March 9, 1992                 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS               Vol. XLI  No. 2


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Lush): Order, please!

Statements by Ministers. The hon. the Member for Port au Port.

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MR. SPEAKER: If the House will allow me to revert back from Statements by Ministers - if the hon. Member for Port au Port would take his place please.

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: This is a matter that I think ought to have a level of priority. Then we can provide for the hon. Member for Port au Port.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: It is with considerable sadness that I rise to inform hon. members of the passing on Sunday, March 8 of a distinguished Newfoundlander and a former member of this hon. House, Beaton J. Abbott.

He was first elected to the House of Assembly in 1956, and from then until his resignation from cabinet in 1968 he held several portfolios, including municipal affairs, supply and public welfare. Mr. Abbott was a dedicated member of the House who was always concerned for the interests of the people he served. He was a man of principle who believed very firmly in doing what he felt was the correct thing to do. That led him at one point into a disagreement with Mr. Smallwood, and ultimately to his resignation from the cabinet. In fact, he sat on the opposite side of the House as an independent liberal.

He was a man of great integrity, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to serve with him both in this House and in the cabinet.

He dedicated his life to public service as a school teacher and as a principal, later as a magistrate, and ultimately of course as the Member for Gander and a minister. In December he and his wife Pearl celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary, as clear an indication as there could be of his devotion to his family and of the most important place which his family held in his life.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that on behalf of hon. members on both sides of the House that you convey our deepest condolences to Mrs. Abbott and the members of her family in this time of sorrow.

Mr. Abbott made a tremendous contribution to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador throughout his life, and those of us who had the pleasure of knowing him will always remember him with respect, fondness and gratitude.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. We on this side would like to associate ourselves with the comments of the Premier in paying respects and sending condolences to the Abbott family. He was a former member of this Legislature, and a gentleman who contributed so significantly to life in our Province, and no doubt has made this Province a better place for all of us as a result of his contribution. So on this side I say to the Premier we want to be associated with his comments in passing on our condolences to the family.

It was interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that the Premier indicated that Mr. Abbott had a disagreement with former Premier Smallwood, and it struck my mind that there were a number of people who had disagreements with former Premier Smallwood, but that does not make any difference. I am sure it was just reason as it would be with anyone who disagreed with the former Premier and will disagree with the current Premier. That, I think, is a sign of the independence and a sign of the type of people who are elected to this Legislature. It is something of which I am proud, that we have that kind of representation sent in here. So we would like to associate ourselves with the Premier's comments.

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

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave of the members opposite to make this very short statement. It has to do with something that happened over the weekend which I think should be mentioned in the House.

I want to point out to the members of the House of Assembly that there was a fund raising event in the Bay St. George area which took place on Saturday past, for Emile Benoit, who, as you know, is a well known musician and a very favourite son of Newfoundland, especially of my district.

Mr. Speaker, members from both sides of this House participated and helped to raise $6,000 to preserve Emile's music on compact disc. I would like to take this time to thank the Minister of Development, whose help was invaluable, and to thank the Member for Stephenville for his participation and help. I might say that the three of us were on radio for a number of hours on Saturday, and oddly enough, Mr. Speaker, the comments were very favourable. It is not often that the members in this House act in a nonpartisan manner, and certainly this time the co-operation had very favourable results, and I again want to thank the hon. members opposite.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want it to go on record as associating myself with the remarks of the -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The Chair is under no obligation to recognize the Member for St. John's East under those circumstances, unless it is by leave of the House.

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave?

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The recognition of a former member of this House who has made a substantial contribution to this Province as a teacher, school principal, magistrate, and serving this House for fifteen years should not and did not go unrecognized and I want, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my party to be on record as associating myself with those remarks and join in the request that the Speaker, on behalf of the House, pass on condolences to the family of the late Mr. Abbott.

Statements by Ministers

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

MR. CARTER: Mr. Speaker, as hon. members are aware, 1991 was a disastrous year for the inshore fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador. Landings were down to such an extent that in many areas fishermen's incomes were reduced by half. In Labrador, the situation was even worse.

In response to this, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador contributed $2 million for programs to assist those engaged in the fishery in areas hardest hit by the inshore fishery failure.

I am pleased to announce today a further measure to assist fishermen - a special program for fishermen who are experiencing difficulty in making their 1991 payments to the Fisheries Loan Board as a result of the very poor inshore fishery last year.

One of the main elements of this program, Mr. Speaker, is that 1991 interest charges will be forgiven for all Direct Loan Program clients, subject to certain conditions, as follows:

First, forgiveness will apply only to normal interest applicable in 1991, and not to interest associated with payments in arrears.

Second, a borrower whose loan was approved prior to April l, 1988, must have made payments on his account at least equal to the amount of forgiveness during the April l, 1988 to the September 30, 1991 period. However, borrowers with loans approved after April l, 1988, would be exempt from this requirement if they can demonstrate to the Executive Board of the Fisheries Loan Board that their delinquency was a result of a poor fishery or other extenuating circumstances and not to a lack of intent to make payments.

Mr. Speaker, the board believes that help should be provided to fishermen who are experiencing serious financial difficulties as a result of the 1991 fishery failure. At the same time, however, it should also be recognized that a significant number of borrowers have made no serious effort to repay their debts to the Board.

Mr. Speaker, in addition to forgiveness of 1991 interest charges, the special program I am announcing enables fishermen who have direct loans to request a deferment of the 1991 principal payments due. Requests from those who can demonstrate a significant reduction in earnings would not normally be refused.

A third feature of the program is that Fisheries Loan Board clients who purchased vessels through government-guaranteed chartered bank loans, rather than from the Board, and who experienced a significant drop in landings as the result of the 1991 catch failure, can also take advantage of interest forgiveness and deferment of principal payments for 1991. I want to point out, however, that these clients' requests will be assessed on an individual basis depending on each borrower's circumstances. As well, the forgiveness of interest for Bank Program clients will require the approval of the Fisheries Loan Board Executive Board. Borrowers who purchased larger vessels through the District Loan Program, prior to the introduction of the Bank Loan Guarantee Program in 1981, will also be eligible for assistance, under the same terms and conditions as Bank Loan Guarantee Program borrowers.

I also want to point out, Mr. Speaker, that fishermen who have already made their 1991 interest payments through assignment of catch arrangements and other means will be able to apply the amounts paid against payments due for 1992.

Mr. Speaker, this special Loan Board program for fishermen recognizes the special financial circumstances in which fishermen found themselves in 1991 because of catch failure.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Firstly, I want to thank the minister for a copy of his statement. I received it a few minutes before I came to the House today and basically I have to say that it is a positive statement, there are some positive initiatives here to reduce the financial burden which a lot of our fishermen find themselves in today.

But having said that I want to remind the minister that it was months and months ago that I raised the issue here in this Legislature in Question Period and debate and through the public media calling on the minister to go to the Loan Board and get some of these initiatives undertaken, because it did not take them until March of 1992 to know that we had a catch failure in this Province in the 1991 fishery. It has taken the minister six to seven months too long to bring in these initiatives because I am sure all members in this House, who have fishermen in their districts, and that is just about every one of us, know about the catch failure there has been, know about the pressure that has been put on fishermen throughout this Province by officials of the Fisheries Loan Board. Some of them have gone so far that you could classify it as harassment, Mr. Speaker. I want to say to the minister that I hope this is just again not another play on words, that he will direct officials of the Fisheries Loan Board to go about this thing properly and to stop the repossession orders and procedures that are going on all over this Province. I hope that he and the Loan Board are sincere about carrying out this program that he has announced today. There are some very positive things here that should help the plight of our fishermen around this Province.

A question for the minister, however: I would like to know, How many fishermen will fall outside of the program, will fall through the cracks, and will consequently not be accommodated? Another question for the minister that he can probably answer when he finds the appropriate time in the House or through the public media is: Is the Loan Board going to pay the banks the interest that is being charged on the loans? Is that what the minister is indicating in his statement, particularly on page 2, paragraph 3, when he talks about government guaranteed chartered bank loans? Is the Fisheries Loan Board now going to pay the interest to those chartered banks for the fishermen? Is that what he is indicating here?

As well, Mr. Speaker, I think it is very positive in the statement that fishermen who have paid interest in 1991 through assignment of catches and other means reflected in the minister's statement -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. MATTHEWS: - that they will now be able to apply the amount against payments due for 1992, Mr. Speaker. It is a very positive day for fishermen. But I want to say to the minister and the government that there are other businesses out and about the Province that have loans and so on, and that need help. I ask the government to consider that, as well.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs.

MR. HOGAN: Mr. Speaker, on Thursday last, I had the privilege of participating in somewhat of an historic event, namely, the unveiling of a new Newfoundland coin that was placed in general circulation as part of the events leading up to the celebration on July 1 of Canada's 125th birthday.

My purpose in rising today is for the House of Assembly to give recognition to Mr. Christopher Newhook, a twenty-five year old resident of Mount Pearl, who submitted the design for the new Newfoundland coin.

The coin program is comprised of twelve different twenty-five cent pieces that are to be issued into general circulation, one to represent each of the provinces and territories. As well, there will be a special one dollar coin on Canada Day.

When the coin program was announced at the end of January, the public was invited to submit designs on the theme, "The Beauty of Canada." Six weeks later the Royal Mint had received more than 11,000 designs, including almost 500 from the Province of Newfoundland.

The design submitted by Mr. Newhook, a free-lance artist, depicts a lone fisherman in a dory. As the Premier indicated at the ceremonies, it probably has more significance, at this particular time, than anything else, and we should take advantage of Mr. Newhook's design to draw the attention of the whole country and the whole of the world to the plight of the cod fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, it is appropriate, I think, for the House of Assembly to duly recognize this achievement and I move that a suitable correspondence be forwarded to Mr. Newhook.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise to respond to this statement on behalf of my colleagues on this side of the House. First of all, let me congratulate the minister on his appointment to that particular portfolio. I have to say that municipalities in this Province are looking forward to some sanity being put back into the Department of Municipal Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, we welcome this announcement. This is, indeed, an appropriate, I think, recognition of the ten provinces and the two territories of Canada by striking these twelve different twenty-five cent pieces. We are particularly proud, of course, that the artist who submitted the winning submission, selected from the 500 submissions made from within Newfoundland, came from the great historic district of Mount Pearl. Mr. Newhook is becoming well recognized as one of Newfoundland's foremost free-lance artists and this particular work, no doubt, is one that we all now know well because it has had such publicity. Mr. Newhook is an extremely good artist who has produced some very good work, and I think it is very appropriate, indeed, that his submission was selected.

We rise, Mr. Speaker, to associate ourselves with the comments of the minister.

Oral Questions

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

During the 1989 provincial general election campaign, the Premier, at that time, pledged to attack and reduce the unacceptably high unemployment rate in this Province. It is almost a quote, as a matter of fact. Now, he repeated that pledge again in the government's first Throne Speech, he repeated it again in his first Budget Speech and he repeated it again in the legislation creating the Economic Recovery Commission. Mr. Speaker, he has recently told us of their plan to introduce a long-term, like a twenty-year plan of some sort, strategy for the future, and that is fine.

My question to the Premier is this, Mr. Speaker: When will the Premier show the House his plan to address the urgent situation that faces our people throughout this Province today?

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear! Good question.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, if Newfoundland and Labrador had not been affected by two or three things, first, what has happened in the fishery, the impact, over which we had no control - not even the former government had any direct control. They could not cause this. The same unemployment, the same increase in unemployment rates, would have resulted had they been in power. If we had not encountered the national economic recession, as we have done - over which we have had no control, nor did the former government in 1982 - we would find, Mr. Speaker, that there had been some improvement in the unemployment rate in this Province.

But, as a result of these things, over which this government obviously has no control, the increase that has taken place in the unemployment rate in Newfoundland - and there has been an increase - has not been as severe as it has been in some other provinces. It has not been as severe as it has been, really, on a broad base nationally. The situation would have been worse had we not been successful in making some contribution toward dealing with it, although it is not perfect. There is still a very long way to go.

We are going to continue this effort to resolve the problems. I have to say to the Leader of the Opposition, as I said on opening day, jobs pulled out of thin air one day usually disappear into thin air the next day. Now, the former government has a number of examples of how that has occurred in their effort to try and create job opportunities and it didn't work. We intend to tackle the problem on a long-term, solid planning basis, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, the answer is exactly as I had anticipated. I want to say to the Premier today, sincerely: the people of this Province have been hearing all of the explanations, excuses, reasons and all of the blame as to why the situation exists for the past three years. But they want their government to do something, not just continue to explain why and what happened and everything like that. Fifty per cent of the people able to work above the age of fifteen in the Maritimes are working - 50 per cent! In Newfoundland it is less than 40 per cent of the people over the age of fifteen who are working and who are able to get a paycheck.

So I ask the Premier again to please answer my question. Please answer the question. When are he and his government going to stop acting as spectators to this serious crisis and this serious situation and actually present a plan in this Legislature to create jobs? - a plan to create jobs.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we will go back to the 1982 recession and look at what happened when the former government was in power, and look at the disparity between this Province and the Atlantic provinces then. You will find that the disparity was even greater than it is today. We have diminished it somewhat. We have not solved the problem entirely, nor have we claimed the ability to do so.

Now, we could go through all sorts of schemes. We could spend $20 million on something like the former government did and achieve absolutely nothing other than the loss of money.

AN HON. MEMBER: Marble Mountain.

We could spend $3 million or $4 million on something like Marble Mountain and create permanent jobs.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WELLS: There are eighty-two people working at Marble Mountain today. The member refers to Marble Mountain. There are dozens and dozens more working in Corner Brook, at driving taxis, working in stores, working at a variety of other things. Mr. Speaker, we have achieved some significant improvement and we intend to continue along a sound line. But we are not going to rush out and make irrational decisions as the former government did and cost this government tens of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. We want to see results in the end.

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

MR. SIMMS: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. The Premier has just exhibited once again exactly what I have been trying to tell him. He doesn't seem to be getting the message. The people in our Province today are not interested anymore in hearing the excuses and the blame. The time for that is over. Our people want some help. He says the unemployment rate that jumped from 15 per cent in early 1989 when he formed the government to now, nearly 19 per cent, a 4 per cent increase, is not too much. It is extremely significant that over the last three years the unemployment rate has increased dramatically.

