March
29, 2017
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS
Vol. XLVIII No. 2
The
House met at 10 a.m.
MR. SPEAKER (Osborne):
Order, please!
Admit
strangers.
Orders of the Day
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Deputy
Government House Leader.
MS. COADY:
Mr. Speaker, I'm seeking
leave of the House to permit the Chair of the Select Committee to present the
committee's report.
MR. SPEAKER:
Is leave granted?
AN HON. MEMBER:
Leave.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Stephenville Port au Port.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. FINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, on behalf of the Select Committee appointed to draft a reply to the
speech from His Honour, the Lieutenant Governor, I am pleased to present the
report of the Select Committee as follows:
To His
Honour the Lieutenant Governor, the Hon. Frank F. Fagan:
May it
please Your Honour, we, the Commons of Newfoundland and Labrador in legislative
session assembled, beg to thank Your Honour for the Gracious Speech that Your
Honour has addressed to this House.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
When shall the report be
received?
MS. COADY:
Now.
MR. SPEAKER:
Now.
On
motion, report received.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Stephenville Port au Port.
MR. FINN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It is
certainly great to stand today as we officially kick off the second session of
the 48th General Assembly. I was pleased to have the time yesterday to be the
mover of the Speech from the Throne. I guess yesterday of course, as most of us
here in the House of Assembly are familiar, it is a formality and quite an
honour to have our Lieutenant Governor bring the Speech from the Throne.
This is
when we kick off our session as we begin a new year, and our second year in
government. I believe there were a number of good things mentioned yesterday in
the Speech from the Throne. I also, in my speech, alluded to a number of
initiatives that we have brought forward. What was unfortunate in seeing some of
the subsequent speakers yesterday, in particular the PC leader, the Member for
Topsail Paradise, had quite a few comments to make. He began by talking about
what a Speech from the Throne is and what a Speech from the Throne is supposed
to do.
He said
it's a day for laying out priorities. It's an opportunity for us to share our
strategies. It should be a grand vision. It should be charting a course of what
we're supposed to do, and we should be giving hope and confidence to the people
of the province. It's a time in this speech when we should be laying out
specific initiatives for the coming year.
He said
it's not about what Newfoundland and Labrador needs; it's what they need now. He
said instead of a time when we need accountability, we hear blame. He went on to
say, at a time when we need decisive action, we get waffling and wavering. He
said, it's supposed to be about the way forward, and instead it's more about
what's in the past and what's behind.
I really
struggle with hearing some of that. I know the Member was here in the House as
His Honour read his speech, and I understand that it was certainly quite
lengthy, but there were a number of things that were mentioned in that speech
yesterday that kind of contradict exactly what the Member opposite was referring
to.
He went
on to say that we abandoned our people, and there was very little mention of the
people of the province in the speech yesterday. I certainly beg to differ. He
said there was so much missing from the speech. There was so much missing from
the speech yesterday. But then only went on to specifically mention that we did
not mention Mistaken Point.
Now,
yesterday's Speech from the Throne was about a number of initiatives in
The Way Forward that we, as a
government, have laid out as a plan to get this province back on track. From all
the things that you can suggest that would be missing, we somehow yesterday
missed Mistaken Point. I do not see the relevance in that. I think the Minister
of Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation yesterday was here present. He had
laid out in this House of Assembly, in the past, all the initiatives that we're
working on in that regard, as did the Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources.
I don't know how that can be the one thing that was suddenly missing from the
speech yesterday.
One of
the things that were really quite shocking was the reference to us playing a bit
of a blame game again, and there was a mention of blame. He went on further to
suggest that when we took office, we were to be full aware of the state of the
province's finances. He said they knew the state of the finances, and we knew,
and the people of the province knew.
I feel
like I'm sounding like a broken record because we've said this time and time
again. I won't belabour it, but I really need to point it out. I honestly do.
The Premier yesterday, in his reply to the Speech from the Throne, got up and
specifically referenced that he had wrote the PC leader, then former premier of
the province, in September 2015, seeking an update on the state of the
province's finances. There was no response to the letter seeking an update to
the state of the province's finances no response.
So we,
as an Opposition at the time, could only be led to believe what was laid out in
front of us. What was laid out in front of us was a deficit expected to be $1.1
billion. That was the expected deficit when we took office.
