over the damage done by taking away the hospital, or re-assigning the duties of the hospital.

Blanche Brook, Minnesota Drive in Stephenville. Now, for part of the time I have been in here, the -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Already? By leave?

MR. BAKER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Government House Leader, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: I was wondering, Mr. Chairman, for the sake of information, if the hon. member just speaking has anything to say about the bill we are supposed to be debating. I wonder about the relevance of this exercise.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Just briefly, to the point of order. I mean, it is the same point of order. The Government House Leader has raised this now four or five times and the rulings have been consistent. I am sure Your Honour would not want to deviate or does not need to recess. But, I mean, clearly, the member, himself has explained on the three or four times he has been rudely interrupted by the Government House Leader, how the relevance is there. It is pretty clear, an excellent explanation, too, I think I might add. There is no point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Mr. Chairman, seeing there was an intervening speaker, now, I guess I can carry on for another fifteen minutes, and finish.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. R. AYLWARD: I guess I will be on the new clock?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Oh, to the point of order, alright.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. member, at the beginning of his speech, did indicate that there was some relevance to the bill. I guess the previous Chairman ruled that it was in order. I would say that probably it is still in order.

The hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

AN HON. MEMBER: We have a member on his feet who wishes to speak.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I have already recognized the hon. the Member for Mount Pearl.

MR. WINDSOR: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman. My apologies, sir, I did not think - I have to say I am a little bit nervous with my friend from Pleasantville sitting behind me while I am speaking. I would rather have him over there where I can draw a bead on him.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) not very fussy about the grants.

MR. WINDSOR: One of my weaker moments, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to speak for just a few moments on this piece of legislation. I spoke last week on the six-month hoist resolution. I think I made the point then that really what we are talking about here is the breach of trust of the Government. I think, what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are mostly concerned about, is the breach of trust, confidence, they had in this Government. The promises put forward to them have not been fulfilled and they now have no expectation, in the near future, of having those promises fulfilled. I think, one of my hon. colleagues quoted the Premier today as saying it could be five to ten years before we can expect a significant improvement in the unemployment situation.

We talked a great deal about relevancy. My hon. friend was, I think, making some very excellent and relevant points. There is very little that is not relevant to this piece of legislation. We are talking about labour across this Province in the public service and the impact it will have on every aspect of life in this Province.

A couple of hon. gentlemen opposite, when they spoke, talked about - they have not yet talked about the impact on labour and the breach of trust with labour. I don't think I have heard anyone over there really try to defend the particular piece of legislation, other than to say `We had to bring it in because we did not have any money.' Well, again, I am going to try to make a few points about the Budget and exactly how it is we got into the financial position we are in. I am not going to make raw political comments about the incompetence of the Minister of Finance, that has been well established. But, Mr. Chairman, I want to talk about the Budget and some of the points that have been made by hon. gentlemen opposite. There is a rationale for bringing in this really revolutionary - not a good word -

AN HON. MEMBER: Unprecedented.

MR. WINDSOR: Unprecedented, for sure, is better terminology.

- unprecedented piece of legislation. I pointed out last week, as well, that indeed, we saw some wage restraint programmes back during the previous administration, but they were done honourably. They were honourable in that we honoured the collective agreements that we had signed and restraint came into effect at the end of those collective agreements. What we are seeing now, Mr. Chairman, is a breach of trust, a breach of contract, and I think that is what we really should be concerned about here, that no longer can people expect this Government to honour a contract duly signed by Her Majesty's Government.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Finance I believe, said, one of the major problems was that provincial revenues were drastically down. Now, one could ask why were they down, what was the cause of it? The obvious answer I could make is, it is because of the economic policies of this Government; obviously, they have not worked. I have been saying for weeks that we passed to this Government a surplus situation and they very quickly turned it into the most serious deficit Budget we have ever seen. You really have to look at the Budget, Mr. Chairman, to say, Where did we lose all of this money if, indeed, we did. So, I started to compare last year's figures with the revised figures from last year's Budget at the end of the year, with those estimated. The first one on Statement Two, Mr. Chairman, if hon. gentlemen want to follow, the the Department of Summary, Current and Related Revenues. We see that the first item is retail sales tax, one of the major items of fund-raising for our Government. And retail sales tax was down last year $35 million from what was estimated. The question is, Why was retail sales tax down? Obviously, it was because the economy was weak. Consumer confidence was down, so they were not spending. If they are not spending, they are not paying retail sales tax. Unemployment was up, so people who are not working do not have disposable incomes and they are not spending, so retail sales tax was down; yet, personal income tax was up by $21 million. They lost $35 million on retail sales tax and picked up $21 million on personal income tax. So they are only out $14 million. Then, you look at the gasoline tax. We know the minister had sneaked in an extra percentage the year before, he said he announced it over two years; that came into effect last year. They picked up $3.2 million there, so now we are down to $11 million, Mr. Chairman, and we can go on down through. Corporate income tax was down by $9 million. Well, why was corporate income tax down by $9 million? Did it have anything to do with payrolls?

AN HON. MEMBER: Nothing to do with them.

MR. WINDSOR: Ah, payroll tax, maybe, had something to do with it. Maybe business was down and corporations were paying their money out through a payroll tax, because we picked up through the health and post-secondary education tax, $28.6 million; that was $14 million more than they had in the Budget.

Now, the minister tried to tell me the other day, this is a net figure versus a gross figure. Well, I understand that full well. Why did he not put a gross figure in last year's Budget? If he had a net figure in last year's Budget, why is this not a net figure in this Budget? So, in other words, in last year's Budget - and I will give you the answer - he put in what he expected to get, which was $15 million. And, of course, when we exposed him here in the House and said, `Well, what about all the Crown corporations and government agencies and the public service, itself, hospitals and schools and all the rest of it?' after a month or so he finally - he could not answer the question first; he is embarrassed by it now, he is hiding behind his newspaper.

He could not answer the question first, it took him a month-and-a-half before he finally said, `We are going to give the money back to them somehow. Don't say anything about it, but we have to do that because, if we do not give the money back to them, then you cannot apply the tax to the Federal Government. We will lose $4.5 million of revenues of payroll tax from the Federal Government if we cannot tax them, and they will only honour that tax if it is a tax of general nature, if we are taxing all Crown corporations and agencies, including ourselves. So we are going to pay that money to ourselves and give it back again,' but he did not put the revenue in there.

He put in the $15 million that he expects to get, but he does not show any revenue, so it must have been a net figure, that is what he was saying, it was a net figure; but now, this year, all of a sudden, when he looks at his revised and sees $28.6, he says, `Oh, yes, but this is a gross figure.' Well, the $28.6 should have been there last year where the $15 million was, in other words, he misled the House and there should have been receivable somewhere in there against it or a payable to the Crown corporations.

In other words, the grants to the other corporations, last year, should have been increased by that $13.5 million, because he said he had to give it back. So, with the $15 million as the net now, then it must have been the net in his estimate, and if it was a net in his estimate, then where was the money that was given back or should have been given back? So, what it amounts to is that they collected the extra $13.5 million, but there was nothing in the Budget figures that put it back again. It did not go back to the Crown corporations last year, but he is going to give it back this year, he says, and we have to believe him. We have reason not to, but we have to believe him. He says, the gross figure of $42.5 million this year, is just that, and he is really netting $25 million. Well, if that is the case, then the Crown corporations are not getting what it appears they are getting in the Budget, they are not getting as much, because there is $17.5 million of payroll tax that Government has to give back to them that is already included in their Budget figures, already included in their departmental estimates. So, if you look on the basis of that into the Budget itself, the estimates for 1991, and just quickly looking at hospitals and nursing homes, there are some figures here that are very interesting. The total grant to the hospital boards, an interesting number here - I have it here highlighted, I just cannot find the page, Mr. Chairman. Here we go.

Grants to hospitals, Mr. Chairman, last year, was budgeted at $466 million. We now know that is the gross figure and there had to be money built into that to take away from the payroll tax. There was $13.5 million total last year, and about $3 million of that had to paid by those corporations to Government for the payroll tax. So they really did not get $466 million, there was only $463 million budgeted for them last year. Neither is there $483 million budgeted this year, because the payroll tax is in there. And we know that 75 per cent of the revenues of hospital boards, for their expenditures is salaries. So 75 per cent of $483 million - sure, I had it all done for myself here. I am so far ahead of myself I forgot it. I had it all worked out here right at hand - too well organized.

