November 20, 1995           HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS         Vol. XLII  No. 58


The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Statements by Ministers

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief statement. I provided a copy to the gentleman for Humber Valley who, I guess, shadows me, if that is the word, and I apologize because in fact I only got it to him a moment or so ago.

Members will be aware that a man being detained at the St. John's lockup died there late Friday night or early Saturday morning. The matter is under investigation by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and by those directly responsible for the operations of the Adult Corrections Division of my department, which of course operates the lockup.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible)

MR. ROBERTS: I do not find it at all amusing I say to my friend for Grand Bank. The man did die while in custody and I do not find it at all amusing.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: No, I am not dead but unfortunately the gentleman in the lockup is. Mr. Speaker, I expect to be able to make a further statement within the next day or so, but until then I can say nothing more about the incident.

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

MR. WOODFORD: Mr. Speaker, as the minister already said there is not much that can be said about it yet, and the only question I have from the short brief statement would be the line in which it says, late Friday night or early Saturday morning. The hours between that, was it 11:55 Friday night, 1:05 or 12.05 Saturday morning? What is the difference, because in saying that I am talking about the monitoring system at the prison?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MS YOUNG: Mr. Speaker, whereas the United Nations adopted a declaration on the rights of the child on November 20, 1959; and whereas on November 20, 1989 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a convention on the rights of the child; and whereas the convention addresses the rights of children and recognizes their basic human rights, and gives children and youth additional rights to protect them from harm; and whereas the convention recognizes the important role of the family in the upbringing of children; and whereas the Government of Canada designated November 20th as National Child Day on March 19, 1993; and whereas the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has established a select committee on children's interests, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador would like to formally proclaim November 20, 1995 as National Child Day in this Province.

I would also like to commend the numerous groups and individuals throughout the Province who have organized special events to celebrate National Child Day.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I say to the Minister of Social Services that if she and her government want to commemorate National Child Day they should be introducing in this House of Assembly long overdue and badly needed child welfare and child care reform legislation, as well as the long promised and long overdue New Schools Act.

Oral Questions

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have questions for the Premier. If the Premier is obsessed with balancing the Budget this year, why didn't he and his government stick to the expenditures authorized in their March Budget? Premier, why did you spend over $26 million more than was authorized in your March Budget, this summer?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I think the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board is better able to deal with the details of the Budget, but I can say to you, Mr. Speaker, that there were a couple of areas where we spent some extra money that can account for pretty well all of the increase.

One is, a decision to purchase two water bombers, because our existing water bomber fleet, much of it is fifty years old and the argument being made at the time and we accepted it, now if I had my time back again, maybe I would think differently, in today's circumstances, I have to admit that maybe I would think differently. I can't say to you that perhaps we should have done it, but it was a compelling argument at the time. Here was an opportunity, at relatively modest cost to put our water bomber fleet into a much better position and we wouldn't have this opportunity in the future.

We tossed it back and forth for quite some time and reconsidered and reconsidered and in the end, agreed to do it. Now, if I had my time back, I think I might have made the decision differently; I will frankly admit that. Another significant component of it was the increases in social assistance payments and the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board can give the House the other detail, but our biggest problem, Mr. Speaker, is in shortfalls of revenue to the Province estimated by the federal government that is: provincial income tax and transfers, EPF transfers and other transfers to the Province.

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, my colleague is right. The problem is that this government is incompetent at managing.

To refresh the Premier's memory, he and his government spent $7.2 million this summer that was not in their Budget to acquire two new water bombers. I ask the Premier: If you are going to acquire new water bombers, why didn't you Budget for them in March, and since you didn't Budget for them, why didn't you do without for this year?

After you went ahead anyway and spent the $7.2 million, why did you wait until two-thirds of the way through the Budget year to tell people that you are going to take that money back from hospitals, schools and municipalities, $7.2 million?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: Mr. Speaker, the explanation is fairly simple; we did not buy two new water bombers. They would cost about $15 million to $18 million each, new. These were used water bombers. They were a good buy and that was the only opportunity to acquire them. The argument being made, the argument that the minister brought forward and Cabinet accepted, so it is all our collective responsibility, the argument being brought forward is we will be doing something in the best interest of the taxpayer if we do this now, even though it is outside of our budget and it may place us in some degree of difficulty. It is the right thing to do in the best interest of the taxpayer. Now I just got through telling the House that if we were making the decision today, knowing what we know today, we may well make the decision differently. I can find out who we purchased it from. The company, I believe, Canadair is it? We purchased it from the producer. I assume they were traded in by somebody else.

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

MS VERGE: This is shocking, Mr. Speaker. What does the Premier know now that he did not know this summer when he paid the $7.2 million of taxpayers' money for the water bombers? What does he know now that he did not know last March when he brought down the Budget? Now, Mr. Speaker, what does he know today that he could not tell us a week or so ago about the number of temporary employees on the public payroll and the number of people on the public payroll with deputy minister and assistant deputy minister status? He and his minister were going to count, can they tell us the numbers yet?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I saw the numbers on that on Friday - I don't know if it was Friday or Thursday - and I know there was one error in it and I sent them back for correction. I should have them today or tomorrow. I will probably be in a position to table them tomorrow. I am happy to tell people that there are fewer deputies now and fewer assistant deputies now then there were say six years ago when we took office. There is no question, the record is there and all the names are all there. So there is no difficulty judging it. It will all be seen. There is still a significant reduction. Now what do we know today that we did not know last March when we brought in the Budget? We know today that the federal government, as of October, are estimating that the revenue received from corporate income tax is going to be down by $14,000.000. We know that the revenue to be received by way of equalization and other transfers and total revenue transferred from the federal government is down by about a total of about $45 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: (inaudible).

PREMIER WELLS: Thirty-four million dollars netted out, but in addition to the $34 million, there is another impact built up from prior years. So it is about $45 million less that we are going to get in this fiscal year through that means. That is what we know now. We didn't know in March that we would have the level of expenditure in social services that we have. We had budgeted for a significant increase but it was higher than we anticipated, and we didn't know that this opportunity to purchase those planes would come along. We didn't know that last March. I've just told the House the circumstances in which we made the decision. Maybe, given the knowledge that we have today, we would have made a different decision.

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

MS VERGE: Ridiculous. Mr. Speaker, I've questions for the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. Why are you cutting municipal operating grants by 22 per cent without consultation, without concern, when you and your department hired twenty additional employees since July; when you are proceeding to spend $500,000 to do a feasibility study on an expanded 911 emergency response system; when you brought some sixty to eighty of government staff together at Terra Nova Golf Lodge for a week-long seminar earlier this month; and when you publish your departmental newsletter, at some cost to the taxpayers, bragging about all these new expenditures?

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

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, she has caught me completely off guard. I don't know of spending $600,000 on an expanded 911 service?

MS VERGE: Five hundred thousand dollars.

MR. REID: Five hundred thousand dollars. I don't know anything about that, I really don't. I don't think we are doing that. In fact, I'm surprised that she would say that, knowing full well that the recovery from the 911 service in St. John's and Corner Brook will provide those savings which we hope to be able to use to offset that $500,000. I don't know the details on what she is talking about in Terra Nova Lodge. I certainly wasn't there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. REID: I wasn't there, Mr. Speaker. I'm sorry, I wasn't there. I don't know what she is talking about there. If she is talking about twenty extra employees I would think that they were probably hired - not extra, because I don't have any extra people, I've lost a number of people - if they were hired, then I would assume most of them were hired through the Government Service Centre, which took over from a number of other departments, transferred from one to the other, but I will provide the information.

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, in all sincerity, that there is no increase in staff in my department. There is no increase in staff in my department.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister responsible for social services.

The minister now has had the opportunity of a few days to review the problem with her department's leaking of confidential information, the invasion of privacy of individuals whose files are kept by the minister. I wonder if she can tell me who in her department was aware of this problem. Does she know how many faxes were sent to the wrong number - how many faxes - when it started, and who knew about it?

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have asked my officials to get me the information. I am not sure if it is in my office today - I have not been there since 9:30 this morning - however, as I find out the information I will certainly be willing to share it with you.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, this has been a very serious breach of confidentiality. The minister was made aware of this on Friday. I wonder if she can tell us what type of information was sent to this construction company, and how confidential was it?

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I said I asked for a report. I do not have the report today.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the minister can confirm that a very sensitive and confidential file of a young offender was part of the information received by this construction company? A lot of people are concerned about this invasion of privacy, but I wonder if she would care to confirm whether or not this is true.

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I have asked for the information, and until I have the complete information I cannot comment on it.

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

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the minister is undoubtedly attempting to stonewall the House and not give the proper information at the proper time to the people of this Province. I want to again reinforce to the minister that this is a very serious breach of confidentiality, and I will ask her this final question: Will she undertake to inform the individuals whose information she has caused to be leaked to people who should not have that information that this has been done, that their privacy has been invaded, and in the case of minors what will she do there?

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will do whatever I deem necessary as soon as I get the information.

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

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Premier. It pertains to committees of Cabinet. I would ask the Premier, when ministers travel on special committees of Cabinet are their travel and accommodation expenses charged off to the respective departments, or is there a separate fund for Cabinet committees, Executive Council or Premier's Office, or wherever?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I don't know. I assume that when a minister travels the expense is charged out through his department. I believe that is probably the case. But the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board would be more knowledgeable than I am.

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

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. No, the reason I ask the Premier the question is that there is a Cabinet committee scheduled to go to Labrador West. There has been an ad running in Labrador West about the visit of the Cabinet committee. People are being charged a $10 fee for a question and answer period. I'm wondering - I'm asking the Premier quite seriously - is this to offset the cost of the ministers going to Labrador West, or is it a new policy to recover some of the deficit problems? Because the ad has been run for the last couple of weeks. A $10 fee for a question and answer period with a special committee of Cabinet. So I want to ask the Premier if he knows about it, or what it is all about.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: I have no knowledge about it, but there is a Cabinet committee that deals particularly with Labrador. The Minister of Justice is the chair of that committee, so I am going to ask him to provide the answer to the House.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just happen to have some information here. The question wasn't entirely unanticipated. The Labrador West committee is going to be in Labrador this weekend. It consists of my friends the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation and the Minister of Natural Resources, and myself. The hon. gentleman for Grand Bank has either been misinformed or has perhaps put the wrong spin on it. Let me tell him what the committee is doing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I have the ad here as well. The committee will arrive in Labrador, Mr. Speaker, at 6:25 p.m. Friday. We have an interview -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman asked the question, I will make the answer.

MR. HARRIS: (Inaudible) ministerial statement.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, if it is a ministerial statement it is more than my friend for St. John's East will ever make, I say to him.

If I could answer the question.... That evening we are having a social function with the Menihek Liberal Association. The $10 charge covers that, and that doesn't cause me any difficulty at all. Anybody who wants to come and is prepared to pay the $10 towards the Menihek Liberal club, fine. If they don't want to come, that is fine too. The Menihek Liberal Association has to raise money for the next election, as does any other party.

Now Saturday, Mr. Speaker, we meet with the town of Labrador City, we meet with the town of Wabush, we meet with the Churchill Falls Anglers and Hunters Association and we meet with Mr. Alonzo Drover, we meet with the Smokey Mountain ski club, we meet with the Labrador West Chamber of Commerce and at 3:05 we depart Wabush. Now, Mr. Speaker, I would say that the people of Labrador West will get their monies worth out of that whether or not they come to the social thing. Surely my friend from Grand Bank does not mind that in the evening we are going to ask people to meet with us, if they wish to meet politically, there will be no charge to the government for this. Indeed, if there is a profit it not only will not go to the government it will go to the fighting fund of the Labrador West Liberal Association. We are going to Labrador West because we are there at least once a year to hold a meeting such as we are holding.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I will ask the hon. minister to take his seat.

A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Grand Bank.

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

I think the minister doth protest too much. I just asked a simple question. The ad is very clear; there is nothing about a Liberal fundraiser. It is for question and answer period with the Cabinet committee, a ten dollar fee to ask me a question which I might not answer.

MR. EFFORD: That's fairly cheap.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Fairly cheap, yes the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation for sure would not (inaudible) for that cheap I say to get to speak to him.

But I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Education pertaining to the deficit problem the government finds itself in. I have been told this morning that school boards in the Province have been asked for substantial savings between now and the end of March. I have heard figures ranging - depending on the size of the school board and their allocation - from $200,000 to $500,000. Could the minister confirm that and would he inform the House of what suggestions he has for school boards to obtain those savings? Is he suggesting an extended Christmas vacation, a four day week for schools and children in the Province? How else are they going to come up with those big savings in one case up to $500,000 between now and the end of March and really they cannot begin to obtain the savings until January?

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

MR. DECKER: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman will know that all government departments and all government agencies have been made aware of the difficult fiscal problems that the government has and all these agencies have been asked to make a contribution to making the savings. In the case of the school boards they have been asked to save 3 per cent by now and the end of March, exactly the same way as the university has been asked, exactly the same way as the various hospital boards have been asked, exactly the same way as the Department of Education has been asked. Now, Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member has a problem with the magnitude of the cut on the one hand and on the smallest in the cut with the other, he will understand that some boards have bigger budgets then others, 'To him that hath shall be given,' I suppose. He who has more to give will -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. DECKER: Oh yes, it is 3 per cent. So if you have a million, 3 per cent of a million dollars is more than 3 per cent of a thousand dollars. The hon. member should understand that. That is rudimentary arithmetic, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of Health.

The heads of health care organizations in the Province were told last Wednesday that they must absorb $27 million out of the $60 million budgetary shortfall. Mr. Peddle, Executive Director of the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association said after a meeting with board Chairs and CEOs, that there is nothing that can be done to save the $27 million. He said to find the money will have a major impact on programs and services. Now the CEOs were to report to the minister last Friday. I ask the minister, has he received a report and have those cuts been identified?

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

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

The hon. members question is not premised quite correctly. The figure of $27 million represents 3 per cent of the $900 million budget that health has; that means right across the health care system. We are looking at the possibility of trying to achieve that type of savings. The institutional side spends about two-thirds of that budget which is about $600 million. What we accomplished in meeting with the health care boards Wednesday night was not to tell them so much that they had to come up with x amount of dollars as to make them aware of the fiscal problem that we have. What I did do was ask the health care system to respond with their best efforts to see exactly what type of a contribution could be made toward that deficit reduction problem without causing undue hardship or destabilization to the health care system. Until such time as we have done the complete analysis of the information that comes in from the system and also an analysis of the programs that we deliver separate and apart from the institutional sector, I am not able to inform the House or the hon. member as to exactly where we will achieve what savings and to what extent the savings will come toward addressing the fiscal problem, but that will become information in due course that will be made available through the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, and then directly through the departments as a consequence of government's decisions.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess the minister is not able to tell me if he received the report on Friday. I asked him that question.

Sister Elizabeth Davis, who oversees a budget of $283 million said: Any further changes means we have to compromise the quality of health care we deliver; and she said and I quote: Our board is certainly not willing to compromise the quality of health care we are delivering.

Now I say to the minister, the quality of health care in this Province has been compromised on an ongoing basis, with people continuously being turned away from hospital doors because there are no beds available and no operating rooms.

Now, does the minister feel that his department can cut $27 million from the health care system in four months, without compromising the quality of health care?

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

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Mr. Speaker, having received indications from the health care boards that they are running a pretty lean-and-mean ship if you like, and having heard from them that over the years, and correctly so, there has been a fair bit of adjustment made to the health care system, the health care boards nevertheless did commit to having a look at their operations to see if in fact there are efficiencies that they have not yet identified that they can contribute toward this exercise.

Now, in terms of whether I heard back from them on Friday, I have to tell the hon. member, as he would appreciate, that I hear from the institutional side of the health care sector on an ongoing and daily basis, and sometimes many times a day either directly or through my officials, and we are exchanging information, we are exchanging ideas, we are exchanging all of the thoughts and the collective wisdom that we have between us, clear across the health care sector, not only the institutional side but the program side as well, and the whole exercise of course, is as he correctly indicates, to try and achieve expenditure efficiencies, that will contribute towards the budgetary situation.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Peddle, The Executive Director of the Newfoundland Hospital and Nursing Home Association, said and I quote: Even if we were to close an organization tomorrow, with the severance pay we would have to give employees and so on, you couldn't accomplish it.

Now, I ask the minister: Is it government's plan to eliminate severance pay first, to achieve this objective and then initiate massive layoffs in the system?

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

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

I am not going to indicate to the hon. member today what, if any measures, government will take within the Department of Health or beyond that to address the budgetary problem.

All departments, as has been indicated by the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, by the Premier and by the various ministers who have been asked direct questions, all departments and all ministers are looking at their budgets, looking at the programs that they deliver, looking at the departmental operations that we are responsible for, and from the review and exercise we are going through, we will determine a course of action that will help us in the most appropriate manner to address the budgetary problem and at the same time still be committed to and in fact be able to deliver a high level of quality service particularly as it relates to health care.

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

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Social Services.

Will the minister confirm that she has been ordered by the Supreme Court of Newfoundland to repay to a social services recipient, a clawback based on an overpayment that has been made to a recipient on the basis that such a clawback is illegal, except where there has been fraud or misrepresentation by the client? Can the minister confirm that that has happened?

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will certainly check it out for the member, and -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MS YOUNG: But you passed it over to me, so obviously there is some truth to what you are saying.

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, the minister is correct, I did give her a copy of an order of the court dated November 10, and while the minister is checking it out would she be able to confirm to the House that not only was this order made but it was agreed to by the officials of government on the basis of their acknowledgement that such clawbacks are illegal and contrary to the regulations of the minister, and will she undertake and commit to this House to investigate all cases of clawbacks of overpayments, and repay to the social services recipients, as she has been ordered to do in this case, monies that have been illegally taken out of their social assistance, their already woefully inadequate social assistance payments? Will the minister undertake to do that?

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

MS YOUNG: Mr. Speaker, yes, if my department has been involved in any clawbacks that were illegal we will certainly deal with that.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's East on a final supplementary.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for that commitment and say I will hold it to her. I have a final supplementary for the Premier. This illegal act has been the result of a regulation passed in accordance with the Social Services Act which says that government can only take back social services payments if there has been a misrepresentation or fraud by the client. I want to ask the Premier if the minister and his government planned to bury this regulation along with a whole bunch of others as part of Bill 7? Is this regulation going to disappear and allow the government to take back this money by changing that regulation? Is this one of the ones that government had planned to bury as part of that bill without telling the public they are going it?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER WELLS: We are not burying any regulations. What we are doing is getting rid of an excessive burden that has accumulated over fifty years, and it is about time we have done that, so it is not burying anything. Whether or not that regulation is included amongst the regulations to be repealed or altered I do not at the moment know, but I will have it checked and we will find out.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a question for the Minister of Social Services as well. Following up from the declaration today, or the proclamation of National Child Day, in November 1991 the provincial Cabinet wrote the federal government expressing support for the adoption by Canada of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Does the minister intend to bring similar legislation of the rights of children to this House, rights that recognize the special status of children and youth under the age of eighteen years?

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

MS YOUNG: I am sorry I was distracted and I did not hear the question. Could you repeat the question, please?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: I was noting that as a follow-up from the minister's proclamation today that in November 1991 the provincial Cabinet wrote the federal Department of External Affairs, I do believe, indicating and expressing support for the adoption by Canada of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Does the minister intend to bring similar legislation to the House on the rights of the child, rights that recognize the special status of children and youth under the age of eighteen years?

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As you are aware we do have the select committee of the House dealing with the services provided to the children of this Province, and I will certainly be very interested in looking at your report and all the recommendations that you will be making.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount on a supplementary.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, while we all recognize that legislation is not always a guarantee to a safe and happy childhood it does indicate the level of commitment that government has to children's developmental needs. The Child Welfare Act recognizes a child's right to be protected from abuse and neglect from infancy to age sixteen. This means that youth whose age is sixteen and seventeen are not protected under the current child welfare legislation. Does the minister intend to initiate legislation that will raise the age definition to eighteen years, keeping in mind that nearly all persons sixteen and seventeen years old are not defined as adults, and for the most part are still students in high school?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated to you, we are awaiting the report; however, that is an area that is not currently addressed in this Province and I certainly will be looking into it.

MR. SPEAKER: The time for Oral Questions has elapsed.

Notices of Motion

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, some notices of legislation.

I give notice that I shall, on tomorrow, ask leave to introduce the following bills:

A bill, "An Act To Revise The Law Respecting Limitations".

A bill, "An Act To Amend The Leaseholds In St. John's Act".

A bill, "An Act Respecting Standards of Conduct For Non-Elected Public Office Holders".

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

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I give notice of the following Private Members' resolution for Wednesday coming:

WHEREAS the government's balanced Budget is a farce; and

WHEREAS part of the budgetary problem is caused by cuts in federal transfers, about which this government has said little; and

WHEREAS another part of the problem is due to this administration's failure to cut waste in government; and

WHEREAS the government has also failed to keep its commitment to reduce costs by significantly decreasing the number of seats in this House of Assembly; and

WHEREAS the government's answer to its budgetary problems has been to download the burden onto municipalities and severely cut front-line health, education and social services;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this hon. House condemn the government for its weak-kneed approach to Ottawa, its mismanagement of the government's finances, and its general disregard for the effects of its actions on the well-being of our citizens.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health.

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

I give notice I will, on tomorrow, ask leave to introduce a bill entitled, "An Act To Amend The Hospitals Act". (Bill No. 39)

Answers to Questions

For which Notice has been Given

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Last Thursday, I believe it was, the hon. Member for Mount Pearl asked some questions concerning some heat pumps. I have some information from the Department of Finance. If it is incomplete or if the hon. member wishes a little more information I will certainly get it for him.

I am told that the installation of heat pumps in Clarenville is part of a contract between Atlific and Honeywell. As the hon. member knows, Atlific was the operator of the hotels, and Honeywell is an engineering/computer firm which specializes in these devices, so the contract was approved by Hotel Buildings Limited but it was not a party to it as far as I know. This was to install an energy management system in three Holiday Inns in Newfoundland. Apparently a similar device had already been installed in St. John's. This was to upgrade the hotels, and did not cause any capital cost to Hotel Buildings Limited, that being the company owned by the Province, the cost release financed through the bank, and Fortis will assume the lease, so it was not a case of us having spent a capital sum and then that money having been sunk. It was set up as a lease so that there were monthly payments over the period of the lease.

There were savings in energy costs for the hotels, with a pay-back period varying between three and eight years in the various hotels. Certain savings are guaranteed by Honeywell, and any additional savings above the guaranteed amounts will be to the benefit of the hotels. I have not seen the leases, and I have asked for copies of them. I suspect what that is, is if they could not demonstrate there were savings of a certain amount in heating costs then Honeywell would probably be responsible for the difference between the two. The St. John's system has been installed some three or four years and has been working well over that period of time, and the savings to date are greater than anticipated.

In summary, Mr. Speaker, as far as I know there has not been a net cost to the Province. It has, in fact, saved on the operating cost of the facilities, certainly in St. John's at the Holiday Inn, and the extend to which there were any capital costs remaining, or any lease payments remaining, those will be borne by the purchaser, in this case Fortis. If the hon. member requires any further information, I will certainly get it for him.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Orders of the Day

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the first thing we could do, please, is call Motion No. 5, which is the motion to refer Bill 28 to the Government Services Committee. I understand this is not a debatable motion, but that is not for me to say; I am advised of that. In any event, could we deal with it and the bill can go to the committee and the committee will deal with it?

Motion: To move, pursuant to Standing Order 54.2(3), that the bill entitled, "An Act To Revise And Consolidate The Law Respecting Credit Unions" (Bill No. 28) be referred to the Government Services Committee.

Motion carried.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in the House on Friday morning, we are anxious to afford members an ample opportunity to debate the bill we are about to call, so accordingly I move that the House do not adjourn at 5:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that the House do not adjourn at 5:00 p.m.

All those in favour, `aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye!

MR. SPEAKER: Against, `nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay!

MR. SPEAKER: Carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, just one final announcement. Bill No. 32, which is the Executive Council bill, I'm advised by the Clerk's office, is now available for distribution so it will be made available. I say to members they shouldn't be put off by the size of it. The last thirty or forty pages of it are simply a re-enactment of some existing substantive legislation.

MR. TOBIN: We won't get to that this year.

MR. ROBERTS: I have no idea when we will get to it, Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend for Burin - Placentia West. We are in the hands of the House.

Mr Speaker, with that said I wonder if you would call Order No. 24, the House of Assembly amendment act, please.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act". (Bill No. 31)

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

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to move second reading of this bill. Let me say that I do so with a great deal of pride and with a great deal of confidence. This bill is the best redistribution bill ever presented to this House of Assembly, it is the fairest redistribution bill ever put to the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: It is founded squarely and frankly on the basic democratic principle that the vote of any one person is worth no more and is worth no less than the vote of any other person in this Province. That is the principle upon which this bill was founded. That is the sole principle on which this bill is founded, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The point I was making is that the bill is founded squarely and frankly on the basic democratic principle that the vote of one person is worth no more and no less than the vote of any other person in this Province.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, hon. members opposite can make an effort -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

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

The Chair is having difficulty hearing the hon. member speak, so I would ask hon. members to my right to restrain themselves, please.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hon. members opposite can heckle and catcall if they wish but I have the right to speak and I am going to speak. I am going to say what has to be said in favour of this bill, and I shall gladly sit and listen to members opposite. If they don't want to do me the courtesy of allowing me to make my case - I realize that I'm speaking to a jury that has tried, convicted, sentenced and executed the plaintiff in this matter, but I am going to say what I have to say in accordance with the rules of this House.

The point I made, Sir, is that this bill is founded squarely and frankly on what I suggest is the basic democratic principle that the vote of one person is worth no more and is worth no less than the vote of another. The forty-eight seats that will be the basis of the election of the next House of Assembly, with a handful of exceptions, all fall within the 10 per cent rule and that was the rule established by this House in December 1993. A big step forward, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. ROBERTS: I will come back to deal with the handful of exceptions, but before I do let me first of all address a couple of ancillary points.

The first is: Why are we bringing a redistribution bill before the House now? Given all the problems that confront this Province, why are we asking the House to deal with a redistribution bill? The practice, Mr. Speaker, has been for the last thirty years that after every decennial census the House makes the adjustment in the boundaries of its seats to reflect the results reported in that census. It was done in 1974 after the 1971 census, it was done in 1984 after the 1981 census, and it is being done now after the 1991 census.

Even if there had not been the tradition of the census, the tradition of doing a redistribution every ten years, as does every legislative assembly throughout Canada, to my understanding, we are left with the inescapable fact that in district after district, Mr. Speaker, because of the movements in population that have come in the last ten or fifteen years the votes of some individuals are worth a great deal more than the votes of others.

I have a table here and I have copies of all these tables, Mr. Speaker, for anyone who wishes them. Anybody who is interested in having the facts, the information is available and the Pages will distribute it.

We take for example, Bay Verte - White Bay - and I am using the existing census figures and the existing districts there - Mr. Speaker, and the norm is 11,207. If you take the population of this Province as found in the 1991 census and divide by fifty-two you get a quotient figure of 11,207. Baie Verte - White Bay is 17.3 per cent below the norm; Bonavista South is 22.5 per cent below the norm; Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir, 29.1 per cent below the norm; Burin - Placentia West, 26.7 per cent above the norm; Eagle River 54.2 per cent.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: One of the handfuls of exceptions, I will deal with it.

Ferryland is 27.9 per cent below the norm; Fortune - Hermitage, 17.2 per cent below the norm; Grand Falls, 15.5 per cent; Harbour Grace, 13.7 per cent; Harbour Main, 24.1 per cent above the norm. So the votes of 124 or 125 people in Harbour Main district are equal to the votes of 100 persons in the average district. Now, Mr. Speaker, should we take account of that or should we not? What about Humber East, 14.7 per cent up; Humber Valley, 14.2 per cent down; Kilbride, represented by my friend the Member for Kilbride, 40.1 per cent above the norm; Mount Pearl, 61.7 per cent above the norm; Mount Scio - Bell Island, 51.9 per cent above the norm; Placentia, 27.8 per cent below; Pleasantville, 27.7 per cent up; Port au Port, 24.3 per cent below the norm; St. Mary's - The Capes, 30.5 per cent below the norm; St. Barbe, 12.4 per cent above; St. George's, 17.1 per cent down; St. John's East Extern, 44.1 per cent. So 14,410 people in St. John's East Extern, Mr. Speaker, have the same voting power as 10,000 in the norm. Now, Mr. Speaker, those are unacceptable figures and we are not prepared as a government to go into the next election with those figures. We will go on, St. John's South, 12.3 per cent below; St. John's West, 16.5 per cent above; Stephenville, 29.1 per cent below; Terra Nova, 14.2 per cent below; Torngat Mountains, one of the justifiable exceptions, 73.4 per cent below the norm; Trinity - Bay de Verde, 21.4 per cent below the norm; Twillingate, 26.4 per cent below the norm; Waterford - Kenmount, 44.5 per cent above the norm and Windsor - Buchans, 30.5 per cent below the norm.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what those figures show very clearly is that no matter what size of House we establish there must be a redistribution. Thirty-one, Mr. Speaker, of the present seats are well beyond the 10 per cent norm and no democratic assembly worthy of the name could tolerate that situation. That is the governments position, that is the policy on which we stand and that is the policy we shall gladly defend, honour and implement. Now, Mr. Speaker, there are those who say that perhaps we should take something else into account beside population. Mr. Speaker, members of the House fulfil many roles and I've been here a bit and I have some idea, Mr. Speaker, through eight elections, through eight terms in this House, some idea of what some people in this Province expect of their members.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me point out that the basic function we have here is to elect the government and hold it accountable. That is our role because this is the way in which the people of Newfoundland and Labrador elect their government, through the House of Assembly and that is why it must be one person, one vote. That is why, while we will bring in this bill which, Mr. Speaker, sets it down with a handful of justifiable exceptions that every seat falls within the 10 per cent norm and that is the tightest there is in Canada with the single exception of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, they made it 5 per cent with a handful of justifiable exceptions. In this Province when this bill becomes law, as I predict it will, it will be 10 per cent.

Now, Mr. Speaker, that's the first point. The second point, Mr. Speaker -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to be shouted down by members opposite.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. ROBERTS: If they don't have the courtesy to listen, I am not going to be shouted down by the likes of you yahoos. I have seen beer gardens in this House before and I am not going to tolerate one now. I have the right to speak, Mr. Speaker. Hon. members opposite, Mr. Speaker, if they are not prepared to listen, should at least sit there in silence, they will get their turn to speak, we are going to let the House sit, we are going to ask the House to sit until ten o'clock tonight to accommodate them all. If they want to make the same speech seventeen times they can do it and we are going to sit until ten o'clock tomorrow tonight, if need be, to accommodate them. We will give them every chance to make their case, Mr. Speaker, and say whatever they wish subject to the rules of this House.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the first point is: Why should we do redistribution now and I have given you our reasons, Sir. Next is: How large should the House be? Now there is no magic number, there is no perfect number. We could have seven MPs, we have had seven MPs representing this Province since Confederation, Mr. Speaker, we have had seven, we could have seven MHAs or we could have 107 or we could have 727 if we wanted; there is no magic number.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, there is.

MR. ROBERTS: There is no magic number, Mr. Speaker. The Commission of Government, my friend from St. John's Centre reminds me, had seven, six commissioners and a governor. There is no magic number. We have set the size of the House at forty-eight, and I will tell the House, in a few minutes, how we came to that number.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. ROBERTS: Hon. members may know, Mr. Speaker, hon. members may know or not know. I am going to tell the House whether they know or not.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we have set it at forty-eight for two reasons. That produces an average size district, the quotient is 12,181 and in our judgement, that allows for effective representation; that means each member will be responsible for a constituency that on the average is 12,181. It could go up and down, 10 per cent.

Secondly, we believe there should be a relationship between the House and the Cabinet, the House and the Ministerial Payroll and that reflects the fact that the Cabinet could be fifteen or sixteen, add on the other offices in the (inaudible) to the administration and you have a situation where the Cabinet and those who look directly to the government, directly to the ministry for their payroll, Mr. Speaker, are far less than a majority of the House.

Now, in the Peckford Administration and in the Smallwood Administration we, in both instances, saw a situation where the Premier of the day had arranged a situation where far more than a majority of the House was directly beholden to him for substantial emoluments, legal, but substantial over and beyond their pay as MHAs. We believe that's wrong and this bill implements that principle.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me go through the history of the redistribution leading to this bill. In December, 1992 - and I wonder if the law clerks would be good enough to pass me the 1992 and 1993 volumes of the Statutes, please?

In December, 1992 this House amended the act and we provided there, that the Commission would have five members and that the size of the House would be reduced between forty and forty-six members, and that's found in Chapter 56 of the Statutes of Newfoundland, 1992. Those amendments were adopted in December 1992, subsequently, the Speaker, Mr. Speaker Lush, appointed a Commission of five members, the Chair was Mr. Justice Mahoney, who was nominated by the Chief Justice of Newfoundland; the other four members were: Mr. John Nolan; Mr. Raymond Baird, Mrs. Beatrice Watts and Mrs. Dorothy Inglis, all people with an interest in politics, all in fact, with previous and well-known partisan affiliations, all with considerable experience in public life.

Three of them, Mr. Justice Mahoney, Mr. Nolan and Mr. Baird have sat as members of the House. I said all had political affiliations, Mrs. Watts doesn't to my knowledge, have any political affiliation but the other four did, all of them estimable public citizens. Now, Mr. Speaker, their first role - and I am not sure if my friend from Grand Bank mentioned it but let me make the point so it's on the record - Mr. Justice Mahoney did sit in this House as a Liberal but went to the Bench in the early 70s and of course, has had no political affiliation or partisan involvement of any sort since then, and I certainly don't want to leave any implication that he did. He did sit in this House as the Liberal member for the old dual district of Harbour Main between 1966 and 1971. I say to my friend, the Page, that I have all of these tables so do not leave them again. Thank you, very much.

The committee was constituted by the order of Mr. Speaker Lush and it went to work. It presented its preliminary proposal in August 1993. Now, Mr. Speaker, the preliminary proposal is not required by the act, but it is not barred by the act either, and there was ample precedent for what the Commission did in presenting its preliminary proposal. Both the commission headed by the late Mr. Justice Higgins in 1974 and the commission headed by Mr. Justice Bartlett, now retired as a judge of the Supreme Court, but Mr. Justice Bartlett did the same thing in 1974 in the case of the Higgins commission and in 1984 in the case of the Bartlett commission.