AN HON. MEMBER:
How much (inaudible)?
MR. FINN:
It was an expected deficit of
$1.1 billion and when we took office, we find out it is $2.2 billion.
I've
said this in the House of Assembly, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have repeated
this in the House of Assembly, the Premier repeated this yesterday, so I do not
understand how the Member can stand on his feet and suggest to us and to the
public of the province that we were all fully aware of the province's finances.
Now,
with that aside and I understand that folks don't need to continue to hear
that they left us in financial dire straits and everything else, but I can't
understand the rhetoric behind suggesting that everybody knew. It's clearly
documented that there was no information to suggest we would have a $2.2 billion
deficit. Now, if this was $25 million, so be it, maybe $100 million, so be it,
but we're talking about a significant difference of $1.1 billion.
I ask
the Member for Topsail Paradise: What would you do with an extra billion
dollars? What would you do with extra $1 billion as a government to operate?
What would you do with an extra billion dollars? It's ironic that the deficit we
just paid this year, $1 billion went to interest payments on our deficit. If we
did not have to pay a billion dollars in interest on our deficit payments,
imagine what we could achieve. Just imagine what we could achieve with an extra
billion dollars.
Again,
we're not talking about an extra $20 here. To put this in context: Central
Health, for example; $130 million is roughly a third of their annual operating
budget. We're operating a province with an $8 billion budget, and we got to give
$1 billion of that to deficit, to interest payments; $1 billion of that has to
go there.
So
again, to stand up yesterday and address the province and address the House of
Assembly in response to the Speech from the Throne suggesting that we knew full
well the state of the province's finances, nothing could be further from the
truth. We'll have to continue saying it.
What I
do want to speak about is some of the things that we did mention. Again, the
Member mentioned this is supposed to be about laying out a plan and this is
supposed to be about the way forward. Yesterday, His Honour sat there, delivered
the Speech from the Throne and he talked about our initiatives. They're saying
that we didn't hear anything new.
We
didn't need to wait for a Speech from the Throne to list the initiatives that
we've been working on for the past year. Why would we wait for one particular
day to announce that? We've been working on a number of initiatives over the
past 15 months now, and most of which were announced yesterday. In my remarks
yesterday, I was pleased to speak to the near $28 million over the next five
years that we'll be investing in a multi-year marine infrastructure plan as
brought in by the Minister of Transportation and Works.
It was
also referenced in our multi-year infrastructure plan that there's a multi-year
plan for roads in this province, something that municipalities and the people of
the province have been looking forward to for years. The former administration
had all kinds of time to open up a multi-year infrastructure plan on roads.
The
beautiful thing about the multi-year infrastructure plan on roads is what this
is going to do it's going to allow our contractors and the various companies
that partake in this type of procurement to prepare. It's going to allow them to
prepare and plan properly when it comes to hiring practices. Each year you have
contracting companies that say, okay, we're going to bid on this piece of work
now, and I think we're going to take on another dozen employees to complete this
job, but we don't know if we can keep you because we don't know what we're
bidding on next. We have no idea what the government's plan is to do next.
The
stability this will give to our contracting companies that partake in roadwork
in this province is phenomenal, and they've applauded this. They've applauded
this. Just like our municipalities have applauded this type of initiative as
well.
With
respect to creating jobs; again, there's no jobs plan they indicate, and we're
going to see unemployment rates now higher than we ever seen before. I'd like to
remind the Members opposite, that having been in power from 2003 to 2015 there
were a number of economic indicators that pointed to employment rates in this
province and where they would be at this time this year. The megaprojects are
starting to unfold and we're seeing some people leave as they finish up their
work there.
All
these things were clearly documented during their tenure, Mr. Speaker. So to
suggest that we somehow in 15 months just created an unemployment rate and we
have no jobs plan. How about the jobs we're going to create with the
construction of the Western Memorial Regional Hospital? That's the same hospital
that I believe was announced six or seven times over a 12-year period. We still
haven't seen any action. In Corner Brook they call it the greatest dog park
there is, because it's just an open gravel lot. That's all it is. It's just a
grand, big, open gravel lot, and you'll see people there walking their dogs.