Now, here is the question that the people want me to ask the Premier. They are truly wondering if he understands the seriousness of the situation. Does he understand the anguish of the people out there who are concerned about losing their jobs? Does he fear for the people who are going to lose their jobs, or is he simply too involved in other issues like constitutional issues? That is what they want me to ask the Premier.

So answer the question directly. Never mind the blame. When are you and your government going to bring a plan into this Legislature to address the immediate situation that we face, a plan to create jobs, or are you just simply going to continue to rise in the House and blame this one and blame that one?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Let me say again, Mr. Speaker, jobs dragged out of thin air today disappear into thin air tomorrow, just like the 200 Sprung jobs did.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

PREMIER WELLS: And we are not going to repeat that. We are not going to follow their recipe. Now maybe they want us to follow their recipe. We are not going to follow their recipe. It has been demonstrated to be disastrous. We are not going to follow their recipe. Let me tell you instead, Mr. Speaker, what we have done.

We know that there were 408 separate companies helped last year through ENL and ERC - 408. We know that it made a contribution towards generating some 1,400 new jobs and helped to sustain some 3,000 others. Now, we know that, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

REMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, let me say to you that I also have sufficient honesty to confess inability. The former government didn't. But I will confess to the people of this Province that we, this government, cannot protect them against the consequences of a national economic recession - we cannot. The former government pretended they could and they created an utter disaster. We cannot protect the fisheries - the loss of jobs in the fisheries, against what has been done in terms of mismanagement of the fisheries by the federal government. We cannot cause, suddenly, 8,000 jobs to be created to produce jobs for the people who are displaced. It cannot be done. The difference between us and them when they were there, Mr. Speaker, is that they didn't have the honesty to admit it - we do.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There is one sure to way to ensure that you do not create mistakes like Sprung, and that is to do absolutely nothing; and that is the approach that this government has been taking.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: 'Do-nothing Clyde'.

MR. SIMMS: The Premier flags out all of the things that ENL is doing. One thing he didn't mention about Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker, is that they have just spent in January and February - two months - $25,000 on television advertising. Now, is that a priority, or is it not a priority?

 

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, the Premier need not try to camouflage the question. What he should do is give an answer to the people. I ask the Premier one final time to try to come to his senses, to avoid the blame and the excuses - we have all heard them. Tell the people what you are going to do for them now.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I say again, in case the hon. member does not understand the English language, let me say again for him that we cannot - we cannot - put a shield around this Province and prevent and protect the Province against the ravages of the national economic recession. The former government couldn't do it either. The unemployment rate more than doubled in the 1982 recession.

MR. SIMMS: It did not.

PREMIER WELLS: Well, it came very close to it.

MR. SIMMS: That is incorrect, it didn't double.

PREMIER WELLS: It went over 20 per cent - 22 per cent.

AN HON. MEMBER: It hurts, doesn't it?

MR. SIMMS: It did not double.

PREMIER WELLS: It went over 22 per cent, that is right. So it didn't double, it only went over 22 per cent.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, and again that is (inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: That is right. It did not double -

MR. SPEAKER: Order please!

I remind the Leader of the Opposition and other members to my right that Question Period is for asking questions. It is not for debate. It is to get information, and I want, please, to cut down on the interruptions.

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Let me say, Mr. Speaker, I was in error. It didn't double, it went to over 22 per cent. It did not double. I was in error. It went to over 22 per cent. Now, Mr. Speaker, they couldn't do anything about it. They couldn't protect the Province against the ravages of a national economic recession. The difference is that the Liberal party understood. We understood the situation at the time.

Mr. Speaker, we also cannot protect this Province, or shield it completely against the consequences of the loss of several thousands of jobs because of what has happened with the fisheries, because of the mismanagement of the fisheries by the federal government, because of the effects of foreign overfishing - because of what has happened. We cannot stop the loss of jobs because of that. And, Mr. Speaker, we are not prepared to waste public funds and put the Province in a still worse position by spending $25 million or $30 million on harebrained schemes to create phantom jobs one day, only to see them disappear in the mist the next. We are not going to operate on that basis, we are going to take a different approach to rebuild the economy of this Province on a sound and reliable basis.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DOYLE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a follow-up question for the Premier, as well. I want to ask the Premier about jobs lost since he took office back in 1989. The unemployment rate, as the Leader of the Opposition mentioned a moment ago, was 15 per cent when he took office and it is now 19 per cent. The difference between 15 per cent and 19 per cent in the work force of 238,000 people is 10,000 jobs. Now, in addition, about 7,000 people dropped out of the work force over the last year, so that is 17,000 jobs lost since the government took office.

We are going to continue to ask the Premier the question if it takes all day, all week, all month or all next year, we are going to continue to ask him the question: What is his immediate plan to correct these horrendous numbers? We have people out there who are feeling that the government is not concerned about job creation, we have people who are losing their homes, banks are foreclosing on these people. What does the Premier intend to do for those people who are losing homes in this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I expect every single member of this House has the same kinds of concerns that the hon. members opposite are now standing up and expressing. The difference is that we, on this side, have the honesty and integrity to explain to people what the real facts are. We don't pretend. We are not prepared to fake things. We want to do everything we can within our power, within our ability, to try to help people deal with these problems, but I remind hon. members that there are only so much taxes we can raise. There is only so much money we can borrow, and if the hon. members opposite hadn't borrowed us silly in the fifteen years they were there, we might have some more manoeuvring room here today.

The people of this Province understand that it is wrong to put them further into debt and see nothing for it - it is wrong to do that, to wreck our chance at a reasonable future. They support this government, Mr. Speaker, in their efforts to make sure that we govern in a way that will not put this Province into that position, and we intend to continue on that line.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Harbour Main, on a supplementary.

MR. DOYLE: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. Let me remind the Premier, as well, that he was passed a surplus budget on current account back in 1989 when he took office.

Let us talk about the St. John's Metropolitan area for a minute, Mr. Speaker. In Metropolitan St. John's, the unemployment rate went up 4 per cent since last February. That is nearly 3,500 jobs or half of the jobs that were lost in Newfoundland over the last year, and it was caused by government layoffs in the last Budget.

Now, are these people being helped who were directly affected by the budget that the Premier brought down last year? Are these people going to be helped, and does the Premier feel any responsibility toward these 3,500 people who were laid off as a result of his Budget last spring?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we didn't create the mess. We have taken on the responsibility of trying to find solutions to it. We are doing it in an orderly sensible way. Last year they were saying we were destroying the health care in the Province. It is better now than ever it was before.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we intend to put this Province back on a sound management and financial footing, because we are concerned about the people of the Province, concerned that they have a means of earning a livelihood here, concerned that they not be burdened with an inordinate level of taxation.

The former government has put us in a position where they have everything in jeopardy. The teachers' pension plan is in severe jeopardy. We have to cope with that mess that they made. The workers' compensation fund is in severe jeopardy. We have to cope with that mess that they made. We owe $4.8 billion because of their approach to government. Mr. Speaker, we have a massive job ahead of us to try to restore financial sense to this Province, to put us back on a sound and proper road and, in the process, rebuild the economy of this Province.

Now, I know the hon. members opposite don't like the degree of success we are having with that. It bothers them greatly. It is a source of immense embarrassment to them. So, I understand the subterfuge that they have to create with these fake concerns about doing something for people now. You do something within the limits of your ability, you do not pretend you can act beyond your ability. That is not an honest thing to do, and we are not prepared to do it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I recognize the hon. the Member for Harbour Main.

MR. DOYLE: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

If the Premier won't do anything to help those people who are unemployed right now, will he make a promise that he won't add to it this year? Will he promise that there will be no more public sector layoffs this year?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker. I will make no such promise. The Minister of Finance, when he delivers his Budget, will state what the government's position is. Now, we have a difficult position facing us again this year, and I say to you, so far, we are getting no help from the unions. They are taking a head-in-the-sand approach. I have to say to them, that we must - we have given them every opportunity, and if they spurn it and set it aside in this way, then the government must and will do that which is necessary. It may involve more layoffs. We must do that which is necessary to manage this Province in a sound and proper way, and we are not about to run from it because of these kinds of questions in the House today.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is to the Premier, as well. While this government has failed to address employment problems, in general, it's biggest failure has been its inability to find employment opportunities for the youth of this Province. Presently some 32 per cent of the population between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are unemployed. What has the Premier done, then, to live up to his 1989 election promise of providing jobs for the youth of this Province so they will not have to leave home to find work?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, we are endeavouring to do just that. That remains the commitment of the government, to provide opportunities for our people within the Province. It isn't easy when you are faced with three major factors: the utter mess that we inherited, the national economic recession, and what has happened in the fishery. Now, it isn't an easy solution.

The difference between the people opposite and the people on this side is we are prepared to tell it to the people exactly as it is, tell them honestly what the situation is, what we are doing about it, and how we intend to approach it.

Now, I think the people have had an ample opportunity to express their views. They have been asked by a variety of pollsters. We haven't done it, we just read what we see in the newspapers and report it on television. I can only say to you, Mr. Speaker, that I can confess to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, I don't think we are perfect - I think we have even made some mistakes, but I think we are going in the right direction. And I express my sincere appreciation to the people of this Province for their recognition of that fact, when they have expressed their opinions as they have, and say to them, give them every assurance, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to continue along that vein and not along the lines that the Opposition proposes, which the people of this Province have clearly denounced.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Premier knows that the youth unemployment situation in this Province has gotten worse each year since 1989. Added to that, in a couple of months, thousands of students will graduate from the colleges, schools and universities throughout this Province. What is the Premier going to do to give them a chance to get a job here in this Province so that we can prevent the mass exodus of thousands of the brightest young people in this Province to the mainland? What is the Premier going to do to prevent that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, maybe they have their questions preset, they don't listen to the answers and they figure they just must continue and ask them, but let me say again what we say to people honestly, we cannot create jobs out of thin air. We cannot create jobs out of thin air. We say it again in case they missed the point. We also say we are not prepared to put this Province in debt beyond its ability. We are not prepared to add another two or three points to the retail sales tax to try and create more Sprungs that do not work anyway. We are bound and determined to correct the problems of the economy of this Province so that on a long-term basis we can generate a stable economy and provide for an opportunity for people to seek employment here as they graduate from school and graduate from university and technical colleges and so on.

We gave no undertaking to anybody that we could turn the mess around in two or three years. We told people honestly how long it would take to correct this mess. On top of that we were then saddled with the burden of trying to cope, Mr. Speaker, with the consequences of what has happened in the fishery, with the consequences of a national economic recession, and with the consequences of substantial cutbacks by the Federal Government in their transfers to the Province. We have had to cope with these difficult situations, and I say to you, Mr. Speaker, anybody who is prepared to look at the record objectively will see a remarkable record of achievement and commend this Government, as do the people when they are asked their opinions. They give full marks and full commendation to this Government, and I prefer to accept their judgement, Mr. Speaker, as opposed to the prejudiced judgement of the members opposite.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for Fogo on a supplementary.

MR. WINSOR: Mr. Speaker, with a youth unemployment rate of 32 per cent, thousands of students coming out of school in a couple of months time seeking Summer work so they can return to school next year: can the Premier tell them that job opportunities will exist for them this Summer, and has the Government considered a strategy to find temporary Summer employment for the thousands of students who will soon join the workforce? That is not long-term, that is short-term because they are going back to school in September. What is the Government going to do about short-term jobs for the Summer?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I have no doubt that the Minister of Finance, when he delivers his Budget, will announce programs, generally speaking, of the nature that the Government has had before, and I believe of a nature not dissimilar to the kinds of programs the former government put in place - not at all dissimilar to the kinds of programs the former government put in place. It is quite similar. Will it be adequate to deal with the entire problem? I doubt it, Mr. Speaker, because I am frankly prepared to honestly admit to the people of this Province that we do not have the resources to deal with a problem of the magnitude that we have in a perfect way. We struggle to try and do our best to provide for good sound Government, and to provide for the fair treatment of people, as we intend to continue to do, Mr. Speaker.

 

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

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

In the absence of the Minister of Justice I have a question for the Premier. On February 14, Valentine's Day, the community of Davis Inlet was shocked by a tragic fire which took the lives of six small children. Is the Premier considering the appointment of a judicial inquiry into the cause and circumstances surrounding this tragic fire?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, whenever death occurs in an unexplained way, or there is no obvious and clear explanation for it, a judicial inquiry is normally conducted by a provincial court judge. It happens as a matter of routine. I think in fact Government generally just goes through the pro forma form of issuing the Order in Council directing it but it is a matter pretty much of routine that we have it. I do not know what the Minister of Justice has done but I will undertake to inquire and inform the House as to whether or not there is anything in process that will cause a judicial inquiry to be held in the Davis Inlet fire.

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

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

I have a question for the Minister of Fisheries as a result of the recent announcements on the reductions in the northern cod quotas, and layoffs in the fishing industry because of the closure of the trawler industry for northern cod. I must say, Mr.

Speaker, that these laid off people are not reflected in the most recent unemployment statistics, so once all these are compounded and added in we are going to see a much larger unemployment rate for this Province in the March statistics.

I just want to ask the Minister of Fisheries, what is his Government planning to do and how are they prepared to help the fishermen and fish plant workers and others, who have already lost work and income because of the closure of the fishery, and for those who will be losing work and income because of this devastating news to our fishery?

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

MR. CARTER: Mr. Speaker, we propose to work with the Federal Government, and we indicated to the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on several occasions, the latest being of course on Friday past, that the Province is quite willing to work with his government to put together a response package to accommodate the fishermen whose livelihood is being at least, temporarily interrupted by the plant closures. I have written the minister, Mr. Speaker, a letter to that effect and I am quite prepared today to table that letter.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the minister: is the Provincial Government planning to have an aid package ready for trawlermen and fish plant workers in this Province, if plants remain closed for an extended period of time. We all know there is going to be a further review this fall, the federal Minister of Fisheries has told us that. The chief executive officer of Fishery Products International says he is going to fully assess his company later this fall, and there may possibly be a restructuring of the company. Will the Provincial Government have a package in place to assist those people when they fall out off the work force?

