The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Lush): Order, please!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.

MR. GRIMES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to clarify any confusion or misunderstanding that the Leader of the Opposition may be labouring under as a result of public statements made by me on Tuesday, March 9, 1993. The Opposition Leader suggested yesterday that my comments represent an admission that there are three different government positions on fiscal policy - that of the Premier, the Minister of Finance, and my own.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Speaker. As a matter of fact, in my address to the Kiwanis Club of Grand Falls - Windsor, I detailed and fully supported the government's consistently stated position with respect to our commitment to fiscal responsibility, including an approximate $50 million limit on the current account deficit, an approximate $30 million reduction in program and operation costs, and an approximate $70 million reduction in compensation costs.

With respect to the reduction in compensation costs, I stated that I was hopeful that our objective could be accomplished without a reduction in take-home pay. I further stated that this was different than what the Premier and the Minister of Finance had said. I pointed out that there was a difference in my comments since the Premier and Finance Minister had been saying that our objectives may have to be met through some combination of reduction in fringe benefit costs and unpaid leave which could result in less actual take-home pay.

We do not know yet what the final outcome will be, but I am sure I spoke for everyone on this side of the House when I expressed hope that we could meet our fiscal objectives without a reduction in take-home pay.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. GRIMES: I regret that my usual honest, forthright approach to the matter has caused confusion with the Leader of the Opposition who continually tries to create further confusion. I apologize if my comments have in any way caused any difficulty for the Premier or my Cabinet colleagues, but I am assured that such is not the case.

I was not critical of the government as the Leader of the Opposition further suggested, but rather acknowledged an awareness of the level of concern existing in the public during a time of some understandable uncertainty. I also pointed out that I am continuing to encourage my colleagues in government and the other parties we are dealing with to finalize some decisions as quickly as possible to remove the uncertainty and provide definitive positions to react and respond to. It is clearly unacceptable for me to be discussing publicly what advice I am giving my Cabinet colleagues and I regret any embarrassment I may have caused by doing so.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, with respect to the education issues raised I addressed two matters which we have had and will continue to have opportunities to discuss in cabinet and caucus namely the Williams Commission Report and the 2 per cent savings clause. The Government positions put forward by the Minister of Education and the Premier are fully supported by me, and I look forward to participating in future discussions aimed at improvement of our education system. Again, I have no hesitation in offering sincere apologies to the Premier and my colleague the Minister of Education for any poor choice of wording on my part that may have led the Leader of the Opposition or the public generally to any conclusion of lack of support on my behalf. I accept and support the Government's position without qualification and I rise to make that clear.

I look forward to continuing to work with the Premier and my colleagues as the details of much needed and long awaited educational reforms are developed for the betterment of the youth of our Province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I recall the last time that the Premier caught the hon. member doing something he should not be doing he took away his keys, this time he is taking away his credibility.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SIMMS: Let me just say this, Mr. Speaker, the questions I asked in the Legislature were based on two stories in a credible, reputable newspaper in the Province and that newspaper and those newspaper stories were liberally sprinkled with all kinds of direct quotations as to what the minister had said at those particular speaking functions. The question is: why would the newspaper want to misrepresent what the minister has said, because that is what he is saying here in fact, it is not me? Why would the newspaper say that Grimes has different views than Wells? It is not me, it is the newspaper that I was referring to and the hon. minister knows that and if he wants to make that kind of an accusation towards the newspaper than that is between him and them. I can only tell him this, that I have had occasion over the last twenty-four hours to speak with some attendees at both of those meetings and I can assure the hon. House, Mr. Speaker, that their recollection of events is much closer to that which was related in the newspaper than to the account given by the hon. minister.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East, is asking for leave of the House.

AN HON. MEMBER: No.

MR. SPEAKER: No? Sorry. There is a member saying no, and the Chair cannot give leave if a member is saying, no.

MR. HARRIS: On a point of order.

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

MR. HARRIS: Do I understand it that the hon. members opposite do not wish me to make any comment on the minister's embarrassing situation, is that the position of hon. members opposite?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

There is no point of order. The Chair can only be guided by what hon. members say and in this case he does not have leave.

The hon. the Minister of Justice and Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, a very brief statement and I apologise to my friend from Humber East, we did not get it through until about 1:30 I should think, but I hope she will acknowledge it, it is a brief statement, we have not taken her unawares.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to announce the appointment by the Cabinet of two new provincial court judges. David Edward Power and Kymil Sharon Howe were appointed upon recommendation of the Judicial Council. I think there were eighteen applications eligible to fill the two seats that were vacant that have now been filled.

Miss Howe is a native of Corner Brook, she has been employed hitherto as a Crown Attorney in Corner Brook, she is a graduate of Memorial University and the University of New Brunswick Law School, she was called to the Bar of Newfoundland in December, 1982 and practised originally with the firm of Monaghan, Seaborn in Corner Brook and since 1990 has been a Crown Attorney in western Newfoundland.

David Power is a sole practitioner in Gander. He is a native of St. John's, he graduated from Memorial University and from Dalhousie University Law School, he was called to the Bar of Newfoundland in 1972, and the Bar of Nova Scotia in December, 1991. He has of course maintained his practise in Gander while serving as a member of the bar of Nova Scotia. He has been a Bencher of the Law Society of Newfoundland since 1986.

Mr. Speaker, the appointments are effective immediately. These two judges will fill vacancies at Gander and at Goose Bay. The actual assignments are the responsibility of the Chief Judge of the Court, His Honour, Judge Luther.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

On behalf of my colleagues in the official Opposition, let me welcome news of the appointment to the Provincial Court of Kim Howe and David Power. These are both very well qualified individuals, people who are suited to holding judicial office. I am particularly pleased that a second woman has been appointed to the provincial bench. I was about to say Kendra Goulding became our Province's first woman provincial court judge but that is not quite true. From what I recall, another woman served briefly as a magistrate or a provincial court judge several years ago but resigned. But Kendra Goulding has been the only woman on the provincial bench until today when she has been joined by Kim Howe.

I am pleased to see that a vacancy in Happy Valley - Goose Bay is going to be filled. I am concerned about the under-representation of provincial court judges in Labrador. We, in the Opposition, took strong exception to the government's decision to move the resident judge out of Labrador West and to serve Labrador West from Corner Brook. We believe there should be a resident provincial court judge in Labrador West, perhaps a judge who also serves Eastern or Coastal Labrador, or Western Newfoundland, as well. We are concerned about the adequacy of the provincial court service in Central and Coastal Labrador. All along, there were two resident judges in Happy Valley - Goose Bay who served the Lake Melville area, as well as the Coast.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Premier. Last November, he will recall that I asked him about the progress in negotiations with Quebec for the development of the Lower Churchill River hydro system and he said then that there hadn't been any meetings since March 3, 1992. Could the Premier tell us now if any formal negotiations have resumed since that date?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, Mr. Speaker, no formal negotiations have resumed but if I just left it there it would not be a complete statement of the situation. The reality is that events other than factors affecting the negotiations or the positions of the two parties have intervened, most notably the excess of hydro electric power over the demand for it. Members will be aware that recently news reports indicated that Ontario Hydro had close, I believe, to 50 per cent capacity beyond their needs. Ontario Hydro recently announced that it would be laying off some 4,500 people, would be closing one or two of the nuclear reactors, and would be reducing its power output because it doesn't have the need for the power that it is capable of generating. Quebec is experiencing a similar thing and Ontario and Quebec are both competing in the foreign markets.

So the circumstances, as nearly as we can judge now, and part of this, at least this opinion, is partly founded on sort of causal, or off-the-record, non-negotiating discussions, between Hydro Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, with a view to assessing the overall hydroelectric situation. The general view is that the power to be generated at the Lower Churchill would not now be needed for a few years further down the road than was originally the view as little as a year or two ago.

So the hydroelectric circumstances have changed. The fact that there have been no negotiations since March of last year is not, I should add, a result of any inability of the two parties to continue the negotiation, or such strong differences between the two parties that it would be pointless to continue the negotiations - it is as a result of the economy, the recession and the hydroelectric power situation.

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

MR. SIMMS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Trying to listen carefully to what the Premier has had to say on this issue, I am not quite sure if he admitted that negotiations have broken off, since there hasn't been a meeting since last March - and up until that time, I believe the two negotiating teams had been meeting regularly on a monthly basis. I guess my question is: Are the negotiations, in fact, then, broken off? Is it fair to say that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, I don't think that would be fair to say, although I would sooner talk to the hydro people specifically before I would confirm that with certainty. Prior to November 1991 they had been meeting virtually on a monthly basis. Then there were no meetings between I think it was November 1991 and March of 1992. I think that that is correct. Between November and March 1992, as hon. members know, the recession started to have its more serious impact and those involved in both Hydro Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, of course, became more fully aware of the impact on their respective corporations of the lessening in demand for hydro.

The last meeting took place in early March of 1992. There has not been any reason to continue negotiations since then, because there has been really a recognition between the parties and sort of more casual conversations.

Members will be aware that representatives from Hydro Quebec also sit on the CF(L)Co board, so there are discussions amongst officials from time to time and there is a recognition that the hydroelectric reality in northeastern North America is such that a continuation of those negotiations is not a priority at this particular time.

MR. SIMMS: A supplementary.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that these negotiations are really going nowhere - I mean, that is the long and short of it, certainly for the last year or so - I would like to ask the Premier: Would he be prepared to give a full accounting to the people of the Province concerning the negotiations? And would he be prepared to table in the House details of the Province's proposal and the Province of Quebec's proposal?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition can put whatever colour he wants on it. It is not right to say that these negotiations are going nowhere. The situation is as I described it. Now, if that is the colour the Leader of the Opposition puts on it, I just people to know that is his coloration of it.

The second question that he raised is: 'Would I be prepared to table the details of the negotiations?' No, Mr. Speaker, because the parties' negotiations are technically still there, and the time is going to come when the parties are going to continue those negotiations.

When the parties started out, it was agreed that we would not disclose the positions that the parties were putting to one another until there had been a conclusion. Now, unless and until such time as the negotiations are formally broken off, not to be resumed at all, then I would not feel free to put forward the details of the position.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier this question: Was there a direct proposal from the Province of Quebec regarding the financing of the Lower Churchill project and the payment of royalties to the Government of Newfoundland?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I just indicated that in the circumstances I considered it would be inappropriate, particularly without the prior approval of both Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro and Hydro Quebec, to disclose the details of the respective proposals. That being the case, it would be equally inappropriate to do it through a twenty question process. It doesn't matter how you do it, it is inappropriate either way.

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

MR. SIMMS: Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Premier again, and I will do it this way: Did his Minister of Mines and Energy present such a proposal as I just outlined, to the Cabinet, or to a Planning and Priorities of Cabinet, and was that proposal not, in fact, supported by the minister and the Province's negotiating team? Can he confirm that?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: No, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is totally incorrect.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

My questions are for the Premier, and follow questions I asked him last week about ENL, also known as Employment for Noted Liberals, and the now infamous $75,000 a year MacKenzie contract.

Last week, the Premier tried to shift the focus to the technicalities of the old Conflict of Interest Act by saying he would ask his Minister of Justice, a man who knows something about conflict of interest, whether the MacKenzie contract breached the precise requirements of the act for Cabinet approval.

I ask the Premier now: Is it not true that your 1989 provincial campaign manager, Fraser Lush, now your central Newfoundland Vice-President of ENL, took work away from a member of the corporation's staff - an individual who was already on the public payroll - and then contracted it out at the rate of $75,000 a year to Bill MacKenzie, shortly after Mr. MacKenzie left the office of the minister nominally in charge of ENL, and days after he set up a consulting business? In other words, is it not true that this was a calculated, deliberate act of partisan patronage involving a colossal waste of taxpayers' money?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: To the best of my knowledge at this moment, what you have just heard from the hon. member is a total, complete fabrication. I will reaffirm and make sure that my understanding of it is accurate, but my understanding of it would indicate that is just a complete fabrication. There is no merit whatsoever in it.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Why is the Premier pretending that he doesn't know what is going on with ENL? Why won't the Premier admit that he designed this corporation to operate outside the ambit of the Public Service Commission? - that he appointed his key campaign workers, Fraser Lush, Keith Payne and other Liberal hacks, to key positions with the corporation? - that he has allowed ENL to operate without acceptable procedures or controls? And now, he hears from the Auditor General that in its first two years of operation, up to last March, which is a year ago, ENL ran up something like $70 million in doubtful loans. Why doesn't he admit that he, himself, has been part and parcel of this scandal?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, it is one thing for a member to put forward propositions that she may have heard from somebody else and ask a government minister whether or not it is true - but for a member to make the kinds of statements that the hon. member has just made, when such an hon. member, if there is a modicum of intelligence there at all, must know that there is no truth in anything that she just put forward.

Let me just state for a moment very clearly: Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador was the successor corporation to Newfoundland and Labrador Development Corporation, a Crown corporation created by the former government that provided for its own appointment of officials as a Crown corporation and didn't function under the Public Service Commission. Now, why does she stand in the House and say that I personally - as though I had the right to do it - could exempt Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador from the ambit of the Public Service Commission? I mean, surely, the hon. member has more concern about her own credibility and her own personal integrity than to put forward propositions like that.

Then the second proposition, if I heard her correctly, is that she said that since it has been created, it has run up $70 million worth of bad debts.

MR. ROBERTS: That's the Auditor General's figure.

