The House met at 2:00 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

Before we start the routine business of the day, I would like to welcome a number of groups to the galleries on behalf of all members.

We have seventeen Level III students from Xavier High School in the District of Bellevue, accompanied by their teacher, Adrian Norman; seven Adult Basic Education students for Skills for Success on Parade Street, accompanied by their instructor, Donna Adams. As well, we have twenty-eight Grade V and VI students from New World Island East Elementary in the District of Twillingate and Fogo, accompanied by teachers, Roland Hamlyn and Chris Osmond and chaperons, Noreen Cutler, Rex Cutler, Ivan Card and bus driver, Boyce Sansome.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my colleague, Mr. Furey, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, I rise to announce that effective today, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association will merge with the Canadian Exporters' Association to form a new business organization to be called the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada.

Mr. Speaker, due to the historical significance of these two organizations and the major role they have played in the economic development of Canada, a similar statement is being made today in the House of Commons by the federal Minister of Industry Canada, the hon. John Manley, as well as other provincial industry ministers in Legislatures across Canada from coast to coast.

Mr. Speaker, manufacturing and exporting have always been closely linked. As trade barriers fall, Canadian companies are developing, producing and exporting quality products to the rest of the world. In short, we continue to succeed in a fiercely competitive global marketplace. The union of these two associations that have played a significant role over the years in achieving that success, will result in an even stronger organization with an international focus.

This merger makes good business sense and will benefit Canadian companies, including many here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that the Chairman of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association at this significant juncture is a Newfoundlander - Mr. Lorne Janes, who is also currently Chairman of the Newfoundland Manufacturers' Association.

Manufacturing continues to play a key role in developing our economy provincially. Newfoundland and Labrador is leading the country in terms of increasing manufacturing shipments for the first quarter of this year, with an increase of 14 per cent, higher than any other province. Manufacturing shipments comparatively for the country are down slightly for the first quarter.

Mr. Speaker, it is also important to acknowledge the contribution of Mr. George Lee, who has been Chairman of the Newfoundland chapter of the Canadian Exporters' Association for the past three years.

Mr. Speaker, we thank the Canadian Exporters' Association and the Canadian Manufacturers' Association for their past work and wish the new organization, the Alliance of Manufacturers & Exporters Canada, the very best in the future. We look forward to working with them.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I first of all wish to note that Mr. Janes, who has been with the Canadian Manufacturers' Association in the capacity of chairman, and Mr. Lee, with the provincial chapter of the Canadian Exporters' Association have served well in those capacities in this Province and on a national level. It is very appropriate, too, I think, that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Canadian Exporters' Association merge.

As a Province and as a country we depend heavily upon exports and particularly, too, with free trade there has been an increase in exports and an export trade surplus in our country because of these new ventures. Many local and Canadian manufacturers depend heavily upon the exportation of goods from our country that has a small population base out to large markets around the world. These associations have very many goals in common, the Manufacturers' Association in production for exporting a tremendous amount and it is very appropriate, too, that this step has been taken. I commend both associations in taking this initiative now to work on a more collaborative basis now and in the future by merging into one association.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My questions today are for the Minister of Mines and Energy.

I ask the minister: Has an agreement has been reached for the transfer from IOC to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro of the twenty megawatt generating station at Menihek dam which now supplies electricity to the town of Shefferville?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: I do not think it has been finalized, Mr. Speaker, but it is close to being finalized. There has been some work on this for some time and I believe the expectation is that there will be an agreement and a transfer finalized in the next few months.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Will the minister also confirm if Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro has agreed to upgrade and to lease that facility after the final transaction to Hydro Quebec, and how much will we receive for that lease?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: No, Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro have not agreed to do any upgrading on anything. Let me put this in context. Presently the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a private company, owns the Menihek power station which has a rating of about nineteen megawatts. The only use of power from this particular station at this time is in the town of Shefferville, which of course used to, at one time, have a mine that was split on both sides of the border, but at this time the only use from the power at Menihek is in the town of Shefferville, and this is a town that is mostly populated by some natives in Quebec.

The Iron Ore Company would like to dispose of this facility. A couple of years ago they tried to do this privately, and it was our view, since Menihek controls about 25 per cent of the water that flows through the Churchill watershed that it would not be appropriate for some external private company to come in and control that watershed. We suggested that Hydro should make an arrangement with the Iron Ore Company of Canada to obtain ownership of this facility and control over that watershed. That is what is being arranged and we hope that agreement is finalized.

Now, as part of it in the meantime, we get control of the watershed and we get ownership of the facility. In the meantime there is no use for the power that is being produced by that facility at this time except in the town of Shefferville which uses about seven or eight megawatts of the nineteen megawatt capacity. The agreement that is being made is that Hydro Quebec will provide an amount that will be sufficient to pay the Iron Ore Company the amount that they want in terms of a purchase price, so Hydro Quebec will provide that money.

Hydro Quebec will provide the quantity of money that is required to upgrade the facility for transfer of the power to the border, the Labrador/Quebec border, and within Quebec I think the native groups are going to take ownership of the distribution network in that Province.

What is going to happen is that we, through Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, will obtain ownership of it without spending a single penny. Hydro Quebec will provide the money that will give the Iron Ore Company what it needs for the purchase, and Hydro Quebec will spend the money that is needed to upgrade that facility to give a certain supply of power to Schefferville for the time in the future.

In the meantime, what is being built into this with us being the owner is that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro will be able, at its option, at any time, to say: We need the power that is surplus to Schefferville's needs tomorrow, immediately. Secondly, if a demand comes for power over and above the surplus to Schefferville Hydro can determine to set a time period and say: We will make a recall for whatever amount we want and we give you a notice period for that recall.

Thirdly, what is being arranged is that if a demand becomes available and we want all the power from Menihek -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his remarks.

DR. GIBBONS: - we can give three years' notice, Mr. Speaker, and say we want to cancel and terminate this arrangement to sell any power into Schefferville.

What is happening in all of this is that Hydro Quebec will only have the power as long as it is no longer surplus to our needs, and we have a good deal.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Will the minister then make it clear, is the portion that is used, that is supplied, going to be leased at a certain amount or a certain fee recovered for the ongoing operation of the Menihek dam, or is Hydro Quebec, I ask the minister, going to control the operation of Menihek dam? Who is going to retain operational control?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, ownership will rest with us through Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro Corporation. Operation for supplying the power to Schefferville will be through a lease arrangement with Hydro Quebec. For that arrangement it will pay us a fee for the power that is produced, a fee that is substantially higher than the present fee that is paid for the use of that water by the Iron Ore Company of Canada.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad the minister is catching up, because I asked him in question number two if it is going to be leased, and he did not say it was. He now said it is going to be leased, so he is admitting that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is going to receive the transfer, and make it clear, the Menihek dam from IOC that no longer has a use because they don't need it for Schefferville, now Newfoundland is going to pay for the upgrade and get reimbursed, and then lease it to Hydro Quebec, the minister said, for the amount of power that is needed for Quebec - they are going to pay for those costs - and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is now going to lease that to a company in Quebec; that is what he said.

I ask the minister: With all of the problems we had with Hydro Quebec, why would we turn over the operation of that facility, that the minister said, to Hydro Quebec? Why wouldn't we retain that control here in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, we are turning nothing over to Hydro Quebec, absolutely nothing.

MR. SULLIVAN: You are leasing it.

DR. GIBBONS: We are going to own it, but we do not own it today. It is owned today by the Iron Ore Company of Canada, which is providing this power to Schefferville, to the town. They have no other use for the power on the Labrador side of the border, and we are going to own it for the first time in our history, we are going to control the 25 per cent of the Churchill watershed that flows through the Menihek as a result of this arrangement, and we are not going to spend one cent, not one red penny, not one loonie, ourselves on this matter. Hydro Quebec will provide the money that is required to purchase it, for us to purchase it. They are going to provide all of that money. They are going to provide the money and do whatever upgrading they need to do to maintain a service to their people, and what we are getting out of this besides ownership is a bigger annual fee substantially than is presently being paid to us by the Iron Ore Company of Canada for the water rights. The other thing we are going to get is access instantly to the surplus power that is available if we need it, access within a reasonable period to be determined by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro if we want to recall more than that surplus at any time for an industrial development in that part of Labrador, and access on three years' notice to the full amount of that power if we need it for industrial development in that part of Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good deal for us, an excellent deal for us.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Minister, if it is a good deal could you tell us what the lease terms are, and what the lease fee is to lease this to Hydro Quebec to operate, to supply Schefferville with power? What are we getting? In other words, how much in the total deal are we receiving for this Province? And on the demands, we know there is approximately 130 megawatts we have the right to recall, I think, on the Churchill from CF(L)Co; that is still there, I understand. We have used approximately 170, so will the minister stand and tell us what the lessee is, the lease is out; we know we have ownership it is in our Province and we should. Tell us what we are getting in the total package because of this deal.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, presently, I believe the Iron Ore Company pays us about $2,500 to $3,000 a year in fees for this and that's about all.

I don't have the exact fee that we are going to get at this time, I don't know the exact fee myself but we are going to get substantially more than is presently being paid to us for this and we are going to get ownership without spending a loony and, we are going to have access to any of the power that is produced there, subject to our recall rights that are in the agreement, and I mentioned most of the conditions that are in the agreement a moment ago when I went through the different stages on which we can have recall rights and the lease itself is a twenty-five year lease but it is subject to being ended at any time, three years notice are all that is given if we want to terminate it completely because we have a demand for the power. So, we are well protected in this, it is a good deal; at this time today we have no demand for even one miliwatt, not microwatt, one miliwatt for the power from that dam.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Why shouldn't we own it, if IOC is not going to use it? A generating station in Newfoundland and Labrador, why shouldn't we own it I say to the minister.

I want to move on to another aspect.

Hydro Quebec owns and operates an electrical generating facility at Lake Robertson. It uses this facility to supply power to the residents of Quebec and an agreement is in the works I understand, to supply power to Southern Labrador which was served by diesel generation in the past.

How much I ask the minister, is Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro paying Hydro Quebec for this power that is going to be supplied to Southern Labrador?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Again, Mr. Speaker, it is correct. Hydro Quebec has developed the power facility on the Quebec side of the border, near the Labrador Straits that is going to supply power to a number of towns in that area that are presently on a grid as primarily supplied by diesel.

We have had discussions with them through Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to get some power that for a period, will be surplus to their needs. There will be a time when they will have some surplus power and, again, I don't know the exact amounts, I have not been involved with the negotiations about the exact fees but I am sure these numbers are available somewhere. I am not even sure that the agreement has been finalized as to the exact amounts, but there is some power, that for a number of years will be surplus to the demands of Hydro Quebec in the Quebec part of that particular part of the country and they are prepared to sell the surplus to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro for use in that grid.

Recently, in Coastal Labrador, there was a public hearing by the Public Utilities Board about the rate that should be paid for that particular power or for any power to the people who are on that grid. PUB I expect, will be ruling in the next few weeks on what they think that power should be sold for in the region combining the surplus power from Quebec with the power that is being generated presently by diesel. I don't know what the answer is going to be by the Public Utilities Board. They have had the public hearing, they have had lots of input on it but I myself, have not been a part of it and I don't know the exact numbers and I frankly, have not been interested in the exact numbers.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am appalled. The minister knows the transaction is happening and he does not know what we are going to get. I am very interested in the numbers I say to the minister. I am appalled that we don't know what we will be getting for this deal on the Menihek dam and also, it is my understanding -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) appalled.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, I am appalled. - and it is my understanding that in Southern Labrador that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro will be paying in the vicinity of forty-five to sixty mils, for interrupted energy I might add; we will still need to maintain periodically, the diesel generating machines that are there at the plants to supply it, because we don't have a consistent supply.

Now I ask the minister, the residents in Southern Labrador feel they should pay rural, interconnected rates. Now, don't you think, minister, that there should be a straight substitution of equivalent power, amounts that are needed, exchanged between Hydro Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro to serve both instances, from the Menihek dam and Lake Robertson that is located near Southern Labrador?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, the two matters are quite separate and quite different. In the Lake Robertson case, Hydro Quebec has developed a hydro power development. It has paid whatever it costs to develop that hydro power development. It has some surplus power that is available and they have said that they are prepared to make that available to us for an appropriate price. That price is being negotiated. I don't know what that price is but it is a price certainly that is considerably cheaper than our present cost of producing power in that region or anywhere using diesel generators much less than the cost of producing it using diesel generators. So if such cheaper power is available to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro it certainly should be (inaudible) to obtain that power if they can get it for any temporary period to help cut down the cost and make it cheaper on the ratepayers of Newfoundland and Labrador and that is what they are trying to do.

The Menihek one is quite a different matter. There is a power station that is presently owned by the Iron Ore Company that is presently only producing power and selling it into Schefferville and is being produced by that company. We can get ownership of it and will get ownership of it through an arrangement that is being made. It will not cost us one penney to do so but we will have recall rights on every kilowatt that can be produced on that one, when and if we need it at any time, when and if we need it under the appropriate conditions. So in both cases, as far as we are concerned for this Province, it is a good deal for us both ways.