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

MR. CARTER: Mr. Speaker, I can only repeat what I said a moment ago, that we have had meetings with the Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and will be meeting with him again shortly to discuss that very problem, given the fact, Mr. Speaker, that the problems we are now experiencing in the fishing industry are the responsibility of the Federal Government. I think it is totally irresponsible to expect the Province to shoulder the full burden of responding to that program, and I think any member who would recommend that is being totally irresponsible, given the circumstances surrounding the crisis, and I question their motive, Mr. Speaker. Is it to score a cheap political point or are they sincerely interested in helping the people who are severely affected.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The real question, Mr. Speaker, when you talk about irresponsibility is, when is this Minister of Fisheries going to wake up to the realities of Newfoundland and Labrador?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: When are you going to wake up? Anybody could write a letter to John Crosbie or Brian Mulroney. When are you going to do something yourself, you are the Minister of Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador? If you spent as much time working as you spend writing letters and spending time in the air, by the way, not pulling jobs out of thin air -

MR. SIMMS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. MATTHEWS: -we would be a lot better off in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that he is on a supplementary and ought to ask a question. I remind all hon. members that Question Period is not a time for debate, but to solicit information from Government.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Question Period is not a time for a minister to impugn motives on another member of this House, either, without being taken to task.

MR. SIMMS: He should have been taken to task.

MR. MATTHEWS: He should have been taken to task, Mr. Speaker. If we are going to talk Parliamentary rules here, let us talk them.

I want to ask the minister: The Provincial Government has advocated a much deeper cut in the Total Allowable Catch for northern cod, how big a cut has the Provincial Government proposed, how many jobs would have been lost if the Province's proposal had been accepted and what action is the Government prepared to take to help affected fishermen and plant workers, if the proposed TAC that his Government has recommended to the Federal Minister is implemented this fall when a further review is undertaken? Has the minister assessed those questions and does he have answers?

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

MR. CARTER: Mr. Speaker, let me deal with the first part of his question, when he asked me if we had been asleep since these crises started. Let me tell the hon. gentlemen that this Government, Mr. Speaker, was very much awake in 1989, in providing assistance. Let me give you a few numbers.

Since 1989, Mr. Speaker, the fisheries -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CARTER: You want to know what we have done. The Fisheries Loan Board has made more than $70 million available to fishermen through loans, bounties, and interest forgiveness. Since 1989, since we took office, Mr. Speaker, this Government has assisted the sealing industry to the tune of approximately $5 million in direct grants and loans. As a result of quota cuts and the closure of three offshore plants - Grand Bank, Trepassey and Gaultois - this Government has made $13 million available to extend the layoff notices. That's being asleep alright, isn't it? As a result of these closures the Government has engaged in a 70-30 cost-sharing basis for a plant workers retirement program.

AN HON. MEMBER: What an abuse of Question Period.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CARTER: Last summer we made $100,000 available -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!

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

I would also remind the hon. minister that answers should be as brief as possible, and tell him now that Question Period is over.

AN HON. MEMBER: Saved by the bell.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

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

For the purpose of maintaining order and decorum in the House, and for maintaining the respect and dignity of the Chair, I want to ask the hon. the Opposition House Leader to clarify a position. I can go to Hansard, but I am wondering if the hon. the Opposition House Leader was making an inference that the Chair had not called the hon. the Minister of Fisheries, because when I told the hon. member that he ought not to take part in debate, I think he came back suggesting that maybe the Chair should also call the rules fairly. I just want the hon. the Opposition House Leader to clarify it, please.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, I was inferring in my remarks that this Legislature is supposed to operate in a fair and equitable manner, and that is basically all I was saying. The Minister of Fisheries impugned motives on me in my question. I was told I was not supposed to take part in debate when asking questions. I just thought that if it was brought to my attention about my debating the issue that the Minister should have it brought to his attention that he was impugning motives on another member, which I think is unparliamentary. That is the only reason. If I have caused Your Honour any embarrassment by doing that I withdraw, and I am sorry.

MR. SPEAKER: I accept the hon. member's explanation.

Before moving on to the next item of business, on behalf of hon. members, I would like to extend a cordial welcome to seven students in Level II and Level III, accompanied by their teacher, Mr. Reg Hutchings, from Jens Haven Memorial High School, Nain Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Presenting Reports by

Standing and Special Committees

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Eagle River.

MR. DUMARESQUE: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Select Committee appointed to draft a reply to the speech of His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, I present the report of the Select Committee as follows:

To his Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Honourable Frederick W. Russell: May it please Your Honour. We, the Commons of Newfoundland and Labrador in legislative session assembled, beg to thank Your Honour for the Gracious Speech which Your Honour has addressed to this House.

Signed by the Member for Eagle River, the Member for Carbonear, and the Member for Fogo.

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

DR. KITCHEN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In accordance with the Financial Adminstration Act, I am pleased to table the Public Accounts of the Province for the year ending March 31, 1991.

MR. SPEAKER: In accordance with section 13 of the Auditor General Act, as Speaker, I am required to table the annual report of the Auditor General before this Assembly. Therefore,I now table the annual report of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1991.

The hon. the Minister of Finance.

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to present the department's observations on the report of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1991.

Notices of Motion

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador has declined and unemployment increased dramatically since this government took office almost three years ago; and

WHEREAS the government has failed to keep its much repeated promise to stimulate economic growth and to significantly reduce the unacceptably high unemployment rate that face our people today; and

WHEREAS the government has failed to produce the economic recovery plan promised in the Throne Speech and Budget Speech 3 years ago;

BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly insist that this government honour its promises to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and to this House of Assembly; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that in addition to the government's announced intention to introduce a 20 year-long term economic plan, the House of Assembly call on the government to present immediately to this Legislature its own plan to create jobs and to address the situation that faces our people today and in the immediate future.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Trinity North.

MR. OLDFORD: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are suffering because of the recent cuts to the total allowable catch of Northern Cod made by the Federal Government; and

WHEREAS the quota reductions have effectively eliminated the directed cod fishery by the Canadian offshore fishing fleet; and

WHEREAS the Federal Government has responsibility for the management of our fish stocks and must take responsibility for the consequences of its management decisions; and

WHEREAS the Federal Government has recognized foreign overfishing is partly responsible for the depletion of fish stocks; and

WHEREAS the foreign fleets continue to fish the Northern Cod stocks on the Canadian continental shelf; and

WHEREAS there is a need for diversification of production efforts within the fishery and a need for an economic diversification plan to assist the individuals and communities affected;

BE IT RESOLVED that this House of Assembly call on the Federal Government to take immediate action to prevent foreign overfishing of our coast, and implement a response program that includes measures to help affected individuals and also encourage economic diversification in the affected communities in order to ensure their long term viability.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS the lack of representation by women in the House of Assembly reflects the inequality of women in society and political parties have to date been unable to provide a means or mechanism to resolve the gross inequality of representation, and

WHEREAS gender balance achieved by having an equal number of men and women would provide greater democracy and lead to policies and laws which would remove barriers to equality of men and women in society; and

WHEREAS Newfoundland and Labrador has experienced representation by more than one member per district as part of its political history, which form of representation can be adapted to achieve gender equality,

BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly support the principle of representation by two members per district, one woman and one man, without increasing the number of legislative seats;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a Committee of the House be established to report to the House on the methods and timetable to be adopted to implement the new form of representation.

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

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

I move the following resolution:

WHEREAS the House of Assembly has decided that the official name of the Government of this province shall be the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS that decision of the Legislature acknowledges that Labrador, while an integral part of this Province, retains a distinctive identity from the Island part of the Province; and

WHEREAS the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission has recommended that Labrador should lose its status as a separate federal electoral district;

BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly recognize the Province as the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the House of Assembly petition the Parliament of Canada to reject the recommendation of the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission and that Labrador retain its own seat in the Parliament of Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. NOEL: Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS the standard of living in Newfoundland and Labrador can be improved by reducing our cost of living as well as by increasing incomes; and

WHEREAS certain domestically produced dairy, poultry and other food items presently cost up to twice as much, and sometimes more, than if they were imported; and

WHEREAS Canadian trade policies, in addition to burdening taxpayers with the cost of subsidies amounting to billions of dollars every year, probably impose through unnecessarily high prices what is essentially a consumption tax in excess of $100 million a year on residents of our Province alone; and

WHEREAS Newfoundland farmers have demonstrated that we have the ability to supply many products at competitive prices without excessive subsidies or supply management;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this House urge our federal and provincial governments to pursue all reasonable means of ensuring food is made available to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians at the best possible prices.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay.

MR. SMALL: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow ask leave to introduce the following resolution:

WHEREAS the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is fully committed to revitalizing the sealing industry for the benefit of the landsman based sealers; and

WHEREAS it appears that the rapidly growing seal herds are having an adverse effect on the fish stocks off Newfoundland and Labrador;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador continue to explore every avenue to develop the industry through a program aimed at the full utilization of the resource, including the skins, meat, and by-products of the animal and that scientific, technological and market research be directed to this end; and

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this hon. House call upon the Federal Government to join with the Province in developing and implementing a comprehensive programme to expand the market opportunities for seal products to the extent necessary to harvest sufficient numbers of seals to restore the ecological balance in our marine environment.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I give notice that I will on tomorrow move that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on Supply to consider Certain Resolutions for the Granting of Supplementary Supply to Her Majesty. (Bill No. 39)

I give notice that I will on tomorrow move that the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider Certain Resolutions relating to the Advancing or Guaranteeing of Certain Loans made under The Loan Guarantee Act, 1957. (Bill No. 56)

I also give notice that I will on tomorrow move that this House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to consider Certain Resolutions relating to the Guaranteeing of Certain Loans under The Local Authority Guarantee Act, 1957 (No. 2). (Bill No. 54)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Before moving on to Orders of the Day, when the Member for Eagle River submitted his report on the Address in Reply I ought to have asked: When shall the report be received?

If hon. members will allow me to go back and say those lines -

When shall the report be received, now or presently by leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Now.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

Orders of the Day

MR. BAKER: Order 1, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order 1. The Address in Reply.

The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To listen to it all I am somewhat reminded of that whimsical song from the 'sixties: Where have all the such-and-suches gone?/Long time passing. Well, where have all the Liberals gone, short term passing? Three years passing. Where have all the Liberals gone?

AN HON. MEMBER: You haven't read the polls, boy! You need to have a look at the polls!

MR. HEWLETT: I have seen some polls and the people know where the Liberals are gone and are going.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. HEWLETT: I have never seen such a do-nothing ineffectual government in our Province's history. When the hon. the Premier was responding to questions in Question Period earlier you used words like shield and protect. Well the people of this Province require that their Premier fight on something other than the Constitution in this Province. Shield, protect - all defensive terms. He was on the defensive the entire time during Question Period because the record of this Government is abysmal. All they could do was point out one project where we tried and failed - Sprung. We forget about all the other things that were done - the mines that were opened; the paper mill that was saved. We forget about what previous Liberal governments wasted; how the Churchill Falls agreement is probably twenty or thirty Sprungs a year for sixty-five years. We forget about all that. All we remember is just one project where we tried and we failed; but, Mr. Speaker, we tried. We worked hard. We tried. But we have a Government here led by a Premier who does not want to interfere in the economy. Newfoundlanders expect their Premier to interfere in the economy. Newfoundlanders expect their Premier to wade face and eyes right into the problems facing the economy of this Province - not sit back and do nothing and say: I cannot shield you from national or international factors.

The hon. the Premier said in response to a question that the hospital situation is improved immensely. In Grand Falls right now, which is the new county hospital for my district, Grand Falls - Windsor being the county seat under the new system of government that has been invented here, patients are waiting on stretchers in the corridors looking for beds. This is the new improved hospital system, Mr. Speaker.

What they do at the clinic in Springdale now is if someone is rushed in to be stabilized and then needs to be sent to either Corner Brook or Grand Falls, depending on the ailment, they do not call over to Corner Brook or Grand Falls ahead of time and say: we have someone here, do you have a bed? They found out that does not work. What they do now is they stabilize the person, put him in the ambulance, make sure they are outside the Springdale town boundaries, then they call the hospital concerned and say: he is on the way; and all that guarantees them is a stretcher in the corridor. So there is the vast improvement in your hospital system.

Jobs out of thin air... Jobs out of thin air are better than welfare. Short-term job creation measures are no panacea. They are not the long-term answer to our economic problems, but isn't it better to put someone to work on a short-term basis so at least he or she can qualify for unemployment insurance rather than send them to the welfare office?

Now the Development Association in Green Bay did a study there a little while ago as to how many stamps or insurable weeks would be needed for ordinary working breadwinners, let's call them, in given families, in order to qualify for UI this winter. Not counting kids coming out of school, who need twenty to start off, we needed 2,000 weeks for Green Bay. Between the hon. Minister of Labour's Provincial program and the federal emergency program, Green Bay got 500 insurable weeks. That is 1,500 families left in utter desperation. GMAC Financing Corporation is going to come and take their truck. Cohens is going to come and take their furniture. The bank is going to foreclose the mortgage on their house, because on welfare $500 or $600 a month versus $600 or $700 every two weeks on UI, you cannot have instalment plans. You cannot have a credit system. The only people who can survive on welfare are people who have been used to living on it, because people who are used to working seasonally and drawing UI cannot survive on welfare - and welfare is what this Government is offering people because it does not believe in pulling jobs out of thin air. Well those jobs out of thin air that keep you out of the welfare office are a heck of a lot better than no jobs at all; and no jobs at all is what this Government has brought forward.

Hibernia, a very important project in terms of a construction project, a big slowdown on the go, a lot of uncertainty. What has this Government done? Acknowledged the fact that the companies have a problem on their hands, that extra money, investment capital needs to be found to fill the gap left by Gulf. What has this Government done in practical terms, I wonder, to bring about some immediate results there? Who have they pushed? Who have they prodded? Who have they bugged? Who have they phoned? What committees have they formed? What task force have they sent out scouring God's green earth looking for your $1 billion? How many people do they have in Hong Kong talking to those multimillionaires who do not want to become communists, who are willing to trade their fortunes for a Canadian passport if they will invest it in Hibernia?