As an afterthought let me add that both Judge James Higgins and Judge Rupert Bartlett served as members of this House, Mr. Higgins as the PC and United Newfoundland Party member for St. John's East, and Mr. Justice Bartlett served as a member of the House for one day, sitting for the old Trinity South seat. He was elected in October 1971, was sworn on March 1972, and then the dissolution came that evening. My recollection is he stood for re-election but was not successful in Trinity South district. That was not a good year for Liberals I say to those who forget.

Mr. Speaker, the commission, as I said, produced its preliminary report and it was made public. The commission then began a round of public hearings. I asked leave to appear before the commission and they agreed to hear me. Then in November 1993 I appeared before the commission at a public meeting held in Clarenville. The hon. lady may well choose to differ. She has every right to differ as she is very different. If she wishes to differ on this she may well indeed, but my submission is that it is entirely appropriate in every sense of the word for me to appear and to make the statement I did as a minister of the Crown speaking for the ministry. I said to the commission, and I say here now, that I made that statement as a minister of the Crown and speaking for the ministry.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, the members of the ministry do not lose their right to speak and to make representations. We are bound by Cabinet solidarity but we are still citizens, we are still members of the House of Assembly and we still have the right to speak. Secondly, if we are going to speak to the Commission, a statutorily created body operated on a statutorily created basis it is appropriate that we do so openly and not in the dead of night, not in the dark of night, and not by some roundabout backdoor way, but openly, so I appeared before the commission and I made my submissions on behalf of the government.

Mr. Speaker, these submissions led to further amendments here in the House because there were two changes made in December 1993, and in case member's memories have failed or they have not had a chance to look at it, the changes are found in the Statutes of Newfoundland 1993, Chapter 57. One was to introduce the 10 per cent rule. Up until then we had followed the 25 per cent rule, and the House in 1993, at the request of the government, replaced the 25 per cent rule with the 10 per cent rule, so if one were to take a seat of 1000 or 10,000 people as being the norm, a seat could be as small as 9000 or as small as 11,000 under the new rule, and under the old rule it could be as large as 12,500 or as small as 7500. We brought it down to the 10 per cent tolerance, we gave our reasons then, the House accepted them then, and that was one change.

The second change we made was to say to the commission that in preparing their report they should try to create a forty-six seat House and if they could not they had the liberty to go to a forty-four, a forty-two, or a forty seat House. Those are the two significant substantive changes made by the 1993 amendments. Why did we ask for those amendments? Well, they were debated at length in the House at the time, and I will refer very briefly to our reasons, there were two.

The first is that simply and solely when we saw the forty seat proposal, which the commission made public, and we reviewed it as a government, we saw two problems. The first was the 25 per cent variation was too large. We came to that view as a Cabinet. Were we right or were we wrong? That is for others to judge, but this House sustained that view and this House enacted the change we requested subsequently.

Secondly, we came to the view that a forty seat House was too small, that given the geography and the population size of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the historical role of members, we thought it should be of the order of forty-six seats and, as I just reminded the House, we gave the commission the leeway to recommend a smaller number of seats if they wished, but we did say that we were not prepared to sponsor a bill which reflected the original proposal. Given that - and the commission did their job well and properly in making the preliminary proposal - if we decide, as a government, we were not prepared to ask the House to adopt those changes, the hon. thing to do, I suggest, was what we did, which was to let the commission and the world know publicly and openly what we were doing. Otherwise, we are going to let them go on their merry way, bringing in a report, carrying on with a report that we had said we were not prepared to implement. So, Mr. Speaker, no; we made our views known frankly and publicly, and we came back to the House, made our requests to the House, and the House approved them, and the commission said: Very well, we answer to the Legislature; we accept the legislative direction, and they went on with their job.

MS VERGE: Then what (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. lady asks then what we do. If she will simply control herself just a teensy-weensy bit - I know it is difficult for her, but if she would simply exercise a little bit of the self-control that I believe she has - and possess her soul in patience for a few minutes I will tell her what we did. She may have a different view, but that is for her to say when her turn comes, and her turn will come; she can be assured of that.

Mr. Speaker, the December, 1993 amendments carried those changes into effect. The commission continued with its work, and it presented its report in June, 1994. It was made public very shortly thereafter, and in due course was tabled in the House when the House met.

Before I get into the substance of the report, let me make a statement or two about the commission. The report of the commission headed by Mr. Justice Mahoney - Mrs. Watts, Mrs. Inglis, Mr. Baird, Mr. Nolan were the members - was a comprehensive report, and it was a clear report. They discharged their mandate from this House fully, squarely and effectively; one could not argue with that. Their report spoke very clearly, and the mandate that they were given and have been given by the Legislature in the act as amended in December, 1992 and December, 1993, the Electoral Boundaries Act, was discharged fully, squarely and effectively. I thanked Judge Mahoney and his colleagues then when they presented the report to me, and I stand here in the House today and acknowledge gladly and happily and willingly and proudly and with gratitude their contribution and the way they did their job.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me come on to the report because the report was there, and when we got the report we had to deal with it. Among the materials that have been passed out to members, in my understanding, are the pages from the report which represent their final recommendations, and it is worth, I think, drawing the House's attention to these. This is the report. I am reading now from page 4 of the final report. Page 5 actually bears facsimiles of the signatures of the members of the commission.

After thirteen months, and the discharge of two separate legislative mandates - those are the '92 and '93 ones - we hereby submit our unanimous report:

(a) As to the names, descriptions, boundaries and populations of the forty-four one-member districts that are within our mandate - and I acknowledge that was their mandate; it fell within their mandate and they discharged that mandate fully and squarely and effectively, forty-four seats, all within the plus or minus 10 per cent tolerance ratio set down by the House; and

(b) Our recommendation with respect to Labrador, for the reasons stated in our final report, and at our second press conference, that the Act be amended to permit Labrador to retain its present four provincial electoral districts so that only the removal of Churchill Falls from the District of Naskaupi - Churchill Falls is now in the district which I represent, and has been since 1975 when this was corrected - and its inclusion in the District of Menihek, represented obviously by my friend for Menihek, which since its inception has included only Labrador City and Wabush. The Commission said: Four seats for Labrador, but move Churchill Falls from Menihek into Naskaupi. That was its recommendation. It speaks for itself.

It went on and said: We further recommend the Legislature consider amending the electoral boundaries act to permit the inclusion of Reidville, Cormack and Howley in the proposed Humber district. The report as you will find, if you go back to it, Mr. Speaker, included Reidville, Cormack and Howley, those three communities, in the District of St. Barbe. It went on: And that we further recommend that notwithstanding the population of the resulting districts that the Legislature consider amending the act to permit: a) all of the town of Grand Falls - Windsor to be placed in a single district; b) the town of Peterview to be placed in Exploits district, and; c) the proposed Lewisporte district, less the town of Peterview, to remain as a district. The effect of those three - the a, the b, the c - would be to leave us with those three seats, each more than 10 per cent away from the tolerance.

The Commission's recommendations were straightforward and they speak for themselves. We as a government then had to address these issues and decide what we would do. We had the unanimous report of a commission which had had exhaustive hearings and done a great deal of consultation and a great deal of consideration and debate among themselves. The final report, members will recall, was very extensive, very lengthy, very substantial. We had to decide what to do with it. We weren't going to dismiss it or treat it lightly. We had to take it, analyze it, decide what we were prepared to do. It recommended, again, forty-four seats and it said: We further recommend a fourth Labrador seat, and then the changes I've given in Humber Valley, Lewisporte, Exploits and Grand Falls districts.

As a Ministry we were impressed with that report. We were very much inclined to try to implement it. After consideration and discussion in Cabinet and caucus the decision was taken to try to implement the report. We could have done it two ways. We could have simply taken the recommendations of the Commission, the forty-four plus the extra seat in Labrador. My hon. friends over there are now objecting apparently to the Labrador seat distribution, but the Commission recommended clearly a fourth seat for Labrador, and then the four other seats that would be out of the ten or - plus or minus - we could have done that. No trouble to draft a bill, bring it to the House, ask the House to deal with it.

But we were not prepared to do that. We were not prepared to ask the House to adopt a bill that, leaving aside the handful of justified exceptions in Labrador - and that is essentially Torngat Mountains and the new Cartwright - L'Anse au Clair seat - we take position that the seats should be plus or minus 10 per cent. There is a wrinkle with respect to Naskaupi, or Lake Melville as it will be called, and Labrador West, as it will be called. I will deal with that in due course.

MS VERGE: (Inaudible) more than one wrinkle in this (inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The hon. lady has a wrinkled mind, Mr. Speaker. She sees wrinkles where there is a seamless garment. We are dealing with reality now, and I ask the hon. lady not to interrupt when we are about important things. She will get her chance.

We decided as a government we would try to implement this bill. But as I said, we weren't prepared to allow greater tolerances. That has been our consistent position, and that is the position on which we stand, the position on which we will fall should we have to fall, but I don't believe we will.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. `Byrne Primus' would be well-advised not to enter a debate until his turn comes, and in turn I shall not interrupt him when his turn comes. We carry on.

I asked, with the acknowledgement of the government, one of my civil division solicitors, David Jones, who had been secretary to the Commission and done admirable work - or legal counsel, whatever his title was to the Commission. Did admirable work, and knew the file well. I asked Mr. Jones -

MS VERGE: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The hon. lady keeps interrupting me. I realize she doesn't mind if she is rude. She thinks that is probably politically desirable. I would say to her that if she expects to be heard in some kind of respect here she has to extend it to others. That is pretty basic. Her mother would have told her that when she sat at her mother's knee three or four years ago. The hon. lady, I ask her again, please to allow me to get on with what I'm saying and I will let her get on with what she is saying. i gather I'm to have the honour of having her respond to these few humble remarks.

Mr. Speaker, let me carry on. I asked Mr. Jones, who is a civil division solicitor, been with the government for a number of years, probably back to the time when my hon. friend the Member for Humber East was the Minister of Justice. He is a very good lawyer and does very good work. I don't know how long he has been there but probably back in the hon. lady's time. I asked him to tell us what would be involved in implementing the recommendations of the commission and staying with the 10 per cent rule, those two directions. I said David start at forty-four seats and see what you have to do. He did all the numbers and in fact, in due course I asked him to brief both Opposition caucuses. It did not take him long to brief my friend from St. John's East, his Caucus is still fairly small but the official Opposition Caucus were briefed fully by Mr. Jones, as were our own Caucus. He came back and he said in due course: Minister, I must tell you that the 10 per cent rule, to make that work, will take a House of forty-eight seats. That is where we got the forty-eight, no more magic then that.

MR. TOBIN: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman from Burin - Placentia West knows all about foolishness and he exhibits it and proves it daily. Let me say to the hon. gentleman, Mr. Speaker, I have said to the hon. gentleman - let me say to the hon. gentleman as I said to his leader, if he wants to be rude, Mr. Speaker, I shall have to pray the aid of the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I am about serious business. The hon. gentleman from Burin - Placentia West is pretty good at badinage, not as good as he thinks he is but I would say to him, let him badinage outside and let there be some good work done in here for the moment.

Mr. Speaker, we concluded that forty-eight seats were necessary if we were to have four seats entirely in Labrador, as the commission recommended and if the other seats were to be plus or minus 10 per cent. There is no more mystery then that. We then, Mr. Speaker, said well what shall we do? We finally said we shall ask some independent person, we shall give him or her a commission, we shall ask him or her to take the numbers, to take the data made available to the commission headed by Judge Mahoney, to take the evidence given before the commission headed by Mr. Justice Mahoney and to come back with a suggestion. That, Mr. Speaker, was the commission that was accepted by Mr. Justice Noel, at that time a Judge of the Supreme Court. He has since retired. Mr. Speaker, we asked Judge Noel to accept the commission and table the commission here in the House. I thought I had a copy of it but I cannot seem to lay my hands on it. I believe one has been distributed to members and if the Clerk has one to hand perhaps he or she could pass one to me.

AN HON. MEMBER: What is it?

MR. ROBERTS: The commission of Mr. Justice Noel. It is a copy of the Order in Council that was adopted. We tabled it here in the House but if it is not here we will get one. I can tell members pretty well what is in it and I think I have here in this book a brief of it in any event but whether I do or not, let me say what it was. Let me say what was in the commission issued to Mr. Justice Noel. We said to him take Labrador and take the two urban seats in Labrador. Now that is the seat represented by my friend from Menihek and the seat I represent and he and I will agree, whatever else we may disagree on, that those seats are urban seats. They are both a long way from St. John's, his somewhat further then mine but they are not rural seats. I have a couple of communities that are perhaps rural; North West River, Sheshatshiu, Mud Lake but the town of Happy Valley - Goose Bay is as modern and as urban a centre as we have in this Province today. I know my friend would agree that Labrador City and Wabush are as modern and as urban centres as we have today in this Province.

MR. HARRIS: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I say to my friend from St. John's East, I hope there is more jet traffic in Goose Bay because that's jobs and it is jobs at an acceptable price and I would do it any time. I said an acceptable price and I do that any time.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me come back - and I say to my friend from St. John's East let him too possess us - we will even hear him, we are that democratic in this House. Now, Your Honour, Judge Noel was asked to take the population of the -

MS VERGE: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Here goes the hon. lady once again erupting. I wish she would do her erupting in private. It is more socially acceptable.

Now Your Honour, we asked Judge Noel to take the two urban seats in Labrador - Menihek and Naskaupi in the present House - to take their population, add it up, divide by two and get a quotient and then to take that quotient as the quotient for the Province and come up with the number of seats that were necessary to carry that quotient throughout the Province using the plus or minus 10 per cent.

Now, the Order in Council says that a little more succinctly -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) be the judge of that.

MR. ROBERTS: - but, Mr. Speaker - the hon. gentleman for St. John's East once again is erupting and he is like his soul mate, his fellow Scorpio, his birthday mate, his intellectual equal -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: No, I wouldn't go that far - his soul mate but not his intellectual equal, the hon. lady from Humber East. If he doesn't know why we need judges, he should go back to law school, maybe some judges will tell him in due course.

Mr. Speaker, the Commission given to Mr. Justice Noel by the Cabinet, which was tabled here in the House, roughly contemporaneously, I don't remember the dates, they are on the record, provided for a House of forty-eight seats, and when he did the arithmetic in his report and the report was tabled here as soon as we received it, and I believe the House was in session at the time but in any event, if not it was tabled soon after that as the House met, came up with forty-eight seats and he then, Mr. Speaker, I don't have the Commission here and nobody has given it to me so I won't be able to read it as my note said, but the Commission is public.

He then took the population of the Province, took the census data, took the evidence from the representations made to the Commission headed by Judge Mahoney and he came up with a map dividing the Province into forty-eight constituencies and that's the map that's in the bill now before the House. There is not a boundary changed. There are some changes in names and I will deal with those, but there is not a boundary change. The boundaries in the schedule of Bill 31 are those recommended by Mr. Justice Noel in his report, with not a jot or a tittle of an exception.

His report, in my judgement and that of the government, is an admirable job and I want to thank him too, I want to acknowledge; he was not paid a nickel for it. He did it as part of his regular work, he did the report expeditiously and efficiently, and I thank him for it, his report is here and in due course the House will be asked to address it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, here is the Commission now. Let me just make reference to it. It was the Order in Council, 95-082, adopted on the 8th of March, 1995 and I will table it, but we gave the judge an instruction as I say, to put four seats in Labrador thus implementing the report the recommendation of the Commission headed by Judge Mahoney; we then directed him to get a quotient using the process I have set out by subtracting the population of the present Torngat and Eagle River districts and taking the remaining number and dividing it by the lowest number that will enable the two remaining Labrador districts to fall in plus or minus 10 per cent if they were divided equally - I thank my friend - and then we went on to allow the Commissioner a special power with respect to the southwest coast of the Island of Newfoundland and then we said, subject to the above, the boundaries of the remaining districts shall be such as to ensure that the population of no district shall vary from the quotient by more than 10 per cent, and when Judge Noel did his numbers he came out with the quotient, it was 11,126 and then he took the plus or minus 10 per cent, and dividing 11,126 to fall within plus or minus 10 per cent of the quotient, 11,126 of the Labrador seats going 10 per cent up or 10 per cent down, he came to 12,181 and that's the figure he adopted, 12,181, forty-four on the Island, four in Labrador, and he sets out that succinctly in Part 2 of his report dated April, 26 which has had an analysis admitted in Council, MC 95-0153, which is the one I just read. It's OC 95-082, it's MC 95-0153. Only the Cabinet office can explain the arcane process by which we number OCs and MCs and the difference between them.

MS VERGE: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The hon. lady may know what arcane is, but she doesn't what good manners are, and if she wants to be as intelligent as I believe she is, she would show a little good manners.

Now, Mr. Speaker, Byrne Primus, has something to say and I will gladly hear him when his turn comes.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the bill before the House implements Judge Noel's report with only one change. We have changed some names and among the papers provided to the members is a concordance which shows the district name recommended by Judge Noel and the name which is in the proposed bill. We have also provided members with an analysis, which I think is a very interesting one, of the historical names of districts. For example, there has been in this House since 1832, in every House, and we are now up to the Forty-Second General Assembly, there has always been a seat with the name Bonavista in it. There has always been a seat with the name Burin in it. Since 1855, the first Responsible Government House as opposed to the Representative Government House, there has been a seat with the name of Burgeo and LaPoile in it, or Burgeo. There has been a seat called Conception Bay. There has been a seat called Ferryland. Right from the start in every House of Assembly elected since elections began in this Island of ours, in 1832, it has had a Member for Ferryland, a Member for Fortune Bay, a Member for Placentia and St. Mary's, a Member for Trinity Bay, a Member for Twillingate and Fogo. They are all laid out here up to Confederation, and if anybody wants post - Confederation I am old enough and I have been around long enough to be able to give members that, or they are out here on the roles that are hanging in the lobby behind the government side here, all except 1949. I have no idea what happened to that but I suspect it went to Russwood one day on loan and the loan is still outstanding if the truth were to be known, but I do not know that. All I know is that the 1949 role has gone missing but the others are hanging out here. Mr. Speaker, we did change some of the names for historical reasons.

MR. A. SNOW: Why Labrador West?

MR. ROBERTS: My friend for Menihek asks why drop Menihek and Labrador West. I asked widely around Labrador West, including councils and the Chambers of Commerce, and people there told me that Labrador West, in their view, was more descriptive and a better term than Menihek. Menihek is a river, I guess. It was a power station many years ago and the power station is still there, up near Schefferville. People in Western Labrador in my dealings, and my hon. friend will contradict me if he believes I am wrong, but in my dealing it has always preferred to be said Labrador West, Lab West, or Western Labrador, so that is why.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you say you did it, or the judge?

MR. ROBERTS: The judge recommended Menihek, I believe.

AN HON. MEMBER: Can you do that?

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, I did. The judge did not hold hearings. I asked. I am a minister and I am responsible for the conduct of this bill. I asked, yes. I asked and I made the answer. I asked people in Western Labrador, and I asked people in my own constituency, what should this be called, and they said, well, Naskaupi means nothing to us. It is the name of a river and it is the name of an Indian tribe who ironically live in the Torngat Mountains district. The Innu people living in my constituency are primarily Montagnais and the Naskaupi people live up in Davis Inlet, the members of the Innu nation. They said they were always known as Lake Melville. Eagle River is really only the name of one of Frank Moores sporting haunts, and when we consulted the people in that area they said Cartwright to L'Anse au Clair was a more descriptive one.

Here in St. John's Judge Noel suggested Columbus Drive. Now, Columbus Drive is not an old street and it is certainly not a name connected with St. John's. I think my friend for Waterford - Kenmount agrees with that and we made a change. It was given some merriment in Column seven today of The Evening Telegram but we have made a change and are calling it St. John's West, and all the other seats were changed.

My friend for Fortune - Hermitage disagrees with the suggestion of Fortune Bay and Hermitage so we will have to try and find a name that suits that. Mr. Speaker, the point of it is we have tried to preserve the sense of history and I have tabled both the concordance which shows the changes we have made and also the historical analysis which gives the history of seats going back to 1832. Now, those are the only changes we made, Mr. Speaker.

Let me make one other reference to the instructions given to Judge Noel so that it is on the record in case members want to refer to it or are interested in it, and that is the situation in the two urban Labrador seats, my seat and the seat represented by the Member for Menihek, Naskaupi and Menihek. Strictly speaking each of them it out of tolerance. The instructions of Judge Noel were cast very carefully. The quotient for each of the other districts of the Province subject to, with exceptions for Torngat and Eagle River, shall be determined by subtracting the population of the present Torngat and Eagle River districts and that of the Province, and dividing the resulting total by the lowest number that will enable the two remaining Labrador districts to fall within plus or minus 10 per cent of the quotient if they were divided equally.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the two Labradors - the reason those words `if they were divided equally' are in there was what would happen if we do not. If you look at, again, the table that has come out, it will be noted that the new Lake Melville district is somewhat higher than the 10 per cent rule, and the new Labrador West district is somewhat lower. The two together fall within - if you add the two of them together and divide the total by two, you come into the plus or minus 10 per cent. Now the reason for that is that the population of Labrador West is marginally greater than that of the present Naskaupi, including Churchill Falls, Northwest River, Sheshatshiu, Happy Valley - Goose Bay, and Mud Lake. The only way to bring them into sync would be to take, I think it is, 105 residents of Wabush and put them in with the new Lake Melville district. Now I think my friend from Menihek would agree with me; that is not a very good solution. To divide the two of them equally, to bring both into the 10 per cent rule, it would be necessary to take, I think it is, 110 people from Wabush and make them part of the new Lake Melville district, and the other people in Wabush, and all of the people who live in Labrador West, would be constituents in Labrador West; so that is what happened there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: That was the Mahoney Commission recommendation. I agree with my friend from Menihek that people in Churchill tend to look to the west as opposed to Happy Valley. I am aware of that, as is he, and we are both right, but the population of Churchill, which is about 800 in round numbers, would hopelessly skew the two, and the two seats in Labrador are both urban seats; he will acknowledge that. They are the concerns of the people of my constituency, by and large, and the concerns of the people of his are those comparable to the people who live in Grand Falls or St. John's or Corner Brook as opposed to those who live in Conche or in Pigeon Cove or Belleoram, in the smaller communities around the Province, so that was the reason why.

Let me talk for a moment about Torngat and Eagle River, the new L'Anse-au-Clair to Cartwright seat. They are the handful of exceptions. I do not believe there is a member of the House who would stand and say - if there is, let them do it - that the people who live along the Coast of Labrador, and there are in the area from L'Anse-au-Clair to Nain, which is about 900 miles, if memory serves me correctly, of some of the most rugged coastline in our Province, there are approximately 9,000 or 9,100 according to the 1991 census; I do not believe there is a member of the House who would say they should be formed into simply one seat. That was tried once, in a district that began at Mary's Harbour and ran to Nain. If one looks at the 1975 roll, and there were fifty-one seats in the House in that stage, you will see, opposite the name of the Eagle River district, the name of Ian Strachan, who was the Liberal member for that seat elected in '75, and Ian's seat began at Mary's Harbour and went to Nain. Experience showed that was unworkable in every sense of the word, and in 1979, or 1978 the House amended - no, it was '79; Mr. Peckford was Premier - and added the fifty-second seat to the House, and did that by creating the present Eagle River and Torngat seats, and they made an incidental adjustment in the seat I represent, the Strait of Bell Isle, because the area from Red Bay, the community immediately south of Mary's Harbour, to L'Anse-au-Clair in the 1975 distribution was included in the Strait of Bell Isle. Now that was done simply to discomfort me, of course.

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. ROBERTS: One of Mr. Frank Moores' efforts to... But I did my best to try to discomfort him on occasion. If it had not been for Mr. Smallwood, I think we would have discomforted him mightily in 1975.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: My friend from St. John's Centre recollects, my friend for Terra Nova recollects. (Inaudible) any others in the House who recollect, but we recollect mightily -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I'm sorry?

AN HON. MEMBER: That's all the friends you have.

MR. ROBERTS: I believe my friend, but that is more than he has on occasion, I would say to him. I would say that we would have discomforted Mr. Moores mightily in 1975 if Mr. Smallwood had stayed out and let it be a two-person fight, a two-party fight.

In any event, the point I was making, Mr. Speaker, is that there is nobody, I believe, who would stand and say that the people of Torngat do not in themselves deserve a special electoral district. The six communities from Rigolet to Nain are among the most isolated in our Province. The terrain is among the most rugged in our Province. The difficulties of travel and communications, the problems are such, and add on the fact that that is the one area of our Province where a majority of the people are aboriginal. The great majority of the people there are aboriginal. We believe it is appropriate and proper to create a Torngat seat. We have done that, and it has been there since 1979 in the present form. We ask the House to continue it.

Also, that leaves Eagle River. There are about 5,200 people in the area of the present District of Eagle River. Fifty-one hundred and thirty-three. The question then comes: Where does one put those? The Boundaries Commission led by Judge Mahoney recommended they go in with the Island. The Island was one proposal, and the other proposal was Goose Bay. Either way you have an impossible situation. Again, the area between L'Anse au Clair and Red Bay, my friend for Eagle River will agree, is comparable to any other rural area in the Province. Once you get north of Red Bay you get into Mary's Harbour and St. Lewis and Lodge Bay, communities going down through Black Tickle and on into Cartwright into Paradise River and Separation Point, and the mouth of the Eagle River where the Lethbridge family - I guess that is the most northerly or the most westerly place in the constituency - the problems of distance and of travel and communication are such that in our mind it is justified. That is why we have the second seat on the coast of Labrador. Again, we make no apologies for that. We are proud of it and we believe it is appropriate.

I've only got a couple of minutes left. I believe I have about ten minutes, I would ask the Clerk at the Table.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, pardon? Eight minutes. I thank my friend for Ferryland. He has never been able to shut me up, and I can tell him the only people who can in this House are the Speaker or my constituents.

Mr. Speaker, let me say a word about the financial aspects. I anticipate there will be a considerable amount of hoopla about this in the next day or two while we are debating this bill. This bill is not brought in as a money-saving measure, but it will produce substantial savings annually and on a recurring basis. The budget for the House on the Estimates - now, I'm not counting special warrants, I'm not counting any reductions that may be made in the consequence of the present exercise - the budget for the House is $8.206 million. That is the House of Assembly. That doesn't include the Chief Electoral Officer or the Auditor General's Office which are under the same head. That is the budget of the House.

Just divide that by fifty-two. I know that is rough justice but it is a way to do it. If you divide it by fifty-two you have $157,000 for each member.

MR. SULLIVAN: We have fixed costs.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, we have fixed costs. If only the hon. gentleman would have a fixed mouth we would be okay. That $157,000 does not include pension payments or the pension liabilities that accrue, because the pension liabilities are not recorded in the annual accounts, not separately - I don't know if they are there under - and the pension payments are paid out of a different head. The retired members of the House who are drawing pensions, payments to that come from a different head entirely than that in the House.

Reducing the House by four MHAs will save about $600,000 a year every year forever. That is not a huge amount of money, but it is a significant amount of money. We don't put this forward as a cost-reduction bill, but we put it forward acknowledging that it will save some money. We could save even more. If members wanted, we could abolish the House, but the last government that did that was a Tory House in 1934. Let it be remembered, the last time the House cost nothing was when the Tories formed a government in 1934 under Prime Minister Alderdice and they abolished the House. We can do that and we can save the entire $8.206 million.

Let me say one or two words about one other feature of the bill. We are asking as well the House to change the section -

AN HON. MEMBER: So moved.

MR. ROBERTS: I'm glad the member moves it. To change the section of the act that sets the requirements for the degree of support needed to make the orders of the House, the rules of the House, the Standing Orders. That is found in section 3, Mr. Speaker.

At present, Mr. Speaker, the House requires that - a change in the rules of the House, Mr. Speaker, requires the affirmative support of two-thirds of the members of the House, that is 34.32 MHAs in the House of fifty-five. I don't know whether it is thirty-four or thirty-five unless my friend from Ferryland is the .32 which perhaps he could be, but it takes thirty-four or thirty-five MHAs to change a rule. I am not going to give a legal opinion at this stage. It is not my place to give legal advice to the House. There is no other Legislature in Canada that has that rule; most are a simple majority of the members present and voting. The rule we suggest to the House, Mr. Speaker, the rule we suggest to the House will be that the vote of 50 per cent plus one of the members present and voting in favour will be sufficient to make the rules of the House or to change them once made. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is not something we plucked out of thin air; that of course is the test of the Houses confidence. The government's right to hold office is judged by that measure. Our right to hold office is tested every day by that standard, 50 per cent plus one of the members present and voting. Mr. Speaker, we put it forward on that basis and we have no hesitation in commending it.

Let me just say a word about the two-thirds requirement, it has been there since Confederation. I did not go back before Confederation, it may or may not have been there in the pre-Commission House but while the result is very clear, you get rule changes in only one of two situations, either when you have an overwhelming government majority or unanimous consent. Now the second is a receipt for paralysis, you get the lowest common denominator. The first we have seen - we have seen two situations in this House where the government had an overwhelming majority, one was after '49 and the other was after '72, I sat here in '72. It was in 1974 when the Moores administration, using its overwhelming majority, within the rules, changed the rules to try to silence the Opposition. Now, Mr. Speaker, in '74 the Moores administration used its overwhelming majority to force changes through. Now, Mr. Speaker, our suggestion is that we should put this on the same basis as the confidence of the House, namely that 50 per cent plus one is sufficient to make the rules, it is sufficient to make a government and -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentlemen opposite may say what they wish and we shall listen to them with the respect their remarks deserve. They may vote as they wish and at the end of the day we will see who has the votes and the votes will decide because this is a measure of confidence, as is every government bill, Mr. Speaker. If we don't carry this bill, I say to my friends opposite, if we don't carry this bill the Premier will be down at Government House, not for dinner, not for a cup of tea but to go to the people.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. ROBERTS: Talk about whistling past the graveyard. There is nothing hon. members on the other side would like less then to have to face the electorate today, nothing we on this side would like more, Mr. Speaker.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me conclude that this is a good bill. It is the best redistribution bill ever to be brought before this House. The best, bar none, ever to be brought before this House. We had twenty-eight seats, we went to thirty-six, we went to forty-two, we went to fifty-one, we went to fifty-two and now we are going back to forty-eight and for the first time, Mr. Speaker, we are going to do it firmly on the basis of one person, one vote. As nearly as it is possible to do so.

So, Mr. Speaker, with those few brief remarks I commend this bill to the House and I look forward with confidence to seeing it read a second time and then becoming law, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Before I recognize the hon. Opposition Leader I would like to welcome to the public galleries, on behalf of hon. members, the former Member for St. George's, Mr. Alec Dunphy.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, this -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

If hon. members want to argue I suggest they leave the Chamber. I have recognized the hon. Opposition Leader.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This bill, Mr. Speaker -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I have recognized the hon. Leader of the Opposition to speak, if hon. members like to argue they can go outside.

MS VERGE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This bill is bad. This bill represents the worst kind of crass gerrymandering. This bill will produce a modest amount of savings, most unfair in the light of the massive cuts being imposed on hospitals, schools and municipalities.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice and his Liberal colleagues are responsible for this atrocity. Mr. Justice Noel is not responsible. A staff lawyer in the Department of Justice is not responsible. The legitimate boundaries commission constituted by law, with the chief commissioner appointed by the Chief Justice of the Province and the other commissioners appointed by the Speaker are not responsible.

Mr. Speaker, this bill will produce forty-eight districts, a token reduction of four. This bill ignores the proposal of the legitimate commission to have forty districts, a reduction of twelve. This bill effectively flushes down the drain the $400,000 of taxpayers' money spent on the legitimate commission, and the bill is contrary to the final report and recommendation of the legitimate commission calling for forty-four districts, a reduction of eight.

Mr. Speaker, this bill, in calling for forty-eight districts, is outside the scope of the current law. When the current Liberal government launched this process three years ago, the Minister of Finance of the day announced, in a fall mini-Budget, that the government was going to direct a redistribution commission to make recommendations for a House of Assembly consisting of the most appropriate number of districts between forty and forty-six. That was announced along with roll-backs and cuts which were imposed on individual citizens and publicly financed organizations providing public services.

After that announcement the government initiated three sets of changes to provincial legislation. Later that year the government initiated amendments to the Electoral Boundaries Act to direct the Electoral Boundaries Commission to determine the number of districts between forty and forty-six. That bill was passed in late December of 1992. The next spring the government initiated another amendment to enlarge the size of the commission from four to five. The original act said that the commission had to be composed of a chairperson chosen by the Chief Justice and other commissioners - three other commissioners selected by the Speaker - and that was designed to ensure that the commission would be non-partisan and impartial.

In the spring of 1993 the government initiated a change to enlarge the commission by one, and when that was passed the government proceeded to announce the commissioners. The government announced that the Chief Justice of the Province had chosen Mr. Justice John Mahoney of the Court of Appeal, and the Speaker designated Beatrice Watts, John Nolan, Ray Baird and Dorothy Inglis. The five-member commission, under the provisions of the law, which the government had reviewed which allowed a range between forty and forty-six districts with the population varying from the provincial average by plus or minus 25 per cent, proceeded to have hearings in many locations in the Province. The commission preceded their meetings by publishing a proposal for forty districts. The law gave them the discretion to have between forty and forty-six. They proposed forty as a starting point for the public discussions. After they had had several public meetings the current Minister of Justice started interfering. The minister appeared before the Commission at a public meeting in Clarenville and told them that the government - or to use his word, the Ministry - didn't like its proposal for forty districts. It, on looking at the political fall-out for the Liberal Party, was objecting to a loss of twelve districts. The government then proceeded to change the law. For the third time in this process the government changed the law.

In the amendments made at that stage in the late fall of 1993 the government changed the act to say that there had to be forty-six districts, giving options in restricted circumstances for a smaller number of districts, but the amended act provided for a variation from the provincial population average of no more than plus or minus 10 per cent. By changing the law the third time after the Commission had been constituted, after the Commission had proposed forty districts, after the Commission had had several public hearings, the government changed the rules.