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

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have the minister's word it is a good deal and he does not even know what the figures are. How can the minister tell us it is a good deal when he said he does not know what we are getting, I say to the minister? Is it going to be another Churchill Falls deal? We want to know and we have a right to know. I ask the minister, what are we getting on the deal with the Menihek dam? What is Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro paying for power to serve people here in Southern Labrador? Why shouldn't there be an equal substitution of power? Why should Hydro Quebec be able to come in, operate and run a hydro generating facility in this Province when we have to pay for interrupted energy at probably an exorbitant rate in Southern Labrador? What is so secretive about this transaction? Why doesn't the minister subject just the public hearings so people in this Province can subject that to public scrutiny and to ensure that we are getting the best deal that is in the interest of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, there is nothing secretive about it. It is a good deal. In both cases it is a good deal for us. In the Menihek case we are not spending one loonie and we are going to get ownership, control of 25 per cent of the Churchill power, Churchill water rights and we are going to get significantly more per year than we now get. I don't know the dollar amount personally. I would tell you if I knew it. I don't know it but I am told it is significantly more than the $2,500 that the Iron Ore Company of Canada - or the $2,500 or $3,000 that the Iron Ore Company of Canada has been paying for the last forty years or so since that was developed in the early '50s but I don't know the exact amount.

In terms of the rate that we are paying for the interruption of power from Lake Robertson, my understanding is that negotiations are not finalized. I have not been given a figure as to the final rate that we will be paying but again it is substantially below the cost that we presently have for producing diesel power, substantially below it. I am told it, I can believe the people who tell me that it is substantially less than what we are presently paying for diesel power and for diesel power it is the most expensive power in this Province. We only get about 28 per cent of the cost of the power in the rates that are being paid by the people who are buying it.

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Minister, a very, very serious issue was raised here in this House yesterday regarding the existence of a cartel in the crab processing industry. Would the minister inform the House if there has been any new developments to support the statements that were put forward here in the House yesterday?

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

MR. EFFORD: I have no idea what the hon. member is talking about. If I made a statement in the House yesterday I made it publicly before yesterday. Again, after Question Period yesterday to the news media: Do I believe there was a cartel existing in the Province? I said yes yesterday that I believe a - whether cartel is the proper name but that is the name that it is being referred to among the fishermen of the Province. Do I believe it exists? I have not changed my mind since yesterday. If the hon. member is asking me what I discussed at meetings this morning, I'm not going to tell him.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I can assure the minister that this is a very serious issue. He may be `Joe Blunt' with me but I think a lot of people out there in rural Newfoundland and Labrador whose lives are depending on this need to know some answers.

Minister, yesterday you indicated that you were doing an investigation within your own department and seeking the advice of the Department of Justice. We don't have the luxury of time on our side because as you know there is already a very active snow crab fishery presently taking place in other Atlantic Provinces. I fear that this particular fishery might interfere even further with our markets and pricing, et cetera. Would the minister inform the House as to how long he expects his investigation to take place? When does he expect it to be over, and when can we get our fishermen back fishing and our plant workers back to work?

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

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the hon. member finds it a very serious situation. Had I not raised it through an interview on the Fisheries Broadcast last week he wouldn't have even questioned me in the House on it. So I find it (inaudible) now he finds it a very serious situation.

I find it a very serious situation. I was the one who brought it out in the public, I'm the one who is going to deal with it, and I am going to deal with it in a manner that is efficient and proficient to the satisfaction that I am satisfied it is either totally not there at all, or it is totally now being stopped among the fishing industry. But as far as the snow crab fishery this year in Newfoundland? A snow crab fishery has been announced: 37,000 metric tons by the federal government. Whether I have asked Justice for advice or not has nothing to do with crab pots going in the water.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I remind the minister that he is the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. We all know that. You are expected to bring those things out and to be on top of what is happening in your particular industry. So it should be no surprise to the minister that I would raise it after he raised the issue in expressing concern.

The minister also stated yesterday that he doesn't believe fish harvesters play any part in this so-called cartel, and it is strictly between the processors. I ask the minister if he has had any consultation whatsoever between the representatives of the fish harvesters, the FFAW, and if he has, would he mind telling us what their opinions and suggestions regarding this particular operation of a cartel were.

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

MR. EFFORD: I've had meetings with the processors, I've had discussions with the union representatives, I've had discussions with people in the harvesting of the crab; or I guess fishery in general, but in this particular case crab is what we are talking about. Am I going to tell the hon. member the results of those discussions that I've had? No I'm not.

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have one question and it is for the hon. Minister of Justice. It is on the same topic as just previously discussed. My one question is this. What legislation or what provisions or what act or what regulation forms the basis of the referral or the investigation which has been requested by the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture to your department? What is the concern of the Ministry of Justice, or what is the basis or the subject matter for which advice is being sought?

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

MR. EFFORD: Mr. Speaker, the provincial fisheries of this Province is under the guidance of the fishery inspection act. We have a lawyer from the Department of Justice who is assigned to my department. I had some concerns about the possibility, or what I believed to be a cartel - the name is only talked about in the general public, and it is an organization or structure, whatever - quite some time ago because I live in a fishing community. It was expressed to me last year and I brought it to the attention of the proper officials at the time.

Since becoming Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture I have asked the lawyer who is assigned to the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture to look up and research, under the fisheries legislation, whether it is the fisheries inspection act or whatever, or the combines act, or whatever legalities can be, if he can advise me if this, what we perceive to be happening, is a legal thing. That lawyer who is assigned to my department is doing that research . He will get back to me, I'm hoping, no later than next week at least, the middle or the latter part of next week.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

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

I have my inaugural question for the new Minister of Development and Rural Renewal, D2R2 as it has been described. First of all government has indicted their desire to stimulate economic growth and development in Newfoundland and Labrador through the nineteen economic zones and, of course, the implementation of the regional economic development boards. Capitalizing on opportunities that are available will require strategic planning and a coordinated approach to regional economic development as the minister has stated, and I agree.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister, given the rush to put into place all the permanent boards before the end of June, I ask the minister if she thinks there is any danger that the viability of these initiatives will compromise by a lack of communication and coordination between government and these boards?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Development and Rural Renewal.

MS FOOTE: Mr. Speaker, it is not a rush in the sense that we have been working for some time now, in fact for the past two years to put in place the provisional boards. What we are now trying to do is move it ahead so that we can see some economic development take place. In fact what we are trying to do is get the permanent boards up and running by the end of June, but bearing in mine that a lot of the people who have served on the permanent boards will already have served on the provisional boards.

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

MR. SHELLEY: At the Strategic Planning Conference held this past weekend in St. John's, which the minister attended, the representatives from the provisional boards and the permanent boards were confused about their role in this development initiative and they requested government's commitment to the process. Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister whether she is willing to demonstrate government's commitment to this process by providing these boards with unlimited access to government expertise, number one, by repairing the broken lines of communications between the board representatives and government, and to let the pace of implementation of these boards be driven by the grassroots that the minister keeps referring to?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Development and Rural Renewal.

MS FOOTE: Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes to all three. What we are hoping to do is have all boards up and running by the end of June, the intent being that we want to see economic development take place in rural Newfoundland. We all know the urgency of that happening so we will certainly make sure that all expertise in government is available to every board throughout the Province. The rush is not on my part here, I think the rush, in any discussions I have had with members of the provisional boards and the permanent boards that have been established, they were all anxious to see economic development take place in this Province.

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

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister has also indicated that these boards will have a great deal of autonomy and support within consideration of projects, especially within their own zones. Also at the last part of the conference there were a lot of discussions among the representatives. They raised concerns about the college closures. Board members indicated that the presence of community colleges throughout the region were essential to the economic restructuring process of these boards, so I ask the minister if she will respect the concerns raised by the members and ask government to reconsider the closure of the community colleges until there is a thorough assessment of these colleges and the impact of the closures?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Development and Rural Renewal.

MS FOOTE: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows that the decision to close community colleges was a Budget decision and it was a decision that was taken by this government and a decision that the Minister of Education has indicated will stand.

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

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

In the absence of the Environment and Labour Minister I ask whoever the acting minister is. As we know and as the people of the Province know there is a major development that government is about to make a decision on, that being Star Lake Power Development. I would like to ask whoever can answer for the government, where is that project proposal? When can we expect a decision by government on the environmental impact, and will the department let that project proceed or not?

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

MR. TULK: The last part of the question was?

MR. E. BYRNE: When will the government announce what the environmental impact of it will be, if that project will be proceeding and when it will proceed?

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding in conversations that I have had, and as a matter to some effect in the department that I happen to run, the wildlife section, as I understand from the Minister of Environment and Lands that project will soon get the green light. As far as environmental okay is concerned it will go ahead, but I will have the Minister of Environment and Labour give a more detailed answer when he gets back in the morning.

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

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

Let me ask the minister who is responsible for wildlife then, in the environmental assessment and the environmental impact study that was done, it indicated that the Buchan's caribou herd, that they anticipated there would be a 15 per cent mortality rate on the herd each and every year. Is the minister aware of that and if he is, is he concerned about the impact on the Buchan's caribou herd, and what its long-term impact will be on that herd?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the minister.

MR. TULK: Let me assure the hon. gentleman that the wildlife division is concerned about every aspect of wildlife in this Province and indeed we will take whatever measures are necessary to protect it. And if the hon. gentleman fits into that category we will even protect him.

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

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

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the Minister of the Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods to present the 1995 Annual Report of the Regional Services and Protection Section of the Wildlife Division. In so doing, I would like to take perhaps twenty seconds to say that we are this year tabling this annual report, and we are doing it as a tribute to a wildlife conservation officer by the name of Jobe Flowers in the community of Hopedale, in the District of Torngat Mountains, who met an untimely passing in a fire last November 17, 1995.

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am pleased to present a petition this afternoon on behalf of residents of the District of Virginia Waters. Last night I was pleased to attend a public gathering by approximately sixty or seventy residents of the area of Brophy Place, Kelly Street, Hunt's Lane, McGrath Place and Blackwood Place, on the issue of school busing. This particular area, Brophy Place and those streets that I just mentioned, along with other parts of the city of St. John's, in particular Shea Heights and areas of the Goulds and Quidi Vidi and so on, have been dealt a very difficult blow in the last number of days, and that is the cancellation and discontinuance of school busing in an area where, of course, the people in these areas have long been used to satisfactory and appropriate busing for their children to the neighbourhood schools.

In meeting with the group that was assembled last night at the community centre on Brophy Place, it was clear that these individuals are upset. They are in a position such that financially it would be virtually impossible for them to afford the cost of busing, or taxiing, or other ways to school for their children next year, and it was necessary that a meeting such as this was called. It was called by the community leaders in that particular area. Representatives of Metrobus were also present, and representatives of the Department of Education, in the absence of the minister, were present as well.

One thing that came out of that meeting was the fact that there was a commitment by the officials who were present representing the Department of Education that an approach will be made to the minister to have a meeting with the minister by the individuals representing those concerned parents in this area, in the hopes that the minister would, too, consider this a special case. We will recall in the House the other day when the issue of busing was brought to the floor of this House by my colleague, the Member for St. John's South, it was indicated by the Minister of Education that special circumstances would be given a second look, and I would submit, in having heard the concerns of these concerned parents at this public gathering last night, that this, too, meets the definition of special circumstances. I can only hope, on behalf of this group, that the minister will take a hard, serious look at the real concerns that have been brought forward by the group as we met last night, and I hope that the commitment as made by the officials of the Department of Education, is made and kept, and that very shortly we will hear a response from the Minister of Education as to having listened to the concerns of this group and hopefully finding that this is a special needs case.

So, on behalf of the parents of Brophy Place, Kelly Street, Hunt's Lane, McGrath Place and Blackwood Place, I present a petition voicing their genuine concerns as to the total discontinuance of school busing for the children in their area.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

I stand to support the petition presented by the Member for St. John's East, and the petitioners who have asked for a second look in terms of the discontinuance of school busing and how it impacts on them within the St. John's.

Mr. Speaker, it raises a larger issue, an issue that impacts upon many areas of the city. My colleague, the Member for St. John's South raised a similar issue last week in the House dealing with constituents in Shea Heights where they discontinued school busing service, yet a school bus will be travelling through their community.

The larger issue is school busing in St. John's, generally speaking. There is a sense within the community, and there is a sense within people who rely upon school busing and their children who rely upon school busing, that this area of the Province is being treated very unfairly on this particular issue. I would submit to the House and in particular to the Minister of Education that when he returns he should take look at school busing as a whole for the entire area of St. John's, and make some recommendations that would see the reorganization of school busing in St. John's with this impact: that for the children who depend upon it, it is reinstated where there are special circumstances, and reinstated immediately, and to bring it to areas that now do not have it that may need to have it.

Thank you very much.

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

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to have a word with respect to the petition that was just presented by the hon. the Member for St. John's East with respect to school busing in St. John's.

The comments I would make are not necessarily in support of the petition, although I do recognize that people who have historically had school busing provided within the city limits that was not extended to everybody within the city limits, are now concerned, understandably, as to why that change would take place now and the availability of busing to them would occur.