They have done nothing, Mr. Speaker, except to leave it to market forces, leave it to the Feds, leave it to the whims of the world. Well, Mr. Speaker, no one is going to look out for Newfoundland and Labrador but the people and Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot leave that to Mainlanders to look after. We cannot leave it for foreigners to look after. We have to do it, and the people of this Province expect their Premier to get involved. The people of this Province expect their Premier to hang up his skis, tie up his yacht and actually go to work dealing with the ordinary every day problems of putting bread and butter on the table, now, not ten years down the road. There will not be anybody left here ten years down the road.

We hear about the crisis in the fishery because you have large numbers of people being laid off in a very short period of time. In the logging industry we have a steady erosion. Hundreds of jobs are disappearing every year due to lack of wood and through mechanization. Attention is not being brought to the logging industry as it should be. My district was the capital of the mineral exploration industry for all of Newfoundland and Labrador and it is barely alive today because it needs a stimulation program. The Feds cancelled theirs and I think there should be a new one. This Province should be approaching the Feds to come in with a new one, if necessary cost share it, but we are not going to open any mines if we do not prospect, and prospect in serious ways, like diamond drilling, line cutting, and soil sampling.

There were well over 100 jobs in Green Bay a few years ago in that regard but right now there are barely a dozen or more. This Government has done absolutely nothing except sit back and watch the economy, and the social and economic fabric of this Province slowly unravel, and throw up its arms and say: we cannot do anything about it. It is bigger than us.

If you want to be Premier of this Province the first thing you have to realize is that you have to take on, probably, the hardest job in the world. You have to fight with, you have to deal with, and you have to win with people who are bigger than us. You have to be ten times as good as your average Mainlander or European. Instead we have a Premier fresh out of the corporate boardroom who would seem to let Mother Nature, let economic forces take their course and as a result very little, if anything, has happened, except that natural market forces are downgrading our economy and increasing our unemployment rate.

Hope Brook Gold closed down during the tenure. Opened during the tenure of the PC administration and closed down during the tenure of this administration. I understand there are negotiations on the go right now with a possible reopener, but I also understand that the problem with regard to reopening is that the Government is being just a touch too tight fisted in assisting with the reopening. It is not a Sprung, it is Hope Brook. Take a chance, spend $1 million. I gather that is all that is keeping the two sides apart, $1 million. Take a chance. If you do nothing you will never fail but you will never accomplish anything. Now, this party in Government, Mr. Speaker, got elected as a liberal party, small 'l', this Government got elected promising jobs, jobs, jobs, like Joey used to say, this Government was going to bring home every mother's son and the mothers were going to kiss the Premier's feet for bringing home their sons. Well, their sons are all home, because they have been laid off in the factories and mines of Ontario, and the mothers are not kissing the Premier's feet.

At home the social welfare office is absolutely blocked. Social workers are going off on stress-related leave and their caseload is just being split up among the remainder of the people working in the office. We almost had a wildcat strike out there a month ago, just because of the way that this particular Government is handling the economy. It would rather see people on welfare than give them short-term make-work projects to tide them over until this great economic miracle that the Premier talks about, this turnaround in the Newfoundland, Canadian and North American economies, comes about. He would rather see them on welfare than on unemployment during that interim period.

Well, Mr. Speaker, my constituents, and I would say the vast majority of the constituents of people in this Assembly, would rather be on UI working seasonally than not working at all and being on welfare. Instead we have a premier who puts a theory first, not people first. Is it any wonder that our Party has chosen a new slogan, "Putting People First"?

If we made mistakes we learned our lessons. We are listening to the people. We continue to do it. We are going around the Province having meetings, we are talking to people, we are listening to people, and we are going to put people first. We need a government that cares about people, not concepts, not economic philosophies.

Most of you people over there are real Liberals, and yet you are led by a guy who is to the right of Attila the Hun! You sit quietly by like sheep and put up with it. The only guy over there so far who has had the nerve to speak his mind was at the same church service with me last night in Port de Grave. Mr. Efford. I do not think he is probably well beloved within that Cabinet right now.

So this Government has a record of failure. Because this economy is 50 per cent government. You downsize government in the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador, you play macro-economics with a micro-economy, and you just might destroy it. This Government, under this Premier, is going well along the road to doing just that. People who are going on welfare who have never been inside a welfare office before in their life - the hon. minister knows it, his caseload is up. His officers are swamped. They are not doing social work, they are tied to their desks doing paper work, processing people. They are not out investigating family situations, dealing with child abuse problems, in a way that a person with a university degree in social work would normally do. They are tied to their desks writing out emergency food orders, processing people, filling out forms.

That is what this Government is offering people. Instead of jobs out of thin air you fill out forms and you get $500 or $600 a month. Like I said: where have all the Liberals gone?/A very, very short time passing.

The difference in this Party and the Party opposite is quite simple. We would try -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)!

MR. HEWLETT: In Sprung we tried and failed. Hope Brook we put back together, St. Lawrence mine we put back together. If Clyde Wells had been premier of this Province when Bowaters pulled out of Corner Brook that city would be a ghost town today. That is the God's truth. Because the man does not believe in getting involved and shaking people up and hunting down the world till you get yourself a new investor. That is the reason I worry about Hibernia.

He left Corner Brook, he gave up on Corner Brook. Brian Peckford and a team of top bureaucrats moved into Corner Brook and we saved the city.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. HEWLETT: Now listen here. We have a project out there that could be the genesis of an offshore oil industry and you are sitting back and you are just watching it all happen. Letting the companies do their thing. You are monitoring, monitoring, you cannot eat monitors unless you live in a tropical climate where you get monitor lizards and they do not taste that well I am told. And you know the ultimate irony, Mr. Speaker, is that I received a newspaper in the mail the other day and in it was an insert of a mail order catalogue, and for sale in this newspaper was a print by a Canadian artist entitled, 'Canadian Heroes', and there were two portraits on the one print, Mr. Wells and Elijah Harper. Canadian heroes, thirty dollars a print, unframed. How many unemployed loggers and fishermen and miners I wonder, would like to buy that print to hang over their tables, the tables on which they cannot afford to put bread and butter, one wonders?

AN HON. MEMBER: They will hang that before they will hang your picture.

MR. HEWLETT: They will not hang that any more, sir.

MR. TOBIN: Not as quickly as they would hang you if you are going back to your district again.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker -

MR. TOBIN: The man is jealous of you that is why he is always bad mouthing you.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, we have a Government opposite that does not care about the immediate, short-term pain that the people of this Province will have to go through in order to carry through an economic philosophy that the Premier and probably only the Premier and a few right wing extremists in that particular party agree with, but you are all scared to death of him. Nobody speaks up, no one is allowed to open his mouth, so you are all right wingers, whether you like it or not, you are not Liberals. You are not Liberals, I am a bigger Liberal than any of you. You do not care about people.

Remember Joey Smallwood used to talk about liberalism and reform and all of that, but what are you guys doing?... you are sitting back and just watching her fall apart and saying: we cannot do anything, it is in the hands of the international economy, it is in the hands of the national economy, it is in the hands of the Gods. It is in the hands of everybody but Clyde, except the Constitution! Oh, then hands off, that is my exclusive territory altogether.

Well, you cannot eat Meech. I said it a couple of years ago and I am still saying it and people who would buy that portrait to hang over their tables would be reminded when they do not have any food to put on those tables that you cannot eat Meech. You cannot eat Meech, you cannot eat the Constitution. This Government has to come up with a short-term action plan to alleviate the suffering being felt by ordinary Newfoundlanders out there now and keep them out of the welfare offices.

Give the hon. member for Placentia a break and let him get his department re-organized and restaffed, so that it could better deal with the growing case load -

MR. WINSOR: Waterford - Kenmount. He has moved up (inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to resume his seat just for a short time.

MR. HEWLETT: Oh, excuse me.

MR. SPEAKER: I think this is the appropriate time to remind hon. members about the importance of parliamentary language, and I know the hon. member would not want to use anything but parliamentary language and I refer hon. members to Beauchesne, page 142, section 484. This is very important, it is there so that we bring in a moderation to debate and it says: 'It is the custom in the House that no Member should refer to another member by name. Members should be referred to in the third person as "the Honourable Member". A Minister is normally designated by the portfolio held: "The Honourable Minister of such and such", and other office holders are similarly identified by their offices', so, I want hon. members please, to keep that in mind because it is a very important procedure in the House of Assembly.

The hon. the Member for Green Bay.

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, I do apologize. My passion for seeing the people of my district not have to visit the welfare office as often as they have to these days may have caused me to slip somewhat with regard to my parliamentary language and procedure. For that, I do apologize to the Chair.

However, Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, quite simply, that whether I refer to the hon. persons opposite correctly or not, the fact of the matter is they are a do-nothing government, they are a stand-pat government, they are a let-economic-forces-take-their-course government, and they are a let-Mother-Nature-take-its-course government. They do not put people first and people are suffering. People need help now, and it is about time they got off their rear ends and did something, Mr. Speaker.

I thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Fortune - Hermitage.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. LANGDON: It gives me great pleasure today to stand and participate in the 1992 Throne Speech Debate. The Throne Speech, on page 1, says, "However, as Canadians and as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, we are facing unprecedented new challenges at the present time. Indeed, as a nation and as a province, we are truly at a critical crossroad in our history in a constitutional sense, in an economic sense, and with respect to the state of our public finances." Mr. Speaker, that is true, but not only do Newfoundlanders and Canadians find themselves in unprecedented challenges, it is happening worldwide.

For example, who would have thought that in 1991 we would have seen the profound and unthinkable events happen in the world, where we would have seen the largest nation on earth, the U.S.S.R., disintegrate and become independent sovereign nations, all looking after their own affairs? It has meant social and economic problems for the world community that are not even imaginable. We have witnessed this through the advent of t.v. We are, indeed, part of a global village.

We are, as I suggest, a fiber-optic society. At any one time, one-third of the world's people in 150 countries, approximately 1 billion people, are watching t.v., even at this present time. As I thought about that, I thought about the clip that we saw on t.v. a few years ago that caught the imagination of the world, I guess, a Newfoundland sealer towing a white pup across the ice with a streak of blood emanating from behind it. I am not sure if we could have done anything, in a sense, to change that event in history, but it happened. So these pictures on t.v. speak of our feelings. In a sense that t.v. picture bonds emotions to people whom we have never met. What it is doing, Mr. Speaker, is changing the social values of society.

In the 1950s the standard of living was measured by the prestige of the individual, how much wealth he had accumulated, how many cars he had, how many houses he had. But in 1990 that individual prestige has been replaced, and it has been replaced by the quality of life for all of us or standard of society for the 1990s. The individual is no longer the prestigious thing, it is the quality life for all of us. There is a global intercommunication, and what others do affect us whether we like it or not.

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, we are also entering a decade of individual responsibility where we are reassessing our values, our morals, our ethics, and philosophical codes of conduct. We are seeing that there is now responsibility to others, and there seems to be a new balance between the physical and the spiritual. We have to learn to learn. I must repeat that again: We have to learn to learn. We cannot always expect to teach others and that they always listen. We have to unlearn, in so many instances, what we have learned.

The government has, in its Throne Speech, outlined its agenda for the Province for 1992 and beyond. It has included the priority of the fisheries, the importance of the Hibernia project, the about to be released strategic economic plan for the Province, the tremendous potential for tourism, the concern for the environment, concern for education, the social network programs, and the Constitution issue. It is very impressive. It, indeed, shows very precisely in which direction the government wishes the Province to go.

I would like, Mr. Speaker, to address in the time allocated to the fisheries issue first, and other aspects of the Throne Speech, if time permits.

I would like first of all to comment on my own district. It has two distinct parts: that of the Connaigre Peninsula, and the Burin Peninsula. On the Connaigre side of my district, believe it or not, the majority of people have done very well during the winter fishery. There are two deep-sea plants in my district, one at Harbour Breton and the other at Gaultis, and I guess it was with some luck that the plant in Harbour Breton was converted to a red fish plant.

Since the time that it has been designated as a redfish plant, the FPI has done modernization of the plant, and because of the modernization, it saw, in the first instance, some of the casual workers being laid off. However, all of these casual workers were recalled and put to work because of the new techniques that the plant, itself, and the company has for redfish, like deboning and skinning to make it more presentable to the market, thus creating more jobs. So that, in a sense, has been good. In fact, there have been probably over 500 people working in that particular plant in two shifts during the winter.

I was talking to the plant manager this morning, and the only difficulty they have now is the ice, which is interfering with their catch. They should have been in on the weekend with the boats full of redfish. It hasn't happened, but they are still out there fishing.

Another bright spot in my district is Gaultois, the plant that also was re-opened with redfish allocation to Conpak. Like any plant when it opens first, it has bugs and so on to be ironed out, but the plant over the last number of weeks has done very well, and the people there have been able to work for five weeks for full employment. That, in itself, is a very, very healthy sign for the community of Gaultois. I suppose, as I just said, if there is a bight spot in FPI, it would be at Gaultois, but there is no way that FPI can carry the company, itself, or that we even suggest that.

The inshore fishery at Grand Le Pierre, Rencontre East and Belleoram has been better this season than it has in the last decade. When I say that, I realize the problems that other people have, that other members have in their districts, but certainly, at this time and point on the Connaigre side, there is not a big problem. Whether the resource will be there next year, however, remains to be seen. But there have been high winds and difficult weather conditions that have prevented many of the longliners from fishing as much as they would like, and therefore, the catch has been down. Generally speaking, the catch has been average. In the Terrenceville/Bay L'Argent/St. Bernard's area they are not winter fishing, and how the 1992 summer fishing will come along, no one knows right now.

There is another potential bright spot in my district, Mr. Speaker, and it helps, in a sense, with the diversification of the economy of the Province. It has to do with dimensional stone, or granite. The government has given its go-ahead to that area as one of the sites for development in the Province. Sometime during this week, I think it is tomorrow, there are going to be some people here from Italy, who are going to meet some local investors, and we are hoping that that particular project will begin operation this summer. I understand that they are going to be taking 1,500 blocks out of it and taking it to market. But we are hoping that this product can be refined and finished here. There has also been some talk that that might be done in the town of Buchans. Nevertheless, it is a bright spot, and we are looking forward to seeing that quarry being used and providing some jobs for the people of that particular part of my district.

Back to the larger issue of the fishery. I attended a national forest congress last week in Ottawa, and while there, representing the Minister of Forestry,who was ill and unable to attend, the federal government and the provinces signed what could be called, I guess, an historic document, because it was the first forest accord ever signed in Canada. As I sat there, I thought: How can we be world leaders in the preservation of our forests and be so far behind in our fishery? There are a number of reasons.