So we
have to come in now under a multi-year infrastructure plan, and that's one of
our pieces. How about a long-term care facility on the West Coast as well, in
Corner Brook? That's part of a multi-year infrastructure plan. So when you want
to talk about creating jobs and providing stability, and providing a vision and
being able to maintain employment, and be able to advise companies who are
bidding on contracts on roads and on our marine infrastructure, these are the
pieces we've laid out nothing new in the Throne Speech.
How
about agriculture, the legislation and the announcement by the Minister of
Fisheries and Land Resources to open up more agricultural areas? I mentioned
that yesterday. This is something that the Members opposite support. It's
something they said was in the Blue Book, but I guess they didn't get time to
introduce it somewhere in a 12-year span. They didn't find the time to introduce
an opportunity to open up agricultural lands.
How
about the capital works funding that we laid out last year? We are able to
increase some of our funding for that by leveraging funds from the federal
government. I can tell you employment in the Stephenville Port au Port region
this particular spring and summer as a direct result of municipal capital works
funding is going to be great.
We have
waterline extension projects going on in the Town of Stephenville, the Town of
Port au Port East. Port au Port West-Felix Cove-Aguathuna will have waterline
projects; the Town of Cape St. George, the Town of Lourdes. We're going to have
more work with respect to infrastructure this spring and summer, our contractors
will certainly be busy, I can tell you that, Mr. Speaker.
When it
comes to agriculture; I'm very proud to have Northern Harvest Sea Farms in the
Town of Stephenville. Northern Harvest Sea Farms is, I believe and you can
correct if I'm wrong, minister the only and first agriculture company in North
America to receive a four star rating, and they're going to embark on a $6
million expansion in the Town of Stephenville this summer. In doing so, they've
stated they will do this and they have done this from their initial construction
phase, they're going to use all local contractors to do this type of work. So
employment will be created there as well.
Mr.
Speaker, one of the things that was talked about yesterday as well was the $100
million in lost revenue as our government did not introduce the increase in HST
in January. In fact, we waited until July. We lost out on an opportunity for
$100 million. I want to remind the Member, that $100 million is one-tenth of
what you falsely led everybody to believe would be a deficit one-tenth,
absolutely one-tenth.
The
Member yesterday stated that they faced challenges as well, and, no doubt, there
were challenges over their tenure in government and, no doubt, there are
challenges that will be faced by every government. He specifically referenced
the fact that they faced challenges in 2004 and they faced challenges again in
2009. He went on to say that in 2009 their government was one of the first
governments to overcome what was known as the economic crisis that spread
throughout North America and rippled throughout other parts of the world; one of
the first governments to overcome that.
During
their time of challenges, what we seen, and I stated this yesterday, was a
government that put their hat on one industry. They put their hat on the most
volatile commodity that the world has known. So during a time when they're
stating they had faced challenges, and everything is wavering on the price of
oil, somewhere in there, that administration found a way to think it would be
logical to remove the 15 per cent tax on insurance premiums. We don't need that
anymore, they thought. Let's forget about that. How about we decrease the HST
down to 14 per cent seeing how we're doing so well. How about we go ahead and
decrease that down to 13 per cent seeing we're doing so well.
In fact,
while we're at it, why don't we decrease the income tax levels to the highest
earners in the province? Let's do that in '07, and the next year say: my God,
we're doing so well, let's decrease the income tax brackets again. Doing all
this, and then only to get into 2009 where you're stating yourself you had a
challenge, and during a time of challenge rather than prepare for the future and
set aside any funds, we're just going to keep decreasing taxes and just letting
it roll. And letting it roll to the point where you now have a transition in
government and you have folks on this side of the Legislature that come in and
being blindsided by $1.1 billion. To that end perhaps, I believe one of the
greatest pieces of legislation that was passed here this year was Bill 65, An
Act to Amend the Financial Administration Act.
Yesterday, we heard again that the Liberals were supposed to be open and they
were supposed to accountable and we're supposed to be accountable. One of the
biggest and best accountability measures that we've put in place is ensuring the
release of public accounts so that no administration, no matter what stripe or
colour, Mr. Speaker, if they are to transition into government, if any future
government is to come in, we now have in place legislation that will ensure
everyone in the province will know what the state of the finances are.
So to be
over there yesterday in recognizing the Speech from the Throne from His Honour,
to suggest we're only blaming, we didn't live up to any promises, there's
nothing new that we're doing, and that is what it is. It was really difficult to
sit here yesterday and listen to that, Mr. Speaker extremely difficult to
listen to that yesterday.