I have a small area in my district that is affected by this policy. We have been meeting with the people in our area. The reality is this: within the city of St. John's, with the exception of a very few areas on the periphery that have been identified by the Members for Kilbride and St. John's East - within the city of St. John's, Metrobus has an adequate busing system. While I agree with the principle that everybody within the city should be treated equitably with respect to school busing, it is not a question of necessarily expanding the school busing - the free school busing, if you like - by virtue of yellow buses that the boards run into the rest of the city. It is a matter of ensuring that all parts of the city are treated fairly.

I have expressed to my constituents that I will undertake on their behalf, not necessarily to ensure that we will continue to provide busing to them that is not available to all of the population of St. John's. The fact of the matter is that some areas of the city have been receiving free school busing while 90 per cent or 95 per cent of the people of St. John's have had to use Metrobus and pay for their own busing. What I have undertaken to do for my constituents, which they agree with, is to ensure that now that the busing that really was not appropriate for them to have in the past and which has now been withdrawn is replaced by an adequate network and routing of Metrobus service that will ensure that they have a way of getting their children to school, as does everybody else in the city.

The people in St. John's have to use Metrobus by virtue of 90 per cent or 95 per cent of them being self-serviced by that system, and for those areas on the periphery who were piggy-backing on a free bus service, I can only say that I will undertake, on behalf of my constituents who are affected, to ensure that they have the same access to Metrobus that everybody else in the city of St. John's has. If, in the infinite wisdom of the Minister of Education, he so chooses to decide to expand school busing universally, free of cost, to everybody in St. John's, then, of course I would be happy to ensure that people in my district get their fair share of that free ride.

In the absence of that, and in the unlikelihood of that, then I would say in the circumstances that would not be appropriate, because St. John's does have a good Metrobus system. I can assure the hon. member that the people of Brophy Place, Shea Heights, Newfoundland Drive and East Meadows, Blackmarsh Road, Jensen Camp Road, Old Pennywell Road, and all of these areas that are so affected, I can undertake to do the best I can to ensure that they have a good Metrobus network servicing them, as do the other 95 per cent of the people who live in the city of St. John's.

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

MR. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise again today to present a petition on behalf of the residents -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. OSBORNE: Is the hon. member finished?

I am standing today to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Shea Heights in St. John's, to oppose the discontinuation of school busing in Shea Heights. This is one of a number of petitions that I have now presented on this particular issue, and while the hon. member across has stated that each area of St. John's is receiving Metrobus service, Metrobus service is a service for which the general public has to pay, while most areas of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador are receiving free school busing. I think this is unjust and unfair to the residents of St. John's, most particularly to the residents of Shea Heights, as there is a school bus that passes directly through the community of Shea Heights on the way to Blackhead, and directly through the community of Shea Heights on the way back to drop these students off at school.

I ask the House to accept this petition and to review the special circumstances which the Minister of Education has said he would review in this particular case, as the Metrobus system in St. John's is not subsidized and all other areas of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador are subsidized with school busing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to speak to the petition that has been brought forward by my colleague, the Member for St. John's South. I would just like to respond somewhat to a few points made by the hon. the Minister of Health just a few minutes ago.

The situation and the distinction that has to be made is that Metrobuses are not school buses. There are no monitors aboard Metrobuses to deal with young children. Metrobuses do not stop at a prescribed pick-up place for young children. Metrobuses do not drive onto school grounds to ensure that children are dropped off close to the school entrance, they will stop wherever the bus stop is and, in all likelihood, it could very easily be on the opposite side of the street. A Metrobus does not take into account driving conditions or weather conditions, or placement of bus stops. To put it simply, a Metrobus is not a school bus, and that is fundamentally the problem with the argument which is being raised by my learned friend opposite.

Mr. Speaker, the problem with this decision with respect to the discontinuance of school buses is the same as with every other decision that has been made dealing with education in the last number of months. There has been no planning, the decisions have been arbitrary, the decisions do not take into account what is in the best interest of young school children in this Province, the decisions are made without any comprehensive plan and, as a result, the young people of this Province, and the parents of these young people, are protesting, and they are protesting in large numbers.

Just witness the 2,000 to 3,000 young high school students who stood on Confederation hill yesterday. What young people are saying is: We are not going to take it anymore, and the decision to discontinue school bus services for the people of Brophy Place, for the people of Shea Heights, for the people of the Goulds, and for other parts around this city, people who have been accustomed to adequate and free bus services over the years, this decision, as I mentioned earlier, is unfair, is unkind, and does not take into account what is in the interest of young people.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to present a petition.

The petitions of the undersigned residents of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, known as the Fightin' Nfld'ers, ask for the House of Assembly to accept the following prayer:

We, the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador, do hereby petition the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to support our petition to do one of the following: open a food and recreational fishery to all Newfoundland families or close the food and recreational fishery to the rest of Atlantic Canada.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I will continue on with the petitions that I have started. I have told the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the members opposite that I will continue to present petitions. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, I thought I was going to run out of petitions on the food fishery but lo and behold, somebody has been listening, because I have hundreds of petitions now from places like Botwood, Point Leamington and right across the Province, asking for me to continue to voice their opinion of how the government has reacted in not allowing a food fishery in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, the now Premier, the once Minister of Fisheries for the Federal Government, was the person solely responsible for deciding not to have a food fishery in this Province. I was delighted the other day that he did get up to respond to one of the other petitions I presented but, Mr. Speaker, what was shameful is that his arguments for closing the food fishery were - disgusting; that is probably the best word I can find for it. For the federal Minister of Fisheries to give those reasons for closing a food fishery - when he had the resources, he had the scientific research to go on, that he would decide to close the food fishery.

The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture here in the Estimates Committee meeting on his department a few nights ago, reminded us how many fish seals eat in just one day. The seals eat more in one day than what was caught in that entire food fishery, when it was open, and I support the minister when he talks about increasing the seal quotas. That would be our solution to - and you could have ten food fisheries in this Province for the amount of fish that seals eat. Not one person who signs these petitions, or myself who supports them, believes - if I believed for one minute that a small food fishery for a man who could go out and jig a fish to eat - if the Minister of Fisheries provincially or federally or his great scientific research that comes from Ottawa could show me that that would in any way hurt the recovering fish stocks, Mr. Speaker - the small amount of fish caught by a food fishery would not, in any way, hurt the recovery of the fish stocks.

Now, Mr. Speaker, nobody has been able to provide us with the information that says that in-bay stocks - and if you talk to fishermen around the Province - who I think are the real experts when it comes to the fishery, not the scientist out of Ottawa - if you talk to these people they will tell you there are lots of fish in the bays of this Province. We are not talking about the offshore biomasses where the big draggers go out and scoop up the fish. Speaking of the offshore draggers, Mr. Speaker, they can catch, in one day, what these people caught as a food fishery. The difference between - I say to the Member for Fogo, the Government House Leader, that he made a point -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible) Bonavista North now.

MR. SHELLEY: I am sorry, the Member for Bonavista North, Mr. Speaker, I stand corrected, with the changes in boundaries. I stand corrected, the Member for Bonavista North made a comment about the food fishery. I think, if you really sat back to think about it and the scientific research, if you want to go on facts and figures and so on, that there has been no scientific research. I have asked DFO to show me the different of the biomasses offshore, which is why the moratorium is in place now, Mr. Speaker, and I concur with that. I believe that there should be no commercial fishery until we can find out that there is a link between the in-bay stocks and the offshore biomasses of cod fish in this Province. That is where we don't know.

The other thing is, Mr. Speaker, why in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Quebec they can fish for food? The Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture can go over on a holiday this summer in Prince Edward Island and jig a fish as a Newfoundlander but he cannot jig a fish in Newfoundland. Now, Mr. Speaker, unless some scientist has been telling the minister - and the fact that I found out is that fish caught off the South Coast of Newfoundland were caught in the Bering Strait, thousands of miles away. So unless we have a chain-link fence under the water that is going to stop those fish from coming between Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, why the discrimination? that is what I ask the Minister. Why is it? We are saying that there are different stocks or different borders and these fish come to a border, stop and turn around and say, sorry, we cannot cross the border. What a ridiculous comment to make, Mr. Speaker! The truth is that Newfoundlanders are being discriminated against when it comes to the food fishery. The second point being that, if there are fish in the bays, and in the small communities out there, Mr. Speaker, any man who has fished for years and years and years, should be allowed to go and catch his ten fish to eat. I am not saying a commercial fishery and the minister - I talked about the federal minister, it is the former federal minister's argument. Our own provincial fisheries minister, Mr. Speaker, has said: you think we should open up the commercial fishery? No, Mr. Speaker, I don't believe we should open up a commercial fishery, not until we are absolutely sure, because that is a large amount of fish we are talking about but I am talking about a minuscule amount of fish that is caught in a food fishery, and I will refer the minister to this.

The two arguments that the then Minister of Fisheries put forward for closing down the last food fishery, there were two main arguments. First he said, they were getting small fish and then he came back and said:

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SHELLEY: By leave, Mr. Speaker?

MR. EFFORT: No leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to support the petition that is put forward by my colleague from Baie Verte in support of the food fishery.

Mr. Speaker, it is a fishery that has always existed here in Newfoundland ever since the first day here I suppose, and they are soon going to celebrate a big worldwide national event, Mr. Speaker, that happened 500 years ago. It is something that we have always done, it has always been part of our culture, it has always been part of our diet, we were allowed to go out and jig a meal of fish I say to the minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: That looks terrible.

MR. FITZGERALD: It does not look half as terrible as the shirt that you have on here today. In fact, I believe it is the same one he had on yesterday. You should wash your shirt sometimes, don't pollute the bay I say, because it might have some impact on our fishery.

MR. EFFORD: I only have two.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, that is one more that we thought we had.

Mr. Speaker, I stand here today on a very serious matter and that is the food fishery; the minister will stand up I am sure, when I sit down, and get on with the same old speech that we must conserve our stocks and the plant down in Catalina is closed and the one in Bonavista is closed and I have fourteen fish plants in my district - this is what you will hear, I say to the people in the galleries, this is what you will hear when he stands, and he will go on and say that until those plants open that we cannot be allowed to go out and take a chance on destroying the stocks that would provide so many of our people with a livelihood and a pay cheque, and he will get nobody here to disagree with that because that is not what we are supporting and that is not what we are proposing and that is not what the people in Newfoundland and Labrador want.

What I say to the minister is: the people in this Province, the people, Mr. Speaker, in rural Newfoundland would still like the opportunity to go out and catch a meal of fish, and I can guarantee that there is enough stock out there to supply them with that particular need and we will not destroy anything. I call on the members here to go down on the waterfront. If they want to talk about destroying something, if they want to talk about conserving our stock, I would ask them to go down on the waterfront and look at the back of a boat that is tied up down there now, from Clearwater Fine Foods in Nova Scotia.

It is a shrimp dragger and has been there for a few days, and look at the process that this particular dragger uses in order to catch shrimp which is a favourite food of the cod I might add, Mr. Speaker. Look at the technology that they use. What you will find is two, big, iron plates about the size that you would attach to a big construction excavator or grader, tied up to the back of the boat, that is dragged over the ocean floor in order to catch shrimp. There is nothing wrong with catching shrimp, nothing wrong with going out and providing employment with that particular boat, but it is the way that we fish that particular stock, and you look at it and you can see the damage that it would do because there are seven or eight big, cutting edges attached to those particular pieces of steel that is dragged to keep the ends of the net open to scoop up the shrimp and you can imagine what it is doing to the ocean floor.

Cutting edges on it that can be replaced the same as you would do with a grader that is ploughing the road so you know what it is doing, Mr. Speaker, it is ploughing the ocean floor, destroying spawning grounds, destroying hundreds of tons of juvenile fish that people in the House heard me say before with the stories that are brought back for those particular fish

Mr. Speaker, it is ploughing the ocean floor, destroying spawning grounds, destroying hundreds of tons of juvenile fish. People in the House heard me say it before, with the stories that are brought back from those particular fishermen, where they stand on the decks of the boat and shovel out tons of cod, halibut, redfish, turbot, two and three inches long. Still the minister will stand here and he will say that if we allow somebody to go out with a hook and line we will destroy the stocks.

In fact, it was only a couple of months ago that the fisheries officers down in my particular district went up and took away some kid's rod where he was out on the rock flicking it out as we all did when we were growing up, trying to catch a few connors or trying to catch a few tom-cods, what have you. It is a sport that belongs to us.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. FITZGERALD: Came, Mr. Speaker, took away that particular -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: - rod and sent the kid home.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. FITZGERALD: Shameful.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, I would like if I could to take a few minutes to speak to this petition, to clearly lay out what I see as the issue here, to clearly say where I think we should stand on this issue. Let me say to the Members for Baie Verte and Bonavista South that there is not a member in this House who would today feel any better - and I believe the same thing is true for the minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture - there is not a member in this House who would today sooner stand and say: Yes, there is a food fishery in Newfoundland, this member, and I believe every member in this Legislature.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: I will tell you why. Mr. Speaker, I've sat and listened to those gentlemen for the past, I don't know how long, go on with petitions about how we should have a food fishery.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: I have no doubt that it will keep going. I say to them that I think - I won't accuse them, Mr. Speaker, of playing to people's emotions about how they feel about traditional Newfoundland. I won't do that. What I will say to them is I think they are gambling with doing something to fish in a particular part of an eco-system called the North Atlantic Ocean, the fish that are called -

MR. SHELLEY: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Now, I sat and listened to you. I would ask you to sit back in your seat and listen to me.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible)!