Seventy-five per cent of that is $359 million in payroll that goes out, and, at 1.5 per cent, they put out a payroll tax of $5.4 million. Hospital boards, out of their budget, out of the figure that is in here - because the minister told us these were gross figures in the summaries, therefore the money that was paid into the hospital boards is going to be given back. So they are going to pay back $5.4 million. Looking at the estimates, themselves, we see that there is $483 million budgeted this year, versus $478 million last year, $5 million. That is the total overall increase to hospital boards this year. It happens to be exactly the same as the boards have to pay back in payroll tax. In other words, there is not one red cent of increase to the hospital boards. And if anybody knows anything about mathematics and economics, that is a rollback, at least by the 4 per cent cost of inflation, at least by that much, or whatever the salary increases were. Because we are talking 75 per cent here in salaries - interesting. Maybe the salary increases last year were about 7 per cent. They were around 7 per cent in the health care sector. Would the President of Treasury Board like to confirm or deny that - closer to 7 per cent than 4 per cent on average? Therefore, it is a 7 per cent decrease in the funding that is available, not a 4 per cent decrease.

The same is true of Memorial University. You can look at all of them. I just picked up these two. Memorial University, last year, had a $106 million grant, and a $107 million grant this year - $1.1 million dollars additional for Memorial University, this year. Again, when you take 75 per cent of their $107 million as their payroll, and take 1.5 per cent of that, $1.2 million. So the University grant is identical to what it was last year; and, with inflation built in, they have less money to work with. No wonder there are thousands of layoffs in the public service. They don't have any choice. They have less money to operate on.

Now, what an interesting scenario. That is the health and education tax. The mining tax is down $2.9 million, tobacco tax is on target, and other was down by about .7. So, the bottom line on provincial taxation measures last year, provincial revenues through taxation, the difference, there was a loss of only $10 million.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. WINDSOR: Oh, that is too bad, I was just getting warmed up.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Fogo.

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I suppose I was unfortunate enough to be in my seat this afternoon when the Premier intervened in this debate for the first time, in an attempt to rally the troops. He did not do much of a job though, Mr. Chairman. According to the rally I see coming from the Government tonight, I do not think the Premier was very effective in rallying the troops to war.

The Premier made a statement, I suppose, that is, perhaps, one of the truer ones he has made. He said, `I do not expect that the people in this Province will welcome the reductions in health care and education.' Now, what a startling revelation that was, for the Premier to say that the people of this Province will not welcome the cuts in health care and in education. I think that might have been -

AN HON. MEMBER: He said what?

MR. WINSOR: He said, `The people of this Province will probably not welcome reductions in health care and education.'

AN HON. MEMBER: It is starting to sink in now. He is a very slow learner.

MR. WINSOR: Yes. That is the gist of what the Premier contributed to the debate on Bill 16, and he spent the rest of the time telling us that we sat for 590 legislative days, and so on. There was not one thing about Bill 16, nothing on pay equity, nothing on arbitration awards, nothing on the schedules that are attached, and, in many cases, as my colleague from Humber Valley pointed out in the case of the Newfoundland Milk Marketing Board, Government has no dollars contributed to it, nothing about the fact that certain Crown corporations are included for rollbacks or wage restraints, but nothing on freezing the rates that they charge to consumers. We do not see any of these.

Mr. Chairman, then he went on to say that it is no wonder the people see the House of Assembly as being irrelevant. He stood in his place for fifteen minutes and he did not have one item of relevance to contribute to this debate. I have seen the President of Treasury Board stand in his place on two occasions already tonight to suggest that members on this side were not relevant when they were speaking on Bill 16, when the Premier this afternoon spoke for fifteen minutes and did not say one thing about the bill, other than that the debate had gone on for a long time, and the Opposition was preventing Government from going on with its business.

Mr. Chairman, the reason the Opposition has to fight this bill is because of the severe impact it has on the lives of Newfoundlanders.

MR. POWER: People who have no right to speak in the Legislature.

MR. WINSOR: People who have no right to speak in the Legislature have to have their voices heard, and they are asking us, Mr. Chairman, to act on their behalf, so that they can be heard and so that the Government is told that they do not agree with the Government's decision to eliminate pay equity. The only time the Premier has addressed pay equity is to say, `Look, why are we only going back two or three years? Why do we not go back thirty years?' Now, what an argument!

MR. RIDEOUT: We are going back to when we signed the agreement.

MR. WINSOR: We are going back to when we signed the agreement, which was natural.

MR. RIDEOUT: Signed agreements mean nothing to the Premier.

MR. WINSOR: Well, signed agreements mean nothing to anyone on that side.

MR. POWER: Why does he not go back to the Upper Churchill?

MR. WINSOR: If he is talking about agreements, why does he not go back to that, to the Upper Churchill that has an $800 million a year adjudication award, we will call it, because that is a new word they like to use, going to Quebec, while Newfoundland sits idly by and gets $1.2 billion from Ottawa.

MR. POWER: The first chance we had in our history, and they blew it.

MR. WINSOR: Now, Mr. Chairman, the irrelevance of the House of Assembly, the Premier talked of, no one is in the galleries, and I think the Premier might have been a little bit concerned that there is no one there watching this charade, this facade that he puts on when he pretends that he is doing all these things for the good of Newfoundland.

MR. POWER: He is doing it to try to get re-elected.

MR. WINSOR: Mr. Chairman, I watched the NTV news tonight, and the Premier was on trying to defend -

MR. POWER: He didn't do a very good job, did he?

MR. WINSOR: No.

- this Government's record in job creation in this Province.

Now, Mr. Chairman, any Newfoundlander under force of the Premier's intrusion into his living room, saying `We have created more jobs, and the situation now is as good as or better than anywhere else, if he listens to that, Mr. Chairman, he must live in a different world. He does not live in the world of ordinary Newfoundlanders who are absolutely terrified -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: Yes, he does live in a different world. The Premier does live in a different world. He does not live in the world of ordinary Newfoundlanders who are absolutely terrified by the actions of this Government, a government which, I suspect, for the first time in this Province's history, stripped public service unions of the right to have fully-negotiated contracts for their members, the first government that has ever engaged in this type of union bashing - because that is what it is - contract stripping, union bashing, call it anything you want.

MS. VERGE: The Member for Exploits is doing the bashing.

MR. WINSOR: The Member for Exploits (inaudible) will be done when he greets the teachers of this Province, and we do not have to worry what will happen to him. In fact, I suspect you will not even have to campaign in Exploits against that member next time, because he is history.

AN HON. MEMBER: What about the Member for Windsor - Buchans?

MR. WINSOR: We will not comment on the Member for Windsor - Buchans.

Now, Mr. Chairman, in addition to the impact that this bill is having presently on the public sector unions of this Province, there is the lasting impact the bill is going to have, because this legislation prevents workers from ever again recouping the losses during the period of restraint. Mr. Chairman, it is fundamentally unfair and wrong for a government to take away rights from public sector bargaining units and never again allow them the right to catch up.

Mr. Chairman, on the subject of pay equity, the President of Treasury Board, responsible for the Status of Women, I think, now, is also the individual responsible for introducing into the House of Assembly, this bill taking away rights.

MR. POWER: It can't be the same person.

MR. WINSOR: It can't be the same minister. Actually, he should have resigned from one of his positions, because he is obviously in a direct conflict of interest.

Now, Mr. Chairman, what else has happened because of Bill 16? Besides stripping contracts, it is also taking away the morale and the dignity of the workers, because they no longer believe that an agreement, a contract entered into between a government and employees has validity anymore. There is no incentive to do anything. I have never, in my lifetime, seen a workforce so demoralized as the one in this Province. Now, this could come about as the result of a number of things. It could be because of Bill 16, it could be because of the layoffs, also, it could be the result of some of the actions of this Government, because they have intimidated -

MR. POWER: Back to the 1960s.

MR. WINSOR: Before the 1960s. It is reminiscent - and I think someone referred to it the other day - of back in 1959, when an administration in this Province, I will not say of what political stripe, but it was led by Mr. Smallwood, decertified a union.

MS. VERGE: In 1967, when Clyde Wells was Minister of Labour, they decertified an hospital union.

MR. WINSOR: In 1967, Clyde Wells decertified an hospital union, and they used the Minister of Labour? Would that not make you think that this Premier and this administration have something against labour unions in this Province?

MR. POWER: They should bring in a piece of legislation to roll back time twenty-five years, retroactive from 1967.

MR. WINSOR: In fact, that is being done, because what we are finding here now is the `50s and `60s relived, when people were afraid, intimidated, and terrified.

In our role, as elected representatives of the people, we sometimes have to make calls to various people in Government. You call them and say, `How are you doing today?' and they say, `Fine, at least I have a job.' Now, Mr. Chairman, that is the kind of attitude we are finding out there, that people are glad they at least have a job, or they are not fired yet. That is the situation existing in our workforce today.

This afternoon, I saw an interesting thing happen in this House of Assembly, for the first time, I think, I have ever seen it occur here. In response to a petition today, the Minister of Education blew a gasket.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did he?