The Commission carried on and held more hearings. Finally in the summer of 1994 the Mahoney commission published its report with recommendations calling for forty-four districts. That was a reduction of eight. Mr. Speaker, the government didn't like that either. Members of the Liberal caucus rebelled. The Premier yielded to the pressure and then authorized the Minister of Justice to concoct boundaries. The Minister of Justice and some of his cronies went into the back room and rigged a map dividing the Province into forty-eight districts. They had a staff lawyer consult the Opposition caucus. Some of us did not attend the meeting on principle. Then the Minister of Justice went to Mr. Justice Mahoney and asked Mr. Justice Mahoney if he would rework the boundaries for the third time. The Mahoney commission initially, under the original legislation, proposed forty districts. After the legislation was changed the Commission recommended forty-four districts. Then the Minister of Justice asked Mr. Justice Mahoney if the Mahoney commission would produce a third recommendation, namely a recommendation for forty-eight districts. Mr. Justice Mahoney refused.

There only ever has been one legally authorized boundaries commission. That is the Mahoney commission. Mr. Justice Mahoney was not hand-picked by the Minister of Justice. Mr. Justice Mahoney was not picked by the Ministry. Mr. Justice Mahoney was chosen by the Chief Justice of the Province. The other commissioners were designated by the Speaker. All five commissioners under the law that is still in force, the law that the Ministry changed in mid-stream, made a final recommendation for forty-four districts.

When the Minister of Justice went to Mr. Justice Mahoney and asked for a third proposal, a recommendation for forty-eight districts, Mr. Justice Mahoney said no. The Minister of Justice, in an effort to hide, to camouflage what he had done, in an effort to put an ethical face on gerrymandering, went to Mr. Justice Noel. The Ministry selected Mr. Justice Noel. Mr. Justice Noel put his name on the cover of the rigged forty-eight district map which the Minister of Justice and his Liberal colleagues rigged in the back room.

This bill that is now before us is the product of a flawed, tainted process, and on those grounds alone we in the Official Opposition will vigorously oppose it. Worse than that, it amounts to only a token reduction in the number of seats, a minimal savings of public funds, at a time when this Administration is more ruthlessly and recklessly than ever before slashing public services, cutting hospitals, putting the boots to municipalities, threatening to roll back wages, lay off staff, water down services at a time when the government is demoralising people, preaching doom and gloom.

Mr. Speaker, how can this government in good conscience, reduce the House of Assembly by only four districts when the legally authorized commission recommended forty-four, when the commission under the original law in the early days of its mandate proposed forty, and now, carry on to make drastic reductions in hospital funding, in grants to schools and colleges, in funding for Memorial University, in operating grants to municipalities? I mean, what an appalling double standard and on top of all that, Mr. Speaker, this government spent over $400,000 on the Mahoney Commission, whose work they have rejected, whose recommendations they have totally ignored.

Mr. Speaker, last Friday in Question Period, I asked the Minister of Justice if he and his colleagues who are responsible for this whole process, who controlled it from the beginning, who changed the law three times, and who in the end, rigged their own boundaries, would repay to the public Treasury the $400,000 that was wasted on the Mahoney Commission? Mr. Speaker, the waste of money was not an accident. It didn't result from carelessness; it didn't happen because of unforeseen circumstances.

The Premier and the Minister of Justice directed this whole process from beginning to end. Remember, they changed the law three times after they made the announcement in the mini-Budget three years ago that they were going to reduce the number of seats by eight to twelve, they changed the law to direct the redistribution commission to recommend a number within that scope, they amended the law later to enlarge the size of the commission which of course, drove up the cost of the commission and then they changed the law a third time to handcuff the commission, to direct forty-six unless certain exceptions were found, and to restrict the population variance to plus or minus 10 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, this process is contrary to the democratic practices that evolved, it amounts to turning back the clock, it's tainted, it's corrupt, it's partisan, in a word it is gerrymandering. The process produces a budget savings which is unreasonable and out of proportion to the kind of cuts that are being inflicted on vital public services. It amounts to the breaking of a promise issued in the mini-Budget three years ago, and it has the effect of wasting the $400,000 that were spent on a legitimate commission; the $400,000 that was deliberately authorized and spent by this government which controlled the whole, crooked, redistribution process from beginning to end.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice bragged about the bill providing for Island districts that vary from the provincial population average by no more than 10 per cent. Mr. Speaker, that is not a goal, that is not a restriction that is appropriate for our geography and it is not a restriction that is found in the legislation governing district redistribution in most other provinces. I recently canvassed most of the provinces and found that British Columbia has no population restriction whatsoever, and the districts in British Columbia in fact have populations deviating from the average by as much as 60 per cent - 59.9 per cent precisely - on the high side, and 40 per cent on the low side. Plus 59.9 per cent minus 39.8 per cent.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS VERGE: Mr. Speaker, the last redistribution, I say to the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, happened about a year and a half ago.

In Alberta the law allows a maximum deviation from the mean district population of 25 per cent, with the exception of a maximum of four districts whose population can be 50 per cent below the average if specific conditions are met. There is some latitude given in determining the population for those exceptional districts.

Saskatchewan is the example the Minister of Justice and the Premier keep pointing to because it is the only one which happens to approximate their rigid, narrow, urban-based way of thinking, the only one which facilitates their quest to have a further accelerated shift of population from rural areas to urban areas.

In Manitoba, where a very high percentage of the population is concentrated in Winnipeg and a couple of other smaller urban centres, the law authorizes variants from the provincial population average by 10 per cent, except for northern districts where the variants may be plus or minus 25 per cent.

In the Maritime provinces, plus or minus 25 per cent seems to be the norm. That is specifically the case in New Brunswick and in Prince Edward Island. In New Brunswick, in addition to the general rule of plus or minus 25 per cent, a greater latitude is allowed for one area in the Fundy Isles.

On the Island of Newfoundland, as members of this House should be well aware, we have a high percentage of people living in small communities, in rural areas, and we have a very large territory in proportion to the population. The original law allowing plus or minus 25 per cent is much more reasonable and suitable for our geography and our population than the amended provision which is now operative, the 10 per cent. I would say to the Minister of Justice who now represents Naskaupi that the case he makes for smaller populations on the Coast of Labrador can and should be applied to many rural ridings along the coastline of Newfoundland.

Even after changing the law and restricting the parameters for the legitimate Boundaries Commission the Ministry, to use the Minister of Justice's word, wouldn't go along with the final report. The last time districts were changed in this Province, a bit more than ten years ago in the mid-1980s, I was a Cabinet minister. Under the provisions of the act which was then in effect, which were the same as the act in effect three years ago when the Liberal administration began the process that is now coming to a conclusion, the Peckford administration accepted in total, without change, the report of the commission. The commission was headed by Mr. Justice Bartlett and there were two or three other commissioners. The Peckford administration implemented the final recommendation in total without any deviation.

Mr. Speaker, for some members of the PC caucus of the day there were changes which were upsetting, or changes that did not make sense, but as a matter of policy the Peckford government decided that we should implement the report without change. The feeling was that if we started to tamper with the recommendations, even though the temptation was there and there were plausible reasons to make some amendments from the Bartlett commission report, that we would be essentially opening Pandora's Box and we wanted to be seen to be presiding over a process that was impartial and fair. There is an expression used by lawyers that justice must not only be done but it must be seen to be done, and in the case of the boundaries redistribution in the mid '80s the Peckford cabinet wanted not only to have changes that were chosen impartially but we wanted people to see the changes as the product of an impartial and a fair process.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the current Liberal government does not seem to care anymore what people think, and I cannot help but shake my head at the disillusionment that former supporters of this government must feel. Many people in the Province voted for the Liberals in 1989 believing the promise of real change and liking the sound of the fairness and balance slogan. Again, in 1993 people in the Province gave the Liberals a mandate. Budget responsibility was more of an issue in the 1993 election so people who had faith in this Liberal administration believed that they would adhere to a high ethical standard, that they would be fair and honest, and they expected that the government would be responsible in making spending decisions, and would be consistent.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has done exactly the opposite. The government has basically blatantly rejected the recommendations of a legally constituted impartial non-partisan commission, wasting $400,000 in the process, $400,000 which is so badly needed today in the health system, in our schools, and by municipalities. Then they proceeded to have the Justice Minister and a few of his cronies rig the boundaries without any pretence of using the work and the impartial recommendations of the Mahoney Commission.

Now, the Minister of Justice did make an attempt to camouflage skulduggery. He did go to Mr. Justice Mahoney and ask the Mahoney Commission to produce a third recommendation calling for forty-eight districts, and he must have been upset when Mr. Justice Mahoney said, no. We can only imagine that conversation, we can only imagine what Mr. Justice Mahoney must have thought after having produced a final report calling for forty-four districts, following a change in the law, up four from the initial proposal of forty, to be confronted by the Minister of Justice and told that government was not satisfied with a forty-four district result, and wanted the commission to re-work it a third time. Well, you can only imagine what Mr. Justice Mahoney thought, and we can think what his reply must have been; it was a `no'. The Minister of Justice then went judge shopping, and he found a judge who was willing to do his bidding. He and the Ministry hand-picked Mr. Justice Noel, and Mr. Justice Noel put his name on the cover of the forty-eight district proposal which the Justice Minister, and probably the Minister of Tourism and Culture, cooked up.

Mr. Speaker, the Premier and the Minister of Justice could not sell to the Liberal caucus either the forty district proposal of the Mahoney commission in the early days under the original law or the forty-four district recommendation in the final report under the amended, amended law. Mr. Speaker, when you remember that the Liberal government controlled this process all along the way, all along the twisting and turning path, then you have to conclude that they are totally incompetent - totally incompetent. Even when they have total power and control to make the law, they cannot accept the product. They have to keep making changes until finally, in this case, they had to abandon the $400,000 work of the legitimate commission and rig boundaries themselves.

Mr. Speaker, since Confederation democratic practices in this Province evolved. In the Smallwood era in the fifties and sixties, and I realize that is when the Premier and the Minister of Justice learned their trade in politics, there was no pretence at impartiality in determining electoral boundaries. The Liberal Party did not have a public process or an open-party process for nominations. There was no Public Tender Act. Joey Smallwood basically carved up the Province and gave contracts to construction firms and wholesalers and other business people who supported him and the Liberal Party. He ruthlessly withdrew business and penalized anyone who crossed him, or had the nerve to voice dissent with his administration. In the Smallwood Liberal days there was no Public Service Commission. The Premier and his henchmen blatantly and openly handpicked civil servants. They interfered with the courts. They had magistrates run for them as Liberal candidates, or deputy ministers run for them as Liberal candidates.

Mr. Speaker, when the PCs came to office in the 1970s things changed. The Public Tender Act was made law; the Public Service Commission was constituted; the merit principle was established to guide hiring for permanent public service positions.

Now the Member for Bonavista North is exclaiming, evidently from his perspective, everything was not as it should have been in the 1970s. Now I can believe that. I was not associated with politics in the 1970s. I was not a member of this House until late in 1979, but I can tell the minister that we then progressed from the Moores' PC era, which went from '72 to early '79, to the Peckford PC administration, and in the Peckford days there was a high ethical standard, a high standard for contracting and hiring, and in the case of a determination of electoral boundaries and redistribution, I can assure the Member for Bonavista North that the law was followed to the letter. A commission, headed by a judge chosen by the Chief Justice, held hearings and made a final report and the Peckford Cabinet implemented that report to the letter, without any deviation.

But, Mr. Speaker, what is happening now, represents major regression. We made progress from the '50s to the '60s to the '70s to the '80s. Here we are, in 1995, with a government that is behaving the same as the Smallwood Liberal Government carried on in the 1960s. The only little bit of difference is that the current Liberal Government is stuck with certain laws and even after the government changed those laws to facilitate its partisan objectives, when the result didn't suit them they have blatantly ignored the law.

The current law of this Province restricts the size of the redistributed House of Assembly to a maximum of forty-six. What are we doing here today considering a bill proposing forty-eight districts? The current law of Newfoundland and Labrador says that districts have to be drawn by an impartial commission made up of a chairperson chosen by the Chief Justice of the Province and four other commissioners selected by the Speaker. What are we here today debating a bill which provides for boundaries that were rigged by the Minister of Justice and rubber-stamped by a judge whom he selected? It's a contaminated process. It's unacceptable in the 1990s; as I mentioned, it represents turning back the clock.

Mr. Speaker, for the people we represent, process may not be of paramount consideration. Most people in this Province today are worried about earning a livelihood, buying groceries. Many people are wondering if they and their families will be able to continue living here in Newfoundland and Labrador. We are seeing an alarming increase in out-migration. Just over the last few months, moving vans are fully booked; U-hauls are all rented. Tractor trailers are in use to ship out people's belongings from Newfoundland to Alberta, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

People who work for the airlines, people who work for Marine Atlantic, say that over the last six months there has been an unprecedented number of one-way tickets sold. One-way tickets for Newfoundlanders who are leaving this Province hoping to find work on the mainland of Canada, mostly in Western Canada, who don't expect to be able to come back home. Mr. Speaker, some of these people have given up and concluded that there is no future for them here because the message they hear from the Premier, the message they hear from the Member for Eagle River, is that there is no future. This is a do-nothing government; this is a government lacking an agenda. This is a government that's not talking about opportunity or jobs.

This is a government that is obsessed with cutting and rolling back, it is a government that has a Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs who seems to enjoy telling volunteer councillors and mayors that they are going to be cut more than they were before, that even more responsibilities are going to be down loaded to them. This is a government that says on the one hand, that people are taxed to the hilt but on the other, that people in rural communities should be paying higher taxes. Now, how, I ask the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, are people in communities on the northern tip of the Northern Peninsula going to come up with money to pay more taxes? There is a massive unemployment problem. The populations are shrinking, most communities are lucky if they have a complement of volunteers willing to carry on.

Mr. Speaker, if additional taxes is the best answer this government can come up with, then I say, to the ministers opposite: you impose the taxes, don't make volunteers, in small, rural communities do your dirty work. Mr. Speaker, redistribution was an overt, deliberate, formal program of the Smallwood Liberal Administration in the 1960s. In the 1990s, this Wells Liberal Administration has a hidden agenda of resettlement and this redistribution bill is facilitating that agenda.

This redistribution bill, with the Minister of Justice bragging about this particular feature of it, restricts population variances in Newfoundland ridings to plus or minus 10 per cent. The Minister of Justice and the Premier, who are controlling this process, want rural districts made larger in size and territory and therefore more difficult to service, rendering access to members more difficult and more frustrating, using as the excuse, equality. They don't seem to appreciate the fact that St. John's and Corner Brook urban ridings, where the population is compact in each district, where members can literally walk from one end of their district to another, involved much less work for members than sprawling rural ridings.

I say to the Member for Bonavista North that while his population now may be less then the population I represent, it is certainly less then the population of the Member for Waterford - Kenmount. I would venture to say that he gets many more calls in the run of a month, in the run of a year, then I do or my colleague representing Waterford - Kenmount. His district is much larger in size, it is spread out. It encompasses several communities, some unincorporated. The ones that are incorporated are served by volunteer mayors and councillors.

The Member for Waterford - Kenmount represents some 24,000 people. They are all in the city of St. John's. They have their basic services and needs met by the City Council for provincial government requirements, they are within easy reach. A local phone call or a short trip from a provincial government office where public servants can provide most needed information or provide most wanted service. So the number of occasions for people in Waterford - Kenmount to call upon their member, to be prompted to make a request of their member, would be inconsiderable compared to the demands that would be put on the Member for Bonavista North. I can make the same comparison among many other members of the House but, Mr. Speaker, for this Province we should have a redistribution law that recognizes geographic reality the same as the maritime provinces, the same as British Columbia, the same as Manitoba allows for smaller populations in rural areas on stretches of coastline where the communities are small and widely scattered than the populations in compact urban districts.

Mr. Speaker, we should certainly insist upon a process for drawing boundaries that are impartial and non-partisan and that process is provided for in the present law. It is just that this government is displaying total contempt for the present law by ignoring it and proceeding to bring in boundaries which were the produce of an illegitimate process, which were the product of rigging and manipulation by the Minister of Justice and probably the Member for Eagle River and a few of the other Liberal members opposite.

Mr. Speaker, on top of all that the final result for the budget is a token saving only. By reducing four seats when twelve was reasonable and originally recommended, when eight was formally recommended by the commission after the law was changed when the interference began, we will be getting half or one-third of the savings that were attainable, yet the government is proceeding to cut hospitals, schools and municipalities far more than was indicated by the budget last March, more than was brought about by budgets in the previous couple of years. Remember, this whole process was launched three years ago in a mini-budget. This government has been in office now for seven budget years and a pattern has been developed. Year after year the government brings down a Budget in the spring that turns out to be incomplete and misleading. Then in the fall, usually after the Opposition has pried out admissions that the Budget is off, there is a shocking announcement that a substantial amount of savings have to be realized, and the Christmas hope and cheer are squashed when there is a month-long process of alarming possibilities of roll-backs and cuts and slashes. Then, around the end of November or early December, there is a statement with decisions which are upsetting and negative, although rarely as bad as people were led to expect in the flurry of speculation and rumours in the preceding month.

Mr. Speaker, this has not happened just once or twice. It happens regularly. Last spring the government brought down a Budget which the Minister of Finance of the day and the Premier held on high, claiming it represented a balanced Budget, claiming that they would carry out their program of operations and construction this year without borrowing. The document, on the face of it, did not provide revenue without borrowing. On the face of the Budget brought down last March the government borrowed $80 million from itself. The government increased the total provincial debt by $80 million by taking that amount out of a sinking fund and applying it for current operations this year. Then the government took money from one-time transfers, and the federal government transfer for the downloading of the ferries, and applied it to current requirements.

So, there was $100 million of revenue for this year that was derived in questionable ways, and which really made it clear to any astute analyst last March that the Budget really was not balanced, but the government then carried on over the summer to spend $26 million which was not provided for in the Budget. I asked the Premier about that here this afternoon. The government spent $7.2 million on water bombers this summer. That was an expenditure that was not provided for in the March Budget. When I asked the Premier: Why, if the money wasn't in the Budget, did he spend it? Why didn't he just make do for another year?

Well, he said, the water bombers were fifty years old and had to be replaced. Obviously, the government had forty-nine years to get ready for and plan to replace the water bombers, so the omission of that amount from the March Budget is inexcusable. What is illustrated by this twisted redistribution process of the last three years is the government's total incompetence. Even when the government announces a goal the government rarely meets the objective, and the government constantly changes, retreats, deviates. The government is consistently inconsistent.

Mr. Speaker, many people in the Province have been taken in by the government's slick public relations. Gradually people are seeing through the veneer of polish. Gradually people are realizing that the government is incompetent, that the government rarely means what it says. People are beginning to see what really happened with boundaries. People are beginning to realize that the Budget was a sham. People are losing confidence in the government's ability to provide for municipalities when there has been a series of fiascos starting with amalgamation six years ago, but when it comes to hospital reorganization very few people yet realize that the government really does not know what it is doing. The government doesn't have a plan.

This summer there was an announcement of radical hospital reorganization here in St. John's involving the closure of the Grace, the Janeway and the Children's Rehab Centre. That was done for the stated purpose of improving patient services by redirecting money out of institutions and into the community. Mr. Speaker, what very few people have seen yet is that the government doesn't know how the Grace and the Janeway are going to be replaced. The government doesn't even have a vague, general concept of the infrastructure that will serve people after the Grace and the Janeway are closed. The government doesn't know what the construction cost will be to enlarge the Health Sciences Centre. The government doesn't know what the borrowing cost for that construction will be, and therefore the government has no idea whatsoever whether that radical re-configuration of hospitals in St. John's affecting patients in every part of the Province will make sense.

What the government announced this summer essentially involves option ten identified by officials of the government three or four years ago following receipt of a consultant's study. Public works engineers at the time produced cost estimates for option ten, specifically for enlarging the Health Sciences Centre to replace the Janeway and to take the Grace out of the system. That involved $309 million worth of construction.

How is the government going to come up with $309 million? Obviously borrowing. That is the only option. How much would it cost to borrow $309 million? At approximately 10 per cent annual interest that is $30 million a year just to service that borrowing. Thirty million dollars a year would go a long way to providing nursing care and other front-line patient care in institutions and in homes. The government in cutting and slashing, contrary to the approach taken in industry over the last several years, has not been streamlining administration and eliminating layers of middle management, and empowering front-line workers; this government has added to senior administration, has circumvented the Public Service Commission by hiring temporary staff, and is reducing personnel who are giving direct services to the public.

It is a government without a plan; it is a government that doesn't have the pretence of a plan any more. It is a government that has sunk so low, it is a government that has come down so far, that the government doesn't even pretend to conform to the law and to current democratic principles in redistributing boundaries.

The Member for Port de Grave, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, I understand is not very happy about the boundary changes. But the same as many other negative decisions of this government, decisions that are hurting his constituents, measures that are reducing services to the people he represents, he is going to go along with these decisions because he wants to hold his Cabinet seat. It was only when he was kicked out of the Cabinet and had a brief stint on the back bench that he rose his voice in support of people throughout the Province. When he was a backbencher he was a fighter for the people and now that he is in the Cabinet, with the Cabinet perks and extra salary, he is silent.

MR. TOBIN: Now, he is a wimp.

MS VERGE: He is a wimp. I am quoting the Member for Burin - Placentia West.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation was in the government three years ago when the government was hurting people by cutting, slashing, and rolling back, and he was part of the decision to impose fairness and balance to politicians and people he represented. He was part of the decision to reduce the House of Assembly by six or twelve seats, and now he is going along with this very disappointing result, this result that is not even authorized by the law, of a token reduction of four seats, four seats only instead of twelve initially proposed and instead of eight formerly recommended by the legitimate commission, four seats taken away from the politicians. What is going to be taken away from the individual voters, taxpayers, municipal councils, hospitals, group homes, colleges and schools?

Mr. Speaker, this bill would be unpalatable in the best of economic circumstances. This bill would be unacceptable in the context of growth and improvements to public services, but when the bill is put forward at a time when municipal operating grants are being cut by 22 per cent, when school boards are being told that they have to cut tens and hundreds of thousand dollars from their operating budgets, when the community college system is threatened with radical changes, when Memorial University is trying to find $20 million, Mr. Speaker, the bill is totally reprehensible. It is immoral.

I say to the Member for Port de Grave that this bill is immoral. It is completely wrong to have a token reduction of seats and a minimal saving of public funds when it was perfectly possible, and dictated by a legal process that we have twice as much a reduction. It is wrong to have a redistribution of boundaries directed and controlled by a Liberal politician and his cronies with just the veneer of approval by a judge who was hand picked in defiance of a recommendation of a legally constituted commission headed by a Court of Appeal judge chosen by the Chief Justice of the Province.

This bill is immoral and it is also illegal in the sense that it contravenes the existing law. The existing law says that the maximum number of districts allowed is forty-six. The existing law says that the redistributed districts have to be recommended by a commission appointed under the law. It has only been one commission appointed under the law under the Electoral Boundaries Act with the Chair chosen by the Chief Justice and the other members selected by the Speaker, and that was the Mahoney Commission. The Mahoney Commission recommended forty-four districts and that was after the minister and his colleagues changed the law. Initially, the commission proposed forty districts.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Health sits there today with a look of satisfaction on his face. How can he live with himself, going along with this corrupt process for eliminating four districts when he knows that eight or twelve should have been cut? How can he impose massive reductions on hospitals and community health when he realizes that some of the money so badly needed in our hospitals could have been found by a further reduction of seats? Talk about a double standard, Mr. Speaker, a double standard, the like of which we have never seen before.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, because this bill is bad, is wrong, is against the provisions of the current law, is contrary to the recommendations of the legally constituted commission, leads to token savings at a time when massive reductions are being inflicted upon vital public services -

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Half-a-million dollars is not (inaudible).

MS VERGE: I say to the Minister of Health, $1.5 million could have been realized if the initial proposal of the Mahoney Commission had been acted upon, three times the reduction that will result from this corrupt measure.

Mr. Speaker, this measure is wrong for fiscal reasons; it is also wrong for democratic and legal reasons, and, Mr. Speaker, we in the Official Opposition, will fight vigorously against this measure. We will insist upon fairness in budgeting, we will insist upon one standard for politicians and taxpayers and we will vote for nothing that is not the product of a legitimate, impartial, redistribution process.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. WOODFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WOODFORD: Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I recognized the Member for Humber Valley.

MR. WOODFORD: There has been a lot said already, Mr. Speaker, before ever the legislation came to the House about this boundaries issue. When the hearings were held around the Province and people had an opportunity to have their say, wherever the public hearings were held in the districts of the Province, now have it.

Mr. Speaker, on that subject alone with regards to hearings, I found that in different areas of the Province most of the general populous in the areas didn't take part really. It was council members; it was development associations, the members in that particular area, special interest groups really. The ordinary individual in different areas of the Province didn't really take the opportunity to have any input into the hearings with regards to the boundaries issue, and there are several reasons for that, Mr. Speaker. There are different reasons and one of the biggest as far as I am concerned is this complete apathy with the system, complete complacency with the system and the members wherever they might be, with politicians in general.

A lot of people today, and I have said in the House time and time again, that if the people in my district would come in here and see what's happening in the House, day after day after day, as far as I am concerned, I don't know if they would vote again in any general election in the Province. People today, I think if a poll were taken as to how many seats we should have or how many members we should have in this Chamber, I would say that most of the people in the Province would say they probably don't want any, and the most I would say is probably twenty-five or thirty members.

Now, when you look back on the numbers and the 10 per cent rule that we finally came down to, at the end of the day, when they talked about the variance plus or minus 10 per cent, and when you look at the different districts and the numbers were finally arrived at, Mr. Speaker, I still have some concerns. I know that in my particular district, every day of the week, every weekend of the year, that you can just keep up with the demand. Phone calls, trips to your district.

I've been almost ten and half years now in provincial politics and I haven't missed a weekend in my district in ten and a half years. But pretty well every weekend, Mr. Speaker, if I go to my district I have anywhere from one to four functions on. Those are just functions. That is not counting seeing individuals, people who want to see you, people who have some concerns. A lot of people don't want to talk on the phone, especially the older people, they would like to see you. If they have any documents or something they would like to show them to you; they don't like to put them in the mail, or they don't like anybody else around. You've got to respect the privacy of those individuals and try to cater to them as much as possible.

I remember back when we were in government, 1985 to 1989, talking to different ministers that were with me, colleagues at the time. I will never forget. Any St. John's member here, I don't know if the hon. Member for St. John's Centre maybe. No, the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island won't. Any St. John's member can probably appreciate what I am going to say. I was invited to supper one evening by a St. John's member. I went to supper around 7:00 p.m. Anyway, around 9:00 p.m. I said to this particular individual: Boy, I guess I had better run down now, I had better go back. He asked: What's the rush? I said: I have seven or eight phone calls that I have to make, and I have a little bit of correspondence to go over, you know, and so on. He said: Phone calls? This hour of the night?

This was in 1986 just after I came in here. I wasn't familiar with the system; I wasn't familiar with the different areas and the different representation. He said: You don't make any phone calls after you come out of the House in the evening? I said: Yes sir. You have to get people who have been working all day. You have to get them. That is the only time you can get them when they are home at night, and so on. He asked: How many phone calls do you get like that? I said: I think that night I had four or five calls to return. He said: Four or five calls? I don't get that many in a month. That particular month this individual member had two phone calls.

All of a sudden I started to say to myself: We aren't in the same league at all. Make no wonder I can sit around a table and make no wonder I can stand in the House of Assembly, and people look at me when you bring up those things and say: How come I don't get them? There is no trouble to tell why they don't get them. You are sitting here right next to the doors of Confederation Building. Every individual out here in the particular area has access and is in proximity to - a birth certificate, they can walk up and get them. I carry out an average - you can average a couple of birth certificates a week every time you go out. Because people from rural Newfoundland haven't access to that. Three months in the mail to get a birth certificate, minimum.

Passport, what are you going to do for a passport? Send it in the mail, send it to Ottawa, send it here, and wait your five or six weeks or two months? I can go down here and get a passport. Even with the new restrictions on it now you can have a passport in a few days. Bring it out to your constituents. This is the kind of service. Anybody has problems with Crown lands, where do they go? To the office in their particular area. If they can't fulfill their needs then they have to come to St. John's, especially when it comes to registering a document or something like that with the Registry of Deeds after you get it out of Crown lands. Who does that? The MHA in the area does it. Mention that to a St. John's member. They don't know but it is fit to eat.

All those things, and I can go on and on. I'm sure that members on the other side of the House from outside the so-called overpass can certainly appreciate and understand where I'm coming from. If they are not they are certainly different than my particular area. I suspect that there are not too many members representing any districts outside of the capital city who are any different than I am. We have the same kind of concerns. One might have a little bit more to do with the fishery or forestry or some other item but the representation is completely different. When I look at, I don't care whether it is in Newfoundland or PEI, no matter where you are the representative, this plus or minus 10 per cent, should be forgotten.

Why do you need eleven members in and around the city of St. John's? Can someone explain that to me? Can someone explain why you need ten or eleven members in and around the city of St. John's when someone has to look up in your face and say you get a couple of phone calls a month, when they are home and their constituents can come right into the office and see them. When a constituent wants to see me they have to wait for the weekend. Because I am in here from another district of the Province on Monday morning and go back on Friday nights and that is the only time that I can see them but anybody in here, Mr. Speaker, they can walk into a members office any day of the week, seven days a week really or go to their homes that evening.

If they have a function Monday night, Wednesday night or Thursday night they can go to it and there is absolutely no problem. They have access to their MHA if they make themselves available, that is the other thing. That is entirely up to them, Mr. Speaker. The difference and the representation, there is no comparison, absolutely none. The only difference is that right here in this Chamber, if a member takes it upon himself or herself to get up and speak on behalf of their constituents or pertaining to a piece of legislation that is one thing but outside this Chamber with regard to accessibility, communications and proximity to the source of government and the needs that those districts out there in rural Newfoundland today require, they are altogether different.

I could represent - there are ten or eleven members in here, one council to deal with. How many councils have I got to deal with or some other members here, I can name some? Fourteen councils and thirteen or fourteen fire brigades. It's the same with recreation commissions, the same with the development associations. A couple of development associations, the council got nothing. In here the council looks after the roads, the council looks after the water and sewer, no problem with that. You have no problem with fire protection, everything is looked after. The hospitals are here. Most people here, if they want an operation or if they want to go in the hospital, most likely they will get it because they are closer to it. What have people outside got to do? Wait for an appointment, come in and stand in the office for ten minutes to be told to go home and come in some other day. So it is altogether different, Mr. Speaker, the representation in a district such as mine and a lot of others around this Province and around here.

I would say that if I was in this jurisdiction here, around this particular area, based on comments made by members previous that I knew over the years and today, members that I have spoken to over the years right here in this Chamber today, I could represent 40,000 - 50,000 people, no problem at all. Absolutely, no problem. Their concerns are probably the same but they are addressed in a different way. They do not have different councils, different fire brigades, different recreation commissions, different anything. The offices are all in here. That to me is wrong, when you put a district such as mine or the district such as I am sure of the other members, the Member for Port au Port for sure, his phone must be one of the hottest around.

The unemployment rate around this Province is one thing but when you look at a particular district in this Province and look at your particular district - people figure you can do something. They call you probably out of frustration, probably out of desperation and more so - those two words today are the ones that I guess are the most prominent; desperation and frustration. They call and they figure that you can tell them where to go or give them some direction, whether it is a job or whatever for information purposes. That is not so when you are closer to a building such as this or the seat of government.

Someone said one time, there is not a smoke stack in the city of St. John's, but yet whenever you need as little as a birth certificate you have to wait three months, put it in the mail, or else you get your member to get it for you, or you have to have someone else in here, and even they do not have the same access as your MHA, so it is very, very important, and I say when we are going from fifty-two down to forty-eight, as far as I am concerned, we should leave it alone. What is the difference - fifty-two to forty-eight - absolutely nothing! It is a laugh. If we are going to go, do it right. Go from fifty-two, if you are going to make a mark at all, and do something significant. Go down to forty seats, and redistribute the seats in and around not only St. John's - maybe Grand Falls, maybe Corner Brook, maybe Gander - but especially here in the City. As far as I am concerned, it is not needed. The representation, based on ten years, almost eleven years in provincial politics, and ten in municipal politics, I think that I should be able to say, with some degree of certainty, how many people you can accommodate in the run of a day when you look at phone work, and especially look at weekend work when it comes to dealing with councils, recreation commissions, and what have you around this Province, and that is to do it right.

It is one thing to say you are going to get elected in a district and another thing to say you are going to represent the district. If you are going to show up every now and again over the four years that is one thing, but if you are going to return every phone call, if you are going to answer every piece of correspondence, if you are going to try to get to every function, then you are going to be busy. If you are going to represent your people properly then, as far as I am concerned, something should be done about the difference with regard to the numbers.

Look at numbers. You cannot compare. It is not apples and apples; it is apples and oranges. How can you tell me, who is living in the small community of Cormack, and I have to drive, if I have a function in Jackson's Arm, an hour-and-a-half to two hours away, I have one, probably, that night in Hughes Brook; I have to come right on back and drive to the Bay of Islands, the other side of Corner Brook, and then come back home again, and then probably go to Howley.

People just don't understand. Someone doesn't understand. If they say that representation in my particular area of the Province is the same as sitting here close to those chambers and you have the same amount of work to do, and you look at numbers? Numbers aren't everything, Mr. Speaker. Numbers is one of the factors.

Representation and the problems you have in representing in that particular area, the logistics of just getting around, of driving. When you look at some of the changes made in this particular piece of legislation it is going to make it worse for some people, worse than it already is. It is one thing to say: One person, one vote. But to say to someone in rural Newfoundland today who cannot see their member, only a few times a year because of logistics, because of distance, because he has the House of Assembly being open and so on, that is not fair. It is not fair to say to someone in my district that you can only see the member on a weekend, when someone in this district here can see their member every day of the week.

Do you call that fair? When I can have a delegation come in here any day of the week, when I can go speak to my constituents any night of the week? Yet we look at numbers and say: Within a plus or minus 10 per cent we are all equal. We are not equal. We are equal with regards to this particular piece of legislation. When you want to look at 10,000 in Humber Valley versus 10,000 in St. John's versus 10,000 in Gander, sure we are equal. Big deal, very easy to just sit down and take a pen and draw it like this and say: Ten here, ten there, and so on. But actual representation, and really good meaty representation, they have not got it regardless of what you do with this.