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

MR. TULK: The fish in 2J-3KL, I say to the hon. Member for Baie Verte, is on the verge of extinction. He knows it, everybody else on this planet knows it, that the fish in 2J-3KL is on the verge of extinction. He has no other evidence to indicate otherwise! He has no evidence, Mr. Speaker, to indicate otherwise.

I say to him that what he is doing in this House is doing the same thing that politicians did in I think it was 1990. A politician who was then the federal Minister of Fisheries was advised by his scientists to make the TAC for 2J-3KL fish 125,000 metric tons.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Nineteen eighty-nine. What did he do? He gave into the political pressure of fish companies and people like the hon. gentleman opposite and announced 197,000 metric tons. That is what he did!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Who gave him the advice?

MR. TULK: The scientists told him to give 125,000 metric tons, I say to the hon. gentlemen, and they announced 197,000. What happened in 1992?

AN HON. MEMBER: What's that got to do with it?

MR. TULK: What does it have to do with it? It is called bad judgement on the part of politicians!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TULK: What happened in 1992?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible)!

MR. SHELLEY: Sit down boy, you are making a fool of yourself.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TULK: What happened in 1992, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SHELLEY: The food fishery (inaudible)!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TULK: Thousands of people in this Province got laid off.

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

I ask the hon. Member for Baie Verte to allow the hon. Member for Bonavista North to make his presentation.

MR. SHELLEY: (Inaudible).

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

I just asked the hon. member if he would give the hon. Member for Bonavista North the courtesy to be heard in this House.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, let me say to the hon. gentleman that he can yell and bawl all he wants. The truth of the matter is I will say in this Legislature what I want to say and I will say it how I want to say it. I won't ask the hon. gentleman for permission.

We saw as I said in 1989 a federal Minister of Fisheries say: Oh yes, we will go up to 197,000 metric tons. In 1992 the people on Fogo Island, the people along the northeast coast, got laid off.

Mr. Speaker, this hon. gentleman then comes out and says: You know, a dragger can catch more in a day than people in the food fishery will in a month. He is right. The truth of the matter is, he is right. But I ask him this -

AN HON. MEMBER: What about the seals?

MR. TULK: The seals, the same thing, and nobody on this side of the House will disagree with him that the seals should be hunted. As a matter of fact, I guess we have pushed and had more success than any previous government in the last fifteen years in getting that done.

Mr. Speaker, let me say to him through you this evening, one of the best fisheries ministers this Province has ever seen - the second best, I say to the hon. gentleman, was the man who made the decision in 1989.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. TULK: Let me say to him, Mr. Speaker -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. TULK: - that two mistakes do not make a right.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SHELLEY: (Inaudible) anyway! (Inaudible)!

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

I have to remind the hon. the Member for Baie Verte that it is totally unacceptable and unparliamentary to be continuously interjecting when a member is speaking in this House.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, on a petition.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to present a petition on behalf of some residents of Bonavista South. The petition reads:

To the hon. the House of Assembly in legislative session convened, the petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador, that:

WHEREAS Newfoundland Power has asked the Public Utilities Board to approve an increase in electricity rates; and

WHEREAS Newfoundland Power, since it has a monopoly in the delivery of an essential commodity in this Province, is not at risk of becoming non-competitive - and the whereases and wherefores continue.

What the people in the District of Bonavista South are saying is that they want to speak out against the application by Newfoundland Power to the Public Utilities Board to be awarded and granted an increase of some 4.9 per cent, I think they were looking for, in a hike in electricity rates in this Province.

It is a utility that has a monopoly on the delivery of an essential service. Last year it made something like $27.8 million to $28 million profit, not a bad profit, I say, compared to the economic conditions that most of our companies find themselves in today. This particular utility, as we know if you turn on your television, they run all kinds of ads promoting what they do, and naturally, it is done in competition with the oil companies, to go out and control the heating market out there today. They already have a monopoly on, I suppose, the lighting market, if you would, and they enable us to use domestic products in our homes. But they are also a situation now where they want to go out and control the heating of our homes as well.

When you look at the older homes in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, many of them with very little if any insulation, and you look at the cost of heating those homes, and you look at the decision of the government opposite to combine the GST with the RST, the harmonization of two taxes which will allow this utility to tack another 8 per cent on to the hydro bills, the light bills in this Province, you will find that many of our homeowners and most of our people out there today will be paying in excess of $55 to $65 more a month on the electricity bill for their homes.

This comes at a time when many people are facing layoffs, many people are going year after year without a hike in wages. One of the reasons Newfoundland Power uses in trying to support their application to the Public Utilities Board is that they have not had a rate increase since 1992. I can assure you that there are a lot of people out there today who haven't seen a raise in their pay cheque since 1992 either, and many people whose pay cheques have either shrunk or disappeared altogether. Mr. Speaker, when you look at what this utility company is doing in rural Newfoundland and Labrador and when you look at the ads they are carrying now, especially as it relates -

I looked at a television set the other day out in my district and the local channel was on and Newfoundland Power at the time, was advertising for people to have their houses wired for electric heat. I don't think it was the power, that is wrong to say Newfoundland Power was advertising it, it was a contractor who was doing the advertising, but obviously there was a deal worked out between Newfoundland Power and that particular contractor that would allow them to go - he would come, wire your house, put in electric heat, and the cost of providing that particular service could be spread out over a four-or-five-year period with the cost added to your hydro bill, another way of Newfoundland Power getting inside the door in order to have your house heated with electricity and there again making a nice, handsome profit off the consumers of this Province.

You will find also, that Newfoundland Power, when they provide a service, do not always come and say, because you have built a house, now we will run power wires to it and provide you with the service that you require. Not so. If they have to stick any more than one pole, you will find that the person who is responsible for paying the bill in that particular household will also have to come forward and launch out $300 to $400 for each other pole that is stuck. So not only do they look for profits but they also charge you for their services that will be there forever and a day and you will always be paying for it.

If you go to put a light on a pole and if they have to place a particular pole other than the one that is already existing -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. FITZGERALD: - I say to hon. members, it will cost you another $ll or $12 a month. So I call on the government, Mr. Speaker, to make representation on behalf of the taxpayers and the ratepayers in Newfoundland and Labrador and oppose this rate increase for which this particular utility has applied.

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

MR. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I stand today to support this petition. We have presented several petitions now to the House of Assembly regarding the rate increase by Newfoundland Power and, I ask the members of the House of Assembly to take into consideration the number of petitions and the number of people who are lobbying against the rate increase by Newfoundland Power. I think it is time that we, as responsible representatives of the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, took heed and represented the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in their wishes.

The people of our Province do not want a rate increase by Newfoundland Power. A company that has made almost $30 million last year in profit does not need a rate increase. This company is doing an aggressive advertising campaign, they hold a monopoly on electrical power in the Province, they are doing an aggressive advertising campaign to promote their product. They have reduced the amount of the increase that they are seeking slightly, because they themselves have realized that the amount they were looking for was horrendous. I feel, as many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians feel, that this rate increase is unjust and not necessary at all. So I ask the members of the House to support this, and I thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order 11.

Motion, second reading of a bill, "An Act To Establish The Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board And To Provide For The Certification Of Professional Fish Harvesters", (Bill No. 9).

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

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture responsible for the future direction, the building of the fishing industry for the future, it gives me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction to have the opportunity to stand in the House of Assembly of Newfoundland and Labrador and to introduce a bill, "An Act To Establish The Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board And To Provide For The Certification Of Professional Fish Harvesters". I think it is a day that will be remembered for a long, long time in the future of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I think this is the beginning of the building of a new fishing industry, the fisheries of the future, realizing that the fishers of the past made a lot of mistakes, caused a lot of decisions to be made to bring about the collapse of the fishing industry. But the good that can come out of this is to learn from the mistakes of the past and to begin an industry, the fishery of the future. Newfoundland and Labrador does have a lot of potential for a fishing industry.

A couple of things I want to get into before I get into the actual harvesting, the certification of professionalization of fishermen, is just to talk generally about what is happening in our fishing industry. Honourable members opposite, on a day-to-day basis, present petitions to the House of Assembly for the opening of a food fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador. In presenting those petitions, they make comments and refer to the fact that the Province is 500 years old. Since people came across the Atlantic Ocean and settled on the shores of Newfoundland, codfish has been a food stabilization for the individuals involved in the fishery and, for that matter, for individuals who have just settled here in Newfoundland and Labrador, and they are quite right. The reason for people coming over and settling on these shores was to be active in the fishing industry. Was it a part of their food stability? Yes, it was. But let's come on up through the years, and let's not talk about 100 years, or century by century, let's try to put it all together, what happened from the first day that our ancestors, came across and settled on these shores up until most recently.

We have had one of the richest resources of any country in our world. Here is the issue, the fishery, and I am not only talking about codfish, although cod has been the main fish for the last hundreds of years. Hopefully, it will not be the main and only dependency on the resource in the future, but traditionally that is what it has been for all those hundreds of years. And it has been, as I said, the richest resource in the whole world that any one province or any one people could have.

Look at our history. Look at what we have gained and how we have benefitted from the fishing industry as a whole. Have people who have been involved in the fishing industry taken pride and taken the opportunity to make that industry theirs, and make it work to the best advantage that it possibly could work for them as our fish harvesters, through processing, or to the fish merchants, and to the industry as a whole? Absolutely not. In fact, the most we have been interested in doing is getting the fish out of the water, in any manner that we wanted to get it out, get it onto the wharves, get it onto the tables, or into the stages, and then get it to the merchants. That was the real concern. Have we ever taken full advantage of the fishing industry, and the returns that resource could make? Have we ever been responsible and concerned about conservation, that this is a renewable resource, and if we manage it in a proper way it would last forever and ever and ever? No, we have not. Have we ever been concerned about the quality of fish over all those hundreds of years - 100, 200, 300, 400, 450 or 500 years? Have we ever been concerned, when we take a species of fish out of the ocean, about what the value of that fish could be, concerned about the handling of it until it reached the consumer's table, concerned that the better we handle it, the more we do with it, the better we process it, the more we value add it, the more dollars and cents it will bring into my pocket, if I am one of those individuals? the more it will bring in to the processors, the more it will bring in to the workers? No, we have not. Have we ever been concerned about the methods and the type of gear we used in all those centuries in fishing? Have we ever taken the time and the interest to ensure that all of the people involved in the industry properly understood whatever the technology, whatever the term or whatever the type of boat, the type of prong or the way of handling the different species of fish and the cod in those days? No, we did not. Did we ever take the time in our education system? Did we ever take the time in our training system, in all those years, to say that we have an industry here, young people are going to be involved in the industry and we are going to put in our training programs, from day one, anybody who wants to be properly trained and to take advantage, to work in the fishing industry and to give them the benefits of the training that could be made available so they will be able to have a return and be able to work as in any other profession? No, we have not.

In fact, when I grew up in the fishing community of Port de Grave, and not unlike any other fishing village around this Province, those people who most commonly got into the fishing industry were those people who dropped out of high school, who really dropped out of school and decided, `Well I have dropped out of school. There is not a lot of work around. I am going to go fishing.' Were they required to go and get some training? The only training that they got and we had gotten was from the individuals in the fishing industry, our parents or a crew master, a skipper who said to us - oh, we went out from time to time during school vacations or during holidays and watched the cod traps being hauled, a trawl or whatever type of gear or technology was being used in that given day. What we watched, what we saw - not what we were told in most instances but we saw other people do was the amount of training that we received. No wonder, Mr. Speaker, that we are in the situation we are in today.

When I grew up in the area and we went out and hauled our cod traps the mesh - it was not the size that mattered to us, whether it was 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 pounds of small cod hooked and meshed in the side of the cod trap. What did most fishermen do? They pulled them out and threw them away. Was there a concern or was there any forum or any system put in place to explain to young people involved in the fishing industry that if you destroy that type of fish, that small fish, what will happen is there will be none left for the future. No, there was not. If there were people out there using prongs and sticking them down into the fish, into four, five, eight or ten barrels of fish that was in the bow of the boat or just throwing then on the stage with the sun pouring down on them, was there anybody who ever said, look, you handle that better. You get it to the market, you get it into a processor so that you can get top dollar for it? No, it was just the individuals who thought of, by themselves, different things to do. But there were never opportunities made available to people who relied on the fishing industry for a living. Nobody ever saw the fishing industry as the basis of the main industry of this Province. Nobody ever said the fishery is a major, major resource. It is vital to the survival of rural Newfoundland and Newfoundland in general, rural coastal communities, but Newfoundland in general.

I remember just a couple of years ago when I was going around the Province for two years as the head of a small group of fisherpeople. I used to say to people, the fishery of this Province is important to every man, woman and child, no matter where you live. I used to get people looking at me and doubting. You could see the expressions on their faces. You could hear the comments they would make. I used to call up businesses and ask: Why don't you be a part of this organization in bringing about awareness of the destruction of our fishing industry. Comments would be made to me: `I am too busy. I am not a fisherman, I have nobody in the fishing industry.' Today, after the moratorium, today they realize how important the fishing industry was to the survival of their own personal business and the survival of the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador in general.