The forestry is a provincial resource, managed jointly with the Province. The financial return to the country is more than agriculture, mining and fishing combined; the practice of the forest cutting was publicly challenged so that the companies would have to establish standards of practice; and finally, the public would not trust the industry to police the forest themselves.

But how, then, with the fishery? In Canada, while we are here in the House, we have foreign countries within our Two Hundred Mile management zone and within Canada's Two Hundred Mile boundary, harvesting more fish than we are ourselves. They are there legally. It might have been legitimate at the time but times have changed and they should not be there any longer. We should be able to take that resource for ourselves. We have the rape of the resource outside the Two Hundred Mile zone on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks. We see the failure of the federal government scientists to adequately research the problem, and yet they do not want to have joint management of the fishery.

I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that foremost,there has to be joint management with the federal government. If we look at the enemy in all of this we look at ourselves. It is in all of us. There is no one lily-white in this situation. The feds, the Province, the industry, the fisherpersons and all of us - that is, the public - we have to work together to solve the problems for the common good.

I am convinced that a lot of the problems we are encountering in the fishery in this Province and in Eastern Canada, and Canada as a whole, is because of fragmentation. We have user groups in the industry who are at odds with each other, at loggerheads, and who are willing to take each other on. We have to go as a united, cohesive force and convince the federal government that, indeed, we need to have this common stock for all of us. If we don't do that, then I am afraid that in our pleadings to the federal government, it is going to be a lot more difficult to achieve action.

I believe also that we have to educate our own people - Newfoundlanders, Canadians and the world - as to the dire catastrophe facing this eco-system. I believe that the government, and the Department of Fisheries - and the Premier said so in the House a couple of days ago - that the government has started on the right course through their advertising campaign. We have to bring our message to the world. I am afraid that the world does not understand. Not only does the world not understand, but Canadians as a whole, Newfoundlanders included, fail to understand what is happening. All of us have to be participants together. There has to be a conservation of the resource.

Now, we talked about the forest industry - I did, a few moments ago. One of the things that the environmentalists in Canada have really got after the companies for is clear-cutting - cutting everything that stands in their way. The environmentalists have now challenged that, and obviously, with the new forestry accord they have in place, they have been able to make it work.

A lot of the blame, and as I said earlier all of us participate in this - we blame the foreign fishing for a lot of the problems we have in the industry. Mr. Speaker, I can remember, even as a boy growing up and talking to some of the trawlermen on the South Coast long before there was any problem with the resource, that a lot of the problems came from our own people. A lot of the problems came from our own people, and they still do. When, for example, you are out fishing and out of a total of 20,000 pounds, you put 10,000 of it down the hole and you flush 10,000 overboard and let it drift aimlessly on the ocean, that is wrong.

AN HON. MEMBER: That doesn't happen.

MR. LANGDON: It does happen, and I will tell you what we need to do. We need to bring into effect a boat quota - a boat quota - and that is, whatever fish comes into the net should be brought in. Now, we might not be able to market it all, but rather than let it float across the ocean dead, at least we can make it into some type of meal. In Marystown, we have one of the world's first-class operations.

It could be done, but we are not willing to do it. It is like going to the gold nugget in the mine. We want to make all of the profits, but we can't do that. We have to understand our global role in society. There has to be changes in our perception of how we catch fish. We have had no feeling whatsoever for conservation.

I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that unless there is conservation, we will, indeed, see the dire consequences of the failure of the whole eco-system of the fishery on Canada's East Coast, and we cannot allow that to happen.

I would also suggest that no one has done so much that we could not do more - and there are problems, obviously.

MR. TOBIN: Do you support a moratorium on the deep-sea fishery? - that is the question.

MR. LANGDON: A dire consequence is if the eco-system in the specific geographic area is not addressed immediately. The resource cannot continue. It is sustainable development, and if it cannot sustain its present sustainable development, our using it, then there is no way we are going to have it there for generations to come.

Also, Mr. Speaker, what a lot of people don't realize is that technology has gone beyond what we need to harvest the resource. In bygone years when the trawlers and boats left port, in many instances, it was hit-and-run, or hit-and-miss. There were times that the trawlers came in half-loaded, or probably quarter-loaded, but that is not possible anymore under the present technological schemes that we have, because what happens is that they have all the instrumentation that is needed, and if there is a school of fish, they can put down the net and they can just ravage the resource that is there. Probably we even have need to put some limit on the type of technology we are using.

Mr. Speaker, we have not addressed the biodiversity in the industry, either. We need to be able to sell every part of the fish. I believe that with the education and the technology we have, we should be able to do that, but up to this time, we have not fully utilized the species that we have.

We need also to evaluate our economic goals in the industry. What do we need? What are we expecting of the industry? Obviously, that is very important for all of us to remember. The federal government has not listened, and is not willing to help solve the problem up to this point. I think, though, that if we can exert more pressure, something could be done to conserve the stock that is there. I wonder is it because less than 1 per cent of the gross national product is fisheries revenue? Is that the problem? Is it the fact that, as I said earlier, the forest industry is greater than the mining, agriculture and fishing combined that they have the ear of the federal government?

Whatever the situation, obviously, we have to take a very, very serious look at our fishing industry, if not, we will find ourselves in a situation where the people of this Province will not be able to avail of the opportunities facing them.

I also think of the economic situation the Province finds itself in. I read with interest the fact that over the last couple of years, there has been $500 million less in transfer payments because of a cap of the federal transfers. No one is blaming the federal government, but that is the economic reality, and we see the same in the global situation. Our friends to the South are finding that. I believe, also, that the Americans are a people looking for an identity right now. Probably, some people will not believe that. They have to re-evaluate their role in the world, as such, and the fact that they were the world's number one military power, and because of the breakdown, of the problems between smaller independent countries, they are no longer needed, and therefore, we find them putting protection on many of the products we have. I believe we are innovative enough. I believe we have the education, the technology, the know-how, that in time we can look after our own affairs and, indeed, master the things we set out to do. It is not short-term, obviously, but I believe that we, as a people in this Province, can look high, and hopefully, do things that will benefit the Province as a whole. I believe we have been loquacious too long. We have tried to be all things to all people, and I suppose we could also say we are tautologists, and that is, we have become the order of the day, we have become repetitious.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. LANGDON: Tautologists. I suppose, also, that we have, in addition to that, become philologists. We have studied our records for so long, I believe, that we are really, in a sense, ready to make things on our own. I wonder also, probably, in closing, if we have become logophiles?

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. LANGDON: Logophiles, that is, lover of words. If we have become lover of words rather than taking the action to really cure our problems, obviously, that is not going to work. So I believe we have to act, and I believe government is doing just that.

I hope that the epilogue of this eco-system disaster can be averted and our people will be able to avail of a resource that can be sustainable and allow us to continue our way of life as it has been for the past 400 years. I believe that we can, Mr. Speaker, and I believe that the government has embarked on a program that will enable us to do that. I believe, with the policies they have outlined, we will be able to go into the 21st century as one of Canada's leading provinces, because of the ideas that have been expounded and put forth by this government.

Thank you very much.

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

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

AN HON. MEMBER: Sit down, 'John'. Sit down, boy!

MR. TOBIN: If you want to be recognized after a government member, you have to sit over here as an independent.

MR. R. AYLWARD: The hon member is independent-thinking and he probably should be over here, too. He probably should be sitting here as an independent.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. R. AYLWARD: I don't mean there, no. The only thing that is keeping the hon. member on that side is because he would have to sit so close to the hon. member down on the end on this side, I would think.

I want to have a few words on the Throne Speech, Mr. Speaker, and before I get started, I want to congratulate the hon. the member for Eagle River as the mover of the Speech. He did a very good job. I will make a few comments on his presentation in a little while. I have a differing view of the world than he has. I also want to congratulate the Member for Carbonear as seconder for the Throne Speech.

I sat here listening to the Member for Eagle River, as mover of the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, and I was very interested in the theme of his speech. He called it the hallmarks of government, I believe that was the general thrust of his speech. He had four or five hallmarks that he wanted to highlight. I found it ironic that in the situation we have in this Province today, economically in particular, and in our fishing industry, that the hon. Member for Eagle River was talking about this Government that he is a part of in glowing terms.

The first hallmark that he used, which happened to be the most ironic of all of them, his first hallmark of this Government was fairness. The hon. Member for Eagle River, who represents a Labrador seat, the only one on that side of the House who represents a Labrador seat, was not invited into Cabinet two or three weeks ago, and he calls this a fair Government. Now I cannot see how the hon. Member for Eagle River, unless he was afraid, because he is a fairly forceful young man. Maybe the same fate would happen to him as happened to the Member for Port de Grave, I am not sure.

But as far as a hallmark of fairness, I do not think the people of Labrador would consider it to be very fair that they have an elected Member to this Legislature - they have a person who wishes to stay here. They have another one who does not wish to stay here. I say congratulations to the Member for Happy Valley - Goose Bay, whatever the name of that one is, Mr. Speaker. That was his choice.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Naskaupi.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Naskaupi, yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: No, I do not know the name of it. Mr. Speaker, it was his choice to give up and back out on the people from Labrador if he wanted to before he served his full term. So be it, that is up to him.

But there is a Member of this Legislature who sits on the Government side of the House, who was elected by the people of Labrador, and who I am sure will be elected probably many more times if he wishes to stay there. From knowing him a little better now than I did before, because I am lucky enough to serve on a committee with him, I am sure he is very interested in politics generally and dedicated to Labrador. I cannot see how he would think that one of the hallmarks of this Government is fairness when he is ignored once again. By ignoring him the people of Labrador are being ignored and not having Cabinet representation.

The only Cabinet representation that this Government, this Premier in particular, thinks the Labrador people should have is a shotgun candidate from St. John's. Now I really find that objectionable. I cannot see in this day and age why any group of people from any part of our Province needs to have someone brought into their area to tell them what they want. We have gone beyond that. That went out with the... oh, even before Joey. Joey was doing some of it. But he started to change it. That went out with the... what do you call it, the mentality?.. the fish buyer's mentality, merchant's mentality. That is when that went out. Should be gone fifty, 100 years ago.

But here we have it again. There is only one reason why we have it. Because we have the merchant's mentality sitting in the big seat. He is the one who would agree with that mentality, I would say, and he has shown it now, he is going to show it in Labrador. When they have a very capable Member in this House of Assembly. He is not only ignored but embarrassed. Called immature by the Premier, one time last year. 'He is an immature Member,' I believe was what he said. That is not fair. Because the hon. Member's heart is in the right place and he is very capable. He is probably the only one in this House of Assembly who has a degree in political science, I would not be surprised. There is another.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: He has two degrees. Well, it makes him twice as good as all of us. He was always better, but, Mr. Speaker, that shows his interests in the business, shows he did the background work. He has shown himself to be electable. As all of us who come into this House, we all come in here equally, and one should be able to serve in Cabinet as well as another.

It is a well known tradition in the parliaments of this country, in particular in the Legislature of this Province, that different areas usually get cabinet representation. There is usually a central, an eastern and a western, a southern if possible, and a northern if possible.

AN HON. MEMBER: Like a Triple E Senate.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker that is tradition in this House. I think it is a tradition that is worthwhile following and it should stay in place.

The second hallmark that the Member for Eagle River said that this Government shows is compassion. I don't know where he got that one. He must have not only a political science degree, he must have a writing degree. He is a fictional writer at heart. He has to be. For anyone to say, even if it is the furthest stretch of your imagination you could never say that this Government is compassionate. It has not shown one ounce of compassion anywhere, in any policy, in any dealings they have had since 1989 - since they were elected. There has been no - zero - compassion shown by this Government. The most blatant sign of non-compassion that this Government has shown it showed in its last budget when 2,500 people were thrown out on the street - 2,500 good, dedicated public servants who went through a Public Service Commission to get their jobs, fair and square, did their work every day, and 2,500 of them were thrown out on the street. I do not think that the Member for Eagle River could possibly convince them that this Government is compassionate.

The next hallmark is almost as ridiculous. The next hallmark he says this Government shows is fiscal responsibility. Even that is an awful stretch of the imagination. Every single budget that the administration has prepared to date, 1989, 1990, 1991, probably again in 1992, have been off by millions and millions and millions of dollars. They cannot come close to their estimates on budgets, so I do not know where the fiscal responsibility is. If somebody tells me there is going to be a $10 million deficit and it turns out to be a $100 million deficit, it does not show fiscal responsibility in my mind. There is something missing in the mix there somewhere. If the hon. members opposite or on this side did that with their businesses they would not be in business very long. Your board of directors, if you had one, as CEO of a company certainly would not congratulate you as being a very fiscal, responsible person if your budget showed a deficit of $10 million and your revised estimates at the end of the year, three-quarters of the way through the year sometimes - one time at six months through the year - show that you were ten times out. You were $100 million instead of $9 million or $10 million. Fiscal responsibility is certainly not a hallmark of this Government - anything but from the budget estimates.

Mr. Speaker, the other hallmark of this Government, according to the Member for Eagle River, is reform. Reform. I guess reform can come in many different ways. There is good reform and there is bad reform. I cannot say that this Government has lacked in reform. I cannot in all conscientiousness say that this Government lacked reform. They reformed the Ombudsman's office. That, I suppose, was reform. I do not think it was good reform - not in a democracy; not in a western world democracy. I think we probably would be the only western world democracy who abandoned or abolished the Ombudsman's office. I think probably we would get that distinction. Maybe that is the type of reform the Premier likes to see, but I am sure people who used and who wish to use the Ombudsman's office did not appreciate that reform. The unfortunate part of it was that there were not enough people using it, I guess. Not enough people took advantage of that institution in our Province. Unfortunately it now has become a thing of the past.

Mr. Speaker, I suppose another reform that this Government did was to take our consumer rep off the Public Utilities Board. That again is reform no doubt. But I think it was better reform when he was put on there. It certainly showed more compassion for the rate payers of the utility companies in this Province. So I think a better reform would have been to strengthen the role of the consumer advocate on the Public Utilities Board rather than weaken it. The consumer advocate whom we have in the Province now, Mr. Brake, I think is his name, he is trying his best. I do not say he is not trying to do everything he can do. But he certainly does not have the power that the former consumer advocate had when he was on the Public Utilities Board.