PREMIER WELLS: That's the Auditor General's figure. Now, Mr. Speaker, let me tell hon. members where the outstanding investment has come from. From NLDC, the corporation created and run by the former government, $34 million of the $70 million was NLDC, $34 million - before this government ever had anything to do with it. So now she stands in the House and says this government created these bad debts. Another $16.2 million was RAND, the Rural, Agricultural and Northern Development, all the agency created by the former government, all of it done at that time. A 57 per cent NLDC - fifty-seven, forty-six, that doesn't work out quite right.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

PREMIER WELLS: The next amount, Enterprise Newfoundland and Labrador, is $20 million. Mr. Speaker, that is the total indebtedness. Of the total indebtedness, the original $34 million from NLDC, $19.5 million is bad debts. Fifty-seven per cent of the bad debts was as a result of the way the former government ran the corporation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

PREMIER WELLS: That is the way they did it. Mr. Speaker, another $16 million of the indebtedness, $7.5 million of that is bad debts - that is RAND. That's another 46 per cent of the total bad debt. In recent years there has been a problem with $2.6 million of it. That is 13 per cent of the total bad debts. Now, Mr. Speaker, we know what credibility statements coming from the hon. member deserve. None.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I want to remind hon. members again as to what question period is all about. I remind hon. members that sometimes when the question is loaded, with all kinds of extraneous remarks, it makes it difficult for the Chair then to decide when the minister has answered satisfactorily. Because he starts dealing with the remarks that are outside the question. So I ask hon. members to please keep that in mind. Talking about a question, it must be question, not an expression of an opinion, representation, argumentation nor debate. When we get into that then the answer is going to be similar.

The hon. the Member for Humber East.

MS. VERGE: Mr. Speaker, is the Premier saying that he personally agrees with the award of the $75,000 a year contract to Bill MacKenzie, the former political aide to the minister nominally in charge, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology and if so, will the Premier explain why that was a wise use of taxpayers money and will the Premier table the content?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I have told the House, I think it was on Friday, that I had no personal knowledge of it. I did not know the thing existed until I heard it raised in the House but I have asked to have the matter checked. I asked the minister responsible to provide the information that he has and I have asked the Minister of Justice to determine whether or not it contravenes the conflict of interest rule, and if it does contravene the conflict of interest rules it cannot stand. The contract must fall and I will see that it does fall, if it contravenes but I am not prepared to jump to the conclusion that it does, merely because the member's Opposite want that conclusion to be reached. I expect the minister will have it for me very shortly.

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

MS. VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Why will the Premier not own up to his responsibility in this sorted affair? This matter came to the attention of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, the Premier included, through the public news media two months ago. Why will the Premier not stand here today and own up to his part in this dirty deal?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the fact that the hon. member has no concern about the quality or reliability of her comments in this House reflects rather badly on her, more than it does on the government. Let me say that I heard mention of this thing for the first time here in the House, I believe it was on Friday. I have asked to have the matter completely investigated and I will advise the House. I expect, within a day or two, I will have the reply from the minister, and as soon as I do, I will inform the House. If the contract is appropriate it will stand. If there is anything inappropriate about it, we will not do as the former government has done, and allow it to stand anyway.

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Premier, also. I suppose, in this Province, even the slowest amongst us would realize that we are under a very severe restraint program, and I guess, the public servants, the nurses, teachers, all of those, would realize even more than anyone, what a restraint period we are under, because they are getting their pockets picked every day, Mr. Speaker. We have, and have had for awhile, examples of the Premier and his Cabinet being exempt from this restraint period. Mr. Speaker, we have $800,000 spent on offices, the Premier's offices, which is extravagant in these times, $600 for doorknobs, $800 for chairs for the office, Mr. Speaker. They spent $800,000 on an agricultural task force to try to find a candidate for St. George's, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to get on with the question.

MR. R. AYLWARD: They had fourteen or so media specialists hired on by the government throughout the system that is costing a fortune.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member knows he is not supposed to make a speech. A brief preamble is allowed and I think the hon. member has stretched the definition of a brief preamble. I ask him to get on with the question, please.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, that is my brief preamble. Now, for the question to the Premier: Would the Premier do his best to find out which of his ministers purchased an $800 briefcase and had it charged to the taxpayers of this Province? The briefcase was purchased in Toronto within the past couple of months. It was purchased in a specialty store, in Toronto and the expense claim has been processed by the department. Would the Premier look into that and report back to this House as soon as he can, about an $800 briefcase?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raised a number of other things besides the briefcase. I have been diligently looking for the $600 doorknob. Every doorknob in my office was in my office - every doorknob that has been in my office since I have been there, was in my office the day I took over from Mr. Rideout. Now, when I find that $600 doorknob, I am going to ask Mr. Rideout to account for it, just so the people of this Province will know the depths to which the hon. members will think. Because they have nothing positive to offer, so they fabricate the big lie and throw it out there, knowing that there are some who are willing to believe anything at all.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I will enquire as to who, if anybody, purchased a briefcase and what the facts and circumstances are, and I will advise the House.

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

MR. WINSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a question for the minister responsible for Works, Services and Transportation. The minister is probably aware that the hostel, a part of the West Coast sporting centre in Stephenville, has been closed since February. The facility, an integral part of athletic and sporting development on the West Coast, is owned by the minister's department. It has been closed since February. Will the minister now take action to have that hostel re-opened?

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

MR. GOVER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, for several days now, if not for over a week, the Member for Stephenville has been calling this matter to my attention and requesting action on it. The matter is being reviewed by the department and appropriate action will be taken, all at the initiative of the Member for Stephenville, Mr. Speaker, and no thanks to the Member for Fogo.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for Fogo.

MR. WINSOR: I remind the minister that enquiries to the minister's office do not open the hostel, Mr. Speaker. We have been informed that it is not going to be opened in this fiscal year and it is not a priority for the 1993 fiscal year. It has been closed since February. I ask the minister again: Is he going to now take the necessary action so that scheduled sporting events can continue on the West Coast and Stephenville using the hostel, as has always been done in the past?

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

MR. GOVER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated to the Member for Stephenville, Mr. Speaker, this matter is under review and appropriate action will be taken. I am in constant contact with the member most affected, the Member for Stephenville. He persistently inquires about this particular matter and I am sure, between the two of us, we will find a satisfactory resolution, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. WINSOR: Mr. Speaker, the minister should give up playing politics and allow the people to play sports.

Mr. Speaker, the minister is aware, the estimated cost of repairing this facility is $14,000 or less. Why doesn't the minister do the right thing and immediately issue instructions to people at his department, to have the pipes and the related work corrected so this facility can open and put it on a priority list instead of putting it on an inactive list for 1993-1994?

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

MR. GOVER: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, this matter is being reviewed and a matter that is being reviewed is a priority matter. We have to assess the needs of this particular facility in relation to the needs of the other facilities which require renovations and repair but, as I indicated, Mr. Speaker, with the strong urging from the Member for Stephenville, hopefully some resolution can be found to this particular matter.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, (inaudible) Social Services.

Mr. Speaker, in 1988, the budget for people on social assistance was $104 million dollars. According to the Auditor General's statement, in 1991, the numbers of people on social assistance had caused the budget in this Province to grow from $104 million in 1988 to $195 million. Let me ask the minister: Can he tell me if there has been an increase or a decrease in 1992, as it relates to that $195 million for 1991?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, the amount to be expended this year, at the end of this fiscal year, should approximate $170 million and that would be in all categories of social assistance in the department. If his figures are correct and I assume they are, that would be a decrease from 1989, I believe you quoted.

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

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, let me put this to the minister then. In 1988, there were approximately 16,000 people directly on social assistance - families. How many people would be on it in 1992?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, we now have approaching 31,000, something like 30,600 cases per se, people involved in those cases of course, the cases vary from one person to as many as five or six people. The total persons involved, if you like, receiving assistance, families and single persons, would be approximately 66,000 or 67,000 people. Now, I would caution the hon. member that that includes all categories of social assistance, people who are mentally and physically disadvantaged, all categories are included in that caseload and it is not all people who are receiving monetary assistance per se and able-bodied. That is a small portion, if you like, a smaller percentage of the 30,000 caseload.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West, on a supplementary.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I suggest to the minister that the proportion would be the same in 1992 as it would have been in 1988 which has seen double the numbers of people on the caseload of the minister's department. Most of that is the direct responsibility of no economic policy by this administration.

Yesterday, my question to the minister was dealing with the way government is clawing back from the people on social assistance in poor times. Let me ask the minister this, in view of the fact that this government has asked for and received approval from the Federal Government, not to pay on the overpayment they received, let me ask the minister if he will do the honourable thing and award the same type of a repayment program to the people on social assistance as the Federal Government has given to this Province on their overpayment? The minister cannot be part of a government with a double standard and the people of this Province who are on social assistance cannot afford to pay. I ask the minister, will he do it?

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is obviously grasping for questions because it is identical to the question he asked me yesterday. The answer is the same, Mr. Speaker, that if overpayments are due and payable to the government, to the Department of Social Services, if an overpayment has been caused by way of an error, an advance, or whatever it happens to be, it has to be repaid.

MR. SPEAKER: A final supplementary, the hon. the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, as does the Provincial Government have to pay back their overpayment to the Federal Government when they can do it. Let me ask the minister: Why is he part of a double standard? Why the double standard? Why, in poor economic times, does the Province not have to pay back their overpayment, at the same time, without any increase for the people on social assistance? Why is the government dragging money from them when all they have on the stove is a drop of water in a kettle? That is what they have in their homes.

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

MR. GULLAGE: Mr. Speaker, I have heard nonsense before in this House but we are hearing the heights of it today. Mr. Speaker, we help people, from time to time, to bridge a period when they are waiting to go on unemployment or workers' compensation. We have helped people with the moratorium. Until the moratorium package was announced, we helped people in that transition period, as well. Mr. Speaker, we are very reasonable. These overpayments and these extra payments, these transition payments that from time to time we do help people with - we are very reasonable in setting up repayment schedules, as reasonable as you can possibly be, and the cases are looked at on an individual basis. We are as reasonable as we can possibly be, but we have to insist in fairness to the large caseloads we have, in all fairness to the people overall receiving benefits from us, that overpayments have to be repaid.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Premier. One of the great tragedies evident in the unemployment statistics released by Statistics Canada as of last Friday, is the fact that 31 per cent of young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are unemployed. Those are the official figures but the real figures are actually higher. May I ask the Premier what the one in three young people in Newfoundland who are unemployed can expect to receive in the way of positive news in this government's Budget tomorrow?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: The hon. member, like all other people in the Province, will have to wait until tomorrow when the minister delivers his Budget, then they will know.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East has time for a short supplementary.

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, if the Premier wants to go on a crusade across this country, why does he not go on a crusade to support a jobs plan for young people in Newfoundland and all across Canada? Why does he not support such a plan, such as the New Democratic Party has proposed federally? Why does he not go on a crusade for that? Instead of some pre-electioneering on the fishery, why does he not crusade on the employment needs of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the difference between the hon. member and myself is that I have the honesty to tell the people of this Province that no government - this government or any other - can shield the people of this Province from the consequences of a national, and indeed international, economic recession.

If you look at that great NDP government, they announced today that they are going to lay off 18,000 people. Was that the number I heard?... some massive number. They just laid off 4,500 in NDP Ontario. In NDP Ontario they laid off 4,500 in Ontario Hydro alone. Forty-five hundred are going to be laid off in Ontario Hydro alone over the next while.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Ontario indicated today - I heard interviews with Premier Rae indicating that over the next four to five years there would be substantial layoffs in the public service of Ontario. Now, Mr. Speaker, great, wealthy - relative to Newfoundland - prosperous Ontario cannot shield its people from the effects - the devastative effects - of the national and international recession.

It is dishonest for any member of this House to stand and suggest that somehow the government of this poor Province can do it nevertheless. It is utterly unrealistic and misleading, Mr. Speaker.

The time for Oral Questions has elapsed.

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

MR. BAKER: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table six copies of a special warrant under the requirements of the Financial Administration Act. This special warrant totals $21,800,000. Seventeen thousand, three hundred of it is for additional funding to reflect the caseload increase for social services, a $3.5 million amount for home support services, and $1 million for youth corrections additional funding to reflect the overcapacity of the Whitbourne Youth Centre. So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to table these special warrants.

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

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

MR. R. AYLWARD: The hon. minister read out a $17,000 special warrant for social services. There must be something wrong with that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Seventeen million.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Million you meant, but you said thousand.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table the First Annual Report of the Advisory Council on the Economy. That is the council that replaced the economic council that was structured - the separate economic council that was structured - by the former government and the economic recovery advisory board. We consolidated them last year and this is the first annual report. In doing so I want to express, on behalf of the government, to Mr. Harold Lundrigan, the Chairman, and Mr. G. C. Eaton, the Vice-Chairman, and all the members of that advisory council, the sincere appreciation of the government, and I am confident the people of this Province, for their volunteering their services in this way.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of the Statutes and Subordinate Legislation Act, I am required to table in the House the regulations adopted under that statute since the House last met.

In the interest of sparing hon. members a very large pile of paper, of which I assume they are already intimately familiar, in pursuit of the ongoing efforts of my friend, the Minister of Environment and Lands, to conserve paper I have not provided each member with a copy. The stack of gazettes on the table in front of the law clerk represents the gazettes that have been passed, or have been published, since the House last met.

I now table them, discharging my obligation under the statute, and I would say to hon. members, Mr. Speaker, and to you, that if any member wishes to have this, I would be delighted to have him or her sent a complete set and would ask in return only an undertaking that he or she will read each of them and report fully in due course.

Thank you.

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

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have four petitions here, all on the same subject, pertaining to education. They are all from different schools in the district of Humber Valley, and all the teachers are represented by the Deer Lake - St. Barbe South Integrated School Board.

I will just read the four schools that the petitions represent: C.L. Sheppard School in Cormack, the Elwood Regional High School in Deer Lake, the Howley Elementary School in Howley, and the Deer Lake Pentecostal School.

The prayer of the petitions are pretty well the same. They represent a total of some fifty-five teachers in the district of Humber Valley, under the Deer Lake Integrated system and the Deer Lake Pentecostal system:

To the honourable House of Assembly of Newfoundland in Legislative Session convened, the petition of the undersigned staff of the four schools involved;

WHEREAS we believe it is unjust to make a select group of Newfoundland's population who have, through wage restraint, been already severely sacrificed to the deficit, bear further inordinate portions of the burden for the provincial deficit; and

WHEREAS we believe further cuts in funding to the education system can only be detrimental to education, damaging the economy as a whole, disastrous to our present population and destructive to generations of students to come;

THEREFORE your petitioners pray that the House of Assembly and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador take no action that will further cut the teachers' compensation package or cut the number of teachers employed, or reduce the programs in our schools.