Some of
these initiatives, again, as I mentioned, all the time in the world to
implement. We went through the legislation and I did this just the week before
last, before the House recessed for constituency week. I went on to reference
some of the pieces of legislation we brought in and I did point out all the
pieces that they supported. All the pieces of legislation that they supported
that we have brought in this year; did not see them not support that.
In true
Opposition fashion, we continue to hear from the Members opposite that they are
unhappy with the things that we've done and we don't have any new plan. Just
like last year, Mr. Speaker, during budget debate, I have yet to hear any ideas
from the Members opposite on a new plan.
I'm
actually looking forward this afternoon to the private Member's motion brought
in by the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island. For those looking
forward to that private Member's motion this afternoon, it's around holding a
summit for educational professionals in the province, to look at instructional
resource teachers and allocations and how do we help inclusive education. I'm
looking forward to that. It's an initiative brought in by an administration that
had 12 years to do that. They had 12 years to do that too.
It's
just a common theme that we see. Suddenly there are ideas that they're bringing
in and they're saying why don't we do this, when they had all the opportunity in
the world. The 64 pieces of legislation we passed last year, they had all the
opportunity in the world to do them last year themselves the year before.
They
must have been too caught up with the boundaries commission and the change; they
only had the House of Assembly open for five weeks. They were too caught up with
the changes perhaps, I don't know. All the pieces of legislation they supported
and thought it was great, where was the initiative to bring it in from the other
side?
Mr.
Speaker, I won't go on too much more. We're going to have a significant amount
of time to speak to Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne. Again, I'll
take a moment to thank His Honour for the Speech from the Throne. It certainly
is a great day and is a proud day to be here in this province and to have the
distinct honour to be here in this Legislature when we bring in His Honour and
we hear about the plans that the government is going to have moving forward and
that our government has. There are a number of plans that we've laid out that
the Members have clearly agreed with and they'll continue to play politics with
that and suggest that it is something that they don't agree with.
I look
forward to continuing the course of the debate, but with that, Mr. Speaker, I'll
take my seat.
Thank
you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for the
District of Labrador West.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LETTO:
Well thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I was
waiting for somebody on the other side to take the opportunity to have a few
comments on the Speech from the Throne, but I'm amazed that nobody stood up. I
was sort of taken off guard.
I just
wanted to have a few words on the Speech from the Throne yesterday. First of
all, I want thank my colleague for the District of Stephenville Port au Port
and my colleague for Exploits for putting the motion forward and doing such a
great job of introducing the debate on the Speech from the Throne.
I guess
the response has been varied, but not surprising some of the responses that
we've heard from the Opposition on the Speech from the Throne yesterday which
I thought was a very good document, a very good speech and certainly lays out
our plan for the next few months to implement some good things around this
province. But the only comments I get, I hear from the other side and from the
leader of the Third Party, for instance, is empty platitudes, meaningless
targets. When I hear these things, I don't quite understand where they're coming
from because what's happened and I'm going to have a chance to elaborate on
this. Last Friday, the Premier and the Minister of Transportation and Works
released the five-year, multi-year plan for infrastructure investments. It's a
Way Forward document.
In that
document, there are some great initiatives, good objectives, timelines attached.
So when I hear these things, empty platitudes and meaningless targets, I think
it's just for the sake of opposing rather than being constructive. Because if
we're going to get this province back on even keel, we need all of our parties
working together and all the people in the House of Assembly, as the Premier
said yesterday and he was hoping to achieve; but obviously, after the comments
yesterday from both parties, he decided to take a different route. And rightly
so, because his remarks yesterday were quite appropriate.
When I
heard the Leader of the Official Opposition, and my colleague for Stephenville
Port au Port already referred to it this morning, talking about waffling and
wavering and at a time when we need hope, we get uncertainty. Well, Mr. Speaker,
we've experienced at least two, three challenging years in this province. With
the drop in the oil prices and all the commodities, it's been challenging. It's
been challenging for us on this side of the House.