MR. WINSOR: Yes, the Minister of Education blew a gasket here this afternoon. Now, I suspect what has happened is that the NTA, the post secondary institutions, finally put the pressure on, and maybe he discovered there might be some things happening within his own department that he is not very pleased about. Maybe some of his own officials are not really pleased. Maybe the minister was upset today because he discovered that a certain high-ranking official in his department is not very pleased with him. We will not comment much more on it. I think the minister may have a statement tomorrow as to why he was so mad and perturbed in this House this afternoon.

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell him.

MR. WINSOR: No, I cannot tell him.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MR. WINSOR: He shouted so loud this afternoon that I actually had to tear this out of my ear because he deafened me. It is the first time the Minister of Education has shown any kind of emotion in this House to indicate something was going on. Now, something has irritated the minister. I think it might be that a high-ranking senior official in his department might be taking up a position in a Mainland university. A Mainland university might get a high- ranking official, another part of the brain drain from the Province.

MR. POWER: Education is going downhill in Newfoundland, and the man can't take it. It cannot be tolerated.

MR. WINSOR: Do you know why he is going to resign?

AN HON. MEMBER: Why?

MR. WINSOR: Because he could not tolerate the minister's responses to, particularly, the post-secondary cuts in this Province, that the minister stood by.

MR. SIMMS: Perhaps the minister does not even know.

MR. WINSOR: Yes, the minister knows.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. BAKER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. the President of Treasury Board, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, of the last nine speakers from the Opposition, only one has said anything relevant to the wage restraint bill. I wonder if we could have a little relevance here?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, just briefly, I do not want to take up a lot of your time, but, I mean, obviously there has been pretty wide relevance allowed in this debate thus far. I do not know what is wrong with the Government House Leader. What the member is talking about is a story now circulating that a senior official in one of the Government departments, the Department of Education, is resigning. The member is trying to make the relevant point, if the Government House Leader will give him the chance, that this is an example of what is happening because of what the Government is doing with its budgetary cuts. Officials such as this senior official are very upset with what the Government is doing. That is very relevant, extremely relevant.

MR. POWER: (Inaudible) job creation (inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Fogo.

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINSOR: No, I am not going fifteen minutes. I will not go fifteen minutes, because there are too many members on the Government's side -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

AN HON. MEMBER: Question.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do believe the House is getting very close to being ready for the question.

I could not help but notice the intensity of the confab between the President of Treasury Board and the Minister of Education just a moment ago. It went on for pretty well, I guess, the duration of my colleague's speech. Some of us have some skills in lip reading. I could not quite hear everything. But I wonder were the President of Treasury Board and the Minister of Education cogitating over how they are going to find $2.2 million for substitute teachers' contracts. Is that what they were doing?

Yesterday, up until 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., there was a $2.2 million shortfall in the Department of Education budget for substitute teachers. However, magically, out of the air yesterday evening, there was an agreement and an understanding reached with the NTA, the $2.2 million is back, and there is a commitment that there will be no change in that for this year while a committee looks at it and reports, I believe, over the next year or so. So I would expect that the President of Treasury Board is getting a few new gray hairs and the Minister of Education is having the hair stand on his head. There will be another pack of Nicorettes for the President of Treasury Board tonight. And the Minister of Education will be tearing out his hair as he tries to find $2.2 million to meet the commitment that they had to - they had no choice - give in writing to the NTA just before sunset yesterday evening.

Now, I want to say a word or two, as well, to the Minister of Education. It has been a long time since I have observed anybody with such sanctimonious indignation go so fanatic as the Minister of Education did today in the House, in trying to defend the Budget cut - and that is what Bill 16 is all about, rollbacks and cuts - the Budget cut at Memorial University that led to the disappearance of MUN Extension. The logic, Mr. Chairman, of the Minister's argument escapes anybody who has a clue. The Minister said, "MUN Extension is no longer relevant because, out of the thirty-five or thirty-six or thirty-eight employees of MUN Extension, thirty-two or three-three of them were in St. John's.' Well, now, Mr. Chairman, that is a pretty logical argument. My work is in rural Newfoundland, but I am in St. John's. The work of the Member for Burin - Placentia West is in rural Newfoundland but he is in St. John's, because that is where he has to be most of the time. I mean, MUN Extension has been in St. John's for years, but it helped save Fogo Island, Mr. Chairman.

MR. BAKER: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the President of Treasury Board, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: I would like to put on the record, Mr. Chairman, that now ten of the last eleven speakers on the opposite side have not referred to Bill 16, and have not dealt with the wage restraint and the pay equity legislation that is before us. I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if we can have some relevance.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader, on the point of order.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, perhaps this will convince the Government House Leader that he is making a fool of himself by getting up and interrupting speakers. Just because nobody over on that side wishes to participate in the debate, they should not be ignorant enough to intervene when members on this side are speaking.

I will offer Your Honour another example of relevance. Page 3 of that minister's bill is about collective agreements and pay scales, and on page 4, on the top, it says, public sector employee means every person employed by blah, blah, blah, and under six it says, `The Memorial University of Newfoundland and any agency, board, commission, or other body funded or owned by the university.' Now, Mr. Chairman, that is very clear to what my colleague, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, is talking about. Is Memorial University an agency of the university, and body funded by the university? I do not think you can get much more relevance than that.

I do not know why the Government House Leader does not go into the common room, have a coffee, have a Nicorette or something, and let us carry on with our debate. If he does not like what is being said, that is fine.

MR. BAKER: Further to the point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the President of Treasury Board, on the point of order.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because a word is mentioned in a piece of legislation does not mean, then, that anything that contains that word is subject to discussion. Because the word `the' is in a piece of legislation does not mean that any sentence that has the word `the' in it is then relevant to the discussion. It does not make sense, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, the legislation concerns the freezing of wages in the public sector for a period of one year. It also includes the doing away with the retroactivity of pay equity. Mr. Chairman, I will repeat again, ten of the last eleven speakers opposite have not been relevant to the bill, and have not talked about these issues at all. I simply want to make that point, because they seem to want all this time to debate the bill, and they are not even debating it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader, on the point of order.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, I will not bother to even give other references. There are all kinds of references about increases applied, no increases applied to the pay scales of public sector employees during the restraint period, first increases take effect March 31, 1991, and recalculated pay scales. I mean, there are all kinds of areas one can be relevant to.

What is happening here now, and let it be clearly understood, is the Government House Leader has stood, perhaps, six or seven times now on spurious points of order. He should be told to take his seat, but that is up to the Chair. He is trying to build some kind of a case, so that when the time comes to introduce closure on the Committee process of this particular piece of legislation he will be able to refer back to all his interventions tonight and all the reasons why we are not debating and they are debating, and then freely feel comfortable - instead of interrupting members - then to say: Mr. Chairman, they are not debating this and therefore we will have to invoke closure. Clearly, that is all that is happening and it is coming through loud and clear.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

On the point of order raised by the hon. the President of Treasury Board, I believe that this particular bill, of course, covering all the departments and agencies of Government, lends itself to a wide range of debate. While relevance is difficult to define, with this particular bill being as wide-ranging as it is, it is perhaps even more difficult. The Chair is listening closely to what hon. members are saying and, at this point in time, I think what has been said has been relevant to the points that are in the bill, and therefore, there is no point of order.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As usual, the Government House Leader, for the umpteenth time now, has been proven wrong again by the wisdom of Your Honour. I have no worries about somebody on the other side, Mr. Chairman, raising a point of order on relevancy in debating this bill, because Your Honour consistently has had the wisdom to know the difference and know what the Government House Leader is up to.

MR. SIMMS: And, indeed, his two colleagues have occupied the Chair and given the same rulings.

MR. RIDEOUT: Exactly, have been consistent all the way through. Now, Mr. Chairman, let me say to the Government House Leader, I do not care if he gets up on this foolish point of order fifteen times in the fifteen minutes that I have. He has gained nothing, he has not gained a thing. And if all of my time is taken up with the Government House Leader wasting my time through points of order, then another member will get up and I will get back up again. And if wants to spend the next twenty-seven hours on points of order, he will not have accomplished a thing.

So let him go ahead. He is not hurting us one bit. He is not wearing us down. I can tell you one thing, in fifteen-minute segments, as long as a dozen of us here can do it, but I will tell him for myself, as long as I have another person in the House with me, I can keep this debate going until Christmas Eve. So you do not have to worry. Unless you bring in the gag order, with another person - the Opposition House Leader or the Deputy House Leader or the Member for Burin - Placentia West or the Member for St. John's East Extern or the Member for Torngat Mountains - as long as I have a colleague with me, and a dozen of us over here can do the same thing, we will have our Christmas turkey on the Table. There is nothing the Government House Leader can do about it except employ one parliamentary rule, and if he wishes to do that, it is his prerogative, let him do it.