Mr. Speaker, as I already stated, this represents some fifty-five teachers in the district and four different schools. The school board of Deer Lake Integrated system, in my area over the last few years especially, has been devastated by the actions taken by this administration already. The Deer Lake Integrated system for instance is short this year some $200,000. There's no way, even today, that the Deer Lake Integrated system and the St. Barbe South Integrated system can survive without any extra help. Absolutely none, let alone any new, further cuts to maintenance or operating pertaining to the school board.

A number of teachers have written to the minister over the last couple of months and I'd like to pass on some of the concerns that they had. I'll read out a few of them for the House and for hon. members opposite. In the midst of all this, in the midst of all those cuts, the teachers in this Province have to fulfil the job that they were originally hired to do. That is, preparing our young people to be self-sufficient, independent, contributing members of the society to which they belong.

This gets done despite all the cutbacks, despite all the setbacks, despite wage freezes, despite threatened wage rollbacks, despite layoffs, despite cuts in substitute days, despite the numerous rumours that threaten their morale and professionalism. It is done because of the dedication of teachers, parents and students in this Province. But they keep falling behind and government insists that the cuts will make it more efficient and produce a system that will give us greater equity.

Twenty children crowded around a single computer in an elementary classroom - is that equity? A senior high school with only four teachers, trying to provide a comprehensive program - is that equity? Numerous multi-grade classes with no multi-grade curriculum - is that equity? Teachers, because of declining enrollments, forced to teach outside their area of expertise, I ask - is that equity? Teachers forced to curtail professional development activities because of a lack of substitute days - is that equity? Schools with no guidance services at this time of social upheaval- is that equity? Schools with no adequate library resources, I ask - is that equity?

Teachers, parents, students, have had enough. Hopefully this administration opposite tomorrow will take that into consideration when they're thinking about making cuts to education in this Province and make sure that no other cuts are made that would be detrimental to the educational system in this Province. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support my colleague in the presentation of his petition. Here in this Province where less money is being spent per capita on education than elsewhere across the country I think it's very important to focus and use the dollars that are available toward the best means possible. I can't think of any means more possible than putting funds into education.

This government just recently slashed $20 million from their budget for 1992-1993. In one specific area of capital expenditure, $2.5 million (Inaudible) schools have severe problems. They're burdened, in debt, some boards, and capital expenditures not available to go into education. Some schools are hoping to join together into a new area and close down some schools that are very poor in structure. But with a reduction in capital expenditure they can't achieve that particular end. In order to have a facility that's conducive to educational learning and proper attainment of their abilities it's important to have an environment that enhances education, not one that takes from it.

On the operational side of things, there have been severe cuts on the operational aspect. Seventeen and a half million dollars achieved just over the last quarter of this fiscal year. That alone has caused serious problems within the system itself. Now to look at cutting even a 2 per cent savings clause that was mentioned, even though that seems for the time being, and hopefully to be saved, it was indicated a 2 per cent savings clause was put there to protect teacher jobs.

The 2 per cent savings clause goes far beyond the protection of jobs. It is the protection of programs in areas that do not have the population base to be able to offer programs. Resulting in, as my colleague said, people teaching outside their areas of expertise, four and five subjects in areas where there are reduced teachers. Areas that they cannot really give the best possible type of educational opportunities to their kids. I think it is important that, if areas are going to lose specific teachers, that a plan - and this Government has not put any plan in place, other than say slash the 2 per cent or eliminate the 2 per cent to be able to redistribute and put into place teachers in areas where there is a vital need to be able to maintain some semblance of a reasonable program for the kids.

This Government has attacked teachers, it is like trying to operate buses without having bus drivers. You cannot operate schools and offer programs without teachers. It is very important. One of the first steps is have someone to provide adequate instruction. You could teach them in a palace with every possible opportunity there but if you do not have instructors that are going to be able to convey to them the knowledge that they have garnered over their training and through their experience, it is going to be very difficult to have our students rise up to levels and achieve that across this country.

This Government should be more concerned with setting expectations for students. Having targets of achievement over the next period of time. They should be concerned with putting in place the mechanisms and so on, to be able to monitor those expectations and those target levels that they set. It is also very important that there be resources there also to help these students achieve to their fullest. This Government has taken away the resources that are needed in terms of facilities, resources in terms of teachers, and cutbacks occurring all over the place. Under scrutiny, just the latest one is getting into pension areas. Increase in premiums just a few years ago and they are continuing to increase, and now trying to give Government a break from contributing to a plan where $250 million should have been contributed by Government into that fund over a period of time.

So, Government has an opportunity in Section 61, the Schools Act, this Government, the Government now, to exercise their authority under Section 61, the Schools Act, that increase costs of transportation and reduced competitiveness in schools in this Province. Section 61, empowers the minister to be able to make decisions pertaining to attendance of kids within a school in general proximity or across town, whatever the case may be.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Being Wednesday, 3:00 p.m. the Chair has to call the private members resolution which I understand is the resolution of the Member for Eagle River.

I will call on the Member for Eagle River to introduce his resolution.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased and proud today to stand in this hon. House and put forward a resolution, Mr. Speaker, that is the most reasonable proposal ever put to the House of Assembly in this Province to reclaim the fishery for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: Mr. Speaker, what we are about to debate here today is the essence of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the essence of our future and the future of our children in this Province because without a fishery in this Province and without a management process in place, where we have a meaningful impact upon it, Mr. Speaker, there is no future and let there be no people out there thinking otherwise. Over the next number of minutes that I have, I will outline for all hon. members the basis for joint management of the fishery. I will also illustrate what the present situation is and the impact that it has upon the economy of the Province and upon the people who are unemployed out there in our great Province today.

I should start off, Mr. Speaker, by reading into the record the resolution has it stands;

WHEREAS most provinces of Canada have management control of their principal natural resources; and

WHEREAS the fishing industry is of critical importance to the economic and social well being of Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS the Government of Canada since 1949 has had full management control over fish stocks of principal importance to our fishery; and

WHEREAS the Government of Canada's mismanagement of those resources has resulted in near collapse of key stocks and a most uncertain future for hundreds of coastal communities; and

WHEREAS the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador must achieve a meaningful voice in the future management of its fish resources; and

WHEREAS the Prime Minister of Canada in June of 1990 agreed in writing with the principle of joint fisheries management for Newfoundland and Labrador; and

WHEREAS the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board provides a model for successful shared management of a natural resource; and

WHEREAS the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is proposing reforms that would give all Atlantic Canada Provinces an equal say in the management of fish resources that are critical to Newfoundland and Labrador;

BE IT RESOLVED that this House hereby endorse the Province's proposal for a Canada-Newfoundland Fisheries Management Board as an effective mechanism to achieve rebuilding of fish stocks and long-term stability in the best interest of the people and fishing industry of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine anybody in this hon. House not supporting this resolution, but I must say that I believe it is time for the hon. Leader of the Opposition to say something about the fishery in this hon. House of Assembly, to say something to the people of this Province about his views on the fishery and I look forward to hearing his views. Just recently I noted, Mr. Speaker, that he claimed to be a Crosbie Conservative in one of the newspapers in the City, so I would hope that he will certainly take this opportunity to give his opinion on his Crosbie Conservative proposal that is before the people of this Province today. I believe there are four reasons, Mr. Speaker, that we must have joint management.

The first is principal natural resource. No other province in this country has a resource that is so essential to the economy of that province that it has no say into. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine, if the federal government owned and managed the oil of Alberta, can you imagine what the Premier of Alberta would do, considering what they did when we had a national energy program? Considering what they did, can you imagine if the federal government was calling out to the premier, Mr. Klein of Alberta every other day, saying to him that you are only allowed to pump so many barrels of oil a day, you are only allowed to pay your workers so much each day, and you must give so much to your neighbouring provinces whether you like it or not? Can you imagine the response of the people of Alberta, Mr. Speaker, in western Canada?

Can you imagine the response of Prince Edward Island, if we had Ottawa coming to the farmers of Prince Edward Island, who are so vitally impacted upon by the potato industry, can you imagine what it would mean if the federal government were to say to the potato farmers of PEI that you can only grow so much and after you have grown so much you have to give so much away to other farmers, to other people in Atlantic Canada and other parts of the country. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, if the federal government were to say you have to give 30 per cent or 40 per cent of your prime, farming real estate to other people in this country so they will have a chance to come in and take the full benefit of that resource? Obviously, Mr. Speaker, it would be totally unacceptable.

Mr. Speaker, the second reason that we must have joint management is the impact upon the provincial economy, and a lot of people in this Province are still yet to understand that the very lifeblood of rural Newfoundland and Labrador is attached to the fishery. The very lifeblood of 300 and some odd communities along the coast of Labrador and along the northeast coast of Newfoundland; Bonavista, Conception Bay, Trinity Bay, down St. Mary's Bay, St. John's is not also excluded from this, every place in this Province is absolutely dependent upon this resource for their livelihood and some people may not completely understand that.

I know today we have demands upon our treasury by the teaching profession, by the hospitals, by the public service of our Province, but I have to say to them, and I use my own community of L'Anse-au-Clair on the coast of Labrador as a prime example, without the fishery, without that fish plant in that community, whether that be a feeding plant to a larger one or whatever, but unless we have those thirty-five to forty jobs in that small community there would be no school; there would be no grocery stores; there would be no motel there that we would be able to have any kind of expected growth with, so there would be no L'Anse-au-Clair. There would be no community as we know it, and that is not unlike any other of the three hundred and some odd communities all across this great Province. You take that keel out of the boat and obviously she is going to sink. That is a metaphor obviously that is very real, and people must understand that this is the kind of impact that it has on our communities.

Mr. Speaker, the third reason that we must have joint management is that the present system is unacceptable. The present system, as it has stood now since 1949, gives Ottawa total control over the management of our fishery. It gives the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans the almighty power to decide how much fish is going to be given to the international community and how it is going to be allocated to the people of Atlantic Canada, and indeed to our own fishermen and plant workers of Newfoundland and Labrador - and that is absolutely unacceptable, because I can tell you that there is no need for, and there should not be, an international directorate for fisheries in Ottawa - there should not be.

The Secretary of State for External Affairs should not be dictating fisheries policy in this country when it has such an impact upon our people in Newfoundland and Labrador. It cannot be tolerated that the Minister of External Affairs of Canada is using fish as a bargaining tool when it goes to the international community trying to sell our wheat, trying to sell our auto parts, trying to sell our iron ore, or trying to sell our lumber. That is not acceptable when it has such an impact upon the people of this Province, and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the people of this Province do not support that and do not want to see it continue.

Mr. Speaker, apart from the international community and the travesty of international trade, there is also the problem of how the fish is allocated within the Canadian community. Most people in this Province do not understand. Most people in this Province have been fooled. Most people in this Province have not been told the truth about how the fish is being allocated and how the system is set up.

I am sure that if you were to ask the general public of this Province what 2J+3KL, 4Rs, and all of these numbers and letters meant, 5 per cent of the people would be the most that would be able to tell you what they mean or what kind of an impact it has upon them and their communities, but that is the system. These letters and these words are the very essence of how the fishery is controlled, and what they do is set up a total allowable catch, which means that there is a certain number of fish in terms of metric tons that can be caught, and then they go and allocate them to the different users. What they do there is then give the tacit approval from the state for this company or that company to go and harvest that fish, bring it to some place and process it.

What we have seen since 1977 is a process that has been put in place that has not adhered to proper management, and I think particularly about the proper principles of management. In 1977 when we went to the International Law of the Sea to say that we should have jurisdiction within the 200-mile limit, we argued for that jurisdiction on the basis of certain principles, and these principles are long-standing. These principles are credible. These principles are being applied in other parts of the world. It was not new that these principles were to be applied, and it certainly wasn't lost on us when we sought to try and negotiate management control inside the 200-mile limit. Mr. Speaker, these principles are worthy of recalling because they have such an impact upon the present system. I'll certainly be illustrating that later on in the debate.

The first principle upon which international fisheries law is based is the principle of conservation of the fish stocks. That is the first principle. That every community must manage its fisheries resources on the basis that it's going to be a sustainable fishery, that it's going to be there for the generations to come, and that we are going to harvest it only to the point where we can have it rebuild and that it can have the kind of benefit year after year to the people who depend upon it.

The second principle upon which the fish is allocated is the principle of adjacency. Adjacency. It has not been said enough in this Province and it's certainly not been repeated enough by our federal counterparts, that adjacency means that those closest to the resource must get the greatest benefit.

The third principle upon which it is based is the economic dependency of coastal communities. That is also a very important principle, because the economic dependence of coastal communities - if in fact in our situation now in Labrador, if we had all of our people working in mining on the coast of Labrador, then yes, there would be a possibility that we could afford to not have any fish brought in there and harvested because our communities would be self-sustaining at a difference resource. So that would be a basis to see that resource go somewhere else.

Obviously nobody in this House needs to be reminded that the economic dependency of coastal communities in Newfoundland and Labrador to the fishery is utmost. It is not 10 per cent, or 20 per cent, it is more like 95 per cent, with some areas of the Province that do have some opportunities in the lumber-woods industry, and some dependence and some economic benefit from the tourism industry. By far and large we are totally dependent upon the fishery.

The fourth principle upon which management is supposed to be given is the principle of historic use. Historic use means not what happened two years ago, or ten years ago, or even twenty years ago. Historic use is a long-standing principle that recognizes the long-standing attachment to the fishing industry, and it is termed in more like fifty to 100, 200 years ago. So historic use to Newfoundland is obvious. People settled here for that one and only reason.