I can tell you that even with the extra people that they are going to put in my particular district - because my district remains the same, except for the fact they are going to take everything north to Wiltondale, District of St. Barbe, and then go sort of south over to Trout River. Another hour, hour and ten minutes, from where I live, we will say, in Cormack. It is so easy for someone to say: well, yes, I get two or three phone calls in a month, and when you tell them that you have twenty to twenty-five phone calls a day, not counting your correspondence, not counting the meetings to meet with someone in Jackson's Arm, a council in Jackson's Arm and there is a council in Hampton and another one in Howley and another one in Cormack, another one in Trout River and another one in Hughes Brook, you can go on and on and on. There is absolutely no comparison, absolutely none, Mr. Speaker, and I think that most members in this Chamber today, realize that what I am saying is so true.

If there is any member in the House today, Mr. Speaker, who can get up and refute what I just said in the few, short comments that I have had already, then I challenge him to do so. I challenge him to do so, get up and say that what I have said is not true. I don't think there is a member over there who can do it. Any member who is worth his salt, any member who moves around this Province and moves around his district and represents the people the way they should be represented, knows full well that what I am talking about is so true.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the legislation we have before us will be passed, there is no question about that, there is no question when the government of the day brings in the piece of legislation. There is only one variance from that and that was the Hydro legislation; that was the type of legislation that went to the heart and soul of every Newfoundlander and Labradorian, that's the only example that I can remember, but this type of legislation whereby, really, it's the members themselves who have to get up and debate this, it is the members themselves who have to make the comparisons.

The ordinary individual sitting in the District of Humber Valley today, does not know to what degree this particular institution works. Whether you sit for fifty days a year, whether you sit for 100, whether you sit for whatever, legislation to most people doesn't mean a thing because they are ordinary Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who are trying to make a living and getting on trying to raise families, and they do not have the time to fool around, nor the means, with wondering what this legislation is all about. That is why each and every member in this Province was elected. That is what they were elected to do, fulfil their duties by coming in here as legislators and watch the government of the day and make sure that the legislation they bring to the floor of the House of Assembly is not going to do some wrong, do them some hurt, or whatever.

The scary thing about this, Mr. Speaker, while I am on that subject, I venture to bet how many members, whether backbenchers on that side or members here, whatever, really take the piece of legislation and go through it. How many members really look? If it is something to do with the Highway Traffic Act, something to do with agriculture, the fisheries, the Minister of Fisheries, or the Minister of Education, how many really know what's in each and every piece of legislation?

Now, the ordinary individual out there in the District of Humber Valley, unless I am cognizant, unless I am vigilant, of what is in each piece of legislation they have no way to find out. They do not know until some day when they get a letter in the mail saying this regulation has been changed now. This was passed in the House of Assembly twelve months ago and this is the new regulation. Unless I am willing to stand in my place and willing to take every piece of legislation that comes in here and read it, then I cannot answer to my constituents. That takes time, Mr. Speaker.

I remember a few years ago when a member said to me, do you have anything on the weekend? I said, yes, I have three functions on the weekend. He said, three functions? I said, yes. He said, oh, my. Then I said, that's every weekend, a minimum of one, two, three or four, depending on what it is. He said, you have that every weekend? I said, yes, every weekend. I said, what about you, do you not have any functions on? He said, I have a couple a year. The conversation went on and I said to myself, that member is not going to get re-elected, and when the last election was held he did not get re-elected.

If I was a member sitting in this House today and I was not getting invited to a function, I would be concerned; I would be worried. Either the people do not want you, either the people cannot get you, but I am going to tell you that if I was not getting invited to functions in my district I would be worried. Now I probably should not be saying that to members opposite, because all of a sudden some of them may be - every Friday evening now there will be tires screeching out Kenmount Road trying to get back home, or extra seats on Air Nova or Air Labrador trying to get back to their districts.

Mr. Speaker, the long and the short of this particular debate that we are into today is representation. We can call it what we wish, we can talk about what we like, but the bottom line with this particular piece of legislation is representation, representation of the people, and never before in our history, as far as I am concerned, do the people need the representation that they need today. We may not have all the answers, we may not have half the answers, but people need help. People need representation more than ever they needed it, and it is our place to give it, and if those numbers dictate to me today that I cannot perform that duty the same as I did yesterday, then there is something radically wrong. If I am here sitting as a member, with the same 10,000 or 11,000 or whatever people, and I do not have to work, and I am only getting a few calls a month, it should be incumbent upon me to stand in my place and say so, because I will stand in my place today and say, categorically state, that I cannot handle many more than what I have now, not to do it the way I am doing it now. I really, honestly cannot.

If there were an extra 2,000 or 3,000 people added to my district today, I just cannot humanly handle it. I can try to be cocky about it. I can try to be arrogant about it and say: Oh, no problem, give me another 10,000 or 5,000 - big deal - but if I am going to do what is expected of me, and people expect more today, no question... One that comes to mind here lately is the Member for St. John's Centre. I hear him talking especially about the low rental housing and stuff like that down around the city. Some of the same concerns that he is starting to get now, that members are starting to get now, that members are starting to get, that I have out around there. Probably before him, members before him, and probably members today, got a few calls every now and then about it. That one subject alone, I would submit, is after adding a lot of headaches for the Member for St. John's Centre. Just put him out where there are another twelve or thirteen councils to deal with, and all different areas, and spread out all around rural Newfoundland, combined with all the other problems, with unemployment, and the problems they have today in rural Newfoundland and elsewhere, Mr. Speaker, then I would say they need representation more than ever they needed it before.

I realize my time is up, and I realize with the majority that the government has this piece of legislation is going to go through. As an MHA - and I know all that means. I told a person after 1985 when I got elected, he said: Boy, you're an MHA now. I said: Yes, that doesn't mean a thing. All that means is it might happen again. It did happen again, but I can assure you that people in rural Newfoundland today, and all Newfoundlanders in general, need their members and need representation worse than ever they did before.

At the end of the day I realize, with the majority the government has, this legislation will go through, But we have to be on the record in stating our case and stating the reasons why, as far as I'm concerned, there should not be a plus or minus 10 per cent. We should look at the different areas of this Province and look at giving the people good solid representation, something that the people of this Province deserve and should have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


 

November 20, 1995         HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS        Vol. XLII  No. 58A


[Continuation of Sitting]

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

MR. HEWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like a few words on this bill which will, in effect, redraw the electoral boundaries in this Province. It is something I have spoken on many times in this House. In petitions over the last year or so, I presented nearly 1,500 names from constituents of mine who do not want to see the District of Green Bay which, according to facts and figures passed out by the Government House Leader here today, has been in existence as a name representing a district in this Province since 1928. And after this bill passes, which I have no doubt it will pass, Mr. Speaker, because the government has a majority in this House, the name Green Bay will be lost forever, except for the history books. Out of this redrawing of district boundaries, Mr. Speaker, there will be no Green Bay anymore in terms of the name being hyphenated with some other seat or part of seat in this Province.

When the Government House Leader stood and spoke, Mr. Speaker, he indicated that this bill was being done on this tremendous principle of `one person/one vote'. Mr. Speaker, it is sad to say, but if that is the principle on which this government stands -and it is probably the only principle on which this government stands, because everything else associated with the government's behaviour on this particular matter, Mr. Speaker, is absolutely reprehensible. This is electoral corruption in the highest degree. This is cynical manipulation of the highest degree.

This government, in an attempt to win votes, went before the people of the Province on a promise that it was going to significantly reduce the number of seats in this Assembly. They laid it out as a part of their budgetary program; it was going to be a part of their program to save taxpayers' money. They were going to significantly reduce the number of seats in this House. So they struck, under law, Mr. Speaker, an independent commission whose job it was to take its mandate, lay out its plans before the people of the Province, seek the people's input and bring back a report for this Assembly to consider.

Mr. Speaker, the one thing that scared the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, more than anything else, was that the commission so appointed did not act like a bunch of lap dogs; they took their mandate seriously and they actually read the Premier's political statements about a significant reduction in this hon. House. And they put before the people a proposal to reduce the number of seats to forty, which would have been a twelve-seat reduction, Mr. Speaker, which would have meant significant savings to the taxpayers of the Province as regards the Budget of this House.

Your average member of this House spends somewhere in the order of $100,000 to probably $120,000 or $130,000 per year if you include his salary and his expenses which vary with his distance from St. John's in the geographic size, etcetera, of his district. So if you had a twelve-seat reduction, as the independent commission wanted to go with, Mr. Speaker, there would have been savings on an annual basis, well in excess of a million dollars.

Mr. Speaker, when the government saw that the independent commission was going to go with forty seats, they participated in the public hearing process that the commission set up and said: A forty-seat House is really too low, and they tightened up the mandate of the commission - they came back into this Assembly and made some changes in the mandate of the commission, and the commission eventually came in with an independent report of forty-four seats.

Mr. Speaker, there are only two possibilities that this House should be considering at the moment: leave it as it is now, or take the report of the Mahoney Commission, which recommended forty-four seats. At least, that report, in its final outcome, was not tampered with in any significant way. The mandate of the commission was amended to make a change from its original intent of forty seats, but at least the amending of the commission's mandate was done legally through this hon. House, and as a result we have a recommendation from the Mahoney Commission of forty-four seats.

We know why it was moved from forty up to forty-four, and we know why it was moved from forty-four up to forty-eight, and it is a forty-eight seat house that we are discussing here today, Mr. Speaker.

These changes came about basically because of the electoral selfishness of the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party, wanting to appeal to the people at election time to win their support, promised a 12-seat - or at least, a very significant reduction in seats. Once they got the power, and the realities of power came upon them in their second election, they decided that they could afford to break their word to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and come in with a much smaller reduction in seats.

Mr. Speaker, this would be shocking to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador except for one thing. The hallmark of this particular government is not its esteemed principle of `one person/one vote'. The hallmark of this particular government is that it has broken its word; it has broken its promises time after time, after time. Never in the history of this Province has one party been in power for so short a time and broken its word so many, many times.

This particular Liberal Party, Mr. Speaker, does not seem to know what honour means in terms of keeping its electoral promises in its behaviour both in and out of this Assembly. This Liberal Party, Mr. Speaker, basically is cynical enough to promise anything at election time, and when push comes to shove, it will deliver what suits its own particular selfish ends.

Mr. Speaker, today, because of the selfishness of the Liberal Party, we are facing a new House of Assembly of forty-eight seats, not a significant reduction in terms of budgetary saving but a significant statement on the cynical manipulations of this particular party. In my own case, my constituents do not want to see Green Bay district split in two. The forty-eight seat House sees the northern part of Green Bay, King's Point, Harry's Harbour, Little Bay, Beachside, that area, placed in with Baie Verte district, a district located, until now, wholly and solely on a totally different peninsula and very physically and geographically removed from Baie Verte district.

Prior to Confederation, and early during the Confederation years, there could possibly be some logic in splitting Green Bay this way insofar as travel was by boat and the people in King's Point, Harry's Harbour, and Little Bay. Beachside area, could easily go across to the communities on the Baie Verte Peninsula by boat. The modern day reality, Mr. Speaker, is that travel is by road and getting from King's Point or Harry's Harbour to Baie Verte district is a considerable road journey, and there is no longer, because of the roads, a community of interest between the two areas.

Similarly, Mr. Speaker, this particular government laid on its judge who had to draw up a forty-eight seat House - in order to make their numbers work -

MR. TOBIN: What's Müller saying now?

MR. HEWLETT: Mr. Speaker, in order to make their numbers work, they had to do things not only with regard to the northern part of Green Bay, but they had to do things in Central Newfoundland that they do not like now, that they are ashamed of now. The member for Exploits can shout across the floor to me all he wants, Mr. Speaker, but you know, his friends and neighbours in the Town of Grand Falls-Windsor are not at all amused at what he, as a member of this government, has done to the electoral boundaries in Central Newfoundland.

The Mahoney Commission, either in its original proposal or in its fort-four seat proposal, would have left my district intact, added some communities to it in Central Newfoundland in the way of the Badger-Buchans area but the newly amalgamated Town of Grand Falls-Windsor would have been left intact as one electoral seat. The final report of the Mahoney Commission, the forty-four seat report, recommended that this House of Assembly amend the bill that it brings in to allow for the population numbers to vary so that Grand Falls-Windsor could become one seat. This government has not brought that about at all, Mr. Speaker. What they have done in changing it from forty-four to forty-eight seats is, made the split in the Town of Grand Falls-Windsor more pronounced than it ever was under a forty or a forty-four seat House.

Prior to Christmas last year, Mr. Speaker, we had a briefing from an official in the Justice department on a forty-four seat House that had Green Bay losing the northern half, we picked up Badger-Buchans and maybe 2,000 people, maybe one-third of the former Town of Windsor. Somehow, Judge Noel, in getting his instructions from this government, got his message wrong; he got his wires crossed somewhere, he didn't follow to the letter exactly what the government had drawn up internally, and in coming down with the seat changes, instead of putting maybe one-third of the former Town of Windsor in with Green Bay, he put fully two-thirds of the former Town of Windsor in with Green Bay, and Badger and Buchans he put in with Grand Falls and the other third of Windsor.

In terms of Central Newfoundland, Mr. Speaker, that is an electoral mess. It is an insult to the people of Grand Falls-Windsor, in that it really undoes what this government did at some considerable grief and expense and that was to bring about the amalgamation of Grand Falls-Windsor, so people in that particular town are less than amused at what this government has done. The other thing, Mr. Speaker, has to do with community of interest. The original Green Bay Park of the new seat called Windsor-Springdale, they didn't even have the courtesy, Mr. Speaker, to call it Windsor-Green Bay; they called it Windsor-Springdale, which is not something that goes over well in communities like Robert's Arm and Triton, I can assure you. But the Green Bay part being added to what is essentially a sizeable chunk of, I guess, in Newfoundland terms, `a small city' in Central Newfoundland, makes absolutely no sense in terms of community of interest.

Mr. Speaker, Green Bay, as it is now constituted, is essentially a rural district, the largest town being Springdale with 3,500 people, and there are twenty other smaller communities varying in size from, you know, 1,000, 1,200 people down to just a few hundred, so you have an extremely rural, coastal Newfoundland seat now being mixed in with a sizeable piece of what amounts to our city in Central Newfoundland, and that, Mr. Speaker, makes absolutely no sense in terms of community of interest, in terms of supporting the amalgamation that this government practically forced upon the Town of Grand Falls-Windsor.

Mr. Speaker, this government, in so doing, basically, have insulted a lot of people. They have insulted the people of Grand Falls - Windsor by splitting a district that has been in existence since 1928. They have insulted the people of the current district of Green Bay, but more importantly what they have done with this entire process is an insult to the truth. It is an insult to any kind of integrity. It is the worst kind of cynical manipulation I have seen in this House in a long, long time.

I remember when the Premier was bent on privatizing Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. He did everything but put the gun to the head of the citizens of this Province to bring them around to his point of view. A small fortune, several million dollars, was spent trying to convince the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that what they thought did not matter, that they were stupid, that they did not have a clue, that it was his way or no way, his way was the right way, and the people did not fall for that.

The people basically had a lot to say about the Premier's plans to privatize Hydro, but this particular time what do the people have to say about what this government is doing? They had public input through the Mahoney Commission. It's report has been scrapped. If you listen to the commentary on the Open Line in the last day or so, what the people are saying is that this report is insulting to them from the point of view that here we are cutting hospital beds, cutting back on the education system, taking equipment off the roads that is supposed to be clearing snow, basic services to the citizens of this Province being cut back at the front-line level, at the community level, and this House of Assembly, under the Premiership of Clyde Wells and the ministers of his Cabinet, are bringing about a token reduction in the size of this House, an absolutely token reduction, a reduction that would have been, as I indicated earlier, significant had the Mahoney Commission been allowed to carry out its initial plans, less significant but still significant had the report of the Mahoney Commission been accepted. But this House is now being asked to approve a piece of legislation which is an insult to any notion of budgetary restraint. It is an insult to the truth. It is an insult to any sort of integrity in the electoral process. It is an insult to the people of Northeast Newfoundland and to the people of Central Newfoundland, especially in the Grand Falls - Windsor area.

Mr. Speaker, this government has done very little in the last half-a-dozen years of which it can be proud. It has forced amalgamation on many, many communities. It wasted the early part of its mandate in a fruitless search for the Constitution of Canada, a constitution that suited our Premier and basically very few others. We went through, just a little while ago, a referendum in Quebec which came about, basically, as a direct result of this government's rejection of a Meech Lake process that had earlier been approved in this House under a former administration.

So we have seen what this government has been about. It has amalgamated towns in a forceable way. It has wasted time when it should have been developing economic policy, creating jobs at a time when recession was not upon us. When the times were somewhat better economically, they were wasting their time; they were frittering away their time playing constitutional games so that the Premier could do his constitutional dance on the national stage. Then, when the time came to get down to the business of governing, this government was faced with recession, and they have been dealing with recession ever since.

Now, they told jokes in the Assembly when the Assembly was last up in the tower on the ninth and tenth floors. Very early in the mandate of this government - not in this particular mandate but in its previous mandate - its preoccupation with shutting things down, with being negative, got to the point where the Premier was reputed to have been kicked out of the warm place down below because he was in danger of shutting down the furnaces. That was the joke in the first term of this government and it has continued on an accelerated pace this time around, and we have to wonder: just what these people are up to?

We have an economy right now in tatters, people leaving the Province in droves, the Budget of the Province in an absolute mess, and the health care and education system under attack. The government keeps saying we have no money, we are broke, we cannot do this, we cannot do that, and yet at the same time, when they had a chance to save $1 million or more a year on an ongoing basis with regard to cutting the number of seats in this House, they would not do it. That says only one thing to me, Mr. Speaker, that this crowd put themselves first, their party first, and the Province comes last always with this particular Liberal Government.

I find it amazing, Mr. Speaker, that in their dealing with the Federal Government they tend to turn a blind eye to everything the Federal Government does that throws a monkey wrench in their budgetary process. They seem to calmly and quietly acquiesce to every negative thing that the feds want to do to us, and the people of the Province, through the services that they receive directly, are the ones who are most negatively affected with their behaviour as to how they handle their budgetary matters.

One way they could ease the burden on the people would be if they, the government, showed some leadership at the top in terms of restraint, and one of the ways they could have shown restraint was to accept the report of their independent commission to significantly reduce the number of seats in this House. The government appears to be well bloated in the middle management areas with a lot of temporary employees, many of them probably Liberal hacks appointed over the last number of years under the guise of the general hiring freeze through the Public Service Commission.

We have a government vehicle fleet. There was much fuss and bother made about the size of the fleet vehicles that government inherited from the former PC administration. There was much to-do about ministers' cars when government were in Opposition. When they came to power, they put the ministers' cars back in the motor pool and gave each minister $8000 a year to go buy his own car, while a minister who left office under the former government, if his car was half decent at all, it went back into the motor pool for someone else to use. What this government has essentially done is given extra salary and allowance to their ministers by allowing them to go out and buy their own cars, of which after three or four years allowance they will have purchased the car, and the car will no longer belong to the taxpayers, the car will essentially be the private property of the individual minister. So that is how the government attacks its need to be fiscally responsible to bring about real savings in this Province.

This government, sooner or later, Mr. Speaker, is going to have to get honest with the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. They have been smooth, they have been slippery, they have said one thing and done another on an ongoing basis. I sat for ten years, off and on, in the galleries when this government was an Opposition party, and the song they sang at that particular time, and the song they are singing now, you would never know it came from the same people. The only person in this Province in whom I have seen a greater change in terms of his philosophical view with regard to the role of government in society, is Mr. Fenwick, the columnist with The Evening Telegram, former Leader of the NDP. If anything, Mr. Fenwick is to the right of this particular government and one has to wonder if he is positioning himself to be a candidate for either the Liberal Party in the next election or for the Reform Party nationally, but there has been a significant change in his particular philosophical outlook, and the only other change that comes close to the drastic change that Mr. Fenwick has done, has been the Liberals as government versus the Liberals as Opposition.

I remember in my first term I used to say, you know, I am a red Tory and now the Liberals, they are not just blue Liberals, Mr. Speaker, they are ice-blue Liberals, there is no heart in them, they are cold, cold, cold to their very soul, to their very core and they seem to enjoy it. The Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs wades into a meeting of a few hundred mayors at a meeting in St. John's this weekend, and the commentary out around rural Newfoundland when I was out in my district, people were saying: Ah, the more they beat up on them, the more fuss he gets into, the more fights he gets into, the more you will like it, because there are several ministers in this government who thrive on controversy, who thrive on really sticking it to the people, to the people's organizations, to the people's duly elected councils. A government which seems to get its life's blood from the strife and grief of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and as I say, what they are about in this particular debate, in this particular bill, in this Assembly, is adding insult to injury after what they have done already.

Mr. Speaker, politics, is at times, a difficult game. I represent a district right now with twenty communities; it is a rare weekend I don't have something on in the district. People come up to you in the summer and say: I guess you have your holidays now, the House is closed. All of my twenty communities have their community celebrations in the summer and you are expected to show up at them all, and you count yourself lucky if you are not put down in the dunk tank more than once on any given Saturday afternoon. I measure my pleasure in terms of a day in the district in July and August, with the lack of being dunked, Mr. Speaker, as it is one of the occupational hazards of being an MHA in a rural, multi-community district.

Mr. Speaker, now we have, added to that, under this new redistribution, a piece of Central Newfoundland totally different from the area I currently represent, a very urban area being added in with what remains of my District of Green Bay, to form a new seat called Windsor-Springdale. Mr. Speaker, one has to wonder just what is behind all this. I mean, this government, tonight has us sitting until ten, and as I understand it, tomorrow night if need be, we will sit until ten so that they can get this bill through the House as soon as possible.

One has to wonder what is the all-fired rush? The government has walked away many, many times from a multitude of items on the Order Paper of the House without dealing with it when things become difficult in the House, when you are into rough times, when you are into budgetary cutbacks and the government is getting into a lot of criticism. I cannot, for the life of me, see how any government, how any political party that would want to gain favour with the general public, would do what this particular government is doing with regard to this particular bill.

If one wanted to ease the blow that one is delivering to the health and education systems, if one wanted to ease the blow that one is delivering to the municipalities in this Province or at least, if one wanted to created the perception of easing the blow, then one would obviously have to take it on the chin first and foremost, at the top in this particular Assembly, and what we have here is a sad commentary on a government that does what it must with the people and their money and their services, but does what it chooses, what it wants, what it wishes for itself when it comes to its own particular benefits as a political party. It is a sad day that, after half-a-million dollars in public expenditure, two or three years of fooling around with public hearings and commissions, that we stand here today and speak on a resolution to reduce the number of seats in this Assembly by a measly four seats. That will not save any amount of money, any significant amount in the long term. It is an insult to the people whose districts are being totally redrawn, and the process used is an insult to anyone with a notion of any kind of fair play. What we have going down here is the worst kind of cynical manipulation carried out by this particular government because they want to survive, whatever the cost.

I remember when the Liberal Party spent seventeen years in the wilderness, and the last ten of those was under the stewardship of a Premier named Peckford, who came from a district named Green Bay, and they are so small minded, so petty, that when they bring about these changes here now, the district that I represent disappears from the electoral map. It is not Windsor - Green Bay; it is going to be Windsor - Springdale. The Government House Leader tabled a list of possible changes in names that they were going to bring about in this House, and they did not even do that. They changed the names on a whole whack of districts, but it seems that the name Green Bay over the past number of years has caused this government some grief. Some grief has come to this government from Green Bay, most of it, I will say, from the former member. This member does not claim such fame or glory, but I sincerely hope that I can be re-elected, possibly in the new seat of Windsor - Springdale, and thereby, if nothing else, bring a little more grief to this Liberal Party that has lost its legitimacy and its right to govern.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: There are pros and cons in every situation, I suppose.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say a few words on Bill 31, An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act.

Today when the Minister of Justice was on his feet speaking on this bill I felt that we got a blast from the past. He said that this bill was brought in on the view - that the bill was founded on the view that one person's vote should be no more than another person's vote - no more, no less, I think were the words he used, than another - and I think that is a fairly reasonable principle if that was the only criteria that you should use, but I believe there is other criteria that should be used.

He also answered the question: Why do you bring it in now? Of course, the answer to that was because of the census and the ten year review, and no one could argue with that. He said the reason why there were forty-eight districts instead of forty-four, or forty, or forty-two, whatever the case may be, is because of the representation and the quotient, or the average; 12,181 was the number he used for representation. He thought that the Cabinet should be less than the majority of the House, and he referred back to a previous administration.

Mr. Speaker, this government has an awful habit of blaming everything that is going wrong in this Province on the previous administration. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation does that all the time. This government has been in office for six or seven years now, Mr. Speaker, has brought in seven budgets, and they are still blaming everything that is going wrong in the Province on what happened in the past. I think it is about time for this government to get away from that old tired line.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) tell the truth.

MR. J. BYRNE: I tell the truth.

MR. WALSH: (Inaudible). Are you satisfied (inaudible) final results (inaudible)?

MR. J. BYRNE: What is good for one may not be good for another. I mean, what is good for the overall Province may not be good for a certain individual, but it may be good for other individuals, I say to the -

MR. WALSH: Would you recommend changes to your own district?

MR. J. BYRNE: I made my presentation to the commission that made a recommendation to the government of thirty-four seats and that was not accepted, I say to the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Keep interrupting. That is good, keep interrupting. It will keep me up on my feet longer.

AN HON. MEMBER: You have a habit of talking to long.

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, I can talk all I want.

Mr. Speaker, this bill has to do with the reorganization, of course, of the electoral boundaries within the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is proposing to reduce the seats in the House of Assembly from fifty-two down to forty-eight districts in the Province. Of course, what would have to be looked at here, Mr. Speaker, is the savings to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the savings to the taxpayers of the Province.

I support reducing the number of seats or the number of districts in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Fifty-two districts, I believe, is quite high to give proper representation to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. I made some comparisons to other provinces in Canada, Mr. Speaker, and it seems that on a per average and per district basis, we are quite high in some instances. Of course, when looking at reducing the seats in the House of Assembly, we have to look at proper representation and the service that we would give to the people in this Province and to the taxpayers of this Province.

As the Minister of Justice said, we have a situation here which is going to be based on one person, one vote, which is partially correct but not really quite accurate, Mr. Speaker. If this bill succeeds in this House, and most likely it will, Mr. Speaker, we won't have one person, one vote. What will actually happen is we have districts in the Province, in Labrador in particular and on the South Coast, where that view will not be accurate.

One thing that should be talked about, I suppose, is the 10 per cent variance, Mr. Speaker, versus the 25 per cent variance and the variance of the quotient or the average per district. Now, 10 per cent really was quite restrictive, I believe, to the commission when it was put in place. A lot of the other provinces had 25 per cent variance of the average, and I will say a few words on that later on.

The Electoral Boundaries Act, Mr. Speaker, was first enacted in 1973 and it put into effect, basically, a four-person commission which would be appointed every ten years to look at the electoral boundaries in the Province and look at the numbers of people being represented in those districts. Bill 20 amended the Electoral Boundaries Act and we got royal assent basically in March, 1993. Mr. Speaker, that bill basically had the effect of adding one person to that commission which made it five people to review every ten years.

Now, I would have to agree that we should have a review every ten years. Basically when you are looking at the demographics of the Province, and in this particular point in time in our history the demographics, we have the out-migration which is really quite significant. We know now we have tractor trailers hauling people's possessions out of this Province daily. The ferry is going across to North Sydney blocked with people leaving this Province right, left and centre. North, south, east, west, central, and Labrador, people are leaving this Province, and it has to do a lot, I believe, with the philosophies of this government and the non-action of this government, the incompetence of this government why the people are leaving this Province. People in this Province today, or what is left here -

AN HON. MEMBER: That is not relevant.

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, it is quite relevant, I would say to the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. The people in this Province today are leaving, as I said, right, left and centre because basically of the demoralizing of this government. Civil servants in this Province today are completely being demoralized, and that is basically spreading out into the public sector because of the incompetence of this government.

Now I would like to say a few words with respect to representation of the MHAs and the workloads of the MHAs. When you compare an MHA representing a rural district versus an urban district there is quite a difference in their workload, I believe, and I have personal experience of that. I represent a district that is 75 per cent rural and 25 per cent urban, and my workload is certainly from the rural part of the district, and there are reasons for that. I would say that in the rural part of my district I get at least maybe ten to fifteen calls to one for me to deal with compared to the urban part of my district, and I believe the reason for that is that in an urban area the MHAs, or the individuals who have problems, would normally go to an MHA in a rural area, would get calls from individuals in their district. Basically, they call their city councillors or town councillors and ask these people to deal with the problems, so the workload is quite, quite different as compared to an MHA representing a rural district.

Again, when we talk about the 10 per cent variance in this bill, where they basically tied the hands of the commissioners, the 10 per cent variance is not, I don't believe, quite -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Come over and take it out for me, I say to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. Don't be so concerned. I have my hands in my own pockets. I said to you once before: Don't worry about what is in my pockets. You should worry about putting your hands in the pockets of all the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: That is better, yes.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, the 10 per cent variance, I believe that really was restricted to the commission, and when you compare that to other provinces, many other provinces, when it comes to the quotient or the average, they have a 25 per cent variance up and a 25 per cent variance down, so plus or minus 25 per cent. I believe in an urban district they certainly could have it twenty-five. They could have it 50 per cent. They could probably have 100 per cent variance in an urban district if you want to look at the workload, if it was strictly looking at the workload, of course. Now in a rural district I think that could probably be easily considered 25 per cent, 30 per cent, or 40 per cent, if that is just the only factor that you want to look at.

Now the purpose of this review, of course, or any review, when you look at the electoral districts in any province, would be, from my perspective, three reasons to look at a review. One would be to save dollars for government and taxpayers of the Province, and also we have to look at the view that the Minister of Justice talked about today, the equitable representation, which is a very legitimate view, and we always have that gerrymandering possibility creeping in, Mr. Speaker. Gerrymandering in this situation, of course, when the government looked at it, would be looking at their seats which was best suited to the government at this point in time, which was the Liberal administration. Now, change at this time, Mr. Speaker, with the combination of the dollar saved for this particular review, of course, in my belief was the dollar saved and gerrymandering.

In 1992 the government brought in a mini-budget and the government committed itself at that point in time to reducing the cost of governing within the Province. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is not in his seat but he wants to know if I am reading from something. No, I am not reading. I have some copious notes here. When the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is on his feet he reverts to various notes most of the time. When the Minister of Justice was on his feet today he had reams and reams of paper that he referred to. I have just copious notes. Maybe the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation -

AN HON. MEMBER: He is scared of him.

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, I have no doubt about that. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is definitely scared of the Minister of Justice. We all know that. That is nothing new. I say to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation that maybe he should get on his feet and say a few words with respect to the electoral boundaries and Bill 31. Maybe he is afraid to because I heard he is not quite pleased with the results of the changes in his area. Maybe he is afraid to say a few words because it might affect his chance of getting elected in the next election.

I am no psychiatrist or anything like that but I have to say the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation on many occasions has been bringing up the name of Dr. Calvin Powell, and I would say if he is bringing up his name that often he must have some serious concerns about that individual, and I think that more than likely he will be ahead of you after the next provincial election, if he so decided to run. I just know the man as an acquaintance type of thing and not as much as obviously the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation does.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who is that?

MR. J. BYRNE: Dr. Cal Powell. Every time the district of Port de Grave comes up his name is mentioned by the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation so he must have some very serious concerns. In the mini-Budget of 1992 government said that they would reduce the cost of governing and said they would appoint a commission to recommend a forty to a forty-six seat House of Assembly. On December 23, 1992 Bill 62 gave royal assent and the electoral boundary commission directed to reduce the number of seats from forty to forty-six. Now, of course, that is not what we see here today.

In March 1993 government appointed an electoral boundary commission. That commission was made up of Mr. Justice Mahoney, who was the chair, John Nolan, Dorothy Inglis, and Ray Baird. Those people started their review of the electoral boundaries in the Province, and Bill 20 in 1993 increased the size of the commission from four up to five. In March 1993 a person by the name of Beatrice Watts was appointed to that commission. I remember the commission and I thought they did a good job at the time. I have to compliment them on their work.

In August of 1993 that commission released a report and that report proposed forty districts, Mr. Speaker; forty, not fifty two, not forty-eight, not forty-six, not forty-five but forty districts. That was supposed to be a focus for this group to go around the Province and have public hearings and have people make representation to this commission and come up with a recommendation for government. They did have their public hearings and there were many representations made to this commission. As a matter of fact, I made a representation to this group and a number of other MHAs made representations to this commission, and they made some good recommendations, good points. Of course, the recommendations that I made, the presentation that I made, is a matter of record with the government and they have it if they wish to look at it. When the recommendations of the commission were made, government decided to ignore them.

Mr. Speaker, in October of 1993 I think, the executive assistant to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation made a presentation to the Mahoney commission. I believe that is correct. He stated that there would be no real savings. That is what he felt. I am not sure if he was representing the minister at that point in time, when he made these comments, but he must have been -that there would be no real savings and it would probably cost government more. Now, I would say he had his own logic for that, and he is certainly entitled to his opinion. There is no doubt about that. If he was there, was he representing the views of the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation? Was the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation that concerned that he would have the boundaries of his electoral district changed that much that it would have a negative impact upon his chance of getting elected in the next provincial election, Mr. Speaker?

In November, 1993, the Minister of Justice also made a presentation to the commission, Mr. Speaker. He made the comment that the mandate of the commission was flawed from the beginning. Now, the mandate of the commission, of course, was given to them by the provincial government. I would say the Minister of Justice, as a member of Cabinet, played a big part in setting the mandate of the Mahoney Commission. And to go back shortly after and say that the mandate of the commission was flawed would lead me to believe that the government, through the Minister of Justice, was certainly trying to affect the outcome of the commission's report, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the first Mahoney report recommended forty-four districts, but that was based on the restraints that were put in place by the government of the day, which was, of course, the Liberal Administration that you see now. Now, they had many restraints put on them with the 10 per cent variance and, basically, the interference of the Minister of Justice, and they came back and still recommended forty-four seats.