I won't
belabour the point, as my colleague for Stephenville Port au Port has so
eloquently demonstrated this morning, the state of this province and we took
over the reins of government. We were led to believe that we were coming in with
a $1.1 billion deficit. We find that not only was it a $1.1 billion deficit, but
it was twice that. When you're talking about B as in billions, when the one
becomes a two, I tell you, it's not like going from $5 to $10. You're talking a
major, major change in the financial situation of this province, and that's what
we had to face.
AN HON. MEMBER:
It was game changer.
MR. LETTO:
It was a game changer;
absolutely, it was a game changer. To say that we knew all about this while we
were in campaign mode, I think is just ludicrous.
So, Mr.
Speaker, I'm not going to belabour that point. What I want to do and I think
what we all should be doing in this House, on both sides, is looking at the good
things, looking at the positive future that we have in this province. I think
the plan that was laid out by the Premier and the Minister of Transportation and
Works on Friday goes a long way.
First,
we've often heard, for the past year, we have no plan. Yeah, the government has
no plan. Well, I looked up the definition of a plan this morning on Google, just
to make sure, just to ease my mind. I thought we had a plan, and I just wanted
to make sure that our plan matched the definition of what a plan is. It's
written on Google and Google never lies; Google is always right. A plan is a
written account of intended future course of action, aimed at achieving specific
goals on objectives within a specific time frame.
Now, if
this document doesn't fit that description, I'm at a loss. Because what this
document does is exactly what a plan is, and this is a good plan.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LETTO:
So for the Opposition to keep
saying that we have no plan, they need to change the rhetoric because this is a
plan and it's a good one.
I'm
going to take a few minutes to go through a couple of things in the plan because
what this is, it's a five-year plan that lays out the objectives of this
government. It lays out the things that we are going to do in the next five
years. It lays out a time frame, when it's going to be done. It gives it a
momentary value that needs to be spent to achieve the plan. So for anybody to
say we have no plan, it's just ludicrous.
For
instance, under health care, we're going to spend $23 million for repair and
renovations projects in health facilities across the province; $20 million for
replacement and upgrading of the medical equipment at the health facilities
province wide; $13.2 million to advance the replacement of the Western Memorial
Regional Hospital; $10 million to construct a new electrical substation to
service the Health Sciences Centre and Memorial University; $7.5 million to
advance the replacement of the Waterford Hospital. And we've all just heard
AN HON. MEMBER:
It's a good plan (inaudible).
MR. LETTO:
It's a good plan.
We just
heard the report from the All-Party Committee on Mental Health that requires us
as a government, and something that we've committed to, we're spending 5.7 per
cent of our health care budget on mental health, which is well below the
national average. We need to increase that to 9 per cent by 2022.
We as a
government, we're committed and the Minister of Health will be releasing
another plan by the end of June that will outline and implement the
recommendations of the all-party committee; 54 recommendations which are very
much needed in this province. It's 54 recommendations that all parties in this
House agreed to and needs to be done, and it's long, long overdue. Many people
have suffered because of it, and none more than the District of Labrador West, I
might add.
We can
go on and on; K to 12 education. Now, I just had the Minister of Education in my
district, the District of Labrador West, last week for two days where we visited
all the schools in Labrador West. There are four of them, including the French
school, Ιcole de franηais, the elementary school or the primary school, I
might add the middle school and the high school and we met with all the
principals. We met with many students. We met with many, many teachers, and I
tell you I accompanied the minister on these visits, and the conversations
they had with the teachers in those schools was very frank, pointed, and they
didn't hold back, and neither did the minister.
We
recognize that there are some shortfalls in the system but, nevertheless,
teachers, principals understand where we are as a government and they're willing
to work with us to overcome those shortfalls. I might add, in the feedback that
I got after the minister left was very positive from the community, from the
teachers, and the fact that he took the time out of his busy schedule in
constituency week to come and visit Labrador West was very much appreciated.
So when
we look at the expenditures in the K to12 education and Coley's Point is even
there.
AN HON. MEMBER:
Coley's Point.
MR. LETTO:
Coley's Point Primary School is in this plan, and it will be done, Mr. Speaker,
it will be done.
We look
at several expenditures around our schools, including the school in the Mobile
High School, which is a topic of discussion these days, $5.3 million to begin
construction on the extension of that school. So we are dealing with the issues
that we face in the education system, and post-secondary education is no
different when we look at Memorial University and the College of the North
Atlantic.