Just a few days ago I was at an appeal hearing for an individual in Charlottetown, Labrador, for the northern cod program. After forty-two years in the fishery he was told by Mr. Crosbie: you do not qualify for the northern cod program. After forty-two years. Because in 1990 he did not get, for the first time in his forty-two years, ten insurable weeks in the fishery. That was at the appeal hearing. He was told that he would not qualify. Of course, his natural response to the appeal board was: why do you think I came to Charlottetown, Labrador, why do you think I came and brought my family to the coast of Labrador, if it wasn't for the tremendous fishery on the coast of Labrador? That's why I stayed here.

It goes back more than five or ten years, it goes back to four hundred and some odd years that we've been here as a people. These principles are not to be flippantly dealt with as they have been by the federal government over the last number of years.

These are very good reasons why we must have joint management. The principal natural resource we do not have any control over, the tremendous impact it has upon our provincial economy cannot be understated, and the present system is unacceptable. These are three reasons why we must have management control over the fishery but the fourth reason is, Mr. Speaker, we have got to say today for joint management of the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador, is because of the federal minister's proposal for reforming licensing allocation and sanctions in the Atlantic fishery tabled a week or so ago by the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, John Crosbie. This is the reason why we today have to speak loudly and unified in this Province against the proposal, Mr. Speaker, because if this is implemented it will be the death knell, it will be the one thing that will put us in perpetual poverty forever in rural Newfoundland and Labrador for the communities that live, and there will be many that will not survive.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: I say, Mr. Speaker, that if this proposal John Crosbie has proposed is put in place it will mean perpetual poverty for hundreds of communities in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, the communities that survive, because other than that you will not have a meaningful say. Mr. Speaker, I do not stand alone when I say that this proposal should be condemned. Just two days ago the editorial board of the Evening Telegram cast their opinion on this proposal. This proposal was thoughtfully considered by the editorial board and the headline said it all. It said it was an unacceptable proposal. And for the conservative leaning tenor that oftentimes comes from the editorial board of the Evening Telegram, the conclusion of that particular editorial, I think, is very interesting and must be carefully considered by the people of this Province, and that was this sentence, 'This proposal by Crosbie is unacceptable and every Newfoundlander should rise up against it.'

Now, these are not words that have just flippantly been put on paper, these are words that were put there, I am sure, under considerable thought and I believe they were put there because the editorial board of the Evening Telegram recognizes how vitally important the fishery is to Newfoundland and how damning a proposal this is to the future of the fishery in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, let me say why this is absolutely unacceptable. I just spent a few minutes outlining how we got the 200 mile limit and the principles upon which the 200 mile limit was granted and how it is being divided amongst the user groups within the Canadian community. I mentioned that the first and primary principle of fisheries management is conservation of the fish stocks so we will have a fishery for tomorrow. Let me tell you that on Page 9 of this proposal the principles have been outlined: the allocation principles written into the legislation would be important in giving focus to board deliberations. It would be important because the board would have to deal with how they are going to allocate the fish on the basis of this proposal.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I must remind the hon. member that his time is up.

MR. DUMARESQUE: Mr. Speaker, I would have appreciated a couple of minutes notice from the table because I did not realize I was getting that close. Could I just take one minute?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave for a couple of minutes?

AN HON. MEMBER: No.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I was offering the Member for Eagle River a minute to conclude what he wanted to conclude. I realize, of course, that he is going to close debate later on but if he wants a minute to just finish his train of thought he can. As long as you do not take too long now and you have to keep the volume down because it is a bit hard on some people's ears.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. member has been given a minute or so.

MR. DUMARESQUE: There is no problem, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the hon. members for their indulgence.

I just want to say, before other hon. members note it, that the principles upon which Mr. Crosbie is basing the future of our fishery on, if you look at the four of them and I will deal with them later in the evening but, Mr. Speaker, the principle of conservation of the fishery is not even on the paper. The principle of trying to put in place a program that will see the fishery on a sustainable basis is not even in the picture and that, Mr. Speaker, is something that is remiss, has been remiss from any other public document in this Province and in this fisheries department ever, since 1949. It was always there and I wanted to say that that is a very, very glaring omission from Mr. Crosbie's statement. I will have more to say on it later, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

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

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

It is becoming a familiar topic of debate over the last short while, Mr. Speaker, and I guess I want to go on the record at the outset as saying and so it should be, so it should be. Last Wednesday we were here debating a private members resolution on the fishery, I guess related in a lot of ways to what we are talking about here. It is about us, in Newfoundland and Labrador, that are in a crisis situation, as the Member for Port de Grave said yesterday and many of us have said many times, that we are in a real desperate situation. Most of our problems, regardless of what people say or how they feel about the fishery, is fishery related. The economy of Newfoundland and Labrador is driven, has been driven and will continue to be driven by our most important industry, that of the fishery. Not that we do not have to put efforts into other areas. Not that we do not have to attempt to diversify, not that we do not have to attempt to do other things, but our fishery is in real trouble. I want to say to the Member for Eagle River, right from the start, that there is not too much which I can disagree with in what he just finished saying. There is not too much that I can disagree with because I support, our party supports, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador having more say and more input into our most important industry.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Now, I do not know what kind of an individual, what kind of a person you would have to be, that would not want that.

MR. NOEL: A tory.

MR. MATTHEWS: A tory, no, no because the biggest tory in Newfoundland and Labrador, tory meaning conservative, I say to the Member for Pleasantville, happens to be the Premier. The biggest right wing conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador is, the hon. Clyde K. Wells. I have to say to the Member for Pleasantville, that he is not too far away from it himself.

MR. NOEL: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, it depends on the situation with you, it depends on the situation whether you are right or left.

MR. NOEL: I am always right.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I have to say to the Member for Pleasantville, Mr. Speaker, of some things that we have seen in the last couple of weeks, most people in his area think he is never right. Now, he can take that whatever way he wants but there is a message in that, that there are not to many people in the District of Pleasantville who think he is right on anything but having said that -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: My salary?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. MATTHEWS: $8,000 car allowance and all of that stuff.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) polish your shoes every day.

MR. MATTHEWS: Polish my shoes. Members of Caucus bring me coffee when I flick my fingers but that is what comes with having a bit of authority, I say to the member but he will never realize that. He will never know what that is like, I say to the Member for Pleasantville. He will always be as far back in the benches - soon over here.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is not going to be over here.

MR. MATTHEWS: Of course there will not be much need for - they will go in the one row, I say to the Member for Pleasantville, by the time we are finished with them. One time before there were eight, I believe it was. One time before there were eight of them. I would say there are not going to be too many more when it all comes about.

Getting back to this important resolution, I want to say to the Member for Eagle River that I can't disagree with his resolution. Most other provinces in Canada do have management control of their principal natural resources, there's no doubt. Now, ours is a bit different. In that (inaudible) boundary. It swims. Sometimes it is closer to Newfoundland than it is to Nova Scotia. Other times that same fish is closer to Nova Scotia than it is to Newfoundland. Then we have the great big problem, Mr. Speaker, when it goes really close to St. Pierre and Miquelon, and that causes a nightmare for all of us.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, many times when the fish is very close to the shores of Newfoundland, there are a lot of boats from Newfoundland and Labrador a lot closer than the fish. And they are not after the fish, I say to members. There is no doubt there is a real problem.

Mr. Speaker, we disagreed with the Atlantic agency proposal since it was first introduced, announced, made public, whatever phrase you want to put on it, back in 1991. I guess it was November of 1991. We disagreed very strongly with it. Some people were taken back that we disagreed with it, by the way. Some people were somewhat taken back that we disagreed with that Atlantic agency proposal. But, as one member of this Legislature, as one Newfoundlander and Labradorian, there is no way that I can support any proposal from anyone that is going to worsen the situation for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. I cannot accept it, I am not going to accept it, I am going to oppose it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: I am going to tell those who propose it that they are wrong. I have continued to do that as late as this morning, I say to members opposite. I have done it as late as this morning.

MR. SIMMS: And the Leader has done it.

MR. MATTHEWS: The Leader has done it.

MR. DUMARESQUE: The Leader (inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Oh yes, the Leader is on record, I say to the Member for Eagle River, for much longer than his Premier is on record on this issue - and some very specific proposals as to how we think this matter can be resolved. Because hon. members know that in any kind of a dispute, when you get people locking horns, two sides are stubborn, no one is willing to give, no one is willing to negotiate, you don't accomplish too much.

Now, we think that there is a way about this. We really do. We think there's a way about it. We've told people in authority that we think that. We've told them that they should immediately - and they should - begin discussions.

MR. DUMARESQUE: You should be the Leader.

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I should not, we have a good Leader, who cares a lot more about the fishing industry, I say to the Member for Eagle River, than does his leader, who only pretends to care about it. It has only become a popular issue for your leader within the last few weeks.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: I say to you in all sincerity, having been here longer than some members, who were here with their leader who was then Leader of the Opposition, and now with him as Premier, that he is singing a different tune today than he sang for the last four years, a very different tune, I say to members opposite, when I went toe to toe with the Premier, Mr. Speaker, in the old Legislature up on the ninth or tenth floor, toe to toe with him. When that Premier said to me that we could not afford - his very words - we could not afford, I said to him: Premier, we can not afford to not have more say, to have more control over our most important industry, because - and you see it has been borne out, what I said four years ago.

I said: if we had more control over our industry, it wouldn't be in the state it is in today. If we had healthier fish stocks, a higher total allowable catch, more fish being brought ashore in Newfoundland and Labrador, more Newfoundlanders and Labradorians working in our communities, then the bottom line of this Province would be much better off. And Premier, we then could afford it very much. That was the argument I used in the old Legislature and it sounded to me to be very logical.

But how can a person who argued that for so long, who is saying: What could we do if we had it? What will we do with it? - and now, suddenly want to rise up and be the saving grace of the Newfoundland fishery? People are just not going to buy it, I say to members opposite. They are not going to buy it, it is not going to wash. Because Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can see through the Plexiglas, they can see through the transparency of this Premier.

Now, I am not doubting at all the sincerity of the Member for Eagle River, not one bit, or the Member for St. John's South, or the Member for Port de Grave, when they express concerns about the fishery in this House and publicly. I know where they are coming from. I think they are a lot like I am. Their backgrounds are very similar. They have gone through the hardship, with their people, of knowing, of seeing their communities decline, seeing people thrown out of work.

I have said it before, but before I got into politics, I was wrestling with the possibility of my hometown going down the tube, and I am still wrestling with it today. I went through it with the restructuring crisis in the early 1980s. I went through it just a couple of years ago when FPI announced that they were shutting down the plant. We have a new operator there now who is trying to do something very different in scallops and (inaudible), and there is still that uncertainty attached, so we are still going through it all. I am hopeful it is going to work but, of course, what complicates it now, in the town that I now live in, is to see that the people there now have not worked this year and are hoping to get good news by June; but all indications are that the news is not going to be good for them in Fortune.

Then, of course, across the bay from us we have Harbour Breton. Go up the coast - Belleoram, Gaultois. Gaultois is still making a go on a bit of red fish. Ramea has a bit of, I guess, life. All around the Province you go, and it is all because of our fishery. It is all because of our fishery, and why should we not have more say over that? How can anyone not agree with that? Why would anyone propose something that, in my opinion, is more complex and is only going to muddy it all up more? Why would you propose that? Why would you do it? If we are going to make it work, if we are going to get it back, then why would we not try to somewhat simplify it to make it more workable? - not that everybody can go and do what he likes - no one is proposing that.

I don't think anyone has suggested that the Federal Government shouldn't continue to provide surveillance or be totally involved or mostly involved in the scientific arm of it all. No one has ever suggested that. There are a lot of questions asked about the science, what that has done for us all, but someone has to have responsibility. But when it comes to what we do in Newfoundland and Labrador with our amount of the total allowable catch, that should be left up to us. I think it should. Why should someone else dictate to where Newfoundland and Labrador's share of the total allowable catch goes? Why can't we decide that as a people? Just tell us. No one disagrees that the Federal Government shouldn't set it, with some input from us. Someone has to make the decision, whether it is 200,000 or 400,000, but if ours is 200,000, let us decide where it goes and what we do with it in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is my point.

So why would anyone suggest a five - whatever it is called - a five-member board - representatives from five provincial governments and the Federal Government? If you were ever looking for a snarl and a tangle that will never unravel, I think that is basically what they are proposing, I say to the Member for Eagle River, and I didn't like it from day one. I take exception to it, and I still think there can be an arrangement entered into by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Federal Government that will do for this Province what it wants to do in the fishery, and can allow the Federal Government to maintain the couple of things that they should maintain, I think, but give us the bulk of the say. I think that can be worked out, I say to the Member for Eagle River. There is a way around it, but it will never be worked out if we just go separate ways, not talking to one another and so on.

I want to go on record as saying that I totally support joint management. I always have. I don' think there is any other route for us to go,because you are right - if we don' get it, all the doom and gloom you are forecasting, it is going to be bad enough as it is. I don't know if members realize just how bad it is with our fish resources. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if they really realize, but if you follow this as closely as I have for the last twenty years, I tell you, it is a frightening situation. It is very, very frightening what is happening out there - and it is not only with 2J+3KL cod. It is in 3Ps. It is all the way along the South Coast and up in the Gulf, and it is not only with cod, I say to members. The flounder resources are in serious, serious trouble. The caplin is just about gone, so what is next? I say to the Member for Fortune - Hermitage, we just talked about Gaultois and redfish. The most that FPI has processed, in Marystown so far this year, is redfish. The other catches have been so low. Redfish - it is a struggle to make a go on redfish. It is not lucrative, there is not a great demand in the marketplace for it. Most other times companies could sell redfish because they had the cod and the flounder as leaders in the marketplace. They could say to people who wanted the cod and flounder so badly, yes, you can have our cod and flounder but you must take a certain amount of our redfish species. Now, that is what happened. Redfish was never lucrative, redfish was always borderline.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, it is improving but what I am saying is that without the cod and flounder as leaders, it is going to be harder to move the redfish. So, nobody can really hang their hat on a company like FPI being around too long if the only thing they are going to have to process is redfish. They won't be around here.