Mr. Speaker, the introduction of this piece of legislation cannot go with just a few mere comments and not talk about the errors, the mismanagement and the thinking of the past. If we are going into a fisheries of the future, to rebuild a fishery that is sustainable for communities and for the people who are involved in the industry and the harvesting and the processing, we must start now to have respect for that resource and to have an understanding of its potential, what that resource can do for our incomes in this Province, for people living in communities in rural Newfoundland and the Province as a whole.

It is terribly difficult to talk when there are a dozen different conversations going on around you, seriously.

Mr. Speaker, the fishery of the future is beginning now to unfold. It is critical now, today, to start building. We know that the groundfish stocks are not yet recovered sufficiently to have a commercial fishery. I think in general we all accept that. There may be areas, different zones in the Province, where there is a good sign that the fish stocks are returning. To say that we can go back into a commercial fishery as we did five or ten years ago, or fifteen years ago, no. We know the stocks have not reached that size yet. We know that for a time we must wait, maybe two, three, four, or five years, or whatever, before it begins to open, but we know we have to handle it and think about it very carefully, and make sure that when we do we do begin, not to jump into it and everybody take a boat and go out at the fish.

What we must do now is plan. What we must do now is focus on getting all of the people in this Province, especially those who are directly involved in the industry, all thinking the same way. The principle, I am saying to the people involved in the industry, the principle on which we must start is, we must insist in respect of everybody who is out working in the industry that from the time that species of fish, no matter it is, comes out of the water, from the time you set your nets, your gear in the ocean, and you take it out, until it reaches the consumer's table you have got to have total understanding of the potential that piece of fish, or that product has of returning the best dollar to you. In other words, handle it as if it is a piece of gold. Handle it with the utmost respect, handle it with the utmost care for quality, because the world is demanding quality.

The market is out there saying: If you are going to provide a product for us it must be a quality product. Newfoundland is just a very, very small dot on the map of the world with respect to how much fish is out there. Aquaculture is unfolding rapidly day by day all over the world. More and more countries all over the world are getting more and more involved in the fishery. In other words, the supply is out there. There is a demand but there is a supply. If we are going to create a market where we can be successful we have to emphasize quality, number one.

No longer can we treat that product in the manner in which we treated it in the past, so we begin by telling and educating our people right across the industry. That is not only the people who catch the fish, that is the people who process the fish, the people who work in the fish plants, the people who put the ice and water, and whatever cure is going on in the processing sector, and the people who truck the fish - all people involved in the industry from the time you get into the boat and start putting gear in the water, until it reaches the consumer's table. That is where we must begin training our people and emphasizing and ensuring that our people believe it and respect it. That is the only way it can work. And it is not just enough to talk about it, it has to be implemented and planted in the minds of the people. Mr. Speaker, that is the clear message that we must implement and talk and make sure that our people believe it.

The next thing, whether it is number one or number two, or it is side by side, parallel with it, is conservation. No longer can we ever bring back a fishery in which we harvested, managed, and processed in the manner which we did in the past. We must get the best product out that we possibly can, but ensure that the resource is going to be there for the future.

How many time did I say when I was in the Opposition in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988 during Question Period, during debate in the House of Assembly, during public consultation, public debate, what the large draggers were doing out on our Grand Banks around Newfoundland and Labrador.

Listen to this, Mr. Speaker. When a dragger would go out on the Banks and fish, taking all of 60,000, 70,000, 80,000, 90,000 pounds of fish in one haul - and this is where the destruction really took place - and looked at the size of the fish that was in that haul, and made the decision that the only fish that they were going to bring ashore were fish from 24 inches, 25 inches, 30 inches long, and had grinders installed on their boats to grind up all the small fish, so, in other words, all of 60,000 pounds - and use that for an example - and they would probably take 20,000 or 25,000 pound of the larger fish out and throw away the rest. In other words, if they came in with 500,000 pounds of fish on board, you had the large fish, and by catching and bringing in that 500,000, they probably destroyed another 750,000 pounds or a million pounds or whatever numbers.

That was the kind of thinking that went on in the harvesting of fish. It happened on a large scale on our draggers, but it also happened in the inshore fishery, as I described earlier, with our cod traps and our gill nets. I have said, one of the worst pieces of gear that ever went in the water was a gill net, in the bays around Newfoundland. A lot of people will argue and say no, that is not right, but I will say it. I have said it publicly, I have never used one, and I will say it again publicly.

AN HON. MEMBER: The worst piece is the otter trawl.

MR. EFFORD: I am talking about inshore, in the bays. When you get out on the Grand Banks otter trawling, the way in which it has been used, yes, it was a total destruction, not only to the fish stocks but to the environment, as has been described and talked about, so many times debated here in this House of Assembly. What did it do to the bottom? What did it do to the eco-system? We know of the destruction that those trawlers and those draggers have done; and are still doing it, by the way, outside the 200-mile limit.

Mr. Speaker, I could go on. I could give a hundred examples of what has gone wrong with our fishing industry, why we are in the situation we are in today. Now, I want to take a couple of minutes and talk about what can happen to a community if we properly manage the fishing industry. I am going to take a community just for an example and give you the type of thing that I foresee for the fisheries of the future.

Let us use the town of St. Lawrence, which has a government facility that cost the taxpayers of this Province millions of dollars to build. If we were to rebuild and reopen a community like that, how should the fishing industry unfold in that area? How could it succeed? Can it succeed dependent on codfish, when the cod comes back, one species of fish? No. Can it succeed on any one species of fish? No. Here are the reasons why.

Because there is no one species of fish that can supply sufficient work for individuals working in that operation to get the length of working time they should get out of any industry. Dependency on one species of fish, like we are doing now in the crab industry, means six, seven, eight, nine, or ten weeks, if you are lucky. Then we come to a government, provincially or federally, looking for make-work programs. The end result is that we have our television cameras around from The Fifth Estate from CBC, or some other documentary program, showing Newfoundlanders carrying rocks around in their arms trying to get enough weeks work, building slipways or whatever else, to try to survive. No longer will the people in the industry and no longer will the general public allow that to happen.

We have to build a fisheries of the future that they must be a multi-species operation. So it is quality, conservation, and multi-species operation. Here is the plan that should be put in place. We have to utilize the other species of fish in the ocean to our commercial advantage. People will say: Well, there is only crab, or there is only cod, or two or three others. How wrong that is.

The value of what resources are in the ocean, other than the few species of shellfish or the cod or the groundfish that we have taken out, is just unimaginable, the multi-millions of dollars of value of other species of fish that are in the ocean, and I will give you a couple of examples that the market is demanding. A simple little shellfish that we used to see as a nuisance on the beaches when were growing up, called a ose egg, called by different names in different communities around the Province, today called sea urchins, fishermen in this Province today are realizing as much as $25,000, $35,000, or $40,000 over the season in catching and harvesting that one species of fish alone. If someone had said that to us five or ten years ago, we would have laughed at them.

Skate; when I hear the word skate, I think about hockey players. I learned a few years ago it is referred to as a fish, what we used to call a mull ray, a nuisance fish. When you hauled your cod trap, or you hauled your trough, and you saw a mull ray, better known in some areas as a maiden ray, you cursed on it; it was of absolutely no value at all in those days. Today, the world markets in France and the United States, and the Asian markets, are crying out for skate, mull ray, maiden ray. In fact, there are boats leaving our shores now to go out into 3Ps zone fishing for those species of fish. They are realizing, in one trip, $25,000, $35,000, $40,000 worth of maiden rays or skate for the market - in one trip. Five years ago or ten years ago we laughed at it; we did not know anything about it.

Kelp on our shores, kelp on our beaches, the markets are crying out for kelp. The markets are crying out for marine cucumbers. One would want to stay away from cucumbers in this House because we know how much money has been invested and lost in cucumbers. With millions of pounds of cucumbers out on the ocean floor, the Asian markets are crying out for them. Harvest it, process it, and we will buy. We had one boat go out awhile ago, about three weeks ago, to the South Coast, and in two drags, in two tows, brought up 14,000 pounds of marine cucumber.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) South Coast?

MR. EFFORD: No, not only on the South Coast, all around where there is a hard bottom, a rocky bottom.

Shrimp is another species that is not fished commercially by the small boat fishermen here in Newfoundland; yet in Maine and in Nova Scotia, it is a commercial fishery. We are only now starting our exploratory stages. It is a fishery that starts in September and ends in April, and we are talking about multi-species operations.

Just let me give an example of a multi-species operation that I see unfolding in the fishery in the future. Let's start off in the spring of the year, and let's say that the crab fishery, the snow crab, is a species that starts up - which it does - in March, April and May. Then, the next species that you would fish would be caplin. Then, the next species that you would fish, for example, would be codfish. Then, as you go into the fall of the year, you have your shrimp fishery, you have your mackerel fishery, you have your herring fishery, then you have your other underutilized species, which runs right through. So, you start in March and run right through until the next March if your properly organized and develop the other species of fish, and educate and work with the people in harvesting, and give them the ability to go out there and do it.

Now, the first question that will come to me is: Is there enough fish to sustain all of the people involved in the fishing industry today? Absolutely not - absolutely not - but I would rather see 50 per cent of the people involved in the fishing industry get a full season's employment out of it than to see 100 per cent of the people involved today getting the minimum amount of work, and most of them not working at all, in a totally frustrated industry. Build the fishing industry to the best advantage possible of those people involved in the industry. That is the thinking we must have. Number one is quality; number two, conservation; number three, a multi-species operation, and building our industry with our thinking around that.

Now, is it sufficient for a minister to stand in the House of Assembly and go on for twenty or thirty minutes and talk about it? No, it is not. Is it sufficient for just one or two, or a small group of people to believe in it? No, it is not. We, as a government, the people involved in the industry, the private sector, the business people, the financial institutions, everybody must become aware of it. Everybody must believe in it. Everybody must believe in it with a passion, that this is the type of resource that other countries and other provinces and other nations would be proud to have and would reap the best possible benefits. We now have to begin with the thinking and the respect and the understanding of what the financial benefits and opportunities are there and we must use them to the total benefit for the people of this Province, and we can build, Mr. Speaker, an industry, a fishery of the future on that motive of thinking. With that motive of thinking we can build an industry, in that form, it is a business and it must be operated like a business. It is a part of nature and you must respect that; it is part of the food for the world market. The world demand, we must respect that and that is where our quality comes in.

This, Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation that I am introducing today, simply says that: The professionalization of fishermen means, taking advantage of the opportunities there and acting in a professional manner in that industry; and all the things that I have said in the last twenty or twenty-five minutes mean simply that, simplified down to that, giving the people in the industry the opportunity to become professional people, with the proper training, with the proper education to debate the talk and the opportunities made available, that can happen. It will only happen if we believe in the value of the resource that we have and we have to believe in developing it to the best potential possible, with the maximum number of people who can be sustained in the industry and financed and supported by the resource, and get away from the attitudes that the rest of Canada and other people living in Newfoundland have seen and made fun of and made wisecracks and laughed at and say: Well, they work for seven or eight weeks and then they give it up. No longer is that going to happen in this Province. The fishery of the future is beginning here today, Mr. Speaker, professionalization with the utmost respect and thought for the resource that is available at our shores.

Thank you.

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly happy to rise today to say a few words on Bill 9 as put forward by the hon. Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, and I say to the minister that even though we might say sometimes it was a long time coming but it is here, and I congratulate the minister for bringing this piece of legislation forward.

It is one of the few pieces of legislation I suppose that has been introduced in this House that was done with consultation, and I suppose the reason it was done with consultation is because the minister probably didn't write it. It was written I would think, by the FFAW. In fact, if we recall, Father Desmond McGrath left his parish on the West Coast and came to work with the FFAW, I think it was his dream to put forward a piece of legislation that we see here today known as Bill 9.

Governments before or I should say ministers before this minister, had intentions of bringing this same piece of legislation to the floor of the House of Assembly. In fact, the former minister had promised it to the fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador to be delivered in 1995, the spring of 1995 and if you read the proposals as put forward by the FFAW\CAW, professionalization of Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesters, it is a proposal that is almost the complete repeat of Bill 9, so it is a proposal that has been put forward by the fishermen.

I think it is something like 225 or 245 communities around Newfoundland and Labrador that were visited, the stakeholders, all the registered fishermen were contacted by letter and notified that this particular group would be in their communities and they came forward and offered their suggestions and advice, and as a result of that, we have a piece of legislation brought forward here today and put forward by the minister and I don't think he will find anybody who will disagree with it, because it was an act of consultation, a great deal of consultation and I commend -

AN HON. MEMBER: No, the union told them they had to do it.

MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the union told them they had to do it, that was part of it but in order for it to be done the minister had to agree and I think it will clear up a lot of the things that are happening in the fishery today. It is called, "An Act To Establish The Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board And To Provide For The Certification Of Professional Fish Harvesters." Why shouldn't fishermen be classified as professionals? Why shouldn't a fisherman go through the apprentice stage and go on to be a Harvester I, to a Harvester II, to a Harvester III and then a master fisher? When you look at all the things that are happening in the fishery today, you look at the type of boats that they are using, the technology that they are using and gear types, the technology that they are using on their particular boats, you will find out that many of those fishermen, not only have to be fishers I suppose but they also have to be navigators. They have to be electronics experts and they have to be almost like managers of businesses because that is what the fishing industry is today. In order to be successful you have to be able to do all of those things.