But yes, this Government has reformed, but it has reformed in the wrong way. It is going backwards. It has almost reformed Canada out of existence to date. That's how much reform this Government has taken.

The other hallmark of this hon. Member was the defender of the Province's best interests. I do not really know what he meant by that. I guess it is a reference to Meech Lake, is all I can figure, I do not know what best interest this Province had in scuttling Meech Lake. I do not know what Provincial interests were defended by scuttling Meech Lake but I guess maybe in a fiction writer's mind you could come up with some reasons.

The Premier in his Throne Speech, once again as he did in three of the others - this is the fourth one - keeps talking about a long-term strategy. There is a plan being prepared. If we do not soon see the plan there will be nothing left around to plan. I think what the Premier is using - when you try to prepare a plan you must have some kind of a formula in mind of what you are going to do, what way your plan is going to proceed. I believe the formula that this Premier is using to prepare his plan could be called the Jay Parker formula. He wants to get as many people away from this Province as he can so he can get it down to his estimate of a manageable population.

Well if that is what the Premier is trying to do it was tried before with resettlement and it did not work. It won't work this time because people of this Province are not going to put up with it. They are not going to leave this Province.

One statistic I find interesting - and I do not say hon. Members over there even wish to hear this statistic; they certainly are not promoting it out in their districts - is that since this Government took over in 1989, there are 25,000 less people working in the Province than there were that time. Now that is a frightening statistic.

MR. DOYLE: Horrendous. Frightening in the extreme.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Twenty-five thousand less jobs, less people working in this Province today than in 1989 when you guys took over. Mr. Speaker, I can list off some of them. I know the hon. Members are looking puzzled over there, saying - while I was sitting here listening to Question Period I just marked down a few that I thought of at the time. There are many others. These are just a few - set down for the minute.

There are 500 or so jobs gone out of Marystown. They are still trying to sell it. They might sell it and they might not. I do not know what is going to happen some time this week. But there are 500 jobs gone out of Marystown. Those skilled tradesmen, most of them are gone away from the Province. They all still want to come back. If you can get a deal on it, if you can get it sold and get it in operation I am sure you will get a lot of them back. But that was 500 jobs.

Newfoundland Dockyards, since this Government took over, between 300 and 600 jobs gone down there. I am not sure with the contract they are finishing up now. There was a time when there were twenty-eight people working down at the Newfoundland Dockyard. There was a time down there when it was up to 620 people working. The Member for St. John's South will say this.

During our time, Mr. Speaker, we put the syncrolift in. We were pro-active, we did something. The Dockyard was in trouble, it was going out of business, no doubt about it, and there were very few people working there. So, what did our government do with that federal facility, Mr. Speaker? We could have shrugged our shoulders the same as the Premier is doing with everything: That is a federal responsibility! Let the feds do it, their in charge of management! Their in charge of the resource management, it is their fault! Let's leave it! We could have done that with the Dockyard. But what did our government do when we came across the situation where there was strictly federal jurisdiction and responsibility? We put $11 million into it and built the syncrolift there.

Now, Mr. Speaker, that is being pro-active, that is doing something. That is not shrugging your shoulders every time something comes up and saying: Let the Federal Government do it. You have to get off your rear ends and do something.

Mr. Speaker, National Sea used to be a very thriving fish plant at one time. What was done down there? There were 300 to 400 jobs lost, 300 to 400 jobs gone out the door, most of them in the District of the Member for St. John's South, a lot of them in my district, from both the Dockyard and -

MR. MURPHY: I fought for them.

MR. MATTHEWS: You didn't do anything.

MR. MURPHY: I never heard anything from you, not a peep.

MR. MATTHEWS: Flew up to Halifax. Big bluff!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Did not hear a peep? Yes, you did fight for them. The Member for St. John's South fought for them. He would not tell them the truth. The Premier would not tell him the truth about what was happening. I know that. It was only because the people from Grand Bank came in here, backed the Premier into the wall and gave him a good fright that the hon. Member for St. John's South got some money for projects down there. They are the ones who fought, not you. You made a lot of noise and you had a few demonstrations around, but you did not do it. The people from Grand Bank, who came in here - two hours after they left, after they pinned the Premier against the wall there was $14 million floating around. Two hours before that there was nothing.

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you know what he said?

MR. R. AYLWARD: What was it he said?

MR. MATTHEWS: I would if I could, but I can't.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I would if I could, but I can't, until he got pinned against the wall, and he could then. It depends, Mr. Speaker, on the approach sometimes.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage the people from Grand Bank to come in here and do that, along with the Member for Grand Bank, because I know when the Premier is cornered he will react. The trouble with it is he has a group of people over there who are afraid to corner him. They are afraid to corner him or tackle him.

Now, Mr. Speaker, National Sea is gone. That is 300 to 400 more jobs. In Grand Falls there a little while ago there was a restructuring of the woods operations, and there were another 420 jobs gone there last year or the year before in the forest industry. Mr. Speaker, those are only four different places and I have 1500 jobs without a spinoff job. That is 1500 jobs right off the bat without a spinoff job when I just sat down for a few minutes.

Mr. Speaker, Long Harbour is gone in the District of the Member for Placentia. I do not know how many jobs are out there. I will just guess. We lost 200 or 250 jobs?

AN HON. MEMBER: It will be open again (inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: Is that right? And the hon. Member for Placentia who was elected did nothing, Mr. Speaker, since 1989 when he got elected.

MR. MATTHEWS: The Premier was out shaking hands with them in the election.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I will open it again! I will keep it going! I will look after you!

Mr. Speaker, a little project that employs Newfoundlanders and is very valuable to the future of our Province, a project out in Wooddale where we have a nursery to generate trees, sixty jobs gone out of there in the last two years. Mr. Speaker, there were only 120 or 130 jobs out there, mostly part-time during the summer, and sixty of those were eliminated. So, that not only affects the workers who were laid off, it affects our forests in this Province from now until forever, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Member for St. John's South continues to make a joke of this. He wants to make a joke of the economic situation in this Province, Mr. Speaker, when his district is one of the districts that has felt the policies of this Government drive them into the ground more than most districts in this Province. Mr. Speaker, if he wants to make a joke of this, go up on Shea Heights and make a joke of it. You will not last long up there if you are making fun of what is happening to the people up there.

Mr. Speaker, I had to serve my time up there and if the hon. member gets a few votes out of it like I got up there, then I would say he is doing okay. But, Mr. Speaker, I wouldn't come out of that district anytime winning by two votes, I will tell you that right now. I would not come out of there winning by two votes, Mr. Speaker, I would chuck it in and go run again. That is what I would do. Two votes would not be worth it, Mr. Speaker.

MR. MATTHEWS: Give it up by default.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Superior Seafoods in Stephenville - the Member for Stephenville is working very hard to get another project in his district, but Superior Seafoods in the last couple of years went down in Stephenville since this administration took over. I suppose at peak times there might have been 300 or 400 people working there. That is another project that is gone. It is starting to add up.

The people who did not believe my 25,000 figure when I started, if they gave it a bit of thought they could probably add up most of it in their own -

MR. HODDER: Coady Mechanical in Stephenville there was another twenty or thirty jobs; Regional Optical another forty jobs gone out of Stephenville. That is just out of Stephenville.

Those are ones I was keeping going when I was there.

MR. R. AYLWARD: The pride and joy of Newfoundland, the one that is going to be our saviour of the last two years, Hibernia. How many jobs have gone out of there in the last month? Have we lost 400 jobs there over the last month? That is another 400 - another 400. The public service of the Province - the Premier's own budget - the one that you have total control over, the one that you have complete say over, and what did you do to try to alleviate the major problem in this Province, which is jobs? What did this Government, with the support of their backbenchers do to try to solve the problems, which governments are supposed to do, try to solve the major problem in this Province, which is jobs, you laid off 3,000 of them. That is how you solve problems. Hopefully they will go away. I can almost hear that in the cabinet room again. We will get rid of 2,000 or 3,000; hopefully they will go away. Maybe we will not have to bother about them any more.

Mr. Speaker, we are exporting brains now more than we ever did before, which is the most important resource that we have - our young people and the education that they have. If you are laying off management and technical public service people in this Province, you are sending away your education. That is the most serious part of it all. Again, the Member for Baie Verte is over there laughing; the Member for Pleasantville was just laughing - or Placentia was just laughing. I am sorry - not Pleasantville - from Placentia. Every time you mention 300 or 400 jobs gone, three or four of the members opposite get a chuckle out of it. It is not funny. It is not funny. It is very serious what is happening in this Province.

Youth unemployment - there was a statistic given here today of the youth unemployment in this Province; 31.5 per cent on youth unemployment. There is the hon. Member for St. John's South again. Yes, there is Ottawa. We hear Ottawa. I would say if we did not have Ottawa, if the Member for St. John's South did not have John Crosbie pumping money into his district day and night, you would not be allowed in the district any more. I do not know if you go there very often, but you would not be allowed there any time if you do go there.

Ottawa has pumped a lot of money into this Province since this Government has come into power, and they had to because this Government is doing nothing.

The project that we all hoped - everyone in this House of Assembly hoped - would get us over some hard times in the fisheries, is the Hibernia project. It is very important and becoming more important daily as we see the problems we have in the fisheries that it is going to take time to rectify. We have a Hibernia project that has lost one partner - 25 per cent - will have lost it by October. We know that there is another partner who wants to off-load 15 per cent more. So we have 40 per cent of that project that we have to find someone to fill in. Petro-Can is going, whether you like it or whether you know it or not. Petro-Can is getting out of there at least 15 per cent of their share. So we are looking for 40 per cent. The companies have put someone in place to try to hustle up a new partner. The companies have. I know they have put a team in place to try to do something. The Federal Government has put a team in place to try to find a new partner, and they are even willing to change the structure to allow more foreign investment, which is a big step for a national government to do. They have put a team together to try to find someone to fill up this 40 per cent - 25 per cent or 40 per cent, whatever it would be - but the project is most important to this Province. What has our Government done?... absolutely nothing. Not one thing. There is no team in place. Right off the bat the day that the rumours started, this Government should have been able to find out whether they were true or not, they should have had a team in place that day to scour the world if necessary to find a partner. Find somebody who is interested. The companies have their team and it is looking after the companies' interests; the Federal Government has its team and it is looking after the Federal Government's interests; who is looking after our interests?

MR. HEWLETT: Nobody!

MR. R. AYLWARD: Nobody. Not a soul, Mr. Speaker, looking after the interests of this Province on a project that should get us over the hump. It should be able to keep us surviving until our fishing industry gets back in place again. But what is this government doing? Absolutely nothing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. R. AYLWARD: The hon. Member for St. John's South again. Rather than getting up here and saying: yes boy, there is (Inaudible) I must go to the Premier and see if I can get him to do something on this. I must go and see if I can finally beat it into his head that this is important. What does the Member for St. John's South say? He laughs at it again and he says: Ottawa. That is all he knows how to say, is 'Ottawa.'

You have responsibilities as a Member of this Government to the people of this Province. One very simple thing that this Government could do is to put a high-powered team in place - I do not care if they are Cabinet Ministers or senior public servants, or they're consultants that you hire - to get out and scour the world. Go to the Eastern countries and see if Japan or Korea or Hong Kong have some money over there. We all know they have piles of it. Are they interested in our oil? We do not know. Nobody in this House knows. Nobody ever said that they were interested or not.

But if I was in Government we would know. Because I would have been over there, Mr. Speaker. I think Charlie Power is over there now. Maybe we will find out when he comes back. There would be a team in place. Because I would consider it to be our responsibility.

AN HON. MEMBER: A lot of nonsense.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Yes, Mr. Speaker, it is nonsense. Exactly, nonsense, what the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs says. Exactly what he said, nonsense. That is the mind-set of this Government. The main way to assess the hallmarks of this Government, as the Member for Eagle River said in his speech, the hallmarks of this Government, if I had to assess it, I would say just one statement: let her slide, Clyde.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to first start off making a few remarks in relation to the Throne Speech by first congratulating my hon. friend there sitting next to me from Eagle River, Labrador, who did such a magnificent job in moving (Inaudible).

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. EFFORD: And also my colleague and friend from the great district of Carbonear out in the Avalon Peninsula, in Conception Bay, for so ably seconding that.

It is difficult, Mr. Speaker, in these difficult times, to present a Throne Speech in any manner or fashion that is going to satisfy the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Because when you get people placed in a very difficult financial position, and a position of chaos and suffering in an industry which they were so used to earning a living from, and the situation which we are facing in 1992, it is almost impossible to put it in print, especially in a book that size, where you could bring some contentment or some self-satisfaction to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

When I read the Throne Speech I was a bit disappointed. Because being Chairperson of the United Fisherpersons of Newfoundland and Labrador - as well as my responsibility as MHA for the district of Port de Grave, which is one of the larger districts in Newfoundland, and larger communities in Newfoundland involved in the fishery - I was a bit disappointed, as every Newfoundlander and Labradorian and I am sure every Member of any Government would be, in that we have not, and cannot, and probably will not in the immediate future do any more to control or to make decisions that are going to be able to revitalise the fishery in this Province. It is going to take a lot more than just talking, printing and putting out books, and I will get to that a little bit later.

If we go back, Mr. Speaker, to the some 400 plus years since John Cabot discovered Newfoundland, we have to realize that the geography and the location of Newfoundland and Labrador is such that one thing and one thing only matters in this Province and that is the fishery. You take the fishery out of this Province and you have absolutely nothing left. You have no present and you have no future in this Province. You can bring in all the ideas you would want to in your wildest imagination, in starting small businesses, promotion of businesses, subsidy of businesses, economic recovery, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador, anything you wish, it matters not if the fishery fails.

You can go out to Port de Grave with eight fish plants there now, eight - not one door is open. Every plant in the district of Port de Grave is on the verge of closing, in fact some have already closed as early as last week, and there are more saying there is no way the bank managers are going to extend any operating credit to them to keep open. So, what is the good of going out to that district and starting more small businesses for more bankruptcies to take place in the Province. There is only one thing that can save the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, a revitalized fishery, and nobody in this country is going to help us. Nobody in this country is going to help us. We have been at that for the last forty years. Everything we had before 1949, the merchants controlled, every merchant, including the Crosbie merchants, raped and pillaged every Newfoundlander and Labradorian who was ever involved in the fishery. You owed your soul to the merchants when you gave up in the fall of the year. Now you owe your soul to the Federal Government, because they have taken everything away from us since we joined Confederation.