Now, the Throne Speech in 1995, Mr. Speaker, basically threw the Mahoney report out the window. The government then appointed a new commissioner, Mr. Justice Noel, to report by April 30, 1995. Now, what happened here, of course, was the Mahoney Commission report was gone out the window, no good. All the money that was spent on that report was in a futile effort.

Also, Mr. David Jones, a public servant, was also appointed at that time to the commission to help review the boundaries. What did he do? He sat down, took out the maps, he met with the Liberal caucus, he met with the Opposition caucus, and he made some comments and suggestions. Basically what we said at the time was that we accept the report of Commissioner Mahoney, and that is where we stand today. We accept the report, forty-four seats, and that is what I feel, personally, we should have today, but Mr. Noel and Mr. Jones basically redrafted the boundaries to suit the government, to suit the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation and a few more, so he redrafted the boundaries, got his map out and made a few changes to suit the government, nothing else.

As I said, the government did not accept the independent commission's report. Why? It is not what the government wanted. This is not what they wanted. Actually, if you look at the legislation, I would believe that by the government appointing Chief Justice Noel to the commission was actually breaking the law.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: In appointing Chief Justice Noel to the commission actually they were breaking the law. The person who was supposed to appoint any person to the commission is the Chief Justice, but they wanted Mr. Noel, Justice Noel, to lend credibility to their forty-eight seats. They wanted to manipulate the process, and that is exactly what they did. They had their own specifications drawn up behind the scenes, and they instructed Mr. Jones to come up with forty-eight seats, and that is exactly what he did, and that is what we have here before us today, forty-eight seats.

We are in a time of restraint, and it is a very serious situation. I see the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation staring over. I don't envy his job, and I don't envy a lot of the ministers their jobs, and I don't envy the Premier his job, but I have to say that I think the situation we are in today in this Province has to fall on the shoulders of this government. They keep going back to the previous administration, and blaming something that happened ten, twenty or thirty years ago, but I would say...

The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation asked me the other day for some recommendations on how to get this Province back on the road. The first thing that popped into my mind - I really did not want to say it - would be for this government to resign and call an election, and let somebody get elected over there who can do the job that these people cannot do. They have a vacuum. Their lack of ideas is unreal.

Anyway, I am led to believe that this government spent $400,000 on the Mahoney Commission.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: More than four hundred?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: The Member for Fogo is saying it is more than $400,000.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Anyway, over $400,000; and the Member for Fogo says it is more than $500,000. Maybe it is $600,000; maybe it is $700,000; maybe $1 million; we don't know. With the way this government does the books with their smoke and mirrors maybe it is $2 million; we don't know. So they probably hid it away, but $400,000 in this day and age for something that was ignored... There is no point in asking the Minister of Finance anything because he will only tell us it is smoke and mirrors, but basically spent $400,000 on a commission which was ignored by this government in the serious situations in which we are in in this Province today, is nothing less than disgusting.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what is being proposed by this government is a four-seat reduction; now fifty-two seats down to forty-eight. It is laughable. I mean, the people in this Province today, if you heard some of the open line shows, I mean, it is a farce. What kind of money are they going to save with four seats? If it was cut down to forty-four, well, maybe it was worth the effort but, with forty-eight seats, it is nothing less than a farce, Mr. Speaker. I have to question, was it worth the effort at all? I don't think so.

Now, Mr. Speaker, what I am saying about saving money, I have to make the comparison of course, to the cuts that are happening in this Province today and the cuts that have happened in this Province since 1989. Of course, we have the health care cuts. Now the Member for Eagle River is looking for relevance and if he not intelligent enough to figure that out, he should get up and leave his seat and go back out and eat some more chicken or something, I say to the Member for Eagle River.

Now we have massive cuts in this Province, massive health care cuts and the Minister of Health now is looking for another $27 million and Sister Davis is there now saying: They are cut to the bone now, they just can't cut any further and will actually affect the health care in this Province. Now, we know it has been affecting the health care service in this Province all along. We have the Minister of Health on his feet every day when you ask him a question, says health care is improving in this Province, but now we have Sister Davis, behind whom the government was hiding, whom the government was asking to do the cuts and trying to lend some credibility to what they were doing with respect to health care, coming out and saying now they have gone too far and we have the government coming out and saying, well we are going to cut four seats. It's a joke; it's a farce, Mr. Speaker, nothing less than a farce.

We have the municipalities being hit. Now again, since 1989, the municipalities in this Province have been hit -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: I can't put it in words, it has been so hard. It has been drastic, it has been severe, it has been too hard for any municipality to cope with and now we have the MHAs, the people who make the laws in this Province who should be taking the responsibility or taking their share - and they are to a certain extent - now are talking about cutting the MHAs to a certain extent with respect to their pay and their -

AN HON. MEMBER: Thank you.

MR. J. BYRNE: Oh, I haven't got to my district yet.

Now I see there are only four minutes left, Mr. Speaker, but we have, as I said, the members of the House of Assembly, I believe the cuts should be more severe with respect to the number of seats in this Province. We had an independent commission going around this Province and they recommended forty-four seats; that's eight seats less than what we have today, double what this government is recommending, and we would have seen some significant savings to the taxpayers of this Province and which we are not going to see with just a cut of four people, Mr. Speaker.

We see civil servants jobs being cut. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of other issues I wanted to bring up but I want to say a few words before my time is up with respect to my own district. The Member for Mount Scio- Bell Island was here a while ago, he is not here now but anyway he was commenting to me about my district and if I supported the cuts and he thought that I would be quite pleased with the revisions to the electoral boundaries in St. John's East Extern.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I represent St. John's East Extern and I was quite proud and pleased, an honour basically to be elected as the Member for St. John's East Extern in my first try. Now, the District of St. John's East Extern basically, is one of the larger districts. I think it is the third largest in size in the Province population wise - so I could see that district being cut somewhat with respect to the population of the district.

Now the Minister of Natural Resources met me one day on the elevator and he just mentioned in passing about the name change. Now I didn't even expect a name change to the district. I said that Cape St. Francis was recommended by the commission, and I liked that, but when the report came back they had left it at St. John's East Extern. Now, when we see this bill introduced in the House of Assembly, we have the name changed to Cape St. Francis, which is probably representative of the area. It is a more rural area now that a lot of the district is being cut. The population of the district, I believe, has been cut from approximately almost 17,000 down to just over 12,000. The area that is going to be taken out of that district is the Wedgwood Park area, East Meadows area, the Woodlands and Northlands area, which is approximately 4,000 people. Now that is quite a significant cut with respect to the district itself, but that is the urban part of the district and, as I said earlier, you do not get as many calls from the urban part of the district as you would normally get from the rural part, but it is quite a significant cut.

I did well in all parts of the district in the last provincial election, and I was hoping to do so again. I was hoping to do even better the next time around because of the antics and the lack of action of this government in creating jobs - something they promised in their last provincial election. I was saying that the district is a good Tory district - it has been for a number of years - and I was hoping to do even better the next time around, if I decide to run. The district itself is a good district. The people in the district are good people. You have the people in Pouch Cove and the people in Flatrock and the people in Torbay, and Logy Bay, Middle Cove and Outer Cove, and Bauline, East Meadows, Woodlands North - it is all in the area - Penetanguishene, Airport Heights; we have good people in that district as, of course, we have good people throughout the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. If this government could only come up with some good ideas to tap into the natural resources we have here, this Province would be much, much further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, the government is now planning also - and this has a connection with the electoral boundary changes - it is the nineteen economic zones. This government now, to me, and I have been preaching this in the past, of course, is the resettlement issue, and we have nineteen economic zones. Now we have the reduction in the electoral boundaries, which should go further, by the way, as I said earlier; it should go in line with the Mahoney commission report, which was forty-four seats. The nineteen economic zones, basically now, is something that I would say this government is possibly looking at nineteen regional governments, or nineteen counties, and what is happening, of course, with the cutbacks to the municipalities, and I said it before and I will say it again, is that this government is hoping - I would say actually hoping - that there will be in the next municipal elections in this Province in 1997, fewer people run for councils, that by fewer people running for councils there will be less councils elected, and that there will be more or less no opposition to the plans of this government to forge these amalgamations or these counties or regional governments.

I think that basically this government has a plan afoot to cut this Province down to nineteen economic zones. I also believe there is a plan afoot by the policies of this government - I say it again, as I said it before - to increase the outflow of people out of this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is sup.

MR. J. BYRNE: In cluing up, Mr. Speaker -

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

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In cluing up I would say that this government should have accepted the Mahoney Commission's recommendation of forty-four seats. At the very maximum there should be no more than forty-four seats. That is what I certainly would have supported. But, I suppose, just to say that there is a reduction of four seats is something, but not significant enough to warrant any praise.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) totally agree.

MR. FITZGERALD: I totally agree, you are right, I say to the Member for Trinity North.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to stand here tonight and speak on Bill 31, "An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act." I suppose in fear of re-echoing many of the things that have been said by speakers before me, I have to repeat the problems that we over here on this side have had, Mr. Speaker, with this old bill, and that is the process by which the amendments came forward and by which this new bill came about.

I don't know the date exactly but I know at that particular time there was a commission struck by this government to go around the Province and hold public hearings, to allow people to come before it and express their thoughts and wishes and desires to bring about electoral change, Mr. Speaker, and with a mandate to reduce the number of seats. I firmly believe that when this commission was struck that they shouldn't have been stifled by a mandate and rules and regulations from the government telling them what they must do and what they must not do. I think they should have been allowed to go out, listen to the people and bring back a recommendation based on what they heard while they were out there. If that meant thirty-eight seats, then let them come back with thirty-eight seats. If it meant forty-eight seats, then so be it, Mr. Speaker. That is the reason they went out around the Province in the beginning and the reason why they opened up the process and allowed people to come forward. If they weren't allowed to bring back the wishes of the people and to formulate that into policy and into a bill, then why go through the exercise, Mr. Speaker? Why go through the exercise of taking them out and go through the expense of spending, I think it was something like $400,000, and then be interfered with by the Minister of Justice, the then acting Minister of Justice I might add?

AN HON. MEMBER: An actor too.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and quite an actor he is.

Mr. Speaker, I think I appeared twice before the commission. The first proposal, if I recall correctly, was a talking proposal where the Mahoney Commission came back with a recommendation of forty seats. They did have a drawing done up and they had, I think, a slight description, at least of the communities that make up the boundaries.

At that particular time, Mr. Speaker, it appeared to be a very workable proposal. It was forty seats that would bring about a change. It was a real change, that we would be reducing the number of seats here in this House by twelve which is certainly a sizeable reduction. It would certainly mean a big savings, when you consider twelve MHAs, twelve staff, twelve expense accounts, and all the way down the line.

Then, after the hearings were allowed to take place, Mr. Speaker, the commission went around the Province again, and I think their next proposal, and their next recommendation, was forty-four seats, if I recall correctly. Let me revert to the forty-seat proposal before I proceed. At that particular time everybody, I suppose, who saw his seat disappear was very, very interested in going and rallying people behind him because he wanted to look after his seat. That is human nature that we all want to look after our own. The reason why we are here is to get re-elected, for most of us, I suppose. That is the reason why we are sitting here tonight, the reason why we are out in our districts on the weekend, and the reason why we like to do a better job. Everybody feels much more secure in the district they got elected in, and in the district they now represent, rather than having to go and tread unfamiliar territory and uncharted waters.

I know in one of my neighbouring districts there were petitions brought forward and troops rallied together to go and make presentations on why a certain district should not disappear, and they were all good reasons. I would have done the same thing. When you see a district that is predominantly an agricultural district lumped in with a district that is probably a fishing district, or has nothing in common with a certain part of a rural district - they were really good reasons and I commend the members for motivating those people and having them go out because that is what the whole process was all about.

In my particular district, I know that at the time I appeared there was very little interest shown in the boundaries that were brought about. I appeared before the commission down in Bonavista and if I recall, at that time there was only one other person who made a presentation on that morning. The presentations were more along the lines of historic attachment rather than what we maybe should look at. I always though it made a lot of sense to have some of the communities that are involved right now in Bonavista South, which are Catalina, Port Union and Melrose down in the lower end of the district - I always thought it made sense to have those included in Bonavista South. I always thought that if there was a recommendation made, or if there was a change made, that you would probably see the line cross at Barbour Bridge, I say to the Member for Bonavista North, there as you enter Charleston. It would then be an area where you would just have one member travelling that part of the Bonavista Peninsula and the member would serve Route 235 and up Route 230. He would serve both sides of the peninsula, the south side of Bonavista Bay and the north side of Trinity Bay up to Charleston. I think if you did your figures and looked at your quotients there you would find that it would probably work out very, very close to the numbers that are arrived at here now.

Naturally, everybody's dream, I suppose, or everybody would like to have their own community in the district they represent. The committee in its final report, in the forty-eight seat proposal, saw fit to go as far as Melrose on the north side of Trinity Bay and then come all the way up and take in the surrounding communities of Lethbridge, Jamestown, Portland, Morley's Siding, and on down to Winter Brook. It certainly made sense, but the forty-seat proposal would have taken Bunyan's Cove and Musgravetown into the same district as it exists today. To me, it would have made a lot of sense to have allowed that to happen, because we were always part of Bonavista South. When I say `we' I speak of Musgravetown and Bunyan's Cove which were always part of Bonavista South up until 1973 when the district of Terra Nova was created. I think it was 1972 or 1973. I stand to be corrected.

MR. LUSH: I will tell you now. It was 1975.

MR. FITZGERALD: It was in 1975 that the new district of Terra Nova was created. Yes, that is probably when it was. It was certainly later than 1972.

It made sense to me, because all of that area had something in common in that it was all related to the fishery or agriculture or farming and logging.

MR. LUSH: I was the first member.

MR. FITZGERALD: You were the first member there. I remember it quite clearly, and the gentleman who ran against you at that particular time for nomination was a gentleman by the name of Gilbert Holloway, I say to the member. I attended the meeting up in the second story of the Musgrave Town Central School, on the same hill that we talked about the other day here where the new school is built.

AN HON. MEMBER: You must be old, are you?

MR. FITZGERALD: No, I had just come back from Ontario, then, after being away for eight years, and I was certainly interested in politics.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: No, I supported the Member for Terra Nova, I say to the Member for Ferryland. I supported him.

AN HON. MEMBER: He was a good man.

MR. FITZGERALD: He was a good man. I voted Liberal before. I voted NDP when I lived in Ontario. I never, ever voted NDP here in Newfoundland.

MR. SULLIVAN: Is he still a good man?

MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, absolutely; he is still a good man, and I think he can go back into that district today and win it hands down, I say to members opposite and members here. He can go back into that district today, because the man is well respected there. He is a prime example of what members should be, and what they want to be but won't be able to be when you see those changes brought about here.

The Member for Fogo - Twillingate will have something like fifty communities included in his district. The Member for Trinity North - the district of Trinity North now will have forty-eight communities. Bonavista South will have thirty-five communities, a vast difference, I say to the Member for Pleasantville, a vast difference to being able to come and walk around your district every morning before breakfast, a vast difference.

When you go and compare, and when you don't take into consideration the geography of this Province and the geography of the areas being put forward here, I think we are making a great mistake. I think we are making a great mistake. Because comparing rural districts to urban districts is completely different, Mr. Speaker. This whole process was based on population only - I think it was plus or minus 10 per cent - and if somebody could see the number of telephone calls that I get, and I will venture to say that I have one of the busiest districts in this House here, if people could see the number of telephone calls that come through my office on a daily basis, and compare it to some of the people who represent an urban district here, you will see that there is certainly no comparison.

The Member for Humber Valley got up earlier and spoke about some of the things that a rural politician has to look after, and is expected to look after. Somebody came to me some time ago and talked about dealing with a social services problem, and wondering why I would pay so much attention to trying to get somebody on social services a second-hand washer. That person said: `I know that you have made so many calls; I know that you went and visited the house, but you are probably going to lose twice as many votes by somebody seeing a truck drive up to the door and delivering a washer.' I said: `Well, sobeit; if I lose them I lose them.' Because this particular lady, and the other people who call, are people who need assistance, need to be looked after, and have a great need for some common things that we individuals most of the time take for granted. It is not an issue with us if something gets broken - we either get it repaired or we get it replaced. All the people out there in rural Newfoundland today, I can assure you, are not that fortunate.

At the particular time that I appeared before the Mahoney Commission I talked about the number of phone calls that I was receiving and I talked about the urban/rural thing and I talked about the plus or minus - I think it was plus or minus 25 per cent at that particular time, in the beginning. One of the commissioners said, `Well, you know, we understand all that, but we will give you extra staff. If there is a busy district like yours, and I have every reason to believe that it is because I heard it from the person who spoke before you as well and from other people in the area, we will give you extra staff.' Then I questioned the idea of having this bill - the idea of having people going around the Province and talking to the public out there with the intention of reducing the number of seats. If they are going to give me extra staff in order to run a district and they are going to cut out three or four members of the House of Assembly, then where is the saving, Mr. Speaker?

Most of the time - and I think we all can attest to this - when people call they don't want to speak with your secretary, they don't want to speak with your executive assistant, in the case of the ministers, they want to speak with the person that they elect, Mr. Speaker. They want to speak with the person that they elect and it is not good enough to say that he is at a meeting or he is not in the House or he is out in the district. They expect you to get back to them, and I believe they have every right to expect that because you have been there looking for their support and you will be going back again. I think, Mr. Speaker, that that is not asking too much, for you to be there for them when they need you.

In my district - and I speak of my district because that is the one I know best and the one that concerns me the most, Mr. Speaker - for me to leave where I live, and I live on a bordering town of the district, and drive to Bonavista and back again it is 120 miles, 60 miles one way. That is a vast difference, I say - and I know there are members here who represent ridings where even that is not a large distance. I know some people have to get on ferries and other people have to fly in and visit other communities.

I say to the member that those are things that should be taken into consideration, Mr. Speaker, because never before in the history of this Province have we needed greater representation and never before have people out there been so beaten down and expecting something than now.

As we find our economic times getting worse, and I believe they will probably get even worse than they are today, the pressures and the expectations on members are certainly great, and I think that we should be there to respond. It is one thing to save money and another thing to give representation.

The other thing about us, as politicians, is I think we always seem to be guilty about ourselves. We seem to think everybody is looking at us, everybody is saying that we are making too much money or we are not doing enough work or there are too many of us or somebody's pension is too great. I don't hear any of that, and I doubt if many people on the other side hear any of it. We all seem to feel guilty with ourselves about it, but how many people have been confronted and have been told that people out there would rather have other communities included in their districts or they would rather not be part of a particular district because they are not getting representation? How many people sitting here now have been confronted by constituents, Mr. Speaker, who have asked them if they wouldn't mind stepping aside or if they wouldn't mind giving up their pension or something else? Nobody. Very few if anybody. I don't think anybody has and, in fact, the former Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, before he left, went around there a few months ago and he came over and met with our caucus and looked at the possibility of reducing government members' pensions. He came over and he wanted our thoughts and ideas and suggestions, and I asked him, at the time: Minister, are there many people calling you about this? Are many people approaching you? Are you getting many complaints about government members' pensions?' `No, I am not getting any complaints.'

For some reason, because we are politicians we always seem to be apologizing for who we are, what we are doing and what we are all about. Everybody has the same opportunity to do what you do. It is an open process, at least it is open over here on this side; we don't even require members to carry cards. Anybody at all can come forward and take part in the process if they want to run and become a member of this party; it's an open party, they just have to show up and vote on the night we have nominations and they are as welcome as -

AN HON. MEMBER: Flowers in May.

MR. FITZGERALD: They are as welcome as the flowers in May, and that's the way that it should be. It is an open party, an open process, Mr. Speaker, and I believe that those people on the other side - if they had their time back, they would probably want their party to be open as well. We all have this fear that somebody is going to block the halls if we don't have a membership. If we don't control something, somebody is going to block the halls, and if there are any more than two people running for something, there is always a situation that the person who loses, will come out and say: Well, such a one blocked the hall because the Tories - if it was a Liberal nomination party - did it so they could get the weakest candidate. That's a bunch of crock, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Nobody blocks any halls other than the people - and I say to the minister, it was your idea to carry on with a Late Show, it wasn't ours. We were satisfied to go at five o'clock when we had people in the gallery. The night is bad, the weather is bad and only for that, I am sure that they would be here and it is not our bill, I say to the minister. It is not our bill, it is your bill and that's why we are here debating it. It is your idea, Mr. Speaker, to carry it on until ten o'clock tonight. That is another process and I don't know why we are here until ten o'clock tonight.

I mean, it is a piece of legislation brought forward, we are exercising our democratic right by standing and debating this bill, Mr. Speaker, and I hope people on the other side would take part in the process as well, because it will be certainly interesting to see what some of those people think. And I can assure you, not every member over there is happy with this bill as it is presented and the process that has taken it this far.

Mr. Speaker, in my particular district, the District of Bonavista South, there are thirty-five communities. Many of those communities have their own fire department; there are communities which have their own town councils and community councils; there are communities which have their own particular organization and some time during the year they carry on functions, and members are invited and are expected to attend functions. And I think they should attend those functions - that's why they are there; it gives them a chance to meet their constituents, it gives them a chance to get up and address the gathering and there is always a situation when you go, when somebody asks: Was the member there? I can assure you that this member is there, Mr. Speaker. Everything to which I am invited, if it is possible at all, I attend, and I think that is the way it should be.

Now, when I assume - or whomever is the member of the district, when he assumes another ten communities and when the Member for Fogo - Twillingate takes on fifty communities, it is virtually impossible for that man or the Member for Trinity North with forty-eight to attend all the functions and all the things that happen in those communities throughout the year. In the summer time, I mean, most of the communities now have their day whether it is Little Catalina Day or whether it is Catalina Day or Bonavista Day or whatever, Mr. Speaker, all communities or most of them have their little functions and they expect the members to be there.

The Member for Naskaupi probably cannot associate with what I am saying because he does not attend anything like that; he is in the twilight of his career, probably won't run anymore and has no concern, no compassion, that's why he is leaving the Chamber, he does not want to hear it. In fact, I doubt if he can look at himself in the mirror. I would like to ask him before he goes, how often has he gone to his district this year?

MR. SULLIVAN: I heard there are no mirrors in his house.

MR. FITZGERALD: I would like to find out how often that member has visited his district this year. Somebody put up two and I would say you are probably right on. I would say you are probably 100 per cent right.

MR. SULLIVAN: (Inaudible) out of his house, and all the glass windows; he put shutters over them.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I tell you, I visit my district at least once a week and I don't know if there is one community in my district where I have gone any more than two weeks without being there. and in most of the areas, Mr. Speaker, when I go there, a place like Newman's Cove for instance in my district, and Upper and Lower Amherst Cove where, there does not seem to be a lot of activity there and you have a chance to meet with everybody as you do in some of the other centres, I get out and knock on the doors there. I go down and sometimes I take a full day knocking on doors: `How are you doing? Is there anything I can do to help you?

When did the Member from St. John's go into somebody's house and fill out his Unemployment Insurance return, on a bi-weekly basis, a bi-monthly basis, I ask him? When is the last time somebody did that? When was the last time somebody went to help someone fill out his income tax form? This is what rural politicians do, Mr. Speaker, I am not the only one who does it. I am sure the Member for Trinity North - and I would like the Member for Bonavista North to speak on this bill because, with his experience and some of the people he dealt with, I can assure you that he would make a very interesting speech, and he is dealing on the north side of the Bay with exactly what I am dealing with on the south side. He is probably a little bit better off in that he has a fish plant there that still generates a fair amount of employment, but basically, Mr. Speaker, it is pretty much the same thing, the same type of people and many of the functions and many of the efforts that are requested from a local politician that he will find as I am finding in my district and it is something that I think should be allowed to continue.

When I got elected, I talked to somebody from one of the St. John's ridings about the number of phone calls I was getting, and this sort of thing, and how he seemed to have had a lot of time on his hands. And he said: `Yes, but Roger, one thing you have to keep in mind is that we are closer to the action. You watch my office door and you will see a lot of people in and out. I have seen probably three times as many people in and out of my own office as I have seen in and out of his office. Because when people come here, they always want to seem to come in and get you to take them somewhere, whether it is down for a birth certificate, or whether it is down to an appeals hearing, or whatever. This is something else, when it comes to unemployment insurance appeals. I know that a lot of the people from St. John's take part in this as well. There is an awful lot of that kind of activity out there today that they expect their government members to partake in and help them along the way.

I have had many occasions when I have, if the House was open, stayed over Monday morning and travelled to Gander, have gone down and picked up my constituent, taken him in to Gander, brought him back again, and dropped him off and brought him in here. Those are the kinds of things that you will not be able to do when you take into consideration the number of towns and the number of people you are going to be taking on when you look at this - even this forty-eight seat proposal - you are not going to be able to do it.

The shame of it is, I think, the plus or minus 10 per cent quota. I don't think that should have ever been built in there. I think the rural areas should be completely different. The rural areas probably could have been plus or minus 25 per cent. When I hear members even here today, when the Government House Leader was introducing the bill, people talked about, `Give me another 5,000; I can handle another 5,000 or another 6,000'. Sure they can. Some urban members can very well handle another 4,000 or 5,000 people. It is not a problem for them.

I got elected in May of 1993, and I have not taken a holiday, have not taken a day off -

DR. KITCHEN: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: Pardon?

DR. KITCHEN: Not even Sunday.

MR. FITZGERALD: No, Sir, not even Sunday. In fact, yesterday morning I got up, I say to the member, I went to church down in Bonavista, and after church I visited four people and came back in here again last night. When I got in last night I went to the hospital to visit two constituents, and on leaving the hospital I went over to Cowperthwaite Court and visited a former constituent of mine who is living there. I thought that area was in the member's district, St. John's Centre. And this is a person with a problem, and somebody has to go back and help that individual again.

DR. KITCHEN: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: And you know what I am talking about, I say to the member.

Mr. Speaker, those are the kinds of things that need to be done. I think those are the kinds of things that people out there expect, and they have every right to expect it.

Now, we can get on our high horses and come in here, and it is very easy to forget the people who elected you. You can come in here and you can get led astray. You can buy yourself a house, and you can be down on George Street, and you can go to the Arts and Culture Centre, and go to the hockey games. You don't have to go home every weekend. You can attend all those functions and forget the people who elected you - very easily done - but the day of reckoning will come.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: The day of reckoning will come. `Rex Gibbons' knows what I am talking about as well. Whether he will admit it or not is something else. The day of reckoning will come, but he probably cannot associate with it because he represents an urban riding, I say to the Member for Fogo. But he is down around the north side of Bonavista Bay and they teach him a few things down there, from what I understand. He is down around the north side of the bay there and hopefully some of it will -

AN HON. MEMBER: Wesleyville - Lumsden.

MR. FITZGERALD: Around the Wesleyville - Lumsden area.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. FITZGERALD: Just a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, if you will.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, those are the things that a rural politician has to deal with. He can make up his mind when he gets elected. He can come in here and forget the person who is on social assistance, he can forget the old gentleman who cannot read or write, who wants help in filling out his unemployment insurance form, or the lady who wants her GST looked after. He can forget all about that and hang around with the cocktail circuit crowd in here - forget about his constituents. But eventually he has to go back; and if you are not there for them, then you will not be here the next time around, especially if you are in Opposition, I say to the member, and the next time around comes much sooner than a lot of people think. And this is one member here, whether it is thirty-five seats or forty-eight seats, I think I will be able to look at myself in the mirror, and the next time around if I am defeated, you will not see me hanging around and up in the stands. I will walk away from Confederation Building and I will walk away from politics because I will know that I gave it my honest effort, and the people have spoken and I will accept that.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I say we are here for one reason - we are here to provide representation. We are here to represent the people in our districts, our constituents who put us here. Now, you make it forty-eight or you can take it down to forty, or do whatever you want with it, but if you do not provide that representation you are not doing the thing you were elected to do and when the people have another say in judging you, I think you will very quickly find out what your marks were in the three or four years that you stood in this House and provided representation on their behalf.

Thank you very much.

AN HON. MEMBER: What a member!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I guess two years ago or thereabouts I made a presentation to the Mahoney Commission and in that presentation I said: I believe the business of the Legislature and the responsiveness of the elected members to the electorate can be satisfactorily achieved with a reduced membership in the House of Assembly. I said as well: I am prepared to accept the concept of a forty-one member district and if there are adjustments to the total, the number should not exceed forty-two elected members.

Mr. Speaker, on the bill before us today we have Bill 31, "An Act To Amend The House of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act." My comment is that this act is a step in the right direction. It reduces the number of members in the House from fifty-two to forty-eight. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it does not go far enough.

Back in 1928, when this Province - this country at the time, was facing some severe problems, the Legislature of the day, a Liberal Government under Sir Richard Squires, faced the same problems as we do now. They found that the membership in the House of Assembly was, in their opinion, too many. There were forty members in 1928, I say to the Member for Fogo. They had a redistribution and they dropped the membership to twenty-eight. That was in 1928.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I could also tell you what happened in the next election. They got very sadly defeated but it was not because of the reduction from forty seats down to twenty-eight. They recognized that in this country, at that time, as in this Province today, if we are going to talk about reducing membership in the House of Assembly, then we should do it sincerely and we should do more than tokenism. Fifty-two members to forty-eight members is mere tokenism.

We are debating this bill today in the aftermath of the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs having told the municipalities of this Province that their municipal operating grants can be reduced by 22 per cent. We listened to Sister Davis talk about the effects on health care of the cutbacks in the budgetary allocations. Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that if we are going to reduce the membership in the House of Assembly we should do it down to what the Mahoney Commission recommended at a minimum, which is forty-four members and, personally speaking, I think we should be nearer to forty members.

Now, Mr. Speaker, before I arrived in the House in 1993, I knew from my reading of Newfoundland history that after every general census a redistribution takes place. In December, 1992, the government of the day, in a Ministerial Statement, announced its intention to appoint an independent redistribution commission whose task would be to recommend the electoral district boundaries changes. There had been some discussion in the House of Assembly prior to that and members had made recommendations. I believe it was the Member for St. John's East Extern, at the time, Mr. Kevin Parsons, who talked about the concept of a forty-member Legislature. So the government of the day issued a Ministerial Statement giving its intent. The intent was that the House of Assembly should be reduced to somewhere between forty and forty-six members. Subsequent to that, later in that same month, the independent commission was appointed under the Chair of Justice Mahoney. Mr. Speaker, then the other members were appointed and these names have been stated here today on a couple of occasions. Mr. Speaker, Justice Mahoney and his commission then went across the Province and began to hold public hearings. My presentation to them was, like a lot of other presentations. I said in my presentation to the Mahoney Commission that I was prepared to accept a forty-seat House, forty-two or somewhere around there.

Mr. Speaker, we expected that there would be real change. The government had been elected on a promise of real change in 1989 and real change is not going from fifty-two to forty-eight. Real change is going from fifty-two to forty-two, forty or forty-four. That is real change. Today, in light of the economic conditions of this Province, maybe we should be thinking about thirty-six seats. Maybe we should be going lower than forty.

Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that we have to try to look at our role in providing an example to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. And our example of economic restraint is not exemplified by our actions when we talk about reducing the number of seats from fifty-two to forty-eight. That, to me, is mere tokenism. So, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to have a strong, consistent message presented, we should have been doing it more aggressively, and although I say this is a step in the right direction, it doesn't go far enough.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the Mahoney Commission submitted its initial report in February of 1994, after having their hearings during the fall of 1993. In that report, they talked about a forty-four seat Legislature. Now, in the subsequent months there was dialogue as to whether or not - they talked about forty-four including Torngat or not including Torngat, there was a lot of dialogue. However, I have as well, a confidential draft document prepared by the Mahoney Commission. It was drafted up - and I am just going to read parts from it.

MR. ROBERTS: Is the hon. gentleman prepared to table it?

MR. HODDER: Yes, I am. It says in this draft document - the concluding paragraph says everything. It says: Therefore, from the foregoing, it can be seen that the commission acted entirely within the legislation and its instructions under it. Subsequent events have demonstrated that it was all a waste of time and public money.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman has every right and of course indeed (inaudible) the obligation of the rules to table it, he must also explain why (inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: I didn't think a private member could table anything.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, speaking to the point of order, I am constrained by the fact that a member of the Opposition or a private member in this case, is not allowed, under the rules, to table the information; however, I am quite prepared to show it to the House Leader.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Beauchesne specifically says that a private member has neither the right nor the obligation to table any documents unless by consent of everybody and the hon. member has consented to table it.

MR. ROBERTS: Is there unanimous consent to table it, Mr. Speaker?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: Yes - unanimous consent? Okay.

The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, I can table the comments here but I would like to quote from them and I will share them with any member of the House.

MR. ROBERTS: Table them so that we can have a look at them.

MR. HODDER: I have only the one copy, Mr. Speaker.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, the hon. gentlemen over there have given consent to table it, so let's table it.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, what this report says is - and I am quoting again from the confidential draft prepared by associates of the Mahoney Commission on May 11, 1994.

MR. ROBERTS: Now we are getting closer to it.

MR. HODDER: It says: Because of recent publicity and controversy about the report made in June of 1994 by the 1993 Electoral Boundaries Commission, it is necessary the public has some factual information to correct certain misinformation given to the public. Then it outlines the mandate to the commission. Mr. Speaker, the comments here indicate that members of the Mahoney Commission were not very happy.

MR. ROBERTS: Does the hon. gentleman know who wrote it?

MR. HODDER: Do I know the precise author? The answer is no, I do not know the precise author.

MR. ROBERTS: Carry on.

MR. HODDER: Mr. Speaker, what this memorandum states is that - it talked about the two reports, the proposal for the forty members in the House, and the forty-four. It says there is no confusion. There are no two reports, and the commission did not recommend the government do anything. Instead, the commission submitted a summary of the report with the full report in order that it could easily be understood, because of all the details in the full report.

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

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to interrupt the hon. gentleman but he is quoting from an anonymous document, which he has acknowledged, and he does not know the provenance of this document, I would draw the House attention, Sir, and yours, to paragraph 498 of Beauchesne; it is on page 152 of the 6th Edition: "When quoting a letter in the House, a Member must be willing either to give the name of the author or to take full responsibility for the contents." Paragraph 499: "Telegrams should not be quoted in the House as there is no way of ensuring the authenticity of the signature."