I commend the fishermen, Mr. Speaker, who have seen a need for this, who have come out and taken pride in what they've done because as we all know - those of us who represent rural communities, and those of us who came up from fishing families - it was always a profession that never carried a lot of respect for it in a lot of cases. Sometimes the fishermen - because they were not big wage earners in most of our communities in years gone by - it was a struggle, Mr. Speaker, people got involved in the fishery as an occupation as a last resort. They got involved in the fishery to provide the staples for their families. They went out and at the end of the year when they brought forward their bill, went forward to get straightened up at the end of the year if they went down on the Labrador Coast or even if they fished around their communities, most of the time when they went to the local merchant to get straightened up they received very little in the form of monetary exchange, Mr. Speaker. Usually it was always the situation that the fishermen owed the merchant. The merchant owned the fishermen and the fishermen owed the merchant.

When the minister brought up this particular concern that is happening within the crab fishery today - I can understand he is so concerned because none of us, I am sure, sitting in this Legislature today would ever want to go back to that, Mr. Speaker, and that is exactly what will happen if you see a group of processors out there controlling prices, controlling who they buy from, who they sell to and it filters all the way down the line. Then you have people who are responsible to the merchants of this world and we have gone full circle from where we came.

Mr. Speaker, the fishermen today, if you notice them, are walking with a much quicker step than they did a few years ago because now they are proud of what they do. They are proud people and they have every right to be. They have every right to be proud when they go forward, go out on the sea and take a chance on losing their lives. Mr. Speaker, many of them fish 200 miles offshore. Many of them go out in boats that should never be out there and I hope this piece of legislation today, when you get the professionalization of fishermen, that the people who make rules and regulations will listen to this group of people because that is something else that should never be allowed to happen.

I get many calls from my district, Mr. Speaker, of crab fishermen having to go out past the 200 mile limit in order to take part in a crab quota, the crab fishery. We might stand here and say well they don't have to go. They made enough money by fishing inshore that it will get them over the winter. It will get them enough stamps for unemployment insurance but human nature being what it is, Mr. Speaker, and all of us I suppose who have a little bit of dignity about us would like to be able to go out, make a few dollars, support our families and do a few things that need to be done today to put us up in a little bit of a different class so that we can afford a few luxuries.

Mr. Speaker, human nature has it that we will go, we will take a chance and that is what is happening today and many of those fishermen will tell you that even though they go out to the 200 mile limit in their fifty-eight foot boats they do not want to be there. They do not want to be there and they should not be there, because in most cases their insurance is not even in effect once they go out past a certain mile. Once they go out past a certain mile then their insurance is of no use to them should they get involved in an accident, and God knows many accidents happen out there. We can tell all kinds of stories where people got lost, people we know, or else some very, very narrow escapes.

As we look at how far we have come since, I suppose, our fathers went out and took part in the gill net fishery, which the minister spoke about and that he was totally, totally against. I think the gill net fishery was introduced somewhere in the 1960s and at that time there were no particular rules and regulations as to the size of mesh to be used in your gill net, You could go out and fish and take part in a fishery that had no controls whatsoever, and when you came ashore - and we have all seen it, you came ashore and brought your boat into the wharf and the first thing you did was jump down. It did not matter if you walked over the fish or if you fell down into it, and if you did not have a prong aboard the boat somebody handed you a prong and you stuck it down and threw it up on the wharf.

I can picture it in my own community now. There was no thought for quality. It was a word we did not know, and it was a word we did not have to know because nobody bothered to tell us how important it was. It was an old tradition we continued to go by. Then all of a sudden we realized there was some incentive not to do those things, some incentive to put some ice on a boat, carry it out and ice your fish to protect your fish from the sun. There was some initiative with not having, as a result of the prong, holes down through the fillets of your fish when you brought them to the plant. In fact in the particular plant where I worked it was not uncommon to see a dump truck go delivering asphalt during the day and go to the local wharf during the night and truck up a load of fish.

The way of cleaning of asphalt out of the box of the trucks, anybody who knows anything about trucking or construction, was to diesel fuel, the diesel fuel would break down the tar, the tar would flow out and then you would go and take a water hose, wash that down, and go on down to the wharf, load up the fish, bring it back and put it in gear, up goes the box and away it goes into the plant. We did not know any different. It was a way of making some money. Nobody told us that we could not do it. The fish merchants bought the fish and I suppose as a result of that we were always poor fishermen, because we were delivering a product that was not in demand. We were delivering a product of very low quality and it reflected back on the amount of money the merchant was making, and the amount of money he was paying the fishermen.

Mr. Speaker, all that has changed now. Anybody who drives the highway knows it is not uncommon to come upon a tractor trailer with the fish stored in grey containers, they can only be a certain size, and there has to be so much ice onto it. If it reaches a plant or reaches a processor and that is not done then the fishermen do not get paid for it. It took us a while to change those habits, it took us a while to adjust to new things, like it does with everything else. Sometimes change is welcome and more times we buck against it because it is not something that we are used to and it is something that is going to cause us a little bit more time, but we have been rewarded in that in that we have gotten a little more money.

Back in 1992, as we all know, Mr. Speaker, there was a moratorium announced on our fishery around the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Some of the wise people of the world thought it was no big thing. I think at that time the whole fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was something like 5.5 per cent of our gross domestic product. People thought that we would shrug our shoulders and shake ourselves and go on. Life would go on, life would continue, we would survive, and something else would happen and we would prosper.

When you take 30,000 people and put them out of work, then something has to happen. We found out very quickly that it was much greater than what the percentage of our gross domestic product reflected. You take 30,000 Newfoundlanders, you could take 30,000 people on an island with 500,000 people and put them out of work, and I suppose in most of our communities, especially in rural Newfoundland, it was maybe 80 per cent, 90 per cent of our employment. All you have to do is go down in my district today. Go down to places like Port Union, Catalina, Bonavista and Duntara and see what is happening, and see what has happened to those particular communities since our fishery closed.

The Member for Trinity North stands there and I think he can pretty well verify what I'm saying. You drive down through Port Union today, especially, a once very vibrant town, and if you were there when the bell rang or when the whistle went off for people to go home to dinner, boy, you better get out of the way. Because everybody was on the move.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: People were on the move, Mr. Speaker. They were going home for dinner. The hustle and bustle was there and people were working and people had money. They were going to Clarenville and other places. They were buying skiddos, buying new cars. They didn't know what it was to be without. They were making very good money. Most fish plant workers who worked for a couple of the giant companies, FPI and National Sea, most of them were making anywhere from $10.50 to $14 an hour. That isn't too bad considering you had your son, probably your daughter in some cases, and a husband and wife, and home for dinner every day.

The Speaker knows. I spent a good many weeks down in his district in the town of Lewisporte when a company that I worked for was involved in a joint venture with Northcotts. They had a fish plant there and people would come in from Embree and Brown's Arm, and from Lewisporte down to Campbellton. They would all come in there, boy, and they were eager workers, wanting to get extra time and wondering if there was any work on the weekend. All of a sudden that was taken from them.

The reactions that we saw the day that John Crosbie announced the closure of the fishery down at the Delta Hotel - at that time it was called the Radisson - what we saw then wasn't Newfoundlanders out to tear down a door or to get at John Crosbie, or to get into a fist-fight. What you saw was the frustration experienced by proud people who saw their livelihood being taken from them.

The livelihood was taken from them not because of any of their doings, for the most part, because most of those people were inshore fishermen. Most of those people had gone forward before and told the politicians of the day and told their leaders what would happen if they didn't stop destroying the stocks off our shore. It wasn't the inshore fisherman, it wasn't the fellow with the hook and line, or the fellow with the cod trap, who destroyed the fishery. It was the people who were fishing, the harvesters that were out exploiting the offshore stocks.

When restructuring took place back in -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I wonder if the hon. member would take his seat for a moment.

It being Thursday and 4:00 p.m., I would like to read the three questions that we will be addressing in the Late Show.

Question number one: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of Government Services and Lands concerning my question on rate increase for Crown lands. That is the Member for Cape St. Francis.

Question number two: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Government House Leader concerning my question on school busing. That is from the Member for St. John's South.

Question number three: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the Minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods concerning my question on marketing of local vegetables. That is the Member for Bonavista South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: The third question was from the Member for Bonavista South: I am dissatisfied with the answer provided by the minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods concerning my question on marketing of local vegetables.

The hon. the Member for Bonavista South.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, if I could continue. The people I just referred to were consulted many times, and in many cases, our fishermen begged for them to stop what was happening offshore.

Then another turn of events took place, where you had the restructuring of certain fish companies in Newfoundland and Labrador. I think of the giant fish company of FPI, formerly called Fishery Products, the giant fish company of Fishery Products International came out of that restructuring, and adjoining with Fishery Products at the time was John Penney and Sons, the Lake group, H.B. Nickerson and Sons, and I think there was one other one. It just won't come to me now, but it was a combination of four or five fish companies and they all joined together under one big multi-national - no, it wasn't a multi-national - well, it is a multi-national now, because FPI is into a lot of other countries. But at that time it came together as one giant fish company known as Fishery Products International.

It almost seemed like there was a big competition on the go between FPI and National Sea. That is what seemed to have been happening.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) Nickerson's was around.

MR. FITZGERALD: I used to be with Nickerson's, I say to the member. I worked four years with Nickerson's. In fact, I travelled the Labrador Coast very often in the summertime. Almost every two weeks I would be down the Labrador Coast and I would go to places like Williams Harbour, where we bought salmon, and I would go to places like Black Tickle, and Smokey, Mr. Speaker, and down around Domino and those places.

Since you brought up Labrador I will go back and I will just take you back to that particular area to talk about quality. I remember going down there, and at that particular time we were buying turbot down the Labrador Coast. Down in Labrador I think there was probably a small cold storage there in Black Tickle that might have been capable of holding three, four, five tons of fish. We would hold it there until the coastal boat would come in. Then it was put in cold storage on the coastal boat if there was one coming within a certain period of time; or if not there was a charter arranged and it was sent down to Cook's Harbour.

I remember going on the wharf down in Black Tickle many times. They used to have pen boards nailed around the wheel wells on the wharf. That is where the fishermen would come in and dump their turbot. It would be there three and four feet high. The sun would be sweltering down on it, it would be covered with flies. That would be there for days. Then we would go, we would either put a little bit of ice on it and ship it over to Cook's Harbour, or it would be probably just dumped over the wharf. That was the wastage that was allowed to happen in those times.

Getting back to FPI again, getting back to the draggers, National Sea, there was a competition: who could catch the most, who could show the best bottom line at the end of the year, who could make the most profits. It wasn't hard to make a profit in those days after the restructuring took place. The value of our Canadian dollar went down and that was a plus for us, when you are going into the United States market. The price of fuel went down to almost an all-time low in recent times, considering what we use today. The price of fish went through the roof. The price of fish was better than they had ever seen it before.

As a result of that, we were catching fish, bringing it in, putting it in the quickest form possible, and shipping it out to market. Shipping it down to Danvers, to Boston, Mr. Speaker, where secondary processing was taking place - but we were happy.

We were happy because we were working, we were happy because we were making a dollar, but we never stopped to realize that we probably could have had three times as many people working, Mr. Speaker. But I don't know if we have learned that particular lesson even up until now, and I commend the minister when he talks about new, innovative fisheries, where they go out and have developed a new pot which is environmentally friendly now to go out and catch shrimp, a wonderful idea. But, if we are going to survive and if our rural Newfoundland communities are going to survive, and if we are going to fish, then we should get every dollar we can and every hour of work for every pound of fish that we catch or we are all doomed in this Province, I can assure you, or at least in rural Newfoundland. Because the Voisey's Bays of the world and the possible oil discoveries on the West Coast, all good things, all things that will employ some people and create some economic opportunities, but it will never allow us to survive in rural Newfoundland. The only way we are going to survive there is by surviving on what brought us there in the first place and that, Mr. Speaker, is the fishery.

When the moratorium was announced in 1992, 30,000 people were displaced and were told to go home. Go home, there will be a pay cheque there for you. It started off, I think, at $225 a week and people almost rioted in the streets because it wasn't enough, and it wasn't enough. A lot of people out there thought the fishermen had it made, but I can assure you, there are not many fishermen that I know out there today who have it made. There were not many fishermen out there in 1992 who had it made, as far as I know.

So, then, the minister of the day and the government of the day became a little bit compassionate and they looked at what the fishermen made and what the fish-plant workers were making and they boosted it; I think the top rate was $406.

Then up went the big cry: The fishermen are making $406 a week and I have to go somewhere else to earn a living. The fishermen, Mr. Speaker, are getting too much. In fact, I heard the Minister of Health say in a meeting that we attended one time that the fishermen should not be treated any differently from the people in his district who were janitors and were laid off. Mr. Speaker, there is a vast difference. When the government of the day comes out and tells you that you are not allowed to work and they implement legislation, making it a crime if you go to work and do what you normally did, then somebody has to be responsible.