So, that is just how serious the situation is, Mr. Speaker. I think I am just about out of time. It is to bad I can't speak again after the member does, because I know he is going to get really fiery, when he knows there is nobody else coming after him.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: No, I didn't.

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, you tried.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, I tried but I just couldn't get up for it.

Mr. Speaker, the final 'Be it resolved that this House endorse the Province's proposal for Canada-Newfoundland Fisheries Management Board as an effective mechanism to achieve rebuilding of fish stocks and long-term stability in the best interest of the people...' Mr. Speaker, who can have any argument with it? And the one before it, 'Whereas the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans is proposing reforms that would give all Atlantic Canada Provinces an equal say in the management...' Mr. Speaker, I want to be very, very clear -

MR. TOBIN: They are joining us.

MR. MATTHEWS: They are joining - yes, well, they are, they have come full circle really. It is what we have been proposing for a long time as a party. We weren't successful in getting it, so far they have not been successful in getting it, but that doesn't matter. We should not get hung up about who is going to be successful, Mr. Speaker, in getting more say over the fishery for the people of this Province, because if we don't do it soon and real soon, as the Member for Port de Grave says, the hardship in the communities in Newfoundland and Labrador is only starting now, compared to what we are going to have, if we don't soon get a revitalized fishery. If we don't make the most of what limited fish resources there are coming to our shores, we are going to have severe hardship. We have heard the Minister of Social Services tell us what has happened with his department. We know what is with the cod moratorium package, we know how many are on UI. Over half the population of the Province is depending, in some way, on some kind of income support. Is that frightening? It is very frightening to me. And I say, one way to change the cycle, to start the change, is for this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador to certainly and most definitely, have more say over the fishery. That will be a start in the right direction. I oppose what is being proposed by the Federal Government. I support more say over that very, very vital industry. I want the member to know that and I want our members to know it; and, as fisheries critic and one member of this House, I will continue to fight for that because I believe it is the right way to go.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir.

MR. GILBERT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I stand to support my colleague from Eagle River and I am going to let him do the general close-out and take the general overall concerns of the Province, but I would like to just say one thing, that I heard the Member for Grand Bank, when he got up and talked about the Premier having changed. Now, I have been here eight years as the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir, and the Premier came in some time after that, but while we were in Opposition, and the only thing I ever heard the Premier say was that he couldn't support full jurisdiction of the fishery by the Province of Newfoundland because constitutional control - because we didn't have the assets to be able to support it. So, I think that there is no change. He said joint management yesterday, today and forever, and I think the crux of this motion is joint management. It was brought about now, I suppose, because it is an unfortunate proposal that Mr. Crosbie put forward and everybody, I think, agrees, that if it does go into effect, the Province will never have any hope of ever getting control of our destiny again.

I want to speak today because I represent the district of Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir which, I suppose, more than any other district in the Province, has been decimated by the mismanagement of the Federal Government down through the years. So when I look at the fourth 'whereas' here in my colleague's resolution - and it says: 'WHEREAS the Government of Canada's mismanagement of those resources has resulted in near collapse of key stocks and a most uncertain future for hundreds of coastal communities".

When I look at the coastal communities in the district of Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir - and any of my colleagues who have been there, who would like to accompany me there - you go into places like François, McCallum, Ramea or Burgeo, and you have a look at it, and you know that their ancestors didn't settle there to be farmers. They settled there because they were going to fish and the fish was there on the rocks. Historians have told how they were clinging to the rocks, and people could go and harvest the sea at their doorstep.

MR. MURPHY: You could throw a basket overboard then.

MR. GILBERT: That's right. This is where the district of Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir comes from. It has total dependence on the fishery and there is nothing else that it can do. What I want to try to do is show some of the examples of the mismanagement that has happened in the district in the length of time that I have been there.

As I go around, and over the years as I have talked to the inshore fishermen, they have been frustrated and angry. They are concerned that nobody seems to be listening to them. The unions haven't been giving them the attention that they think they should. They realize that there are only 3,000 inshore fishermen in that area from Terrenceville to Port aux Basques, where there are 14,000 north of Cape St. Mary's. So where you get the majority of the people this is where people listen.

They have been saying for the last eight years that I have been there: 'Listen, there is a gradual decline in this fishery along the South Coast; we are not catching as much fish. The inshore fishermen are not catching as much fish here now as they did two or three years ago. So, eventually, it is down to the point - they saw the size of fish go down like, one time the average fish was forty-three inches, then it was down to thirty-nine, and now it is down - they saw it go down.

They were saying: 'There's something wrong.' The Federal Government wasn't looking at it. Nobody was looking at it. They said: 'Look, we are using five or six times as much gears right now to catch... at first, you would say two years ago, three years ago, five or six as times as much gear to catch maybe as much fish as they were catching in 1985. Now, they are using that much gear and more and they are catching about half what they catching six or seven years ago. So they say, the first example they saw of mismanagement was that nobody has listened and looked to the cause. Again, it was the inshore fishermen who came up with it.

Then they saw another injustice that was done to them in 1991. There was a failure along the Northeast Coast of Newfoundland because of ice. The next thing, when the DFO opened the fishery last year, they initiated an $800 gear-up allowance, again to the people north of Cape St. Mary's. But they had a little caveat onto it this time. They gave that $800 gear-up allowance to the people in Cape Breton. They said, when I asked the question on behalf of the fishermen of the coast - I went to DFO and they said: 'There is no failure along the South Coast. There is a failure in Cape Breton and a failure north of Cape St. Mary's, but there is no failure along the South Coast. Tell that to the fishermen who were using five to six times as much gear for half the fish.

Now, we are into this year and we heard the Northern cod moratorium announced. And, in July of 1992, Mr. Crosbie and DFO announced that again there was going to be a closure of the fishery, again north of Cape St. Mary's. And there is no problem on the South Coast again. There is nothing done with it. So we are into the situation where we have a failure in the inshore fishery. And because of the fact that we are closing the Northern cod fishery now, we are finding that the fish plants are closed in Ramea, and that is the main reason that the Ramea plant closed. The only reason is that the Northern cod fishery was closed and the quota that was harvested by FPI and distributed among the plants, there was a portion of the Northern cod that went in to keep the Ramea plant open. We have seen the Ramea plant go from a full year's operation down to nine months, then to six months, then to three months. Now we are down now to subsistence, to go with the ten weeks.

We saw an interesting thing happened again in the mismanagement of the fishery when we saw the Federal Department of Fisheries and a Newfoundland and Nova Scotia company, Seafreez, sign a deal whereby they were going to open up the Canso plant that had been closed in 1988 by National Sea because it wasn't economically viable.

The same year we saw that happen, we saw National Sea pay the Newfoundland Government back $5 million they owed them on this plant in Burgeo. So, if they closed the plant in Canso because it wasn't economically viable to operate, and owing the Nova Scotia Government $13 million, it would seem awfully strange to me that they would come in the same year and pay the Newfoundland Government the loan of $5 million on the Burgeo plant if it wasn't a viable plant.

In 1990, all of a sudden, we saw the Seafreez company come in, they were going to open, and we heard Mr. Crosbie announce he was going to create 400 jobs in Burgeo, he was going to create another 600 jobs in Canso and he was going to revitalize those two towns by doing this. This was with a fishery where we saw the total allowable catch decreasing on the Northeast Coast. This deal by battering off 20,000 metric tons of fish that was normally processed in Burgeo was going to be shared between Canso and Burgeo. Canso was going to be opened and there was going to be fish brought in from the Bering Sea to be processed in both Canso and Burgeo and everybody was going to be happy. The only thing about it was, at the time, the Provincial Government said: No, this will not work. The Fishermen's Union said: No, this will not work. The Fish Producer's Association said: No, this will not work. But, yet, the Federal Government, with all the advice that was given by everybody, without any input from the Province, went ahead and made this deal. Now, I make a prediction to you here that very shortly, Mr. Crosbie will be making a statement in which he will say that Seafreez broke every part of that agreement that was put in place, and that Canso is open but Burgeo is closed. Now, this is again going to be a sign of the mismanagement that has gone on in this Province. That is a decision that Mr. Crosbie is going to have to make, and I predict to you that he is going to make a decision that that agreement was broken.

MR. TOBIN: Who owns Burgeo plant now?

MR. GILBERT: Seafreez.

MR. TOBIN: The Province sold it.

MR. GILBERT: The Province never had it. If you remember, National Sea, in 1988, came in and paid off the $5 million they owed this Province on Burgeo while they let Canso close, so that will tell you that the Burgeo plant was a profitable one in 1988. Now, it is closed up and Canso is open, so again, it shows that if this Province is going to exist, we must have a shared management of our fishery so we will have some say in what is happening to the fish adjacent to our coast.

There is, I suppose, the most blatant example of mismanagement on the part of the Federal Government and how Mr. Crosbie can,at this time, announce he is going to set up a board made up of someone from Quebec, someone from Gaspé, someone in New Brunswick, someone in PEI, someone in Nova Scotia and then someone in Newfoundland to manage the Atlantic fishery, the same time that he is giving full control of the fishery in BC to a provincial board from BC. Then we look at, why would you do that? The new entries into the fishery, into the Gulf - the Newfoundland fishermen who traditionally fished in the Gulf and the fish that came from Burgeo and Ramea traditionally came out of the Gulf, and contrary to what my friend from Grand Bank says, the redfish comprised about 70 per cent of the fish that was processed in Burgeo and Ramea back in the 1940s when these plants first became offshore plants and frozen fish plants. They picked up on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks, down in 3L and 3NO, to make up about 25 per cent of what they processed but, traditionally, they always existed on redfish, turbot and haddock that came out of the Gulf. Now they were forced out of the gulf by the federal government - another great decision that was made by the federal government in the management of the fishery - and they said in the mid-seventies, with the Kirby Report and all those learned gentlemen who got together and traced what was going to happen in our fishery, and outlined the future, and they said that there was going to be this thing called northern cod. By 1987 you are going to be able to harvest 485,000 metric tons of northern cod, so we should start building fish plants so everybody can get in on this, and we will not give it to the traditional plants that were involved in the offshore.

The only victims of this mismanagement - the major victims of this mismanagement - are the people along the south coast, the inshore fishermen, and the plant operators, because the traditional offshore plants were Burgeo and Ramea, Grand Bank and Fortune, and Burin. Harbour Breton was a salt fish plant that came in in the seventies, but up until that time these were the traditional offshore plants that fished offshore.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. GILBERT: Burgeo, Ramea, Gaultois, Grand Bank, Fortune, and Burin. Harbour Breton came in 1972, I think. It was a fresh fish plant until that time and it became -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. GILBERT: Yes, again in the seventies.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) seventies.

MR. GILBERT: Well they were after the ones that I said, the south coast ones.

Here is what I am saying, the people who have suffered most in the fishery are the fishermen and the plant workers along the south coast, and it is because of mismanagement.

Right now we are talking about what is the fishery of the future. We have a board set up where a fellow from Gaspé is going to be able to have as much say into what fish we process in Burgeo or Trepassey as the fellow who is going to be appointed from Newfoundland.

I think, as I have said before, it makes about as much sense if the federal government set up a board in the Atlantic Provinces to manage farming and they gave the fellow from Newfoundland as much say in the farming in PEI as they are giving the fellow from PEI into our fishery right now. It is about the same sort of sense they are making.

The first thing that we have to look at in joint management is: Which province is the most dependent on the fishery? So if you were to take Nova Scotia, it would possibly have the next greatest dependency on the fishery, but it has a couple of statistics there. The last figures there, the processing sector in Newfoundland for fish products in 1991 was $198 million. Now this is one that was put out by the Newfoundland government. The one that came from the federal government for Nova Scotia, and it says 'food industries', so food industries in Nova Scotia, processed in Nova Scotia, was $338 million. So that includes the agriculture. You can talk apples down in the valley and everything else that is processed in Nova Scotia, so there is $338 million in Nova Scotia, where there is $200 million in Newfoundland just for fish alone.

You can imagine the dependency of our economy on the fishery is twice what it is in Nova Scotia. Then you get the new entries into it, the Gaspé, the north shore of Quebec, the New Brunswick and the PEI who have started to fish in the gulf and have demanded, and have been given, a share of the fishery that was traditionally ours.

All of it was again mismanagement on the part of the federal government - a total mismanagement; but when we talk about the fishery of the future, we hear the federal government saying to the Province: You have the processing licence. You make the decisions. You play God. Who is going to play God? And they say: What are we going to do with the fishery of the future?

We have some serious problems there that were caused by the people around us, the Provinces that were given access to the fish adjacent to our shores that my colleague from Eagle River talks about, but when we are talking about the fishery of the future, as my friend from Port de Grave says, he wants to know what we are going to do about it.

Some of the stuff - we talk about the overfishing, the foreign overfishing, and let's face it, we are not without sin ourselves. Our offshore trawlers and our sixty-four footers and things like that have caused some of the problems, but the thing that really hurts me when I talk about it, is the one thing that everybody wants to hide their head about - the seals. We do not hear anybody saying anything at all about the seals. Now, I talked to the Department of Fisheries, the scientific branch today, and the survey that was done yesterday, there is a herd of seals right off southern Labrador right now, that is forty-five miles long and thirty-five miles wide. There is another herd down off the Grey Islands that are numerous and are spotted, they have not counted them but they are spread out, and then to the east of Fogo-

AN HON. MEMBER: How big was the herd?

MR. GILBERT: Forty-five miles long and thirty-five miles wide, down off southern Labrador. Then they talk about another herd that is down off the Grey Islands between St. Anthony and Fogo, then there is a herd to the east of Fogo, but another one of the most shattering things that I was told when I asked the Department of Fisheries today, the scientific branch, what are you doing about it, do you have an estimate as to how many seals are actually there? No, we do not, the last one was in 1990 but there was no money made available this year for any study of the seals, so what we are talking about now is a seal population that they said went anywhere from 2.5 million to 4 million in 1990, but now what they are saying - and they also said it on February 28th; they sent a surveillance flight out which went out from just about - you can say the tip of the Bonavista Peninsula, if you flew out there, right on the edge of the Grand Banks and they found that there are seals there that they had never known were there before, right down to the southern end of 3K, for those people who have a map, there are seals there, hood seals, that they did not realize and had never seen there before.