We have no say, no control, no management and no responsibility in our own lives. Newfoundland and Labrador, again I will say, cannot survive without the fishery. When you have people making decisions in this country, or going across the world talking, trying to save the fishery, people like the hon. Barbara McDougall, who probably has never seen the outside of a codfish let alone the inside of a codfish in her life, I do not place much faith in having any diplomacy measures working anywhere in the world when you get that sort of attitude.

In fact, when I was a minister in this Cabinet I had the opportunity at one time of having a private meeting with the hon. Barbara McDougall and I found that her attitude towards Newfoundland and Labrador, was pretty cold. But we have to deal, Mr. Speaker, with matters in our own hands and I tell you one thing I do not agree with, and I will say it here in this House that whatever government, whether it is this Government, a past government or a future government, I do not agree with decreasing the number of fishermen in this Province. In fact, I agree with increasing the number of fishermen, we should be increasing the number of fishermen. A small country like Iceland, half the population of Newfoundland and Labrador, uses all of its profits for education and transportation over the fishery with a 2 per cent unemployment rate. If we had control of our fishery stocks on the Grand Banks, instead of 31,000 people employed in the fishing industry, there should be at least 60,000 people employed.

If we only had the fishery that was given to Japan and Russia last year inside the 200 mile limit, in caplin, tuna and squid, we would be employing in this Province another 5,000 to 10,000 people. 132 million pounds of squid, fifty tons of caplin the year before last, this winter past they searched for caplin but they could not find any. Is there any wonder why they could not find any?... you cannot keep raping and raping and taking and taking and put nothing back.

Japan, last year had a quota inside the 200 mile limit of 180 tons of tuna, valued at anywhere from five dollars to twenty-five dollars a pound, depending on the market. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars could have gone into the pockets of fishermen, could have been caught here in this Province and could have been shipped over to Japan with a profit derived for everybody, we do not get any benefits from all the other species of fish that is caught within the 200 mile limit, inside. The Federal Government tells us that no foreign country catches any fish inside the 200 mile limit that Newfoundlanders cannot catch. How silly do you have to be to believe it? How silly do you have to be to even sit in an audience and listen to it. Hundreds of million of dollars worth of fish taken each and every year, but the problem is that when we talk fish they think: well, we are only talking codfish, but there are other fish swimming in the water, very valuable fish equal to the cod.

The other thing that is amusing is when they drag for shrimp and when they drag for squid, and when they purse seine the tuna on the Grand Banks, or when they drag for caplin. Are we silly enough to believe that when those draggers come out of the water only the species of fish they have quotas for are caught, that there are no other fish caught in that drag net?

Mr. Speaker, it is a very, very difficult time to understand how our country, our federal government could make decisions that could destroy the very existence and culture and the lives of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian. I do not understand it. I cannot imagine that we cannot get any more satisfaction out of our federal government than we are getting.

MR. WARREN: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, if the Member for Torngat Mountains wants to make a speech, he has ample opportunity to stand to his feet instead of sitting over there mumbling and jumbling, and pointing his finger. This is the problem with this Province. This is the reason we are in the situation we are in today, because not even the people in the House of Assembly takes the matter at issue serious enough.

Last year we presented a resolution to this House of Assembly sending it off to the Federal Government to ask them to ask the Prime Minister to go over to the foreign countries who have been raping the Grand Banks and impress on their leaders what is happening out there. We never got a response back from the Federal Government. We sent out to every mayor in this Province to ask them to take up a petition, and yesterday I had a letter back from the Federation of Mayors and Municipalities refusing to endorse it. Can you imagine? Refusing to endorse a petition to send to the Prime Minister of Canada to save the fishery of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Federation of Municipalities of Newfoundland and Labrador. I have a copy of the letter in my office now. I cannot believe it. Is it possible the Federation of Municipalities do not believe that the fishery in this Province is important, that we should not ask the Prime Minister of Canada to try and save our fishery? This is the reason we are in trouble because we cannot agree to agree in our own little Province, that we are always attacking each other.

I was over at the Fluvarium last night when CBC came in with their cross country check-up, and there were only about seventy-five people there. Most of them were fishermen and three or four politicians, and I heard fishermen criticize fishermen, and fishermen blaming fishermen over there last night. I thought what we should have done last night was get a message out to the rest of Canada that we want support from you people to put pressure on the federal government: (1) to bring in a seal harvest, (2) to stop the foreign overfishing, and (3) to impress on the federal government that they must do something. Instead we sent out the message that we were fighting with each other, Mr. Speaker, and that is wrong.

We should solve our own problems here quietly, and we can do that if we put our heads together. And we sent out a message last night for the most part that we are attacking each other. And we expect to get the people in the rest of Canada to save us? How can you do that? We tried to use the news media for the source. It is the only method at our hands to do that, and we had it vanish last night when we tried to get it right across Canada. But in spite of it all last night, most of the call backs from other provinces were in total support with Newfoundland. They understand what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador. They understand that we are only in little of excess of 500,000 people and that we have a very weak voice in the House of Commons. It is not because the individual is weak. I am sure he is a very strong individual, but he is overpowered by the numbers of people from Ontario and the Quebec Ministers.

Let me give you an example, Mr. Speaker. France is applying for an extension of 3Ps, a 200 mile zone. Last year Ontario alone traded with France $700 million worth of products, industry from Ontario. Now when they sat around the Cabinet table in Ottawa to make the decision on if France is going to get an extension, if France is going to get more fish, who do you think the decision will be in favour off? Seven hundred million dollars, Mr. Speaker, in trade, import and export with France last year. What I am saying is that the number of ministers from Ontario overpowers the one minister from Newfoundland, and that is where we are losing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: We would be a lot worse off if there was another minister from another province with no understanding. I agree with that, but what I am getting at is we here in this Province are our own worst enemies. When the farmers out west had that problem last year and every other year. What did they do? They marched en masse on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. What did Newfoundland do? You get two or three people, some of the union reps, and a scattered person like myself, and when you call a meeting, you cannot even motivate people to come out to a meeting to voice an opinion. We called a meeting over the public airwaves in this Province for every person interested in fighting, combating, and trying to make an impression on Ottawa, and what did we get? We got 200 fishermen, maximum, and out of that 200 people, about twenty-five were from the public sector and the remainder were fishermen. Yet, who do we have involved in the fishery directly? -31,000 plant workers and fisherpeople, inshore and offshore. And all the business sector and everybody else depends on it but nobody will take an interest. Do you know why? It is because they figure someone like myself is getting something out of it. 'What am I going to go out and help Efford for?' one fish plant owner up in Trepassey said; 'I am not going to send in money to help the Inshore Fishery Association and help John Efford.' How silly! How silly, Mr. Speaker!

MR. TOBIN: Trepassey?

MR. EFFORD: I don't know if it was Trepassey, but it was the Daley brothers - Adrian Daley, who said it, whatever community he lives in up the Southern Shore.

AN HON. MEMBER: Renews.

MR. EFFORD: Renews. But the point is not what community he is from, it is the attitude. I am not getting any salary from the United Fisherpersons, all I am doing is trying to help them. I don't care whether they pat me on the back, I don't care what they say. They are only hurting themselves. That very fish plant last year derived probably $1 million worth of cod brought in by the fishermen. Will he get any this year? Will he get great satisfaction in running down the chairperson or the executive board? All we are trying to do is focus attention on it, bring worldwide attention to what is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador so that everybody else in the world will understand that we are a small population, a small community, and we are drowning. We are drowning for the lack of co-operation from our counterparts in Ottawa and other parts of Canada. Probably it is because they do not understand how serious it is. It is probably because they figure, well, we will send them down a few make-work programs, we will send down them a few response programs and they will be happy.

MR. TOBIN: Does the Premier understand that?

MR. EFFORD: I don't know, you ask him. I can't find out. You ask him. That is your responsibility. And if you were a bit stronger over there, in Question Period, probably you would know. I am not here to debate whether anybody here knows that, Mr. Speaker.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to take his place. I have, on several occasions, told hon. members the form by which we ask hon. members questions. It is to stand and ask the hon. member if he, or she, would mind a question. We should, please, keep these things in mind for order and decorum in the House.

The hon. member may continue.

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this is serious. There is no question about it. When I look at my district this year and when I look at the Throne Speech, the intention is to try to help people, to try to employ people.

I visited Burnt Island and Rose Blanche a couple of weeks ago, the district of my hon. friend for LaPoile, and when I visited those two communities, visited the high school, and afterwards met with a number of plant workers there, I learned that last year they did not get enough UI benefits to get unemployment insurance this winter. Because they were supposed to have a winter fishery, they couldn't avail of the response program, they were told. There was no winter fishery and they still have no jobs. They have no income, and now they are reduced to UI benefits through social services, yet last year the federal government put in a training program: 'We will take so many people out of the plant workers and we will retrain them to be secretaries,' or whatever the training course was. Can you imagine putting in a training program for forty-five or fifty people from Rose Blanche and Burnt Islands to work in offices? Boy, it must have taken a big bottle of silly pills to think up that.

AN HON. MEMBER: What office?

MR. EFFORD: What office? That is the very point, because they still forget that the very existence of Newfoundland and Labrador is the fishery and without the fishery in Burnt Island, Rose Blanche, Margaree, and Isle aux Morts, there is no survival for the people in all of the communities. It is the same with my district out there, take for example, the eight fish plants and the 150 or 200 skippers out there, the small and long-liners - there is no survival for them. How else can they survive?

Besides the foreigners out there, Mr. Speaker, there is the seal harvest. Can you imagine that in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador we do not have a seal harvest and we are going to employ scientists to research and see if there is any need? How foolish are we getting? I don't understand why fishermen are lying down and taking it. I can tell each and every person here that if our grandfathers were alive today they wouldn't take it. Studying to see if seals eat fish!

Now, it is like I said in a press conference on Friday, I didn't see Mr. Young, the owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, out delivering chicken to them last week, or pizza, or anything else. I mean, that's how silly it is, and we joke about it. Do seals eat fish? Well, let's suppose they do eat fish. Let me give you some examples on how much it would affect the quotas. Six million seals in the water eating on an average of ten pounds of some species - I don't know, it might be caplin, it might be cod, it might be turbot, it might be mackerel, but just using ten pounds, multiply that by one day, that is sixty million pounds a day, multiplied by 365 days a year: 22 billion, 7 hundred million pounds of fish, and we are going to wait and wait and wait to see if we are going to have a seal harvest? Twenty-two billion! How much fish did Newfoundland and Labrador catch last year? I mean, they eat more in one day than we caught last year in total!

AN HON. MEMBER: One hundred and twenty-seven thousand tons.

MR. EFFORD: One hundred and twenty-seven thousand tons, and they would eat this year alone, with the population at six million -

Okay, let's say I am wrong. Let's say I am exaggerating. Cut it to five pounds a day. Five pounds a day would give you eleven billion. How many dollars and cents and jobs would that create in this Province if those fish were not eaten? And if they eat all the caplin then they have to eat cod.

Do you know what happened two weeks ago in the hon. member's district? A very honest, dedicated fisherman called me. He just got in off a dragger after a hard two weeks out there trying to earn a living. He called me and said: 'I just saw you on the news. I just heard the scientist talking about the seals and the fish. I can prove to you that they are eating fish. This week we took a video aboard the dragger, seven hundred fathoms of water, and when the net came up to the top of the water there were hundreds of seals ripping the fish out of the nets.' He told me that.

AN HON. MEMBER: He told me the same story.

MR. EFFORD: Now let me tell you what happened. I said, 'That's great! That is all we need to bring to the Minister of Fisheries,' and I told the hon. Minister of Fisheries about it, I told the Chairperson of Seafreez, and I told the scientists. I said, 'No more research.' And he called me back the next night, and he was a different man altogether, low-toned, different voice. I said: 'What's wrong?' He said: 'I can't send you in the video.' I asked: 'Why?' He said: 'A union representative called me and threatened me. If I send in the video, I may lose my job.' Now that is a fact.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: I don't know. You tell me. But the man was scared. He was trying to hang on. And I can name the union man, it was Chess Crib. That is who did it.

Now, we are talking about what is wrong in Newfoundland and Labrador. We are talking about why it is that we are out of work. We are talking about a seal hunt. We are talking about every single day that the seals are eating hundreds and millions of pounds of fish, and we wonder what is happening to the Province. If you drove the foreigners away you will still not save the fishery. If you stopped, put a total moratorium - which I do not agree with, because people have to live - you will not save the fishery. You have to take care of all factors. And of all the factors, the main and largest one is the seals, and we cannot even get a seal harvest in this Province. We have millions of people starving in the world.

I was talking to the experts in the sealing industry the other day, and they tell me that the Marine Institute have developed a protein out of the seal product that can be an additive for food, that they can put - because the people in the third world can't digest seal meat like we can. They are not used to it, so they would not be able to eat it, but they have now developed a protein additive that could be added to their food and it will be good for their metabolism. What happens? We can't even put that together here in this Province. You talk about creating jobs. You talk about what would happen if we put that sort of factory in this Province.

There is one way to bring in - 'Well, we have to study it further. We have to have another Royal Commission.' We have to have another study to put on the shelf.

Now, we have hundreds of thousands of people in Russia going hungry. Russia has already agreed to take 100,000 seals, sending the ships over, paying the Newfoundland fishermen to go out and hunt them. We are talking about people not earning money, and we have to debate that for the next six months. And we wonder what is happening to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, what we have to get back to in this hon. House of Assembly and in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is we have to be a stronger voice, sending a message to Ottawa that we are not going to put up with it anymore, that we are not going to take the handouts anymore, that we are not going to allow what is happening to this Province, the devastation of the economy. Because if the fishery works you won't worry too much about the recession in the rest of Canada. You won't worry if you have to start small businesses.

Because you put eight fish plants to work in my district, employing about 1,400 people on a full-time basis - and what I call full-time is a fishing season; I don't expect they are going to work twelve months of the year - but a fishing season, four to six months. Two of them out there work ten months of the year - three of them, I'm sorry, Hiscock's, H. P. Dawe and George Dawe. Because they are a smaller operation, they dry and salt fish.