The point I make, Mr. Speaker, is that the hon. gentleman has acknowledged he has no way of knowing this document is authentic; therefore, he ought not to quote from it. For all he knows, it could have been made up in the Opposition research office yesterday afternoon.

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

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

I do not want to bog down the House on spurious points of order by the Government House Leader. He is trying, I guess, to prevent my colleague, the Member for Waterford - Kenmount now from having his say in the debate. Just a few days ago we saw the Member for Eagle River over there with all kinds of documents, pink slips and other stuff that he was supposedly quoting from but in reality was not giving the House proper information, so I suggest to Your Honour there is no point of order and that the Government House Leader should let the hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount conclude his remarks.

MR. SPEAKER: To the point of order, in reviewing paragraph 498.(3): "When quoting a letter in the House, a Member must be willing either to give the name of the author or to take full responsibility for the contents."; and paragraph 499, "Telegrams should not be quoted in the House as there is no way of ensuring the authenticity of the signature." I guess I will go back to my previous ruling in terms of documents cited, paragraph 495: "A private Member has neither the right nor the obligation to table an official, or any other, document..." So I guess a letter, to me, is a letter written to somebody, but the hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount distinctly said he was quoting from a report, an official document, he said, and in this House I have to take the hon. member's word.

There is no point of order.

The hon. the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The point is that there was $400,000 spent on the Mahoney Commission, and that money was spent to achieve what? To bring us from fifty-two seats down to forty-eight seats. It would take us a year to even recover the amount of money spent on the commission. Therefore, the whole process was, in itself, a waste of public funds in the sense of achieving any great economies; however, I admit that the purpose of having electoral redistribution is not necessarily solely motivated by the need to reduce public expenditure. It is something that is required to be done from time to time.

Mr. Speaker, how does the membership in this Legislature stand up with the practice across the rest of the country? Let me compare it to New Brunswick. In 1993 in New Brunswick the Electoral Boundaries Commission recommended a reduction from fifty-eight to fifty-five districts. The average district voter population is 9,411 and, of course, there is a 25 per cent variation allowed for in New Brunswick. In the Province of Manitoba, the total population of the province is 1,071,232 divided among fifty-seven electoral districts, an average district population of 18,794. Then we move into Saskatchewan; in Saskatchewan we have a district population here of fifty-six constituencies, southern constituencies and, of course, there are a couple of northern constituencies as well. The population quotient is 17,182. We move into Alberta where there are eighty-three electoral districts, an average district population of 30,788. In British Columbia where the population is 2,013,674 there are seventy-five districts where the quotient is 26,849.

In this Province, with the changes that we have, we find that the numbers for this province of the forty-eight seats, the quotient is 12,181 and with lesser or plus 10 per cent, it could be 10,963 or 13,339. Mr. Speaker, compared to other provinces of this country, our population quotients are quite low. Therefore, what I am saying is that a forty-seat membership in this House is quite reasonable. In fact, if you use the argument of the population quotients in other provinces, with the exception of Prince Edward Island or the New Brunswick example, we could easily find ourselves quite well served with a House of thirty-six. Mr. Speaker, these are some of the reasons why I cannot support the bill. It does not quite go far enough.

Mr. Speaker, also I wanted to comment on the variation. I believe in representation by population. I think everybody believes in that theory and that democratic principle. However, we have to recognize, as my colleague, the Member for Bonavista South said, the sheer geographics of Newfoundland and Labrador. We have to recognize as well, the workload variation between urban and rural districts. While we can say that one vote is equal to one vote, is equal to one vote, we have to also ask: does one workload equal one workload, equal one workload? I, as a member representing very much of an urban district - I have a couple of farmers in my district, but 98 per cent of my constituents are urban dwellers. So, Mr. Speaker, there is a big variation. My district is located partially in the capital city, primarily in the capital city, I would say, and because of its nature, my constituents have access to government services by virtue of their adjacency to the capital city and to the government offices, federally and provincially.

Mr. Speaker, when you look at the services that are provided by the cities of St. John's and Mount Pearl you cannot compare that to the services that are provided in many of our rural areas. Therefore, while we can say that there should be representation by population, and one person's vote should be equal to another person's vote, we have to face the reality, and the reality is that for an urban district like Waterford - Kenmount the workload is not the same as the workload for my colleague in Bonavista South or my colleague in Burin - Placentia West. It is entirely different, so therefore it is reasonable to assume that in a district like Waterford - Kenmount we would have a lot of people who could either have direct access to the providers of the service or they would have the service provided by the City of St. John's or by other agencies, and they would not have the same need to call on their MHA for regular services. So for that reason I do believe that the 10 per cent variation is a little too restrictive. I would have been happy to have supported somewhere around the 15 per cent to 18 per cent variation. I think 25 per cent may be a little bit too much the other way, but somewhere in between there could have been a happy meeting, you might say. I think 10 per cent is too restrictive, and probably 25 per cent might be too much. Maybe we should have sawed it off at half-way between the two.

As well, I wanted to comment on some of the process. I made reference earlier to the fact when the concept was brought forward there was some concern that there had been effort on the part of the government to protect some of its own members. I know that gerrymandering is a word that has been used. It has its origins in Massachusetts, but it certainly -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HODDER: Oh, no; I don't need your help. I do my research before we come here. I should say to you, in the dictionary gerrymandering is found right after gerontology.

In this particular case what I wanted to point out is that in looking at the redistribution it is not much of a secret around this building that some members on the government side are not very happy. They were not very happy with forty-four, and some of them are not even happy with the forty-eight seat concept.

But, Mr. Speaker, we have to be determined to do what is right for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot go out and say: well, this is going to affect my district negatively, or this is going to affect my district positively. We have to do what is right for the people and try and be as fair as we can. Some of the members opposite I know are not very happy with the way their towns or communities are divided up, and that is understandable. Certainly we expect that there might be even further amendments coming to this particular piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, we all have to face the reality that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador today expect this House to be an example of constraint, an example of cutbacks, and if we are going to require the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to cut back we should start it right in our own backyard. Going from fifty-two to forty-eight is not exemplary for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and it is not the signal we want to send to the people at a time when we are asking everybody else to cut back and we are going to just keep on doing the tokenism that we have represented by the measures outlined in this particular piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I just wish to say that I will be voting against the legislation and not because it greatly affects my district. It does not. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the boundaries of my district will be redrawn and if anything it will be positively affecting the district of Waterford - Kenmount, but that does not make it right. Therefore, I say, Mr. Speaker, although I feel very comfortable with the fact that I would like to see a forty seat Legislature I would have supported strongly the forty-four seat proposal by Justice Mahoney. That is what the recommendations were.

We should have stayed with that. We should not have fooled around with it. We should not have gone out and said we have to have it up to forty-eight, and when the government decided they were going to go and put it up to forty-eight I think they broke faith with the independence of the Commission. The Commission was independent and what happened to it afterwards was nothing more than absolute gerrymandering. Mr. Speaker, we have to try and lead by example. You cannot appoint a commission and then go out afterwards and say if it does not bring back what we want we will change it all, and this is what happened here. The Commission did not bring back what the government wanted so they said: fine, if you do not bring that back we will fool around with it, we will gerrymander it, we will make it to what we would like to have it to give us the best chance in the next election.

Mr. Speaker, what you have today is a flawed approach. It has been tampered with by the government and by the Cabinet to try to settle the strife in their own back benches and it does not represent what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador expect from us in 1995, and it certainly does not represent what is in the best interest of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador because we can have adequate representation in this House with a forty seat Legislature or, according to the Mahoney Commission, with a forty-four seat membership.

I thank you, very much, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. WOODFORD: Mr. Speaker, the Member for Menihek was up first.

MR. DECKER: Do you think we should only have on riding on the Burin Peninsula?

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I tell the hon. member one thing, that at the most it should be two ridings - at the most.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: That's a job.

Mr. Justice Mahoney saw that as well.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Justice Mahoney and the commissioners saw the need for two -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) table it now.

MR. TOBIN: No, he tables nothing.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is worth nothing.

MR. TOBIN: Why are you talking about the Minister of Justice?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Because someone said you were worth nothing, so I assumed it was you they were talking about.

AN HON. MEMBER: A good point. Somebody in the caucus said that.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible) somebody.

MR. TOBIN: Somebody's.

AN HON. MEMBER: You are against the bill, are you?

MR. TOBIN: We will see whether I am for it or against it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: You wait and see, now.

AN HON. MEMBER: It's hard to keep a straight face, (inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, it is hard to keep a straight face, and it must be extremely difficult for the Minister of Justice to come into this House and introduce these pieces of legislation with a straight face after Mr. Justice Mahoney brought in a recommendation of forty-four seats, and then the Minister of Justice and the Premier did not have a seat. Under the forty-four seats there was no seat for the Minister of Justice and there was no seat for the Premier, and that is where the forty-eight seats came from. There were no seats for -

MR. W. MATTHEWS: No seat for the Premier?

MR. TOBIN: The Premier's seat was gone, and so was the Minister of Justices. What did they do?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, when all of this was said and done, what happened? What did Mr. Justice say?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: I think this is very important, what Mr. Justice had to say. When he submitted his report, when the Minister of Justice tore it up and threw it away and ignored it, he said: Therefore, from the foregoing it can be seen that the Commission acted entirely within the legislation and its instructions under it. Subsequent events have demonstrated that it was all a waste of time and public money.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: Who said that? Mahoney said that?

MR. TOBIN: That is what was said, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: You want me to read it again?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, read it again.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I will read it again. He said: Therefore from the foregoing, it can be seen that the Commission acted entirely within the legislation and its instructions under it. Subsequent events have demonstrated that it was all a waste of time and public money. That's what it said, Mr. Speaker, and the reference was made to this government which decided to go in and tear up Mr. Justice Mahoney's Report, and what did they do? They went judge shopping! The Minister of Justice took him out and they split bread together, I would suspect -

AN HON. MEMBER: What?

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, they broke bread together. The Minister of Justice going on a judge-shopping tour.

AN HON. MEMBER: What do you mean go on a judge shopping tour?

MR. TOBIN: How did he go judge shopping? He went and asked Mr. Justice Mahoney to again come in and put his stamp on what the Premier and the Minister of Justice did and he refused. That's what happened, so then he went to some more judges I would suspect, and he finally found a retired judge as I understand it, who put his stamp on it and it is not legal and I don't think it is binding because this House, Mr. Speaker, legislation states that a Justice of the Supreme Court and a Commission must go out and hold public hearings around this Province and a former speaker, Mr. Speaker, set it up as per the legislation of the day, and Mr. Justice Mahoney brought back a report that recommended - forty seats in the beginning was his proposal - the Minister of Justice goes out and interferes with that process; he goes to Clarenville and interferes with that process, undermines what happens in this House, undermines the commission and asks, like he says himself, on behalf of the ministry -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: What's that?

AN HON. MEMBER: You don't believe that?

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I don't believe anything the Minister of Health says - went out and undermined it -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I can't say, it is unparliamentary and if it is unparliamentary I wouldn't say it, Mr. Speaker knows that.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, you are not right there, you are not right there. What does the legislation state? Not less than forty and not more than forty-six, so how come we end up with forty-eight, Mr. Speaker? How come we end up with forty-eight if it is not gerrymandering at the worst, the way, Mr. Speaker, that this has been chopped up, cut up, screwed up, can only be done by the Minister of Justice, and Premier. Individuals in a panic because their seats are about to be blown, thrown away. What concern do they have for the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture and the Minister of Environment, when they have to go and fight it out, Mr. Speaker? Let there be no doubt who is going to win. There is no doubt who is going to win.

The Minister of Environment will take it hands down. It won't be a contest and the unfortunate thing about this is that the people of the Province will not get an opportunity to reject the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture and all of his incompetence in a general election that will be done by the people in the new district when the Minister of the Environment takes him on in a nomination.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: Is that prophecy now or just speculation?

MR. TOBIN: That is fact, and if the member wants to wage something on it - now I am not going to wage a Jaguar or anything like that because I do not get an $8000 car allowance like the Minister of Health, while the sick and the suffering in this Province -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I most certainly did and not very long.

I can tell you one thing, that when we lost the government we passed in the keys of the cars and that is more than you are going to do with the thousands of dollars you are getting from taxpayer's money. While you are closing up hospital beds in this Province you are driving around in Jaguars. I would drive around in one, too, if I could afford it but I cannot afford it I say to the Minister of Health. The government will not contribute anything to my cost of buying a car.

AN HON. MEMBER: I will give you the keys.

MR. TOBIN: Well, if you can I will have her.

I know this is the proposed district that I would think, Mr. Speaker, you would probably be looking at. I ask members opposite what sense does it make and what do the people of Bay L'Argent, Jack Fountain, and St. Bernard's have in common with Bellevue, Bellevue Beach, Dildo South, Chapel Arm or Blake Town?

AN HON. MEMBER: They are all Newfoundlanders.

MR. TOBIN: Sure they are all Newfoundlanders. Placentia Bay, Bonavista Bay and Trinity Bay. Mr. Speaker –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, and all fine people, no doubt about that but the bottom line is that the Burin Placentia should be two seats and two seats only, Mr. Speaker. The Commission recommended that. What sense does it make to take five towns out of my district?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, Mr. Speaker, I would love to represent it but I tell you one thing, it will be a hard job to find someone like the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island to represent it. They will be digging pretty deep then. Mount Scio, Fortune - Hermitage -

Mr. Justice Mahoney recommended that the Burin Peninsula be split down the middle. Fortune Bay would come under the Grand Bank district and Placentia Bay would come under Burin - Placentia West. Now what did they do? They took Monkstown from my district and put it in with Bellevue. They took Winterland, Epworth, Salmonier, Tight Brook, Lewin's Cove and put them all in with Grand Bank and made my district smaller at a time when they are closing hospital beds; at a time when the sick and the suffering of this Province have never been attacked like they are being attacked right now; at a time, Mr. Speaker, when children in this Province - we heard today, children in this Province are being asked to have their budgets slashed in the school systems. Never before, Mr. Speaker, have governments gone to the kindergartens of this Province, to the elementary schools or the high schools of this Province. Never before, like the Minister of Education has now gone to the school boards to slash the budget and to attack the kindergartens of this Province. Yet, what did they do? They cut the number of communities from my district. They made Burin - Placentia West smaller.

AN HON. MEMBER: They attacked four year olds.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, Mr. Speaker, and I would say one day year olds if you could attack them, the old hobnail boots.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Go back and live with the hens boy.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Well that's why you spend so much time in the chicken house, I would suggest, plucking chicken, since you are speaking of brains and water levels. A fellow who spent a life plucking chicken and hens -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Don't say that, he might be thrown out of the House.

MR. TOBIN: I would say, Mr. Speaker, that if the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island - what is he saying about the changes in his district?

MR. WALSH: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Wonderful, oh well we will hear that.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Is that right? So you think that - what do you think about the commissioner's report? Are you going to stand up and tell us that? You won't stand up and say anything, I would say to the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island, because you are trying to sulk your way back into the Cabinet, that is why you won't say anything. You won't even stand with the members when they write letters to the Premier. When they write letters to the Premier you won't even put your signature on them, I say to the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island. Tell me about the games that you play. I know too well, and your caucus knows you even better.

In a time when the education system in this Province is under attack, and tens of millions of dollars is coming out of the education system, the hospitals are under attack, why is the government decreasing the number of people in this Province in certain electoral districts? Why are less people going to be in Burin - Placentia West under this new proposal? Six communities are taken out of the district, nothing new added, not a thing, six communities gone. Why?

AN HON. MEMBER: What did they do with them?

MR. TOBIN: They put one in with Bellevue and the rest in with Grand Bank; that is what they did with them.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: They are not in my district any longer.

I don't believe the taxpayers of this Province deserve to have the reduction in populations in this Province. I think they should be increased. Not only do I think that Burin - Placentia West should be 14,000 or 15,000 people like it was in the past; it could be increased. I don't have a district, one vote per person.

MR. SULLIVAN: The Premier said: A citizen is a citizen is a citizen.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, that is what the Premier said, but how can you compare a district in rural Newfoundland with an urban district? How can you say to the Member for St. John's North that he has the same amount of work as someone who represents a rural district, like the Member for Port au Port? Can you see any difference? Can you see the grave difference, the vast difference that will be between Port au Port or Baie Verte?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: What was that?

AN HON. MEMBER: It looks better at a distance.

MR. TOBIN: Why don't you go back to Florida where you spend the best part of your year?

Mr. Speaker, how can you compare Burin - Placentia West, for example, to St. John's West, and say one vote per person; every vote is equal, I think. The Premier said: A citizen is a citizen is a citizen.

I don't know if the Member for St. John's West, or St. John's North, or St. John's South has to charter a boat to visit their districts, or have to board a ferry to visit their districts, or have to drive, in my own case, to four or five fire departments, fifteen or twenty councils, who all want meetings every time you get an opportunity. How can you compare them to the urbanized seats in this Province?

MR. SULLIVAN: Where Andy Wells looks after them.

MR. TOBIN: Where the city council gets the calls. The only member in St. John's who I would suggest gets any amount of calls, the only member in St. John's who I would suggest does any amount of constituency work, is the Member for St. John's Centre.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. TOBIN: I would say that the Member for St. John's Centre does more constituency work than all of the rest of the St. John's members put together.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, you are not urbanized; you are rural. Torbay is - if you want to make Torbay urban, then I don't know what to think of you.

AN HON. MEMBER: Part of my district is urban.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, but that is - I said St. John's districts. I would never want to say that Kilbride was in St. John's.

How do we expect the people of this Province to be prepared to see the education system and the health system continue to be savagely attacked? This government, Mr. Speaker, is not prepared to take the recommendation of Mr. Justice Mahoney and bring in a forty-four seat House. How serious is this government about saving money, how concerned is this government, Mr. Speaker, about their financial obligation to the people of this Province, when here they have an opportunity to bring this House to forty or forty-four seats maximum and they refuse to do it? How can members opposite stand and vote for this?

As I was driving in from Marystown this morning I listened to some calls on open line, and the callers said that if this government is serious about doing something, let's reduce the number of seats in the House to the equivalent of the economic zones. Some people suggested nineteen; other people suggested two per zone which would be thirty-eight. In my opinion that would be plenty.

Any person representing a northern seat, Mr. Speaker, who can't represent 20,000 or 25,000 people, should not be allowed to be in here anyway; they are not worth their salt. If any member can walk out to their door in the morning in their pyjamas, like some of the - I won't say that - and their gold-plated slippers and say: I am visiting my district -

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you say gold-plated slippers?

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I said it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Ask some of your colleagues from St. John's.

Mr. Speaker, walk out and say: I am in my district, I visited my district... and trip over the gold hanging from their bumpers.

AN HON. MEMBER: Put their toe out through the door and they are in their districts.

MR. SULLIVAN: Are you trying to say they are Cinderellas here in St. John's?

AN HON. MEMBER: Put their toe out through their door and they are in their district.

AN HON. MEMBER: Is there a pumpkin in this too?

MR. TOBIN: Yes, there are a lot of pumpkins in the story I am talking about; a lot of pumpkins, Mr. Speaker.

How can you expect the people of this Province - weighed down with gold chains, bracelets, jewellery like you have never seen, and say that they cannot represent more than 12,000 people?

MR. L. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible)?

MR. TOBIN: You know who I am talking about, I say to the Minister of Health. If you don't, you are some stunned.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Has he got gold chains now on his car or on his neck or apartment? You would need gold chains tonight.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: I wouldn't doubt it, Mr. Speaker, for a minute.

Then these people talk about representation. Let them go out, Mr. Speaker, and take a district in some part of rural Newfoundland where they have to go and visit their communities by boats and skidoos, let them travel out there -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Yes, I am talking about the Member for St. John's North. Let him travel out there, Mr. Speaker, and see what is going on.

MR. L. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: You have them winterized.

MR. WOODFORD: You need chains on, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation says, in the winter.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)?

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I have it but it is ten years old.

AN HON. MEMBER: You settled down the old chicken clucker.

MR. SULLIVAN: There hasn't been a cluck out of him since.

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, when all of this was happening, the government had an opportunity here to save money and not to be attacking municipalities as well.

There are two points I want to make. One is the talk about councils. I have a copy of a letter here from the town of Fox Cove - Mortier that is sent to the minister. Signed by all of the council. It is too long to read but it makes some very good points. I will just read the last paragraph. It talks about the minister talking about all the phases he has to go through, phase one and phase two and all that. He finally says: Did you ever hear of the phrase: you can't get blood out of a turnip? Bottom line, Mr. Minister, thank you very much.

I think that sums up the feelings of all of the councils in this Province. That sums it up. I think the minister was (inaudible) past weekend. But how can the minister stand in front of a group of volunteer councillors in this Province when at the same time he is part of a government that ignores a commission's report that would reduce this House to forty seats, waste millions of dollars by not supporting this resolution? Why? How does the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs expect councils to go out and do what needs to be done?

I have something else here the minister might be interested in, the resolutions that were given out on the weekend by the Federation of Municipalities when they were debating over not having money enough, and yet there was a lot of money spent there. I have a copy of all the resolutions that were passed, and I've a copy of a similar resolution of a meeting in Gander on May 12, 1984, when the board of directors met with the hon. Hazel Newhook, minister, and Mr. Clarence Randell, the Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs. The president was no other than the present Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs. They were talking about government considering making changes to the MOG.

Mr. Reid pointed out that we do not have to accept what the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has decreed. He said that government expects to have these measures accepted because they have never been challenged on such matters by municipalities. I know it hasn't come home to roost. Now, when you said to the municipalities then that you didn't have to accept what government has decreed, what do you say to them today when you have issued the decree, I ask the minister? What do you say to them now?

That is the kind of question that has to be answered. I don't know if the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation still supports: Efford's aide says changes to electoral districts impractical. He said the District of Port de Grave area -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, because I haven't got any time left.

MR. SULLIVAN: Will you give him leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. SULLIVAN: Good, okay.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, he should be gone forever, after that statement he made in May of l984 and the one he made this weekend over at the hotel, wherever it was.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who?

MR. TOBIN: The Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, no. Didn't you hear what he said in '84? Did you hear what he said when he met with Hazel Newhook, when they were talking about making changes?

MR. SULLIVAN: He was the president then.

MR. TOBIN: The President of the Federation of Municipalities, Art Reid, pointed out that we do not have to accept what the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador has decreed. He went on to say: the government expects to have these measures accepted because they have never been challenged on such issues by municipalities. Mr. Speaker, what was the cut? I wonder, was it 22 per cent? Not likely, Mr. Speaker -

MR. WOODFORD: Fifty cents and it went down to forty-five cents (inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Ten per cent cut.

MR. TOBIN: - and now you come in and issue a decree of 22, the hypocrisy. What changes people to become like that? Why do people change their positions, Mr. Speaker, because I have no doubt that it had to be a man of principle who made that statement in May of '84, but where is the principle today?

Mr. Speaker, there are people and I am not suggesting the minister is one but I will say this, that there are people who will sell their souls for the perks of power, will turn.

AN HON. MEMBER: Ten per cent is not enough (inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: No, 10 per cent was too much.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: No, he wasn't.

MR. TOBIN: No I wasn't in Cabinet in '84.

Mr. Speaker, the other morning I was driving and I heard the present Mayor of Carbonear on the radio -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TOBIN: Your buddy - and it is my understanding that that town was having big financial problems and I wondered why, and then, Mr. Speaker, it came that the present minister was the former mayor who stopped at nothing to try to be elected to the House -

MR. W. MATTHEWS: It became perfectly clear, didn't it?

MR. TOBIN: - and if that meant putting the town -

AN HON. MEMBER: In debt?

MR. TOBIN: Yes, in big debt. In red, Mr. Speaker, sobeit, then he came in and tried to help solve the problem that he created. No, Mr. Speaker, he came in and compounded the problem, that is what this minister did and yet he will not support the reduction of seats in this House to forty.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. TOBIN: In conclusion, let me say that this piece of legislation is a farce. Mr. Justice Mahoney was committed to go around this Province and have public hearings and Mr. Mahoney and his committee, Mr. Speaker, brought back a recommendation of forty-four seats. I would like to see a forty-seat House but he brought back a recommendation of forty-four seats, and I honestly and sincerely believe that if we are to gain respect or to be respected by the public, or some people who are not out there looking after our own interests, then we should abide strictly by an independent committee that was put in place. I would implore all members, Mr. Speaker, to think of it in that vein, to think about why this was set up. How can members opposite, legitimately, look at what Mr. Mahoney recommended and not support it?

How can members opposite ask the taxpayers of this Province for an additional $2 million to appease the wishes of the Minister of Justice and the Premier because he did not have a seat in the Mahoney Report? How can they do that and at the same time savagely attack health care, education, and everything else, Mr. Speaker? How can members opposite sell out? Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice is talking about a straight face and he has a face like a Robert's horse to bring in this piece of legislation.

AN HON. MEMBER: Robert's horse.

MR. TOBIN: Yes, like Robert's horse. I did not say robbers I said Robert's.

AN HON. MEMBER: You should say a face like a Tobin.

MR. TOBIN: There would never be a Tobin betray the people of this Province on a piece of legislation as important to the taxpayers of this Province. There would never be a Tobin show such contempt for a Justice of the Supreme Court and a duly appointed committee as the Minister of Justice has shown. I consider that to be nothing but contempt for Mr. Justice Mahoney and his committee.

MR. SULLIVAN: Did not Mr. Justice Mahoney say that?

MR. TOBIN: I have what Mr. Justice Mahoney said here, and I read it three or four times. He said it was a waste of time. I submit to the Minister of Justice and the government that they tear this up. Mr. Justice Mahoney said: therefore, from the foregoing it can be seen that the Commission acted entirely within the legislation and its instructions under it. Subsequent events have demonstrated that it was a waste of time and public monies. That is what he said, Mr. Speaker, and that is the truth.

MR. SULLIVAN: Now, how many judges did he chase after that?

MR. TOBIN: I do not know how many justices he chased after that. I say to the Minister of Justice that Burin - Placentia West should not be reduced in size. The taxpayers of this Province do not deserve to have the district reduced in size. I am not overworked nor has any member before me in Burin - Placentia West been overworked. If the Minister of Justice wants to do justice to the taxpayers of this Province increase the population of Burin -Placentia West.

AN HON. MEMBER: Now, are you for or against this bill?

MR. TOBIN: Yes. The Minister of Justice should increase the population of Burin - Placentia West. There should be two seats on the Burin Peninsula. Two seats are plenty on the Burin Peninsula. The people of Fortune, Hermitage, St. Bernard's, Terrenceville, Grand Le Pierre, Bay L'Argent, Jack Fountain, all that area should all be brought in with the Burin Peninsula.

AN HON. MEMBER: (inaudible)

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, for the record, that nobody paid my green fees. You should look to your left.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I went down one day to the Goodwill Centre and they said you had just left with the one I wanted. So I had to settle for the green one.

MR. SULLIVAN: I heard they shut down after Ed went in, didn't they?

MR. TOBIN: There was a tweed one down there and I wanted that, but they said: Mr. Roberts just left with it.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I would ask the Minister of Justice to give serious consideration - and I may do something afterwards, Mr. Speaker, when we get into committee - to putting in place a system whereby there would be only two seats on the Burin Peninsula. However you want to divide it up, divide it up, but both my colleague from Grand Bank and myself agree fully that Fortune Bay be one district and Burin - Placentia West be the Placentia Bay district. If you want to divide it up any other way, divide it up but leave that part of the Peninsula as two seats and let us get on with representing the Peninsula. Because there is no one, Mr. Speaker, living inside the overpass who could do justice to representing any part of the Burin Peninsula.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to speak on Bill 31, `An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act.' My colleague, the Member for Burin - Placentia West said that there should be only two seats on the Burin Peninsula. Mr. Speaker, the reality is, in my opinion, that there should only be forty to forty-two seats in this Province.

In the fall of 1992 when this government introduced a mini-Budget, another mini-Budget, the Premier said: As a further demonstration of our resolve to reducing the cost of government and governing of the Province, in the future we will be asking the House to direct the redistribution commission, due to be appointed this coming March, to make recommendations for a House of Assembly consisting of the most appropriate number of districts, between forty and forty-six. In addition, we will be introducing legislation that will restrict the size of Cabinet to not more than one-third the size of the House.

Mr. Speaker, in saying that in the mini-Budget presented in 1992, the government was probably on the correct path, in my opinion. They were headed down the correct road in actually reducing the size of this House and significantly reducing the costs to taxpayers and to the citizens of the Province. But what happened? Chronologically it is an interesting story.

Bill 62 introduced in 1992, `An Act To Amend The Electoral Boundaries Act,' provided that the Electoral Boundaries Commission determine the number of electoral districts between forty and forty-six, weighing certain special factors. Now, over the last three years we found out what certain special factors were. No one told us that it would be interference by the Minister of Justice. No one told us it would be another commission appointed after the Minister of Justice was directed by the Premier to go look for another judge, a retired judge. No one told us that that would be a special factor.

Mr. Speaker, the most important special factor happened last August in the caucus revolt. The real reason we are here debating a forty-eight seat Assembly is not because Mr. Justice Noel brought forward a recommendation for forty-eight seats, it is not because of David Jones, whom the Minister of Justice indicated earlier put together the forty-eight seat proposal; it is because there was a revolt in caucus. The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is not happy with this legislation. We know he is not. I will get to him later on in my speech. That is the only reason that we are standing in this House today debating forty-eight seats, because the Member for Eagle River was going to lose his seat, because the Member for Bellevue was going to lose his seat.

AN HON. MEMBER: Not true.

MR. E. BYRNE: No, is that right? Burgeo - Bay d'Espoir the Southwest Coast of the Province was not going to look so liberal anymore. That's the reason why we are standing here today debating forty-eight seats. It has nothing to do with reducing costs and nothing to do with reducing costs to this government and therefore to the people of the Province. On March 30, 1993 - it may be a scandalous accusation but I would bet my bottom dollar that this is a correct one - in March '93, appointments were made to the Electoral Boundaries Commission; Mr. Justice Mahoney, an honourable gentleman; John Nolan, another honourable gentleman; Dorothy Inglis, an honourable individual and Ray Baird. As the Minister of Justice said earlier when he opened up the debate on this bill, all people with political connections in the past, but they should be commended for the job, not only that they did but for what they had to put up with in terms of the interference by government but they did deliver a report within the letter of the law that was given to them.

Bill No. 20 was an act to amend the Electoral Boundaries Act, increase the size of the Electoral Boundaries Commission from four to five, a very simple procedure. Then on August 27, 1993 proposal - the Mahoney Commission then, Mr. Speaker, released publicly a proposal, a map, a pictorial, a picture of what they saw the Province looking like - forty seats. This document was not a recommendation, Mr. Speaker, I say to you and every hon. member knows that it was not but what it was was a starting point for the commission to go around the Province to hold hearings to get public input back.

On October 6, 1993, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation's executive assistant, Roland Butler, at Electoral Boundaries Commission hearings in Bay Roberts said: the long term gains - now most political staff go anywhere when they are directed by their political masters - the executive assistant, Roland Butler, to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, I don't know if he is still the executive assistant but here is what he said at that time: the long term gains by reducing and enlarging provincial districts would not mean any real savings to the provincial coffers but in fact would probably cost more in providing the same service. This statement, Mr. Speaker, is diametrically opposed to the official position of this government. It is the right position in my mind but it is diametrically opposed to what this government is about. Now I do not believe for a minute that the executive assistant to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation went to a boundaries commission public hearing and spoke his mind without having the okay, not only from the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation but was sent there, Mr. Speaker -

MR. EFFORD: Don't be silly boy.

MR. E. BYRNE: If the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation would listen he would realize that I did not say that and the record will speak for itself but his executive assistant was sent on his instruction to say exactly that. He is not in line and not in sync with this forty-eight seat proposal because he knows it will jeopardize him or have a greater chance of jeopardizing his position.

Mr. Speaker, the real gerrymandering, the real interference and the interference that caused this bill, Bill 31, as we see it today, a forty-eight seat proposal introduced, happened November 8, 1993 when the Minister of Justice hopped in his car and drove to Clarenville. He could not wait for the committee hearings to take place here. They were scheduled, I think, just a couple of days after - drove to Clarenville, on a bird's eye view of the local media, one evening and sat down in a presentation to the Electoral Boundaries Commission and said: the Commission's mandate was flawed. Now, why was it flawed, Mr. Speaker? The Minister of Justice, the minister responsible for introducing, enacting the bill, walking it through this House, ensuring that it gets through, sponsored by the department he represents, goes out to Clarenville out of bird's-eye view of the media on a November evening, November 8 in the evening, and says that the Commission's mandate was flawed from the beginning and that the number of provincial districts should not be reduced below forty-four. Fair enough. We talked about that here in this House. We debated it here in the House. We asked questions to the Premier, we asked questions to the Minister of Justice on it, but the reality is interference began then.

Then Bill No. 48, 1993, An Act To Amend The Electoral Boundaries Act, provided for forty-six districts. We debated it right here. It went from between forty to forty-six to forty-four to forty-six. February 25, 1994, another proposal. The Mahoney Commission released a second proposal - again, only a proposal, not its report, but it is on its second go-around the Province - dividing the Province into forty-four seats as instructed by its political masters, as instructed by the Premier, and as delivered by the Minister of Justice.

Like its first proposal, as I said, this document was not a recommendation but was simply a proposal that would serve as the focus of discussions in public hearings throughout the Province. We started again. Additional costs in travelling around the Province, additional costs incurred by the Commission, supposedly an independent commission. It was up until that point anyway. Then the first Mahoney report comes about. The Mahoney Commission had submitted its first report to the House of Assembly which we -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) only submitted one.

MR. E. BYRNE: I will get to that in a second. Submitted its first report to the House of Assembly dividing the Province into forty-four districts, according to the constraints of its legislative mandate put upon it, Mr. Speaker, by the government and by the Cabinet of the day. The Commission appended its report to contain certain suggestions for improving the redistribution, noting in so doing that the government would have to further amend the act to make these changes possible.