So it is no good for him to get edgy, no good for him to let the withdrawal symptoms take over. There is no point in his nerves getting any more edgy than they are. He may as well sit back, take it, and when he wants to proceed in another fashion, that is totally within his right to do. And we will continue to debate Bill 16 that has everything in it but the kitchen sink. But it has a very important principle in it. And that is the principle of honesty, the principle of dealing with other people honestly, and honouring your word, more particularly, honouring your written word, signed agreements. That is what this is all about, and no amount of harassment by the Government House Leader is going to throw us off this particular trail until he wants to move off it. When he wants to move off it, that is up to him.

I was talking about Memorial University Extension when the President of Treasury Board interrupted. What is more vital and synonymous with rural Newfoundland, I would like to ask the Minister of Education, than the magazine, `Decks Awash'? That magazine was produced and published by people living in St. John's but going, by whatever mode of transportation they choose, to the Baie Verte Peninsula, the Northern Peninsula, or going to the South Coast, a fine production about rural Newfoundland and Labrador. The Minister of Education has the face of a robber's horse to get up in this House and say that by cutting out MUN Extension you are not doing harm to rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Of course, you are.

Mr. Chairman, I heard on the radio news this evening, the President, I believe, of the mine workers union in St. Lawrence, saying that this Government has an agenda that means the destruction of rural Newfoundland and Labrador. It is starting to come true in more ways than one, Mr. Chairman, and it has been consistent. All those little attacks, all those little hits here and there, are being felt more in the rural areas of this Province than they have been felt anywhere else. Now, other areas have been hurt. St. John's has been hurt because of layoffs in the hospital system, and so on, but if St. John's has been hurt, rural areas of Newfoundland have been devastated. So, it is the rural areas that are getting the bum's rap from the programs that this Government have introduced under the name of saving.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) cutbacks. She is very upset.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, she is - Cabot Institute.

MR. RIDEOUT: Oh, they got the Cabot.

So should the Minister of Development be very upset. If we have a growth industry left in this Province I suppose it is the tourism industry. We all hold out hope that the tourism - and where is the tourism industry going to have the greatest potential to grow? In rural Newfoundland and Labrador. That is where it is going to have the biggest potential to grow, the rugged beauty and the scenery, out on the bay fishing, the things we have in Newfoundland and Labrador that tourists will buy, and pay money to buy. Again, you have another example of an attack on rural Newfoundland and Labrador with the closure of that particular course for Hospitality Newfoundland at the Cabot Institute. The Minister of Education, I suppose, says that is not an attack on rural Newfoundland and Labrador. There is absolutely no wonder why a senior official in that Minister's Department is getting ready to pack his bags and become another person to out-migrate from this Province. It is no wonder, because there has been a particular attack on post-secondary education engrained in this Budget and sought to be ratified in this particular piece of legislation. There was an attack on the secondary system, but there was a -

MS. VERGE: A worse attack.

MR. RIDEOUT: - yes, a much worse attack on post-secondary. The senior official in the Department of Education who is about to leave, I think, would understand the implications of this year's Budget for post-secondary education in Newfoundland and Labrador. I think he would have also thought that the minister, who came out of the post-secondary system, himself, would have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. member's time is up.

MR. RIDEOUT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

He must be very disappointed in the minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to say a few words to this bill, as well. It is interesting to see, Mr. Chairman, as we go through this bill and talk about the education system in this Province, how the Minister of Education sits down at his desk and smiles away at what is taking place, how he can gut the post-secondary education system in this Province, how he can lay off teachers left, right, and center, how he can underfund the various school boards throughout the Province, and now, we see people leaving his department. It is no wonder, Mr. Chairman, that people want to get rid of that Minister of Education. He will go down in history as being the worst Minister of Education this Province has ever seen. Only one person could be a worse Minister of Education.

MR. POWER: Who is that?

MR. TOBIN: The Minister of Finance, the other esteemed member from Memorial University, who has done nothing except attack the university since he came here.

MS. VERGE: He has attacked public servants, too.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, he most certainly has.

As we go through this, we see the vicious attack on the education system in this Province by the Minister of Education and by the President of Treasury Board, who, for some reason this evening, wants to continue to interrupt the House, trying to take the House on his back and do what he likes, because he cannot get his own way.

Now, there are some very important components to this bill. The President of Treasury Board gets up and tries to tell us what to talk about, but we can tell the President of Treasury Board we will say what we want to say, not what he wants us to say.

Now, Mr. Chairman, there is a section in this bill relating to `a community college established under The Community Colleges Act'. I would like to speak on that for a few moments.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, Bill 16. I want to talk about that section there and say to the Minister of Education that the actions he is taking with regard to the school system in rural Newfoundland cannot be tolerated. I challenge the Member for Bonavista South to stand in this House and support the people in his district who got the axe last week, the numbers of people who got laid off in the community college system in Bonavista. The Member for Bonavista has done absolutely nothing in this House to defend the closure of his hospital and the cutbacks in the educational system on the Bonavista campus. It is unbelievable what is taking place.

It was only last week I spoke to someone from Bonavista who was very upset with the lack of representation from the Member for Bonavista South. It is about time that he stand up and tell us what he thinks about the actions of this Government in the education system. We have workers being laid off and the new fad now in laying off workers is what we see taking place in the social service office in Marystown. You have people like the Member for St. John's South, who professed to be the expert in occupational health and safety. I have not heard the Member for St. John's South tell us what he thinks about what is happening with the propane fumes in the government office. No, Mr. Chairman, not a word, yet he will try every trick in the book to get the Minister's job, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations cannot turn her back on the Member for St. John's South. He is out there every day, day-in and day-out, trying to undermine the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations. He is supposed to be the expert on occupational health and safety. What does he think about what is happening in Marystown and social workers losing a day's pay? What does he think about that? These are the cutbacks that are taking place in this Government.

MR. WOODFORD: (Inaudible) issue a gas mask down there now.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, the next thing they will have to go to work with gas masks in order for this Government to try to save money.

Yet, if the Minister of Education would leave open the headquarters in Burin, he would save money, and instead of firing people left, right and center, he should leave open the headquarters in Burin. There is a building down there that has a lease for five years, that will be vacant. The Minister of Education will fire teachers, cut funding to the school boards, do whatever he can; he is a tyrant when it comes to slashing funding for educational needs in this Province. You know, when you pick up The Globe and Mail and see an article about the Government of New Brunswick saying: `It is unconscionable to do what was done by the Government of Newfoundland', it was not Tories or NDP members saying that, it was the Liberal Government in Canada saying it was unconscionable to take the type of action that this Government have taken.

I do not know what is going to be the end of this Province. Rural Newfoundland is gone, it is basically history with this group, and it is not difficult to understand why, either, because you have a group representing rural Newfoundland in the back benches over there who lack the courage of their convictions, who do not have the courage to stand up in this House and defend the rights of rural Newfoundland.

The Member for Eagle River, would like his people to believe he is a great defender of the rights of Labradorians. Well, then, why does he not stand up and show the people of Labrador that he does not support what this Government is doing? Does the Member for Eagle River support the cuts in the educational system?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. TOBIN: Does the Member for Eagle River support the cut to the MUN Extension Service?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MS. VERGE: (Inaudible). He made a speech on that.

MR. TOBIN: So, the situation is that we have people like the Member for Eagle River who wants everybody to believe that he is a great defender of the rights of Labradorians, yet, Mr. Chairman, he would likely sell the rights of every Labradorian in order to toe the line to try to get into Cabinet.

MS. VERGE: He would not present their petitions.

AN HON. MEMBER: He would not present a petition on their behalf.

MR. TOBIN: The Member for Eagle River refused to present - now, Mr. Chairman, if that is not selling the rights of his constituents, if that is not turning his back on the people who sent him here, I do not know what it is; the member is not the great defender of Labrador. The people of Labrador wanted a petition presented and he refused to present it.

MS. VERGE: The Member for Torngat Mountains presented it.

MR. TOBIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, I suggest the Member for Eagle River should not let his feelings overrule his judgement, and the judgement he makes in this House is the judgement he should make on behalf of his constituents; he should not be like the Member for St. John's South, who turned his back on his constituents the day after he was elected, he should have courage to stand up for their rights. Here, you have the Member for Eagle River undermining the Minister of Fisheries every chance he gets.

MR. BAKER: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader, on a point of order.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, this makes eleven of the last twelve speakers from the other side who have been both repetitious and irrelevant; I draw Your Honour's attention to the fact that our Standing Orders are silent on this issue in terms of the practice in this House; on three separate occasions in the last couple of weeks, members on this side have been admonished for not being relevant. I draw Your Honour's attention to the point that when we leave the practices of this House, we then go to Ottawa. I will refer Your Honour to Standing Order 11, Sub-section 2 from the Standing Orders in Ottawa which says: " The Speaker or the Chairman, after having called the attention of the House, or of the Committee, to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or repetition, may direct the Member to discontinue his or her speech", and so on; it goes on, so, Your Honour, I would like to draw Your Honour's attention to the fact that there has been no relevance and lots of repetition in eleven of the last twelve speakers, Mr. Chairman, who obviously have nothing to say about this bill and are simply killing the time of the House.