I have talked to fellows who have fished on Fishery Products International trawlers who were out there in that same area two weeks ago, and they said as they haul up the trawls the seals are coming up with them, that is out in 800 fathoms of water and we know those seals are eating fish. Now, just to get home down to the south coast, I talked to Gerald Courtney from Francois a couple of days ago. Last week Gerald went out fifteen miles in his 40-ft boat, he put out ninety gill nets and six tubs of gear, he got 350 pounds of fish and got ten seals in his nets.

Last year in Francois, there were 1,000 seals caught in the nets of the fishermen. I was talking to Roy Giles in Ramea when I was there last week. Roy says that he knows one fellow who got 100 seals in Ramea last spring in the lump nets. The fishermen on the south coast tell me: look, there was fish this year until December. The seals started to come in December, now there is no fish. So that is one of the things that in the management of the fishery, we, as Newfoundlanders have some say in, we have to look at what the situation really is and not what some fellow in Ottawa thinks it is and some fellow who says we cannot talk about the seals because if we do we will get Greenpeace against us.

But I tell you now, Mr. Speaker, if we do not talk about the seals and if we do not do something about it, no matter who has management of the fishery, we are not going to have anything to do because there is going to be no way that we can process because there is going to be no fish left -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

AN HON. MEMBER: It is an ecological disaster.

MR. GILBERT: - and that is the problem, but when we talk about where we are going with the fishery -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. GILBERT: Could I have a minute to just clue up?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Let him clue up.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. GILBERT: The only thing that I say, Mr. Speaker, is, if we have management of our fishery and we can use the fish that is adjacent to our coast, not only the cod but the haddock, the turbot, the caplin and the herring and everything that is there, then look at it on a historical and traditional basis as to where it is processed, it does not have to be the disaster people are saying it is, we will have plants open on the south coast and we will have them open on the northeast coast too.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. FUREY: Mr. Speaker, (inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I talked to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology and I am prepared to give him leave, as long as it does not come out of my time. I think that is agreeable with both sides of the House.

MR. FUREY: Mr. Speaker, just let me revert to Answers to Questions just briefly.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. FUREY: The hon. the Member for Kilbride asked the question today I believe about an $800 or $850 briefcase, one of the ministers had purchased.

I just want to clear the air, Mr. Speaker, and notify the House that in case it was this minister he was talking about, nearly a year ago, maybe a little under a year ago I did purchase a brief case in Toronto. It was the third briefcase that I will have had as Minister of Development at that time.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FUREY: I forget. I think it was $550 plus GST and PST - whatever that brings it up to.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FUREY: What - $620?

Yes, the first briefcase that was there when I was there as minister broke. The locks broke. The second one that was purchased -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FUREY: It may well have been, because there were four ministers that I took over for, so it may have been the Minister of (inaudible).

The second one the handles broke off - the carrying part of it - so I, in Toronto, carrying sensitive documents, which I do as Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, and Cabinet papers, and confidential papers from business people around the Province and from around the country, I thought it appropriate to buy a proper briefcase with the proper locks and the proper portfolio which would fit into it in the event that I had to take things out of the briefcase.

So, Mr. Speaker, if I am the $800 briefcase man, I suppose I apologize. I thought it was the right thing to do, to purchase this for $550, with the GST and the PST and whatever else was involved.

Mr. Speaker, I would assume that would be left there as part of the next minister's property, or the government property; but to clear the air, if the Premier deems or warrants it, I am quite prepared to pay for that and keep it as my property.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. R. AYLWARD: You could not afford it a year ago. You can now.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that my colleague from Kilbride and the Minister of Development can continue this tomorrow in Question Period, but I would like to get into the resolution that was presented today.

I listened with interest to the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir as it relates to some of the comments that he had to make regarding the fisheries.

Mr. Speaker, let me say from the outset that we, as a party, over the years have always supported joint management of the fisheries. Shared jurisdiction I think was what we called it - shared jurisdiction.

Having listened to the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir when he got up to speak, his first comments were that we, as a Province, could not have control over the fisheries - that we, as a Province, could not have jurisdiction over the fisheries. I ask the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir - unfortunately he has left - why can we, as a Province, not have jurisdiction over the fisheries? If we want to have total protection for the fisheries of this Province there is no better way, I say, than to have total jurisdiction over the fisheries. That is the only way we will have protection.

Now I listened to what the member had to say, and he talked about the situation in Burgeo, and no doubt that is a very serious situation that exists in Burgeo today, and a very serious situation has existed in Burgeo for a number of years; but what the Member for Burgeo neglected to say today, and I do not know if it was intentional or not, and I certainly give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it was not, was that it was the Conservative government that constructed a plant at Burgeo. My colleague from Mount Pearl is here today and he was one of the ministers, one of the people, involved over the years in lending a tremendous amount of support to the Burgeo plant, as Minister of Finance and as Minister of Development. But it was the Conservative government in this Province that built that plant that is in Burgeo today, and all throughout the years, and particularly in the past few years, the Conservative government paid $1 million a year subsidy program to the plant at Burgeo. All of a sudden, this government came to power, in which the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir was a minister. I ask the question: is this government today paying a subsidy of $1 million towards the plant in Burgeo? I'd say, Mr. Speaker, that the answer is a categorical 'no.'

The member also made reference to the deep-sea fishery in this Province. I can say that while he talked about deep-sea plants and all that, I can say to the member for Burgeo, and I wish he was in his seat, that the first deep-sea plant in this Province that did fresh frozen fillets was the old Fishery Products plant at Burin.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where?

MR. TOBIN: Burin. The old Fishery Products plant at Burin was the first, I say to the member. As a matter of fact at that time they converted two old banking schooners. I believe one was called the Sival and the other was called... I'm not sure of the name right now. They were old wooden boats with two spars.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Oh, they were banking schooners. What they did was they put (inaudible) on them.

AN HON. MEMBER: I always thought the first trawlers were (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, no, no. The first trawlers were two banking schooners that Fishery Products got. One was called the Sival and they took the equipment off. They put (Inaudible) on them and installed the doors and they became old side-trawlers. They were old wooden boats. That would have been back in the 'forties.

AN HON. MEMBER: Because George Penney up in Ramea had trawlers about '45 or '46 (Inaudible) -

MR. TOBIN: Yes, It would have been back in the 'forties. I'm not sure when it was but it would have been back in the 'forties. I think it was probably around 'forty four - anyway, the old Sival was the first one, I believe. An old fellow by the name of Arch Bridal I think was the first skipper of her. He's long gone but he was a great trawlerman. As a matter of fact his daughter works in my office. He was a great trawlerman, Mr. Speaker.

From that Fishery Product's base then became Burin. They went from the Sival into other trawlers. I guess at that time they were considered modern trawlers. The Dingo was the other one, the Dingo. That was the name of the other one. Then they bought trawlers, such as the Zerda, which was a wooden vessel.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, there's a member opposite and I certainly won't say his name when I mention the name Dingo. He said - what was it Steve called the Minister of Education? It wasn't dingo, it was dingbat.

Then Fishery Products got - they were much smaller then - but there was the old Zerda, she was a wooden boat with two spars. They had the Clamer that was a wooden boat. They got the Zibet. Zilic I think was another one. Then they sort of graduated into what were supposed to be bigger boats. The Zebried, which Curt Mitchell, a great Newfoundlander, one of the best fishing captains who ever sailed on the Grand Banks, was skipper of the Zebried. He was skipper of the Zibet I believe before that. He used to be mate with skipper Bob Moulton for a few years before that as well. He went from the Zebried. Then all of a sudden two more boats came and they were the cream of the crop. The Zeta and the Zinia. Then after that there was a whole pile of other boats that were brought in. In addition to that, back before that, there was the Zebura.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, the Zebura. No, that's the old Zebura. Years ago. She burnt Bunker C. She was the only one they had up there. They had another one like that as well, I believe. I believe she turned over or something. Anyway, that's where Fishery Products came from. So as they spread out and grew, and as the side-trawlers became more involved, there was the Zebrani and the St. Leonard, and there were other boats that came and went. The Zebrula came and the Zebrini and the Zeli and the Zarp, all of them side-trawlers.

Fishery Products then opened up plants in Trepassey and Isle aux Morts. They were the two plants that Fishery Products had that they landed trawlers. As a matter of fact, the first trawler captain I believe from Isle aux Morts was a fellow by the name of Jimmy Chalk. I do not know if the Member for St. John's South remembers him or not, but Jimmy Chaulk was the first trawler captain from Isle aux Morts, who landed in Isle aux Morts and the first native from Trepassey who went skippering a boat was my uncle, Gerry Tobin, he went as skipper of the Zeta and that was back in the 60s, I would say to the member who said earlier it was in the 70s, it was in the 60s, and later Fishery Products got involved in the stern trawlers to harvest the waters because there was so much fish.

The first stern trawler that Fishery Products had was the Zeeland, Captain Billy Brushett, the next one was the Zonnemaire with Curt Mitchell and the Zurich with Jack Moulton and the Zandam with Byron Adams (?). They were the four that were built in Holland and it was after that, that they went to Sorel and had the rest of the vessels built, but when those stern trawlers came -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I would say that the Member for Bellevue knows precious little about the deep sea fisheries and the south coast of our Province.

When Fishery Products got these stern trawlers, there was so much fish on the go at that time that the trawler captain could almost name where he was going to get his load of fish and come back in. That happened, then there came down years in the fishery, there were down years. I talked to Curt Mitchell not long ago and he told me there were a couple years, if he promised you a feed of codfish he would not be able to get it but at that time, there were lots of flounder, the same as back in the late 50s there were lots of haddock.

I remember one time Curt Mitchell landed in Trepassey on the Zebroid and he left Trepassey one day and the next night he was on his way back with the Zebroid loaded again right full of haddock, that is how plentiful the haddock was at that point in time. But when there was no codfish back in the 70s, there were lots of flounder, then there was yellow-tails, but what has happened is that at that time, there was a concentration on the fish on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and I suppose as far north as - well, you know on the northern edge of the Grand Banks you could always get a trip of fish in the spring of the year, always, Mr. Speaker, the gullies were full of fish up there, the biggest kind of steak cod. St. Pierre bank, the same thing, the biggest kind of codfish, there was no problem at all, not just red fish, always the biggest kind of codfish, all over down to the east right through the south they could basically always know when to get a trip of fish.

What happened then, everybody became involved in the fisheries and there were the plants in Grand Bank that became involved and in Fortune they were deeply involved, in Burgeo, Ramea, Gaultois and Trepassey, then out of the blue, there appeared this Michael Kirby, Senator Kirby, who wrote this great report and if there was any man, one person, responsible for the destruction of the fishing industry in this country, it has to be Senator Michael Kirby. He wrote that report and he talked, as the Member for Burgeo - Bay d' Espoir said earlier, he talked about all the fish was out there, go and catch the fish, was the message that Mike Kirby sent, and all of a sudden Fishery Products, even though, and I want to make it clear, they had a plant down in Port Union at that time, which the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation now represents, and they were landing boats in Catalina before the northern cod. Fishery Products landed their boats from Burin, Trepassey and other places.

As a matter of fact, the first trawler captain to come out of Catalina was (Inaudible) Abbott, I would say to the members opposite, he was the first fellow from Catalina to be skipper of the boats. I know the history of Fishery Products, their trawlers and their captains rather well because I studied it, I was always extremely interested. But what happened then? Fishery Products went to Norway and they built a whole pile of boats over in Norway, a pile of trawlers. I believe the first one they brought over from Norway was probably the Zamora, (inaudible) Abbott was her skipper, by the way, and the northern cod was out there to harvest and now there is not a fish to be found. The question has to be asked, what has happened to the fish and what has happened to the scientists? When did the scientist, all of a sudden, become so valuable and deserve so much recognition, is what I have to ask the members opposite?

Mr. Speaker, the Member for Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir made a few valid points today and I concur with most of what he said, by the way -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Oh I agree with most of what you said. The fishing industry is extremely important to my district as well because I remember the days when Burin was the leader in the deep sea fishery in this Province. When Burin not only supplied and kept work for the people of the Burin Peninsula, Burin, Marystown, all of that area, the trawlers also landed in Isle aux Mort and they landed in Trepassey. The people from Burin landed everywhere and they provided income and work for thousands upon thousands of men and women in this Province. That is what the people of Burin did but in 1982, Burin was no more. The people who started and began harvesting and fishing the most prolific fishing grounds in the world, were relegated to tie their boats up and ready them for the junkyard. That is what the old Fishery Products had in mind at that point in time.

Mr. Speaker, it did not happen because Brian Peckford did not allow it to happen, as the Premier of the Province. Brian Peckford, the Premier of the Province at the time, did not allow it to happen, but that was one thing. There was another group of people that made the provincial government and the federal government aware that it was not going to happen and that was a group in Burin led by Lew Bailey and Cathy Dunderdale, that decided that Burin was not going to close.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I can tell you that if the people of Harbour Breton, Belleoram and Gaultois, want a voice and experience to ensure them that their plant does not close, they cannot go wrong with Cathy Dunderdale, I say to the Member for Burgeo, but that is not the issue that I want to talk about today. It is not the issue I want to talk about. They were extremely involved and the Member for St. John's South has been around Fishery Products for a number of years, knows that the plant in Burin today is like no other fish plant in this Province or anywhere else. No more do the people go to work the way they went to work in the traditional fish plants. They now go to work with their slacks, a pair of sneakers or whatever the case may be, into a new modern processing plant, different all together, and it is working, but I would say that Burin is some lucky that they were first in 1982 or God knows where they would have been in the last few years.