Then the Throne Speech in 1995. The government announced in its March 16, 1995 Throne Speech and it said - and this is really where it really gets interesting. From where it said that it was going to reduce the number of seats in the House of Assembly between forty and forty-six, to save money as a further example of what this government's commitment was, to reduce taxes, to reduce costs to the people of this Province. Then, two years later, in the Throne Speech of 1995, and I quote: "In 1993, the House of Assembly approved legislation governing the redrawing of electoral boundaries in the Province. Since that time, extensive public consultations have taken place." No doubt exhaustive and extensive public consultations took place, because it was introduced and it was mandated by this government for that to happen, much more than should have happened. "My Government is now undertaking the final phase of study before bringing back to the Legislature a proposal for electoral boundaries."

Now we know what the final phase of study was about. Let's have a look now. We can't accept forty-four. Forty-six is no good to the Member for Eagle River, it is no good to the Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture, it is no good to the Minister of Environment, it is no good to the Liberal crowd in Carbonear and Harbour Grace. We have to have a look at it, another, second look at it, they said. It was really the third or fourth look. To have another look to see: How can we get this in shape? How can we fine-tune this so nobody gets upset? How can we fine-tune this so the Member for Bellevue can still have a seat called Bellevue? That is what the final phase of study meant, no doubt about it. Let me go on.

MR. SULLIVAN: The Member for Port de Grave didn't have much clout, see.

MR. E. BYRNE: He had no clout. If he had any clout we would not be debating this today.

A commissioner has been appointed to define and draw the boundaries of electoral districts by following guidelines developed from the recommendations of the Electoral Boundaries Commission; another commissioner, additional expense. Why did they have to get another commissioner? Because Justice Mahoney honourably said: Thank you, Ed, but no thank you. That is what Justice Mahoney said to the Minister of Justice. I will participate no longer. He said - this is another quote from Justice Mahoney: There is no confusion. There are no two reports, and the Commission did not recommend that the government do anything. Indeed, the Commission submitted a summary of its report with the full report in order that it could be easily understood because of all the details in the full report. Therefore, Justice Mahoney said: from the foregoing it can be seen that the commission acted entirely within the legislation and its instructions under it. Subsequent events, he went on to say, have demonstrated that it was all a waste of time and public money.

Members opposite know that. We don't need to remind them. They will say it is a bunch of malarkey. They won't believe it. Publicly they will say that, but they know what happened behind the scenes, to a person. They know that what happened here was not correct, and what should have happened is simply this: I am voting against this piece of legislation because the law was not followed. The intent of the law was not followed by this government. If we are going to introduce a redistribution commission that is truly independent, appointed by the Chief Justice, then we should let it go do its work. We have the right to set up its mandate within the legislation, to give it direction, to give it limits, to say: Here is what the people of the Province want through its members, but we do not have a right to interfere.

If that commission's recommendations came back and it said forty seats or forty-two seats, then we should have accepted it unilaterally, unequivocally accepted the report, as was done in the mid-eighties. It was not done that way because it was not acceptable to government backbenchers, and it was not acceptable to the Premier. At first it was, but then at the big row, at the big pow-wow in August of '94 when all things came apart, members got flicked out of Cabinet, members got put in Cabinet; that is when it started to come apart, and this was a peace offering, a political peace offering, gerrymandering, exactly. Call it what it is, that is exactly what it is; but we, as all members in the House, should have accepted that report. If it recommended forty-four seats it should have been accepted as forty-four seats, and we should be going into the next election with forty-four seats.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot support this government in this piece of legislation, but there are many other things that are wrong with this piece of legislation. It does not take into account the distinct differences between representing urban Newfoundland and the distinct differences in representing rural Newfoundland.

As one member, where the Minister of Justice pointed out today that the population of my district was 15,000 plus 40 per cent over what the means should be, the reality is that I could service a district in this area because I can drive to it within half-an-hour. I can be in every part of my district within half-an-hour, but I could service a constituency the size of 20,000 to 25,000 very, very easily. It would add extra work but, no question about it, I could do it because I live within my district, I can travel around it. If somebody has a problem I can drop up and see them tonight; they can drop down to my house and they can see me tonight, which frequently happens, but what happens when you get outside Kenmount Road? There are two town councils in my district, St. John's City Council and the Council of Petty Harbour - Maddox Cove. I represent half the town and the Member for Ferryland represents the other half. I deal with one council when it comes to infrastructure funding. I deal with one council when it comes to street rehabilitation. I deal with one council when it comes to water and sewer problems. I deal with one engineering department if somebody has trouble in terms of water pressure. I deal with one council if drains need to be dug up because they are blocked with ice. But that is because I live in this neck of the woods, so to speak.

What about the members opposite who represent districts in rural Newfoundland? What about the Member for Placentia? What about the Member for Torngat Mountains? They can't say that they can get to every part of their district in half an hour, because they can't. What about the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay? Under this proposal here it will take him nine hours to get from one end of his district to the other. He has thirty-seven distinct town councils in his district to deal with, close to twenty different Lions Clubs to deal with and close to twenty different Kinsmen groups to deal with. Mr. Speaker, it does not reflect reality.

The Minister of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture knows full well he presents a large district geographically.

DR. HULAN: It is going to be larger.

MR. E. BYRNE: And it is going to be larger. It remains to be seen who will be representing it, mind you, but it will be larger, there is no doubt about that. It remains to be seen who will represent the new district of St. George's or Stephenville, whatever it will be, but the minister is right, it is a large district and it is going to be larger; it will be significantly larger. I guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, that with a private member, it will be more difficult for rural Newfoundland to get better representation under this proposal, because it will be more difficult for rural representatives elected to this House to provide the type and quality of representation that is deserved and desired.

What should have happened, Mr. Speaker - it has happened in other provinces. There are precedents set for it. I believe in Winnipeg, in the Province of Manitoba, if you travel beyond the fifty-fourth parallel there is a different variance allowed, a much different variance, for rural seats. What should have happened here, Mr. Speaker, is that the government should have introduced legislation appointing an independent commission, number one.

MR. J. BYRNE: They did that.

MR. E. BYRNE: They did that. The Member for St. John's East Extern is right.

Secondly, they should have given the commission a more specific mandate than they did. They should have said to the commission: In heavily populated areas in this Province, we want a certain population base plus or minus 10 per cent. They could have made it 5 per cent if they had wanted to, within distinct population bases, within largely populated bases.

When the government appointed the Commission they should have given it its mandate when it travelled outside, when it got into large geographical areas, when it got into sparsely represented areas with small towns along hundreds of miles of coastline. They should have said then: We want this same population base, but what we will do, given the nature of rural Newfoundland, given the nature of the geography that you have to cover, given the nature of the types of problems that are facing rural Newfoundland today, in terms of the collapse of the fishery, higher unemployment, less work, many more calls from fewer people coming into rural members' district offices than into an urban district - they should have said: we will allow the variance to be greater in those areas. If a population base is supposed to be 10,000 people, for those districts representing rural Newfoundland we will allow that to be varied by at least 30 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, what that would have done is it would have given the Commission the freedom and the flexibility to put in place a representative map of districts in this Province that reflect the reality of what this Province is facing today, that would reflect, Mr. Speaker, the reality, of what members from urban Newfoundland and Labrador will have to face each and every day and what members from rural Newfoundland and Labrador have to face each day, but they did not, because this is the Premier's vision where one vote is one vote and every district should be of the same size and proportion no matter what.

I mean, it is that same unbending philosophy that we saw during Meech Lake, that we saw recently during the referendum when he could not help but step into the referendum debate, is that same unwillingness, the compromise, it is that same unwillingness to even consider another point of view, that there may be another point of view, and in giving it due consideration, it may have some merit but, the chance for this is lost, for that type of approach and it will only be gained once that Premier leaves that seat and once that government is retired from office which is happening sooner than you think.

Mr. Speaker -

AN HON. MEMBER: Finished?

MR. E. BYRNE: Just about.

Mr. Speaker, all members know that there are flaws in this particular bill. Many do not care. The Member for Bonavista North I would say is retiring; I say the Premier will be retired before the next election. The Minister of Justice will not be around the next election; the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology will not be around the next election and if the truth be told, the Minister of Education and Training might not be around until the next election call, he might not last in the next four or five months; he may be retired already. Other members, I would say there are ten or twelve people, Mr. Speaker, who are sitting there right now who will not be running again and many of them are sitting around the provincial Cabinet, but you would hope that that is not the reason why they are not standing up.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude my remarks by saying -

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: I am not taking myself seriously.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh good, because nobody else is.

MR. E. BYRNE: I will conclude my remarks by saying, Mr. Speaker, that had government truly allowed an independent process to take place, I would have stood here today and supported this legislation -

MR. ROBERTS: No, you wouldn't.

MR. E. BYRNE: Oh yes, I would have.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible) the bill (inaudible).

MR. E. BYRNE: That is not true, I supported EDGE legislation and I supported other legislation that this government has brought forward, but if you had to table Bill 31, with the recommendations contained by the independent commission, I would have stood here and supported it.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will sit down. Thank you very much.

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

MR. MACKEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak a few words on Bill 31, "An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act".

As I understand, from listening to some of the preceding speakers, and referring to a few notes, like in its mini-Budget in the fall of '92, the government announced that it would be asking the House of Assembly to direct a redistribution commission to make recommendations for a House of Assembly consisting of the most appropriate number of districts between forty and forty-six. The reason of course, Mr. Speaker, was that the government wanted to demonstrate its resolve to reduce the cost of governing the Province in the future. Part of the argument for wanting to divide the area to have equal numbers of people, and the guidelines given to the commission, was to try and achieve to the maximum extent possible - these are the words of the Premier - the principle of one person one vote so that all people would be treated equally.

Whilst I agree to some degree with that principle, one must not be blinded by the fact that some districts will remain significantly below the norm. If you take into account the geography for the size of some districts, especially for districts like Torngat and Cartwright, L'Anse-au-Clair, I suppose a similar argument could be used for districts that have higher than the norm. I am sure if you look at the geography of Grand Falls - Windsor it certainly could support one seat.

The Minister of Justice this morning said that by reducing by four seats you could save approximately $600,000 a year. Now if the real report, the Mahoney Commission Report, were accepted and if we were to follow that logic you would save $1.2 million a year.

My friend, the Member for Kilbride, made reference to the executive assistant for the Minister of Transportation, who said that the long-term gains by reducing and enlarging provincial districts would not mean any real savings to the provincial coffers, but in fact would probably cost more in providing that service.

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to go back to the principle of one person, one vote. That principle did not seem to hold much water when a vote was taken in the House to reflect the wishes of the people. I make reference to the vote to change Term 17. Some members were told to vote yes in spite of what their constituents said, so one person one vote seemed to be a bit farcical in that situation.

Just to go back and follow up with the chronology of events leading up to this, I wish to reflect back to August, 1993, when the Mahoney Commission released a proposal dividing the Province into forty districts. This document was not a recommendation, but simply a proposal that would serve as a focus of discussion in public hearings held around the Province; however, in the fall of 1993, while the Mahoney Commission was preparing its final report, government gave notice of its intention to amend the boundaries, to revise the Terms of Reference for the Commission. As a result, the Commission put its efforts in preparing this report on hold. The amendment constrained the Commission to ensure the populations of all districts were virtually identical, with noted exceptions, but in demanding the number of seats to be from forty to forty-six. The amended Terms of Reference were unchanged from the original mandate.

In February of '94, the Mahoney Commission released a second proposal dividing the Province into forty-four districts so, like the first proposal, this document was not a recommendation but the focus of discussion of public hearings held around the Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: Mr. Speaker, I notice the hon. minister said this morning when our Leader of the Opposition was talking, he made lots of reference to it, that he did not like to be interrupted, you see. I suppose as a new member and that, maybe I might refer the same thing back to the hon. member.

AN HON. MEMBER: Point well taken.

MR. MACKEY: Thank you. Mr. Speaker, the Mahoney Commission then submitted its final report to the House of Assembly dividing the Province into forty-four districts. The Commission appended to its report certain suggestions for improving the redistribution, noting in so doing that the government would further make changes possible.

One of the suggestions for improving the redistribution and which the Mahoney Commission recommended for consideration was, and I quote the Commission here: Notwithstanding the population of resulting districts, that the Legislature consider amending the act to permit all of the town of Grand Falls - Windsor to be placed in a single district. The Mahoney Commission asked that that one thing would be considered.

However, instead of accepting the report of the independent Commission, or of amending the act to facilitate the implementation of the Commission's suggestion, the government hired Mr. Jones to rework the boundaries according to the terms of reference which the government withheld from the public. The government hired Mr. Noel of course to lend credibility to the government's efforts so it could manipulate the boundaries, according to its own specification. The Minister of Justice was heaping accolades on Mr. Jones this morning and the great work he did with redrawing the boundaries. Mr. Jones may be good at redrawing boundaries but he certainly doesn't understand geography.

I would like to refer to a few points for the district of Grand Falls - Buchans. In redrawing the boundaries he talks of a line north to a point of intersection with the parallel of 490 North Latitude, then running east along the said parallel of 490 North Latitude to its intersection with the Meridian of 55035' West Longitude. Thence running along the western boundary of the District of Exploits south along the said Meridian of 55035' West Longitude to its intersection with the northern boundary of the district of Ramea - Bay d'Espoir.

What this does in effect is remove seven or eight homes of twenty-five or thirty people from the lower end of Grenfell Heights from the District of Grand Falls and move them into the District of Exploits. They could have easily described the Meridian as 55033' West Longitude and would have included those half a dozen homes there. It seems a bit ridiculous that you take a few homes from a district and stick them off in Exploits somewhere.

With reference to the change of the proposed district from Grand Falls - Windsor to Grand Falls - Buchans I wish to make a few other observations. First of all, if nothing changes from what we will be voting on in this bill, I want to make it quite clear that I would be quite honoured and consider it a great privilege to represent people in the communities of Buchans, Badger, Millertown and Buchans Junction. I have spent a great deal of time in these communities through my work in the field of adult education and I know the hon. Member for Bellevue will perhaps be quite familiar with the work there. I am sure that he would agree that people in Badger, Buchans, Millertown and Buchans Junction are all excellent people and deserve only the best of representation.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to turn again to another aspect of the change. In 1991 the government went to great strides to amalgamate the towns of Grand Falls and the town of Windsor. So through negotiation the government agreed to spend $16 million to bring the former town of Windsor up to the standard of Grand Falls. Now the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, and I quote from Hansard, said on Friday - now we wonder how much of the $16 we are going to have to give back. The hon. member says, let's take one of the large towns in Central Newfoundland, this year we will be sending $4 million to that town, $4 million from this government. I asked that particular town if I could take out of that $355,000. That is what I asked and you know what the reaction was. Now that $355,000 is less then 3 per cent of the total budget. This is going back on the agreement or you might say the amalgamation that was forced on those towns back in 1991.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the government in this bill is essentially undoing all the great work that might have been done. Amalgamation between the two towns was inevitable anyway. It was only a matter of time, it was evolving. Now it seems every effort is being made to this bill to undo what has been accomplished. Now what divided the towns in the first place is now servicing in the description of the boundaries. The quote says; `the line running in an orderly direction along the centre line of Victoria Street to its intersection, a centre line of the abandoned railway line.' Now if you lived in Grand Falls or you lived in Windsor, this railway line was - if you lived north of the tracks you were not thought of very much.

So now this line is going to run in a general northeasterly direction along the centre line of the abandoned railway line to its intersection with the prolongation of Wheeler's Avenue. What in effect, Mr. Speaker, this is doing is just re-enforcing the fact that you are going to be reminded that we are still going to separate you now because we are going to take most of your town and put it out with fourteen other communities in Green Bay. What is even more evident, Mr. Speaker, when you look at physical evidence to divide the town - and I don't know, there must be some sort of relevance to the $16 million - $16 million is being spent on a super highway project on 4 kilometres of road through Grand Falls -Windsor with this big concrete median going down through to make sure that you are going to have all kinds of difficulty getting from the former town of Grand Falls to the former town of Windsor. As I say, even more evidence of what is being undone here.

Mr. Speaker, I might suggest that with the population of Grand Falls - Windsor being less then 15,000 would only make a good district anyway and there is no problem for one person to represent it. To me it does not make any sense in splitting the town into two districts. The former Town of Windsor has no political or economic ties with communities in Green Bay; there is also the travel, you are going to have to travel through another person's district to get to part of your own district, and it makes as much sense as travelling from St. John's East Extern into Kilbride so you might as well put East Extern in with Kilbride, if that were to make it any more rational so, Mr. Speaker, it is easy to rationalize or justify the size of Grand Falls - Windsor as one district.

I just want to quote the commission's final proposal on the population and percentages of variance from quotients of forty-four seats, and they had Grand Falls - Windsor under that proposal, a population of 12,788. Now, with the forty-eight seat proposal, they have Grand Falls - Buchans with 12,739 compared to 12,788, a difference of forty-nine. Now to me, that doesn't make a lot of sense, of taking most of the town and putting it out in Green Bay, it would make more sense if you would take the east or north-eastern part of the town and move it toward the Exploits district -oh no, you can't have that because you have too many Tory voters there and would certainly reflect in the voting pattern of Exploits, and you perhaps would lose a valuable member over there, you know, he would probably be gone anyway.

So, Mr. Speaker, with just reference to the district variance, if it were 20 or 25 per cent of the quotient, this would ensure that Grand Falls - Windsor would be one district. Geography would bear this out and it could easily be accommodated; in fact, you could walk from one end of the town to the other in about an hour so it is only a viable district anyway. So, under the 10 per cent variance, you could still end up with districts on the Island that differ by as much as 2,400 votes. Ten per cent plus, 10 per cent minus, you get your 12,181 so you could have a big variance of districts there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: Well, I certainly do represent a lot of people from the Windsor part of town. Three parts of my calls are from there so I would be honoured to represent that part of the town. I would further -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: Yes. My hon. friend from Windsor - Buchans, he knows what happened to his seat.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) he goes to Windsor all the time.

MR. MACKEY: Yes. I would like to ask the hon. Member for Exploits what does he look for when he goes to Windsor? So, Mr. Speaker -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: Yes. In fact, I guess the Grand Falls golf course which is in the Town of Grand Falls - Windsor is certainly within his boundaries and that's where I see the hon. member quite a bit too you know, so I am certain that he wouldn't perhaps mind even having that part in his district as well.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker -

MR. SULLIVAN: It won't be his district see it will be somebody else's.

MR. MACKEY: That's right yes, but I think there was some consideration or some proposal of putting a golf course down by the weigh scales so he could have the best of both worlds.

MR. SULLIVAN: So he can be weighed and can play golf at the one time.

MR. MACKEY: Yes, I certainly don't mind, I certainly respect the hon. member's ability to play golf.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: No, I guess he perhaps might end up on one of those slip lanes going up to Buchans, you know.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: That is right. He will still be looking for the railway line. Then I'm sure the hon. member would feel railroaded anyway.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MACKEY: So I guess that is why your seat is gone now.

Mr. Speaker, I think this bill is just an attempt to manipulate districts that would enhance the chances on the government side. In closing I would like to say I will be voting against this bill. I think we could do with less government. Forty to forty-four seats are enough. Many members can and would be eager to represent more constituents. I'm sure in the case of Grand Falls - Windsor, that town, it is a very viable district. It was only big enough demographically and geographically to have one member represent them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. A. SNOW: Thank you. I hate to disappoint my colleagues on the opposite. I just want to speak for a few minutes. Just a few short comments.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: My colleague for Burin - Placentia West is going to take my extra time. Mr. Speaker, I just want to have a few short comments.

We are here discussing this particular bill, Bill No. 31, An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act. This piece of legislation, really I suppose you could call it a centrepiece of this government when you look back over the history of what occurs. This government can be really identified with it in a sense -

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you for or against this bill (inaudible)?

MR. A. SNOW: Yes. Mr. Speaker, this bill says a lot about this government. When you look back over the history of what has occurred, this government is all about saying things and doing absolutely nothing.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: The Minister of Justice suggests that I should not be cruel. I am not being cruel; I am merely stating a fact. That this is a hallmark of this government. Even the present Minister of Finance and Treasury Board - probably not going to be very long there, I wouldn't think, so we can refer to him as the temporary Minister of Finance and Treasury Board - but, Mr. Speaker, this Minister of Finance and Treasury Board even referred to them, previous Budgets, as smoke and mirrors. That again tells what this government is all about, smoke and mirrors. Deception! Pull a quick one on the people.

It announced in its mini-Budget in 1992 that it was going to reduce the Legislature down to forty seats. As a cost saving measure they were going to reduce the size of the Legislature down to forty seats. That is what they said they were going to do, and they say it is done for cost savings, yet when the minister who is proposing the legislation introduced it he says this bill has nothing to do with cost savings. We are not doing this to save money. That is what he said when he introduced the legislation. Even though we are going to save $600,000 by knocking off four seats in this time of restraint, when we are shutting down hospitals, probably closing schools and cutting back services to the people - Cabinet ministers may even lose a couple of cars, God knows what is going to happen in this time of restraint, but they say now this has nothing to do with the saving of money.

It has all to do with democracy, he says, one person, one vote, that is what they say, it is democracy. Yet when you look at it, it is only one person, one vote, if you happen to be in a Tory district. That is where it works out, but anybody who is in a little bit of trouble at all, we will work the boundaries around, we will work the figures around for you. Whether it is in Torngat, Eagle River, or over on the Southwest Coast, they will fix the count then, or the proportion. It is not one to one anymore. It is not one and one because of geography then, they take in geography then, so really this bill is all about gerrymandering.

When we are debating this we should consider, and when the legislation was being proposed and drawn up, they should have considered the economic factors. That should have been a factor. I believe when they proposed it in 1992 somebody on that side might have believed in it. They may have, but I honestly felt at the time that we probably could function as well as we had ever functioned with forty-six seats, or forty or forty-four seats. Especially in this time of restraint, I think we should be looking at that type. We should be considering the economic factor, because -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: The former minister, I guess he is going to be the former member for Windsor - Buchans, because that district is going to be gone so I don't know what we will be able to call him. A lot of people would like to call him a lot of things, I suppose, but how will we refer to the hon. member? I don't know what he did. I don't know how he angered his colleagues in Cabinet so that they wiped out his seat, flicked him out of Cabinet first, threw him to the wolves, sat him down by Walter. Right down in the boondocks he is, and now he is saying he is going to challenge everybody in the House to an election - everybody.

The former minister and the former member, the man who has been displaced -

MR. FLIGHT: Do you have any idea what they are saying about you in your district?

MR. A. SNOW: I don't know.

MR. FLIGHT: (Inaudible) now Alec.

MR. A. SNOW: Well, you can tell me, sure. Get up, sure, and speak. The former minister, the former Member for Windsor - Buchans, will undoubtedly have the opportunity to speak, and he should get up. He can get up to speak, and I am sure he can tell us what he says and what he thinks, and what his friends in Menihek are saying about everybody else. Anyway, I don't know what he did to get where he is.

MR. FLIGHT: I did what you did to get where you are.

MR. A. SNOW: Yes, sure. I got elected, and they are going to leave my seat exactly the same.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, the gentleman, the former minister and the former Member for Windsor - Buchans will have the opportunity to explain what he feels about this particular piece of legislation when he gets up and moves his amendment to ensure that he can be back in the next session of this House, or the next General Assembly that is going to be called after the election.

MS VERGE: You should advertise that you will ask your constituents questions for free here.

MR. A. SNOW: Well, actually I do. I shouldn't say it is free. I get paid a fee as a member of the House of Assembly. I get my salary and my expenses that type of thing, and when they ask me to ask questions in the House I don't add a stipend, an extra fee, on top of it.

MR. E. BYRNE: Are you going to pay $10 (inaudible) Cabinet committee?

MR. A. SNOW: No, I thought I would let them enjoy themselves at the Caribou Club and -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: I am sure that the people who attend will be interested in the Minister of Justice's five cents worth, so to speak, that he will give them for their $10.

Mr. Speaker, in my particular district this bill doesn't change the boundaries one iota. I believe it might move the actual boundary, but where the people reside, and where they will be voting and how they will be voting won't be changed. The only change would be -

AN HON. MEMBER: Less caribou.

MR. A. SNOW: I may have fewer caribou but the same number of voters.

Mr. Speaker, the people in my district will see a name change. It will be called Labrador West rather than Menihek, and that is not a big difference. I believe the first time that we had an electoral district there it was called Labrador West.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Yes.

So to revert back from Menihek to Labrador West is not a big change. I think a lot of people in Western Labrador probably would have preferred if there would have been an inclusion of the community of Churchill Falls because of the community interest, if you will. The interaction of the communities is more with Labrador City - Wabush and Churchill Falls then between Churchill Falls and Happy Valley - Goose Bay. Recognizing that, I believe that there should have been a recommendation to include Churchill Falls in the district of Labrador West and it would have been very simple to do. In fact, they deviated in the population in all the other districts of Labrador so they could have easily included, in the Labrador West district, the community of Churchill Falls which historically has always been in Labrador West but not in Menihek. Having said that though, Mr. Speaker, I -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Mr. Speaker, one of the things we have to do is, considering this too, that people in my district have talked about is that - as I suggested earlier, the Minister of Finance has said that it is not a financial aspect - they are not considering the finances of this. The people in my district believe that they should consider finances, no matter what bill we are passing here because it does have an affect. So if it is $150,000 saved in four seats - if they were to go with the original recommendation and the original statement that this government had committed, it would have been down to forty seats and there would have been a considerably greater amount of money saved. A dollar saved is a dollar earned whether it is in the tax coffers or in individuals.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we must go back over the history of how we got to be where we are today. First when the government announced that they were going to change - that was back in 1992 in the mini-Budget when they recommended or suggested that they would change it - and I believe that most people in the Province were willing to accept it then, a forty seat Legislature, and agreed with it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: If we had gone to forty it would have been accepted by the general public and appreciated but I think what this government is doing today is just perpetrating a fraud upon the people. They have used the system very well to gerrymander this thing around and shake it around to suit themselves. We can see, if we look back over what has occurred, that in Bill 62, "An Act To Amend The Electoral Boundaries Act" - Mr. Speaker, that was in December - the government asked that it would go from forty to forty-six, with special factors.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in 1993 they appointed the electoral boundaries commissioners under Justice Mahoney. Mr. Speaker, they appointed the Commission and that Commission set about to define the boundaries in the forty districts. Now, Mr. Speaker, they went around, at a considerable expense to the taxpayers of this Province, at considerable expense they went around this Province seeking advice. They spent several months going around the Province. I believe they spent something like in excess of $250,000 seeking advice on how they would divide the Province into the electoral boundaries suggested as being forty.

Now, Mr. Speaker, while out around the Province people were making submissions and recommendations in different districts, our Minister of Justice on behalf of the government, went to a hearing in Clarenville and suggested that government had changed its ideas, they had lost of focus of what they had set out to do in their mini-Budget. Of course, this isn't strange for this government to change their minds on doing something. They will do whatever they -

AN HON. MEMBER: Be pleasant now.

MR. A. SNOW: I am pleasant. I am merely stating the fact that this government quite often lays out something in the budgetary process and they don't mind changing. They were going to have a balanced budget and they may have one this year, but we told them when they presented it eight or nine months ago that it wasn't going to balance. Sure enough nine months later we find that we have a $60 million short.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: They too have problems. Maybe this Cabinet should be trying to work with the World Bank.

Mr. Speaker, what this government did was suggest that they were going to do this to save money, and when it came down to it, after the rebellion in caucus, they decided to change the number of seats and suggested to the Minister of Justice that he run off to Clarenville and make his submission to the Commission that they should reconsider and they would make the necessary changes to the legislation and that the seats would go to forty-six. Now, Mr. Speaker, forty-six is a far cry from forty. That is a lot of money. That is almost $1 million extra, using the Minister of Justice's figures that he proposed. He was saying it is about $157,000 per member in savings. So going from forty to forty-six we are talking almost $1 million in savings, and that is a substantial amount of money.

I know in my district where the taxpayers pay the highest per capita taxes in this Province, they consider it a lot of money. They could see it as saving enough money to allow them to continue to have a safe and reliable school busing system, for example. Maybe the people in Central Labrador would see $1 million as being able to complete the engineering studies on their new health centre that has been promised for years. So it is a substantial amount of money, $1 million.

Then to add insult to injury, we see that they are not even satisfied, they can't even keep the caucus in line enough to settle for the forty-six seats. So we have to have forty-eight seats. That is what is being recommended now, Mr. Speaker. That flies in the face of what they set out to do. It flies in the face of what the people have to endure in this Province today. If you are an ordinary citizen and not elected to this Legislature, you are enduring a lot of cuts. In a Liberal caucus you don't have to endure the pain. You don't have to endure the same pain that a nurse has to endure. You don't have to work as hard or as long when you are in the Cabinet maybe, Mr. Speaker. These people have to work and pay taxes so they think the saving of a couple of million dollars might ease that burden and still provide a forum for a process that occurs in here in this Legislature where they can be adequately and well represented, Mr. Speaker. They think they have been done in by this government. They feel this government is taking advantage of them again, a terrible government.

People who have served on the Commission thoroughly agree with what I am saying, that this government has abused the process. They have taken advantage of the system and the people of this Province by the charade they put this whole process through, the process of the electoral reform and the redistribution and electoral boundaries, Mr. Speaker. It has been a complete charade. It is attempting to put something out there to deceive people, for whatever reason I do not know. It has been recognized, in a report done for the Mahoney Commission, that that particular Commission acted entirely within the legislation and the instructions under it, and events have demonstrated that it was all a waste of time and public money, what the Mahoney Commission had to do, because this government instructed the Mahoney Commission to go ahead and redraw the boundaries and that the representation would not be what had been intended and they decided they would have to come back to the House and seek the approval to do that.

They did, they rammed it through, exactly like they are doing now. They are forcing the Legislature to sit all hours of the night attempting to get this legislation through the House as fast as they can so they can get their hides out of here while still intact, their political hides, Mr. Speaker. Why else would we be sitting until 10 o'clock at night? Is it an absolute necessity that this piece of legislation be passed before Christmas so quickly? Should there not be a little more debate on it in the sense of allowing people time to think about it? No, Mr. Speaker, not with this government. What they are attempting to do is push this through the House like I have seen other legislation go through the House, up close to Christmas, debating all night. Whether it is the Workers' Compensation Act, or whatever, they want to get it through the House as fast as they can so they can put it aside and say, we are going to save a lot of money but in reality they are not.

Again, it is a smoke and mirrors act. It is an act to deceive Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. It is not based on a principle of one person, one vote. It undoubtedly is not based on that principle so it is not democratic because we have seen how in the Liberal districts there are people that swayed the Cabinet, and swayed whoever made the decisions within Cabinet, the power brokers within the Cabinet, that they would have to gerrymander the Liberal districts that they change, Mr. Speaker.

I find that this legislation is distasteful to say the least, and I believe that time will show that the people of this Province will not want this particular piece of legislation. They will see it for what it is. It is gerrymandering at its worst put forward under the guise of democracy. Mr. Speaker, this has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I think that we could have very easily had forty seats or thereabouts, around forty, and all it was necessary to do was use a 25 per cent differential. There should have been a 25 per cent population differential between the urban and rural seats. I think that then we could have saved a lot of tax dollars for the residents of not just Labrador City and Wabush that I happen to represent and where I happen to be elected, but save tax dollars belonging to every resident of this Province. These people still would have had adequate representation, very good representation, by making this Legislature forty.

The Minister of Justice himself said the second principle they used when they set about drawing up the number of seats was that Cabinet would be one-third. I don't know where he came up with that, he failed to explain it. Maybe when he concludes the debate he can -

MR. ROBERTS: If I ever get to that point.

MR. A. SNOW: You will undoubtedly get to that point. He felt that it should be one-third, and that was mentioned actually in the Ministerial Statement, the mini-Budget, in December, and I will quote, a full quotation so that the Minister of Justice can address it: "As a further demonstration - I quote, this is from the Ministerial Statement, in the mini-Budget, December 4, 1992 - "As a further demonstration of our resolve to reducing the cost of governing the Province in the future we will be asking the House of Assembly to direct the Redistribution Commission due to be appointed this coming March, to make recommendations for a House of Assembly consisting of the most appropriate number of districts between forty and forty-six.

"In addition, we will be introducing legislation that will restrict the size of Cabinet to not more than one third the size of the House of Assembly." So if there are fourteen in Cabinet, Mr. Speaker, we seem to have too large a House of Assembly, or are we indeed going to appoint more people to Cabinet.

Maybe the Member for Windsor - Buchans might have a chance to get back in after all.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible).

MR. A. SNOW: Not yet. After the next election hopefully.

Mr. Speaker, when the people of the Province look at this piece of legislation and what this government has instructed their commission to do, their judge, they will see this piece of legislation for what it is, and that is, Mr. Speaker, a process that has been a sham from the word `go' and an abuse of the democratic process. It is not what the people of this Province want, nor should they have to live with it, although they will, Mr. Speaker. I am hoping that the people will recognize what has occurred in this process and they will show the hon. members opposite how they feel about it at the polls in the next election.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

DR. KITCHEN: Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words about this bill which I support. I support this bill.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

DR. KITCHEN: Most of the comments that have been made have been made about the process, and I think we should focus on the product more. Now the product is what really counts, and the basic question we have to ask ourselves, I think, is: What is the appropriate number of seats in this House? There are people in this House who would like it reduced down, down, down, for the purpose of saving money. Some would even go so far as to put it down to six, like we had under Commission of Government - six. I don't want six. We believe in power to the people, and power to the people can only occur when you have a fair number of members. You cannot have power to the people with six or eight or ten, or even forty. Fifty-two is good. Fifty-two, sixty, the more the merrier, because I tell you this. If we reduce the number of legislators in this place, what we are doing is putting the people of the Province under the rule of public servants and bureaucrats.

Now what is the job of a member? Part of our job is sitting here and passing legislation, or opposing legislation; that is part of our job. Some people think that should be the only part of our job, and that we should not bother with constituents' calls, and something like that. I don't think that is correct. I believe one of our jobs is to be ombudspersons. We should be ombudspersons, and we are. We interfere with the public service when they are not giving good service, and we say: Look, have you overlooked this person? How come this person is waiting to get into a nursing home, or into this? Is there some reason that you have not looked appropriately at this thing? You have to do that. You have to put the little bit of power that you have as members of the House of Assembly to sort of lean on the bureaucrats when they are not treating people in a fair manner according to the regulations. I believe a lot of us do that all the time. That is, I believe, a very, very important thing. If there were fewer of us we would have less time to devote to the number of causes that are out there to be championed.