But anyway, the point I was getting at, Mr. Speaker, is you put those plants to work and I tell you, you won't have too much worry about small businesses starting up in my district. There will be lots of them. Because up until the last two or three years that area was known as one of the fastest growing areas in Canada, the fastest growing area in small businesses, in private businesses,in Canada. That was clearly a result of the success of the fishery out there.

But take the caplin out of there this year. Two years ago there was $70 million worth of caplin landed by the small fishermen in this Province. They say this year there is going to be no caplin fishery. There is no salmon fishery. I will say this: If I were a fisherman, or a fisherman would listen to me, they would never sell their licence back to the federal government. Never would they. But there is enough money there to entice them. And when you have a family down and out, and a mortgage, and a kid in college, and no food on the table, that $8,000 looks awfully good. That is the fault of the federal government. Why didn't they compensate them -

MR. TOBIN: Wait now, just a minute now!

MR. EFFORD: Why did they just not compensate them?

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: Order, Mr. Speaker, order?

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, why did they just not compensate them for the five years they had to close down to rebuild it? And I don't agree with the closedown, but they could have compensated for the five years and then at the end of the five years let them fish for salmon. But it is not the small commercial fishermen who have destroyed the stock, Mr. Speaker, there are two things, the Danes and the poachers. And the poaching will still take place this year, make no mistake about it. Go out in the Codroy Valley and listen to the fishermen out there tell you about the poaching that takes place. I don't know much about the salmon routes because I have never fished for salmon in the rivers in my life, nor do I ever intend to. The little bit of pleasure I do get out of it is out off of Kelly's Island. But it is serious, and we are still allowing it to happen. I don't hear any opposition to it.

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: I just told you what I believe! I would not do it. I am not talking about this government, I am talking about me. I do not agree with the moratorium on the salmon fishery. I do not agree with taking licences from people. I believe that every Newfoundlander and Labradorian should have the right to earn a living. It is what we have here. But the depletion of the stocks is so bad now that we are going to bear the brunt again. Why aren't the deep-sea draggers stopped from fishing salmon? Why aren't they stopped? It is because of trade relations with the rest of Canada. Because those larger provinces up there, when the trade relations come into - and don't tell me that Spain and Portugal don't import, and Germany with its thirty-seven draggers out there, and the Danish fleet out there, and the Faroese, that all of those people don't trade with the rest of Canada? How silly! Each and every country imports and exports goods with the rest of Canada.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: That is what we are doing. We are selling our fish, giving our fish away - we are not, it is Ottawa giving it away. We have no say in it, Mr. Speaker, absolutely no say. And I don't know if it is ever going to change. It will never change from the strength that is coming from this Province. I don't see any marching in the streets. You see the farmers marching in the streets. You see the people in Ontario marching when a factory closes down. But it takes every man, woman and child in this Province becoming vocal, to be loud, and to make it understood how important the fishing industry is.

Do you know there was a business person here in St. John's this morning, and he sells engines. Listen to this one. He sells engines - Yamaha. Do you know what he said? He said: 'Newfoundland does not need the fishing industry to survive. St. John's does not need it.' He actually said it to another individual. He said, 'That is silliness.' It is a part of it, but it is not all of it.

AN HON. MEMBER: He's nuts.

MR. EFFORD: Now that is the reason we are in the trouble we are in. A person selling engines would make that sort of a statement, he made it to an individual and the man was in shock, he is still in shock, that the engines do not matter, that the fishery does not matter to the Province, Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe it. But, Mr. Speaker, it is going to have to get a lot more serious and I can tell everybody in this Province that we have not seen the worst of it yet, that the economy of this Province has not reached the bottom yet and I am afraid that 1992, unless by some miracle, the fish are created there in the water, or the numbers are like the scientist says, probably they are hiding under the rocks, he actually said that in Ottawa -

MR. TOBIN: Who?

MR. EFFORD: A scientist, he said probably they are somewhere where we cannot find them. I was there when he said it. That is the kind of silliness, unless by some miracle the fish swim back, other than that, I do not know where they are going to get the money. I do not know what is going to happen in this Province. You take 31,000 people, or less economy, less money they earned this year on top of last year, it is bad enough to have one year, but when you have the second year on top of it -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, this is not just a situation affecting a few people in my district, this is affecting the whole Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. As I said in the beginning, the Throne Speech, yes, it must be done and every positive note that can be placed in the Throne Speech should be placed there, but coming to reality?.. it is impossible for it to come to reality without the fishing industry, and that is what I am talking about.

Out in Harbour Grace district, at the end of this month the Harbour Grace fish plant will close down. Another closed plant is in my district in Coley's Point fisheries. I was at a funeral home on Saturday evening, they had their notice Friday, they are closed and that is the story you are hearing now from everybody. My first question is: do you have your stamps? No, we do not have our stamps. The fish plant in Brigus is closed, thirty-five people as at the first week in April, no more unemployment. Their unemployment is gone, the same in Cupids in the fish plant. The same in George Dawe and Sons down in Port de Grave, not a dollars worth of UI benefits do they have and I mean that is only from my area -

AN HON. MEMBER: A lot of people (inaudible).

MR. EFFORD: - our area, what about the rest of the Province? Mr. Speaker, there is only one answer, that everybody must focus his attention on fighting Ottawa and impressing and taking back what we have, and at seven o'clock this evening, Mr. Speaker, 7:10, there will be two people arriving from Iceland, to come into Newfoundland, for a lot of reasons. First of all, to create publicity, to focus attention on the rest of Canada to see what Newfoundland is going through. If we can get those two people from Iceland to talk to the people and explain what happened in Iceland, what caused the fishery crisis, how did they control it and what has happened since. That is one thing, secondly, we want them to tell exactly how they went out and drove the foreigners away. There was no bloodshed. There were no guns, that was utter nonsense, but we are going to hear it firsthand from the people of Iceland and one of the gentlemen coming here today is the Commander of the Icelandic Coast Guard, who led the boats out there. In fact the Commander himself was responsible for cutting sixty nets behind the draggers, he told me over the phone, and the Icelandic people rewarded him by giving him a medal, his government gave him a medal for doing it. Now that is the type of story that I want for the people of this Province and the people of this country.

Do you know what I had to do, Mr. Speaker, to get these people here? It took me two weeks to try to raise $6,000 to pay their way to Newfoundland. I put out the message that I was raising money (inaudible). I do not have the money to pay their way here. The association does not have that money - six thousand dollars. It was not until 9:00 last Friday morning that I got the $6,000. Now the plane could not land at 1:10 today, they will be here 7:00 this evening, and I hope that everybody comes to the meeting tomorrow night at 7:00 to sit down and listen to those people.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where?

MR. EFFORD: It will be announced tomorrow, but I think it will be at the Radisson Hotel, but it will be at 7:00 tomorrow evening.

Mr. Speaker, it is of great importance because I think it is going to bring the people here in this Province the main straw of attention that needs to be focused on it. I only hope, Mr. Speaker, that some good can come of it. I only hope we can wake up somebody in the country into realizing that we are drowning, and without it we will not survive. I know I have said a lot of words that a lot of people do not agree with, but it is the basic principle of survival of Newfoundland and Labrador, and without it, Mr. Speaker, we cannot survive. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I listened with great interest to the debate today. First I would like to congratulate the mover and the seconder who drafted the Address in Reply to His Honour for delivering his gracious Speech from the Throne, parliamentary referred to in the Legislature. I want to say to the Member for Port de Grave that it always seems that regardless of what debate goes on in the Legislature I always seem to follow him. It just happens that way. Someone else is suppose to speak, and they could not do it and here I am.

He has touched on a lot of very, very important topics. It has been a wide-ranging speech. He struck on, I think, a lot of the reasons why we have the very serious problem we have with our most important industry today. He did not blame it all on others, he blamed a fair bit of it on others, but as well he has attached some of the blame to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, in that I guess we do not co-operate with each other as much as we should. I think he struck on a very important note in this whole debate and in this whole issue.

It is too bad he has left because there were some things that I wanted him to hear. While he has spoken about everyone else who is not co-operating in this debate on this particular issue, if you watch what has unfolded over the last number of months in this Province you will find that the Member for Port de Grave in his capacity as Chairman of the United Fisherpersons has been at odds with the President and executive members of the Fishermen's Union. They are not coming from the same direction. They are not going in the same direction. There has been forces working against each other there, and there are times that I have sat back being very, very involved in the fisheries debate long before I got into politics, that I wondered really what it was all about. Is it Richard trying to upstage John, or is it John trying to upstage Richard. That is just part of the thing that I have observed from my vantage point and wondered what is it all about?

So he is correct. There has not been total cooperation from the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. There has not been total cooperation from the different organizations and agencies involved in the fishery. From the business end of the industry to the trawlermen, the inshore fishermen, the plant workers, there seems to be a fair amount of division amongst us all. I think it has cost us and it will cost us more. It is very difficult. It is amazing really, when you look at a Province made up of a half a million people that we cannot be more united on the most important issue facing our Province today.

MR. TOBIN: Now say it again, repeat it again.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I think he probably heard it. But if not he will read Hansard I am sure and he will pick out what I said.

He referred as well to the Federation of Municipalities that has not taken a stronger stand on this issue. By far the majority of communities in this Province are directly dependent upon the fishery, we all know that. That is no startling revelation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Pardon? No, they do not take a stand on too much. I agree with the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WINSOR: Individual councils responded, though.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, there are individual councils out and about who know that the fishery is the only industry in their town. It means the only survival of their town. Those are the ones who are standing up. But it is a strange thing even about that. That the communities that you hear speaking up are only those who know - they know now - that they are getting the sword between the ribs in the next short while. Those who have not got the bad news yet are content to sit back until they get the bad news. I am sad to say it, but it seems to be a characteristic of the people in our Province. That everything is okay until it affects me.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: I do not know what it is. There are things I could call it but I guess I would be called to order, Mr. Speaker. But these are some of the things that sort of disturb you when you are involved in such an important debate.

There is not a lot said in this Throne Speech - some fancy words, a whole lot of fancy words - about the fishery anyway. Not a lot to say about the fishery. Not enough to say about the fishery. What really amazes me is we hear the Premier announce on the Throne Speech day that he is going on yet another national tour talking about the fishery. I say: not only is it about time, but I think you're a little bit too late, Mr. Premier.

Because if you had put the time and energy into taking the message about the state of this fishery across this country the same way you have talked about distinct society and Triple E Senate, then I think the message would be in the minds of Canadians and might have already influenced public opinion and the parliamentarians in Ottawa. But of course the fishery wasn't important enough to talk about for the Premier then. It was this Triple E Senate that was going to make life much better in Lord's Cove and Ming's Bight, and areas, towns, out in Bay Roberts.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Dancing in the streets. They're all dancing in the streets out there.

MR. NOEL: (Inaudible)!

MR. MATTHEWS: Triple E Senate is not going to do a thing for the people in Lord's Cove, Port de Grave or St. John's South.

AN HON. MEMBER: Or Quidi Vidi Gut.

MR. HEWLETT: What's it done for the people (Inaudible)?

MR. MATTHEWS: It will do a lot to bringing back the cod stocks.

MR. NOEL: (Inaudible.)

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I again remind hon. members, for I do not know how many times, that the correct way to make an interjection is to stand and ask the hon. member if the hon. member would permit a question. There is nothing within our regulations or within our rules that allows a member to just interject across the floor. There is nothing to allow it, not even precedent.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. MATTHEWS: I say again, Mr. Speaker, that a Triple E Senate, and I am in favour of Senate reform to the degree of abolition, as I said before, but it will not make any difference to the people in Lord's Cove. It will not make any difference to anybody down in the Gut I say to the Member for Pleasantville.

MR. NOEL: Why are you for it then, if it will not make any difference?

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, you are for it. I think for all intents and purposes the Senate is useless, that is what I say to the member. You elect members to go up in parliament and run the country for you and make decisions. It is just a waste of taxpayer's money, another level of Government and bureaucracy, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

AN HON. MEMBER: No. No.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, Mr. Speaker, I will not. Another national tour by the Premier, Mr. Speaker, is just what we need. That is just what we need. It is going to make a big difference. Once the announcement was made three or four weeks ago about the reduction in the northern cod stocks it was two and a half weeks before the Premier of this Province opened his mouth to even comment on it. It was two and a half weeks after the announcement before he uttered a syllable about the reduction in the northern cod stocks, the Total Allowable Catch.

When the announcement was made on Hibernia, Mr. Speaker, the Premier asked the question: why is everyone so concerned?...it is business as usual. Those alarmists, there is nothing wrong with it. It is business as usual, the Government does not know. What is he saying today, Mr. Speaker? He is a little more concerned. Again, maybe a little bit too late, and again, what has he and his Government done, to try and find foreign investment in the Hibernia project?... absolutely nothing. The companies are doing it, the Federal Government is doing it, but again the Provincial Government is doing absolutely nothing. Sit on our hands. What can we do? The Government, Mr. Speaker, is first and foremost responsible for the well-being of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians but they do not want to take any responsibility. If there has ever been a do-nothing Government, Mr. Speaker, a do-nothing Government in the history of this Province this is the one. This is the one, and they will go down in history and be remembered for that. The unemployment rate rose by 4 per cent in three years. There are some figures the Premier tossed out today in Question Period that were totally incorrect I might say, and these figures will be exposed over the next few days. Mr. Speaker, for anyone to stand up and spit statistics out of their face with the press watching that were so erroneous, where did it come from?

MR. WINSOR: If it were anyone else he would have said, let me correct the hon. member.

MR. MATTHEWS: Correct the mis-statements he would have said. Well, he made them today. Of course he will be embarrassed over that.

Mr. Speaker, I see the Government House Leader pointing at his watch. I thought we did not finish until 5:00 o'clock but it is not quite that yet. Having said that, it being the first day back I will yield and adjourn the debate, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Government House Leader.

MR. BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to announce to the hon. House that the subject for Private Member's Day will be the motion put forward by the Leader of the Opposition earlier in this session. Tomorrow I intend to carry on with the debate on the Address in Reply, Mr. Speaker.

I move that the House at its rising do adjourn until 2:00 p.m. tomorrow.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday at 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon.