May 12, 2009              HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS              Vol. XLVI   No. 19


The House met at 1:30 p.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

Today the House of Assembly would like to welcome twenty-nine individuals who are part of the group "Gather", from the District of Trinity North. The group meets with the objective of generating activities through healthy eating, recreation, and other activities.

Welcome to the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The Speaker would also like to add that two members of this group are the parents of the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Also joining us today in the gallery is Mr. Gerry Dean, Mayor of the Town of Botwood, and Mr. Scott Sceviour, Deputy Mayor

Welcome to the House of Assembly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Statements by Members

MR. SPEAKER: The following members' statements will be heard: the hon. the Member for the District of Bonavista North; the hon. the Member for the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair; the hon. the Member for the District of St. John's West; and the hon. the Member for the District of Exploits.

The hon. the Member for the District of Bonavista North.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HARDING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise today to acknowledge the tremendous contribution made to our society by the world's largest service club organization, Lions Clubs International.

With 1.3 million members and 45,000 clubs around the globe, Lions International is, without question, one of our most respected and valuable service club organizations. From their campaigns to rid the world of preventable and reversible blindness to their extensive list of programs aimed at youth to their work with the disabled and their disaster relief efforts, the Lions have worked tirelessly and selflessly to improve the world in which we live.

This tremendous organization continues to think globally and act locally in their constant effort to improve the lives of millions of people around the world. Here at home, the Lions have become an invaluable part of many of the towns and communities throughout this Province.

Newfoundland and Labrador was built and continues to be sustained in large part because of the efforts of dedicated service groups and community organizations. The Lions have become an integral part of that chain of volunteerism and community activism, and their efforts have undoubtedly helped make this Province a better place. The Lions touch the best part of who we are as people. They remind us that our community can only be as strong as its most vulnerable member, and through their dedicated efforts they strengthen us all.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to commend our government for recently acknowledging the valuable contributions of this very special group by proclaiming April 25 of this year as Lions Appreciation Day.

At this time, I would ask all members of this hon. House to join with me to thank and show appreciation for the continued efforts of the Lions organization, both here at home and around the world.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is with tremendous pride that I rise in this House to congratulate a very talented Jamiee Thomas from L'Anse au Clair who will represent the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador at the national 2009 Karaoke Star Jr. competition.

Mr. Speaker, YTV and CMT embarked on a multi-city tour to discover its 2009 Karaoke Star Jr. Their auditions were open to youth between the ages of six and fifteen years of age, and there were 200 young people in our Province who auditioned back in May – May 4, actually. There were five finalists selected from each city across Canada.

Mr. Speaker, Jamiee took top spot in this Province and will now go to compete in the national finals being held in Calgary on May 18 – which I did not think was too bad, Mr. Speaker, for a district that only has partial high-speed Internet connection and all of the voting was done over the Internet.

Mr. Speaker, Jamiee is a fourteen-year-old Grade 9 student who attends Mountain Field Academy in Forteau. She has been singing since she was two years old, plays guitar and keyboard and writes her own music. She has been entertaining residents in that area for years and will now have this excellent opportunity to showcase her talent on national television.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the other participants from the Province, the finalists, Amber, Alexandra, Damian and Kayla, and also encourage people to vote for Jamiee online and wish her all the best in her final competition.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of St. John's West.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS S. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Today I would like to offer congratulations to a constituent of mine, Andrew Burgess, who recently completed the Boston Marathon. This, Mr. Speaker, is a feat in itself. However, Andrew finished 2,236 which, when you consider that there were more than 26,000 runners, is certainly most impressive.

His completion time was 3:07:06, the best time of the competitors from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Andrew is dedicated to the sport of running and his performance this year qualified him to enter the Boston Marathon again next year.

I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating Andrew and wishing him every success in future competitions.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Exploits.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FORSEY: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate a group of volunteers who came together to form a community partnership unlike any other.

Mr. Speaker, on April 22, during Volunteer Week, the Dr. Hugh Twomey Health Care Centre partnered with the towns of Botwood, Peterview, and Northern Arm to explore the idea of a community volunteer recognition event.

At that event over forty groups and organizations were represented and the Town of Botwood availed of the opportunity to recognize a volunteer in their community with forty-eight years of dedicated service, in the person of Mr. Roy Noseworthy.

Mr. Speaker, approximately fifteen groups contributed over 800 hours of volunteer service of work at the Twomey Health Care Centre in Botwood, assisting with recreation programs and meal assistance.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all members of this House to join me in congratulating the organizers of this event.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Statements by Ministers.

Statements by Ministers

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to tell this hon. House today that the aquaculture industry in this Province is bucking the global trend and moving forward despite the global recession. I am pleased to announce that my department has signed a contract with Gray Aqua Farms Limited for an investment of $16 million, including $1 million equity share and $6.8 million in provincial loan guarantees.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HEDDERSON: The company is establishing a salmon aquaculture operation in the Bay d'Espoir region. My department made the announcement in June 2008 that our government would be partnering with Gray Aqua Farms Limited, and I am pleased today to report that we are moving forward with that deal.

Our government is providing a loan guarantee of $6.8 million under the Aquaculture Working Capital Loan Guarantee Initiative and an equity investment of $1 million under the Aquaculture Capital Equity Investment Program. As well, the company has private sector equity funding in place.

Mr. Speaker, these aquaculture financing programs have been instrumental in attracting aquaculture companies to the Province by facilitating access to private sector equity for them. Enabling this private sector investment is especially important during these difficult financial times. The investment attraction programs that our government has put in place have been working extremely well.

This latest aquaculture project will create thirty-five permanent jobs in marine operations and forty person years of employment in the seafood processing sector. As well, it is anticipated that the initiative will create employment in aquaculture supply and service sectors of up to 150 jobs. These are in addition to the 400 jobs already created in aquaculture on the Province's South Coast.

The Newfoundland and Labrador headquarters for the company is located in Conne River. I am also pleased to report that the company has fostered an excellent relationship with the Miawpukek First Nation.

Gray Aqua Farms Limited is a well-established and successful family-run company. They have been in the salmon farming business for twenty years in New Brunswick, where they have recently expanded into char farming. They have been incorporated in this Province since 2006. The company also has established sales and distribution channels throughout Canadian and in the United States markets.

The company has provided our government with a very solid business plan that will see their annual salmon production in the Province reach an estimated 3,500 metric tonnes and sales of over $24 million. Furthermore, they have provided our government with that solid business plan and we look forward to working with them in the future.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the minister for an advance copy of his statement.

As I was sitting there listening to it, it was just like déjà vu, because it was only a few days ago that the minister stood and made other announcements in the aquaculture industry in the Province.

No doubt, this is an industry that is driven by the private sector. There is absolutely no doubt about that. The fact that you have companies that are interested in investing in our Province, investing their own money, is always a good indicator of the potential we have with natural resources right across this Province.

This is very important for areas like the Connaigre Peninsula, areas that have been hit hard in this Province because of job loss, because of changes in traditional industries, whether that be in the fishing industry or in the forest industry, and any time that there are new jobs it is all relevant.

Mr. Speaker, in Newfoundland and Labrador in the last month, we cannot forget, there are 2,800 people who have lost their jobs in this Province. There are well over 8,000 who have lost their jobs in the last year, and this is a Province that is not dealing with the full scope of a problem right now like we are going to see in the coming months and in the next year, I say to hon. members, because the construction industry and the aquaculture industry are not going to be single industries to replace these over 8,000, nearly 9,000, jobs in the Province, but they are all a help. It is all part, hopefully, of a broader plan of government to look at new industry right across the Province and, most of all, to look at revitalization of the forest industry in this Province, which we have seen very little from the government on, which is suffering and which a lot of these job losses can be attributed to because of the closure of the forest industry -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to conclude her remarks.

MS JONES: - both in the sawmilling and in the pulp and paper sector.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement.

It is always good to see advancements happening, especially in new industries, and I know the government has given us – at least acknowledged that there is an aquaculture working capital loan guarantee initiative. I would like to have more information, though, Mr. Speaker, from the minister with regard to the implications of the equity investments that government is making under this plan. What exactly is involved in the equity investments from the perspective of the benefit to government and the benefit to the broader group of people of the Province because of government making these investments? I think that people would want to know this, and I think certainly people in the more traditional aspect of our industries would want to know it, too.

Right now we have plant workers who do not know if they are going to be able to work in the crab industry because we have processors not buying the crab that is being caught, so we have a real obligation to people in the traditional industry and I really would like to see this government showing to the crab industry right now the same kind of leadership that it is showing to the aquaculture industry.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers.

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in this hon. House today to note that each year on May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birthday, health facilities, agencies and community health organizations and public health units join together to celebrate the contribution of public health and public health workers supporting the optimal health of Canadians. This day is known as Canada Health Day.

This year, Newfoundland and Labrador joins other Canadian provinces and territories in acknowledging this important day and the progress we have made in improving the health of Canadians over the last century.

Collectively, we have made major advances in life expectancy, overall health and well-being and quality of life. These improvements would not have happened without the vital public health initiatives such as vaccine production, clean water, pasteurization and better living conditions.

This year's theme, "Canadians Taking Care of Their Health", recognizes how public health and public health professionals in Canada have helped empower individuals to take care of themselves, their families and their communities.

Mr. Speaker, our government, in conjunction with regional health authorities, remains committed to initiatives which benefit the health and well-being of the people of our Province. From our progressive smoke-free initiatives to the introduction of new and effective vaccines for children and youth, our promotion of infection-prevention measures and an investment of $4.1 million annually for our Provincial Wellness Plan, we are placing a strong focus on supporting our residents in healthy living.

Our government has also significantly increased funding for health and community services to help enhance health outcomes for individuals. In Budget 2009, we invested a record $2.6 billion to further support the regional health authorities in the delivery of quality health care services and programs across our Province. As part of that funding, $3.9 million has been allocated to add new drugs to our provincial formulary; $35 million to improve long-term care services and $21.4 million investment to further enhance laboratory services, cancer care and health information systems.

Mr. Speaker, our four regional health authorities have teamed up this year to mark Canada Health Day by producing ribbons for the public which are being distributed to staff and clients and patients and residents throughout our Province today as we speak. Wearing the ribbons signifies that all employees working with the health authorities throughout the Province are working diligently to achieve the same vision: Healthy People, Healthy Communities.

I would encourage my fellow colleagues to wear a ribbon in recognition of the special occasion and to recognize the tremendous efforts of health care professionals across our Province who are working to provide quality care for the people our Province each and every day of the week.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the hon. minister for a copy of his statement today. Certainly, we, too, on this side of the House want to recognize Canada Health Day and certainly recognize the exciting and new developments that are ongoing in the field of health, not only in this Province but right across the country.

Mr. Speaker, Canada Health Day is also an opportunity to reflect upon the past public health accomplishments, to appreciate all those people that work in our health care sector every single day to deliver public services to people. It is a time to also look at what our future health care and public health care needs are and how we can improve and strengthen the health care system.

Mr. Speaker, it is no coincidence that this important occasion in Canadian health history is named after Florence Nightingale who made her reputation as a nurse working in the Crimean War, helping people in the field of medicine and doing innovative and new things in that particular field.

Mr. Speaker, it was a nurse that was the foundation of Canadian health care and Medicare as we know it, and it is nurses today who still maintain that stature in our health care system. We live in a Province today where we have 5,000 nurses who at any minute could serve notice on government that they will strike in this Province. At any particular time, Mr. Speaker, we may see our entire health care changing, and we cannot afford that.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. Leader of the Opposition to conclude her remarks.

MS JONES: I certainly will, Mr. Speaker.

I encourage the government that on the eve of a strike in this Province, on the occasion of Canada Health Day, that they would reconsider their actions and look at arbitration on policy issues for nurses in the Province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill–Quidi Vidi.

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

I, too, thank the minister for the advanced copy of his statement and I am very pleased to congratulate all those in the health care profession who are hard working, qualified and who give of themselves to our community, both here in our Province and across Canada.

I was really interested in the, I guess the word would be slogan, for this year's Canada Health Day: Healthy People, Healthy Communities. I cannot help but noting that what we also need to look at is healthy nurses, healthy communities; that in our system, both here in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Canada in general, we have a major shortage of nurses. In Canada 11,000 full-time equivalent RNs are needed. Here in our own Province it is 1,000 nurses that are needed and we know that our nurses are overworked. We know that they are stressed. We know that they themselves are not healthy. The rate of nurses who have to get sick leave is quite high.

So I say to the minister, yes, we celebrate Canada Health Day but we have to make sure, minister, that we get a work force in place in this Province that is healthy and can add to the health of our communities as well.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further statements by ministers?

Oral questions.

Oral Questions

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have just been notified that nurses have given notice to government that they will take strike action, but it is an overtime strike that they are planning and not a picket line strike.

I ask the minister today: What does this type of a strike or shutdown mean in our health care system?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We were given notice approximately half an hour ago that the nurses' union will take strike action but it will not be the typical type of strike where you have picket lines, at least at the beginning. They are going to refuse – the members will refuse to work overtime.

Typically, Mr. Speaker, when we think of a strike we think of picket lines, we think of disruption in service. That is very significant. This type of job action – and the Minister of Health may be able to speak to it more – will certainly have an impact.

What has happened here, Mr. Speaker, is obviously the president of the union doesn't feel that she has the mandate to go out on strike.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: She obviously only has 50 per cent of the bargaining unit who have voted to strike and she has a concern about the support of her members. That is what is going on here.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, the nurses want to get their 31 per cent raise, they want to receive their pay, they want to go on vacation, and yet they will jeopardize the health care system in this way. It is very unfortunate, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would think that the nurses are doing this because they don't want to cause undue hardship, Minister, on a health care system that is already stressed. It is unbelievable that you could stand here today, as the Minister of Finance for this Province, and incite them to do more than the action they are taking.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the minister today: When will this strike be implemented, and what will be the contingency plan within the health care system to deal with the cutback in overtime?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, I have to confess I don't understand the question of the Leader of the Opposition.

Essentially, Mr. Speaker, we have indicated our concern for nurses and the value that we place in their work. We have offered them a 31 per cent increase, in these economic times unheard of. We know how hard nurses work.

Also, Mr. Speaker, at least 37 per cent of them voted to accept our offer, so a significant number of them are happy with the offer we put in front of them. Why wouldn't they be, Mr. Speaker? In this day and age, with a 31 per cent increase and other issues to address, recruitment and retention, it boggles the mind to understand as to why the union would not accept this.

As to why they are taking the step they are taking, Mr. Speaker, I don't understand, but it is a typical situation of the union wanting to have their cake and eat it too.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

All the minister is doing is spinning government's perspective on all of this. The reality is they have given notice, we are going into a strike, and there is going to be a cutback in overtime services.

I ask the minister today: When will that be implemented? When will nurses stop performing overtime duties in hospitals in this Province?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, the notice we have been given indicates that the strike will begin on Wednesday, May 20, 2009, and it will begin with a refusal by our members to perform overtime.

However, Mr. Speaker, it also means that the nurses, although there will be a form of strike, they will not be on the picket lines but they will continue to be paid their wages; they will want their 31 per cent raise. Particularly, Mr. Speaker, I look at the overtime strikes dos and don'ts: Do work only your regularly scheduled shifts, and do take your scheduled vacation.

In other words, we are going to have a type of job action that the union says amounts to a strike, and I again have to reiterate, obviously the president of the union does not have the mandate to take her members out on the picket line, and that she has a clear concern about that mandate - and if I were in her position, Mr. Speaker, I would too.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think the head of the nurses' union got a very clear mandate from her members, and the minister knows that, when they voted 63 per cent to reject your final offer and 89 per cent to walk the picket line, Minister. Maybe you forget that.

Mr. Speaker, the government can avoid all of this. They can avoid all of this. Send the two policy issues that are existing to binding arbitration.

Minister, it seems like the nurses are prepared to allow for the health care system to continue at some level. I ask you and your government: Are you prepared to let it continue at every level and go to binding arbitration?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have been clear on a number of occasions, both the Premier and myself, that we will not be going to binding arbitration.

It was interesting last night, Mr. Speaker, as I was reading Hansard in 1999, and the Opposition at the time said to the Liberal government at the time: Why won't you go to binding arbitration? Well, it would not be fair to the rest of the unions in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, in 1999, the nurses were offered a 7 per cent raise, as opposed to the 31 per cent raise which is currently on the table. Mr. Speaker, in 1999 there were 30,000 public sector employees who negotiated deals, the same as there is today.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, we negotiated a deal with the correctional officers' union for the first time in twenty-five years, that they have reached a deal, and it shows that even a group with a right to binding arbitration could reach a deal with us because we are fair and reasonable and trying to treat our employees well.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to ask the minister today what impact this will have on the health care system. We already heard stories yesterday of surgeries being cancelled in the Province because the ICUs were full in St. John's hospitals. We are aware again today that both the ICUs are full in St. John's hospitals.

I ask you, Minister: With the reduction of this service, what will it mean to people who need surgeries and critical operations when beds are full and nurses will be off the job?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, as I said yesterday in the House, and a couple of days previous to that, any time there is a work interruption, whether it is a strike or a job action like we have heard described today, our primary consideration is for those people who need emergency care, those people who are the most critically ill, and those people will be attended to whether we have this job action we just heard described or we have a complete walkout, a strike as we typically would have experienced strikes in the past. Either way, Mr. Speaker, people who are critically ill, people who need some emergency services will still get it. There will be some changes.

This is a tactic by the union that requires a modification to the method of operation by each of our four authorities, but clearly those people who need emergency service and those who are most critically ill will get the service that they need to make sure that they maintain the quality of life that they deserve.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Maybe the minister could give us an indication of how many overtime shifts are being worked in the system, in our health care system throughout the Province, so that we have an idea of how many nurses will be off, and the length of time that we will have no nursing services provided within our hospitals in the Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I think it is important, if the member opposite were listening to the question in response from my colleague when he talked about the notice that we received today, I think what the nurses' union have done is clearly indicated that they are not going to work overtime in certain circumstances. Because they have clearly indicated in their notice to us that they will continue to work overtime at the end of their shift. If there is a nurse assigned a patient load today, at the end of their shift, if they are busy or they have additional patients, or the person who is coming in to relieve has not yet arrived, any number of those circumstances, that individual will still continue to work overtime on that shift.

The direction that we have been given, or the notice that we have been given from the nurses' union is that if they are on their day off and the institution or the organization that they are working with gets busy they will not come in on their day off.

Clearly, this is not a suggestion that they will not work any overtime at all. They have made a commitment to ensure that the patients that they are caring for, at any give day, will continue to get the care that they deserve from the nurse who is on that day if it requires overtime.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Earlier today, a fire was started at another St. John's school, the second in the past couple of weeks, and reports have indicated that the fire alarm did not go off.

I ask the minister: Have you been given any information as to why the fire alarm did not function during this fire at the school this morning?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, for the information of the Opposition Leader, the information that I have been provided is that there is an investigation ongoing and there will be a report forthcoming.

I can say that, in that particular building, all fire and life safety codes that are required were up to par. I can also inform the member opposite that work was done in that school on those particular items within the 2008 school year, and it has been inspected several times since then.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Mr. Speaker, the minister says that all of the fire and safety codes in the school were up to standard, but we already know the alarm did not go off, so obviously there was a deficiency somewhere.

Mr. Speaker, we raised a number of questions around fire inspections and life safety inspections in schools in this House of Assembly back in April and May of last year. The protocol that was being followed by the school boards involved a checklist that was being filled out by a school representative or custodian who did not necessarily have any fire safety training whatsoever.

I ask the minister today: Have any of these protocols been changed over the past year to provide for a more effective and a more accountable process of fire and life safety inspections in schools?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I did not realize that the Leader of the Opposition was an expert on fire safety, so I will try and judge my remarks accordingly.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. KING: As I said many times, and I will repeat it again, there have been regular inspections and regular protocols followed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Education.

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, the Opposition Leader is well aware that there are daily inspections and there are annual inspections carried out, not only by staff at the school level and board staff but by independent staff and independent professionals who are trained to do these kinds of things.

I will repeat what I said a few moments ago, that all of the codes that are required by the national building safety code and the fire safety code are certainly in place for this school in particular.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

You do not need to be an expert to know if an alarm goes off or it does not go off, Minister, so maybe you need to get trained in how to read sounding alarms.

A year ago, we pointed out that there were deficiencies that existed within the current fire inspection system for schools. It is unfortunate that a year has passed and the government opposite has not been able to do anything with regard to this process.

I ask the minister: Why is it that you and your government is unprepared to look at implementing a process that involves detailed inspections conducted by trained fire officials in schools in Newfoundland and Labrador?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Education.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: I say to the member opposite, you do not have to be an expert on many things to stand here in this House and ask those kinds of questions. I just provided an answer to that, that we provide annual inspections and we provide daily inspections and they are guided by the fire department and they are guided by experts in the field, and there is not much more I can say to that, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister also knows that these people are not trained. It is a checklist. It is on one sheet of paper. It has ten or twelve items. The janitor, the principal, the teacher, the cafeteria manager, anybody in a school can pick it up and tick those particular things off. It is not being done by trained officials from the Fire Commissioner's Office.

Mr. Speaker, the former Director of Education, Mr. Darren Pike, who is currently the Deputy Minister of Education, committed last year to do a complete review of the fire inspection process and to provide a report on schools in the Eastern School District.

I ask today: Was this review ever completed, and if so, could you table a copy of it in the House of Assembly?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: That is an earful, Mr. Speaker. I say no need to raise your voice and shout. I can hear the question and I will do my best to answer it for you.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I will talk about two particular things. One is that you do not need to be an expert to perform the daily inspections that occur in schools, Mr. Speaker. There is a checklist of items that have to be followed, that are outlined by the Building Safety Code and the fire department. You do not need to be an expert, Mr. Speaker. I suggest the Opposition Leader could even do it if she wanted to.

Secondly, Mr. Speaker, the annual inspections are performed -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. minister to conclude his answer.

MR. KING: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will conclude by saying that the annual inspections are in fact performed by experts in the field, Mr. Speaker, people who are trained to go in and assess fire equipment and fire alarms and fire emergencies and exit doors and all the kinds of things that are a part of keeping a school safe.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister might stand there and think it's cool to play fast and loose with life safety issues in schools in this Province, Mr. Speaker, but I certainly do not feel that way. That is why we have been raising these issues for over a year.

I ask him again, your deputy minister today, when he was a head and the CEO of the Eastern School Board, committed to do a review of the schools in that school district. Was the review ever completed, and will you table it in the House of Assembly?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I say to the member opposite, that we have an expectation that all reports and all inspections are performed on a regular basis, the kinds of inspections that are very extensive and very intrusive.

I say, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the daily inspections that are performed in schools, we are talking about inspecting windows and doors and hallways and the kinds of things that you do not have to be an expert to do.

Mr. Speaker, the annual inspections require more intrusive review. We are talking about inspecting alarms in the ceiling and wiring and those kinds of things, and they are performed by experts, Mr. Speaker.

I say to the member opposite, we have invested over $10 million in the last number of years in life safety issues in schools because we are concerned about what is happening.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The minister obviously does not know the answer, maybe check his Blackberry and the deputy might have e-mailed him the information.

Mr. Speaker, back in June we wrote the Fire Commissioner's Office and asked that there be fire inspections done in twenty schools in this Province. These were twenty schools that were reported to our office by individual parents, students or teachers.

I ask the minister today, if you can confirm whether these inspections had ever taken place and what were the results of them?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, certainly, I will do my best to provide the member opposite with as much information as I can for items for which I am responsible. I have to say that I do not work for the Fire Commissioner; I do not work for the Opposition Leader. I have never seen a request from the Opposition, so I cannot respond as to whether the Fire Commissioner has acted appropriately.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Maybe I will direct my question to the Minister of Municipal Affairs because we did ask the Fire Commissioner's Office to carry out these inspections.

I ask the minister, if she is aware of these inspections ever being done? If so, what were the results, because we never did hear back from the Fire Commissioner's Office?

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

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat once again for the member opposite. I am obviously - I apologize to the House if I am not communicating clearly. We are not aware of any such list. If the member opposite would like to provide me with a list I will certainly endeavour to see if the particular schools identified have been inspected.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, another week, another school affected by poor air quality. This time St. Joseph's in Lamaline was closed due to the discovery of mould. Fortunately, it appears the walls can be replaced and the students will not be out of school too long. A comprehensive air quality review could have picked up on this problem and fixed before the school even opened.

I ask the minister: With the continuing discovery of mould in the schools, will you finally commit to a process that will inspect every school in the Province.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I think I have responded to the member opposite's question several days ago on that.

We are certainly very concerned any time we find mould in schools. I am certainly very aware of the issue at hand and I have personally met with the school council and the administration of that school. So I certainly do understand all the details there, and I am certainly well aware that the appropriate action has been taken, the problem has been rectified, an air quality test has been completed, and results are expected back by the end of this week.

I also remind the member that we are still continuing to be committed to air quality through the process of enhanced inspections, Mr. Speaker, and as a reminder, those inspections are carried out by professionals in the field. Professionals like environmental health officers who go in and do very, very extensive testing of the many assets of a school that could lead to moisture and lead to mould.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, the only way this issue can be resolved is with a comprehensive air quality study done.

Mr. Speaker, this summer season is an ideal time to inspect and identify problems with air quality in the schools.

I ask the minister: What plans does government have to undertake air quality inspections at the provincial schools during this summer season?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, as I think I have outlined before, we have an extensive plan in place through the Department of Education, engaging environmental health officers and others to carry out enhanced inspections and inspections of building envelopes, and we are following through on a process of regular inspection working through every school in the Province.

I say to the member opposite, that we will respond as the need arises. If a district identifies to us a priority or a problem area, as they did just this week in Lamaline, we will respond immediately.

I say to the member opposite that, clearly, we are taking direction from experts in the field. From engineers who are trained in this area and they are well in the position to advise us on what is the appropriate way to best try and detect air quality issues, Mr. Speaker. It is a process that we have engaged in right now, and it is a process that we will continue to use.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. BUTLER: Mr. Speaker, earlier in this session I asked the Minister of Government Services for an update on air quality testing in schools for asbestos. The alternate minister committed to look into the issue and report back.

In the 2009 Auditor General's report it was noted that only 28 per cent of those schools requiring air quality testing had been tested as of April, 2007.

I ask the minister: How many of these schools are still waiting to receive proper asbestos testing and how long will it take to complete the remaining inspections?

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, just for the benefit of the members opposite, I think I actually tabled that information last week on a subsequent day to when the question was asked. All but ten schools were completed as of March 31 last year, and the other ten – excuse me, March 31 of 2009, and the remaining ten will be done this spring.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is for the Minister of Justice.

Minister, I realize that federal sentencing principles are enacted by the federal authorities; however, we have recently heard several cases of individuals who were either convicted or facing additional charges for acts they committed while they were supposed to be on house arrest. The most recent unfortunate accident occurred over the weekend where a woman was killed in a car accident near Boyd's Cove.

I ask the minister: Is the house arrest option a viable sentencing option in your view?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is well aware that sentences for criminal matters are set out in the Criminal Code of Canada, which is an act of the Parliament of Canada, not the Legislature of this Province. Also, of course, judges assign sentences based on past precedent. As the hon. member is well aware, under the rule of independence, judges are independent of the House of Assembly and unfortunately I cannot tell them what they should be doing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am well aware the minister cannot tell judges what to do. I am well aware the Criminal Code provisions are federal statutes. I alluded to that in my preamble. As the Minister of Justice you are responsible for the administration of justice in this Province. That includes all of the laws, including the Criminal Code.

Mr. Speaker, there are obvious questions related to these instances, such as whether these individuals were required to wear ankle bracelets to ensure that they were following court orders to stay within the perimeters of their house arrest.

I ask the minister: Are monitoring bracelets a part, a requirement, of all house arrest sentences that are imposed in this Province? If not, do you know why they are not?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to investigate and check and provide an answer to the hon. member with respect to his question on the monitoring bracelets.

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: In addition, Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the minister can tell me: Once a house arrest is imposed as part of a recognizance, or some sentence, is there a monitoring process in place within our court system which monitors the activities of these individuals and whether they do, in fact, stay at home as they are required to do?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. T. MARSHALL: Mr. Speaker, I will check with officials and get the details on that question, and get back to the House.

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My next question is for the Minister of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development.

Yesterday, TeleTech call centre announced it would be closing, throwing about 300 people out of work. I ask the minister: Did government have any advance notice of this closure, and what, if anything, is anticipated will be required to assist these individuals who are now out of work?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

Mr. Speaker, government was advised, as per the Labour Relations Act, through the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, by TeleTech, the employer, as is its legislated duty to do so. They gave notice that there will potentially be layoffs come August month due to a loss of a contract, or a non-continuation of a contract. That company is in the process of trying to find other contracts to keep those people employed, and hopefully the layoffs will not have to come into effect as notice was provided for.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

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

Mr. Speaker, last week we in my office received information that an untrained twentyish-year-old volunteer in the ER at the Health Sciences was stocking medications, including IV bags containing different medications but with nearly identical labels. Mr. Speaker, this type of situation is asking for trouble in a busy emergency room situation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister of Health and Community Services if he can confirm if this is a regular practice in hospitals' emergency rooms.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Mr. Speaker, I said in the House earlier in my statement that we have a $2.6 billion budget in Health. We have some 18,000 employees and probably 4,000 or 5,000 volunteers. We have 130-odd buildings around the Province, and she wants to know whether or not I know the work assignments of volunteers in one of our health facilities.

Mr. Speaker, there is a certain expectation that the people of the Province should have of what the minister should or should not know about what is going on in our health system. We have four regional health authorities who have a legislative mandate to be responsible for the delivery of health programs and services throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

We have delegated, through that legislation - in fact, the legislation was passed here in this House of Assembly and members opposite would have voted on it. That legislation gives them the mandate, the role and responsibility, to deliver those services. As a minister, I would never know the work assignments of all of the staff, let alone the some 4,000 or 5,000 volunteers, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

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

I hope the minister is not making light of what I have just asked, in the light of what happened with regard to medication that was given by error –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS MICHAEL: - in the hospital in Clarenville, because that is the point of this question.

Does the minister believe that it is proper for untrained volunteers to be dealing with medications? I am asking does he believe it, and will he check on the system of volunteering that would have volunteers working in this serious area?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: Now, that is a sensible question. That is not the question that she asked in the first place. She asked whether I knew, and I do not know. Now, whether or not we should have volunteers tasked and given certain responsibilities that are critical to patient care, those where you need a certain level of training, you need a certain level of understanding, or that the issue that there is a certain degree of risk and there is a high risk of a mistake, and if there is a mistake made there is a high risk of some harm to a patient, in those areas, yes, I would acknowledge that it is inappropriate to have volunteers involved in those kinds of tasks.

I say, Mr. Speaker, to whether or not I would, as a minister, know that is taking place, no I would not - which was the subject of her first question. I was not necessarily mocking the significance of your question. What I was suggesting was, if you want some information in this House, ask a sensible question and you will get a sensible answer. I have never been with any information –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Member for the District of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

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

Mr. Speaker, a Statistics Canada study released in 2008 reveals that medication errors were strongly related to overtime and work stress. Adding into this mix, the whole mix of untrained individuals restocking IV bags would seem to be a road map for disaster.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking the minister: What will he do to specifically deal with the situation that I have described and with this issue? He has not answered that question.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health and Community Services.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: In our health system there are four authorities, Mr. Speaker, that have been extremely successful in recruiting a strong network of volunteers. Each one of our health organizations has auxiliaries. We have people who operate gift shops. They have people who provide direct services to patients. In fact, many of the members up in the gallery today are members of an auxiliary in the hospital in Clarenville, the one you made reference earlier, and they do fine work, they do quality work, they are dedicated individuals who care about the patients they see.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. WISEMAN: They care about the quality of care they give and they are very eager to be an active participant in the delivery of that care and they do great work. I encourage them, I encourage more to get actively involved, Mr. Speaker, because we need them in our health system, our communities need them. I congratulate them and commend them for their commitment.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The time allotted for questions and answers have expired.

Presenting Reports by Standing and Select Committees.

Tabling of Documents.

Tabling of Documents

MR. SPEAKER: In accordance with the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, I hereby table the minutes of the Management Commission for the March 18, 2009 meeting.

Further tabling of documents?

Notices of Motions.

Answer to Questions for which Notice has been Given.

Petitions.

Petitions

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

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate an opportunity to have a few words on behalf again of the residents of south western Newfoundland with respect to the lack of dialysis services in that region. I am still smiling actually, over the Minister of Health's answer to one of the questions there recently. He is not known to withhold information he says.

Anyway, we have some difficulty even getting some information from the minister on this petition because the Town of Port aux Basques met with the minister in Corner Brook last fall. He committed that, not to solve the problem but he would at least check into it. He would consider it and get back to them with what he thought was an appropriate course of action. I do believe that is some six or seven months ago on the calendar. We have not even gotten a letter acknowledging that he had the meeting, let alone anything about where we might go to on a go-forward basis.

Meanwhile, the people who use dialysis in south western Newfoundland, every where that stretches, from LaPoile up to the Codroy Valley, they make three trips a week and they continue to make them since last fall, I say to the minister, three trips a week, nine or ten people at any given time. So you are looking at hundreds of trips that have been made even since he had the meeting with the people out in that area and not so much as the courtesy of a letter acknowledging their concerns. Not a letter even acknowledging their concerns.

Here we are in the meantime; we know we have a facility out there that is capable of handling the dialysis piece. We still have a piece of work to do. Exactly what corner you are going to put them in, do you have to take down some walls and where are you going to situate them, but I am sure within the confines of the Dr. Charles L. LeGrow Health Centre we can find enough room to put a suite that looks after a satellite dialysis machine if that is what is resolved to be the correct way to go. We also know that the money is available for the equipment to be used in that facility. We also know that the people out there want to do it that way, if they have a preference. Nobody likes to be getting into their vehicle or in a taxi and travelling three times a week from Port aux Basques to Corner Brook or Stephenville and back again in all kinds of nasty weather.

By the way, we can get them in other places in this Province, with the same types of numbers, in the Carbonear area, in the St. Anthony area, and the Grand Bank area. We can do it all there but yet Port aux Basques has had this need and been crying out with this need for some time now and no, we cannot even get the - at least addressed, not even asking for the equipment like these other areas and the training, the nurses are prepared to be trained. It would take somewhere between, around eight weeks, I understand for the basic training, and then there has to be some additional two to four weeks clinical training. We have the staff, no doubt, who are prepared to commit to do that. They are concerned about providing the service to people as well. Yet, this government won't even listen and respond to a letter.

The costing issue: We have never ever gotten into what it cost. So far, the government of this Province spends hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxi fares. Now, the medication costs, the training costs, the nursing costs, the technician costs, and so on, are all the same. Whether they do it Stephenville, whether they do in Port aux Basques, or do it in Corner Brook, those costs are static. They don't change. When it comes to the transportation costs to get the patients from their homes to that facility, of course it does cost a good deal more.

We have a taxi fare which is costing about $100 a day to each person.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask members to my left for their cooperation. Thank you.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate your intervention. It is hard to hear oneself speak here in this House sometimes, given the government members carrying on their private conversations.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I ask the hon. member to conclude his remarks.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate your intervention again, because my time is up and it is time for me to sit down. I will be back on the petition again as long as the House is open in the next two or three years.

Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

The hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.

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

It is a pleasure today to stand with another petition from the residents of Triton and Long Island and all the communities in that particular area. The people, not only on the island itself, have signed petitions, but petitions were placed in various communities and it is a pleasure to stand and present those petitions.

Someone asked me recently, why do I present petitions on behalf of the people in that particular area. Number one, it is because I am the critic for Transportation and they send them in. I know my hon. colleague from Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi, the Leader of the Third Party, has received petitions and I am sure MHAs from the area receive petitions. I know my hon. colleague from Signal Hill has some to present. The reason I present them is because I am the critic for Transportation. You do it, not because they are in your constituency, but you do it because they are people with legitimate concerns. They send in petitions and therefore you stand and present them.

The issue involved here, Mr. Speaker – there were two things they were asking for; a replacement ferry or a fixed link. The bottom line with their petition is asking that a fixed link would be constructed between Long Island and Pilley's Island.

They have good legitimate reasons for it. Number one, they say even with a new ferry that is one issue, but they are saying it is more feasible for government if they went with a fixed link. No doubt about it, it is a tremendous task whichever way they go. They are saying that the replacement of the ferry service with a fixed link is the ideal situation. They have some major concerns being isolated, concerns with regard to hospitals, schooling, transportation of goods from the fish plant there, and this is the reason they present those petitions.

Not only that, they were promised a fixed link, the Long Island Causeway, back on August 5, 2003; however, that was, I guess, placed back on the back burner due to financial reasons but we know now the situation that we find ourselves in, and we know there are many needs, but I believe once a promise has been made then consideration should be given when the time arises and government finds itself in a better financial position.

So, Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to stand and present another petition on behalf of the residents, that government will immediately undertake measures to construct a fixed link. I know the minister has agreed to meet with them, but he told me a few minutes ago I think it had to be cancelled due to weather conditions.

That is good news, to know that they are willing to sit down with the committee and discuss the issue. Who knows? Maybe something will come from it; but, Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure just to be able to stand and present another petition on behalf of those residents.

Thank you very much.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate an opportunity to have a few words and deliver a petition to this hon. House on behalf of the residents of Ramea, Francois and Grey River, and that is with respect to the lack of nurse practitioners at the medical clinic in Ramea, which services those communities not only through the clinic but also through coastal clinics.

The clinic calls for a quota of two nurse practitioners, but for many, many months now they have only had the one and have been unable to recruit the other. There have been several options attempted to alleviate the situation. I must say, we get good co-operation from the site facilitator in Burgeo, Ms Porter. She tries her best - and the officials, of course, from Western - but sometimes it is a policy issue that prevents it from happening. I understand there is actually a shortage of four nurse practitioners in the Western district and you might not notice it as much.

For example, there is one in Port aux Basques, a vacancy. There is a vacancy in Stephenville and there is a vacancy in Corner Brook. Now, if you are down a nurse practitioner in a place like Corner Brook or Stephenville or Port aux Basques, you might not notice it, I would think, as much as you would notice it in a facility where you only have two, and nobody else. You do not have doctors, you do not have RNs, you do not have LPNs, and you do not have other nurse practitioners to fill the gap. In the Town of Ramea you only have the two. There is no one else. So, once you are down, you are down 50 per cent of your working quota right there, and that is the problem, so the urgency is obviously far greater if you are trying to replace one person who is 50 per cent of your workload, vis-à-vis trying to replace one person who might be 0.2 per cent of your workforce. That is why it is so significant that we try to have an appropriate policy which allows adequate recruitment and retention for a person there.

The current policy of the government for recruitment and retention only applies if you are a new graduate or if you are someone from outside the Province coming in. It has been suggested that maybe a solution here would be to extend that in the case of rural communities so that the recruitment bonus that is given could be given to anyone.

If you are, for example, a nurse practitioner in this Province, you may be retired, you maybe have vacation time that you are prepared to go work in Ramea, at least if the bonus were provided for a person to go there, someone in that capacity, retired, may be desirous of going there, but there is no incentive right now for them to do that.

If the incentive programming is good enough to use in other areas in the Province, in urban areas and wherever we have shortages – sometimes it is for a specialist, sometimes it is for nurses, sometimes, in this case, it is for nurse practitioners – why would we not make the policy fit the circumstances, particularly when you have these small, rural communities in our Province?

That is what is being suggested here. It is being put forward to the officials at Western, and they said they would see that was passed on to the Department of Health and hopefully those decisions can be made, because they cannot be made by the people in Western. They have to be made by the policy makers themselves, which would fall not at the board level in Western Newfoundland but at the department level, at least, in Confederation Building in here in St. John's.

That has been conveyed to the minister and, again, we hope he at least reads the correspondence and pays some attention to it. We cannot say we have a good track record with this minister in terms of responding. It is one thing to have a problem. It is appreciated if you know that your problem is at least acknowledged, and even that has not happened.

I am sure the minister has enough staff that he could acknowledge the existence of the problem and give some indication of what he intends to look at, or the timelines in which he intends to look at it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Further petitions.

Orders of the Day.

Orders of the Day

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

MS BURKE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I move Motion 10, pursuant to Standing Order 11, that the House not adjourn at 5:30 p.m. today, Tuesday, May 12, 2009.

Further to that, Mr. Speaker, I move Motion 11, pursuant to Standing Order 11, that the House not adjourn at 10:00 p.m. today, Tuesday, May 12, 2009.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is that this House do not adjourn at 5:30 o'clock today, Tuesday, May 12.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

Motion carried.

MR. SPEAKER: The further motion that the House do not adjourn at 10:00 o'clock p.m. today, Tuesday, May 12.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

Motion carried.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I will do some of the third readings we have.

I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, third reading of a bill, An Act To Repeal The Labrador Transportation Initiative Fund Act, Bill 5, and that this bill be now read a third time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 5 be now read a third time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 5, An Act To Repeal The Labrador Transportation Initiative Fund Act, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Repeal The Labrador Transportation Initiative Fund Act. (Bill 5)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 5 has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Repeal The Labrador Transportation Initiative Fund Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 5)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that Bill 6, An Act To Amend The Pensions Funding Act, be now read a third time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 6 be now read a third time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion that Bill 6, An Act To Amend The Pensions Funding Act, be now read a third time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act To Amend The Pensions Funding Act. (Bill 6)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 6 has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and that its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act To Amend The Pensions Funding Act," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 6)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to call, from the Order Paper, Order 2, the Concurrence Motion.

We will continue our debate from the Estimates Committee and we will hear from the Social Services Committee.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is that the Concurrence debate for the Social Services Committee be concurred.

The hon. the Member for the District of Ferryland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HUTCHINGS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today in the House and speak to the Social Services Committee, Concurrence debate. I would just like to take a moment to recognize those members who were involved in the Estimates: the Member for Port de Grave; the Member for Grand Bank; the Member for Cartwright-L'Anse au Clair; the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi; the Member for Burgeo & LaPoile; the Member for Placentia & St. Mary's; the Member for Port au Port; and the Member for St. Barbe.

Mr. Speaker, in the Estimates Committee, the Social Services Committee, we looked at the Departments of Municipal Affairs, Health and Community Services, Education, Human Resources, Labour and Employment, and Justice. In that process, Mr. Speaker, the Committee had an opportunity, obviously, to go through the Estimates as presented by this government for the year 2009-2010, and as well, to look back at the actuals for the last fiscal year 2008-2009.

Indeed, we had some very good sessions and an opportunity for all involved to ask specific questions related to budgets, line items in terms of departments, strategic direction the Province has taken, policies identified that government is pursuing, and how the Budget allocations for the prior fiscal year and for the coming fiscal year will certainly fit into the direction that government is taking.

Again, I thank all the members for their participation, as well for the ministers and for their staff, for what they brought to discussions and certainly the detail that they provided in our session.

Mr. Speaker, first I want to speak to various items of the Budget in my time allotted, but first I would just like to highlight some of the issues and items that were identified as we went through with our Social Services Estimates Committee. I will just touch on Municipal Affairs. Certainly, there was discussion in regards to Municipal Operating Grants, there was discussion in terms of Waste Management Strategy this government is pursuing, and as well as terms of investment in Robin Hood Bay, and in terms of that in the role it is going to play in terms of the future Waste Management Strategy as a central point.

Also, discussion about the gas tax program in terms of funding through that and how that layout works and how it will work in the future. Certainly, through Municipal Affairs, the discussion on the Fire Commissioner's Office, discussion on the 911 service, and discussion on the Expression of Interest by the government and looking to see how we will move forward with that as a government, in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. As well as discussion on Crown lands, municipal boundaries, various issues related to incorporations, towns, local service districts, and in terms of items, what is important to them and questions in terms of Crown lands.

As I said, we talked about the federal tax program in terms of the transfer of federal monies and how money is directed towards the Waste Management Strategy now that the Province is moving forward with; a whole array of issues, no doubt, in terms of municipal affairs. We have so many towns and local service districts around the Province, and no doubt, many volunteers and the role they play in supporting our communities, giving up their time to work with government, with local governance. They certainly do an outstanding job and it is certainly a tribute to our communities and to our Province that we have these people that do the work they do.

We know there are municipal elections coming up again in the fall and we certainly hope that a lot of those individuals out there will continue to put themselves forward for election to help run our towns and cities. As well, we have new people coming forward, because indeed, it is a rewarding experience these days, no doubt. With the initiatives of this government and some of the things we are able to do with funding, with capital expenditures, with infrastructure, we are allowing and helping, especially rural communities and rural towns, to build infrastructure, to rebuild roads, water and sewer, a whole range of infrastructure, to help sustain and build those communities.

The initiative in last year's Budget, certainly the 90-10 ratio for many smaller communities and towns in terms of accessing municipal funding and what those smaller towns needed to put in, 10 per cent. I have certainly seen in my district, and I know talking to some of my other colleagues, they have certainly seen it as well. This allows those smaller communities and towns to step forward and be able to access funding, to build on their infrastructure needs, the type of things they need to do in their community to maintain and to build on their older communities, which is so important, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as well, Health and Community Services Estimates, the Committee went through a whole range of items there. If you went through the Budget, Mr. Speaker, anybody, in terms of the investment that has been made by this government in Health and Community Services, just overall, it is just tremendous. New initiatives every year in terms of the spending we are doing, and continues what this government has done since it has come to power in terms of looking at what we are spending, where we are spending it in our social programs.

If you look at the Province's overall expenditures and where we expend the Public Treasury, 37.4 per cent of the Treasury is directed annually to the health care sector and that has continued to be increased over the past number of years. Again, this year in the Budget it was increased again so that we can deal with an array of issues, whether it is infrastructure, whether it is service in our hospitals, whether it is how we pay our health care workers to ensure they are competitive and to ensure they are duly awarded for the service they provide in our health care sector right through.

The other parts of the social sector; I mentioned the health care sector was 37.4 per cent; other parts of the social sector are 13 per cent. If you add those up, almost half of the public Treasury is directed to the social sector.

Education is over 21 per cent in terms of the investment, and once again this year this Budget recognized the importance of education, our young people, as well as post-secondary, and we continue to invest and put substantial dollars into the field of education, which is so important.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of Health and Community Services we also spoke of Memorial University in terms of expansion of the medical school and certain enhancements there in terms of providing seats available, investments in the medical school and trying to be competitive. We know there are challenges right across North America, not only in this Province, not only in Canada but right across North America, in terms of attracting and securing the health care professionals we need, and this government is working diligently to do that. Again, we are seeing that in this year's Budget.

Mr. Speaker, this Committee also looked at the Estimates for Education. Again, we have seen a Budget that continues to invest in education, as I have mentioned. The range of issues we discussed: we talked about mental health issues in our schools, substance abuse, the challenges with that, and programs that assist with that. We talked about the White Paper report and the investments that we have seen because of that, approximately $136 million to follow through on those initiatives. We talked about the Skills Task Force, the recommendations of that, the ISP report, the new teachers' allocation and, as well, the skilled trades program and, as well, the fact that the marketing board was moved to the West Coast. An array of issues, Mr. Speaker, in terms of education, a lot of good discussion on that in the Estimates Committee.

As well, Human Resources, Labour and Employment, one that I am a little familiar with as Parliamentary Secretary to Human Resources, Labour and Employment, a whole array of positive initiatives we have seen in that department over the past number of years, and again this year we have seen in the Budget.

There was discussion in our Estimates Committee in regard to the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission. We had discussions on the appeal process, certainly service delivery. We also talked about the Vibrant Communities program, the Labour Market Agreement, the devolution of that agreement which will see the EI component of that for training transferred to the Province under a devolution agreement in November of this year, which would come under the administration of the Province. Many jurisdictions in Canada have already worked out that agreement. Newfoundland and Labrador, we will be going there this fall and certainly allow us as a Province to specifically look at our labour market and direct our training through that fund to what is required here in the Province, either regionally or provincially.

Right now it is run under national, I guess, incentives or directions in terms of what is needed, but with this devolution it will certainly allow us to direct our program to what the labour market requires in this Province. As I said, that could be locally, it could be regionally, it could be provincially, but the point is that we can now direct those training initiatives to what we identify is needed, and most importantly what our labour market identifies as what is needed.

Mr. Speaker, we also spoke of income support, certainly in terms of many additions made to that in various budgets and again this year, and in terms of the results we are having. I will speak to that shortly, Mr. Speaker, in terms of what we are seeing in terms of reduction in income support and helping those transition and bridge into the workplace, those that are on income support and government providing assistance, a hand up in terms of moving into the workplace and certainly having success. I will speak to that shortly, Mr. Speaker.

A whole range of items that we went through and talked about. We talked about the immigration sponsorship program, the success that is having. No doubt it is important as well from a labour market perspective. Traditionally, I guess, we have seen that immigrants who come to our Province, who initially land here, have a tendency over the years - we could not retain them. We are seeing some positive results in terms of that changing. We are seeing a higher percentage of immigrants that come to this Province are indeed making this their place of choice to stay and to be part of our communities which, as well, is so important and plays a key role in our economy. In many areas, as we know, whether it is the social sector or other sectors, there is often expertise and knowledge, people that we do not have, and through an immigration program certainly that is a key element to allow us to identify and to make those people available to us.

Mr. Speaker, the final area we looked at was Justice and a whole range of items there in terms of the investments that have been made in prior years, and continue to make in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the justice system. As I said, a whole range of items we went through that were of importance and we had very good discussions on that.

Mr. Speaker, just a few general comments in terms of this year's Budget. This is my third budget in terms of sitting in this hon. House, being elected by the people of Ferryland for the first time in February, 2007. For the last two years I have had the privilege of chairing the Social Services Committee of the Estimates. It is certainly a process where you come to understand and get insight into a massive budgetary process in terms of what services are provided by this Province and what job government has to provide.

I mentioned the amount of expenditures in areas like health care and education; a tremendous amount of expenditures. We have continued to increase those expenditures to try and provide the services for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians as they so richly deserve. I think we are doing that, and we are certainly meeting the needs.

Mr. Speaker, we know over the past year that globally, not only nationally but in North America and around the world, we have had an economic downturn. In the commodity markets, we have certainly seen a decline. When we look at our Province and our natural resources, the commodity market affects us, no doubt. We have seen that in terms of the mining industry, obviously the pulp and paper industry, and the fishing industry. Yet, because of some of the direction this government has taken when times were good, in terms of getting our economic house in order, and in terms of royalties and other revenue generators we have had, we have seen fit to invest that, starting programs, not just this year but in prior years, in terms of infrastructure and investment. We have done that and we are seeing the benefit of the day, when you see a Province like Newfoundland and Labrador not being as economically hard hit as other parts of this country.

I remember reading a while back, that economists were talking about Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador being probably a couple of provinces that would do best in terms of weathering some of the challenges that are out there. Who would have thought that ten years ago, Mr. Speaker? We are doing that and we are doing it quite well.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of initiatives that this government have taken, and certainly continue to do in this Budget. Infrastructure, in terms of municipal infrastructure and so forth, has been quite significant. We have seen that in terms of announcements: an $800 stimulus package or overall infrastructure spending by this government in all facets, in health care, in education, in roads infrastructure, and right through, in all the needs of the Province.

Mr. Speaker, there is one area I wanted to speak to, and we often hear discussion on it in this House and outside. It is an issue that is related to the Poverty Reduction Strategy started by this government a couple of years ago. That was to look at, not specifically through one department, but more or less through everything we do in terms of all departments and how we can take initiatives in terms of reducing poverty and ensuring those in our society that need assistance get that and they are given an opportunity to move forward, and whether it is Income Support, through transition or to move forward into the workplace, and be part and share in the prosperity we have in this Province, so that all can share in that prosperity.

This takes a long-term, an integrated approach, to prevent and reduce and alleviate poverty. It is not a quick fix, it is strategic identified with financial commitments over a long period of time, and we are making improvements in that. We have an annual investment now of about $132 million into that strategy and we are seeing results.

We are seeing results in all available measures of low income. We are seeing a reduction in the number of people living on low income. We are seeing a decrease in depth of persistent of poverty and an improved ranking relative to other provinces. Relative to what has been on in other provinces, we are seeing success. Again, when we look at - there are 9,000 fewer people on Income Support compared to 2003. Since August 2006, over 4,000 Income Support clients have gone to work as of December 31, 2008. That is a result of a whole suite of packages under the Poverty Reduction Strategy.

So, are there challenges, is there more to do? Yes, indeed there is, Mr. Speaker, but no doubt, we are committed and we continue to put money into the Budget, as I said, across a range of departments to continue to meet the needs.

Mr. Speaker, the other one I wanted to speak to was seniors, and some of the things we are doing for seniors in that regard. Again, this year we have made a number of investments which will help seniors, including $7.5 million to change the financial assessment model for home support, and $3 million for social housing units for low-income seniors. They will also benefit again from significant expansion of Low Income Tax Reduction, which we started a couple of years ago and continued to build on it this year. So there are more actual dollars remain in seniors' pockets to assist them; some who, as we know, are on fixed incomes.

Again, this year, I think we invested somewhere in the amount of $17 million for a Home Heating Rebate program. I know a lot of seniors in my district avail of the Home Repair Program through Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, and that had additional funding added to it over the past number of years. So those are initiatives, a few of them. There are many that help our seniors.

I have had the opportunity in my district to work with a whole array of seniors' groups that are doing great work, in terms of our wellness program and through the Department of Health and Community Services, and assistance from that department with our seniors, in terms of getting them out, getting them active. Not only from the perspective of recreation, but certainly from the perspective of socializing and getting out there and meeting as a group.

Mr. Speaker, finally, I just wanted to comment before my time is up, on a program that is run through the Department of Justice, the Inland Fish Enforcement Program. I have had in my district a couple of groups that I have met with over the past several months, and certainly speak very highly of the program, the Inland Fish Enforcement Program, and talk to me of the fact about - one in particular, I met a while back with the Renews River Conservation Association, myself and my colleague, the hon. Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation met with the group. One of the things they said to us was: What an investment you made when you stepped up and got involved with that program. We have seen tremendous results because of that. The Renews River now, in terms of where it was before this and where it is now, they say has been substantial. That is due to the volunteers, the people that are involved with it, but no doubt, as well, through the program ran through the Department of Justice and the ability of that program is certainly worthwhile.

The other group I wanted to mention, Mr. Speaker, is a group that was just recently formed, the Witless Bay and Area Conservation Group that again, has been involved with the Inland Fish Enforcement Program, speaks quite highly of it. A quote from one of their pamphlets, I guess the last one they did. They say: We have worked successfully with the IFEP to help prevent poaching in the sea trout and salmon rivers along the Southern Shore. So, no doubt –

MR. SPEAKER (T. Osborne): Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time for speaking has expired.

MR. HUTCHINGS: Leave to clue up, Mr. Speaker?

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

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. HUTCHINGS: Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, just to clue up, just one of those programs that I thought I would identify, that I have worked with various residents on. There is a whole suite of initiatives and programs, certainly, that are relative to my district that are in the Budget, but I tried to give an overview, I guess, of the Estimates of our Social Services Committee, where we are.

I again thank the members who participated, it certainly went well. With that, I conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

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

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

It is a pleasure to be able to stand today with reference to the debate in concurrence with regard to the Social Services Committee. As my hon. colleague mentioned, he listed the departments that are covered under that Committee: Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Municipal Affairs, Justice, Education, and Health and Community Services. I have to say that I did not attend the meetings with regard to Justice or Health and Community Services but I did take in the other three, being the critic for them, and I have to say that not only myself but all members on the Committee received the greatest respect, the way the issues were handled and, when we presented our questions, how they responded.

I guess when you go to the Estimates Committee there are two steps to the way it is handled. First is the line-by-line items where we see what government proposed and revised and the proposed budget for this year, and it takes into different categories like salaries, transportation, purchased services, supplies, property, furnishings and equipment, allowances and assistance. Then, outside of that, we go into, I guess, our questioning period. I have to say that - not speaking for the other members – you usually have twenty-five, thirty or forty questions for the minister, or the minister can pass it along to members of their staff. I have to say, like I said when I began, we received the greatest co-operation from the ministers and their staff and I want to thank all those who were involved.

Sometimes when you ask questions, there are many times that the questions probably cannot be answered right on the spur of the moment, but I have to say - and I want to reference this; I was going to say it yesterday but time ran out and I did not get a chance to speak to the Government Services Committee - I wanted to note that the minister himself for Government Services, I know we asked several questions and he assured me that he would go and try to get those answers for me. I have to say, before that day was over I had a sheet, and as a matter of fact I have them here, with all the answers to the questions that were asked and he did not have the answers right at his fingertips.

That does not always happen, but I am sure the other ministers who were involved in this particular Committee dealt the same way as the minister that I just referred to. I have to say, it is not easy answering questions, I guess, because you do not know what is coming to you. If you have thirty-five or forty questions, the majority of the time they can answer them. I will be honest with you; it is not easy all the time asking questions. From time to time when you stand in the House, like I did last week, it is not easy when you read the same one twice. From time to time we do run into problems like that.

When we get into debate, I know I have heard many members mention what is happening in their districts. We have not heard all the announcements yet, I guess, but I know there will be good news for each and every one of us, what is coming down from this year's Budget. Some of it has been announced and more of it has not. From time to time we hear individuals make comments about in their districts there is nothing done over the last fourteen or fifteen years, it was all doom and gloom, but I can assure you there are many issues that have happened in their districts under previous Administrations of all political stripes.

Then we hear people talking about how times have changed since 2003, with the debt reduction and so on. That is true, Mr. Speaker, times have changed, but we have to realize - I have said this before and I am going to say it again, and many members on the government side have admitted, as they have been speaking over the short period of time during this session - it is true that there are many projects that started under previous Administrations that the funds began to flow since 2003 and that is why we find ourselves in such a wonderful financial position here in the Province. It helps each and every one of us to know that infrastructure can be done. We heard an announcement yesterday by the Minister of Transportation how a new funding agreement had been signed with the federal government, and what that means to our Province, some $300 million-plus coming through that.

What I am going to do, Mr. Speaker, is just touch on some of the issues that I have brought forward, whether it is in the Estimates or whether it is in Question Period or in various other mediums with regard to the issues within those particular departments that are mentioned under that particular Committee.

The first one I am going to touch on is with Health and Community Services. Mr. Speaker, there are many issues that we have presented to us from constituents. They are not stories that we just bring up for the sake of bringing them up, but we find ourselves in a very difficult position in this Province. Many people have said it is a crisis situation. I have said it myself, and we find ourselves – only today I received an e-mail from a lady who is working in the profession as a nurse, who works in the ICU and the ER in the particular area of the Province that I come from.

They find themselves in a very difficult situation. She told me that any given pay period there are three different shifts where she has to double the shifts and has to stay on, and they find it very difficult, very tiring. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that is why many of the people, many of the incidents that are happening in our health care system are because those people are stressed; there is a lack of professionals in different fields.

This young lady went on to say - and I am just going to quote what she did say - she made a comment, and she was referring to all the hours she has to put in and be away from her family. She said: It is better to work like a dog than to be treated like one.

That is a sad statement for anyone to make, and that is how she feels. She is a professional who finds it very difficult, with a shortage of people within the system, and that is what they are saying.

I had another gentleman who came to St. John's for open heart surgery. He had the same operation approximately ten years ago. He came to St. John's and had all the work done and was supposed to be operated on; however, it got cancelled and he was sent back home. A week-and-a-half after, he was called again. He came in and everything was done, he was prepped for the O.R., and he had his family home from the mainland. Lo and behold, before he went to the O.R., he got word: I am sorry; we do not have any beds available.

That man was sent back home. Five days after he went home, he was rushed to Carbonear Hospital and it was only, I guess, a miracle that he got there in time. I think it was four or five days after that he was transferred to St. John's for his surgery and, I can assure you, he went through a very difficult time. It all had to do with a shortage of staff, nurses not being available to help in the various components of the ER or the ICU units.

Mr. Speaker, another issue I have brought up several times when it comes to health in our Province - and I know government has been trying to recruit doctors. I can honestly tell you, the clinic that I attend in Spaniard's Bay, I think in the past two-and-a-half years I have had myself nine general practitioners. It is not that I am hard on them, or anything like that, but let me assure you the issue is they come from other countries and I can honestly say they are good, trained individuals, if we could only keep them. If we could find the means to keep them, but they come here, they are from different cultures, and once the – I call it the probationary period. It is like when you go into construction. If you go on a job, if you pass the first thirty or forty-five days they will keep you on. Unfortunately, they come here, they are very skilled individuals, but they want to move to the larger centres, whether it is Ontario or out west, where there are more people of their particular culture. That is sad. We are losing those people. I do not know if anything can be done about that, but that is the situation.

I have heard the minister answering questions when it comes to the pandemic. The plan is in place and everything seems to be fine. I remember back in 2006 - and I have been trying to find the information and maybe once I say this someone will provide it to me - there was a $4.6 million plan for emergency and pandemic planning. If I am not mistaken, in that article it said that there would be anywhere from thirty-five to fifty nurses who would be hired totally for that situation if it should arise. They would be hired totally for that reason. I am wondering if those people are actually in place. Because we have such a shortage in nurses, I am just wondering if that ever panned out to the point that we do have that taken care of.

Another issue I have brought up several times, and hopefully in the near future something can be done about it, that is with regards to the oxygen program for many of our seniors. They find themselves in a very difficult situation being unable to afford the fees, the cost that they have to encounter at home.

One of the other departments under that Committee was the Department of Education. There are many issues I guess we bring forward from time to time and we hear that new schools are being built this year, and that is wonderful good news. We know that the announcements were made quite a few times but, put all that aside, it is good to see those new schools.

One of the key issues that I bring forward from time to time is school bus safety. I know that through the Estimates with Government Services, which was the other committee, and through the Department of Education who have their own fleet of buses through the school board, that is a serious situation. I know it was brought up by the Auditor General back in 2004 and again in 2008 about some issues with regards to inspections of the school buses. As I have stated to the minister during our Estimates meetings, I told him some of the stories that I received from bus drivers who have major concerns with regards to the buses that they drive. The inspections are done and after the inspection is done, even to some points where the equipment is changed again because they have different numbers of buses and once the inspectors leave the issue has gone back to what it was.

Even today with regards to air quality, and I know government deals with the issues as they arise, but why I bring forward the comprehensive air quality program, I believe, Mr. Speaker, that during the summer months when school is closed what a better time to check our schools. Whether they all can be done in one school season when it is closed, that is to be debated I guess, but if we had that done, at least then when school is in session we would not have to close the schools down, whether it is for a week, two or three weeks, and the children are interrupted from their schooling, had to be transported to other places, and so on. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, there are schools in my area where children and parents have complained about various illnesses that they encounter. Whether it is problems with their eyes, with breathing and so on. I think there should be a comprehensive air quality study done.

Mr. Speaker, another issue with regards to the Department of Education. I know the school councils and parents feel that they can be more actively involved with regards to when it comes to gathering information and being a part of the process. That is how they feel. They have spoken out on several occasions, and hopefully, something can be done to look after their situation so that they can bring forward the concerns. It is like anything else, it is like when we talk about the fishery, who better to listen to than the fishers themselves? Who better to listen to when it comes to problems that they see within a system, whether it is right or wrong? At least, who better to bring it forward than the parents through their school councils?

Another issue, Mr. Speaker, with the schools is with regards to drugs and bullying. I know the department and the boards have taken various initiatives to try to correct this problem. I know some of the schools have surveillance cameras installed and so on. We hear talk of more today, about how some of the schools go through lockdowns, how they are doing various drills and so on.

I think it was a school on the Burin Peninsula recently, where they had a seminar. They all dressed with the same colour on, and they all took a pledge that there would be no bullying in their schools. I think that is what has to be done, because whether we believe it or not – and I can assure you, I am only speaking for the district that I represent. There are major problems when it comes to drugs being on the school grounds. I know the teachers and the board, and the education cannot deal with that, but collectively with the parents I think something has to be done, because I have a concern that something major is going to happen. When you hear talk of a junior high school with so much drugs that is being passed around and some young kids being caught with it in their class and so on, I think it has to come together. People have to come together to correct this issue. It is not an easy one, it is not an easy issue to take care of, but something has to be done.

Bullying is another concern, no doubt about it. I have heard talk of incidents in the area that I represent, where kids from time to time will not go to school because they are being bullied. I know a teacher cannot control that. They are there to teach. I do not know if a system can be put in place where we can have people go in the schools and help patrol the area. Mr. Speaker, it is an issue, and it is an issue that has to be dealt with. We see it on the TV screens now, and God forbid if it should happen in our little Province, but we see it on the mainland, we see it in other provinces and hopefully, we can do something that that will not happen here.

Also, under that particular department was the Municipal Affairs. There are many issues we bring forward from time to time. Nonetheless, I guess, is the waste management. Major things are happening throughout our Province. We hear talk of the changes that are happening in Robin Hood Bay. We know that has to happen. We know that is all good, but we also have to listen to concerns of the various councils, not only in my district but throughout this Province. It is a tremendous cost to those people and they are going to have to raise their fees tremendously.

As I said before, we sent out a survey to many municipalities and dozens and dozens of them replied back. I cannot say we heard from them all, but small, medium and large local service districts replied back. That was one of their main issues. We know this has to be done but the cost of it is going to be crippling to us. The fees that they charge their residents, some of them are going to double; some of them are going to triple.

We also have the issue with the teepees and incinerators. We know many of those have closed over the years. They have closed down and that has to be done, but there are some towns that have asked that they would remain open. I think there was one in the Port aux Basques area recently. They have to remain open for a little longer period of time.

Another issue is there are many communities – I should not say many, I suppose, but there are communities in our area where the waste, the garbage is going to have to be transported by ferries from the towns where they live to some other area. Let me assure you, that is going to be a costly venture for those individuals.

Then we have water quality, one of the key areas, I guess, within our Province. We know that we have many, many communities. If I am not mistaken, there are 200-plus towns in our Province now that are under boil order. From time to time we know that issues can develop where there can be, I guess, individual errors made. It is very important. We have seen a couple of incidents over the past few years where that has happened.

Another issue is with regard to the provincial emergency plan. I know the department, the former Minister of Municipal Affairs, gave a report on this, and the present minister the same way. Many municipalities are being prepared for this emergency plan that government is asking to implement. I just forget how many years it is they have to finalize their plans, but I have to say that the communities in my area, I think each and every one of them, are on side. They have a plan in place. All municipalities, the search and rescue people, the fire departments, they are all working in conjunction with each other, and I have to say that is what has to be done, but I am just wondering how far along are we throughout this Province with that issue?

Another area that came up during our Estimates with the department was a transfer of Crown land to municipalities. The municipalities applied to government to have Crown lands turned over to them because they found that this was a way to stimulate growth and attract business to their towns.

Government will transfer lands to the municipalities if it is used for roads and other infrastructure needs within the town, but I think the message has gone out that they will not turn Crown land over to municipalities just for the sake of them taking it and trying to entice business people to come in. Government will still sell this property at a fair market value, but I know when I attended the municipalities convention this was one of the key issues that they brought up. They thought it would be very important to municipalities in many areas in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Unfortunately, I know they went back and were supposed to provide other information to the Minister of Municipal Affairs but that has not transpired and the word that I have received is that this will not take place.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity. I know my time has expired and I look forward to presenting again later on.

Thank you very much.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Deputy Chair of Committees.

MR. COLLINS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker I am pleased today to be able to rise in this House and offer some comments on the meetings of the Estimates Committee, the Social Services Committee, of which I was a member. In doing so I would like to, as well, along with the Chairman, the Member for Ferryland, thank the various Cabinet ministers and their officials, who attended these meetings, the minister and department officials from the Department of Education as well as the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, the Department of Municipal Affairs, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Community Services.

Mr. Speaker, I always am impressed by the ability of the ministers to be on top of so many different components in their departments. One of the things I have found in these hearings was that the ministers personally were able to respond to all of the questions, or most of the questions, asked by the Committee members. In some cases they had to defer to their officials, as you would expect them to do, but in a lot of cases they answered most of the questions themselves, which speaks volumes for the ministers and their capabilities, and the fact that they are on top of things in their department. That was impressive because, when you look at some of the figures in those departments, in the Department of Education we were dealing with revenues of $1,234,234,000. That is a lot of money for a minister to be on top of and to be able to answer so many questions as asked by the Committee members.

With Human Resources, Labour and Employment we were looking at an expenditure budget of $292 million; with Municipal Affairs, $214 million; Justice, $222 million; and Health and Community Services, $2.6 billion. That is a lot of money, Mr. Speaker, to be responsible for and to be able to answer so many questions from the other side and from Committee members with respect to individual expenditures and specific expenditures of the department.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out at this time that the procedure at these Estimates meetings is very relaxed but also very detailed. The Committee members ask questions of the government - mostly Opposition members - they ask questions of the government and it is all done in a collegial, respectful atmosphere. The information given is very informative. There is no political pandering, or very little of it. As much time as necessary, as needed, is taken to respond to the question. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in the Estimates of the Department of Health and Community Services we had to come back for a second session.

In situations where the ministers or their officials do not have the information on hand they give undertakings to provide it, and some of the information requested by Committee members is pretty detailed and they want individual breakdowns. Certainly, the Committee members in all cases were very satisfied with the level of detail given in the information by the various departments. Also, I should mention that some of this stuff is done line by line, so it is very specific and very detailed.

I mention that because the hon. Opposition House Leader, in his presentation yesterday, suggested strongly that these meetings should be televised. In fact, I think I have heard the Opposition members say over a number of occasions that all standing committee work should be televised. Certainly, in the interest of openness and transparency we can't argue with that. Certainly we have an opportunity to supply information, give the public information to the extent that we can.

Mr. Speaker, when I see the atmosphere in which these estimates are conducted and when I see the respectful, collegial manner of the give and take of information, I am wondering what television would do for that. Not all the estimates are done in the Estimates Committees. For example, some of the estimates are done here in the House. The estimates done here in the House are a different ball game. When the thing is televised, then suddenly it becomes a political debate, and I am not sure that a political debate serves the purpose of examining estimates of various departments. It is a different ball game. Debate in the House of Assembly is the nature of parliamentary debate and the parliamentary system.

If the Opposition is requesting and looking for detailed information and answers to questions, there is no better place to get it than in the estimates hearings. I am just wondering, with what I see in the debates in the House, whether television would add anything to the process.

I have to agree with transparency and openness, no doubt about that, but I am wondering if the whole thing turns into a bit of a charade, and the procedure that we follow now in the estimates, I wonder if that purpose would be defeated if we went to the televised sessions? The Opposition constantly raised the issue: They can't get information in Question Period. Well, I would certainly suggest if you televise the Estimates Committees, they might have a similar problem, because it turns into a political debate.

I am not sure that the respect the hon. Member for Port de Grave just mentioned, how respectful the hearing atmosphere was - I would be in favour of televising the Estimates Committees but only if it was continued to be carried out in the same respectful manner as it is presently in estimates. I doubt very much, given the political nature of government, that that would happen.

Mr. Speaker, it is not my intention here to insult the intelligence of the viewing public, but I am wondering to what extent the viewing public would be able to follow the information, line-by-line type information, that is carried out in estimates when they don't have the information before them. We, in estimates, have this information in front of us and we can go line by line and fact and figure, but watching it on TV, I am not sure what purpose it would serve.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Budget Estimates and these figures I just mentioned, the figures on which the Budget is based, the millions, and to departments, billions of dollars, I would be remiss if I did not congratulate the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board for the Budget that he brought down.

We, on this side of the House, sometimes chide him a little bit and compare his performance with the performance of the previous Minister of Finance. It is a situation where these two ministers have played musical chairs in departments over the last couple of years. Sometimes there might be a tendency to get confused on who the Minister of Finance is and who the Minister of Justice is, but one is a former and one is a present. Certainly, the former Minister of Finance, and currently Minister of Justice, had a different working condition to work with than the present Minister of Finance.

I want to, just briefing, look at the Budget overview that we saw in one of the Budget documents and look at the performance of 2008 and 2009. We see the very positive performances in 2008. For example, the GDP was increased by 1.8 per cent; employment grew, the unemployment rate declined; personal income growth; personal disposable income growth; retail sales expanded; total investment was up; population was up, in fact, in 2008, and we had four consecutive surpluses. We have now reached a point, of course, where we no longer receive equalization.

In 2009, Mr. Speaker, in spite of all the gloom and doom that have been forecasted and talked about all throughout the world, this globe, when we look at our own situation as projected in the Budget, things are not looking all that bad. The real GDP will decline, no doubt about that, as a result of the decline in exports of minerals and oil. The unemployment rate, they expect it to rise somewhat, and certainly Grand Falls has something to do with that. Personal income and disposable income growth will still rise 3 per cent and 3.7 per cent. Retail sales growth will still rise. Capital investment is expected to be increased. Housing starts are expected to remain strong. So we are not in as bad a shape as a lot of places are with respect to our predictions for 2009.

The minister does bring in a deficit of $750 million. That is based on $50 oil, which is a conservative figure, but it is a cautious figure and a prudent one. We could take the position, well, there is a good possibility that will increase, but because of the volatility of oil prices, then that would not be prudent and probably misleading to go higher than that. Although we noticed yesterday, for example, that oil was somewhere around $57 – closed over at $57 a barrel. It is probably heading towards $60, but who knows where it will wind up. So it is too volatile and probably misleading to say that look, this $750 million will be eradicated by the end of this year. Hopefully it will, but that will be gravy for us, Mr. Speaker, if that in fact happens.

The $750 million Budget is due partially to the $414 million as a result of the unilateral action of the federal government, and of course oil royalties will be down because of lower prices. We are no longer receiving equalization, and the net debt will be reduced below 8 per cent. So 2009 does not look so bad.

Mr. Speaker, I have been in this House now for, I guess, three years, and for several years before that I have been interested in following budgets. I have yet to see the perfect Budget. I marvel at the Opposition House Leader in his reaction to the Budget Speech. He stood on his feet for three hours. I admire him for that. I admire anybody who could stand on their feet for three hours and speak in response to any subject. He did take all of three minutes out of the three hours to say positive things about the Budget, and I suppose that is to be expected. He cannot hold a candle, of course, to the former member for Grand Falls who I believe spoke eighteen hours in succession, one occasion on the Budget, and I believe six or seven hours at one stretch.

There are always deficiencies in budgets. There are always problems to deal with. I can identify dozens of deficiencies in this Budget, any of us on this side of the House can. If there were no deficiencies in this Budget, I would have all my roads paved. That is not going to happen. All the medical needs of the Province would be taken care of. There would be dialysis units wherever we wanted one. That is obviously not going to happen. The easiest thing to do is to criticize a Budget. No trouble to find things in them that they do not cover.

We, in this Province, Mr. Speaker, we are in a special position, and it is due to the prudent fiscal policies of this government over the last three years. It is witnessed, obviously, by the have status that we have now achieved. Have, incidentally, is a confusing word and has been misinterpreted by an awful lot of people in this Province. It is probably a bad use of terms. Many people suggest, when we hear of have status, that we now have everything that we want. If we are a have Province then why aren't all our roads paved? Why do we have medical problems? Why aren't there dialysis units in every corner of the Province? That is not what have means at all. Have simply means that what we do have we are paying for ourselves. That is basically all it means.

Mr. Speaker, this Budget, as brought down by the Minister of Finance, is a stimulating Budget stimulating the economy. It presents an aggressive spending schedule and it is doing what the economists suggest. If I could again revert to what this Budget will achieve, it will reduce the per capita debt back to less than $8 billion, for example.

Mr. Speaker, some of the departments that we reviewed in our Estimates committee, one of them was Education. I want briefly to look at some of the things that we talked about in Education.

Budget 2009 will provide additional funding of $130.9 million in the Department of Education, bringing the total Budget now to $1.29 billon. That is a significant expenditure. There are so many things in the Education budget that you could spend your whole twenty minutes talking about them. I will just highlight a couple. The ones that are particularly appealing to me are the $10.9 million that goes into post-secondary education and making it more affordable for more people. The money used to reduce the interest, or eliminate the interest on student loans and to continue the freeze on tuition rates and so on, bringing a total investment by this government to $71 million since 2005.

Mr. Speaker, just a couple of days ago we had youth volunteers congregated out in the lobby. They were very enthusiastic and very supportive of the work that this government has done with regard to helping post-secondary students. I think the minister has mentioned, we are the first jurisdiction in Canada to completely wipe out interest on provincial student loans.

There are a lot of other things in the Education budget. One of the things that interest me is the fact that the College of the North Atlantic, for example, will receive an increase of $8.3 million in this Budget, partly to deal with the support for additional skilled trades programming to be identified in consultation with the college. Of course, coming from the Placentia & St. Mary's District, and the Vale Inco project being the mega project in this Province at the moment, there is going to be terrific need for skilled people. Anytime you see money going into the skilled trade programs it has to be a plus.

I was also particularly interested, Mr. Speaker, in the $121 million in the Budget for school infrastructure. I mention that because some of that is going to be spent in my district on a brand new school, on which tenders closed last week, in Placentia, to the tune of almost $13 million for a brand new high school for Placentia. That is going to be a welcome asset to Placentia and we look forward to the start of construction this summer.

While I am talking about education, Mr. Speaker, I would be remise if I did not say that the outgoing Minister of Education, now the minister of a new department, did a terrific job in education over the years. There is no doubt about that.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. COLLINS: She made a significant contribution to the development of education in this Province. To the new minister who has taken over, he has the wherewithal and the qualifications to follow in her footsteps and we wish him well.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. COLLINS: I also, of course, want to wish Minister Burke, the former Minister of Education, all the best wishes in her new portfolio.

Two departments, Mr. Speaker, that are always very important to MHAs are the Department of Municipal Affairs and the Department of Transportation and Works. There is $103 million for infrastructure in the department this year. My district benefited from some of these programs last year, and significant work has already been done in Placentia and Whitbourne on water and sewer. We are going to be breaking out a brand new fire truck in Whitbourne in a couple of month's time. So my district is already benefiting from that.

Currently, with the Department of Municipal Affairs we have a number of applications in from the Towns of Placentia, Long Harbour, Whitbourne, Branch, St. Bride's, Admiral's Beach, St. Mary's, Point La Haye, Gaskiers, and Deer Park. All have applications in to Municipal Affairs for infrastructure work, all in various stages of consideration. Some of them have already received pre-engineering letters, some of them are waiting for federal components to be approved, and others have been revised and worked on. We look for some good announcements from Municipal Affairs with regard to these.

I want to, before I close, Mr. Speaker, touch on Transportation. Transportation was not a department that we examined in our committee, but Transportation is a very hot issue in my district. I wanted to talk on it because I am constantly under siege from various parts of my district with regard to road conditions. I have 540 kilometres of road in my district and I think that ranks me up there somewhere with the top two or three in the Province; a lot of them in bad condition.

This government, in this Budget, has allocated, Mr. Speaker, upwards of $11 million for road work in my district. That raised a lot of eyebrows with a lot of MHAs but it is connected with, of course, the Vale Inco project, the access roads of the Vale Inco project, and as well the Argentia Access Road which is the main gateway into eastern Newfoundland, coming from the Marine Atlantic ferry. There is also a new lift bridge being planned for Placentia which is going to run somewhere between $15 and $20 million.

There is a lot of road work going in my district. My district has been identified by the transportation officials as needing $84 million worth of road work. That is a lot of money. That is not all going to get done by the end of this term. My intention, Mr. Speaker, is to make sure that most of it is done before I leave this office, and while that will not be done this term, hopefully, by the end of the next term most of this road work will be attended to, or a lot of it.

I sympathize with the residents of the other communities. There is a lot of money going into my district but I have a big district. There are a lot of areas that not getting the roads done. It is understandable that people will complain. Everybody wants their roads done, and everybody wants their roads done today. I have a lot of communities where the roads are in terrible shape, are not going to get done this year, and not going to get done next year. I appreciate their forbearance and their patience and, hopefully, we can get to them as soon as we can. We cannot do it all the one time, but I have every hope that most of the road needs will be taken care in the next few years.

There are a number of others, Mr. Speaker, that I could talk about, but my time is up.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Estimates.

Thank you very much for your time.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

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

I am glad to have my final opportunity, I guess, to speak to the Budget. Our debate is slowly coming to a close. I guess, before the day is over, it will have been closed.

Of course, this afternoon we are having the Concurrence Debate on Social Services. I was very happy to be, of course, on the Committee and to attend the various Estimates meetings with regard to the different departments that come under the Social Service sector.

I think that I will be repeating some things this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, things that I have said in some of the other debates and some of the debates you have already had on bills, but anything that I repeat I think I will repeat because it is going to bear repetition. It is dealing with issues that are extremely important, and that is the life of the people in this Province and how people are doing, how people are living, and how people are surviving. It is a very important issue.

Our investment in people is the most important investment that we can make. Whether the investment is in social programs, whether the investment is in education, no matter what it is that the investment is in, if it is an investment in health, these are all investments in the people of this Province. We like to think that things are going well, and they are. We have many things that are going on, but we still have many people who are falling between the cracks. This is something that we cannot forget, that there are people who are falling between the cracks.

We have people, for example, on low income who do not have enough money to live on. Whether the low income is low income because of the assistance they are getting from government, or whether the low income is because of the amount of money they get in the job they work in, or whether low income is low income because they are on EI seasonally because of the nature of their work, no matter what it is, we have quite a number of people who are living in poverty. The latest statistic we have on that, Mr. Speaker, is that we have 33,000 families living in poverty in this Province. As I said, that is the latest statistic that we have. Two years ago, our rural poverty rate was the highest in Canada.

When we look at what is happening in a family, or what is happening in a province, or what is happening generally, we have to look at: What do we use as an indicator of how things are going? It is very easy to use as an indicator the flashy things, the things that are going well, and to say: Oh, isn't it wonderful because we have a budget of $6.7 billion? Isn't it wonderful that we have financial assets of almost $2 billion? We are doing so well. That is fine, and I have no problem acknowledging that, but we have to look at what is the weakest in our economy in assessing how our economy is doing. If we continue to have families going to food banks at a greater rate than we have had, if we continue to have a poverty rate that is one of the highest in Canada, if we continue to have a child poverty rate that is one of the highest in Canada, if we continue to have unemployment provincially that is the highest in Canada, then we have a major problem. If we are not dealing with the weakest of what is going on in our economy, then we are not going to improve the economy.

To believe that it is alright to have that poverty, to believe that it is alright to have people going to food banks as long as we sort of put band-aids on the situation is not enough. It is not acceptable, and it is not acceptable to the people who are living in those situations.

One of the issues that concerns me is that in a Province where our revenues are going up every year, in a Province that can have over a billion dollars in cash assets, that we have people on income support who are living in poverty, who depend on food banks, who do not have what they need to live. Yet, we are indexing their income support on a level that is so low that indexing can never get them above poverty. It is impossible; they cannot do it, because indexation started at a time when the amount of money they were getting had them living in poverty.

So we need to look very seriously at our situation here in this Province to say, how do we structure our economy so that those who are at the bottom will come up instead of going down? So that we stop widening the gap between those who have and those who have not? Widening the gap both for individuals but also for communities, because we are widening the gap between our urban centres and our rural life in this Province as well. The gap is widening.

When we look at the unemployment rate for this Province, which in March was 14.7 per cent for the Province, but we know that here in St. John's it was only around six point something per cent, and the average is 14.7 per cent, then we know there are many places out there who have very high unemployment, and they are rural areas that have high unemployment.

So we cannot sit back on our laurels and say we are doing so well, when we know that we have people who are not doing so well. When we know, for example, that in our health care system we have people who are completely stressed out in trying to do their work because we do not have enough people to do the work. We are hearing this day after day in the House, and maybe we have become immune to the information, but we should not become immune to the information. It should shake us up.

Last week, for example, when I heard the horrific story of the woman in Clarenville being given the wrong medication, I was really shocked. We think that because we had the Cameron inquiry, and because we had the Cameron report, and because we had the task force on adverse events, that everything is taken care of, but a number of us in this House received, this week, a letter from Ms Mojica-Fisher, the woman who received the incorrect medication, and she gave us the full story.

For example, on the fourth day after she had received the incorrect medication she was still at home and she was still being treated pretty ineptly by the people in the hospital where she received the wrong medication. Because her husband went on open line on Sunday night, and what he said Sunday night was repeated on the radio station Monday morning, and because Dr. Laing at the cancer clinic happened to hear what was said Monday morning, it was Dr. Laing who called the Clarenville hospital to say that she was really concerned about this and that they wanted to see this woman at the cancer clinic. Now, if Dr. Laing had not happened to hear him speak Monday morning, that woman could have gone all of last week without being treated at the cancer clinic.

We think that after the reports from the inquiry and the report from the task force on adverse events that we have a system in place now, and that system of communication is there and people are going to be taken care of. Well, I have news for us: the system of communication is not there. This is one of the examples, I think, that very clearly says to us we need to have all aspects of our health care system reviewed. We need to know that everybody in the system knows what the communication protocol should be and what should happen. How is it that it did not dawn on anybody in the Clarenville hospital that, with somebody having received a dose of a chemotherapy that her body did not need, that this person perhaps needed to be seen at the cancer clinic where they have the tremendous expertise around cancer and chemotherapy, and the effects of chemotherapy? Why didn't that come to somebody?

We see a government that is all concerned about cutting red tape, and last week that happened; there was an announcement around how much red tape has been cut. That is fine and dandy, and government now apparently has a new zero growth approach, meaning one regulation must be cut for each added. Well, I have to ask the minister responsible for the cutting of red tape, what would that do in health care, for example, where we need new regulations? We need new regulations around communications. We need new regulations around disclosure when something goes wrong. We need new regulations around how patients are informed when something goes wrong, and how they are treated, like the case that we had in Clarenville last week.

What happens if we say, oh, we cannot put new regulations in place because we cannot find any regulations to get rid of? I have to ask, what kind of thinking went into this red tape reduction to come up with that goal, that putting in one new regulation means another one has to be cut?

It might be better to say we had all kinds of red tape that was stupid, that was irrelevant, that was not needed, but you do not say we are going to get rid of red tape for the sake of getting rid of red tape, or get rid of regulations for the sake of getting rid of regulations.

I look at all of this effort that is going into something like red tape cutting and I say maybe we would be better off saying to departments use your common sense, and then taking money that has gone into that and put into the health care system to make sure that the recommendations that were made by Justice Cameron, and the recommendations that were made by the task force on adverse events, we can have those put in place; use the money to have those put in place and to make sure they are put in place with regulations but with regulations that are essential for the lives of people in this Province.

There are just so many ways in which we could go in analyzing our budget and analyzing how money is being spent in our budget that you could take it line by line by line and say, where are we going with this? Where are we going with the spending of our money?

I cannot get away from this red tape issue, because so much effort is going into it and money is going into it. I say, yes, that is fine, that is good, but what is happening with regard to regulations to take care of people?

I want to come back to the issue of poverty again, because they all relate. I go back and forth, I know, but I want to come back to the issue of poverty. Some of the poorest in our society are women and children. One of the reasons of that is that we do have women, single parents who are women, who cannot work for various reasons; one of them being maybe they have children, they are on their own, and they do not have child care. They do not have child care because we do not have a universal child care program.

We have the Violence Prevention Initiative, and the Violence Prevention Initiative is very important. There are a lot of good things happening in the Violence Prevention Initiative, but one of the biggest ways to prevent violence is to help women become independent, to stand on their own feet and to know that they have rights. So violence prevention, while there has to be education, there is absolutely no doubt, while there has to be promotion of anti-violence, there is no doubt, and while we have to work at getting that message out, at the same time, more has to go into helping prevent violence by helping women be equal, by helping women have better incomes, for example.

I spoke last week with a woman who is a home care worker - and I will probably talk about this again tomorrow, but I am going to talk about it today also. She called me from the living room of one of the women in the group, there were five of them. I will not go into the details of her phone call because I will talk about that tomorrow when I speak in the private members' day. They had a very serious issue they wanted to talk to me about. What she said to me was: Ms Michael, we cannot go public. We cannot complain about this because if we do, if we complain about what we are going through and what we are seeing, we will lose our jobs. She said: We all have children's faces looking up at us. What she meant was that all of them were mothers, with children, working in home care. They could not afford to do anything that would mean that they would get fired because they have children depending on them. That is the issue for women, is that in a lot of cases women are the ones carrying the brunt.

So if we are going to help women when it comes to a violence prevention initiative, then we have to make sure that jobs where women dominate and where women are underpaid and that is, for example, in home care and in child care, these two areas where women predominate and where they are working for such terribly low wages, we have to see that their income goes up. Women who are in situations like that are prime to be in situations of violence. It is proven. Research shows that one of the things that keeps women most in violent situations is the fact that they are not economically independent, that they do not have enough money. They do not know where to go. It is rather terrifying for them to think about leaving the violent situation they are in because they do not know what is out there in the future. They do not know what happens when they leave it and walk into a shelter. If they can get their foot into the door of a shelter, if there is a shelter in their community.

If we are really going to look at violence prevention, we have to look at women's incomes. We have to look at the barriers that women face that is keeping them from being able to get jobs, and one of those big barriers is no child care. So it was very, very disappointing for me in this Budget, that once again this government, which has an active Women's Policy Office and it is a good Women's Policy Office. This government which has a provincial advisory council, it is at arm's length as it should be, but an advisory council from the community to advise them. This government which does have eight women's centres around the Province; eight women's centres where at this current time I think they are getting about $110,000 per women's centre. That this government which does have a structure in place, even though some of it is inadequate, we would love to see - I would like to see a good $200,000 go to every women's centre by the way.

This government has all kinds of pieces in its system, in its structure to tell it about barriers for women, to speak to it very loudly about the benefits of child care and early childhood training. This government which has all of these resources, that has access to women's voices out in the community, still will not hear the call for a child care program. I have to say that it really does discourage me. Did I have an expectation that maybe there would be a child care program in the Budget? I guess I did not expect it, I hoped. I hoped that we would see a plan in place saying: We cannot do it overnight but if we take year one, year two and year three, by the end of year three we hope to have a full child care program in this Province. Imagine what that would mean.

We know what it has meant in Quebec, where Quebec did put a full child care program in place and they have done an economic analysis. I have said this before in the House but I am going to say it again because it is so important, they have shown that the economy has gone up a number of percentage points because of more women in particular being in the workplace, and more women are in the workplace because they were able to put their children into child care spaces. For that reason, they are adding to the economy and the child care program is adding to the economy because of the new employment in the child care program as well.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of vision I would like to see this government have. I would like to see this government be just as excited about a child care program as it is about cutting red tape. I would like to see it just as excited about a child care program as it is about Nalcor Energy, because the children of this Province are just as much a part of the future of our Province as our energy program.

Mr. Speaker, I see my time is almost up. I thank you for being able to speak once again, to put forward once again issues that are extremely important, not just important to me as an individual or important to me because of the party I am with, but important to people out there. I am hearing these issues all the time. I know this government is hearing these issues all the time. I know my fellow MHAs in this House are hearing these issues all the time. I guess all I can do is keep speaking to the issues and keep demanding that this government hear what the people in the Province are asking.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. CORNECT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Merci Monsieur le président. C'est vraiment un privilege pour moi d'être ici aujourd'hui pour discuter le Budget 2009.

I just want to take some time, Mr. Speaker, to make a few comments with respect to the Estimates committee to which I was a member; that is the Social Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, this committee reviewed the Estimates of the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Municipal Affairs, Education, Health and Community Services, and of course, the Department of Justice.

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the overall Budget, and look at past budgets of this Administration, the bulk or the majority of our spending goes into the programs of these departments that offer and provide the social safety nets that the people of this Province need and request.

As we go through this important process, the budgetary process, we get an in-depth overview of the programs and spending of each department. As we went through each department, Mr. Speaker, it was obvious that tremendous work has been done in each of these departments and tremendous amounts of monies have been allocated or invested to ensure the delivery of services to the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

It was indeed great to see the solid and strong foundation that this Administration has built, the new initiatives, Mr. Speaker, we are embarking on, and this we are doing despite the challenges we face globally.

This process, Mr. Speaker, is a format as well to give us an indication of how programs and services are to be delivered and how it is to be implemented and rolled out. This spells out government's plan to deliver effective and efficient programs and services to its people.

Mr. Speaker, let me go through the departments and give an overview of each.

Firstly, the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, whose mandate is to work collaboratively with community, social and economic development partners to provide people with employment and income programs and services that promote dignity, self-reliance and independence and reduce barriers to employment. These include, Mr. Speaker, income support services, employment and career services, youth services, and labour market and immigration policy, planning and information services. This also includes, Mr. Speaker, persons with disabilities, labour relations, and une agence qui est vraiment prôche au coeur le department des affaires de la francophonie.

Let's look a little closer, Mr. Speaker, at some of the initiatives within this department. Despite these economic difficult times, we are staying the course and continuing to build our long-term comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy. Our current investment, on an annual basis, to prevent, reduce, and alleviate poverty, is now over $132 million a year. That is astounding, Mr. Speaker!

National experts, I tell the Leader of the NDP, in poverty reduction, such as Canada Without Poverty 2000 and the National Council of Welfare, continually praise our approach to poverty reduction and hold it up as a model for the country. Analyses done by these groups show that we are seeing the positive impacts in our investments. According to Statistics Canada, Mr. Speaker, average family income in our Province has shown an increase of approximately 20 per cent when inflation is taken into account.

Another stat worth noting, Mr. Speaker, is that in our Province, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the percentage of families with incomes less than $10,000 a year decreased by over 10 per cent, from 3.6 per cent in 1996 to 2.5 per cent in 2006. The year 2006, Mr. Speaker, is the latest stat year that I could find. This is more than double the national decrease for those earning less than $10,000, which was 4.5 per cent in 2006.

Today, Mr. Speaker, we have 9,000 fewer people on income support compared to 2003. Since August, 2006, Mr. Speaker, over 4,000 income support clients have gone to work, as of December 31, 2008, as a result of the package of initiatives contained in our Poverty Reduction Strategy.

This year, an investment of $3 million: Firstly, to increase the subsidy rates for children in regulated child care; secondly, to expand and strengthen existing family resource programs; and thirdly, Mr. Speaker, to increase funding for early intervention services for pre-school children at risk or with a developmental delay or disability. These initiatives build on the Early Learning and Child Care Plan and on Poverty Reduction Strategy initiatives for the past three years, such as: increase the mother-baby nutritional program; increases, Mr. Speaker, to the Newfoundland and Labrador Child Benefit program; increased funding for healthy baby clubs; and the development of a home visiting program to connect families with young children to the services they need.

Mr. Speaker, we eliminated school fees. We provide free text books to all grades. Funding is provided to the Jump Start program, Kids Eat Smart, and community youth networks, to increase social inclusion and for children to access nutritious foods.

This is where we are putting the funding, Mr. Speaker. These are the services and these are the programs that people have been asking for, for years and years, and I am proud to say that this administration has delivered.

Mr. Speaker, the provision of dental benefits to youth aged thirteen to seventeen in all low income families.

Added to these initiatives that improve the overall wellbeing of all families, we introduced a prescription drug program for all families, Mr. Speaker, and all individuals working for low wages.

We saw increases and the indexation of income support rates, which have seen income support rates increased by 11.6 per cent since 2005. This year, Mr. Speaker, in April when people on Income Support saw another raise, I had calls to my office congratulating me as their MHA and this government for the increases they have seen over the last couple of years; the first time they have seen that in years.

For seniors we have made a number of significant investments this year, including: $7.5 million to change the financial assessment process for home support; social housing units for low income seniors; and significant expansion for low income tax reduction. Mr. Speaker, unlike what the Leader of the NDP thinks, Budget 2009 addresses the issues of homelessness, as well as promotes housing stability.

I can talk all session long, Mr. Speaker, all year long, about the initiatives in the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, but now I will move on to the Department of Municipal Affairs.

The mandate of the Department of Municipal Affairs, Mr. Speaker, is to support the financial stability and viability of municipalities and the efficient and effective delivery of municipal services. It assists municipalities in meeting their infrastructure needs and provides financial and administrative tools to support sound municipal governance, and the fire and emergency services agency responsible for all the coordination of the overall services in fire and emergency services.

Mr. Speaker, we are spending this year in the areas of community enhancement, municipal infrastructure, emergency measures and so forth. We are investing $9.5 million to advance the Provincial Waste Management Strategy. What an initiative! I know, in my district we are part of the Western Waste Management Committee. It is up and running now, Mr. Speaker, and it is our goal to have its full implementation by the year 2016.

Government will continue in its cost sharing ratio that is par excellence. We have towns, Mr. Speaker, and local service districts that can build and improve upon the infrastructure of water and sewer programs in their municipalities. In my district, Mr. Speaker, there is only one town on an eighty-twenty cost-shared ratio. Other towns are on ninety-ten.

The Gas Tax Program was used to improve municipal infrastructure in Cape St. George, Port au Port East, and others are working on plans to use their share of the gas tax money.

Mr. Speaker, we also considered the Estimates of the Department of Education which is responsible for developing and administering a provincial system of education that encourages and promotes all students to achieve their potential. It administers, as well, the primary, elementary, secondary, post-secondary, and training schools. It is also responsible for the provision of literacy, library and information services and operates the provincial School for the Deaf

Et aussi Monsieur le président, le département de l'Éducation est responsable pour le conseil scolaire francophone provincial pour l'éducation de la langue premiére française.

Mr. Speaker, $121.5 million has been allocated for school infrastructure, including $40 million to increase the allocation for repairs and maintenance; increase of the K-12 system to a tune of $50 million to support salary increases; the implementation of the ISSP/Pathways report and programming for students; an investment of $400,000 to support school board elections in November of this year; $300,000 to enhance the school bus inspection program; and $5.9 million of this year's investment in tuition freeze brings the total to $71 million since 2005. In addition, Mr. Speaker to the $5.9 million for the tuition freeze, $5 million is included to eliminate the interest on Newfoundland and Labrador Students Loans benefiting approximately 49,000 people; an increase in the amount of financial assistance students can get upfront, non-repayable needs-based grants; and to decrease the amount of required spousal contributions to give married students greater access to assistance.

Mr. Speaker, this year, as well, $2.5 million has been allocated to assist Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook with the transition to its autonomy.

We also discussed the Estimates of the Department of Health and Community Services whose mandate is for the overall direction of the Province's Heath and Community Services system, which provides services and programs aimed at the prevention of disease and the promotion, restoration, and maintenance of health and well-being.

Last year, Health and Community Services spent $2,280,507,700 and this year its budget will increase again to an estimated expenditure of $2,558,854,200. These are investments to improve the delivery of health care in response to the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry on Hormone Receptor Testing and the Task Force on Adverse Health Events.

Mr. Speaker, an additional $3.5 million this year to hire thirty new salaried physicians; $2 million to advance professional development activities in the regional health authorities and enhance their capacity to address workforce recruitment and retention needs; $1.6 million to expand the School of Nursing by ten seats, the School of Pharmacy by twenty seats, the School of Social Work bachelors' program by fifteen seats and the Social Work masters' program by fifteen seats, and $450,000 to create a social worker fast track program.

An additional $50 million for diagnostic, medical and other equipment; I am very proud to say that this Administration again this year is putting equipment in Sir Thomas Roddick Hospital, right in beautiful Stephenville, in my district, and they are going to set up an endoscopy unit.

In community care, Mr. Speaker, we are investing $7.5 million for the implementation of a new financial assessment process for determining eligibility for home support services, to increase the personal monthly allowance to $150 for clients in long-term care and community supports system; $16.5 million to support a $1.71 per hour increase in subsidy rates for home care support workers.

Mr. Speaker, we are also creating a new department with responsibility for child, youth and family services. I was very pleased and proud to hear that our Premier named my colleague who shares the Town of Stephenville with me, the hon. Member for St. George's-Stephenville East, will now be the new Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the Department of Justice who provides legal services to government and is primarily responsible for the protection of citizens of the Province in respect to their persons or property; $6 million this year for corrections, for a total investment of over $37 million; over $2 million investment in training, staffing initiatives and programming; $1.8 million to improve the physical infrastructure of existing facilities. I am very pleased to see in the Budget this year that $230,000 has been allocated for the improvements to security and living areas of the West Coast Correctional Centre in Stephenville; more than $100,000 for the Newfoundland and Labrador Correctional Centre for Women for renovations to space used for medical and programming matters; elimination of the $5,000 training fee for correctional officers to enhance recruitment.

Mr. Speaker, we are also investing in the purchase of equipment for Inland Fish Enforcement Program, and additional funding for the RCMP; $100,000 for the Multicultural Women's Organization to support the integration of multicultural women; increased funding for the eight women's centres; and $304,000 to support a specialized Family Violence Court.


Mr. Speaker, despite the economic turmoil in the world, we are spending. Although we may show a deficit of $750 million, we could have taken the easy route. We could have cut and slashed like the early 1990s of the previous Administrations; we could have fired and laid off; we could have cut programs and services. No, Mr. Speaker, we are staying the course.

Mr. Speaker, this concludes my remarks on the Budget Estimates Concurrence for this year. Again, we have built a strong foundation. Budget 2009 will benefit the people and the communities that make up our Province with targeted expenditures in the areas of health, education, poverty reduction, infrastructure and economic development. We stand strong on our record of prudent fiscal management with a solid foundation upon which to weather the storm, a financial storm which has threatened economies around the world. Economists are now recommending, and have recommended, to take the measures that we as a Province and as a government have been doing for the past five years: infrastructure spending, creating employment, lowering taxes, reducing the debt to interest costs and, of course, one of our great, I guess, attributes that we have is prudent fiscal management.

Mr. Speaker, we will stay the course. We will stay that course for a prosperous and self-reliant Newfoundland and Labrador.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Merci bien.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER (Collins): The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MS JONES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wanted to speak today on the Concurrence Estimates for a number of the departments under the Social Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, just to outline the last couple of days in the House and late last week, we were talking about the different committees of various departments, and basically what we did is, over the course of the last six or eight weeks, MHAs have been meeting outside of the regular hours of the House of Assembly to go through each and every budget of every department of government, and also an opportunity to ask questions around those departments. We had the opportunity to ask those questions directly to the ministers, who are the lead people in those departments, and their bureaucrats, whether that be deputy ministers or assistant deputy ministers or directors.

Mr. Speaker, under the heading of the Social Services Committee there are various departments that are looked at; one, of course, being Health and Community Services, which I am the critic for, but also the Department of Education, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, the Department of Justice, and I think there are probably even some other departments, but certainly those in particular were discussed under this particular heading, and the expenditures of those departments and so on.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to start by talking about some issues within the Department of Health and Community Services. As you know, this is one of the larger departments of government. It is a department that is all-encompassing in terms of health care services, and to the date of these Estimates also included all of the services being provided under Child, Youth and Family Services, which now has been broken out into a separate department by government and has a minister appointed to it. I am not sure if the department has anything else established yet, in terms of its structure, or how it will do service delivery in the Province, but I know that is in the works by government, and I am sure the transition will happen over the course of the next number of months.

Mr. Speaker, Health and Community Services alone, to give people an idea, has a budget estimate in this Province this year of – I am looking at the numbers here to find what the total expenditure would be for that department. I think it is something like $2.5 billion this year that will be spent in that particular department, that will be spent on everything from equipment for hospitals to public sector employees to health boards to the delivery mechanism of programs, whether that be on the community health side or on the medical and clinical services side, to deal with everything from prescription drugs to drug subsidies to new therapies and formulas being added, dealing with home care, mental health care, and mental health care services. All of these things are included. Even the School of Medicine which falls under Memorial University is dealt with under the Estimates for this particular department. That will give you a little idea of the kinds of services and what is entailed in this particular department.

Mr. Speaker, we had an opportunity for nearly five hours to examine the Estimates of this department and to ask questions of the minister and of his officials. I must say, they were very forthcoming with information. It is really funny, because when you deal with the Estimates in a department and in committee, it always seems like you get more answers, better details, better information than you ever do in Question Period in the House of Assembly. In fact, I think that at least four or five times a year we should be examining the expenditures of government departments to see where money is being spent and if it is being targeted where they had anticipated or voted it to go in the first place. It is where you get more information and certainly more specific information.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to start off today talking about the situation with nurses in the Province, only because it is relative, it is current, and it is unfolding even as we speak here in the House of Assembly. Today, before I came to the House, probably only fifteen or twenty minutes before I came to the House of Assembly, I was notified that the Nurses' Union had given government notice that they would be going into strike position, that within seven days they would actually launch a strike in the Province, but it would be a strike that would be different from most that we have seen. It will not be a picket line strike. We will not have to walk through nurses with picket signs on the parking lot to get to work everyday, because the kind of strike they will launch is regarding overtime. None of the nurses in our system will be working any overtime as they are doing now.

We are aware of the amount of overtime, not aware literally in terms of the number of hours or numbers of shifts, but we are certainly aware of many cases where nurses are working double shifts, where they have to stay behind to work an extra six or eight hours after they have finished a complete shift. These are the kinds of stories that have been communicated to us time and time again. There is a reason why that occurs. It occurs because there is a tremendous shortage of nurses in our health care system. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we are short anywhere from 1200 to 1400 nurses today in hospitals all around this Province.

Our recruitment efforts have not hit the milestones that we had hoped they would, simply because of a lot of other factors, factors which government has addressed in the last round of negotiations but certainly have not been put into play at this stage. Even though there are offers of higher wages, there are offers of other recruitment initiatives, none of these things have become effective to date, simply because they are outstanding issues that have not yet been settled between nurses and government.

Two of those issues have been very prominent in the media. One of them deals directly with market adjustment, and this seems to be the issue, I think, more so than any other, more so than the second issue, that is really holding nurses back this time. Mr. Speaker, they obviously feel strongly about this, because if they did not, over 60 per cent of their members would not have voted to walk the picket line as opposed to accepting these conditions and staying to work and taking their raises; which tells me, because it is non-monetary, that this is very important for them.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, they see market adjustment as a way of breaking unions, of disempowering unions, and this is what their issue is. They take a lot of pride, as workers, as nurses, in having a collective body represent them, a collective body that will lobby for their issues and campaign for their issues. Market adjustment is really being seen by people in the profession, and by a lot of people in the public, as a way that government can break unions and disempower them, to ensure that they do not have the strength to be able to carry forward with mandates like we have seen in the past.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, in an e-mail I received from one nurse in particular, this is what they write: the problem with market adjustment clause is that it is so vague that government can promise the world to one nurse. A new nurse can be promised more holidays, the best shifts, no night shifts, no Christmases that they would have to work, they would have the first pick of all holidays, and to be fair, they could even be given more holidays than the ordinary nurse under the current collective agreement.

Mr. Speaker, these are the concerns that other nurses are expressing. They are saying that market adjustment gives government the power to arbitrarily negotiate with individual nurses, depending on the circumstances. I heard the Minister of Finance say that myself in Question Period this week, but government putting in place specific benefits for nurses during a specific situation which warrants a different benefit has happened before in this Province. In fact, I represent a district where this has happened.

Going back a few years ago, I had a problem in my district with recruiting nurses. All the clinics in my riding were all rural, small clinics. Most of these nurses were being flown in to work in an isolated outpost and they had to deal with every situation; every clinical emergency twenty-four hours a day. They did not have the backup support of doctors, of specialists, readily available under the one roof. In fact, the nearest doctors and specialists were miles away by aircraft for them to be able to access those services.

So, Mr. Speaker, we were in a situation in the Coast of Labrador, whereby we were asking nurses to take up jobs in these outpost clinics and to work solo twenty-four seven. Yet, they were under the same collective agreements as all the other nurses in the Province.

Well, Mr. Speaker, government fixed that problem. They fixed it, not by taking away the rights of the union to speak for workers. They did it not by bringing in and enforcing clauses like market adjustment in contracts. They did it by sitting down at the table with the union, with representatives of the health boards, with nurses in that area that were impacted and they worked out an agreement. They worked out a special benefit agreement where nurses who would go and work in this area of the Province would get a recruitment and retention bonus, where they would get paid a bonus because of the added responsibility because of the isolation, because there was a reflection and an understanding by government and by the health authorities that these nurses were being placed in a different position than most in the Province. So there did not need to be any market adjustment clauses forced down the throats of nurses and unions to be able to fix those kinds of problems. It has been done before. What was done and how it was done worked, and it is still working today.

Mr. Speaker, I have trouble buying into the argument that is being posed by the government. In addition, Mr. Speaker, there are many nurses out there. I know that government says, that is not what it means. Well, nobody has ever clearly explained that it means something differently than what they stating, but nurses out there are stating publicly. They are stating in letters and e-mails that I have received from them that what market adjustment does is it gives government the power to bring forward and negotiate terms of employment with individual nurses in this Province. If there is a shortage of nurses in the O.R. room or in the lab at the Health Sciences and they are unable to fill those positions, then government can go out and put forward some kind of a special benefit, negotiate a special deal with a nurse to take that position.

Say, for example, we look at the AIDS and Infection Control Clinic in St. John's today. We look at that clinic, Mr. Speaker, where the only nurse practitioner who worked in that clinic, who dealt with the AIDS patients in this Province resigned her position because it was too much stress. She was overworked. She had a lot of burden of responsibility placed on her for dealing with some very sick people in the Province. She had no physician support as the infectious control doctors in the Province resigned their seats and left Newfoundland and Labrador to work in Ontario. So, Mr. Speaker, this one nurse practitioner was left with all of this responsibility.

Now, Mr. Speaker, government, under the market adjustment, will have the option to go in and offer specific benefits to that nurse, whether that be around pay, bonuses, holidays, work schedule, to be able to stay and work in that particular clinic. Some might say: Well, what is wrong with that? The position is vacant, we cannot get anyone to work there, what is wrong with that? What is wrong is this, Mr. Speaker, that the nurse who works in that clinic is no different than the nurse who works in the diabetes clinic up the road. There is no difference. Although the nurse in the diabetes clinic might have been there for twenty-five years and may have two support staff around her and may have two physicians they can call upon at any time, and is not as overworked and does not have the same burden and responsibility and has more supports in the system, maybe that is the real reason there is not a problem there. Is it right that the nurse who has punched twenty years in the clinic down the road has to be paid less, has to work shift work, has to get different holiday pay, different holiday time, than the new nurse who has been hired in the clinic next door, who is serving another different group of patients? This is the problem that nurses see. That is just one example. There are many examples. You can look on any floor in any hospital in the Province and you will see the same problem.

Look out in Gander, where last year when I was in Gander hospital, they were short – I do not know what it was at the time – over thirty, forty nurses or something in that hospital alone. Mr. Speaker, they needed nurses. I know, I was on the floors. I was on the floors. I talked to them and I know that they desperately needed nurses. I was talking to nurses who almost every shift was getting asked to stay behind because there was a shortage. I talked to nurses who were working double shifts. Every single pay period had one or two double shifts. I talked to nurses who were plucked out of other jobs and put on floors to do overtime shifts because they had a shortage. Do you think it was fair? Do you think it would be fair at that hospital in Gander, on that medicine ward where there was a shortage of nurses, that they could go out and bring in five more nurses to work there and that those nurses would be offered a salary higher than the ones who had been there for the last fifteen years? Do you think that is fair? Is there any reason why nurses would not be excited about having that clause incorporated in their contract? It is because they feel it is not right. They feel that there needs to be equal treatment.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think any of those nurses have a problem with paying a new nurse a bit more money to get them, but I think they have a huge problem with paying them more than they are getting for doing the same job. That is where they really have the problem.

So Mr. Speaker, this is the real issue. This is the real issue. I read the press release today that the nurses' union sent out, and do you know what I seen in this? This was not a union who was ready to bundle up all the troops and take them on the street, because this union and these nurses know better than anyone else in this Province today the state of the health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador. They know the dire situation that exists in every one of our hospitals. They are there every day, when there is an O.R. room being closed at the Janeway and children are being sent home without their surgeries. They are there every day at St. Clare's when the ICU is to capacity, when the ICU is to capacity and there are no beds, and at the last minute Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So are being told that you will not get your surgery today. It is those nurses, Mr. Speaker, that are every day in the Health Sciences Centre, in the emergency area, where there are stretchers with people lying on them in the corridors for up to two and three days because there is no bed to put them in.

These are the same nurses who, despite the fact that they had the vote to walk the street, decided they would launch a strike of overtime because they know the vulnerability that exists in our system. They know how fragile it is. They know that today in the hospitals in this city there are wait-lists for every single kind of surgery and diagnostic test, and they know that if they just carte blanche walked out what that would mean to patient care; but, do you know what really astonished me in all of this? It was the reaction of the Minister of Finance.

I was astonished, Mr. Speaker, at the blatant arrogance that he showed towards the decision that was made by the nurses. To stand in his place today and to say that these nurses were doing what they are doing only because they did not have the support of their people, of the people in the nurses' union. Talk about inciting people to act. If there ever were words to incite a union to mobilize itself, I heard them today and I heard them from the Minister of Finance.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, the government opposite should be out there trying to find a way to resolve this and have it over with. They should be out there today saying how pleased they are that nurses are only going to cut back overtime and not close down the O.R. rooms in this Province, because in closing the O.R. rooms, in walking the picket line, it means that people will not get the services that they need. It means that more people with cancer today who need operations will have to wait longer. It means that more people who are sick and need tests done will have to wait a lot longer to get them. It means that people who have already been diagnosed and who need surgeries that may not be life-threatening, like knee replacements and hip replacements, will have to wait months and months longer to get it done. While a lot of these surgeries may not be life-threatening, they certainly cause people a great deal of pain and discomfort. For many people it means they are off work, they cannot work because of that disability, and therefore they do not have an income.

Government today should not be inciting nurses to take more action, but really complimenting them for trying to preserve the integrity of a health care system which they are not doing. If they really wanted to, as a government, they could ensure that there is not one O.R. that ever closes in this Province because of a nurses' strike, because they could send the issues that are on the table today to binding arbitration. It does not cost government any money.

I listened to the Minister of Finance today get up and spew a quote from Hansard when a previous Liberal government back some years ago - I am not even sure if I was part of it at the time - said we cannot go to binding arbitration. Do you know why they could not go to binding arbitration? Because it was on monetary issues, and everyone in this House should know - if they do not know, they should know - that when you go to binding arbitration the ruling sticks. If that ruling says, as a government, you have to pay out 10 per cent more, 15 per cent more in earnings, then you are legally bound to do so. You live by the ruling.

Very few governments will ever go to binding arbitration in cases like that because governments need to control expenditures. That is the way that budgets work. If we were dealing with a monetary issue today, would I be pushing this Premier and this government to go to binding arbitration? Probably not. I have already said publicly myself, if I was the Premier of the Province, I would not go to binding arbitration on monetary issues in a dispute with nurses, but I also said I would definitely go to binding arbitration on any non-monetary issues because those issues are then being dealt with by an independent party. That is the option that this government has that other governments did not have. That is the option that exists for them today.

The reason why they would want to continue to have this dispute with nurses when they have settled on the financial agreements, when they have settled on all the other clauses, is beyond me, Mr. Speaker. It is beyond me. All I see here is a stalemate between the leader and the head of the union and the leader and the head of the government.

What I see, Mr. Speaker, is an option, a very clear option, that would protect the integrity of the health care system, provide services for sick people in this Province who need it, and government will not go down that road. Even though at the end of the day it means they will never have to write a cheque, they will never have to spend one dollar irregardless of the ruling, yet they will not go down that road.

What does that tell you? What does that tell you about a government who makes that decision? You know what it tells me? It tells me that they would rather fight, Mr. Speaker, than they would see consistency in health care in this Province. It tells me that they have become so arrogant that it has to be my way or no way. That is what it tells me, and that is what it tells a lot of people in this Province.

I could tell you today that if this government was being asked to go to binding arbitration on wages or financial benefits for nurses, the public would probably not even support it. The public would not even probably support it, but because they are being asked to do so on issues that do not pertain to the public purse but really pertain to policy decisions and disputes between two parties the public fails to see, they fail to see, why people have to be turned away from hospital rooms in this Province because of a dispute over a policy issue between the government and the nurses.

Mr. Speaker, I can honestly tell you, I fail to see it as well. I fail to see it as well. We have seen all the time in governments, issues in the fishing industry, for example, issues in the fishing industry which are of no monetary cost to government where there have been disputes between two parties, where independent people have been called in to resolve it. Independent people have been called in to resolve the disagreement, the difference of opinion between two parties. We do it in the Management Commission of the House of Assembly, of which the Government House Leader and the Minister of Finance are a part, where we have had disputes in the management committee between officers of the House of Assembly, where we have referred it to independent people to review and make those decisions because that is what you do when there is a dispute, when you have a loggerhead, when you have two groups who cannot come to a consensus and agree upon the one thing.

For some reason, Mr. Speaker, this government does not want to hear of it. They do not want to hear of it because there is an attitude that prevails, and the attitude says: It is my way or no way. That is what we are seeing here today. We are seeing that either this is going to be done my way, and I am going to get what I am looking for, or you can walk. The OR's can close down and the beds can shut down and the nurses can be on the street and people can go on a wait list for those hip replacements, those surgeries and those diagnostic tests, but it is going to be my way or it is not going to happen. Very irresponsible governance, I say to the members opposite, very irresponsible governance!

In fact, Mr. Speaker, if there was not another option to resolve this I do not know if I would even have this view, because I think that what has been negotiated so far with nurses is a good deal. I honestly do. I looked at the offer that government made and the wages, I looked at the concessions that they made, and I have to say: Well done, yourselves. Well done, yourselves! A good offer and a respectable one, but why does it have to come down to these two issues? If there was not another way out, if there wasn't another option that government could choose – and they are the only ones who can choose it, no one else can choose it, they have to make the decision - if there wasn't another option I would have a different opinion. But, knowing what I do, and knowing that today at their disposal there is a system in place in this Province called arbitration where they can refer those issues, where they can get dealt with and everything is resolved, whatever the outcome is, whether it is in government's favour, whether it is in the nurses' favour, whether it is one issue resolved to government's satisfaction and one issue resolved to nurse's satisfaction, it is the end of it. Both parties then live by those decisions.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, the only real reason I have ever heard the Minister of Finance give in this Province for wanting these clauses incorporated into the nurses' agreement is because all other public sector employees accepted them. Mr. Speaker, it is like this: If forty-three of them over there go and jump off a cliff, is the forty-fourth one going to jump off when they know that none of them survived? Is that it, Mr. Speaker? Is that the way they operate, to say that because 30,000 other people in the public sector have accepted this, therefore, they should accept it? Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of attitude that I see. The attitude that I see here is that all forty-four of us will line up, forty-three will jump off the cliff and none of you will survive, and then I will decide what I am going to do. It makes no sense. Where is the justification in an argument like that? That is the only reason the minister ever gave. The only reason he ever gave, as to why nurses should accept those policy clauses in this agreement, is because the others accepted it.

Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing I have learned from this Premier, it is that the status quo is not always acceptable. This Premier has made a career on fighting the status quo. This Premier has said over and over again: Because everyone else does it does not mean we are going to do it. Because everyone else does it, does not mean it is acceptable to us. Mr. Speaker, I hear that speech ringing in my ears when I go to bed at night, I have heard it so many times from the Premier opposite.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, they fail to see the perspective espoused by others. They fail to see the perspective that nurses have; the nurses who stand and say: Just because it was good enough for all the rest, does not mean it is the status quo for me. It does not mean it is good enough for my people and the people that I represent.

I say to the government and the minister, take a chapter out of your own book. Listen to your own advice. Listen to the stand you have taken yourself. You should be looking at these nurses today in awe. You should be looking at these nurses in awe, I say to you. They are following down the road of government's own perspective on issues like this. Yet, Mr. Speaker, you have failed to give them the respect, you have failed to give them the independent process that they are looking for to make this decision, and I think that is wrong.

I do now know why government would fear arbitration. I have no idea why they would fear arbitration. If they are so convinced that it is the best thing to do, to incorporate things like market adjustment into these agreements, and that there are good sound recommendations, there are good arguments for it, why should they even fear going to arbitration? Why should it even be an issue? If they are so confident it is the right thing to be doing, surely any independent person will weigh the information and see the merits of their argument as well; unless, of course, the merits do not exist, unless, of course, there is no factual information to back it up, Mr. Speaker. Then it is an entirely different story, and it is one, Mr. Speaker, in which the arbitrator would choose an entirely different position.

Mr. Speaker, there are many people out there who do not understand, today, why this issue has reached the level that it has reached. There are many people out there who do not understand this and cannot, for the life of them, understand why government, today, wants to see these nurses walking the picket line as opposed to trying to resolve the issue. There is no way to get them to understand it, based on the answers that we have gotten from the Minister of Finance, because there has not been any real justification for pushing these two policy clauses as part of an agreement.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to hear lots about this issue, I am sure, as the days and weeks unfold, but first of all we need to know how this is going to impact the system immediately. We need to know that. We need to know how it is going to impact upon those people who need services today. We need to know how much overtime is being performed in our hospitals by these nurses. How many overtime shifts are worked in this Province on a weekly basis? Is it 100? Is it 200? Is it 500 overtime shifts worked in this Province on a weekly basis? We do not know that, so we do not know what the impact is going to be.

Mr. Speaker, we also need to know what happens in cases where we already have a shortage of 1,200 or 1,400 nurses in this Province, and all of a sudden those who we have been depending upon do not come in to work those overtime shifts. Does it mean that there are still going to be less patients in beds in our hospitals? Does it still mean that some ICU beds will have to close down? Does it mean that there will be only so many surgeries done on a daily basis? Is that what this means, because we have not received any information regarding this? We have not received any information communicated to the public to date of what the impact will be.

Now we know what the impact would be if the nurses decided today that they were going to walk the picket lines and they were going to stand out in front of this building everyday with pickets. We know then what it means, that we would have only critical, essential services being provided in hospitals in the Province. What does it mean when those nurses are gracious enough to not walk the picket line but rather launch a strike in a different manner? To launch a strike that pertains to overtime. What does it mean then? What does it mean then when you still do not have the number of bodies, the number of nurses to call upon to work in each and every one of those shifts?

So, Mr. Speaker, there will be lots of details I am sure in the next few days as we move along, but in seven days from now the people in this Province will feel a difference in the health care sector. They will feel the difference in the health care sector simply because of this decision by nurses. The only ones today that can stop this from going to a full-scale strike, can stop this from turning into a picket line strike in the Province, is the government opposite. They are the only people who are going to be able to stop this from happening now, and unfortunately they have only one option available to them. They have only one option available to them. If they choose not to take it, well then I am sure we will see more action by nurses over the course of the next few days.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to talk about a couple of other issues in the health care sector because I only have twenty minutes left, and I also want to talk about some issues in our education system before my time is up.

One of the things I want to talk about, because it is not just nurses that we have a problem with in our system - that is the problem we have today. That is the issue we are dealing with today. As a result of it, we have things like the ICUs in the city hospitals that are filled. In fact, they have been filled for a few days. In fact, I talked to some nurses from St. Clare's who tell me that the ICU at St. Clare's is almost filled on any given day. There is hardly a day goes by that there is people not contacted at the last minute and told that surgeries are going to be cancelled.

Mr. Speaker, the other problem we have is with physicians, the number of physicians in the Province. In fact, last year we spent nearly $8 million on locums in the Province, and that is bringing doctors in to work shifts that we have no doctors to fill. That means that in areas where you have a significant number of patients, where you have clinical operations and you do not have enough physicians to perform the services or to staff those hospitals, then what that means is that they have to bring people in to do it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we have heard of cases in the Province where we have had up to 3,000 and 4,000 people, I think, in Grand Falls at one point; 3,000 and 4,000 people on a list, patients, looking for a doctor. Looking for a family doctor, a general doctor, somewhere they could take themselves or their family members when they got sick. They had thousands of people on a waitlist waiting for a doctor to come in to look at that list to see if they were going to take them or not. We have seen these situations.

In Labrador West, for instance, we had a situation up there where there were not enough physicians to look after the demand for patients. There were not enough physicians there to be able to provide the service. We have seen all of those issues. They have existed in every single area of the Province. We know that it is still a problem because any time that we are spending up to nearly $8 million a year on locums, that is a substantial amount of money for temporary people to come into the Province, or to move from one area of the Province to the other to fill in for two weeks here or three weeks there or a month here. This is what happens, and they are being paid at a much higher cost. In fact, most locums are paid a great deal higher than salaried physicians or family physicians that would currently work in those particular jobs. So that was one of the other issues that we certainly raised during the Estimates.

The other issue was with regard to the accumulated debt of the boards in the Province. As you know, health boards are the providers of all health care services, through transfer dollars from the federal government to the provincial government combined with the Province's own revenues, are transferred out to health authorities in the Province so that these health authorities can deliver services to the people. Well these health boards have an accumulated debt in this Province of $111 million. They have an accumulated debt that they are carrying year over year, but yet we expect them to be performing first-class services for all the people of the Province.

Every day we hear of incidences in our hospitals, whether it is coming out of the Labrador Health Board, out of the Central Health Board region, out of the Western Health Board region, or out of the Eastern Health Board region where obviously we hear many more issues. Every day we are hearing issues with regard to the administration of health care to people who cannot access the system, to people that are having problems. Yet, we expect these boards to be doing 100 per cent service delivery, to have no problems, to have everything on par when they are running deficits of over $100 million.

Mr. Speaker, that in itself is an issue. Why government does not look at, at a time when there is sufficient revenues to do so like we have seen in the last couple of years with surplus budgets, why they do not choose to pay down those particular deficits and allow those boards to continue to run without having this debt, I do not understand it, because one of the crucial things in health care is stabilizing the delivery agency, and that means stabilizing the boards that deliver this service. Why the government does not do that, I do not know, but they are quick to point the finger.

Every single day when I ask questions in this House regarding incidences in Eastern Health, the minister stands and claims he knows nothing about it. He has no knowledge of it. I believe him, Mr. Speaker, because I think he has limited knowledge on a lot of the things that are going on within Eastern Health. Mr. Speaker, at the same time, how do you expect these boards to be performing at the capacity that you want them to when they are trying to pay down debt? In order to pay down debt they either have to cut services, reduce workforce, save money somehow, or they have to collect more money to pay it. If they are not collecting that more money there is only one way to do it, and that is by saving money. There is only one way to save money in health care, and that is something has to go. Something has to go. There has to be a reduction someplace. Mr. Speaker, that is usually how it works.

One of the other issues that we continuously have raised to us is with regard to long-term care, because we know that one of the problems in the health care sector is not just with the ICUs being blocked. Most of the times the ICUs are blocked is because the beds upstairs are blocked, and some people may be in ICU a day, two days, even three days longer than they actually need to be because there is no bed on the floor to move them to. The reason there is no bed on the floor to move them to is because there are people in those beds who have been released from hospital but have nowhere to go because they do not have the home supports to be able to go home or they are waiting to get into a long-term care facility which has no openings.

Mr. Speaker, if you cannot get people who are being released out of the beds in the hospitals and into another suitable arrangement then you cannot move those people out of ICU into those beds on the floor and move more people into the O.R. and into the ICU.

Mr. Speaker, government no doubt has a strategy around long-term care. In fact, they have probably invested more money in long-term care than any government at one time ever in our history, and I will be the first to recognize that. From the long-term care in Corner Brook, the long-term care in Goose Bay, the long-term care new facility in Clarenville, to the one now that they are looking at in Carbonear. In addition to that, they are doing the assessments on Hoyles-Escasoni in St. John's. The problem, Mr. Speaker, is the capacity. They are replacing facilities but they are not expanding capacity.

We live in a Province today where Statistics Canada will tell you that we have an aging population. We have a population that is getting older. We have a population that is getting sicker. In fact, Mr. Speaker, we have in this Province today the highest rates of disease of some provinces in Canada. I actually had the list here from the study that was done, and I was going to share it with you. I may in a minute, if I happen to find it.

Mr. Speaker, at the same time we are not expanding the capacity in those facilities. For example, in the facility in Corner Brook, which is due to be completed by 2010, we still have eighty beds in that facility but yet we have a demand for more beds. We are replacing a facility in Goose Bay, but we are closing down the existing facility, the Paddon Home, so it is not generating additional capacity. This is the issue. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I understand from the facilities that are being looked at in St. John's today, that are being looked at in St. John's, it will be, again, a replacement of capacity.

When you take into effect that we are not creating new spaces, and we are living in a Province where the population is getting older, where, according to Statistics Canada Health Indicators for 2008, we have the highest incidence of cervical and colon cancer in the country, we have the highest rates of asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure, we have the highest rates of coronary artery bypass surgeries that are being performed, Mr. Speaker, when you look at those indicators you will find that we are not heading in a very positive direction when it comes to an aging province. We are not. We have to deal with these factors.

Mr. Speaker, this same study also recognizes that Newfoundland and Labrador spends the second-highest amount per capita on people of any other province in Canada. Just think about that. We are spending the most money but we have the worst performance in a lot of these critical health areas. That should tell us that we need to change the way that we are doing some things.

Mr. Speaker, I could talk at great length about other issues in health care, but I do want to talk a little bit about some incidences in education, and in particular what we have seen in recent days, with a fire again today in a school in St. John's.

Mr. Speaker, in the past number of weeks and months – in fact, if we go back to April and May of last year, in the House of Assembly, I asked questions day after day after day about fire inspections and safety inspections in schools in this Province. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I almost got tired of listening to myself asking the questions and getting no answers.

Mr. Speaker, this all started when government mandated personal care homes in the Province to conform to existing legislation that said they had to meet proper fire and safety standards, which meant they had to install sprinkling systems. Okay, no problem with that. That was the law; they should conform to the law.

The issue was, however, that government did not do a check of their own public buildings. In fact, there were dozens of hospital facilities owned by the government in this Province that did not meet fire and safety standards and, in fact, were turned down by the Fire Commissioner. Of course, when they realized that they ran out and they had the Fire Commissioner's office do a full assessment on the health care facilities in the Province. As a result of it, a number of them were identified with deficiencies and to date a lot of these deficiencies have been corrected. Not all of them. Not all of them, because some of these hospitals were due to be replaced, like the one in Labrador West that was due to be replaced, I think, five years ago and it has not started yet, but some of them were due to be replaced so therefore they did not follow through with the fire standards and the sprinkling systems in those facilities.

As a result of that, Mr. Speaker, it called into question the schools in the Province: how schools in this Province are being inspected for fire and life safety issues. What we realized was this: that in a school today in the Province there is no protocol or process or regulatory process, I should say, for school inspections for fire and life safety issues. Now, isn't that something? It does not exist.

I am not saying it should only exist today because we raise it. I am saying that once we realize that there are not proper processes and protocols it is the responsibility of the government to act on it.

Mr. Speaker, this is what we have discovered: that in schools today there is a list on a page about the size of this piece of paper. In fact, I have it up in my office, and on it there are probably about twenty items that talk about: check the fire alarm, check this door, check the exit, check the corridor, check the floor, check the window, make sure the windows are not snowed up, the doors are not snowed up, this kind of a thing, okay? This is the checklist that they have in the schools today.

Now, the person tasked with that responsibility is normally, I think, the principal, but oftentimes it could be the janitor who does the inspection on a regular basis. It could be the secretary in the office. It could be another teacher who does it, or it could be the principal. What they do, Mr. Speaker, is they go around the school and they check these items off and they bring it in to the principal who I think then is supposed to send it to the school board.

We found out in one case, Mr. Speaker, last year, that there was one school which had not sent it for months. The school board did not have any copies of them. We found out that there were other schools which were not even doing them. In fact, they all got a memo from the minister at the time, the Minister of Education, who is today the Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services, telling them that they had better get out there and get those checklists done. They got the memo; but, Mr. Speaker, what happens after that? What happens after this checklist is done? Is anything identified? Whose responsibility is it to follow up, to make sure that these things are corrected? Whose responsibility is it? Whose responsibility was it in the school this morning when there was a fire and the fire alarm did not work?

I am hearing from the Minister of Education that this was a school that actually had an inspection. Mr. Speaker, if that school actually had an inspection, and those custodians or principals were, every single day, doing their checklists, they would have checked that alarm yesterday. It means, if it was not recorded on their sheet, that alarm worked yesterday. Either that, Mr. Speaker, or they did not do it. As I said, a year ago we found schools in this Province that were not doing their checklists until they got the memo from the minister that went to the school board, that went to the schools, saying get your checklists done and send them in.

Mr. Speaker, why is it that in other public facilities it is people who are trained who go in to do these inspections? Why is it in other public facilities that there have to be people who are trained to go and do these life and fire safety inspections, but in our schools anyone can do them? Anyone can do them, or they can choose not to do them; there isn't a system that follows up on it. That is what is ridiculous, Mr. Speaker.

In a hospital today, when there is an official inspection done, there is a list that is sent to the Fire Commissioner's office that says these are deficiencies and this is the timeline to have them repaired. The Fire Commissioner goes back, then, to the health board, and the health board is given a time limit to have those repairs done. Why doesn't that exist in the education system?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS JONES: It does not. It does not. In the education system - I say to the minister, I sat down with the Fire Commissioner, I sat down with his staff, and we were fully briefed on the process and how it works. The first thing we notice is that there is no inspection by the Fire Commissioner's office. There is no one in the Fire Commissioner's office who goes into a school in this Province and completes an inspection.

Now, isn't that something? Thousands and thousands of children go into these facilities every day and not one person from the Fire Commissioner's office ever walks into the school to do an inspection. Mr. Speaker, what is the problem with that? Why doesn't government have a process in place? Why don't they have a process in place which says to the Fire Commissioner's office we want detailed inspections done on fire and life safety issues in every school in this Province on an annual basis. Why doesn't that exist? Why is there no regulation that mandates that that be done?

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, why aren't all of these inspections put on-line? Why is it that if I have a child - which I do not, but I am sure there are others who have children, many in the Province - in school, why can't they go on-line and look at those particular inspections in those schools and know, both on fire and life safety issues, and both on air quality issues, why can't they go in on-line and see that these inspections were completed, to see what the status of those inspections were, to see how much time the school board has or the health board has to make those necessary repairs and to get it done? It is very simple. That is all we are asking for.

In fact, do you realize that a year ago when we were asking government to put all of these air quality and fire and life safety inspection reports on schools and hospitals on-line in the Province, and they were refusing to do it, they did come out and say they would put all the inspections for restaurants and food establishments on-line? Now, what is the difference? If you can go out and inspect a private business and have a certified inspector do the inspections, a person who is qualified and trained, and have that information put on-line for the public to view it, why can't you do the same in the schools in the Province where you have trained, licensed inspectors do inspections, and those inspections be on-line?

I realize that there are certain schools in the Province that meet different standards and different codes. I know that under the current, existing fire codes in the Province today that there are a lot of schools grandfathered in under that practice. We are aware of that. The public would be aware of that. People understand those things, but they should still have the information.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for the District of Cape St. Francis.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KEVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is such a great privilege to stand here today and represent the beautiful District of Cape St. Francis and be given the opportunity to speak on the Estimates for the Social Services Committee.

This was my first time ever sitting on one of these Committees with all of the different departments. There were a lot of interesting questions and a lot of knowledge passed back and forth.

Mr. Speaker, I have to applaud the ministers and their staff for their very impressive answers and explanations to the questions. I also applaud our Chairperson, the hon. Member for Ferryland, who did a great job chairing the Committee.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KEVIN PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, both sides were cordial to each other and the questions and answers had a lot of information flowing back and forth from line to line, explanations from one year to the next, to explanations on how different programs are going to work, how the policies of these departments are going to work, and different explanations of everything that is working in each department.

Mr. Speaker, like the hon. Member for the District of Placentia & St. Mary's when he spoke earlier today about whether it should be televised or whether not to be televised, I really do not know, but I know the process that is there now, the information and the questions, both sides were cordial to each other, both sides did everything they could to make sure that the answers to the questions were given and were there. I do not know if that would happen if it was televised.

Mr. Speaker, we heard from the Departments of Education, Justice, HRLE, Health and Community Services, and Municipal Affairs. Mr. Speaker, this government is building a strong foundation, which we were building the last number of years. We are building a solid infrastructure, a foundation for a self-reliant economy. Mr. Speaker, new schools, new hospitals, roads, wharves, you name it and we are doing it. This is enabling our communities to grow.

Mr. Speaker, earlier in February we all sat in on a news conference where they announced $800 million in infrastructure spending. Mr. Speaker, this is what is going to make our Province grow and be strong. We realize that we are in the midst of economic trouble all over the world but the way to get out of that economic trouble is to spend, and that is what this government is doing. It is spending on its infrastructure needs, which is creating jobs all over this Province.

Mr. Speaker, I recently had a friend of mine who came back from Fort McMurray. He was a surveyor up there. He worked the last five, six years in Fort McMurray, and as most of the Newfoundlanders that are coming back from Alberta, they are all wondering where they are going to get positions to work.

Spending like $800 million on infrastructure, I am hoping, and I am sure all my colleagues here are hoping, that these people coming back will fill the gaps that we need. The worries that we had a year ago: Where are we going to get these skilled labourers? We will get them now because they are coming home. He recently got a job out in Long Harbour with Vale Inco doing surveying.

So, it is just a little point to show that we have the skilled force here. With the people coming back from Alberta, the electricians, the plumbers, the pipefitters there are going to be positions here, as long as we spend the money that we are spending.

Mr. Speaker, investments are spread in many regions and many different sectors. Only last week, the hon. Member for Exploits had a private member's motion where he talked about the lack of federal government spending here in Newfoundland and Labrador. It seems like the federal government are doing a different approach from what we are doing as a government. They are kind of centralizing stuff in Nova Scotia, and in Ottawa, in different parts and not spending anything here. This government, if anyone who was at that news conference saw the map of the Province, we are spending money everywhere in this Province. We are spending money right from the Northern Peninsula right to St. John's, and right to my district and right down to Cape St. Francis. We are spending money all over Labrador. Actually, spending in Labrador is $130 million.

Mr. Speaker, this government is investing in the Province's infrastructure, spending in educational facilities of $155 million; $160 million in health care facilities and equipment; $20 million into the justice; $103 million in municipal infrastructure spending.

Mr. Speaker, I recently spoke on the Budget, and I talked about how this government was keeping the people of this Province feeling positive about today and feeling positive about our future.

This Budget was a real eye opener for me. Like I said, I, like most Newfoundlanders, looked at the Budget and saw what was in it for my family. Whether there was an increase in this, or an increase in this tax. I also looked at it to see if there were any layoffs. If there were going to be any layoffs in different sectors of government. I was very pleased to see that there were no layoffs, and there were no increases in taxes. Actually, it was the opposite. We are creating jobs, we are reducing taxes, and that is what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador elected us to do.

Mr. Speaker, as I sat on the committees, I had the opportunity to sit on the Department of Health and Community Services. This is a huge, huge, huge department. They are responsible for all the health care beings of this Province. They provide services aimed at prevention of diseases and the promotion of health care and the well-being of all our citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I listened to a lot of interesting questions to the minister and his staff, and I listened to the minister give a lot of interesting and long answers. Mr. Speaker, this department spends $2.6 billion. That is up from $1.6 billion in 2003. Investments in the Cameron Inquiry, and we all listened to the Cameron Inquiry; this government is responding to that. There is an expansion for the cancer clinic at the Dr. H. Bliss Murphy Centre and I am sure, myself, along with all members of this House, have some affect to cancer and this is a great investment this government is making. They are investing in new drugs being recovered.

Mr. Speaker, the parking garage at the Health Sciences complex, and I spoke about this earlier. People have enough to worry about when they go to the Health Sciences and parking should not be one of them. So, hopefully with a new parking garage, this will alleviate the problems we are having.

Mr. Speaker, adding thirty new doctors to the system, these are positive things that we are doing; ten new seats for the School of Nursing; 80 per cent of the nurses that graduate today stay in this Province. I am sure down the road it will be higher than 80 per cent; twenty seats to the School of Pharmacy. This will ensure that pharmacies are available and pharmacists are available to all regions of this Province.

Mr. Speaker, social workers; I presently have a daughter who is doing social work. It is a very important role that social workers play in our society today. They guide people who need them the most; children, people who are in homes and whatnot. They need our help, and adding fifty more seats to social work will improve everyone in this Province.

Mr. Speaker, another area in which I was very pleased with was foster parents. It is a huge expense today raising children. Foster parents play an incredible role in providing caring and supportive involvement in children on a long-term and temporary basis. The safety and well-being of our children are top priority of this government. We are doing huge increases. Right now, foster parents get $523.30 a month. Children from up to two years of age by 2010 will receive $915. Two to four years of age, they will receive $715 by 2010. From the ages of five to eleven, they will receive $815. From twelve and over, they will receive $760 by the year 2010.

Mr. Speaker, this Department of Health and Community Services is purchasing new equipment, and they are spending $50 million. I am sure with the cost of equipment in the health care system that we could be spending $500 million, but $50 million is a lot of money.

Mr. Speaker, the Hoyles-Escasoni Complex in which a lot of seniors from my district go, they get great care there but a new building will make sure that their care gets improved. We are doing funding for the redevelopment of the emergency department at St. Clare's in St. John's; $1 million to develop electronic patient records. Health care infrastructure spending is approximately $76 million, and even the hon. Member for Port de Grave got his wish, with the site selection of a new long-term facility for Carbonear. Planning for the residential treatment centre for youths with addiction, centre for the youths with complex mental illnesses. Obviously, this government is committed to health care.

I recently had my dad at St. Clare's, he had a knee replacement. I know we hear about all the troubles in the health care system. My dad is seventy-nine years old and the care and kindness that was shown to him was excellent. We have great people in our health care system, and I know this government is making large investments to ensure that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians receive the best possible care.

Mr. Speaker, another department which we looked at was the Department of Education. The government is making large investments in education. This year's budget is $1.28 billion, which is spent all over this Province.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. the Member for Grand Bank on his appointment as Minister of Education. I am sure that the background he has in education will make sure that he does an outstanding job. This government believes in education. It is the key to our future growth. The development of the Province - since 2003-2009, this government has increased the investments in education by 50 per cent, from $854 million to today of $1.286 billion.

In K-6, we are adding additional teachers, new curriculum, quality learning resources, all to make a real difference in our K-12 classrooms.

Mr. Speaker, investments such as free school fees; free textbooks; supporting teachers with a focus on programming and teacher needs; maximum class sizes; increase in funding for teaching resources; improving on student assistance; improving curriculum; spending money on physical education equipment; upgrading our labs and safety equipment. Some of the infrastructure spending is to ensure the health and safety and first-rate education of our children.

This government is investing $121 million in new construction, renovation, maintenance and repairs to our schools in this Province. One of these projects is in my district.

Holy Trinity Elementary in Torbay is an old school, it is crowded, and this government saw the need and they invested. Mr. Speaker, I am very happy today to say the site work is done and construction, when I drive down Torbay Road in the evenings, has started and the people in the area are very, very pleased.

Recently we had a school council meeting and there were some twenty-four questions that were asked of the Department of Education, so we took the questions and we gave them to the Department of Education. We had another meeting in which we had three representatives from the Eastern School Board who came down and had a meeting with the student council and the school council and all twenty-four questions were answered and they were very pleased with the response.

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity this morning to go to Holy Trinity Elementary for ArtSmarts from K-6. I saw different things that Kindergartens right to K-6 did with our people in our arts. It was very, very impressive and I would like to thank those people for putting time in with the ArtSmarts program.

Mr. Speaker, a school in the region will only boost the local economy. There will jobs and employment for people in the area. This government is investing in other schools in my area. Funding has been providing for upgrades for windows, roof, siding, for St Francis of Assisi in Outer Cove. Funding has been provided for construction for new classrooms in Roncalli. Construction work is not only good just for the site; it benefits the whole community. It benefits from convenience stores to gas bars to local restaurants. Investments in new schools are investments in our communities.

Mr. Speaker, a new school for Cape St. Francis will provide a state-of-the-art facility. The future is bright for our children and we are providing good education and well-equipped schools to give them the advantage of the opportunities that we are making for them.

Mr. Speaker, post-secondary education; this was a big one this year for post-secondary education, big for our students, $5 million to eliminate the interest on provincial student loans, affecting 49,000 students and former students. A freeze still on tuition at MUN and CONA.

Mr. Speaker, I have two children and both of them attend post-secondary education. I want them to stay in this Province, just like they want to stay in this Province, and this government is making investments in post-secondary education, like $12.5 million towards construction for facilities for MUN and for Sir Wilfred Grenfell in Corner Brook; $9.5 million to be spent at CONA alone; expenditure on post-secondary education and infrastructure this year is $34 million. This government is ensuring that our children receive the optimum education we can provide for them. There are new schools in all areas of this Province. Government is committed to education and is committed to our youth.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KEVIN PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, another Committee that we had an opportunity to listen to, another department, was the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment. This is a huge department with many initiatives, but one of their top priorities was poverty reduction. Mr. Speaker, this government is making huge investments of $132.2 million to target poverty reduction, to alleviate poverty in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, our government is making a firm pledge to help support people with low incomes tackle the social and economic challenges that arise from living in poverty. We continue to build a strong foundation through our commitment on investments in new areas, enhancing existing services, and strengthening our communities.

A part of this strategy, Mr. Speaker, was to lower the low income tax threshold in which we increased it from $13,511 to $15,911 for individuals, and for families from $21,825 to $26,625. Mr. Speaker, this puts back $16 million into the hands of the people who need it the most.

Mr. Speaker, we are making major investments all over the place and reducing poverty. With early childhood development, through improvements of early learning, child care systems, this government is investing $3 million; $11.3 million to provide a strengthened safety net for supporting communities to tackle and prevent homelessness, enhancing services through the justice system and enabling women who have been experiencing violence to make a successful transition into –

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that the three hours for debate on Concurrence has expired.

Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

MR. KEVIN PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, I have a lot more to say. I am just going to go to the last part.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to just say that investments in our communities are important to people in Newfoundland and Labrador. They are very important to my district, such as new schools, the new bypass road that we are seeing go through, and the new arena in Torbay which I would like to report is doing very, very well.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the government for the investments they are making in my district.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

[The continuation of today's sitting will be found in Hansard 19A]


May 12, 2009             HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS            Vol. XLVI   No. 19A

[Continuation of Sitting]

CHAIR (Collins): Order, please!

The motion is that the report of the Social Services Committee be concurred.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion carried.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I move, as we go through the Order Paper - I guess everyone expected we were having a break at 5:30 but we have decided that we would continue to work through the 5:30 to 7:00 period and continue on past 7:00 as needed.

Mr. Speaker, I move that we resolve the House into a Committee of Supply, from our Order Paper, Order 1, to debate the Estimates for the Legislature, the Consolidated Fund Services, and Executive Council.

MR. SPEAKER: It has been moved and seconded that the House resolve itself into a Committee of Supply on the Executive Council, Legislature, and Consolidated Fund Services, and that I do now leave the Chair.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

Committee of the Whole

 

CHAIR (Collins): Order, please!

We have convened the Committee to debate the Estimates of the Executive Council, where we were when the Committee rose. The Committee of the Whole is now prepared and ready to continue debate or questioning on the Estimates of the Executive Council.

The hon. the Member for the District of Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, it is indeed a pleasure to get up and have a few words to say today with respect to the Committee of Supply.

I just want to reflect back over the years, Mr. Chair. Before I got into politics, a lot of things had a different meaning than they have now. I remember, before I was a politician, the biggest concern I had about the price of oil back then was that it affected the cost of filling up my gas tank.

Well, since then, realizing now what our resources mean to us as a people in this Province, I really respect the cost of oil now because it goes far beyond the cost of putting gasoline in our vehicles, because our resources pay the way for us to do the things we need to do as a government in the Province, and with respect to the oil prices it certainly makes a big difference in what the government can spend.

Of course, all of our resources are like that, Mr. Chair. When we look at our resources, we look at the income, the dollars that go into the provincial coffers to deal with every department, every issue and aspect of a department that the people of the Province are expecting government to deliver.

Of course, that delivery is a big challenge and every year we have to do a budget. We have to budget out what we think it is going to cost to run this Province and, of course, at the end of the year, next year, we will debate what the revision of that budget would be with respect to what we actually spent. Of course this year, as I did in the last ten years, I served on the Resource Committee and we have been dealing with different departments with respect to our Resource Committee. Of course, those departments come in, the minister and his officials come in here and sit and we listen to what the department is doing and take the Estimates for this year and go down through them and see what government is going to spend on each item in those Estimates.

Mr. Chair, it gives me a chance, too, to just say a few things about my district, about my area, too, to get up and have a few words because I notice this year in particular the importance of our volunteers in our communities. In the last little while I have been attending some volunteer suppers and gatherings and it does me a world of good to see what my people are doing in my district with respect to our volunteerism; because, even though we are naturally blessed with an abundance of resources, and sometimes we do not have control over the prices and what revenues comes in from the resources, we still need the volunteers in our districts to do all the necessary things to keep our communities viable and safe.

Just last week I attended a volunteer firefighters award night and appreciation night dinner in Robert's Arm. When we were sitting there, just listening to the different things that the people in the community do, it just amazes me the dedication that the people of our Province have with respect to their own communities.

I know we have hundreds of communities and we have hundreds of fire departments and volunteer groups that do the same thing in their communities. It is very important that they take care of their own matters and that government is there to back them up and, of course, supply finances with respect to the things they need with issues like fire departments and volunteer groups, because without government's help a lot of these groups could not do it. They could not survive and they could not sustain a number of people in a volunteer group to make their community the way it should be.

Of course, I would just like to thank some of the people. A couple of weeks ago I attended the Citizen of the Year banquet in Grand Falls-Windsor. That is a yearly thing that has been going on for a lot of years. I remember back in the early 1980s when I emceed a Citizen of the Year one time back there and it was such a great honour to be in the company of those people who volunteered and kept our community going.

This year, of course, the winner of our Citizen of the Year was Bruce Moores in Grand Falls-Windsor who contributed a lot of time into the fire department and worked tirelessly in doing the things that people appreciate that he did. Not everybody expects these people to go as far as they do, in everything they do, but I can guarantee you that Bruce Moores certainly went way beyond what people expected him to do. He has done such a great job, and it is so rewarding and deserving for him to be the Citizen of the Year for Grand Falls-Windsor. I certainly congratulated him at the time and had to bring that up tonight.

Mr. Chair, with respect to all of our resources, the prices come in. With the oil and our natural resources, forestry and mining and the fishery, they all make a difference. One thing we all have in common in rural Newfoundland is our roads and our road conditions. Every MHA - and I would suspect some Avalon members here, too, who do have responsibility for provincial roads in some of the Avalon districts, particularly outside of St. John' here - that is a common thing that we have had amongst us, as MHAs, which require many millions of dollars even to catch up over the number of years that we have been way behind.

Of course, we take a lot of criticism, too, from people out there in the public who are expecting a lot when it comes to trying to maintain and rebuild these roads. It is an unending task. Even in my district since I have been there, when I started ten years ago, before I even get halfway through doing the roads in my district, the ones that we did years ago are going to have to be started over again pretty soon, because that is the way it works. That is the way our climate is, that is the way the road conditions are in Newfoundland, and it takes forever.

This government this year, of course, with the number of dollars that we are putting into our roads program and our infrastructure program, over $800 million this year is going into that program to do the necessary things in our road building and in our infrastructure.

Just go down through our Budget Highlights and you can certainly see what government has budgeted this year for it. It will take me probably an hour even just to get through a quarter of these, but just the building infrastructure alone in the Budget Highlights, you can appreciate what that $800 million would incur in investment to the Province, with $277 million for transportation infrastructure. That is a lot of money. It is probably not enough, we will always say it is never enough, but it is a lot of money. We do have to catch up, and it is going to take a while to do that.

With our educational facilities, we have $156 million allocated in this year's Budget for educational facilities. Each one of these topics, each one of these items that when you are given the amounts that is, you could spend an hour talking about what this money would do for each one of those departments and each one of those areas in government.

Even the next item, $167 million for health care facilities and equipment; of course, that is another one that is common to every member in this House of Assembly. We know how important it is to deliver the best health care possible in this Province and people expect it and we certainly want to do it. Even in the Central Newfoundland, Grand Falls–Windsor area with our hospital now, when we were in dire need of having our operating rooms refurbished, and of course this year the money has been put aside to do a substantial amount of work in the Central Newfoundland hospital. The pharmacy area alone in that hospital for years has been inadequate with the pharmacy section taken up in the corridors, which was unacceptable for years. Now we are going to find a way to take care of that problem with respect to the pharmacy, with respect to the operating rooms, with badly needed restructuring done and that is going to be done in the next year or so and we certainly need to do that, we are doing that. Of course, the money that government has allocated this year, even though it still might not be enough and some people say it is not enough, but we are working in the right direction. So some day we are going to have most of these questions and problems eliminated or addressed anyway.

Another item there, Mr. Chair, $103 million for municipal infrastructure; that is pretty well another item that most MHAs in this hon. House have to deal with on a daily basis. Some members here have dozens of communities in their districts and dealing with one community at a time on issues probably common to them, water and sewer, road infrastructure, but particularly water, drinking water. We certainly want to do something that is going to make life in rural Newfoundland, life in these communities that have poor drinking water; we need to do something about that. We are addressing that in our budgets from year to year. Millions of dollars go into this budget but this year we are going to try to do a lot more than we had anticipated, I guess, but even now with the federal infusion of the millions of dollars, that enables this government to do a lot more in a quicker period.

Mr. Chair, we still have other things that we need to be concerned about. Maybe not particularly for each individual MHA in this House but we do have a lot of problems with our justice system, with crime and stuff in the Province, and we certainly are working in a direction where we could address a lot of those problems. If you just want to keep on going with these issues. This year it is anticipated $118 million from the federal contributions would certainly be a great welcome, but we know as last week there was a lot more money.

In our area, we certainly welcome any dollar that we can get from either the federal or provincial government with respect to Central Newfoundland trying to be viable and sustainable and try to deal with the problem with the AbitibiBowater issue, trying to keep people in Central Newfoundland, trying to create jobs, trying to make sure that the workers are getting what they are entitled to and our ministers and our government is going to keep –

CHAIR: Order, please!.

I remind the hon. member that his speaking time has lapsed.

MR. HUNTER: Just a minute to clue up, Mr. Chair. Just a minute there.

CHAIR: Does he have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

CHAIR: Leave to clue up.

MR. HUNTER: We are certainly working hard trying to make sure that the right thing is done, and it is going to take a while to, of course, put everything together. I know through the Member for Exploits and the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor-Buchans, and myself and the Minister of ITRD, and the Minister of Natural Resources, we all work together trying to figure out a way to try to address these issues. Of course, it is not easy but we need to address more than that issue, Mr. Chair, there are a lot of people depending on us, not only in the resource sector, but of course, in educational sectors and the health care sectors. We are doing all we can do trying to address these problems.

I wish I had an hour or so to go through the Estimates highlights. You can get up here and speak probably for hours going through the Estimates highlights, and just talking about some of the issues that we have in this Province.

I hope I get another chance before the House closes, to get up and make a few more comments, but I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, for the few minutes I did have.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: Order, please!

Before we recognize the next speaker, I am just looking for some direction with respect to this particular debate.

We have used the time up on the Executive Council, that is the only head that we have been discussing so far. There are two other heads to discuss, the Legislative Branch and the Consolidated Fund Services. We have not identified or isolated particular groups.

The hon. Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, it was probably by omission when we called the Committee of Supply, but certainly as we are in the Committee of Supply for the one hour and forty-three minutes, we will cover the Consolidated Fund Services, Executive Council or Legislature.

We are certainly not meant to limit debate on any of those issues or any questions or comments that people would like to make. So, we could debate all three at one time.

CHAIR: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, that was my understanding as well, that the whole one-forty-three that we had left, that comments could be directed to any of those particular areas. I do believe the last time we spoke Executive Council was the primary focus of the commentary.

I certainly appreciate another opportunity to have some comment. I am pleased with the Deputy Speaker's ruling with regards to the relevancy issue, the last day. I do not think there is any question here today that we are certainly talking about a money budget. We are doing it on the Budget itself, so there cannot be anymore broader definition of a money bill than what we are dealing with here today.

I am pleased to hear from the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor-Green Bay South. It was nice to hear him have a few comments here in the House on the Budget and nice to hear from government members all of the time. You hear a lot from the Opposition members and usually we are taken to be of a critical streak as opposed to anything complimentary. I am looking forward to the member getting back up again because we still never heard anything about that causeway issue. We have had the Member for Port de Grave on his feet eight, ten times presenting petitions on behalf of the people of that district. So it is nice to see that he is still singing the praises of the government, but I have not heard him say anything today about the issue of the causeway. I thought that might have been an opportunity. He might not have wanted to get up in petition and everybody watching him make that petition on behalf of his people, which I do feel, by the way, would have been totally appropriate, but he chooses not to do that.

Anyway, it is good to see him on his feet and maybe the next time he gets an opportunity he will relieve my colleague, the Member for Port de Grave, from the sole burden of commenting on a causeway for his area. Perhaps he might have some commentary, even from a vane of saying we hope in the next Budget, we would hope that the government can find the resources necessary to do a causeway for the people of my district. Even that would send a signal to the people out in that particular area that albeit he might not feel comfortable enunciating that, that he at least feels that way and it might send a hint that, I am still concerned about you and I will hope that the government does in fact give me some funding so that we can do that down the road. That would be a very positive sign for those people, I am sure.

I notice too, as well, the Member for Placentia & St. Mary's today, I listened with rapt attention to some of the comments he was making about what goes on in terms of televised debates with respect to proceedings of the House. He was referring of course, to myself, the Opposition House Leader, who was a strong proponent for televising the Estimates committees. The Member for Placentia & St. Mary's thought: well, maybe that is not such a good idea. Maybe that is not such a good idea because when we are in Estimates right now it is pretty collegial, was the word he used. You can ask ministers' questions, him and his staff, or her and her staff would respond accordingly and there is no politicizing of the issues, was the comment that he used. You do not politicize the issues.

Well now, I would think there are a couple of ways of dealing with the theory that the member for Placentia–St. Mary's has about television. If you were to use his logic, if asking questions back and forth in any forum might lead to the politicization of an issue, I guess he is an advocate for taking the TVs away from the House of Assembly. In other words, the TVs lead to somebody trying to make an issue political. We have the TV in the House, so now do we take that to the next step and say, well let us get rid of TV in the House too, now, because we have a Question Period which is political. Sometimes we ask questions in Question Period that are seriously, sincerely intended to extract information; not from a political one-upmanship but a point of view of trying to get some information. Now you can call that being political if you want, but the people have a right to know and the people have a right to have answers.

MS DUNDERDALE: (Inaudible)

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Yes, I say to the Minister of Natural Resources, we went through that here. I will give a good example. I was here last year or a couple of years ago and pried, pried relentlessly, to get answers about Bull Arm. I was told on day one: No, no, no, no, do not be so silly, there is nothing amiss out in Bull Arm, there is nothing wrong out in Bull Arm. There is nothing wrong about tendering of contracts in Bull Arm. There is nothing wrong about management practices in Bull Arm. Well, this member did not take that at face value. I said: No such thing. We believe there is something amiss in Bull Arm.

We asked the questions on day two; no answers again. We asked them on day three; no answers. We asked on day four; no answers. We even went into the next week. Finally, the minister got up before I had a chance to ask some more questions and said: That individual in question is gone, she has resigned. We came from nothing wrong to the president of the Bull Arm Corporation being gone.

That was how Question Period worked. This government would have you believe that when we ask a question over here, do not worry about it. It is only asking to politicize stuff. Well, if that was just political, why was that person's resignation accepted, I ask? Why was that resignation accepted if there was nothing wrong? Surely the government would, as they do in most cases no matter how obviously political something looks, stand hard and fast behind that particular person, but they did not there. That is an example of how the system can work and ought to work.

I am going to give some credit, and I said before I do not mind giving it. The member for Placentia–St. Mary's said I did not spend much time giving credit the last time. I take exception to the time limit, he said. I think he said about three minutes. I think I used a bit more. Anyway, I am going to give credit because this member for the District of Burgeo–LaPoile, this government has been good to my district in a lot of ways, make no bones about that. I have several water systems and sewer systems that are happening in the District of Burgeo & LaPoile that have happened because of this government and the members in it and the ministers in it. I have water systems currently getting ready to go to tender because of certain members in it. That is appreciated. Do not ever think that because someone gets up and criticizes a government policy or issue from time to time that you do not appreciate, on behalf of your constituents, what the government did. I have fire trucks in places in my district that needs them.

You notice, by the way, the things I am talking about here, fire trucks, water and sewer systems, those are things that every Newfoundlander and Labradorian, by the way, regardless of your political colour, orange, red or blue, ought to have. Everybody is entitled to that in this Province, we all agree to that. This member has no problem in saying that I have gotten several of those things for my district. I did not get them in the sense that you come in on bended knee and you beg and you appeal to a minister to do it. You come in and you state your case and that is what being responsible ministers is all about. There are ministers in this government who I have come in here with, not even in here with, outside of here, and had the fiercest of arguments with on a mater of principle, wanted something for my district and the minister said: No way, Mr. Parsons, you are not getting that. You cannot justify why you should have it. We have been up and down one side of each other. If I can come in and make a case and the justification is there, I can say in all sincerity to the members of this government that the District of Burgeo & LaPoile, to my knowledge, has never been denied a single thing by the members of this government once you make your case. I do not know how much more supportive or approving a member can be in Opposition, and say that. That is the case.

Ferry services, for example, are not going to impact my district right now, this fleet of ferries that is under service contract. We have pretty good ferry services from the Ramea to Burgeo portion. The Gallipolis is so far a pretty good ship. There are problems from time to time, it needs repairs every now and then, but not a bad service overall. There are some issues about the quality sometimes, from the constituents at least, the quality of the boats that are put on to the LaPoile-Grand Bruit-Rose Blanche service.

We see that the government is putting money into new ferry construction, much needed, and that is going to benefit people in this Province. We see that the government has put money into health care; not a problem. We see that government is putting money into new schools in this Province. We see money going in even in my district, for example, the Burgeo road. What a piece of road to try to maintain, 154 kilometres of twisty, in some cases, mountainous roadway. The money went in back when they got rid of the roads for rails deal years ago. They used some of the money. It was the Peckford Administration at the time that used some of that money, and they built the Burgeo roadway. Obviously, we are twenty-odd years out, so the road has deteriorated in some places.


This government has not ducked their responsibilities. I have had a great working relationship with members of Transportation and Works out on the West Coast. Last year, they put a sizable chunk of money into upgrading some portions of Route 460, the Burgeo Road. They are doing the same thing again this year. That is appreciated, not only by me, it is appreciated more so by the people who drive over it. They have to get to places like Corner Brook to access health care, a lot of the government services that they do not have in town, to get to airports in Stephenville and Deer Lake, to do a lot of shopping that they do not have the necessary shops available in their own community, and that is appreciated. I certainly appreciate it every time I go over the Burgeo Road. Every year, when there are a certain number of kilometres that are done, that is appreciated, folks.

I appreciate the fact that Burgeo right now is in the process of getting a new water system. It happened several years ago when unfortunately they had a fire. The fire destroyed the facility, part of it. The building was standing but the equipment was gone.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member his speaking time has lapsed.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: Leave to finish up?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave.

CHAIR: The hon. the member, by leave, to finish up.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Mr. Chair, I appreciate the leave. I guess I will speak more positive of government actions in the future. I might be on my feet a long time.

To finish the story on the water treatment facility: it was built about four or five years ago. It was an expensive system. Burgeo had terrible water. Anybody who lives in communities in Newfoundland, anywhere in the world, you like to have clean water facilities. Burgeo had a terrible water system. As a result of federal-provincial cooperation - it was a Liberal Administration at the time - we started with a new water system.

Believe it or not, the system was so advance technologically that there was a computer system in Montreal that detected that particular evening that a fire was in process at the Burgeo water treatment facility. The fire started and there was a computer setup in the facility that sent a signal and a message off to Montreal to the people who had installed the equipment telling them that there was a fire in process. The Burgeo fire department attended, but unfortunately by the time they got there the system was gone. Where do you go now? You have to start all over. We had a building with all of this equipment in it that was useless. The people were back to square one with their water system.

By this time the government had changed. I was still a member but the government had changed, and the town council representatives and myself approached government and said we need to start all over. We got the numbers on the table, the engineers came in, and everybody denied responsibility. The contractor said it is not my fault. The manufacturer said it is not my fault. Everybody was pointing the finger at everyone else and saying we didn't start the fire, we are not responsible, so don't blame us.

I estimated at the time when we talked – I estimated to the council - that it was going to take anywhere, I said, from eight to ten years to get this unravelled if you went to court. By the time everybody had their cases argued, I said, we will be ten years out before you get any fit water in the Town of Burgeo again. I said, I don't think that is a reasonable approach.

So, we went to the minister of the day, explained that to them, and the minister agreed. Now, that particular minister is not with us any more, God rest his soul. He is not with us any more, but he agreed that we needed to get advanced so we signed the appropriate documentation whereby the municipality said, yes, we will pursue the court case and at the end of the day somebody – for example, the contractors or manufacturers who are going to pay the bill on this - whatever money comes out of that should go back to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the meantime, if we agree to do that, to give you the proceeds of the lawsuit, would you agree that we can get started on our water system? That was worked out. That was done and it started.

Now, we have had a few issues about what kind of tank it was going to be, what kind of equipment it was going to be, but it is a sizeable investment by the government, this government, and do not think that the 1,800 to 2,000 people in Burgeo and this member do not appreciate that. Because that was a case where you did not have to talk what your politics was. You had to talk common sense. Who needs to really make a strong case to justify why 2,000 people ought to have clean water? It is not a big case that you have to muster, at all, and the government, this government, said yes. Finally I am pleased to see now, after all the wrangling between engineers and everything else - because that happens, by the way. You have to go through the public tendering process. Was it going to be a steel-lined tank? Was it going to be a glass-lined tank? Was it going to be a metal tank? Once all of that gets ironed out with the government engineers and the town engineers and everybody else, we finally have it to the point now where the tank is going off for tender and the equipment money has been awarded. So there is a case, again, where this member is appreciative.

I will not take any more time. I do not want to abuse my leave privileges right now, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate them, but I have a few other things I would like to say because I am not all negative. I do have some other positives that I would like to point out about the government. Anyway, I hopefully will get another opportunity as the evening wears on to speak some more.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for the District of The Isles of Notre Dame.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. DALLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is certainly a privilege to have an opportunity to speak on a few items, and certainly some concerns, some comments I am hearing today, and certainly I want to speak to the Budget as well.

I just want to point out something that seems to be a common concern from the Opposition, and that is about the issue of school inspections. I just want to point out something. When I listen to some of the comments that are being made, the comments sometimes cast a shadow of doubt as to what is happening.

What I would like to speak a little bit about is to that which I know from my former career, I guess, as a school principal. When I hear the concerns that have been brought out by the Leader of the Opposition talking about inspections, we all know, and we know it has been said many times, that there are annual inspections done by qualified people.

Sometimes the shadow of doubt that has been cast on that whole issue, we see it as though someone always has to be going into the school to determine what is going on. In my opinion, in listening to it time and time again, it is almost like she is devaluing the work and the effort and responsibilities of the people in the school, on site.

We have adults, we have teachers, we have school administrators, and we have custodians who have been in service in these areas. All of these work tirelessly day in and day out. They have great pride in our schools, great pride in a safe, clean school environment, and I am very confident, from my own experiences, that if there are issues in the school, whatever they may be, particularly structural issues or anything that will impact the safe, clean environment of the school, they will take it to another level, take it to the board level, make sure it goes on a maintenance list, make it sure it goes on an annual maintenance list, and the issues will get addressed accordingly.

I just want to point that out for the benefit of the many teachers and the custodians and administrators out there who I know, personally, take great pride in their schools.

Mr. Chairman, another comment that was made, that I would just like to point out, a comment was made about what happens to the checklist when it is done. Well, Mr. Chairman, from my own experience, when these checklists are done - I was an administrator in the 1990s and, I can tell you, when the checklists were done in the 1990s there was nothing done. There was nothing done. What we are seeing now, due to increased spending, increased maintenance budgets, over $120 million this year, what we are seeing with our checklists now, more and more things are getting done in our schools. I think that is worthy of pointing out.

Mr. Chairman, if I might, while I am on the education theme, I can look back to my district a little bit and compare. What I would like to talk a little bit about are some of the Budget items that were in place for this year's Budget that will have an impact on people in my district, and I would speak to education first and foremost.

I know people look at the Budgets to determine what specifically is there for them, and sometimes it is directly stated out in the Budget but many times there are things in the Budget that will indirectly have a very positive impact on someone's life, whether it is a family or a child.

In education we are seeing tuition freezes of some $56 million investment where we see tuition freezes in Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic to the point where Memorial University has the lowest tuition fees in the country. Mr. Chairman, that is making post-secondary education more affordable, more accessible, and it is helping families plan for post-secondary education. We have seen a $5 million investment this year to eliminate interest rates. We have seen an increase in up-front grants from $70 to $80. All of this, Mr. Chairman, is attractive for students. All of this is making education more affordable and accessible.

What we are seeing as a result of these Budget decisions is a positive, direct impact on some students from my district, and in communities like Cottlesville, Virgin Arm and Bridgeport families are benefiting from these investments.

Mr. Chairman, there are significant investments in the Marine Institute where we are seeing developments in ocean technology, research and ocean mapping. Mr. Chairman, the Marine Institute as well is very important for the people of our district. We have some twenty students attending the Marine Institute from a number of communities like Pikes Arm, Cobb's Arm, Newville and Fogo, just to name a few. I would argue, Mr. Chairman, that probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been educated or trained through the Marine Institute to go on and be involved in very successful careers on the water. Marine Institute investments are very important to the people of my district.

Also outlined in the Budget this year was an investment for a Community Youth Network. This is a core funding announcement where we will have an opportunity to hire a co-ordinator to work in our district and provide youth services. It will enable us to establish supports for youth, provide them with an opportunity to network, an opportunity to gain confidence, direction and support through learning, employment, community building and recreational activities. Mr. Chairman, the Community Youth Network added to our district will support youth in places like Change Islands, Summerford, Herring Neck and Twillingate.

Mr. Chairman, we see investments this year in sport and recreation as well; a very important part for all district and all areas of this Province. Our capital recreation grants and or community recreation grants are being put to good use in my district. We have a new recreation director hired on New World Island for the first time, an educated and trained person dedicated for recreational programming. Mr. Chairman, recreational investments will have a direct impact on youth in my district, particularly in places like Cottlesville, Seldom, Moreton's Harbour, and Toogood Arm.

As well, Mr. Chair, it is not just about youth in our Budget this year, there is obviously investments for seniors and families. I heard a comment today as well, a concern whether health care is headed in the right direction. Well, when you put significant investments in the drug program, the provincial Prescription Drug Program and we add more drugs to that program where we can deal with issues such as liver cancer, colorectal cancer, macular degeneration and HIV and also providing drugs for blood clot concerns in knee and hip operations, that is going to have a direct impact on people in my district, in communities like Fairbanks and Hillgrade, Carter's Cove, Joe Batt's Arm and Stag Harbour.

We are also seeing a significant change in the way we do an assessment on how people have to pay for home care. We are seeing a new assessment tool come in place at a price of $7.5 million, but significant change and significant investment that will change the threshold and will allow more and more people to access home care. This is going to help people in Valley Pond and Tizzard's Harbour and Island Harbour and Deep Bay, certainly important for the people in my district.

Mr. Chair, we are seeing huge investments in tourism as well. We recently saw a $5 million investment with Shore Fast Foundation to develop ecotourism on Fogo Island and Change Islands. Our government invested $13 million in marketing and advertising and we are all benefiting. The tourism operators and the people of my district are certainly benefiting from the wonderful ads that are shown across this country.

Added to that, Mr. Chair, there are decisions in other departments that will impact our tourism, and I could mention Transportation and Works and the amount of money that is going into roadwork in our district. Obviously, it is going to have a significant impact on tourism because that is the first welcome mat that is there and it is certainly the last mat they leave on.

We have already announced close to ten kilometres of pavement for Fogo Island this year and a further announcement to come, looking at three kilometres to support Summerford and Cottlesville residents, as well as the many residents who commute back and forth to the fish plant on a daily basis. Some of the roadwork we have already announced are going to benefit residents in communities like Shoal Bay, Barred Islands, Little Seldom and Joe Batt's Arm.

Another significant announcement recently, Mr. Chair, I would like to point out, and that is the announcement for a call for expressions of interest to develop and design specifications for a new modern ferry to replace the Captain Earle W. Windsor. This announcement certainly shows our government's commitment to improve the aging ferry fleet. It demonstrates a commitment to our district and it demonstrates a commitment to the residents of Change Islands and Fogo Island. A new modern, sixty-vehicle ferry, 200 passenger capacity, canteen services and an ice-reinforced design would certainly be welcome to the people on the islands.

In this Budget, some $44 million has been invested in construction of new ferries; $13.4 million on maintenance of the existing fleet, and more money being put into maintenance of ferry terminals and wharf infrastructure. Mr. Chair, this is significant. It is budget announcements that will have a direct impact and in many cases, an indirect impact throughout our district.

Time is of the issue, Mr. Chair. I just want to point out that I certainly welcome the investments to our district. I think we are seeing some positive things happen in all sectors and there is obviously always concerns but as we make more and more investments there is an opportunity for things to move up in the priority list and as we move up in the priority list, obviously we will be able to address more and more things in short order.

So on that, Mr. Chair, I certainly appreciate the opportunity for a few words and I look forward to other comments this evening.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

MR. KELVIN PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will just take a few moments again to make a few other comments on some stuff that is relevant to my district, certainly that this Budget has impacted upon. I alluded to the Burgeo water system. That was one major thing. The Burgeo highway was another. There is $1 million this year, it is in Capital Works, for water and sewer in the Town of Ramea, much needed, and this government has provided for it through Municipal Affairs in their budget. That is appreciated.

Also, for example, last year - when the 2007 election was on I made a commitment to the people that if I were re-elected at that time, the number one priority in all of the district of Burgeo & LaPoile would be a new bridge, if it could be accomplished over Isle Aux Morts river. Everybody who lives down that part of the coast, from Isle Aux Morts, Burnt Islands, Rose Blanche, LaPoile, people who come up on the boat and travel that road, or Grand Bruit, they had to pass over this bridge. It was deplorable. You would drive over it, for example, and your tire would strike – it was a wooden top, and your tire would strike one piece of wood and it would actually flip up and hit your car. There were other times you would go over it, there was snow on the bridge and so on and you would not see the wood sticking up at you and people ran their vehicles into it. Absolutely treacherous! Not because works services, by the way, did not try to maintain it, because you can imagine now, at that time there were tractor-trailers coming from up and down the coast delivering fish products and so on. So when you have a wooden-top bridge, they tore the top off it pretty quickly. This was happening on an ongoing basis.

So that was why it was the number one priority. I am pleased to say that that bridge was done and completed now, and the people in Isle aux Morts are very grateful for that. Now we had to fight the good fight with the people in works services to get it, but thankfully we have a person who works with works services on the West Coast, Mr. McCarthy, I do not mind saying his name, who is one of the most level-headed persons that I have ever had to deal with. Now sometimes I have asked him for stuff and he cannot deliver. If he cannot he always has a reason why, but if you can make your case again, he can certainly appreciate a case and he will try to get it done if there is any way possible.

The tough times we have had, what I find tough, is not so much the big projects because they are so obvious, like putting a road somewhere or fixing a bridge or putting in a water and sewer system. For example, I have another community, where right now they have a volunteer fire truck. There are about 800 people who live in the community and they have no fire truck. About three weeks ago the mechanic condemned their fire truck.

Now, I am currently negotiating with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and I would hope to think that somewhere in the mix, not because we are greedy - and I understand, by the way, there are communities now because there is 90-10 financing, they have not gone for one fire truck anymore, they have gone for two. Because before if they wanted a fire truck they had to pay 50-50 but now the new formula is 90-10. So a lot of communities instead of saying: well now we have more money, we have 40 per cent more money kicking around now because it is 90-10 funding. They have gone to Municipal Affairs and said: we need a fire truck - they probably want a more expensive one now - and we also need some other rescue vehicle to go with it. Obviously, there is a priority. Do you have a town that gets a fire truck and a rescue vehicle and leave a community without any source of fire protection? Obviously, that does not take a lot of common sense to figure out that that is not appropriate.

So I have made my case to the minister, and we will see where it goes. There is a process. I realize there is a process. It has to go through the fire marshals involved. There are all kinds of recommendations but eventually it hits the minister's desk, and I have no fear that she is a reasonable person. It is not for me to make the decision. She makes the decision. I can only make the case. I know I made the case strongly enough. You do not have to make a very strong case to say that people who have always had fire protection and all of a sudden their fire truck was condemned due to no fault of theirs. It is a pretty good case I think that they ought to have some sort of fire protection because we do not have horse and carts anymore to provide that service.

In any case, the little stuff often is the ones that you cannot get solved and it does not make any sense. I will give you an example, and this is where the frustration comes in, because I can tell you lots of things that I have appreciated that you have done, and I just alluded to several of those.

I will give you an example now of something that I cannot understand for the life of me. There is a little community called Fox Roost-Margaree and they have a volunteer fire department. There are about many 110, 115 homes in that community; all very self-reliant people, hard workers, ethical people. They keep their homes top notch, right up there. They have a volunteer fire department that is second to none when it comes to dedication and wanting to be trained. They do not have a lot of equipment. They have a little fire hall built, and they have a little fire truck in there that serves their purposes.

I get a call one day and they said, Works Services have been going over this strip of road, because Works Services had cleaned that road as long as Fox Roost-Margaree existed. For forty years, as long as they have had the road, when the tractor would go by in the wintertime he had to push the snow somewhere. So the snow plough operator conveniently made the swoop to push off the snow when he came to the fire hall, because, number one, there was room to do it and the other thing was, he was serving a very valuable purpose. While he was pushing the snow off the road he was also clearing the snow from the front of the fire hall. Now, I thought that was pretty neat; no extra gas involved, no extra time involved, but one simple action served a great purpose. You did not have to rely then upon the fire department volunteers to come with their shovels or their snowplows or whatever to try to keep the door clear. Works Services did that at no cost to this government. Guess what? Somebody new comes to town in charge of that particular section of highway and that stops, and all of a sudden the fire chief calls and says: What is going on? Somebody gave a directive that what had been going on for forty years like that could no longer continue because it was contrary to departmental policy.

I wrote letters to the minister, the minister has come back, and the explanation we get is: Well, we cannot do it in Fox Roost-Margaree because if we do it we might have to do it in every community, and we have all kinds of local service districts in the Province, hundreds of them. That could cost us thousands of dollars if we decided to do that. I said: Well, that is fine. If all of the sudden you have 100 LSDs who say, we want highways to clear the lane in front of our fire department, you have a problem, but, I said: That is not the history of this piece. It served your purposes to make the swoop, to get rid of the snow.

That is what is frustrating. It is not frustrating to ask for a water and sewer system for somebody or paved roads or to see that you have a fire truck or to see that someone who has a health care problem you can help them with. It is these little frustrating things that become the biggest issues when it comes to dealing with government. Sometimes the ministers themselves are well intentioned and they want to help you, but because it is written somewhere in the system that it is a policy and it might have existed since Adam was an oakum picker, you cannot change it and that is what is frustrating.

People do not say, all of a sudden: Well, we have to apply little modicum of common sense here. Guess what? The people in Fox Roost–Margaree volunteer fire department, as a result of that ruling, because somebody, some bureaucrat - and I say bureaucrat not in a kind way here, because most of them are kind and do have common sense, but somebody made a decision that: I read that in a book and I cannot do that anymore. That does not make any sense to me and that is where we have a mesh somewhere your responsibilities as citizens and your duties as a job, as a bureaucrat who works within the government system. We have to make it work for the people. That is what this is supposed to be about. It is not whether I look good, or he looks good because he is seen by somebody as enforcing the policy. If it does not make any sense, and the imposition of that policy hurts people, why would you do it? That is the kind of stuff that is frustrating.

What am I supposed to be? If I stand up and talk about that: You are a critic. You are supposed to stand up and say all positive things about the government. What is your obligation? I do not know about the rest of government members, and a lot of them do not stand up, but I have been up in here for weeks delivering petitions from their districts on issues, and my colleague for Port de Grave the same. That is not going to make you a bad MHA because you stand up and you are contrary to government. You have a job to do and this is where a lot of it gets done, folks. It gets done in the House of Assembly because you have to let the people know you are doing your job. If they do not see you on your feet talking about these issues, and they do not see you bringing in petitions, some people assume you are not doing it. You can send them all of the e-mails you want, you can send them all of the letters you want saying, yes, I talked to such and such on this and, yes, I did that, but guess what? The only proof in the pudding is when they see you on your feet here talking about it. That is the only proof that any citizen in this Province ever got that you stand up for your district, is when you stand up here and do it.

That is why this member does not mind standing up sometimes, and I hopefully tell it like it is. If criticism is deserved I will be critical. If credit is deserved I will give credit. I absolutely disagree with the comments of the Member for Placentia & St. Mary's, today, who said that we should not televise Estimates because that is another process in democracy and eventually we, as legislators, will come to our senses and have the Estimates Committee proceedings televised, the same as we televise the House of Assembly, so the people can truly see what is going on.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for the District of Humber Valley.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KELLY: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am very pleased to rise in this hon. House today and to have a few words on the Budget for 2009.

Of course, Budget 2009 is a very significant document that outlines the plan for this government for the next year.

Governments are involved in many processes, involved in planning, in organizing, in staffing, in coordinating, in reporting, and in budgeting. These are the functions of a government, and it is the budget, of course, that allows the government to make the financial commitments it needs to do to make sure that everything is carried out in the departments.

I am very proud to be here as the MHA for the District of Humber Valley, and, of course, the Humber Valley runs from Pasadena through to Pynn's Brook to Deer Lake, Cormack, Howley and the communities in White Bay, which include Hampton, Beaches, Pollard's Point, Sop's Arm and Jackson's Arm. I have quite a diverse district. It is quite a challenge and I do my best to represent the people in my district.

This government has been in power now for six years, and they have been six marvellous years. The government has turned things around. They have changed things. When this government took office in 2003, our debt was $12.9 billion, and in this Budget, of course, it was acknowledged that the debt will be down to $7.9 billion, which is quite a significant achievement. It allows this government to plan and do the things that it currently has in this year's Budget.

For example, the plan was to have a $750 million deficit. Well, the purpose of the deficit, of course, is so that the government could continue with its agenda, which includes increased funding to many departments that the government operates, including more funding for health care, more funding for education, and more funding for infrastructure to the Department of Transportation and Works and the Department of Municipal Affairs. So, quite significant! The government is on the right track.

Over the Easter Break, I visited the other Maritime Provinces and spent a few days down in the United States. When I visited some of the people in the Maritimes in particular, in the Province of New Brunswick, they were so impressed about this government and the job that they were doing. Some of them said that they wished that Premier Danny Williams was the Premier of their province. That is what they told me.

Our Province obviously has a very strong fiscal position. Just recently my wife went shopping in a local wool shop and the lady said these are the best few months that she has had since she has been in business. We find in this Province, despite the fact that we are experiencing some significant difficulties with our resource sector - of course, our Province is resource based - we know that with the forest industry, and in some aspects of the fishing industry, there are difficulties, but overall we are doing extremely well thanks to the leadership and vision and commitment that this government has displayed in the last few years.

Lucas Hellmer said, "Aim not for what you are, but for what you could be." I think that this government and this Premier certainly have vision, there is absolutely no doubt about that, and that vision is seen throughout the Province in the kind of work that they are doing.

Our unemployment rate has done much better. We are in a much stronger fiscal position. Our income grew by 5.2 per cent in 2007 and, of course, our GDP grew as well, which is the total value of goods and services produced in an economy in a given year.

There are many things in this Budget of significance to my district. For example, the forest industry is important to Western Newfoundland. There is money in this Budget for silviculture. There is money in this Budget to control insect defoliation, the hemlock looper in particular. There is money in this Budget for resource roads. There is money in this Budget under the provincial roads program that will mean significant improvements to roads in different parts of my district.

For example, the road between Deer Lake and Pasadena again will receive some funding for mill and fill. There was a problem with rutting, and that will be addressed, but the asphalt that is coming up will be reused and put on the road to Sir Richard Squires Park. The government has also made some significant improvements to that park in the last few years, I think, which ties into their Tourism Vision 2020 initiative, which is quite significant indeed, and I would like to have a few more words on that momentarily.

We see improvements in roads in my district not only between Deer Lake and Pasadena, but the Howley Road will receive approximately three kilometres of roadwork and this year they are doing approximately five kilometres in the White Bay area.

I would like to acknowledge the contribution and the warm working relationship that I have with the Minister of Transportation in ensuring that my district does indeed get some of the needed work that needs to be done.

Also, under the department of municipalities, I would like to acknowledge the work that Minister Whalen is doing as the minister. It is quite significant and, of course, my district will receive significant amounts of monies. Some of it has already been announced and more to come, so I am very pleased with this Budget.

AN HON. MEMBER: More to come?

MR. KELLY: I am hoping for more to come, yes.

Now, getting back to tourism, perhaps our greatest asset in this Province next to our human resources is the picturesque natural beauty when combined with our rich history, culture and hospitality that makes Newfoundland and Labrador an especially attractive travel destination. Our region in particular is infamous for its strong appeal and exceptional tourism potential. Tourism is one of the Province's most important generators of new export-based wealth, jobs, investments and business development, contributing something like $790 million to the provincial economy on an annual basis; and, of course, Vision 2020 is a document that, the plan is to increase the size of that budget. Also, tourism supports 12,730 direct jobs, so it is very significant.

Just this week – yesterday, for example - a major announcement that will have significant impact for tourism in my region, of course, was the announcement of the expansion of the runway at the Deer Lake Regional Airport, in which this government contributed $3 million, $3 million from the federal government, and $3 million from the Deer Lake Regional Airport Authority, quite a significant achievement.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KELLY: The Budget also contains an additional million dollars for tourism. When this government took office in 2003, the tourism budget in this Province was $6 million. It has now grown to $13 million, which is quite significant, and I would like to congratulate my colleague, the Minister of Tourism, for the outstanding job that he is doing in overseeing that department. Many people are talking about the wonderful efforts that are taking place in tourism in this Province. An additional $150,000 was set aside this year for the Viking Trail and the Discovery Trail.

There are challenges, no doubt, in my region, but as I face those challenges I find that my colleagues, the ministers and the MHAs in this House, are very supportive of me as a new MHA and I enjoy the working relationship that I have with them.

Earlier, a number of speakers spoke about education. Of course, that was my background, an educator. I spent thirty-one years as a school administrator, all of them either principal or vice-principal, and I know what it was like in those schools during my tenure. Often, you know, the janitor would go around with a bucket because the roofs of the schools were leaking. This government is putting a significant amount of new money into improvements in the schools in our Province. It is something that was lacking and it is something that this government is to be commended for.

Also, with students, this government has made a significant investment in our youth. For example, this year alone the government has done away with the interest charges on the Newfoundland and Labrador portion of the student debt. We now have, and the government will continue down that road, the lowest tuition fees in Canada. That is very significant. Our government is very proactive when it comes to youth, and I am very proud as the Member for the District of Humber Valley to be a part of this government because of its vision, because of its commitment to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and in particular my district, the great District of Humber Valley.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Port de Grave.

MR. BUTLER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.


It is a pleasure this evening to be able to stand and make another few comments with regard to the debate. I guess in another few minutes we will be almost to the end of the debate with regard to this year's Budget.

First of all, I want to touch on a couple of comments that were made by my hon. colleague, the Member for The Isles of Notre Dame, when he went into the issue about school inspections. He was wondering if it was necessary to bring up the concerns that we do bring up. He figured that we were just causing more concerns within the general public and that everything is fine, everything is being looked after and so on, and he went through the process, the procedure to follow, and he was an administrator and so on.

Mr. Chairman, if everything is fine, when the Leader of the Official Opposition wrote a letter to the Fire Commissioner's office back some time ago and asked for a report on twenty-plus schools – and, I can assure you, three of those schools were in my district - if everything was fine you would not have had the influx of inspectors from all sources going into those schools. There was barely enough room in them for the students to get in that day. They were in going from one end to the other, checking this out and checking that out. They could not believe what was going on. Even to this very day, we still have not had a report back, the Fire Commissioner has not responded, but I know. I had calls from teachers and I had calls from students, visits from students, who were wondering what was going on and what prompted all of this to happen. If everything is fine, that is wonderful.

Mr. Chairman, we hear members and the government talking about money put into education, and there is nobody going to condemn that, let me assure you. I appreciate every cent that is spent on education in my district, the new equipment that is going into the school gyms, the classrooms that have been built on at Amalgamated Academy and so on, but, Mr. Chairman, that does not stop me from bringing up concerns that are brought forward by parents, not only in my district but throughout the Province when it come to air quality.

As long as I have breath I am going to stand and ask those questions. Even though government thinks the procedure they are doing, that if you find out there is a problem in a school we will go in and correct it, that is all fine, but I will be still bringing it up because I honestly think that there should be a comprehensive air quality testing or a review done, and no better time to do it than when the schools are out in the summer months. We will still be bringing that forward. That is not being negative towards government. It is a safety issue, our children deserve it, and that is where we are coming from.

Mr. Chairman, once you listen to some hon. members you bring out issues, I guess, that you never thought you would bring out. I just want to go back to the District of Port de Grave when we are talking about funding and what is happening and what is not happening. During the election of 2007, it was a well-known fact that if we elect someone to the Liberal side this time there will be never another penny spent in the district. We will be four years without any funding. I have to say, and I stand here in all sincerity, I call a spade a spade, the funding that is going in - and I am not going to announce it all here tonight because some of it has not been announced, but I have spoken with different ministers.

We all remember the major storm we had back a couple of years ago, Chantal. I know the hon. Chair today had tremendous damage done in his area. I know in my area the main bridge leading from Spaniard's Bay to Bay Roberts was totally destroyed. Government moved in, put a contract out, and a steel bridge was installed as a temporary procedure to get the traffic flowing.

Many people said, that is what we are going to be stuck with for the next four years, but no, no, when you deal with government, when you deal with the Ministers, they look at issues. It is not with regard to what type a district it is or who is representing a district, and the ministers here know who I am referring to. The funding flowed and that bridge was started. This year, that will be completed. Regardless of who is there, government knew that it had to be done.

Other issues: I know there was a major project last year. I received a call – and I will not use any names – a call from a minister last year saying that we went to tender in a particular community in your district for some storm sewer work, but we could not proceed with it because the tender came in so much over budget. I had the council come in and meet with that individual, and they said, look, we know it cannot be done this year, but next year we will commit to not only doing the portion that we applied for this year, but we extend it to do the full job. That commitment was made, that minister moved to another department, and the minister of the department today, I have been told, that that commitment will be kept this year and that work will be going ahead.

I have also been told there is going to be tremendous amount of road work done in the district, paving and upgrading. One of the key areas, and it is a very peculiar situation, is what we call New Harbour Barrens. It is a link that goes from the District of, it was Port de Grave, but now it is Carbonear-Harbour Grace and Port de Grave joined together in one community, Spaniard's Bay, and goes over to the Trinity Bay side. That road needs a tremendous amount of repair. The work was started on the Trinity Bay side. Each and every year, when I got a letter from the Minister of Transportation and Works asking me what the priorities were, I always included that piece of road, even though 90 per cent of it was not in my district. It was a tremendous link to the district, both ways, bringing business back and forth, and employees and workers back and forth to both districts.

That particular piece of road, I think, is in three districts - I could be wrong – Trinity-Bay de Verde, possibly a piece of Bellevue, Carbonear-Harbour Grace, and Port de Grave. Hopefully, there will be work done this year on it, but they find themselves in a difficult position wondering which member they are going to take some of the money from to do that road. Let me assure you, once they do a portion of the work in my district, I do not mind that money going – regardless of what district the pavement is laid in, that is a good link to my district for the flow of traffic.

Still, even though I know this money is coming for water and sewer and pavement and upgrading, you have to bring the other concerns forward. Only this week, I asked the Minister of Transportation and Works about the summer maintenance program, and about the carpenters not being hired on this year, and the minister committed to go and find the answers to those questions. First he said that there were no changes from last year, but then again he is checking it out and he told me that tomorrow he should have a response to it. That is what it is all about. That is why you are bringing them up. It is not because you are against government or against a particular minister or department. You bring the concerns forward that have been expressed to you by your constituents and you continue to do that. That is the same with the summer maintenance program. They closed out the thirteen depots. You bring that up not to embarrass government, you bring it up because when you hear from the workers themselves, from the people in the various towns, that there is maintenance work to be done, you bring it forward. This has been confirmed by the various individuals working within those departments.

I heard the hon. member from Grand Falls-Windsor–Green Bay South talking about volunteerism. It was only recently we went through Volunteer Week. Mr. Chair, we know what a tremendous piece of work those individuals do in each and every district. I cannot help but think about the Lions Clubs in my district. It was only today that the member from Bonavista North had a member's statement on Lions Clubs and the work that they do. The Royal Canadian Legion, the work that they do in our area and throughout with regards to the Veterans' Highway, the involvement with the Battle of the Atlantic and their involvement with the schoolchildren, they do a tremendous job.

Then we have the fire departments. This year, in conjunction with the District of Harbour Main, a new fire department is being built. I think it is called Bay de Grave and it will include three communities from my district and a couple from the member for Harbour Main. The new fire department at Bay de Grave I think is being built in South River. That is wonderful. Then again we have the Bay Roberts Fire Department who are very active. All the departments out there are very active and they do a tremendous job, Mr. Chair.

Then again, you still have to bring up other issues. Even though everything is going fine and we are getting money for that, you still have to bring up issues when a fire department is looking for a separate piece of equipment or some recreation group is looking for a few dollars. You do not bring it up to be always negative or just trying to spread something and get something on the go. You bring it up because there are issues that are brought forward by the people in your district. The volunteers, whether it is the search and rescue, the municipalities themselves, the individuals who serve on the councils, they do a tremendous job and they are to be commended.

Mr. Chair, I know the clock is ticking down, so I will just conclude now. I appreciate the leave but I am sure I will be back again before the evening is over.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for the District of Topsail.

MS E. MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS E. MARSHALL: Mr. Chair, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the Budget. I did speak previously, mostly on the Government Services departments and of course there are quite a few other government departments which spend a significant amount of money, and I would like to have a few words on those.

I would like to start off, Mr. Chair, with the Department of Health and Community Services. The budget for that department is quite large. It is a $7 billion budget. That department spends about $2.6 billion and it affects every person in this Province. There are a number of initiatives there included in the Budget this year that I would like to briefly mention.

I would like to start off with the announcement by the minister where he indicated that the government would be restructuring the home support financial assessment process. I have had a lot of experience with regard to that because I have had calls from a number of constituents who were assessed under the old assessment policy and they were left with very little resources on which to live. So this new financial assessment process, one of the things that it does is that it increases the liquid asset limit that they are allowed to retain and the new calculations will leave them with more money to live on. The assessment process will benefit families and, as I indicated, it will reduce the large amounts of funds that is required by families to pay for the care of their loved ones.

Mr. Chair, one of the other areas I would like to talk about is mental health. One of the things that this government has done since it has come to power is put a significant amount of money into the area of mental health. Usually we spend about $2 million additional is put into the Budget each year for mental health initiatives and there has been an additional $18 million put into the budgets over the past five years. Every year we are progressively increasing the Budget for mental health initiatives.

Mr. Chair, I would like to make the point that years ago mental health was something that people did not talk about. We sort of kept it within the family or we kept it to ourselves. It was almost like a secret illness. I know, Mr. Chair, just from my own family experiences that a number of people I know quite well had mental illnesses and it was very secretive. Nobody talked about it. There were very little services available. There was really no assistance there for them. Mr. Chair, it is very beneficial that this is something now that is coming out into the open. People are starting to acknowledge that a mental illness is the same as a physical illness. People are seeking help and the community and family members and friends are more aware of it. They discuss it and they provide support to their loved ones. I think that is very, very important.

One of the other areas, Mr. Chair, that we have made a significant amount of progress in over the last five years is with regard to the Prescription Drug Program. I would like to refer my comments not just to the current fiscal year, but I think one of the things this government has done is that in almost all of our programs we have a strategy so that we are not just hit-and-miss on different government programs. What we are trying to do is have a strategy for various programs like the Vessel Replacement Program and now we have the Prescription Drug Program. Each year we build on the support that we have in these programs.

Under the Prescription Drug Program, Mr. Chair, what we have done over the last number of years is that we have started to add new drugs to the program but we have also loosened the requirements that would enable more and more people to avail of the program. Really, we have expanded the program quite significantly over the last five years so more people can take advantage of the program.

This has been a big benefit to my district, Mr. Chair, because I know that over the last number of years I have had many, many calls from people who are quite disappointed because they did not qualify for the program, or the drugs that they required were not covered by the program. I notice that over the last number of years the program has been available to more people and that more drugs are included on the provincial formulary.

Mr. Speaker, in the Department of Health and Community Services also - I just spoke briefly on two programs which I would call operating or current account programs, but I wanted to talk a little bit about health infrastructure. Health infrastructure is very similar to other types of infrastructure, whether you are talking about schools or whether you are talking about roads or whether you are talking about buildings. When you have an infrastructure there to support social and other programs, it is not just a matter of building a building or creating some facility and saying: That is going to be there from now until well into the future and we do not have to worry about that anymore.

One of the things that you do have to do when you have infrastructure, whether it is a school or whether it is a road or whether it is a building or a hospital, Mr. Chair, is that you have to maintain it. You have to have repairs and maintenance on it on an ongoing basis. In addition to that, there comes a point in time when it is no longer practical to repair a facility and upgrade it, that really you have to go back to scratch and put a new facility in place.

Some of the projects that have been announced by this government, I will just run down through them, and I have picked out ones that I am personally familiar with and I feel I can speak to those the best.

The hospital in Labrador West, I have visited that on a couple of occasions, and I can assure anybody who has not visited that hospital that that hospital definitely needs to be replaced. There is $4.7 million budgeted in the Budget for that project.

It is also planned that the Hoyles-Escasoni Complex is going to be replaced, and that facility is just, I would call it, a stone's throw from the Confederation Building. Anybody who has visited that facility can easily see that building definitely needs to be replaced.

In addition to that, Mr. Chair, there is money in the Budget to commence the redevelopment of the emergency department at St. Clare's Hospital. There is also $1.2 million provided in the Budget to start the expansion of the Dr. Bliss Murphy Cancer Centre. Of course, anybody who has ever visited that center, or who has had occasion to be there as a patient, can see that expansion is required at that facility.

In addition to the buildings and the major infrastructure, Mr. Speaker, you also have to continually upgrade and replace the equipment. There is funding provided in this year's Budget for replacing a variety of equipment, and this has been done over the last number of years. This is something that you have to do on an ongoing basis. In the area of health equipment, there is $50 million budgeted and that is for things such as laboratory equipment, a CT scanner for Grand Falls-Windsor, ultrasound machines, and things of that nature. Of course, there is a general allocation there of $40 million for repairs and maintenance.

Mr. Chair, one of the issues that has come to the forefront in recent years are environmental issues. We were all aware over the last, I would say, fifteen years that there are areas in the Province where, for example, there may have been mines and mining companies may have left and the site was not properly remediated or there was no study done on it. I was very pleased to see in the Budget this year, for the Department of Environment, that there is funding provided to assess and remediate contaminated sites. There is just over $10 million provided. That would include remediation at Hopedale, Northwest Point, New Harbour Barrens, Baie Verte and Rambler mines. Also, there is funding there for assessment for the mines at Buchans, Mr. Chairman, and Whalesback at Notre Dame. It is very good, Mr. Chairman, that there is some funding provided for that initiative. I know that there are many other sites throughout the Province that will require funding in the future, but that is a start.

Mr. Chairman, I would also like to briefly mention that I represent the City of Mount Pearl and also the Towns of Paradise and Conception Bay South. I do want to mention that I did speak briefly on Mount Pearl and Conception Bay South the last time I spoke, but I did want to speak about the Town of Paradise and the funding that has been provided to that town. The Town of Paradise is going through a real growth spurt and has for the last number of years. There is a great need there in that community for road maintenance and also for water and sewer, Mr. Chairman. I was very pleased to see, in the infrastructure announcement earlier this year, that there was funding there for the Town of Paradise to the tune of $12.8 million.

CHAIR: Order please!

I remind the hon. member that her time for speaking has expired.

MS E. MARSHALL: Mr. Chairman, a few minutes to clue up?

CHAIR: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: By leave!

MS E. MARSHALL: I would like to indicate that, with the announcement that was made yesterday with regard to the federal-provincial infrastructure agreement, there are additional funds there for the Town of Paradise to help them with regard to their infrastructure projects including water and sewer and also the upgrading of the main road through the Town of Paradise, which we know as route 60 or Topsail Road.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to say thank you very much for providing this opportunity for me to speak and I look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am glad to have another opportunity to make some points relating to the Budget discussions that we have been having.

We noticed this week that a good thing happened yesterday, on Monday, when the federal and provincial governments together announced an economic stimulus package. It was good to see the federal minister with the provincial minister in cooperation. It is something that we all want to see happen.

One of the things that I found very interesting was that there seemed to be total unanimity between the federal and provincial governments with regard to what would be an economic stimulus. The announcements with regard to infrastructure were very concrete, to put it literally, infrastructure that related to water, related to waste water, to public transit, highway, roads, parks, and trails. There was an agreement, I think almost among everybody, both on a federal and provincial level, that in doing an economic stimulus package infrastructure had a meaning that was related totally to physical infrastructure. That is certainly a part of infrastructure and it is a good thing to be able to put forward, because it is very easy to see where the money is going to be used. When we start seeing work happening on the highways, for example, the different parts of the highway that are going to be upgraded because of this package, we are going to be able to see very concretely that this is happening. When the famous Kenmount overpass gets replaced we are going to see very clearly what is happening.

I guess from a political perspective, putting all of the infrastructure money into those kinds of pieces of work is a way for people to say, number one, they can see the work being done and they can see people doing the work. It is both the success of the visible work being done, plus they can see the employment.

There are many people, and it is certainly not only me and it is certainly not the NDP, but places, for example, like the Caledon Institute of Social Policy and places like the CCPA which is the Canadian Council of Policy Initiatives. These are research bodies in Canada, not just think tanks - I do not like the term think tanks - but research bodies which put a lot of work into researching what the impact is, both economically and socially, on people in Canada of government policies. People in institutions like the Caledon and the CCPA put forward a really strong argument that we must look at not only infrastructure in its traditional sense but we must look also at social infrastructure.

I have had people questioning me on: Well, what do you really mean by social infrastructure? It is really very simple, and I actually have said this once before in the Budget debate, that social infrastructure means those programs and those things in infrastructure that relate to the community, for example, libraries. Promoting our libraries, increasing our libraries, improving them, is improving an aspect of social infrastructure. How we use our schools - I just do not mean the nine to five or the eight to three in schools - but how we use our schools as centres in the community is a way of looking at social infrastructure. How many recreation centres we have for our young people, again is looking at social infrastructure. You have two things. Of course, you have a building where the programs happen, but you also have the programs.

Looking at what is it that makes a healthy community and putting money into those efforts is also an economic stimulus. For example, if we were to look at a model for recreation centres – and there are various communities/recreation centres in our Province which are doing really good work – if we were to create a model based on what we see happening in some places, and then put money into encouraging communities to set up similar programs, we do two things. One, we build the community, we build the society, but we also create more jobs. I think we need to recognize that, while there are a lot of jobs to be had in construction and reconstruction, there are also jobs to be had in recreation centres, there are also jobs to be had in after school programs and community centres, and there are also jobs to be had in after school programs in schools. There are many jobs to be had out there that are not construction jobs. It is something for us to think about, because when we talk about construction jobs, while we have a goal of getting more women involved in trades and technology, and it certainly is a goal of government, I know it is, and it is certainly a goal that I have and it is something that I have worked on, we also know that even with more women going into trades and technology, the majority of people currently in construction are men.

With all of the infrastructure that we have talked about, with the infrastructure that received money yesterday, when the federal and provincial governments made their announcements - and for the provincial government, all of that money had been earmarked in the Budget, the money was there for this to happen - that with all of those jobs that will be created, a vast majority of those jobs are going to be men's jobs, unfortunately. Not that men only can do those jobs, but at this moment, the majority of people doing those jobs are men.

What we are going to be seeing is a lot more men getting employment over the next couple of years as the economic stimulus package is operative. I have no problem with men getting jobs, the only thing is, what is happening to women? What is happening to the jobs where they are? For example, home care. If we were to really get into having a real home care plan in this Province, we could be stimulating better salaries for women who are already doing home care as well as more jobs in home care. That is one place where the majority of people doing the work are women, not only, there are some men in home care, but the majority are women. The thing with putting a plan in place, more money, more infrastructural money, into home care, is it is not as visible to the general public. It is not as visible that we have something concrete happening, yet we do have something concrete happening. If we put more money into home care we would have more people receiving the care that we need and we would have more people doing work. Their work is not as visible as somebody who is out constructing a road, but we need this social infrastructure.

I was talking a minute ago about looking at community centres which have, in particular, after school programs. I am very fortunate in my own district to have a number of schools that are connected to community centres or they themselves have after school programs. I am quite impressed, for example, with Virginia Park School and the work that they do before and after school, and the Virginia Park Community Centre and how it connects with the school. The same way with Bishop Field which has after school programs, and Macpherson which has a wonderful program with Daybreak, where mothers and preschool-age children are in the school, using the school, and their lives are connected with the lives of those who are in the school.

CHAIR: Order, please!

Order, please!

I am having some difficulty hearing the member recognized speak. I would ask all members for their co-operation.

MS MICHAEL: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am having a bit of trouble hearing myself, also.

I am talking about looking at what is happening in places where really good programs are going on and sharing the idea with other schools or other communities which maybe do not have programs like the ones that I have just mentioned, and putting money into communities learning from each other. That again is something where new jobs would be created, yet you do not see the work being done. It is an infrastructural investment but it is not as visible.

This is the first year of infrastructure, and, as the government looks at infrastructure in the next budget, because I suspect we should have a long-term vision around this stuff, I would encourage the government to get more into looking at social infrastructure. Look at the research that is being done into that and look at the economic benefits of investing in social infrastructure, whether it is childcare, whether it is home care, whether it is more museums, or whether it is more libraries. All of these investments have both a social and an economic impact and benefit. To me, if government really wants to affect where we are going in the future it would be very wise to bring both of these aspects together in future budget planning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for the District of Baie Verte-Springdale.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. POLLARD: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I, too, count it a great privilege and, in fact, an honour on behalf of the people of the District of Baie Verte-Springdale to stand in this hon. House and have a few words about the Budget.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the Minister of Finance and his team for an outstanding job -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. POLLARD: - and for crafting such a broad, comprehensive document that addresses the needs right across this great Province of ours. The Minister of Finance and the Budget make a lot of sense; pardon the pun, Mr. Chair.

Being a positive person, I like to accentuate the positive whatever chance I can get, so I would like to throw out some random statements about the Budget.

First of all, I would like to remind everybody that we are off equalization. We are a have Province. Our confidence is renewed and that has instilled pride again in all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. You cannot put a monetary figure on that, Mr. Chair. We have had four consecutive surplus budgets, so, Mr. Chair, we are doing something right.

Mr. Chair, our net debt is reduced from $12 billion to $7.9 billion in just five short years. What does that mean, Mr. Chair, to the lay person? Put it in language that we can all understand. At least I can understand it. In 2003, our net debt per capita was $23,000 for every man, woman and child. Right now it is reduced to $15,500. To reduce that even further so we can all understand it, out of every dollar that the government took in we used to spend approximately twenty-three cents out of every dollar, in 2003, when we took over. Now, to date, it is down to eight cents out of every dollar. Those are great strides, Mr. Chair, I say.

An unprecedented $2.46 billion in health care, an unprecedented $1.29 billion in education, Mr. Chair: That is good news and we like to share the good news and send a message out there, a positive message.

We have one of the best Poverty Reduction Strategies in the nation. In fact, it has held up as one of the models, as a template, where other jurisdictions can take it, look at it, and copy from us, or have a template.

Let me go on, Mr. Chair. We have one of the best student aid packages in the nation.

Further to that, we have an unprecedented $800 million infrastructure spending, a 50 per cent increase over last year, Mr. Chair.

I know all this was espoused before, but it bears repeating because it is such good news, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, there is an expansion in our retail sales by 7.7 per cent, driven by a high level of consumer confidence.

Let me carry on. We have an improved credit rating, Mr. Chair. That means, in the eyes of the lending institutions we are viewed to have our house in order.

Let me carry on. We have increased consumer confidence. We have the lowest unemployment rate in years, since the 1970s, Mr. Chair, down to 13.2 per cent. It is the first time in sixteen years we have recorded an increase in our population, an increase of 1,400 compared to last year.

Let me move on: Increase the minimum wage by July 2010 by $10 an hour. Mr. Chair, our housing starts remain steady and strong. Newfoundland and Labrador bucked the national trend.

To carry on: Personal disposable income grew by 5.8 per cent because of our tax cuts in 2007 and 2008 Mr. Chair.

Listen to what Mr. Bruce Templeton, chair of the St. John's Board of Trade, said about our Budget, about increasing the small business tax threshold from $400,000 to $500,000. Listen to what he says: It helps 4,400 businesses, more than 700 members. What does that mean? It means that the businesses have more of the profits so they can invest in their staff and in making new markets. Mr. Chair, we all know that small business is the backbone or the engine that drives the economy.

Another feature of our Budget: a $3.9 million investment to support implementation of our Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy. We are trying to make Newfoundland and Labrador a place to be, a place for our children and our families to continue to live and work and play and raise a family, Mr. Chair.

Another feature: $7.5 million committed to recreation infrastructure to advance sports opportunities for the people of this great Province.

Mr. Chairman, I am glad that our government has adopted the philosophy of Socrates: A sound body equals a sound mind.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. POLLARD: Our government stresses the importance of physical education activity and being physically active on a regular basis.

Mr. Chairman, let me carry on. For the low-income earners the threshold was $13,511. That means they pay no provincial tax if they earn $13,500 or less. This year's Budget increased the threshold to $15,911. In addition, for families the threshold was $21,825. This year's Budget increased it to $26,625. That means our government lost a little bit of revenue, but it means that low-income families got more money in their pockets so they can spend. That is great news, Mr. Chairman.

For seniors, we made a number of investments: $7.5 million to change the financial assessment process for home support; and $3 million for social housing units for low-income seniors. These initiatives build on ones made in previous years, Mr. Chair.

In this Budget there is a lot of good news. We could spend hours talking about the good news. How can I help being so positive, Mr. Chair? No cuts in programs, no cuts in services, no job losses, there are tax reductions, and there are no wage freezes.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. POLLARD: That has engendered and espoused a lot of talk all around the coffee shops across this great Province of ours.

Mr. Chair, the sky is not falling, the ship is far from sinking, the ship is not rudderless, there is someone at the helm, and we are not about to throw in the towel, Mr. Chairman. The reason why we are coming out of this economic quicksand is because we have a government who is pro-active in reducing taxes, reducing debt, increasing infrastructure spending, have a prudent fiscal management, and that has been proven over the years.

Mr. Chair, in conclusion, a little bit about my district. I could carry on, but I want to refer to my district a little bit. I am pleased that in my region, the District of Baie Verte-Springdale, our government has pumped millions of dollars towards our K-12 school in that area. The parents and the students are ecstatic about that announcement. I can carry on with the fire truck in Burlington. The mayor and the council are very, very delighted that our government is investing in a new fire truck in Burlington.

Let me carry on, Mr. Chair. Fire equipment in Paquet, Baie Verte, Middle Arm, Ming's Bight: These investments indicate that our government knows the importance and recognizes the importance of volunteer firefighters and they need the equipment so they can carry on their daily work.

Mr. Chair, infrastructure in the Town of Springdale: They are carrying on their work with the stadium, a plant, and doing their new boards and glass and doing some pavement and the side streets in that community.

Another initiative in Baie Verte, Mr. Chair, which I am very proud of in that region, is that the rehabilitation of the Baie Verte mine site. Our government, despite many, many years of neglect by previous administrations, has addressed the safety concerns and the environmental needs, the immediate needs, of that area which was neglected many, many years by previous governments.

I am proud to say that we took a proactive step and a bold step to invest in that area and the parents of that entire region are very ecstatic that our government is taking that step.

Furthermore, Mr. Chair, my region is so diverse in needs, I can go on in roadwork, fisheries, seniors, fire halls, ferries, schools, health, infrastructure –

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that his time for speaking has expired.

MR. POLLARD: To clue up, Mr. Chair?

CHAIR: Does the member have leave?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Leave.

MR. POLLARD: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am proud that my government is investing in infrastructure, is investing in safe drinking water; $18 million over the next three years in safe drinking water, Mr. Chair. They have increased the cost shared ratio for municipalities across our Province. That is a tremendous stride.

CHAIR: Order, please!

MR. POLLARD: I know my time is up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I look forward to having some other debate.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: Order, please.

The time for debating Estimates has concluded, the time limits allowed. We will now be calling subheads for the Executive Council.

CLERK: Subheads 1.1.01 to 2.2.06 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall subheads 1.1.01 to 2.2.06 inclusive, carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 to 2.2.06 inclusive, carried.

CLERK: Subheads 2.4.01 to 2.5.02 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall subheads 2.4.01 to 2.5.02 inclusive carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, subheads 2.4.01 to 2.5.02 inclusive, carried.

CLERK: Subheads 3.1.01 to 3.1.06 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall subheads 3.1.01 to 3.1.06 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion subheads 3.1.01 through 3.1.06, carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the Estimates of Executive Council carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, Estimates of Executive Council carried without amendment.

CHAIR: We shall now call the subheads for Consolidated Fund Services.

CLERK: Subhead 1.1.01 to 2.1.03 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall subheads 1.1.01 to 2.1.03 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 through 2.1.03 inclusive, carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the Estimates of the Consolidated Funds Services carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, Estimates for Consolidated Funds Services carried without amendment.

CHAIR: We shall now call the subheads for the Legislature.

CLERK: Subhead 1.1.01 to 6.1.01 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall subheads 1.1.01 to 6.1.01 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 through 6.1.01 inclusive, carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the Estimates of the Legislature carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, Estimates of the Legislature carried without amendment.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MS BURKE: Mr. Chair, I move that the Committee rise, report having passed the heads of expenditure, and ask leave to sit again.

CHAIR: The Chair is asking if we shall rise, report that the subheads for Executive Council, Consolidated Funds Services, and the Legislature passed without amendment, and ask leave to sit again.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

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

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): Order, please!

The hon. Member for St. John's South and Deputy Speaker.

MR. T. OSBORNE: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of Supply have directed me to report that they have considered the matters to them referred and have passed the Estimates of the Executive Council, Consolidated Fund Services and Legislature without amendment, and ask leave to sit again.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair of Committee of Supply reports that the Committee have directed him to report that they have considered the matters to them referred and have passed the Estimates of the Executive Council, the Legislature and the Consolidated Fund Services without amendment, and ask leave to sit again.

When shall the report be received?

MS BURKE: Now.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

When shall the Committee have leave to sit again?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

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

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, from the Order Paper, I would like to call motion 1, that the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board move that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government, the Budget Speech.

MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board speaks now, he will close the debate on the Budget Speech.

The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I begin, I would like to thank all members of this House for their input in relation to the budget process.

As I indicated in my initial speech - it seems like a couple of weeks ago now - the budget process is a gruelling process. As a government, we meet with departments, there are committees that meet, and then we engage in the pre-budget consultations.

As I indicated earlier, Mr. Speaker, during the pre-budget consultations we traveled to many areas of this beautiful Province and heard from people how much love they have for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and how much they want us, as a government, to do the right thing. What I found - and I said this on a number of occasions - as I met with the public, doing the right thing will not always be the most popular thing. As a government, we have to make decisions, and we have to make tough decision. It means, by its very nature, that not everyone will get everything they want.

In this budget process, we had to look at our priorities as a government. We have, through sound, financial management, over the last number of years, been able to accumulate surpluses that, with this year's surplus, are over $4 billion.

In these economic times, which many commentators say are rivalled only by those of the Great Depression, we had to look at what, as a government, we wanted to do. Do we strive for a balanced budget at all costs, or are we willing to incur a deficit this year, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that we do not cut social programs, we do not freeze wages, and we do not lay off members of our public sector.

What we chose, Mr. Speaker, as a government, was to put our money into our programs, maintain our spending, and, in fact, in both our crucial health and education sectors, to increase our spending. To do that, it meant that we project a deficit this year of $750 million. Sound financial management over the last number of years, Mr. Speaker, has put us in a position where we can do that without borrowing.

When we took office in 2003, the debt of this province was somewhere close to $12 billion. As of March 31, this year, Mr. Speaker, the debt of this province is $6.9 billion.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: That is a very significant accomplishment, Mr. Speaker, which allows us, in these hard times, to weather the storm and to take the decisions that have to be taken.

Mr. Speaker, in early February we announced an $800 million infrastructure package. This infrastructure package is one that looks to the future while addressing the need for economic stimulus today. How can we lose as a government by building schools, by building hospitals, by building long-term care homes, by paving roads, by building bridges, and by investing in our children and their future, Mr. Speaker, because that is what we have done this year.

When I took over as Minister of Finance, Mr. Speaker, we met with a number of economists, both locally and nationally, and the advice they gave to us was advice that we found we have already been following. Whether inadvertently, or more likely, I would say, through good planning, we have been reducing debt, we have been reducing taxes, we have been creating employment, and we have been spending on infrastructure. Mr. Speaker, while the rest of the world tried to catch up to us, we were well on our way to fighting this economic recession.

The Minister of Transportation and Works, Mr. Speaker, participated in an announcement – I think it was on Monday of this week – where there were further stimulus monies announced by the federal government. I think it is very important to recognize that out of that $300 million that was announced that day, I forget the actual number, but more than half of it comes from the Province. We are more than pleased that the federal monies are there, and they will be used to good advantage, Mr. Speaker.

This budget has been one where, during tough times, we have decided to stay the course. Mr. Speaker, that is the advice that has been given to us, to not panic, to stay the course.

Mr. Speaker, we have not been unrealistic in our approach. We do not expect that the economy will magically turn around. As I indicated earlier, our fate is inextricably entwined with that of the central Canadian economy. It is connected to the U.S. economy, and what happens in China, India, and other emerging markets. We live in a world where what takes place in a province in China can affect the demand for steel and nickel that comes out of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, as a people we are resilient. We are tough and we have fought hard times before. We will come out of this stronger and we will come out of it in good shape, but the message that we must always keep to the forefront is what I would refer to as cautious optimism. This downturn is not over yet, Mr. Speaker. We still hear conflicting messages, but at the end of the day we feel that as a government we have taken the steps we need to take and we have taken them, and I repeat, we have taken them without cutting jobs, without freezing wages, and without laying people off. That is a very significant accomplishment, I would suggest.

Mr. Speaker, I just referred to the fact that there have been no wage freezes and, in fact, that there have been no layoffs. What we have done in this Province, Mr. Speaker, is the opposite of what we have seen in some other provinces in their attempts to battle a downturn. I am not criticizing. I am just suggesting that our steps are very progressive and actually, in a way, can stimulate the economy.

We offered our public sector employees, Mr. Speaker, and gave our public sector employees, a 21.5 per cent raise over four years. In these economic times, that is unheard of, 21.5 per cent. Mr. Speaker, 30,000 public sector employees have signed on to those deals. NAPE is comprised of sixteen bargaining units; CUPE had signed a long time ago. We have the Allied Association of Health Professionals, we have the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association, and very significantly, the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association.

Each one of those union leaders, Mr. Speaker, fought hard, fought tough in the rooms for their various members. NAPE, by its very nature, being made up of so many different bargaining units, there were different concerns. One very significant aspect of these agreements is that, from what I can see and from what I have heard, people are happy with these increases. When you look at the economic time, when you look at the number of layoffs that have taken place in Ontario, for example, when you look at what is happening in the United States, you can see why they would be happy. What we have done as a government, we tried to reward our people for their public service. We have said to them: We appreciate the efforts you put into making this Province the wonderful place that it is. Mr. Speaker, from what I can see those raises have been appreciated.

Mr. Speaker, over the last period of time - and we have been sitting here for a couple of weeks now - there has been some vigorous debate at times. The Opposition, as is its right and duty, has been questioning steps taken by us as a government, and they have put tough questions to us as happens every day in this House. That is the role of the Opposition in a democracy. I have had, over the last period of time, the opportunity on a number of occasions to put partisan politics aside. Myself and the Member for Port de Grave have stood side by side in a number of events where our districts overlap. It has been very pleasurable to watch our young people at the fair in Bay Roberts at the Bay Arena, the Heritage Fair. We have been at the junior hockey tournament that was in the Bay Arena. Mr. Speaker, what it means is that we can stand there together and be proud of the fact that our young people are doing what we want them to do, and that is search for excellence and be proud of the fact that they live in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mr. Speaker, I have had to get used to this. There is no question that politics is a different type of life than that of a lawyer, that the House of Assembly is one where there are tough challenges. As a government, we also face tough challenges.

The Member for Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi continuously keeps us on our toes in relation to health issues and her concern expressed almost, I do not know if it is on a daily basis, but for the equal rights of women and children and the need to reduce poverty in this Province. We hear these messages loud and clear, Mr. Speaker.

The Member for Burgeo & LaPoile and the Opposition Leader continuously ask tough questions and have repeated on numerous occasions in this House that they will not be stifled and will continue to criticize, again, as is their right.

Mr. Speaker, as a Member of the House of Assembly one of the things I have had to learn is that criticism, being challenged, is part of what we do, it is part of why democracy works. I can tell you, there are days that I pick up the newspaper and I listen to the media and I am not especially enamoured with the comments that are made, but again it is the role of the media in terms of making sure that things are out there in the public. Although I might not always agree with them, Mr. Speaker, that is their right and their duty.

What we have, Mr. Speaker, is a process that works for the average person, because each one of us in this House we get here because the average person or a number of the average people have decided to vote for us. What we can do is strive our best to ensure that their interests are looked after, but our decisions will not always be popular nor will they always be welcomed. All I can say, Mr. Speaker, to members of this House and to members of the public, is that everyone in this House is here because they love this Province and they are interested in furthering the objectives and making this wonderful place a great place for our children to grow up and to ensure a prosperous future, one that ensures and allows for self-reliance and prosperity.

Although on political lines we might not always agree, Mr. Speaker, what we are trying to do here is the job that we were elected to and that is to ensure that democracy works.

Mr. Speaker, having said all of that - it is like in court when you say, with all due respect, and then you are allowed to criticize a little - I am going to comment briefly today on the comments made by the Leader of the Opposition in relation to the nurses' situation. Before I do that though, again when I talked about the 21.5 per cent, I want to highlight for the people of this Province the generosity of this deal that has been put before the nurses.

Mr. Speaker, from day one the Nurses' Union has said to us: The main issue is recruitment and retention. We have addressed that issue. A starting nurse will be at 31 per cent raise and the senior nurse will be a 27 per cent raise. We have tried to do this to indicate to our nurses that we value the work that they do. We know the important role that they play in our health care system. There were arguments: Well, you are applying pattern bargaining, you will not break the template. Well, Mr. Speaker, we have done that. We have gone above the template.

We have heard, Mr. Speaker, that there are other issues that affect nurses' working conditions. We are sensitive to that. We are aware of the difficulties and the time required in raising families, in raising children and getting to their events, and also not working to the point of burn out. We have tried to address those issues, Mr. Speaker.

What we did, Mr. Speaker, we put a package together and we said, this is the package that we offer, that we are willing to put forward. To give you an example: In 1999, when the nurses' union went on strike, I think a nurse at that point made $29,000. They were looking for a 17 per cent increase, if I remember correctly, Mr. Speaker. They got a 7 per cent increase, Mr. Speaker, in 1999. Here we are ten years later, and we have a deal on the table now that a starting nurse will make $55,000; almost double ten years.

AN HON. MEMBER: Up to $60,000.

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, up to $60,000.

Then we have our senior nurses, Mr. Speaker, where we are striving so hard to say, look, we really and truly appreciate your work, going up to $75,000.

Mr. Speaker, what we have done, we have said: It is a package. If you want these terms, then we want these terms from you. Are the terms we are looking for unreasonable? Thirty thousand other public sector employees have signed on to these agreements that include and contain the market adjustment and the extended earnings loss.

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition stood up today and she said that I was trying to incite, I think was the word she used, the nurses, that how the nurses are taking the steps that they have to take. In 1999, this is what the Leader of the Opposition had to say: I have seen the leader of the nurses' union and I have listened to the comments she has made in representing the nurses of Newfoundland and Labrador. One thing that always stands out in my mind, one of the things I always have difficulty with, is how any individual can take on a position of that calibre and not be willing to sit, discuss, dialogue, and keep an open mind. After all, whether it be a group, a union, a member of government, we all have a responsibility to the people of this Province. In carrying out that responsibility, we have to explore each and every opportunity. Then, what did the Leader of the Opposition say? There are going to be some cases where we are going to get all the concessions that we want met, and everything will be done the way we want it, but that is a very idealistic world. Lots of times, we will have issues that will be outstanding, that will not be dealt with maybe to the greatest satisfaction that we like. It does not mean that we turn our back and walk away.

Now, Mr. Speaker, anyone who has been watching this House for the last few days will have heard the Leader of the Opposition basically criticize government because of the position that we are putting forward. Then, the Leader of the Opposition says to us: Well, what about binding arbitration? Why will you not go to binding arbitration?

In 1999, Mr. Speaker, March 30, 1999, the Premier of the day says on page 6 of Hansard, "Historically, if you take the time to look at it, binding arbitration is neither foul nor fear for either party because it has come down on both sides of the equation." The Leader of the Opposition is asking this, "The question is: Will you not invoke the section of the Public Service Collective Bargaining Act and do what you have requested of us, put nurses back into the system…" - asking about binding arbitration. The Premier of the day said, "Mr. Speaker, I have given a very clear answer yesterday to a very clear question to the Leader of the Opposition. Government will not go to binding arbitration at this time." A little further down, "Neither are we are we prepared to go down the road to saying we can afford to give one union, an important one, and an important employee group amongst many, a settlement of two-and-a-half times greater than all others." In other words, how can you treat one union differently that the other one? Mr. Speaker, we have done that. We have gone outside the template.

Then the Premier of the day on March 25, says, "I think it is important that the House remind itself today that government has concluded negotiations successfully with over thirty bargaining units, representing over 30,000 women and men across a wide variety of sectors of work…"

Mr. Speaker, do those comments not apply today? We have 30,000 public sector employees who have signed agreements. Very significantly, we have two who have the right to binding arbitration who have reached agreements with us. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association and the correctional officers have the right to binding arbitration, yet we have worked out a deal with them. Does that not speak to our ability to negotiate collective agreements? The correctional officers bargaining unit of NAPE, I think it has been twenty-five years since they have reached a collective agreement. We sat down, and it was tough bargaining, but we reached an agreement with them.

Now we have sixteen bargaining units of NAPE and all of these other unions we have reached agreements with. The question, I suggest, is not why is government so difficult to deal with, because what we have demonstrated is that we are able to negotiate collective agreements, that we are willing to treat our employees fairly. What I say to you, Mr. Speaker, is that a 31 per cent raise in these economic times is unheard of and you cannot, as a union, say, we will take this part of the package that we like, but we will go to binding arbitration on what we do not like. That is not the way negotiations work and it is not the way it will work with us.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, over the last couple of days the Premier has been asked on a couple of occasions: Are you going to negotiate with the EU? Are you going to work with the federal government? What I would like to say to the people of this Province, Mr. Speaker, and reiterate what the Premier said, is that we have a history of giveaways, without pointing fingers or blame, that must not occur any more.

Mr. Speaker, our fishery is gone, some would say, as a result of the lack of federal intervention, and as a result of the federal government allowing it to happen.

We have to continue to fight, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No leave.

MR. KENNEDY: Just one minute to clue up, Mr. Speaker.

What we have to do, Mr. Speaker, is stand up for ourselves, because that is what we have had to do for the 400 or 500 hundred years we have been in this Province. Mr. Speaker, there will be no more giveaways. We will fight hard to ensure a prosperous future for our children and grandchildren, Mr. Speaker, and they will have a self-reliant and prosperous future.

Thank you very much.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Is the House ready for the Question?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Nay.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is carried.

Motion carried.

On motion, the House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

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

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. Speaker, I have received a message from his honour, the Lieutenant-Governor.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!.

All rise.

Correspondence is dated April 30, 2009.

As Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, I transmit Estimates of sums required for the Public Service of the Province for the year ending the 31 of March, 2010, by way of further supply, and in accordance with the provisions of sections 54 and 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, I recommend these Estimates to the House of Assembly.

Sgd:______________________________

John C. Crosbie, Lieutenant-Governor.

Please be seated.

The hon. the Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. KENNEDY: I move, Mr. Speaker, seconded by the Government House Leader, that the message be referred to a Committee of Supply.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that the House resolve into a Committee of Supply and that I do now leave the Chair.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

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

Committee of Supply

 

CHAIR (Osborne): Order, please.

We are now discussing a Resolution and Supply Bill.

Resolution

That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide for the granting to Her Majesty for defraying certain expenses of the Public Service for the financial year ending March 31, 2010, the sum of $4,224,151,100.

CHAIR: Shall the resolution carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, resolution carried.

CLERK: Clause 1.

CHAIR: Shall Clause 1 carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clause 1 carried.

CLERK: Clauses 2 to 4 inclusive.

CHAIR: Shall the remaining clauses carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, clauses 2 to 4 inclusive, carried.

CLERK: The schedule.

CHAIR: Shall the schedule carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, the schedule carried.

CLERK: Be it enacted by the Lieutenant-Governor and House of Assembly in Legislative Session convened, as follows.

CHAIR: Shall the enacting clause carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, the enacting clause carried.

CLERK: Whereas it appears that the sums mentioned are required to defray certain expenses of the Public Service of Newfoundland and Labrador for the financial year ending March 31, 2010, and for other purposes relating to the Public Service.

CHAIR: Shall the preamble carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, the preamble carried.

CLERK: An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service.

CHAIR: Shall the long title carry?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

On motion, title carried.

CHAIR: Shall I report the resolution and Bill 2 carried without amendment?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

CHAIR: All those against, 'nay'.

Carried.

Motion, that the Committee report having passed the resolution and a bill consequent thereto, carried. Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER (Fitzgerald): The hon. the Deputy Speaker and Member for St. John's South.

MR. T. OSBORNE: Mr. Speaker, the motion is that the total contained in the Estimates in the amount of $4,224,151,100 for the 2009-2010 fiscal year be carried, and that the Committee report that they have adopted a resolution and a bill consequent thereto and ask leave to sit again.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair of the Committee of Supply reports that the Committee have considered the matters to them referred and have directed him to report that the Committee have adopted a certain resolution, and recommend that a bill be introduced to give effect to same and ask leave to sit again.

When shall this report be received?

MS BURKE: Now, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Now.

On motion, report received and adopted.

MR. SPEAKER: When shall the Committee have leave to sit again?

MS BURKE: Tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Tomorrow.

On motion, Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that the resolution be now read a first time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that this resolution be now read a first time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt this motion?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide for the granting to Her Majesty for defraying certain expenses of the public service for the financial year ending March 31, 2010 the sum of $4,224,151,100.

 

On motion, resolution read a first time.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that the resolution be now read a second time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that this resolution be now read a second time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt this motion?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: That it is expedient to introduce a measure to provide for the granting to Her Majesty for defraying certain expenses of the public service for the financial year ending March 31, 2010 the sum of $4,224,151,100.

On motion, resolution read a second time.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, for leave to introduce a supply bill, Bill 2.

I further move that the said bill be now read a first time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that the hon. the Minister of Finance shall have leave to introduce a bill entitled, An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service, Bill 2, the Supply Bill, and that the said bill be now read a first time.

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion of the hon. the Minister of Finance to adopt Bill 2, and that this bill be now read a first time?

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

Motion, the hon. the Minister of Finance to introduce a bill, "An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service," carried. (Bill 2)

CLERK: A bill, An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service.

On motion, Bill 2 read a first time.

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that the supply bill be now read a second time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that this supply bill be now read a second time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service.

On motion, a bill, "An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service," read a second time. (Bill 2)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Finance and President of Treasury Board, that the supply bill be now read a third time.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that this supply bill be now read a third time.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

The motion is carried.

CLERK: A bill, An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service.

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 2 has now been read a third time and it is ordered that the bill do pass and its title be as on the Order Paper.

On motion, a bill, "An Act For Granting To Her Majesty Certain Sums Of Money For Defraying Certain Expenses Of The Public Service For The Financial Year Ending March 31, 2010 And For Other Purposes Relating To The Public Service," read a third time, ordered passed and its title be as on the Order Paper. (Bill 2)

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

MS BURKE: Mr. Speaker, with that, I move, seconded by the hon. Minister of Natural Resources, that the House do now adjourn.

MR. SPEAKER: It is properly moved and seconded that this House do now adjourn.

All those in favour, 'aye'.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

MR. SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay'.

This House now stands adjourned until 2:00 o'clock tomorrow, being Wednesday.

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