Mr. Speaker, there is another issue here that is extremely important. I picked up yesterday's paper, with (inaudible), who made a statement on the fisheries, and what did he say? He said the Government of this Province has a responsibility over the processing licenses, basically is what he said, and we are waiting for the Government to make an announcement as to which plants are going to be closed, but do not expect it before the provincial election.

Now, why? Why would the Government, which has responsibility over the processing sector of this Province, who have decisions to make and decisions must be made soon, why has this Government decided not to make the decision until after the election? Is it because there are several plants on the Avalon Peninsula that are going to close? Is it because there are plants in the Minister of Municipal Affair's district, that will not reopen? Is it because there are plants in other districts on the Avalon Peninsula, and I can name them, that will be closed?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Now, Mr. Speaker, I will say one thing, that if there is anyone who knows a lot about the deep sea fishery and the inshore fishery and the plants in this Province, it is the Member for Windsor. I can say to the Member for Windsor - Buchans that I do not know a lot about it but I can tell him that I seen the cod end untied and I have untied them as well, I have seen that. Not only that, I say to the Member for Windsor - Buchans, I was born into a fishing family, in a fishing community -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, Mr. Speaker, Windsor. I suppose you had your own wharf in Windsor as well but I am not going to be distracted by someone who knows absolutely nothing about the fisheries in this Province. The fact of the matter is that this Government has an obligation and a commitment to the people of this Province, to tell them which plants are closing. They have made the decision as to which plants are going to close. So how do communities prepare for the future? How do councils prepare their budgets in this Province when they do not know whether they will have an industry next year or not? Sooner or later we are going to have to face reality - the government is going to have to face reality.

I would suspect, Mr. Speaker, that it will be a decision that will not be made by the government opposite because they will have worn out their welcome in this Province, and the two or three who will be back will be relegated to the benches of the opposition over here, together with - no, there will not be anyone from St. John's East except our colleague on our side of the House.

I say, in all sincerity, that Newfoundlanders have to have a greater say over the fisheries. The only thing I say is that it is unfortunate that the Premier of this Province did not come on side four years ago when he became Premier. It is unfortunate that it took the Premier of this Province four years to come to our way of thinking, four years to agree with our position, four years to go out and say to the people of this Province and this country that the policies that Brian Peckford and the Conservative government have put forth in this Province are the right ones.

The Premier gave us a great history the other day of what that was about, and he did, the Premier talked about it. I would say that we should not balk, we should not stop from anything.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. TOBIN: In conclusion, a minute?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave? By leave.

MR. TOBIN: Just a minute, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to say that in conclusion -

AN HON. MEMBER: It would take more than a minute (inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Another fellow who knows a lot about the fisheries.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me say that we, as Newfoundlanders, should not be deterred by the fact that Crosbie, or Brian Tobin, or Roger Simmons, or Bill Rompkey, or Dave Rooney - who is the other one?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Bill Rompkey, Dave Rooney, Roger Simmons, Brian Tobin - and George Baker - how did I forget his name? - because the federal politicians, regardless of their political stripe in Ottawa, whether they be Conservatives or whether they be Liberals, have not been favourable to giving us control over our resources, that we should not be deterred, that as Newfoundlanders we should proceed with that as our main objective, and some day Newfoundlanders will be deciding the fate of the fishery in this Province. Newfoundlanders will be deciding whether St. John's South plant is open, or Burgeo is open, or Trepassey is open, that the men and women of this Province will control our future.

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

MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The first thing I want to say to the hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West is that he, or nobody else, need worry about processing in this Province if we cannot convince the hon. John Crosbie, the father of friends opposite - do what I tell you - he does not have to worry about processing if we do not get joint management of what is left of our fish. That is the first thing I would say to the hon. member. He does not need to talk or worry about secondary processing. He does not need to worry about first stage processing. He does not need to worry about plants because there will be nothing to process, and the hon. member knows what I am saying to be factual. Now let me say that first.

It is a pleasure for me to rise in support of my colleague, the hon. Member for Eagle River's resolution that is on the Order Paper today. I suppose one would wonder why somebody from St. John's would stand to support or talk about the fishing industry.

Let me remind hon. members in the House that St. John's has the second largest licensed inshore fishery in the Province, and up until the cowardly deed performed by that Nova Scotia company that walked out of St. John's, St. John's was probably one of the most productive fish processing communities in this Province - not only from a standpoint of processing fish, but from the standpoint of what the economy of St. John's was associated with in the fishing industry, as every community in this Province totally depends on this industry, and we know it.

As the oil and the wheat goes in Alberta so does fish go in Newfoundland, as manufacturing goes in Ontario and Quebec so does fish apply in Newfoundland. And for a Newfoundlander who came with his little moratorium package a few months ago, this time last year, indicated that he was prepared to help the fishermen of Newfoundland and he brought in really no more than the lost of equalization payments. That is what he laid on the table. What this government lost in equalization payments compared to our friends opposite was what he provided to the fisher people in this Province.

Something was up his sleeve obviously and now the day of reckoning is here. While the hon. Member for Grand Bank, who I have nothing but respect for, he can call me what he likes, stood in his place last week doing his best, a man with great understanding about the fishery, his friend and colleague in Ottawa scuttled him. He scuttled him when he turned around and had the unmitigated gall to tell the people of this Province, who depend so much on the fishery, that two people from Quebec, two people from New Brunswick, two people from PEI, two people from Nova Scotia, and federal people, and the same equalization from this Province were going to decide the faith of what was going to take place in the fishery in this Province in the upcoming years.

Now, that was the biggest slap in the face the Newfoundland fishery got in centuries. The hon. Member for Burin - Placentia West can talk about Fishery Products, and how it came to be and I can sit here and talk about logs I have home that my grandfather and others indicated in 1901 on the coast of Labrador, which the hon. Member for Eagle River talked about, no fish, but one thing they knew and one thing they were sure of, was that the fish were going to return. They knew they were going to have a tough year because they did not understand maybe water temperatures, maybe there was a lot of ice, or maybe whatever, but they knew when they left in their schooner, picked up the livyers in Carbonear, and went to the coast of Labrador that there was a good chance that their labours were going to be fulfilled when they brought back the salt fish for Baine, Johnston who took it to Jamaica and Barbados.

If they had a bad year they knew that next year was going to be a good year, but ask every single solitary fishermen around the coast of this Province, up and down the coast of Labrador: is next year going to be a good year for the fishery, n-o. Is the year after? We do not know. Is the year after that? We do not know. And the reason is the total disregard and the total mismanagement by those who were in control for so many years, namely the federal government, who have dealt the blow to the people of this Province. We are being accused left, right, and centre, Mr. Speaker, of living off what?.... living off the hides of the rest of Canada. All we asked from Canada was for them to protect the resource that was so near and dear to the livelihood of the people of this Province. No, not a federal government, not since 1949.

I am not only blaming the Mulroney administration. However, as I said the other day, Mr. Speaker, and I will say again loud and clear, that the last nine years Mr. Mulroney and his associates have been in Ottawa has been the critical time for us to protect the stocks or devastate them, and what happened? Because 250 tractors were coming out of the golden triangle of Ontario or Quebec and were going off to Rumania or somewhere else, or going off to Portugal or Spain, in order to get that deal we saw thousands and thousands of tons of fish leave the waters off the Grand Banks, leave the waters off the coast of Labrador, and every single person in this Province knows historically the greatest scientists, the greatest knowledge that was available was the knowledge of the fisherfolk, the fishermen themselves and nobody listened to them.

Now, we have a situation, Mr. Speaker, and members on both sides alluded to it. The Member for Burgeo talked about his coast and the seals. The seals are everywhere. There is no doubt about it and if we cannot talk about seals in this House and the devastation they are bringing on our fishery then we cannot talk about anything. Let us call a spade a spade, let us be factual, let us be honest, let us be open, and let us tell Mr. Crosbie that this has to stop.

The adjacency situation that the Member for Eagle River talked about is almost like squatters rights, I suppose, Mr. Speaker, if that is the word to use. We respect squatter's rights in a property situation. If somebody lived on a piece of property, whether the railway owned it, no matter who owned it, if they were there long enough and they had some affidavits, the property became theirs. Now, our forefathers are on this ground for four hundred and ninety something years, on the ground. We have sustained ourselves on this rock, so to speak, we sustained ourselves because of one specific reason and that was our fishery.

Our cod fishery is in desperate shape, Mr. Speaker, terrible shape. Not only is the cod fishery in terrible shape, let's look at the whole chain, the caplin, which cod feed upon, it is only last year that 55,000 metric tons was taken back from the Russians because of the initiative of this Government. Mr. Crosbie still had it in the hands - the member Opposite can laugh all he likes but if there is no caplin, there is no cod. Now look at the flounder or flatfish industry, the yellow-tail, the grey-sole, all down to the size, Mr. Speaker, the size of a cup and the member Opposite knows it. The flatfish industry as we knew it, Mr. Speaker, is devastated. There is nothing left of it and that was a great resource, Mr. Speaker, because the American market was prepared to pay, on a decent size yield fillet, up to $4.75 per pound last going off. That was the opportunity that the people of this Province had but no, somebody in Ottawa who never put his foot on this Province, was deciding what should go on out on the Grand Banks.

Now, Mr. Speaker, surely heavens the fifty-two hon. members in this House are not going to sit in their place and let Mr. Crosbie dictate to any of us. Surely heavens we are not going to sit here and let Mr. Crosbie tell the people in this House that we are satisfied to tolerate and put up with this - on behalf of all the people.

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible) strawberries.

MR. MURPHY: Surely heavens - eat strawberries, there will be nothing left to grow his strawberries on. There is no fish meal around. Let me say to you, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Crosbie has done the deed. He has driven the final nail.

DR. KITCHEN: A dastardly deed.

MR. MURPHY: Oh yes, a dastardly deed is right, the hon. Member for St. John's Centre says and he knows, the Member for Gander knows, the Member for Windsor - Buchans well knows because he grew up in a fishing area. Still and all the people in Grand Falls, where the Opposition House Leader lives, is totally dependent on the fishery. Oh certainly, they are dependent on the forest products but you think about the people who come in from around the bays, hamlets and inlets of Newfoundland that purchase goods and services in Grand Falls, in St. John's and all over the place.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that the hon. member has adequate time to close up.

That was something else that was missing today, you could sense it today, Mr. Speaker, from members Opposite. They had absolutely no vibrance, they had no heart, they had no interest in speaking. As a matter of fact, I actually thought that they were not going to speak. It is embarrassing when somebody from Grand Bank can stand up and say it in a half-hearted way, that is the sad part about it. When the Member for Burin - Placentia West stands in his place and talks about the old wooden boats at FPI and all of that, and right before our very eyes, day in and day out, Mr. Speaker, what do we see?... the destruction of the only sound, solid, economic base that can vibrantly keep this Province alive, disappearing in front of our eyes and Mr. Crosbie has the gall to turn around, Mr. Speaker, and make the decision or give the decision to people from Quebec, people from New Brunswick, people from Nova Scotia, people from PEI.

I have nothing against the rest of Atlantic Canadians but can you imagine, as the member said, a Newfoundlander put on a board to go over and tell somebody in PEI what to with the potato industry? We would be laughed out, we would be thrown overboard and rightfully so.

So, what does Mr. Crosbie do? He tells the rest of Canada - now B.C. the West coast, the only fishing Province on the west coast, have their own board. There is no one interfering with their salmon stocks or pollock stocks or whatever.

But now we have to sit down and try to convince whoever Mr. Crosbie puts on the board, and then the Member for Humber East will not be jumping out of her place because you can be sure whoever he puts on the board will not have a taint of red on him, I can assure you of that. There will be no taint of red on them. I just hope whoever he puts on the board are strong, super strong, people because there is no way that four people from other provinces are going to listen to the concerns of Newfoundlanders about 80 per cent of the adjacent grounds that are related to the Atlantic coast fishery. It is impossible.

So, Mr. Speaker, how could you not stand and want to be counted with the Member for Eagle River, with the Member for Burgeo, to stand up in this House and talk about... I suggested, Mr. Speaker, some time ago, over a year ago when I saw this coming, we could see the moratorium coming, that everybody lay down their partisan colours and the fifty-two members of this hon. House of Assembly go to Ottawa and tell Canada, tell Mr. Mulroney - that is the very man who promised the Premier - tell Mr. Mulroney that enough is enough; but no, we could not get our friends opposite -

AN HON. MEMBER: Kim Campbell will look after us.

MR. MURPHY: Well perhaps Kim Campbell will look after us, but I doubt it. We had fisheries ministers in BC and we saw what they did for Newfoundland - nothing - absolutely nothing. That is all we need now, a Prime Minister from BC to see what they will do for Newfoundland.

The Premier now is forced for no other reason only to pick up the cause and take off across the country to try and find some ounce of sympathy for the fishery in this Province.

You know, Mr. Speaker, no matter what, the day is not far away. I do not envy the Minister of Social Services. I do not envy him, because we are bound and determined - and Mr. Crosbie seems bound and determined - to take half of the people who are in the fishery today out of the fishery, and then what is left - the 15,000 people who are left in the fishery - he wants to put their fate in the hands of a board of people from four other provinces. It makes absolutely no sense.

So we see the deal. We know the deal now. A few moratorium dollars came in. That will appease them. That will keep them all quiet. That will hold them all down for awhile, and then when the money is in and everybody -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. MURPHY: A couple of seconds?

And the money comes in, what does he do? He turns around last Wednesday and tells the people of Newfoundland: Listen, stay quiet. I got you the money. Do not mind what we are doing, bringing in this board to restructure the decision makers. Instead of asking the fishermen; instead of setting up a board of Labradorians - people on the coast of Labrador who know exactly what is going on - instead of asking those folks to be part of a board to decide the fate of the groundfish level, and what the TAC should be, and the northeast coast or whatever, he invites somebody from Gaspé. It is mind boggling.