MS. VERGE: Chairperson.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Humber East, to the point of order.

MS. VERGE: Thank you. The most objectionable repetition that the members of the House have been subjected to here this evening, has been the Government House Leader, who seems uncharacteristically testy, rising repeatedly, objecting to the contents of speeches by members on this side. Now, he tried it just fifteen minutes ago when the Opposition Leader was speaking, and the Deputy Speaker in the Chair ruled quite sensibly and patiently - I thought he showed real tolerance for the Government House Leader - that relevance is difficult to define and that the precedents all support a wide-ranging debate on a bill such as this which has such a broad scope.

The Deputy Leader, in his wisdom, pointed out that this measure affects all operations of the Provincial Government, restrains the wages and benefits - actually it really rolls back and reneges on commitments for wages and benefits - for all public employees in every department and agency of the whole Government. He said quite firmly - nicely but firmly - that a wide-ranging debate is in order. So, Chairperson, I suggest that Your Honour will follow the rulings that I believe you, yourself have made, and certainly, the Deputy Speaker has made, in asking us to continue with a wide-ranging debate.

MR. CHAIRMAN: This has come up numerous times today, and, of course, it is difficult for the Chair to rule on what is relevant. But I would request the hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West to try to tie his speech into the relevancy of the bill.

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: I was asking, Mr. Chairman, Does the Member for Eagle River support the cuts to the educational programmes on the Labrador coast? Does the Member for St. John's South support the cuts to the educational needs in the City of St. John's and throughout the Province? These are the points I want to establish in this House. Does the Member for Bonavista South support the closing of the hospital and laying off the people in the hospitals? Does the member support the laying off of people in the community colleges in his district and throughout?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, you can tell the President of Treasury Board that he is trying to take the House on his back!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: He is trying to take the House on his back, Mr. Chairman, and sooner or later Your Honour is not going to have any choice but to name the President of Treasury Board. No person should have the right to get up every two or three minutes, no one should have the right to be doing that. He should be named, he should be given the flick. He should be sent out for the rest of the week and let us get on with our speeches.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: Now, what is taking place in this Province today is sad. People are being laid off from one end of the Province to the other, you see new hospitals closing down in Port aux Basques, new clinics closing down in Come By Chance, all of that happening and nobody standing up and condemning Government for doing it. That is unacceptable. You have Bell Island, the hospital, the ferry service, the trades school, and you would never know they had a member.

MR. DOYLE: They don't have a member!

MR. TOBIN: No, they do not have a member! If they had a member worth his salt he would be standing up. He could get up the other day and make all kinds of comments when someone else was speaking from a prepared text. But when it counts to get up and defend his constituents who sent him here he is over there and he never issues one whisper. And it is time for that member to prove he is worth his salt and to stand up.

MR. DOYLE: You don't even have a boat on Bell Island now.

MR. TOBIN: No, and he will never be elected in Bell Island again. Never! Because any government that attacks a community the way this Government has attacked Bell Island does not deserve to be elected again. As a matter of fact, if he had any sense, he should not run again. He should not insult the people of Bell Island by offering himself for re-election; because he has been a disgrace in terms - in my nine or ten years in this House, I have never seen a Member who would not support the Government like the Member for Bell Island - never seen it! It is no wonder my colleague for Harbour Main is getting two or three calls a day, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Menihek.

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate when we are debating Bill 16 in Committee. The hon. the President of Treasury Board seems to be agitated. He seems to have a very thin skin this evening. I do not know what is wrong with him, whether it is lack of nicotine or the fact that the debate is getting through to him, he cannot take the pressure of all the cutting barbs coming across the House in the thrust of the debate.

But, Mr. Chairman, this bill that is being discussed over the past several days in this House is really an attack on the labour movement of this Province. What really bothers the labour movement of this Province is their feeling that this is only the first salvo, the first attack on the labour movement, because this is on the public sector labour movement of the Province. And I am sure that when all the back room boys get talking to the hon. members in Cabinet and get their way, we are going to see some changes in the labour laws and regulations of this Province, that is going to be the second attack on the Province's working men and women. And those are the people in the private sector. People who work in the mines in western Labrador. The people who work in offices and stores throughout this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is going to make Vander Zalm look like a puppet.

MR. A. SNOW: That is right. I believe, after this group of neoconservatives are through, Vander Zalm is going to look like a raving socialist.

In previous debate, I mentioned about how the President of Treasury Board has been stating here in the House that this Government had no choice. Now, how many times have we heard `We had no choice'? `We did not do anything for two years almost, and the economy failed. It is because of the national policies.' - not because we sat down and did nothing other than encourage unions to ask for more, They did not accept the responsibility of economic development, they passed that on to the academics from Memorial and usurped the Department of Development of this Province. They came in with their own Department of Development under the Premier. And this is very relevant to the discussion, because they did nothing to help the economy of this Province. They are arguing that the reason why they have to pass this rollback restraint, this rollback legislation, this attack on labour, is because they do not have any other choice. They do not have the money. Well, I suggest that one of the reasons why they do not have some money, or more money, is the fact they have done nothing other than go out preaching doom and gloom. They have done nothing to properly set into place an infrastructure where private sector can operate.

In debate, the hon. the President of Treasury Board suggested that opposite - I think he was talking about the people on this side of the House - and I quote: `kind of make fun of the situation with regards to the credit rating. They make fun of that. Yes, several speakers opposite have made fun of that. They have said there is really no problem, that other provinces have the same credit rating, that we are worrying unnecessarily about that credit rating, the implication being that we can go out and borrow our fool heads off.'

Now, I do not know. I have been following the debate in this House, and I do not think anybody has suggested that they can borrow their fool heads off. But I believe it was suggested in this House by the hon. the President of Treasury Board that because of the lowering of the credit rating back during the last recession, it is absolutely impossible for them to again go to the bond market and ask to borrow more money. Now, that is nonsense, absolute nonsense.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, they can borrow. Yes, they could have had a different approach. In attempting to solve the economic problem we have in this Province, they could do it without putting it on the backs of the public sector employee, because that basically makes it very unfair, and I do not think it was necessary to do that.

We can see that other provinces, during the last recession, had a lowering of their credit rating. They are also participating in this global recession, and yes, a national recession, too. It is not just in this country though, and it is not just in this Province, it is a global recession, and other provinces have not reacted the way this Government has done. They have not attempted to do it strictly on the backs of the public sector employees. They have taken a different approach in other provinces. As a matter of fact, I think one Minister of Finance has suggested that to have massive layoffs would be unconscionable. I also do not think that many other provinces are considering such a move as this Province is considering, the rollback of wages.

They may, indeed, have some type of negotiations with the union, but I again emphasize that they are going to be negotiations with the union. They are not going to do what this Government is doing, which is ramming this legislation through the House of Assembly. After negotiating in good faith, they are going to throw away, cast aside, run over the faith they have built up in the public sector. And that is very important. In future negotiations, how does this Government expect a public sector union to trust them? How does this Government expect the public sector employee to trust them when his leaders sit down at a negotiating table, negotiate a contract as equals, or even be forced to go to arbitration and have an award made to you, and then find that really, what was behind it all the time, I would suspect - a lot of people are suggesting - was that they had a hidden agenda, that this was all set out to be, that they were not really doing it in good faith when they started last year, even with the nurses, that what, really, they were doing was attempting to set the stage for the unions to demand more money, because they were not really negotiating seriously. When anybody on this side of the House or in the media would ask Cabinet Ministers about a possibility of cutbacks in the public sector, they were told, `No, no, no, that is fearmongering, just rumours.'

And then they went ahead. So, I mean, what would you expect the leadership of a union to believe? They would naturally believe everything is fine, because any time it was ever mentioned in public discussions, the people on the other side of the House, the Government, would say, `No, that is fearmongering; do not believe those rumours, that is only the Opposition attempting to undermine our credibility.' And then, after the big - a well-deserved - wage increase awarded to the nurses, we saw the President of Treasury Board coming in here all puffed up like a chicken. But I think, to continue along the same line of thought, the Member for Gander is soon going to have his goose cooked when he goes back again to the polls in Gander.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. A. SNOW: Gander is very well organized, in the sense of unions, and they are going to recognize what this former New Democrat did, what this former Liberal did. They are going to recognize what he has done to the labour movement of this Province. They are going to recognize that the old hatchet man, himself, the Minister of Finance, is finally getting his way and is carving up the public sector of this Province.

Now, to continue with what I had originally stated just a few minutes ago with regard to the credit rating, that this Province did not have an option, according to the President of Treasury Board, I suggest that they did, indeed, have an option. They could have done as other provinces did. They did not just have to do it the way they are proposing to do it in this bill, because, by doing it this way, it is terribly unfair. This vicious piece of legislation should not be passed, and I am surprised that there were not more people attending some of the hon. member's district meetings than there were.