The other function I see, as most of us do, is sort of a helper, a general helper, to people in many times. The Member for Bonavista South dwelt eloquently on that in his speech today. Particularly in hard times I find that the people who call on you most are the people who are in trouble. There are certain people who can look after themselves. They have fine jobs, are well educated, good houses, no problem, but in hard times you have a lot of people who have a lot of problems, and that is where the member comes in, I believe, very frequently. We need more members, I believe, in hard times than we do in good times. Maybe the next revision we have, when we get all of these good things that people are talking about, when we reap Voisey's Bay in, and we get Terra Nova and all of this going, perhaps we can reduce the size of the House a little bit because the job won't be as great.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

DR. KITCHEN: Absolutely. According to that reasoning people need to be helped, and legislators are there. That is part of our role, I believe. It is not our whole role, but it is part of our role. So you are torn on the one hand between liking to save a few bucks and, at the same time, trying to keep up an appropriate balance.

Members opposite are divided - and our side is somewhat divided, too, I believe, but on your side some people have said - let's keep it to forty; let's keep the original forty. The Member for Kilbride wants it forty, he said. He did; he said he wanted it forty.

The Member for Humber Valley wants at least what we have now or perhaps more because of the job - the very same thing that I'm talking about. There is so much work to be done and I think we have to think about that. There is a lot of work to be done in these hard times with unemployment, with housing problems, with all the problems people have with social services, with problems people are having with pensions, in hospitals and nursing homes and the food banks in this city. These are things that occupy a member's time. We have a soup kitchen here now - not really a soup kitchen, we have a gathering place where people can go and get a meal a couple of times a week, which is a good thing. These are hard, hard times for many people, not for everybody but for many people. I believe that we, as legislators, cannot just entrust the forms of government to fewer of us nor many fewer of us anyway.

Now, I want to have a few words about the city districts, because it has been said time and time again here today that city members have very little to do and from my point of view that is not correct. I begrudge the time I have to spend in this House because for every hour I spend here there are a dozen things I am not getting done in my office that people need to have done for them, calls that I have to make, visits that I have to make and I cannot do. I really begrudge sitting here tonight because I should be out in my district visiting half-a-dozen people that I have to visit.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

DR. KITCHEN: I begrudge it. I wish we did not have to do it. I wish you fellows would pass this thing so we would not have to sit here tonight. It is not our fault. It is your fault for being so stubborn and obstinate.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) push it through.

DR. KITCHEN: I don't want to push it through. I am just saying I begrudge the time we are spending here tonight debating because there is so much for us all to do, for most of us to do anyway. There is a lot of work to be done.

Now, I am not entirely in favour of the details of this bill. Let me tell you what they did to my district of St. John's Centre, besides renaming it - and that is not a big issue; but I have thirty-four polls, seven, we will call downtown: LeMarchant Road between Garrison Hill and Springdale Street. The bulk of my calls come from that area, perhaps 70 per cent. Seven polls out of thirty-four. I have another seven polls in the higher levels area. Some people call it `Rabbittown', in the Merrymeeting Road area, seven polls there - of the remaining 25 per cent perhaps 20 per cent, that gives me 95 per cent. The other 5 per cent or fewer, come from the other twenty polls representing the area around this Confederation Building - very few calls and they are always, always on broad issues rather then personal things. Now then, what has happened? The seven districts where most of the calls are from are now being placed in what is going to be St. John's South along with all the other people in that area who have problems. So the member who represents that area is going to have a very difficult job dealing with all the personal calls that he is going to have to make.

What is happening in the new St. John's Centre is that it is going east and is becoming a very affluent area where there will be very few personal calls. In the new order, to the twenty polls where there is very little work, there are going to be added another seven or eight polls with very little work and a few polls with some work.

So the district which will now be called St. John's East, according to the proposal, will have less work to be done, I think, by the member in terms of household visitations, personal problems, income tax forms and the unemployment insurance stuff and all of that, than before. It could be divided better. I believe if we got carte blanche to take the city of St. John's and divide it up into the same number of seats that were allocated we would probably do a better job, but I am not going to quibble about that because we could always quibble and find a reason for doing something a bit better, but maybe we will not do it as well, because there are other factors that enter into it.

But I did want to make the point that city districts, or some city districts, are extremely difficult to represent, just as some rural districts are hard to represent, particularly when times are hard and people have a lot of problems that they need to consult their member about. Because who else can you consult? One time you would go to see the clergy, because the clergy were in charge of the world one time. But now that is not the case anymore. They don't have the same clout and power in society. I believe that members are important and we shouldn't reduce them by too many.

I believe we have come up with about the right number. I think forty-eight is about right. We will save a few dollars, maybe, and at the same time we have roughly what we had before. I wouldn't mind if we had a few more. But I certainly don't believe that we should reduce it to forty or below for the simple reason that I don't believe a member should be isolated from his constituents, that you should just go and come to the Legislature, make your speeches and go on home again. I don't think that is the role of most members anyway, nor should it be. You have to have a more personal relationship than that with the people in the constituency. I believe all members, or most members, would agree with that. You can't have that if you have very few members and very large constituencies. So I believe we have the thing pretty well right here now.

I want to refer to a point that was made about - I think the Member for Grand Falls made the point about the fact that some streets were going to be in one district and some in another. Well, that happens all the time in the city. One side of Springdale Street is in St. John's Centre, the other side is in St. John's South. So what? That means Springdale Street has two members, if they really want it. They are blessed with two members. So Grand Falls will be blessed with two members. Not one, they will have two. So that is great. They will have much more clout in the House than they had before.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

DR. KITCHEN: No, it is not a very strong argument, but it is an interesting one. It doesn't bother me if a street is divided half on one side and half on the other, what difference does it make? Anyway, I am going to support this bill for the reasons I have given.

Thank you very much.

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

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, thank you.

I would like to have a few words on this bill. I would like to say that what is taking place here tonight is an absolute miscarriage of justice. First of all, the process that we have been involved in here tonight is totally illegal, and certainly it is totally against the spirit and intent of the legislation dealing with the redistribution of seats in the House of Assembly. And it concerns me as well - before I make some comments on that, I have to say that outside of the fact that the hon. the Member for St. John's Centre just spoke, there is no indication that, except for the House Leader, anybody opposite is going to speak. I may be wrong. Maybe they are waiting for all of us to speak and they are going to stand up afterward and speak. This is a mockery of the House of Assembly, that all of the members on this side stand up one after the other -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, unless the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation is going to stand in his place and debate, he should sit there in silence and not make a fool of himself. I ask you to direct him not to interfere. I will not tolerate it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it is a mockery that all the members over there are sitting there and not participating in this debate. I mean, how can a debate be one-sided? Clearly, this is not an open debate as it should be. We are talking here of probably one of the most important decisions that the House of Assembly could make: the constitution of the House of Assembly. How is government going to work if we do not spend any more time in setting up how the House of Assembly will be structured than we are apparently going to do here?

We are sitting here until 10:00 in the night to try to shove this through today or tomorrow. No hon. members opposite are going to speak. Do they not have any questions about the proposed changes to their own districts?

MR. GRIMES: Not a one.

MR. WINDSOR: Not a one, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation says. The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation should have lots of questions. He should spend more time in his district. He would find out what questions his constituents have, that they would like him to raise in this House on other issues.

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that this is an absolute miscarriage of justice, that we are not getting here two sides of the story. I do not believe for a moment that all hon. members opposite agree with everything in this legislation, including the hon. member who just spoke, but at least he had the courage to speak. This is such an important issue that we should be taking plenty of time to decide what is the best format.

Now, let me deal with it, Mr. Speaker. First of all, as I said, the whole process here is flawed. A number of my colleagues have spoken about that, and I am not going to go on at great length, other to say that we do have legislation which has been followed now for, I think, the last two redistributions, whereby we set up -

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, can you stifle the hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The member requests to be heard in silence.

MR. WINDSOR: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, what we should be doing here tonight is setting up a structure that is appropriate. We should have before us a report of a clearly impartial commission. There was one established but unfortunately, the hands of that commission were tied by the terms of reference. Now, the legislation says that a redistribution shall be recommended by an independent, impartial commission that reviews the overall structure of the House of Assembly, the number of seats and districts and electoral boundaries, and comes forward with a report.

Now, in fact the last two, I believe, I was in government at the time and we accepted wholly and fully -

MR. ROBERTS: Not the last two, the last one.

MR. WINDSOR: The last one?

MR. ROBERTS: You were not here in 1974.

MR. WINDSOR: There were only two, in 1974 and 1983. Okay, the last one, but we did accept that fully in its totality. Now, we had problems with that from a political point of view. I will admit that, and I am sure hon. gentleman opposite had problems with it. We had debate within our caucus and Cabinet. But we said very clearly, if this process is going to work there has to be an independent commission that makes a recommendation and we should be bound by it, otherwise it is a farce, it is a mockery. Why do we have a commission at all if we are going to manipulate the results to please ourselves?

Now, the Minister of Justice says: No, no, we are not manipulating. Mr. Speaker, he tries to tell us he went to Clarenville and made a presentation on his own behalf.

MR. W. MATTHEWS: He said, on behalf of the ministry.

MR. WINDSOR: Exactly. He said that two or three days ago. He said: "I went to Clarenville and made a presentation in behalf of the ministry."

MR. W. MATTHEWS: He certainly did - that is what he said.

Now, that told me, Mr. Speaker, that he could no longer hide behind the veil of saying, well, I have a right to make a presentation as other members did. I have made presentations to both of those commissions, an absolute waste of time. I do not think the commission paid too much attention to me, and clearly, the results of what the commission came up with are being totally ignored by this government.

Clearly, the Minister of Justice went to Clarenville with one purpose, and one purpose only, and that was to gerrymander the results, to put some pressure on the commission to come in with something other than what they wanted to do, and when that did not totally work, government have now taken it upon themselves to come forward with something else. The whole process is an absolute, utter farce. It is a farce, it is a disgrace, it is an insult to the institution that we are a part of, here, Mr. Speaker.

This is supposed to be the people's House, a democratic House of Assembly, a democratically elected government, a democratic process. But this whole process has been anything but democratic. It is sad that this is probably the most important debate that we could be having in this House of Assembly, and it has been treated so lightly. We are here tonight, nobody in the galleries - I don't know if there are any news media around, I haven't seen any. They may well be in the back room. If so, that is fine. But, Mr. Speaker, it has not been given the attention and the proper level of debate that something of this magnitude requires.

Now, my friend, the Member for St. John's Centre made some valid points. I don't know if it makes too much difference how many seats there are, but I think the hon. member made a valid point. I have said before, and I am on the record in this House in this debate very clearly as stating that I think it is a whole waste of time. We shouldn't be doing it at all. I don't think we have too many members of the House of Assembly and I don't think we are saving any money. I say to the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, he would have saved more money if we had not had the commissions at all. We have spent more money on the commissions than we are going to save by eliminating four seats.

So this is only a joke, Mr. Speaker. As my friend, the Member for Menihek said, it is a charade that is all. It was motivated initially by a government which, prior to the election, in order to - what they thought they would do was win favour of the public by saying: We are going to eliminate members of the House of Assembly - going to cut it down to forty to forty-six seats, they said. It frightened the life out of them when the commission came in and said forty. They said: Whoops! Now the election was over and they could start backtracking. We won favour perhaps with some people by saying we are going to have forty. Now the election is over, we can start backtracking a little bit, try to save our - there was a great uprising in the back benches, of course. That made a big impact on them.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) typo (inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Oh, it was going to be a typo, yes. They started backtracking then, Mr. Speaker, trying to find ways now to put some seats back in, protect some of our members who might be eliminated by this whole process.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I don't subscribe to the theory that we have too many members of the House of Assembly, as I have said here before. The hon. the Member for St. John's Centre just referred to it. At a time when we have so many economic problems, members now have a greater workload, I think, than ever before. I know I have, as one urban member. I get more calls now in a month than I would have gotten in a full year ten years ago.

MR. GRIMES: You did not know how many calls you got ten years ago; you had that many staff helping you.

MR. WINDSOR: I knew every call that came from my district, unlike the hon. minister. I knew every call, and I still do.

Mr. Speaker, I am not at all convinced that this is the appropriate time to reduce the number of members of the House of Assembly.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, resign, resign!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, he has no more concern about this House of Assembly than he does about safety on the highways. None!

Now, Mr. Speaker, to deal with the details, which I hesitate to do because the whole exercise, as I said is a charade, just to look at the District of Mount Pearl, what has happened: they have reduced the number of constituents in the district. I have lost almost one-third of my district in this redistribution, based on the averaging process. And, you know, I have some sympathy for this one person\one vote concept. It is a valid concept, Mr. Speaker. I should be standing here and saying on behalf of the people of the District of Mount Pearl: We are not being treated fairly. We do not have one-fifty-second of the total number of people only. We have more than that. We have more than our fair share of constituents. Therefore, the people of Mount Pearl do not have as many people speaking for them.

On the other hand, I have to recognize, Mr. Speaker - now the Member for Eagle River should not open his mouth either. I can deal with him. He should be quiet. He is one of the ones who went crying to the back rooms or the caucus room saying: Oh no, you cannot eliminate my district; we have to change this somehow. It is a special case.

Let us look at the special cases here. Are there special cases? How can you satisfy both? How can you say: One person/one vote, but, on the other hand, we have a problem somewhere? I mean, you can't subscribe to both principles.

AN HON. MEMBER: You can if you are a Liberal, Sir.

MR. WINDSOR: If you look at the Torngat riding, Mr. Speaker - there are less than 3,000 people in that riding. Because most of them are native peoples perhaps there is an argument there, but there are many special groups within our society, the same as there were in the Quebec referendum. And these people want special status. There are lots of special groups in Canada. We cannot give them all special status. We could recognize them as distinct societies, whether they be French Canadians, English Canadians, German Canadians, Asian Canadians. I mean, the Chinese community is huge - all kinds of things.

Well, the same is true here. And our aboriginal peoples obviously require special considerations in many areas, but I am not entirely sure that a seat in this Legislature designated primarily to those aboriginal people is totally - I can recognize the geography of that district. The geography of the district makes it very difficult to service, but does it make it so difficult? Is it harder for my friend, the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay now, who is going to have a nine-hour drive to get around his district, or the Member for Torngat Mountains who can't drive, he is going to charter an aircraft, and he is going to fly into all of these fifteen, or thirteen, is it, communities? Thirteen or fifteen. He is going to fly in in a float plane or a helicopter. Is it that much more difficult? Who has the more difficult job, I ask?

AN HON. MEMBER: A good question.

MR. WINDSOR: Is he expected on a Friday night to attend a Lion's Club dinner in Makkovik and a Legion dinner in Nain? Of course not. But the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay is expected to deal with maybe twenty-five or thirty municipal councils, who knows how many Kinsmen clubs and Lion's Clubs and Knights of Columbus and whatever else you might have that members are expected to attend. I am not sure that the Member for Torngat Mountains' job in serving properly his constituents is any harder than that of the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay - probably not as hard. I will recognize that an urban member's job, in that regard, is probably lighter. I have the privilege - I have one municipal council to deal with, one Lion's Club, one Legion club, but I have a soccer association, a minor hockey, a softball, and on down the road. I have numerous of those. But I still do not have the same degree of difficulty as my friend, the Member for Burin - Placentia West would have, of course.

We have different sets of problems, different kinds of problems in an urban area. So it is very difficult indeed to distinguish the degree of difficulty of serving. But I do say, Mr. Speaker, as it relates to the House of Assembly, an urban member can probably speak more easily for a larger number of people because there is more unity of purpose in a larger urban area. In rural Newfoundland you have a diversity of interests that the member would have to try to represent, so there can be some problems there.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in the District of Mount Pearl - I just want to speak to that for a moment - I have lost probably one-third of my people. I regret that, but I mean if it is - on the other hand, I can say, well, now 12,000 people have my one voice whereas 18,000 had my voice before. So I should probably be happy and the people of Mount Pearl should be happy but again, unfortunately, it is another way of dividing the city.

I see also the boundary was changed, Mr. Speaker, to take out the Southlands. Is this meant to be the final nail in taking Southlands away from Mount Pearl forever? Hon. members opposite probably do not realize that I represent part of the City of St. John's. The City of St. John's doesn't know it.

MR. ROBERTS: Does (inaudible) Murphy know that?

MR. WINDSOR: No, the mayor doesn't know it. I never get invited to any of the meetings that the St. John's members are invited to -of course, I don't have any constituents.

MR. ROBERTS: You wouldn't go anyway, would you?

MR. WINDSOR: I would gladly go.

AN HON. MEMBER: Any basements dug out in Southlands yet?

MR. WINDSOR: There is one house out there but I don't believe it is occupied - built by a contractor on spec and I don't believe it is occupied yet, unless it was done very, very recently. And that is the only lot sold, by the way.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, it's not.

MR. WINDSOR: Another sold?

AN HON. MEMBER: No, more than another one, there are nine gone now.

MR. WINDSOR: Nine gone now - they are going like hot cakes, Mr. Speaker. Having said that, I don't want to belittle it, Southlands is going to be one of the nicest housing developments -

AN HON. MEMBER: In the city of St. John's.

MR. WINDSOR: - unless it has been changed.

MR. FLIGHT: (Inaudible) Mount Pearl will ever buy a house in Southlands.

MR. WINDSOR: No, that is not true and I don't say that but I will say this to the Member for Windsor - Buchans, that within five or six years after they settle into Southlands they will be petitioning the minister to put Southlands back in Mount Pearl. Contrary to the nonsense the minister went on with the other day, that is exactly what happened with the Newtown area.

That is exactly what happened with the Newtown area. People moved in there initially, Mr. Speaker, and thought, well, this is great. We are on the Metro Board, we don't have the same tax level, we don't have to pay the same amount of taxes as the people in Mount Pearl, so we will keep this nice and neat. And they formed their own little empire, the Mount Pearl citizens' committee or something, that met with Metro Board and dealt with them, and they were happy for awhile until they found out that they did not have full access to all of the facilities that were in Mount Pearl, all the recreation facilities. They did not have equal rights with those people in Mount Pearl who were paying taxes and that is, I say to the minister, exactly what will happen with the Southlands.

Now, the people of Southlands are not going to take their children to school in St. John's, they are not going to take them to the rink in St. John's, they are not going to take them to church in St. John's, everything is linked, designed and planned since 1972 as part of the Mount Pearl development scheme. Those people, simply because of their location, will be part of the Mount Pearl community. So in a very short time -

AN HON. MEMBER: That is in Mount Pearl, it is still a community.

MR. WINDSOR: Oh! Now there is a threat from the minister! If the minister is left in office I doubt there will be too many communities left, certainly none that are viable.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) part of St. John's then, boy.

MR. WINDSOR: Not likely, Sir, not likely. It might be foisted on them but they will not be made part of St. John's willingly. The minister will not live long enough to see it, I can assure him of that, unless he plays his trickery and I won't use the word `blackmail', but if he finds ways and means of putting such pressures economically and otherwise on the city that they can no longer survive, if he chokes them and strangles them and forces them in, it won't be willingly but they may have no choice, Mr. Speaker. And it wouldn't surprise me, for this government.

AN HON. MEMBER: It should have been done years ago.

MR. WINDSOR: It should have been done years ago... The most successful municipality in this Province - the minister should be holding it out as a shining example of how to run a municipality.

MR. REID: The government paid for it.

MR. WINDSOR: Government paid for nothing, Mr. Speaker.

MR. REID: No! No, boy! (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Government was a developer and the people who built the lots in there paid for every cent that was spent in there, the minister knows it and he is not being honest with the House when he tries to say something different.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) building an empire for yourself in there - you did that. No one else in the world would have been foolish (inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: And the people of Mount Pearl are eternally grateful.

AN HON. MEMBER: How about Lewisporte?

MR. WINDSOR: Ah, Lewisporte is another question. Unfortunately, the Member for Lewisporte doesn't stand up and speak very loudly on behalf of the District of Lewisporte. He now has himself hidden in the Chair half the time so he doesn't have to speak on delicate issues, so that is another question, Mr. Speaker, but his days are coming. His days are numbered.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) running in Lewisporte or Mount Pearl?

MR. TOBIN: He wants to know if you are running in Mount Pearl, and I say the answer is `yes'.

MR. WINDSOR: The answer is yes.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. WINDSOR: Well, I am serving both right now so I might as well. I am serving both right now.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. ROBERTS: Come on, now, boys, `Neil's' feelings are hurt; now, be quiet.

MR. WINDSOR: Mr. Speaker, it will take more than the Minister of Justice to hurt my feelings, I can tell you that.

MR. ROBERTS: I hope so, I hope so.

MR. WINDSOR: My skin is just as thick as his. It may not be quite as ugly but it is just as thick I have to say.

So, Mr. Speaker, the whole process, as I said, is flawed. We should not be debating it. I hesitated to even speak to the motion, Mr. Speaker, because I feel so strongly that we should not be here with this motion on the books. It is not here legally; it is not here in accordance with due process, or the intent of the legislation, which was to establish impartial, political boundaries. And, Mr. Speaker, once we, as Members of the House, get involved, there is no way in the world - human nature will dictate that, I am not pointing fingers at anybody.

Human nature would dictate that once the political sector gets involved in that decision, then the impartiality of it is severely weakened. That is why the process, as designed by legislation, is to establish a commission which will be as impartial as possible. And I say to members opposite, I believe the first commission that was appointed was a reasonable commission, and had they been given the mandate that these commissions are supposed to be given, without having their hands tied - because when you are told you must come within a certain number of seats, first of all, the decision of how many seats you are having is taken from you. They might have said thirty seats will work well if we base it on this assumption; on the other hand, if we make this assumption, that geography is the most important one, for example, if we decide there should be an equal number of seats - let us have thirty seats and divide the total population by thirty and that is the number of people, and there it will be, thirty seats will do; but if, on the other hand, we are saying that the geographical area should be only so large and a member should be able to get to any part of his riding within four hours drive, well, then they might come up with sixty-five or seventy seats. So, you see, it depends on the assumption from which you started and this commission was not given the right to establish those basic premises.

They were told, it must be between forty and forty-six seats and the commission themselves expressed to me when I made my presentation to them that: we feel very frustrated by this, because what we would like to do and what we are going to be able to do, within the constraints of having only a 10 per cent variance is making life very, very difficult for us. So, we will be putting into a report that we agree with as being fair and reasonable within the terms and conditions placed upon us, but it is not the report that we would want to put in had we been given a free hand in accordance with the legislation. And that is why I say, Mr. Speaker, that we should not be here tonight. The only question before this House tonight should be: Do we accept the report of the commission or do we not? That is our option. We either accept it, in its totality, whether we like it or not, or we reject it forthright and say: no, we don't accept it, we will leave it as it was; which is what we did, I think, in one term, left it as it was.

So, Mr. Speaker, let me say once again that this is a very, very serious issue that we are debating. It troubles me greatly that we are not paying it the amount of attention that it truly deserves. I would like to take time with members and go through all of the districts. They may not be my ridings but I have opinions; I have looked at some of the ridings on the West Coast - I have. I have an opinion on the Lewisporte district, obviously. I have an opinion on all districts, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, I wouldn't have time to pass them along here but there should have been an opportunity in a committee setting where we could look at all the ridings and make suggestions - not argue about it, Mr. Speaker, but make suggestions as to how ridings could be better served but, we are not given that opportunity, and if we are going to get into the process of changing what the commission puts forward, well then let us do it properly, and we can't do that here, and again I say, I don't think that is the right approach anyway but, you know, we are half-way there. We are half-way debating the districts and we are not fully accepting the commission's report.

Mr. Speaker, I will finish with that, simply by saying that the whole issue has been politically motivated, has been gerrymandered, it has been illegal and improper - I won't say immoral but it borders on immoral. And it troubles me greatly, Mr. Speaker, that, the most important institution in this Province, the people's House, has been treated so shoddily by this whole process tonight, is forcing through a flawed piece of legislation without giving a proper debate, without giving the people time to deal with it, and without giving due consideration for what we are doing, Mr. Speaker. This issue is very serious because if we do not have a good sound, solid, democratic basis here in this House then the whole procedure, our whole reason for being in this House is weakened greatly, is weakened tremendously, and I have to wonder why we are here at all in this House if we are going to allow these kind of decisions to be made on this basis? I think each and every one of us should re-examine what we are here for, what we were elected to do here, and how best we can represent those people who sent us here?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. HARRIS: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this bill, "An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Act And The Electoral Boundaries Act", and in doing so I want to say that it is very difficult for any Legislature to deal with the issue of electoral boundaries and the whole notion of how they organize electoral boundaries and organize the democratic system without political motivations entering into it.

I have a great sense of déjà vu in this debate and listening to hon. members on this side of the House in particular talk about how government is going about carrying out a political purpose and not one associated with democracy in dealing with this issue. A system put in place of having a commission every ten years is a good one. It places an objective view on it. Of course there are political considerations and in setting up the Commission government made sure that all political parties active in the House in a sense had their views as part of the Commission itself, but government was not satisfied with that and wanted to go further and add conditions to that and gain some political brownie points at the time by suggesting it was time to save money and use the House of Assembly as an example, but it backfired on them.

It backfired on them in two respects. Number one, the Commission indicated its intention to report that forty seats were what the public wanted in response to the Premier's suggestion, in response to the political climate at the time, and had every intention of bringing in such a report. Government for its own new political reasons decided to stop that process by changing the legislation. Then, when they came back with the Commission's report the government, the Liberal members opposite, were not satisfied with it and they forced another round of political change which some of them are still not happy with. They cannot rewrite all the boundaries and now they are stuck with this.

When we talk about the democracy of the House I think we have to talk about some basic principles. Like the Member for Mount Pearl I am not one of those who thinks that the House should be cut in half or cut down to nothing. I think it is good to have lots of representatives in the House; there may be better ways of organizing it, maybe you don't have to pay people or have all the costs associated with it to represent people well, but when I look around this House, I don't see a very representative House, representative of the population of this Province, you know.

AN HON. MEMBER: You are not kidding?

MR. HARRIS: The Member for Conception Bay South says: you are not kidding.

MS COWAN: Yes (inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: Yes, and she is referring to gender and I was just about to say when I look around this House and you have, what do they call it these day, men in suits, is it? Men in suits, forty-nine to three; three women and forty-nine men, that is not a proper representation of the people of this Province. This House does not reflect that; this does not reflect the population and -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: The Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island now says, well they keep defeating women for the seats -

MR. WALSH: They keep defeating them for the nominations.

MR. HARRIS: - and they keep defeating them for nominations. Yes, perhaps they do, but it is that political system we are talking about here and the method of democracy, not the choices that are made by the electorate, it is the political system that offers those choices and the political system that we have doesn't recognize the need for affirmative action in that area.

Not very long ago, I say to the Member for Mount Scio - Bell Island, the Legislature had to take action to enforce financial equality between men and women in a marriage, the institution that most people find sacred, the institution that holds together the family. It was institutional in equality that was established and legislation had to take action to bring about equality between men and women in the distribution of property and matrimonial property upon separation or divorce, and just as the Legislature had to do that, there should be action taken to ensure that a Legislature of this nature, democratically reflects the population that it purports to govern, and that is why hon. members will recall, not all members of this particular Assembly were here for the debate and the vote on a proposal that would have maintained fifty-two members of this House, but have only twenty-six districts, each represented by two members, dual ridings.

We have had them before. Harbour Main was a two-member district, St. John's East was a three-person district; St. John's West was a three-member district at one time, so it is not an unusual, constitutional and democratic mode, but that each district, the twenty-six districts would have two members, one man and one woman elected by the same group of people, and that would have brought instant equality of men and women by gender in this House of Assembly and may not have to be conducted for more than ten or twenty years for it to be considered the norm, so when we start talking about electoral boundaries and democratic representation and how many members it takes to represent certain people, it brings up all of these issues.

I am very fond of the notion of proportional representation. It is the more common form of democratic and political institutions throughout the world, more common than the system that we have, which says that no matter how many votes your party gets, if you don't get more votes than anybody else in a particular riding, you don't get a seat in the House, so you could have 25 per cent of the vote and not win a seat, and that those ideas of your party, of your candidates who are represented in the electorate by 25 per cent, do not get any representation in the House of Assembly.

If there was rep. by pop. in the last election, there would be five New Democrats sitting in the House of Assembly not one, so I have a certain affinity to that system. It is not something we are used to in this Province and I think perhaps the expectations of people in this Province are a little different than that. They like to have a member that they can go to and say: I want my member to take action for me. They like that. So representation by population, which is very attractive, has its drawbacks in our political culture. In our political culture it has its drawbacks.

Members have spoken quite eloquently about the demands put on them by their constituents for specific action, not only in bringing up matters in the House of Assembly but for assistance with social assistance cases and for assistance in dealing with government, and God knows they need it. Members on all sides of the House find it frustrating dealing with government even when it is their own government, I say to members opposite. So, it is difficult to resolve all these problems.

It is not necessarily a question of numbers. Members of the House of Commons represent far larger constituencies than members of the provincial Legislatures. When I was a Member of Parliament for St. John's East there were 110,000 constituents in St. John's East, and people from seven or eight provincial districts would contact their member of Parliament, write them or phone their offices looking for assistance on all sorts of matters, both provincial and federal. I would say we had a better system of staff to deal with that. That may be a way of resolving some of the problems if you have larger demands on your time, to have a better system of staff so that staff could help deal with some of the problems of members and help members with their representation of constituencies. That could be one way of having perhaps a slightly smaller House and at the same time making sure that people are adequately represented, because members would have the resources to deal with that. I know all the Cabinet Ministers have resources to do that because they have executive assistants who are political people paid by the government to carry out constituency duties on behalf of the minister while the minister is doing the job of running a department. So ministers have it but members don't.

There are lots of members who are very busy, as hon. members have said, attending to the demands of their constituents and constituency. They do expect to see their member at their functions, in their town, at their organization's annual banquet and meeting, and I think that is a legitimate expectation. People want to know that their representative gives honour and respect to their local organizations when the time comes to recognize them.

What we have here, Mr. Speaker, is the end result of a program of political chicanery motivated from the beginning by political desire with the public of this Province, first of all to convince them that the government was serious about reducing costs and is going to use the House of Assembly as an example, and then by the distaste that they had for the results of the process. In the end they appointed someone to do the job and told that person what they wanted done, something that would reflect more adequately what members opposite in their caucus wanted, because they did not like the fact that some of their districts were being removed by the process and by the results of the Mahoney Commission.

It was an insult, I say, an insult to the whole commission and in particular to Judge Mahoney. It was an insult to the commission and to Commissioner Mahoney, who was asked to undertake a job and then told how to do it by this House and by this government by changing the legislation. Then, in the end, they were not even happy with what their own appointee, Judge Noel, did and they set about to change all the names. Now in some cases I guess it really doesn't matter whether Bay de Verde is Bay de Verde or Trinity - Bay de Verde. One may be more descriptive than the other, but in St. John's they have gone so far as to play hopscotch with the districts. They are playing hopscotch with the districts of St. John's East, Centre, West, because for some reason it suits the current Member for St. John's West, who I understand resides in Columbus Drive, to have his district, where I presume he wants to run again, called St. John's West; and the result of all of that, of course, is that they do not like the name of Columbus Drive. Well, call it something else. You do not have to have it Columbus Drive if nobody likes it. It is pretty descriptive of where it is. It could be called Cowan Heights. It could be called something like that. Everybody knows where Cowan Heights is, and Cowan Heights - Topsail Road, could very well describe the area in question; but no, they were not satisfied with that. They had to do a little bit more of political chicanery and political mischief and take away the name of the district of St. John's East and call it something else.

MR. ROBERTS: A rose by any other name, Jack.

MR. HARRIS: The Government House Leader does not like the name Columbus Drive. Well, I am not that excited about the name of Signal Hill.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible) move an amendment in committee.

MR. HARRIS: The minister offers to second an amendment in committee. In committee there will no doubt be many amendments and that, I would say to the Government House Leader, will be one of them. There will be many amendments in committee, I say to hon. members, but the kind of manoeuvring of the St. John's district is only designed for political mischief and confusion; that is all. That is all it is there for. That is all it is designed to do, to confuse and further the political agenda of the government and various members of the House. It is ridiculous to take whole districts and rename them some other district, like taking one district and calling it something else.

It just happens to be that St. John's East is a district that the Liberal Party has never won, so now they are going to call St. John's Centre St. John's East, in the hope that maybe they will win St. John's Centre again, and then they can say: Hey, we finally won St. John's East. After forty-five years of Confederation we finally won St. John's East. That is what they are hoping. They are hoping that by renaming St. John's Centre St. John's East they will finally be able to say, after the next election: Hey, we finally won St. John's East after all these years. All we had to do was rename the district and then we could win it. It won't work, because what you will probably find out is that you will lose both the new district that you called Signal Hill and St. John's East, and St. John's East as well.

AN HON. MEMBER: You will be surprised what can happen.

MR. HARRIS: We will see what will happen.

Mr. Speaker, I see -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: I am not going to adjourn debate. It is not 10:00 p.m. yet, and I am not finished yet.

To sum up, though, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to sums up because I am not going to continue beyond the hour of ten, or tomorrow, I want to say that this legislation is the end result of a process that took an objective system of a ten-year commission and turned it into a piece of political mischief from day one to now, and has lowered the possibilities, lowered the expectations, lowered the respect that people can have for the democratic process by once again using political motivation to decide how things are going to happen in terms of this House.

Mr. Speaker, with those remarks, I want to say that I oppose this legislation for what it stands for, a political manipulation from the beginning to the end.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. ROBERTS: (Inaudible) adjourn the debate.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

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

MR. HARRIS: With that, Mr. Speaker, I adjourn the debate.

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

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend from St. John's East that the debate will be called tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock, whenever we get to Orders of the Day. I hope he will find it convenient to visit us tomorrow and that his other endeavours will not interfere with that. Should he not be here, of course the debate will go ahead.

Your Honour, we are now at the magic hour, before I adjourn the House let me remind members that we shall tomorrow night again ask the House to sit late in order to accommodate any who wish to speak on this bill, but we will not sit beyond ten o'clock no matter how much my friend from Ferryland wants us to do so.

With that said, Your Honour, I move the House adjourn until tomorrow, Tuesday, at two o'clock. Thank you, Sir.

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