Responsible they were; the sad part about it is, that again, they didn't listen to the fishermen, and Mr. Crosbie, the Minister of Fisheries, at least had enough foresight that when he brought in the NCARP program, he put it in the hands of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, people, Mr. Speaker, who understood the fishery, people who had a heart, people who were about to deal with the same people they were dealing with every time they went to work for themselves, knew the industry, knew the problems, knew what had to be done. It took a while to get some of it straightened out, took a while for the right people to be getting the right amount of money, took a while to get some of the people who should never have been involved in it, out of the program altogether. That took a while but finally it did get straightened out.

Then we had the Premier of the day, Mr. Speaker, introduce a whole new program called TAGS. The first thing he did, was come in and slash 6 per cent off what the fishermen and the fish plant workers were getting, took 6 per cent away from them and said: Now, you have to apply again; your application before is not acceptable anymore, we want you to apply again and we are going to put you on a new program called TAGS. Well, all kinds of new rules and regulations existed and finally, Mr. Speaker, they developed some policy through HRD. It was taken out of DFO and put with HRD, and it should never have happened because now, you are dealing with people who are bureaucrats, who only believe in policy and rules and regulations, no feelings whatsoever, that is what it says and that is what you do, and because of that, there were all kinds of problems.

So then, they were going to train the fishermen, which was a brilliant idea. There is nothing wrong with training fishermen. You will get nobody in this House to tell you that education is not a good thing. A lot of the fishermen and a lot of the fish plant workers went back to school and did things that would help them get back into the fishery again. Some of them took small engine repair, some of them went out and learned net mending, and did navigation, good courses. But when you see them come out and force people who are fifty and fifty-five years old back to school, and not have a choice, to say that it must be done because if you don't we will take your source of living away from you, we will take your pay cheque away from you, then that cannot work. You cannot force people to do anything if you are going to expect good results. It should be encouraged. People who wanted to do it should never have been denied the opportunity, but it was wrong to force them. What they should have done, and what the fishermen wanted to do, was to do some work in their own communities, prepare for the fishery of the future that the minister talks about, and there will be a fishery of the future - I am convinced of that, but are we going to be prepared for it? That is the thing.

I might sound like an evangelist over here tonight, `Are you prepared?' Well, we are not prepared. We are not prepared for the fishery of the future. Go down to Melrose, a community in my district again that I will refer to, because that is what I know best, and the fishermen will come to you and they will tell you: We don't have a wharf, we don't have a slipway. And you ask them how much money has been spent on the government programs there, and they will very quickly give you figures that will frighten you. What should have been done in areas where we believe that the fishery is going to return was, instead of giving it to schools to come and teach courses that nobody wanted, and that did not mean anything, this money should have been spent supplying material so that when the fishery returned the fishermen would have a decent wharf to tie up to, and they would have a decent slipway to pull up their boats.

Now, you go back to those communities and the wharf is gone, the slipway is gone. They are going back fishing - I can guarantee you that, those people are going back fishing - but how they are going to survive, and how they are going to be able to deliver a good product to the plants is beyond me. I don't know how they will do it unless somebody goes out and takes responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, look at this board that this piece of legislation is going to set up. I think it is a fifteen-member board, and seven of them are going to be appointed by the representative of the local fish harvesters, who is going to have voting status. Then it goes on and you are going to have a representative there from the Labrador Fisheries Co-op, Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, another representatives from the Department of Environment and Labour Relations, DFO, HRD, post-secondary education training, and a representative at large chosen by the minister. I would hope that those people, and the minister has a great say in approving - I think he has to approve all the people who sit on this particular board - I would hope that he does not play politics with it. That is always a fear, when you get politicians, especially the present Minister of Fisheries, it is always a grave concern when you get the minister appointing people to boards and to other associations that have such power.

This particular board, instead of just going out and taking part and meeting to discuss what training fishermen should take in order to reach the Level I, Level II, or Level III accreditation, I think they should be involved in much more than that. Because you hear the minister speak, or members speak - not the minister, because he has been brainwashed, too, now - when you hear some of the members with a little bit of common sense on the other side speak, and talk about the true scientists of the world, the fishermen, the people who know the occupation best, the people who know the status of the stocks best, I say to the Government House Leader, when you get those types of people listened to, I am sure you will see many, many good results coming out of our fishing industry. I do not think you will ever see it go back the way it was.

As I said, instead of involving this particular group of people for the professionalization of fish harvesters, I think their mandate can be much, much broader than that, and they should be able to be consulted, or they should be consulted, I should say, in our fishery of the future. They should be consulted on the size of boat you should have in order to be able to go out to the 200-mile limit and take part in a fishery 200 miles off our shore. They should be consulted on the size of boat, they should be consulted on the amount of fish, whether it be cod, crab, halibut, or whatever, that a boat is allowed to take on each voyage.

If you look at some of the rules and regulations that exist in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans today, they are a farce, it is a shame, it is ridiculous. I can give you one, I suppose, for an example. Many people in my district, and the Member for Baie Verte is getting phone calls every day, from a group of fishermen who have decided in their wisdom that they are going to maintain the boat they have and make it a little safer. Many of the fishermen today, instead of going out and building new boats and spending millions of dollars, are saying: I think I'll repair the one that have.

It is not uncommon to go around this Province today and go into some of the marine centres, which is usually where you find it happening, and see little greenhouses, if you would, built up. There is a little hut made and covered with plastic, they put a furnace in there, and you see the boys there fibreglassing their boats, boats they will have for the next twenty-five or thirty years, boats that will probably take them right through their career in fishing. Before they do that, a lot of them look and say, now, before I do anything permanent with this boat, I think I may as well make it seaworthy because when the fishery returns instead of going out and just putting a few nets around the head, I may have to go off fifty or sixty miles.

The DFO will not give them a license to extend on the size of the boat. Once it goes up to thirty-four foot eleven that's it, then there is another regulation that takes it up to fifty-two feet, another one for fifty-five to sixty-five. That is why when you go down on the wharves today, anybody who might go down and look at the Southside of St. John's Harbour, you will see at least two steel boats down there, one from my district, the Covenant II, I think, is the name of it. Those boats are there tied up and they look like tubs. It is a sixty-five foot boat and it is probably thirty-two or thirty-three feet wide, completely out of proportion. DFO do not mind how wide you make it but it cannot be any more than sixty-five feet long.

Getting back to those fishermen again, many of those people are now building up their boats and increasing the safety of them, as far as I am concerned.

AN HON. MEMBER: It makes sense.

MR. FITZGERALD: Sure, it makes sense. It makes sense because it is providing them with something safe underneath their feet, something they know they can go out in and bring back their harvest in a safe way. DFO comes out now and says, because you have increased the cubic rate capacity of that particular boat, we are not going to license you. They are not looking for any more quota, they are not looking for an increase on their license, they are not looking for any new licenses, all they are doing is improving what they have. So this, to me, does not make sense and it makes me question how sincere most of those people who bring in and implement rules and regulations really are.

I don't think this should be allowed. I think people should be able, if they want to increase the size of their boat, whether it is to increase their licenses in the future or whether it is just to maintain a better boat and make it more seaworthy, they should be allowed to do it, and if they apply for licenses deal with it at that time. If you don't want to give them a license, don't give it to them but allow them to go fishing. This is a place where those particular people, because we are dealing with fish harvesters, may have great input.

Also, Mr. Speaker, this particular piece of legislation would do away with part-time fishermen. It won't do away with them by kicking them out of the industry but it will do away with the term. Part-time fishermen won't be any more now. The fly-by-nights won't be there any more and there is no reason why they should be I suppose. There is no reason why they should be if they are not willing to come out and take part in the training programs, if they are not willing to come out and become professionals than why should they be allowed to go and take part and exploit the trade? A fishermen's trade is no different from a carpenters trade or an electricians trade. You go today and if you want to get involved in either one of those occupations there is a process that you must follow. Somebody will make you write a test, grade you and put you in a category which will determine how much money you make. There is nothing wrong with that process because we are talking about work, we are talking about safety and we are talking about a group of professionals. There is nothing wrong with that. There is no reason why fishermen should not be allowed to do the same thing.

Mr. Speaker, the other thing that we have to keep in mind are the people that we are dealing with here. A lot of our fishermen today probably, are not fortunate enough to have had a Level III education. A lot of them are excellent fishermen, got the knowledge of the trade, know how to read a compass, know how to look after their boats, know how to repair their motors, know how to read all the charts and can go out and make a good living at what it is they do best, Mr. Speaker. Now they may not all be able to sit down and put it all on paper, they may not all be scholars but they are certainly scholars and professionals in what they do. So those people, Mr. Speaker, should never, ever be forgotten and I am glad that this piece of legislation addresses that.

This piece of legislation as well goes on to deal with the appeals process. It goes on to say that the appeal of the appeals board will be binding and will be final. That is a step in the right direction. We all know what happened when many of our fishermen were taken outside one of the programs that exists today and you had this phantom board put forward by the Premier of the day that nobody was allowed to go and appear before. You could never get the names of them. Nobody on the other side, none of the ministers would ever put forward their names.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) who they were.

MR. FITZGERALD: You may have known them but I didn't know them and the fishermen did not know them. You did not know where they were. You did not have a phone number, you did not have an address. You could write them. Somebody said that at one time you could write them. We have to tell you where to send the letter, send it to HRD but they will never return an answer. A phantom group of people who were determining the livelihood of our Newfoundlanders. A phantom group of people who were out there today supposedly looking after people that we represent in this House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FITZGERALD: Shame, shame, I say to the member and I know that he cannot justifiably stand here today and support that piece of information. We have to hold this in context. I think every one of us here find it much better -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I knew one of them. One of them was a lady, I say to the hon. member, and a very good lady. A woman that I have great respect for. I was surprised that she was probably taking part in the way that it was set up because I don't think that that was her doing. I think if she had her way it would have been done much, much differently.

AN HON. MEMBER: She did a good job of it.

MR. FITZGERALD: I am sure she did, I say to the minister, because I have known her and I have worked with her -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I am talking about Miss Northcott, or Miss Peters that was her name and a very, very capable lady. A very good lady and a lady that I have great respect for. She had great knowledge of the fishery and great compassion for the fishermen of this Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I don't know that but I probably know the reason why he got there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: He probably did. I have no doubt. But it was the way that the board was set up. That is what I'm talking about, I say to the member. It was a process.

I don't know of anybody, who wouldn't much rather go and sit down and look somebody straight in the eye and put forward their case and explain their situation. I don't know of anybody who would rather go and sit down and write a letter. Not knowing who you are talking to, not knowing where it is going, don't know if you will get an answer. But this was your livelihood that you are talking about here. It meant the difference, I say to the minister, if a fishermen having to leave what he always had, what he worked all his life to build around him, and support, and his family, having to leave all that behind and go to the mainland and take up a new beginning. That is what it meant. It is as simple as that. We can all tell stories about those people who we knew who had to go away. Those people were denied that opportunity.

This is another area where I think that this professionalized board, Mr. Speaker, will be able to provide a great service. I have to commend Father Desmond McGrath for having the foresight, wisdom, and dream when he saw all the inequities, all the injustices, and the misgivings that were happening out there with the fishermen. He came forward and joined the movement in order to bring about the piece of legislation that we are seeing here today. I have to congratulate him. I was at the news conference where the minister put this forward.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) legislation.

MR. FITZGERALD: It is a great piece of legislation, I say to the member, and I hope it is expanded on. It has to be positive. But let's not forget where it came from. Give the people credit who wrote up the proposal. It was a piece of legislation put forward by the Queen's Printer with the minister's name on it, but it is Father Desmond McGrath's legislation, and it will be put there to help the people of this fishery. Let's not take any credit away from the gentleman who was responsible for it. Let's not take any credit away from him.

Mr. Speaker, I think it will make -

MR. TULK: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: That is what happened here. But I didn't see a member of government mention the consultation. Let me see here who was there - here are the people. There was a steering committee comprised: a senior official from DFO, the FFAW, HRDC, ACOA, there was somebody there from the Department of Fisheries, Food and Agriculture, and Memorial University. That is who was part of the group that went out and went forward and did the consultation for this particular piece of legislation.

They went to 250 fishing communities. So it was good consultation. But, Mr. Speaker, I don't see the Minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods' name mentioned here who went out and consulted, or any of his people. It is certainly a good piece of legislation, and it is certainly going to make a lot of improvements in an area that needs a lot of improvements made. Because if we are going to survive in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, and if the Member for Bonavista North, and me as the Member for Bonavista South, expect to see those two districts and the communities in our districts survive, then this is what they are going to survive doing, as it pertains to this piece of legislation.

We get up here today and we talk and we play politics back and forth, and we shout at this one and we try to insult somebody else, but when we look at our people out there today, suffering because of the misgivings and because of the bad decisions and the lack of consultation made because of people like us, because of people in our profession, then it is no bloody wonder why they are a little apprehensive, I suppose, about accepting us or accepting our opinions and recommendations as we go out and consult.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

It being 4:30 p.m. on Thursday we will begin with the Adjournment Debate.

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just one second, if I'm allowed.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the member have leave to go beyond 4:30 p.m.?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave!