MR. WARREN: They had a big meeting last night.

MR. A. SNOW: There were only sixty people, and some of them were even pleased with the hon. member, I heard -

MR. WARREN: From where?

MR. A. SNOW: - the hon. the Member for Pleasantville.

MR. WARREN: No, forty-one people.

MS. VERGE: His mom was there.

MR. A. SNOW: I don't know if his mother was pleased or not, but a lot of the constituents were not pleased, I hear.

MR. WARREN: There were only forty-one people there.

MR. A. SNOW: Forty-one people.

MR. WARREN: He just told me that five minutes ago.

MR. A. SNOW: And one was pleased and forty were displeased. He said, `It wasn't a rough meeting, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The hundreds of people who are laid off in my district didn't show up, and I suppose they are probably out looking for work.'

AN HON. MEMBER: Gone to Toronto.

MR. A. SNOW: But I know one place they were not - out shopping. They may, indeed, have been looking for work, but they were not out shopping, because they are terrified. They cannot spend any money now. The confidence is gone.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: No, Mr. Chairman, this is not funny. Some people on the other side suggest that you can make jokes about this bill or what is occurring in the economy of this Province and it is not a funny matter. I do not know how many of you people over there have ever been laid off from your job. I will bet you the hon. the Minister of Finance did not spend a lot of time in a line-up applying for work, or, on the bricks with a picket sign, either. He does not understand those things. He does not understand and he does not appreciate. Not many over there did ever have to walk picket lines to get a fair wage, and not many of them had to work I do not think, or at least if they did really have to work in a unionized job, they would not be attempting to pass this type of legislation today. They would not be supporting it. But maybe they did, maybe they did work, but what is even more tragic of those who did work there is that they have forgotten all about it. They have forgotten their roots.

MR. CRANE: Never!

MR. A. SNOW: The hon. the Member for Harbour Grace suggests never. I can remember when he used to be a union man, when he used to support unions, but now that he is over in his cushy offices on the Government side, with private secretaries and researchers, car allowances, all those things, they forget about their labour movement days.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the Member for Torngat Mountains.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WARREN: Mr. Chairman, I understand that the President of Treasury Board is very concerned about staying as close to the bill as possible, so I look at the short title for the bill which reads: 'This Act may be cited as the Public Sector Restraint Act'. I hope, Mr. Chairman, in my next half-hour, to stay as close as possible to the Public Sector Restraint Act.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I do not know if it is a coincidence or not, but on Monday of this week past - I do not know if it has anything to do with the Public Sector Restraint Act or not - I say to my hon. colleague, the President of Treasury Board, an ambulance left a hospital outside the overpass, transporting an individual aged between 80 and 85 years of age. Now, that ambulance arrived at the Health Sciences Complex in St. John's, and the patient was taken to the appropriate section of the hospital. Accompanying this patient were a number of X rays taken at a hospital outside the overpass, along with reports of a number of blood tests taken. Mr. Chairman, these are needed when you transfer a patient from point A to point B for better service.

So, the patient was transferred to the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, and, on being examined by a specialist, the doctor noticed something unusual. He reviewed the X-rays and blood samples that had arrived in the ambulance with the patient, and found, Mr. Chairman, they did not match the patient.

After talking to a member of the family, I found that the blood samples, or the blood report sent in to the Health Sciences Centre with this patient, belonged to another patient. Now, Mr. Chairman, when we talk about restraint in the public sector, was this, due to cutbacks, a mistake by some individual? Well, I say to my hon. colleague, the President of Treasury Board - because the Minister of Health is not here - all he has to do to verify what I am saying is to check either Friday past, or Monday, two days, find out what patients were transported to the Health Sciences by an ambulance from outside the overpass, and ask if all reports accompanying that patient matched the patient. I say to the minister, that the reports and the patient will be mismatched.

Mr. Chairman, I said to my hon. colleague, `I am going to leave that to the President of Treasury Board, because he is now the senior member in this Government who will follow up on this matter.'

MR. SIMMS: Bill 16 could possibly have had an effect in this case.

MR. WARREN: Well, let us look at another example. I was talking to one of my constituents tonight - very interesting, by the way. On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit a community in my district. I was invited to give a speech, as I usually do, a very eloquent speech, of course -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WARREN: - and to present a number of trophies to the winners of the oldest sporting event in North America, the dog team races. When I arrived in Makkovik, I was expecting my friend to come to the airport and pick me up, but when I got there someone else came to pick me up on a skidoo. Now, this is very, very, serious. I say to my colleagues, this is most serious, and I hope the media are listening, because it is most important. The man who came to pick me up said, Mr. Warren, I have to tell you - and I will not say my friend's name.

MR. PARSONS: John or Jim or something.

MR. WARREN: Jim or John, okay. `Your friend will not be here to pick you up because the ambulance aircraft is on the way in to pick him up. He is sick, he is down at the clinic, and he has to be transported to Lake Melville.

Now, while I was there, naturally, the IGA plane came in and picked up my friend. My friend, complaining of severe abdominal pain, was taken down that morning at ten o'clock to the clinic in Makkovik, and, within two hours, the aircraft came in and transported my constituent to the Lake Melville hospital. Sunday morning, after I left Makkovik, naturally I went out and visited my friend in the Lake Melville Hospital.

Now, Mr. Chairman, again I say to my colleague, the hon. the President of Treasury Board, because this is most important, I went in and spoke to my friend, who was still in pain, and asked if his doctor had been to visit him. He said, "Yes, no problem about that." So, fine and dandy! This person, I would think, although I do not know for sure, has supported me for the past number of years, and I would think he has been, and always will be, a supporter of mine, as long as I continue to speak up for my constituents. Yesterday, Mr. Chairman, I called, and my friend was still in the Lake Melville Hospital. I talked to his wife and she said, `He is coming along fairly well.' Tonight, before I came in here, I wanted to check on my friend, just to see how he was, so I called the home of my friend. I was expecting, probably, to talk to either his child or his wife, but it was he, himself, who answered the phone.

`Oh,' I said, `you are back in Makkovik?' `Yes,' he said. I asked, `How are you feeling, boy?' He said, `Not too bad, but I am still concerned.' I asked, `Well, what did they do?' Now, Mr. Chairman, have a guess what they did in the Lake Melville Hospital. Remember, Makkovik is 112 miles away by air from Goose Bay? What did they do, Mr. Chairman? He was in there for Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, five days. Now, what did they do? The X-ray machine is not working, and instead of sending him to St. Anthony or St. John's for X rays, they sent him back to Makkovik and said, `We will let you know when the machine is fixed and we will bring you back.' They sent him back to the Labrador Coast. Instead of having X rays done in St. Anthony or St. John's, they sent him back to a remote community on the Labrador Coast and said, `When we get the machine fixed, we will call you and bring you back in for X rays.'

AN HON. MEMBER: And he is still suffering from abdominal pains?

MR. WARREN: Yes, exactly.

There is another cutback. Excuse me, but I am serious.

MR. SIMMS: Because of the restraints in Bill 16 and other things, there may be morale problems with the staff in the hospital.

MR. WARREN: Well, what I am trying to say, Mr. Chairman, is that that patient should have been sent to St. John's or Corner Brook or St. Anthony and at least given an X ray. But he was not given an X ray, he was sent back to Makkovik where the weather could come down at any time at all, on the coast, and that person could take sick tomorrow.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is the improved health care system.

MR. WARREN: Now, that is the improved health care.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is the rationalization.

MR. WARREN: That is the rationalization of health care in our Province.

So, Mr. Chairman, as I say to my colleagues in the media, there is an example of a person from my district who has been - naturally, as a doctor at the Health Sciences would do and, in fact, only about an hour ago when I was over there to visit my dad who is not very well, the same as a doctor over there would do, feel around your tummy and see how you are feeling and everything else. But one thing they did with my dad today was they took him down to get an X ray. So, at least now they have a picture of part of his body anyway. But, instead of doing that, because the machine was broken, they sent him home on a plane and said, `We hope you get better. Once we get the machine fixed, we will call you and bring you back.'

MR. SIMMS: This is an (inaudible) hospital.

MR. WARREN: This is the hospital in Lake Melville.

MR. SIMMS: Oh, Lake Melville!

MR. WARREN: In the hospital in Lake Melville, the machine is not working, the machine does not operate, the machine is broken.

Mr. Chairman, the hospital at Lake Melville serves - in my district there are roughly 3,200 people, and down as far as Black Tickle in my colleague's district, there are roughly another 1,900.

AN HON. MEMBER: Do not tell me it is the only X ray machine in Labrador.

MR. WARREN: The only one in the area, other than Menihek. There are machines in the west. They could have transferred him over to Menihek.