It is great for me to stand today and have a few minutes to support my friend from Eagle River, who I am sure will finish this afternoon with his usual enthusiasm for the fishery and the people on the coast of Labrador.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. DUMARESQUE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am very pleased to have heard the hon. members say that they completely support this position today. I am very pleased for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that the members on this side of the House in particular have stated their position so unequivocally; but I believe I would be remiss if I did not tell the people of this Province, through this House today, how the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the Official Opposition in this House, has relinquished his responsibility to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador by not speaking out on this issue.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: Mr. Speaker, it was only last week when an issue came before this House on the fishery that the First Minister of this Province did not shirk his responsibilities. He did not hide his head in the sand. He did not abdicate his responsibilities to the fishery. He stood up and he was counted on the position that he wanted to see taken for the future generations of this Province, but the people of this Province have yet to hear one peep from the Leader of the Opposition, the person who speaks for that party, and I believe there is a reason for that. I believe there is a reason for it, Mr. Speaker, I believe there are a couple of reasons.

One of the reasons, Mr. Speaker, came out last week in an interview that the Leader of the Opposition had with a paper in this city, and one of the things he had to say was, 'I got involved in politics, yes, I got involved as a Conservative, as a Tory,' he said, 'because of my overriding admiration for John Crosbie.' He said, 'I would have to say that I am a "Crosbie Conservative", were his actual words. Now, Mr. Speaker, I think that is an indication of where his loyalty lies. His loyalty lies with John Crosbie but it must be to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador first - that is where it must be. We have had too much, Mr. Speaker, of these partisan political games being played in this Province by the members opposite.

We saw the lamest kind of response today, the lamest kind of defence. It was their responsibility today, through their leader, to stand up and say to Mr. Crosbie: This is not acceptable to the people. We demand that you retract or resign. If you are not going to put the people of Newfoundland and Labrador first, then you should resign and leave with some sense of dignity. Because I can tell you that if Mr. Crosbie is going to insist, as he says he is, he will take the position in history books next to Sir Richard Squires, as the person who really turned his back on the people when they needed him most, and he is the person in the position today to deliver something very meaningful to the people of Labrador and the people of Newfoundland, who are looking to him for some direction.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Who?

MR. DUMARESQUE: John Crosbie.

MR. MURPHY: Mutton chops.

MR. DUMARESQUE: That is who, Mr. Speaker. And it cannot be lost on the people that the idol for the Leader of the Opposition is none other than that same person. We cannot allow it to go on, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to tell you now, why we cannot allow it to go on. Hon. members should know that we need joint management of the fishery for jobs, for prosperity for our young people and I am going to tell you why. In one of the species that we have now, Mr. Speaker, the shrimp fishery, that takes place from the northern tip of Labrador down to the Northeast Coast of Newfoundland, not one shrimp is caught south of Fogo Island. People should picture that. Now then, where does the shrimp go? Over 50 per cent of that shrimp goes to companies outside of this Province, in Quebec and in New Brunswick; over 50 per cent, Mr. Speaker - 600 jobs at $50,000 a shot, and I know, because my brother and others of my relatives and my constituents who work for the Labrador shrimp company are on these boats harvesting the shrimp and getting good paying jobs from them. But we are losing 600 of these jobs at $50,000 a shot because John Crosbie is taking care of Elmer MacKay and the political interests of the Tory Party in Nova Scotia and Bouchard's interests in Quebec, Mr. Speaker, that is the reality of the it.

Let me go further, Mr. Speaker, and talk to you about the turbot and redfish. Here we go. The 1993 Atlantic Groundfish Management plan: Of the 16,000 tons of redfish harvested in 2J+3KL, the same area, not one redfish in 2J+3KL is harvested south of Fogo Island, not one. Now, what share do we have? We have 4,000 tons; 12,147 tons of that redfish or twenty-five million pounds of fish is held by the Mercy Seafoods, by the Clearwaters, by the National Sea Products of Nova Scotia, while we have 500 people in LaScie out of work and the plant closed down, Arnold's Cove the same thing, the same company is taking twenty-five million pounds of redfish right from under their noses, taking it back to Nova Scotia to keep these plants twelve months in operation. That is the kind of thing that joint management would not allow to happen and I am surprised that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will not get up and condemn this, as he has thought not to do today, Mr. Speaker.

Let us go to the Northern cod and look at the fishery of the future. When the Northern cod fishery closed last July, do hon. members know that Mercy Seafoods, that Clearwater Fisheries, that National Sea Products and other fishing companies in Nova Scotia had sixty-two million pounds of Northern cod assigned to them by a political groundfish management plan that was there to protect the political interests of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Mr. Speaker -sixty-two million pounds. And let me give hon. members some idea of what that means to our people and my people on the Coast of Labrador. Let me tell you what it would mean to Nain, Davis Inlet, Cartwright, Makkovik and L'Anse-au-Loup, Mr. Speaker.

If we had 20 million pounds of that Northern cod - one-third of it - and we took that Northern cod and distributed it along the Coast of Labrador, combined with our regular inshore fishery, it would keep every one of our plants open, it would keep every one of our processing jobs in place for the full time that those communities are ice-free. That is jobs, that is reality, that is what we are talking about when we are talking about joint management of the fishery in Newfoundland. That is not fabrication, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: When we talk about other species, Mr. Speaker, I have to say - the American plaice and the witch. Here we have the 1993 Groundfish Management plan again. These are fish that we can catch, that we can process, and we can sell. Only a couple of days ago again I checked with the hon. the Member for Fortune - Hermitage to find that Gaultois is still going flat out on redfish because they have now been given a quota of redfish. Well, there would be no difference in the redfish there and the redfish that we could be getting now that is allocated to these other companies.

The same thing can be said for the flounder. Right now, we have 15,000 tons of the America plaice and 8,700 tons - we are losing 10 million pounds of these fish. This is inside the 200-mile limit. This is within the adjacent waters. We are not talking about the Georges Bank. When it comes to the Georges Bank or the Bay of Fundy or any place on the Eastern Coast of Canada within the adjacent waters of Nova Scotia, not one Canadian vessel registered in Newfoundland under a Newfoundland company has one fish there. We are not allowed by law to go over and get one scallop out of the Georges Bank, or any of the fish, the silver hake or anything of that nature, in their adjacent waters. We are told by law: You are not allowed to do it.

Yet again, we have now got a situation in place where we have 250 million pounds of fish - whether it be American plaice, witch, redfish, turbot, shrimp or cod - 250 million pounds of fish in our adjacent waters, 2J-3KL, 4RS, 3PN, and 3PS. These are the adjacent waters around our great Province - 250 million pounds, 7,800 direct jobs in harvesting and processing. Can you imagine what that would do to our economy? I see the Minister of Finance, his eyes are lighting up at the prospect of it, because he knows. He has to deal with it. The Minister of Social Services today has to deal with the horrendous social services list that he has. Can you imagine what it would mean to have 7,800 direct processing and harvesting jobs? That is five Hibernias that we have here. That is the kind of thing that we are talking about. Yet, something so important as this, something so critical as this to our Province, something so necessary as this to our Province, we cannot get the Leader of the Opposition on his feet in the House of Assembly, or at any community in this Province, to say: Down with the Crosbie proposal and give us joint management. We cannot get him to do it, and it is a shame, Mr. Speaker!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: It is a shame.

I can tell you, whether his idol is Crosbie or not, it will not be lost on the people of this Province that a Tory is a Tory is a Tory, and they will have to account for what they are doing. They will have to account for giving away the future of our children, and they will have to account, because what we have seen is nothing less than the crassest kind of politics that we have ever seen in this country, when we have a situation today where John Crosbie is saying to the people of Newfoundland: You do not qualify. You do not have the competence. You do not have the skills. You do not have the commitment. You do not have the will. You do not deserve to take control of your future because you are not qualified to do it. I am going to give you somebody from the Gaspé Peninsula, or the Magdalen Islands, or the Bay of Fundy, or up on the Acadian Peninsula. I am going to give you somebody from there, maybe somebody like Valcourt, to take care of your interests.

Can you imagine? Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that one day we would have a Minister of Fisheries and Oceans from Newfoundland who would be doing this to our people? Can you imagine that we would be in a position those days, that in the 1990's we would have our own native son in that seat, who would be out to delivery such a damning indictment on the future of our people? I am sure that you never could; but there is something else.

We have seen the public purse of Ottawa used as it has never been used before - to placate the interests of the Tory party and to do anything to get their message across. Only a few days ago we had the Chairman or the President of the Chamber of Commerce in this Province saying that he did not agree with joint management of the fishery as well.

Can you imagine the Chamber of Commerce of Newfoundland and Labrador saying that we do not want the 7800 jobs, we do not want the income that these people would generate, the demand they would generate. Can you imagine anybody who is dedicated to growth and development and business opportunities in this Province standing up and saying that? Mr. Speaker, there is a reason for that. That hon. gentleman, Mr. Wilton (?) not too long ago if you read back over the last twelve or eighteen months you will notice the hon. John Crosbie is pleased to see the appointment of Mr. Wilton to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Board. Now, we are seeing it again, another little string pulled as a long line of strings have been pulled with Bruce Chapman, another familiar name in the fishing industry of this Province.

Only a little while ago we saw the supply and services list published for contracts and the money being paid. We saw down throught that list one Mr. Bruce Chapman, $50,100 for four months of service to the Atlantic Task Force on the Economy for the hon. John Crosbie. Is there any wonder he is up today saying that you should take out half your plants in Newfoundland and Labrador to placate the interest of John Crosbie and the federal government.

Of course it is not lost on another favourite son, the other big C in it all, Mr. Cashin. It is not lost on him either because now we are seeing the three biggest Cs ever in Newfoundland - Chapman, Crosbie and Cashin. This is what we have here and they have all been financed by the public purse. Mr. Cashin was not satisfied with $50,000 he had to get $150,000 to $200,000 a year so that he could sell out the interests of this Province, Mr. Speaker. What I am saying to you is that in our day of peril, in our time of crisis, in our time of responsibility and leadership, in our time when we are looking to our leaders as we are looking to our Premier, as we are looking to our first minister, in our time when we are seeking a vison for the future what we are seeing is that the political hacks of John Crosbie have put their heads in the sand along with hon. members opposite and led directly by their Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Speaker.

That is the situation we have today and it will not be lost on the people of this Province. It will not be lost on this people, I tell you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DUMARESQUE: He mentions Ottawa. I tell you if I ever have the privilege of going to Ottawa, this is one son that will not turn his back on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DUMARESQUE: - like John Crosbie has, I can tell you that. If there ever comes a proposal before that House of Commons printed in this green paper, Mr. Speaker, that will be the fastest time that paper went across that House of Assembly and that House of Commons up there, I can tell you that. This is one son that is not going to use the public purse to sell out the lifeblood of Newfoundland and Labrador and the future of our very Province.

So, I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that today is an historic day. We are seeing the first plan every put before the people of this Province, put before the House of Assembly, the first plan that was ever put there, to reclaim our destiny, to reclaim our rights, to reclaim our control over the future of our children and the future of rural Newfoundland and Labrador, in particular.

So, hon. members I appreciate your indulgence and I would hope that we will carry on from this House of Assembly and that you will condemn your cousins in Ottawa, particularly the incoming Prime Minister, if they do not put Newfoundland and Labrador first because that is the first and foremost reason why we are here today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Is the House ready for the question?

All those in favour of the motion please say, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: Those against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: In my opinion the 'ayes' have it.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, before the House adjourns, may I remind hon. members that tomorrow of course is the day for which, at least those of us on this side have been waiting for some time. My understanding is that there will be no Orders Of The Day. We simply go directly into the words of wisdom from my friend the Minister of Finance. The Government will be proposing at the conclusion tomorrow that the House rise until Monday. We are going to have an answer period on Monday. The questions have been so very bad that we are not going to have one tomorrow. We give hon. members forty-eight hours to try to write better questions.

Mr. Speaker, let me also tell members, so that they can make their plans, we will be proposing that the House rise for an Easter recess on Friday the 2nd of April.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Well, I'm saying we're talking about rising on Friday, April 2. If my hon. friend for Grand Bank wishes to discuss the length of the recess I'd be very happy to meet with him to discuss that. We will be proposing -

MR. TOBIN: Why the rush to shut it down?

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible) shut it down. Do you want to meet in Holy Week? Don't you go to church in Holy Week?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I believe that. But I have to say that some on this side will be going to church in Holy Week, if only to pray for those opposite, Mr. Speaker. In any event that's down the road. Tomorrow is Budget Day and we will not be meeting Friday. We'll be back on Monday.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: I guess we agreed to stop the clock, Mr. Speaker. I want to say to the Government House Leader that he can use all kinds of excuses for wanting to shut the House down on April 2 but I guess we all know the real reason. It's that you're going to try to duck out from under the bad news that the Minister of Finance is going to give us tomorrow. That's the problem.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!

MR. MATTHEWS: Now the Government House Leader can squirm all he likes. There's one reason why they can't wait to get out through the doors now. The slide is on, I say to members. The Budget is going to further compound and escalate the slide. That's the real reason. Never before has the House adjourned so far in advance of Easter. As a matter of fact, reflect back two years ago when the Premier wouldn't even agree to shut the House, only for Good Friday and Easter Monday. There were people here with holidays booked who couldn't take them. Now what a change. What a change, I say to members.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. MATTHEWS: We should be open the week.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. member wants to say something in relation to the operation of the House but we (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I think we're in a sort of never-never land of consent for a moment. Let me simply say that it may well be that my hon. friend's eloquence is such that we will meet that week, but we'll take that under advisement and see. I would say to him that the slide is on, and he knows full well it's on, and that's why he wants to stay (inaudible) rather than going to another arena somewhere else.

The hon. gentleman should learn to bide his soul in patience, Mr. Speaker. In the fullness of time all things will be revealed to him. This holiday he's been talking about, we on our side are going to do our very best to give him the holiday he deserves and has worked for, a very long one indeed.

I move the House do now adjourn.

MR. SPEAKER: I just want to remind hon. members that the press people will be here setting up for tomorrow. So if they have anything on their desks that they'd like to put in their drawers please do so.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, at 2:00 p.m.