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: I have a question to ask so I will take it out of that particular time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. FITZGERALD: How much longer do I have?

MR. SPEAKER: Thirteen minutes.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Speaker, I adjourn debate.

MR. SPEAKER: I will now call on the hon. the Member for Cape St. Francis to ask the first question in the Adjournment Debate.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Twice this week I asked the Minister of Government Services and Lands questions regarding the value pricing for Crown land. I have to say I wasn't really satisfied with the answers, and I believe a lot of the people who know the questions and heard the answers are not really satisfied either. Basically it boils back to the press release that was sent out by the minister on May 16, which was a very confusing statement to say the least. It appears there was little thought went into it, because there were very few facts and figures, and that is why I believe the public were so confused. Not only were the public confused; I believe some of the media may have been confused with the answers that were given by the minister.

For example, in the statement on May 16 it says: A lease rental will be established at 20 per cent of the set value of the land. So, when you talk about the set value of the land, are we talking about the assessed value of the land or the set value now, that since that time changes seem to be coming out of the department with respect to what they mean by assessed value, appraised value, or a set value of the land.

At one point, too, they were referring to the lease, or the new policies basically, of a five year interest free loan to the people of the Province who have cabin lots, and talk about putting a spin on things. The next statement that came out was May 27, which was a Ministerial Statement by the minister, of course, in the House of Assembly here, and again, after that statement was read in the House there were questions asked, and again there was confusion, and it seemed to me that this policy was being developed as time was progressing and questions were being asked. It seems like they were floating something out there to see what kind of opposition they would get, and then they would cut the cloth to the suit, whatever the terminology or phrase is used. Again, I asked questions on this very issue, on this statement, and I am still not clear myself. I worked with the Department of Environment and Lands for seven years - I worked in that very division - and I am quite familiar with the process, and I was confused; I still could not get the answers.

Mr. Speaker, I asked questions and the minister presented in this House, or tabled in the House, answers to questions on May 28, and he said: The department cannot really calculate an average cost. I asked what the average cost would be for the increase, and he said: The department cannot really calculate an average cost. The cost of some grants will decrease while others will increase. Now, we all know that, of course, based on the assessed value. If there was an assessed value across the Province, which is what people were led to believe, we all knew it would be different in different locations. Basically, I suppose, they could have come back and told us what it would be in different regions. He referred to a couple of different locations later on, and talked about the northeast Avalon, of course, where land is fairly expensive.

Mr. Speaker, one question I did ask, and I know my time is running out, I asked the minister the other day: Will the minister agree to a three-year extension to the deadline date of October 31, 1996? He did not answer that question specifically. I went on to say: Or will we see properties being seized? He said: No, we will not see properties being seized. That would lead me to believe, and I think when he was on his feet I made the comment: Well, what will be the penalty? What will be the point of a person making application to get a grant, or converting from a lease to a grant if, in fact, there will be no penalties if you don't do that? The minister really did not respond to that one either.

Basically, there are a lot of questions left with respect to this new policy. I would just like for the minister to try and clarify some of the statements that have been made.

Yesterday he presented me with another document, trying to break down the costs or the increased values, or not the increased values but the increased rates, and he talked about lands with assessment or appraisal data, and lands without assessment or appraisal data with respect to residential, and he talked about the same thing, lands with assessment or appraisal data for recreational cottages, and lands without assessment or appraisal data for recreational cottages. I asked the minister if he would be hiring assessors within the department to handle this, and the response I was given was that the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs would be doing the assessments.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. J. BYRNE: By leave, Mr. Speaker, just to clue up?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: By leave.

MR. J. BYRNE: With respect to the assessors, he mentioned that the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs would be doing the assessments. I asked the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, would the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs have their assessors doing assessments on Crown lands during the committee estimates meetings, hearings or whatever, and he was quite clear in saying that, that would not be the case, therein lies more confusion that was created by the minister and I would just like him to address these concerns and try to clarify some of these points.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Government Services and Lands.

MR. McLEAN: Mr. Speaker, I guess, since the hon. member worked with the department, there have been a lot of changes.

Mr. Speaker, the prices for Crown lands have not changed in this Province for the last twelve to fifteen years. I think most people realize out there that they were getting a pretty good bargain on Crown lands when they were in the process of purchasing a lease or a grant.

Mr. Speaker, what we are doing with this new policy, and there are a number of components to the policy and that is why you can't give an average price on what your might have out there. There are many different scenarios that you have to pick or from which to choose, but I can tell the hon. member opposite that, most of the people from whom we have heard in this past week regarding the new Crown lands policies, are starting to get a better grasp of it because we are notifying everybody through correspondence what their positions are, what the options are, and if the hon. member opposite would like to come and sit down with our officials, the same as everybody else is doing, I am sure he will learn about the program as well.

Mr. Speaker, the implementation of the new Crown lands policy is something that we have taken on as a Budget item with regards to extending beyond the March 31 deadline which is the Budget year. We are of the understanding now that once we have everybody's information back, that we don't feel that there will be a whole lot of concern out there regarding this new policy, simply because, once it is clarified for people, they have a much better understanding of what they need to do in order to purchase their land, and what they will have at the end of the day when they adapt to this policy, they will own the land, which is something that many people here in the Province have gone through the leasing process and they are still tied up with the government regulations and requirements, but once they buy into this program they will own their own property and they will be able to do as they please with it following that purchase.

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

MR. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I initially asked these questions of the Education Minister, I now direct them to the House Leader.

The students of Shea Heights have been provided with school busing for the past twenty-five years however, it is now being discontinued. A school bus will pass through the community of Shea Heights on its way to the community of Blackhead and pass through Shea Heights again on its way to bring these students to school.

I asked the Minister of Education to investigate these exceptional circumstances and permit the students of Shea Heights to be serviced by the school-bus system. The Minister of Education responded and said that these circumstances in the community of Shea Heights were not exceptional circumstances, therefore he saw no reason to continue the school bus service.

The cost of metro bus can add up quickly and it is unfair to ask the residents of St. John's to pay this cost when most other communities in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador receive free school-busing service. As I was not getting a positive response regarding school busing in the community of Shea Heights, I asked the minister if he would subsidize metro bus services in lieu of school bus service to be fair to parents and students in the St. John's area. The minister did not respond positively to this request either. When I asked the minister in the form of a petition to reconsider the school bus situation for Shea Heights his response to that was that the students in the community of Shea Heights should consider going to the neighbourhood school and therefore would not need school busing services.

I think that these responses are unreasonable to the residents of Shea Heights and the residents of St. John's. The school bus service in Shea Heights has been discontinued not only for the students of St. Mary's, but also the students of St. John Bosco, as the Metrobus service that services Shea Heights does not travel the community thoroughly enough to take the students to St. John Bosco. Not only that, it travels in the opposite direction of the school, St. Mary's. The students have to get a transfer and travel back in the other direction again in order to get to their school.

Will the government allow the school bus system in the community of Shea Heights to continue, and will the government subsidize the Metrobus service for the remainder of St. John's in lieu of school busing services that most other communities in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador are now receiving?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS KELLY: Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the remarks of the hon. Member for St. John's South. The Minister of Education is out of the House today on ministerial business on behalf of the Crown.

I would like to respond to the remarks in the way that I guess it all boils down to budgetary restraint. This is a difficulty that I think has been addressed somewhat extensively in the House. I know that many petitions have been presented that we have received, we have looked into. We have tried to do our very best within the budget restraints that have been imposed on all of us as a government.

I understand that the neighbourhood school proposal in the community has been accepted somewhat, that people are agreeing that if there is a school in the neighbourhood in many instances the parents would prefer that their children would go to the neighbourhood school. I think come September you will see some of that will happen.

As to students having to transfer between buses, even if they have to go back some distance, I think that is quite common in any public bus transportation system, one which unfortunately will have to continue until I guess the time comes when the Metrobus system can be run in such a way that that won't have to happen.

As to subsidizing Metrobus, that would not be an acceptable solution. We all know that the reason school busing has had to be addressed in the way it has is primarily because of the fiscal restraint that was imposed in the last budgetary process.

The Minister of Education I think has responded to these points to the best of government's ability, but the minister has said that when there are special circumstances he is prepared to further listen. So if since his last response to this group of parents there are new circumstances, I think it would be very appropriate that they be brought to the minister. He has indicated he would be very willing to listen to these concerns.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. FITZGERALD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think I put forward my question a couple of days ago to the Minister of Forest Resources and Agrifoods, the question being that of - and I may have used the wrong word when I put it forward, protectionism as it relates to agrifoods in our Province. I think of the particular area that I represent, in the Lethbridge - Musgravetown - Bloomfield area, which is a prime area in our Province for agrifoods. There is a dairy industry there now which is quite active and fairly profitable, and there is a big root crop industry there.

The problems that this particular root crop industry is experiencing is that during certain times of the year vegetables, and I speak I suppose mostly of potatoes, are brought in from other provinces, Prince Edward Island, dumped into the Province and I am sure sold at a loss. It is probably something like prescriptions I say to the Minister of Health being sold at Dominion Stores and at Wal-Mart. You can almost compare it to the same thing, they do it at a loss because they know that somewhere they are going to make up for it in the market.

AN HON. MEMBER: A loss leader.

MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, a loss leader, because eventually when those are gone and our own vegetables have been marketed, now at a much lower price in order to compete with those vegetables that are brought in from other provinces, then up goes the price of those particular vegetables from Prince Edward Island. In fact it is not uncommon to go out to some of the local stores and buy a fifty pound bag of potatoes, at certain times of the year, from Prince Edward Island for $2.50 and $3.00 a bag, and I am sure our own producers cannot compete with those kind of prices. The Member for Humber Valley nods his head because he knows exactly what I am talking about.

Now, you might say we have to let the consumer price demand fluctuate and let that control itself, but what happens is once our own vegetables have been exhausted, once they are consumed, then the price of those particular vegetables all of a sudden go up to $18.00 and $19.00 a bag, so the consumer is not getting any big bargain. If you average out what he is paying over the year he is probably going to pay as much, if not more, than what he would pay if we were allowed to market our own vegetables for a decent price and not allow this to happen.

Somebody from one of the other departments brought forward in the estimates, I think it was the Member for Twillingate when he talked about allowing a loan to be available for farmers that would allow them to carry their vegetables over a little longer and compete like we used to do with the lumber companies a few ago. At one time we would loan the lumber companies some money to stockpile lumber, buy lumber and stockpile it, to carry it over the winter months when they could go and rip it into whatever size of product that was in demand at the time and market it at the time when they could get a good price. I ask the minister if he would look at that possibility with the hope of solving it, and allowing our local farmers and our local producers to compete and provide much needed employment and probably a little better profits for the local entrepreneurs in rural Newfoundland?

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

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, the problem that the hon. gentleman has spoken about is a well-known problem among farmers and indeed, consumers and anybody who is interested, as he says, in rural Newfoundland and in the Province. He has this unique talent, the Member for Bonavista South, of standing up and taking a problem and doing a great job of dramatizing it.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

I say to him, he is going to see over the summer if I survive in the Department of Forest Resources and Agrifoods. He is going to see over the summer an attempt made to solve this problem. As a matter of fact, if you look over on this side of the House, there is more expertise in agriculture and forestry - I stand up and get cold shivers up my back because I know there are so many people behind me who knows so much about the department that I am in.

AN HON. MEMBER: And that is with Dr. Hulan missing.

MR. TULK: And that, I say to the hon. gentleman, is with Dr. Hulan missing. I intend over the summer, I say to the hon. member, as soon as the House is out, to use the greatest expert in this House on agriculture, a former minister who had to (inaudible) the other side to clear up that mess on Sprung, the only person -

AN HON. MEMBER: He had to sprung them free.

MR. TULK: He had to sprung them free. And I intend - and that is the Member for Humber Valley. Sitting next to him is the Member for Humber East. The greatest expert, I suppose, in the House on forestry, forest resources but I -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: I say to the hon. gentleman that when I look around me I am almost tempted to.

AN HON. MEMBER: Don't yield to temptation.

MR. TULK: Don't yield to temptation. And then, Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask a fellow who has been up and down government in one way or another, getting things done, the Member for Topsail, if they would sit on a little committee with me, not pay them any money. They are going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They are going to reach down deep in the hottest part of the summer and sit down with me -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Listen now, it might benefit you, too - sit down with me - oh yes, I have to tell the hon. gentleman, that the empress mushrooms are going to be a great success, by the way, I say to him. I think it is - yes, it looks good. Some of my officials were down there yesterday and they came back with glowing reports. That is sometimes hard to do, to get officials to give you glowing reports on almost anything that is happening.

I say to the Member for Bonavista South, if he wants to sit down in the middle of July, either write up a brief and give it to us for us to analyze, sit down with us and give us some advice -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Well, right now we are on the fifth floor over in the West Block and I understand - so he doesn't get lost - that we may be moving down to this new place down there come the middle of June or the last of June, some time around there. I would invite him, Mr. Speaker, to sit down with us in the spirit of consultation and co-operation, the like of which has never been seen in this Province, and we will try to work out a solution to a problem that has plagued Newfoundland farmers since the first potato went in the ground.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, at 9:00 a.m.