MR. SIMMS: And it serves 30,000 people.

MR. WARREN: Well, 20,000 at least, and the machine is broken down. As of today, the machine is still not working, and they sent my colleague back, instead of keeping him there. At least he was there under a doctor's care. But instead of doing that, they sent him back to Makkovik where there is just a regular nurse.

MR. SIMMS: Shocking! Shocking! And the President of Treasury Board had the gall to get up on points of order and say nothing.

MR. WARREN: Mr. Chairman, that is why I made sure I kept to the short title of the bill. The short title of the bill is the public service restraint act.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I am just wondering now - and I suppose we can ask this kind of question - is that X-ray machine not working for some other reason. Now, if that X-ray machine is not working, you do not need a technologist there to work it. Mr. Chairman, I have to ask a serious question on this one, because if one of my constituents cannot get an X ray, what happens to the other possibly eighty to ninety people who go to this hospital day after day? Surely goodness, one of two of those may need X rays for some reason. So, my colleague, all of a sudden, got up, I think he said, about eleven or twelve times tonight, to contradict my colleagues about the bill.

MR. WINSOR: (Inaudible).

MR. WARREN: I say to my friend from Fogo, look, you have only been here for a couple of years. You are only a rookie, but one of the best, by the way.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WARREN: I have to say this, Mr. Chairman, and, I suppose, this must be a restraint, too, because on three occasions now the Premier will not come in for the Late Show.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is afraid of you.

MR. WARREN: No, the Premier is not afraid of me, but I will tell you what is wrong. The last three questions I have asked the Premier, and I have a feeling the Premier wants to find out something. the last two or three times I asked the Premier a question -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has expired.

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

MR. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all tonight, I have to apologize to the Government House Leader, because this afternoon when I was speaking, I completely forgot it was Thursday and the Late Show was coming on at 4:30, and he had to get up in his place and brutally stop me.

MR. SIMMS: That is where he started.

MR. PARSONS: That is where he started, Mr. Chairman. He is taking the House on his back, there is no doubt about that. It is insane the point of order the hon. House Leader has gotten up on. There is no relevancy to what we are talking about.

Let us look at the schedule, people from all those departments, the Crown corporations, and whatever.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you say the President of Treasury Board was

insane?

MR. PARSONS: No, indeed I did not. But, we talk about agriculture, it is involved, we talk about alcohol, it is involved, public utilities, the Parks Commission, it is all involved in this act; the Canada Games, the Churchill Falls Corporation, the Economic Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, and then we come to the Economic Recovery Commission. I think I will have to stop there for a moment because I wonder what restraints those employees have, the Economic Recovery Commission?

AN HON. MEMBER: They are all under restraint are they not, and their salaries are cut back?

MS. VERGE: Fraser Lush?

MR. PARSONS: I do not think so. I do not think any of those are cut back. I think the hon. the Government House Leader should perhaps get up and explain why not.

MR. SIMMS: He will get up now and interrupt.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, he will get up and interrupt. Mr. Chairman, I sort of pity the Government House Leader because he has a job to do, he thinks he has a job to do, and sometimes he exceeds that jurisdiction. Mr. Chairman, the fishery, farm loan boards, heritage, livestock owners, the Churchill Falls Development Corporation. That is an awful dirty word.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. PARSONS: The Churchill Falls Development Corporation. Every time I think of Churchill Falls I think about how we were sold out. We would never have any problems today but for Churchill Falls. Joey sold us out. The Liberal Government at the time. He gave it away.

MR. DOYLE: And on the Water Rights Reversion Act who represented the -

MR. PARSONS: That is right, the Water Reversion Act was represented by whom?

AN HON. MEMBER: Hydro Quebec (inaudible).

MS. VERGE: One of the lawyers opposing the Province's (inaudible) through that legislation (inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: This was King Clyde, the guardian of Newfoundland and Labrador; he opposed the Province, Mr. Chairman. And every now and then we get someone over there waving, `Ah, this is what happened to the Province, we lost $22 million -

AN HON. MEMBER: No wonder they love him in Quebec.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, we lost -

AN HON. MEMBER: He is worth $750 million a year to them.

MR. PARSONS: That is right, that is what he is worth, they love him on the mainland; but wait until Newfoundlanders and Labradorians realize what he actually did; Sprung, there are 500 Sprungs in what that lawyer did, every year -

AN HON. MEMBER: For sixty-five years.

MR. PARSONS: - for sixty-five years.

I must say that I do not agree with many of the things the Premier did, but I have to say one thing, that his choice for the Minister of Mines and Energy, was an excellent one;

AN HON. MEMBER: What!

MR. PARSONS: Yes, I have to say it. If there is anyone who can take him out of the rut he is in, perhaps that Minister can do it.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, he cannot speak French.

MR. PARSONS: Well, that might be an impediment; but I am almost sure he can get some kind of a tutor. The Premier has a tutor, so perhaps the Minister of Mines and Energy can have a tutor, as well.

Let us go to the frivolous activities of the hon. the Government House Leader, when he gets up and says it is irrelevant. There are other things in this, Marystown Shipyards, Newfoundland Cancer Treatment Research Foundation, Kippin Marketing Board, Newfoundland Crop Insurance Agency, Eggs, Farm Products, Hardwoods, Hogs, Labrador Arts Council, Computer Services, Housing Corporation, all things that are involved in this schedule, Mr. Chairman, and the hon. the Government House Leader got up, about six times since I came back - I attended a meeting earlier tonight - with those points of order, trying to build a case for himself to bring in closure; that is all it is; he is trying to build himself a case.

You know, when we realize what is happening here with this bill - I was surprised tonight when the Leader of the Opposition mentioned all the things we have lost, all the things to which Newfoundlanders and Labradorians aspired. We have lost - not by this Government - the Land and Sea program with CBC, who were heartless to cut it out; we see MUN Extension cut, another service to rural Newfoundland and then when we talk about Decks Awash, that really brings home fond memories, because the first episode of Decks Awash -

AN HON. MEMBER: You were not featured in it.

MR. PARSONS: I was featured in it.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, you were not.

MR. PARSONS: Alright, the second one; I am not sure if it was the first or second one, but it was with Harvey Best.

AN HON. MEMBER: Harvey Best?

MR. PARSONS: Yes, Harvey Best was then (inaudible), I suppose.

AN HON. MEMBER: What year was that? Is he involved in the Fishery now?

MR. PARSONS: No, he is involved in the fish plant down in Quidi Vidi.

MR. WINSOR: He is from Fogo Island.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, that is right.

MR. WINSOR: (Inaudible) from the historic district of Fogo.

MR. PARSONS: That is right, and that gentleman who was the co-ordinator or spokesman or - what would you call him?

AN HON. MEMBER: The field worker.

MR. PARSONS: The field worker for Decks Awash at that time was Harvey Best and, as I said, he came from the district of my very young but distinguished colleague from Fogo. Harvey Best came originally from Fogo. He is now in the fish business.

MR. NOEL: And a good Liberal.

MR. PARSONS: There is no such thing in my district as a good Liberal, and he is in my district. Mr. Chairman, I also want to say to the members on the other side, when those cuts came about in my district, because we are so close to St. John's and part of the urban area and part of a rural area, there is a great number of my constituents who work at the Confederation Building and Crown corporations and whatever involved in Government activities, and we took quite a battering in these layoffs. It is very easy for us all in here to laugh or joke about it but it is not a joke. Those people out there are suffering and, as I said today, when the Minister of Justice can find it in his heart to give the Legal Aid lawyers a $10 raise, and a raise to a Member of Cabinet, and cut some person who perhaps only gets about $10 an hour with which he tries to raise a family and pay his bills - and sometimes it is an awful lot less than that. In fact, I spoke to a lady who said she would be quite prepared to work for $5 or $6 an hour, and that lady, a one-time government employee, had been making around $18 an hour.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you hear the one on open line the other morning?

MR. PARSONS: No.

AN HON. MEMBER: Some lady phoned up offering to go to work. She was desperate.

MR. PARSONS: Yes, offering to go to work. These people are desperate. And when we see the hon. the Government House Leader get up on these frivolous points of order, telling us we are not staying within the realms or within the pages, within the guts of the bill, it is annoying, to say the least.

Mr. Chairman, I started today to finish up my speech by asking, What are the items that this Government has reneged on? Well, the Premier is not here, but, certainly, the Government House Leader has to take great responsibility for some of those activities. Although, I must say, the hon. the Government House Leader did not speak on the Meech Lake Accord. But the Premier reneged on Meech Lake, he reneged on letting us vote. He reneged on the nurses, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, the firefighters, hospital workers and the general civil servants. They reneged, both of them, and the Members of Government, the Members of the Cabinet.

This Government has victimized, pulverized, petrified the entire population of Newfoundland and Labrador. We wonder some days why people are not in the stands and to some extent it is true what someone said the other day, that people are scared, because they have aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters in the employ of this Government, and they are afraid to come in and show their faces. They are afraid for their own jobs. They are really running scared, and that, to me, is unforgivable, Mr. Chairman.

The only comparison I can draw with the hon. the Government House Leader and the Premier is one many years ago. I suppose, because I am a bit older than some of the ladies and gentlemen here in the House, they would not remember. Many years ago the United States of America was devastated, pulverized, victimized by a twosome. People went to bed scared. They were frightened to death. And for people who do not know, they were called Bonnie and Clyde. Remember? Remember old Bonnie and Clyde? Well, all we have to do is change a few - no it's Baker and Clyde. They have devastated the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, ripped off the poor people.

As I said before, when the Minister of Justice can increase the lawyer's fees by $10, and the Minister of Social Services, as I told him this afternoon, can increase his Chairman on the Appeal Board by $100 a day, and can lay off I think it was thirty-four or thirty-six people in his department, and then go back and hire on fourteen people in a casual way, temporary. Why did he not use the people who were being laid off? If there was a need there, certainly, those people were prepared to work.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: What did he say? I did not hear him, Mr. Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is because they were not Liberals.

MR. PARSONS: I believe I heard that minister say, `because they were not Liberals,' and that is the truth, exactly. The minister said it and I repeat it, they were not Liberals.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. PARSONS: Yes, and the audacity of that minister to smile about it! He increased the Chairman of the Board, who I think is a resident of his district.

MS VERGE: And he got it retroactively.

MR. PARSONS: He got it retroactively, plus I think the minister gave him an extra day, as I told him today, a day previous to his attending this meeting, for which, again, he receives this amount of money. Still, there is no money, and still, we are here with Bill 16!

AN HON. MEMBER: There is money for graft and corruption.

MR. PARSONS: There is money for graft, absolutely, and corruption, lots of money for that. (Inaudible) in the bill.

Mr. Chairman, this bill is an act respecting restraint of compensation in the public sector of the Province. How can we talk about restraints in the public sector of this Province when the Minister of Social Services can increase the per diem of one individual? When the Minister of Justice - you do not need to explain it, it is self-explanatory - increases the fees of the lawyers of Legal Aid? Is this rational? Is this the way that Government should be to the poor people? The Minister of Social Services nods his head. Well if it is then it is news to me.

I said today that I spoke with the Minister of Education. A couple of nights ago I had a call from a resident in my district. Like everyone else, they are fully aware of the cutbacks and what they know it is going to do to education.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very important bill that we are supposed to be debating at this point in time. It is a bill that enacts a wage freeze in the public sector of the Province. It is a bill that, regardless of collective agreements that have already been signed or have not been signed, insists that all public service wages as of April 1 until March 31, 1992 be frozen in the sense that there will be no increases added, a very, very important bill. Also, it takes a provision of a previous pay equity agreement, the retroactivity provision, and it does away with the retroactivity. It is a very important bill.

Mr. Chairman, we have never denied what this bill does. We have not hidden and pretended that the bill does something else. We have been very straightforward about this situation from the beginning. We know what the bill does, but, as we pointed out so many times, this bill had to be introduced. We had to protect the financial integrity of this Province. We are in very difficult times because of a downturn in the economy, because of a freezing of transfer payments from Ottawa -

AN HON. MEMBER: Not true! Not true!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MR. BAKER: - because of a freezing of transfer payments from Ottawa. Because the economy of Southern Ontario has not been performing as well as it has for a number of years, our equalization payments are beginning to suffer. So, Mr. Chairman, we are in a very difficult situation; the revenue is not there.

We could, I suppose, take the option of members opposite and raise taxes. We could take that option. They have suggested no other option, so I assume that is probably the one they would have chosen, to raise more taxes. We felt the taxes were high enough in this Province. We looked at the option suggested by my good friend from St. John's East, to borrow a couple of hundred million, and we could not do that, although the Member for St. John's East insists that were he in the circumstance, he would go out and borrow the $200 million and bankrupt the Province. If that is what he would have done, Mr. Chairman, it is not what we are going to do.

So, we have examined all the options, we have provided extensive time for consultation with the unions, we have consulted with all levels of government, have provided, ever since the second week in October of 1990, opportunities for all the unions to have input into our situation, and, Mr. Chairman, we have done, I suppose, anything that any government in North America would ever do. We have been totally honest, straightforward and open, right from day one. Mr. Chairman, we were in the situation where it was inevitable that we had to have a year of a wage freeze, and could not afford the $24 million of retroactivity for the pay equity.

Mr. Chairman, some members opposite have made the point - and I should point out to Your Honour again that twelve of the last fourteen speakers have not been relevant to the bill at all, have not spoken about the bill at all.

MR. TOBIN: That is not true.

MR. BAKER: I am sorry! You are right. It was thirteen of the last fifteen speakers who have not been relevant to the bill at all, have not commented on the bill.

MR. TOBIN: Not true! Not true!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MR. TOBIN: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West, on a point of order.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Chairman, it is not right for the Government House Leader to stand in this House and be less than honest. Every time tonight he tried to interrupt people with points of order, as it related to who was relevant and who was not, the Chair made the decision, and each time the Chair made the decision that the Government House Leader was wrong. He should apologize to the Chair for the remarks he just made. He should not question the Chair, and he should apologize to the Chair immediately, and admit that he was wrong and rude every time he stood.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

To the point of order, there is no point of order.

The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I should point out that the ruling Your Honour and the previous Chairman in the Chair made, indicated that the rule of relevance was not being applied, because there is wide-ranging debate and so on, and this was the use of the rule.

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

MR. BAKER: However, I repeat again - I will extend it a little further - I have been keeping track, Mr. Chairman, and twenty-nine of the last thirty-five speakers have not debated the bill at all.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. BAKER: As a matter of fact, Mr. Chairman, the Member for Humber East, on two or three occasions, was very relevant to the bill. She dealt with pay equity and she was very relevant. The Member for St. John's East, on a couple of occasions, was relevant. The Member for Humber Valley, on one occasion, was relevant, and the Member for Menihek, on one occasion, was relevant. So I have been keeping track.

AN HON. MEMBER: And I responded to the Minister of Finance and I was not (inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MR. RIDEOUT: (Inaudible) take the House on your back!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, I think it is an important and relevant point of order to point out that from the Government's perspective only eight speakers have spoken in the two days in Committee. None of them have spoken in relevance to the debate with the exception of the President of Treasury Board, one out of the eight has been relevant. So I do not know what his argument is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

No point (inaudible).

The hon. the President of Treasury Board.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Because it is going that way, I would like to give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following motion, that the debate on Bill 16 shall not be further adjourned, that further consideration of any resolution or resolutions, clause or clauses, section or sections, preamble or preambles, title or titles, or whatever else might be related to Bill 16, shall be the first business of the House when next called by the House, and shall not be further postponed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Opposition House Leader, on a point of order.

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Chairman, I am not sure that notice is in order. Given at this stage of a sitting. This is an extended sitting, not the normal daily sitting. And I know that Your Honour - at least the Speaker, when he occupied the Chair - made a ruling on a similar point of order because the notice was given during the regular normal sitting hours. And my interpretation of the Speaker's ruling is that the ruling he gave with respect to giving notice of closure was that it was acceptable to move notice of closure any time during a normal sitting day or sitting hour. And I would argue and submit that this is not, at this point in time, a normal sitting time. This is beyond the normal sitting hours, extended sitting hours, and I would argue very strongly that this notice is not in order at this point in time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the President of Treasury Board, to the point of order.

MR. BAKER: Mr. Chairman, Standing Order 50 says: "Immediately before the order of the day for resuming an adjourned debate is called, or if the House be in Committee of the Whole, or of Supply, or of Ways and Means, any Minister of the Crown, who, standing in his place, shall have given notice at a previous sitting" - it does not say a previous, regular hour sitting, it does not say at a previous sitting before 3:00 p.m., it says "at a previous sitting of his intention to do so...." Mr. Chairman, I think it is quite obvious that this is a sitting of the House, therefore the notice is in order.

MR. SIMMS: (Inaudible) it is 10:00, and I think Your Honour has to leave the Chair, anyway.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No stopping the clock, no stopping the clock!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

The Chair rules that this motion is in order according to the precedent set by the Chairman previously to this.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is 10:00 p.m. The House is closed!

AN HON. MEMBER: You cannot conduct business, the House is closed, and everybody knows it! You have no choice but to leave the Chair!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

It being ten o'clock, the Committee will rise and report progress.

On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress, and ask leave to sit again. Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Trinity - Bay de Verde.

MR. L. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole has considered the matters to it referred, has directed me to report progress, and has asked leave to sit again.

On motion, report received and adopted. Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: This House stands adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, at 9:00 a.m.