I want
to put a plug in here for, again, the District of Labrador West, with our
College of the North Atlantic. We are going through a study as we speak, to have
the College of the North Atlantic Labrador West Campus designated as the mining
centre of excellence. Well, that's natural. Where else would you put a mining
centre of excellence if you don't put it in Lab West? That study will not only
enhance the campus at Labrador West, it will also enhance campuses all around
this province, because all the campuses will have a role to play in that
designation. So, again, we're moving forward.
Municipal Infrastructure; we're seeing unprecedented expenditure in municipal
infrastructure, and the Minister of Municipal Affairs can certainly demonstrate
that better than I can; but, nevertheless, there are many, many dollars being
spent on municipal infrastructure. Yes, we've adjusted the cost ratios that is
true, to reflect the financial situation of the day, but we are smart enough.
We are
smart enough and we're forward-thinking enough to know that water and waste
water are priorities when it comes to municipal infrastructure. That's where the
cost-sharing ratios have not changed because we know there are many communities
around this province who need that infrastructure installed, and we will be
there to help communities get that done.
Transportation Infrastructure; now, I know that Transportation and Works, and we
know this time of the year that there are many potholes, lots of pictures flying
around of potholes and whatnot. It's that time of the year, and we do have our
crews working on that.
The one
I want to focus on, Mr. Speaker, is the Trans-Labrador Highway. I just want to
read the section in this plan that refers to the Trans-Labrador Highway, because
it is a major project for us in Labrador. It's a project that's well along, I
must say, and I want to thank the previous administration for continuing the
investment in this much needed highway.
The
statement in this document that really pleases me is: The Department of
Transportation and Works will continue to work with its federal counterparts to
secure additional funding to complete Phase II and III of the Trans-Labrador
Highway. To see $55.7 million referenced in this document to continue the hard
surfacing of the Trans-Labrador Highway is welcome news, and this year I know
there are already contracts let to pave 160 kilometres from the Town of Red Bay
to Charlottetown Junction. So things are well on the way there.
Justice
and Public Safety; again, we recognize the need for that infrastructure around
our province. When we saw last year the courthouses that were scheduled for
closure but recognizing that this is a much needed infrastructure that we cannot
afford to let go. We were prepared to leave them, and one of them of course was
in Wabush. So I want to thank the minister and the department for recognizing
the importance of having those facilities throughout our province.
So, Mr.
Speaker, I just want to take a few minutes to go back to the Budget Speech
itself. Labrador West is the district I represent and we're there for a reason.
Labrador West exists because of the iron ore mines. I don't need to tell anybody
where that commodity has gone in the last couple of years, but we are seeing
some revival. Prices are going up. It's still very volatile. It depends on which
morning you get up, it could be up $5, it could be down $5; but $5 a ton is a
big move and it means a lot. What we're seeing because of the increased activity
or the increased improvement in the commodity prices and in the markets, we are
seeing new activity within the mining sector.
I just
want to highlight a couple of things. By the way, despite the lower commodity
prices last year and this is referenced in the Throne Speech mineral
shipments are forecast to be $2.9 billion in 2017. That's the highest it has
ever been, and as we improve the markets you will see that number increase. So
mining has always been and will continue to be a major contributor to the
finances of this province. It's not only in Labrador West, although we have the
iron ore mines. There's Voisey's Bay, there's the gold mines on the Baie Verte
Peninsula, as my colleague for Springdale Green Bay so proudly talks about,
and he has every right to do so. There's a Canada Fluorspar mine down in St.
Lawrence on the Burin Peninsula that's being constructed. So mining has a great
future in this province, and again it will continue to be a major contributor to
the finances of Newfoundland and Labrador.
IOC I
don't know how many people heard the president of IOC. He spoke at the Board of
Trade on Monday here in St. John's. He was very positive very positive about
the future of IOC and the future of the region, the future of the iron ore
industry in general. Because of that, IOC has now decided, made the final
decision, to move ahead with the development of Wabush 3 deposit.
The
Wabush 3 deposit is crucial to the future viability and sustainability of IOC.
What we see today, because of the development of that iron ore pit, we will see
an extension of at least 12 years of life for the mine, and that's significant.
Now, the iron deposits in Labrador West are certainly plentiful; nevertheless,
to see development of those pits is crucial to the future, and it gives people
confidence.
I've
seen that confidence we've had a couple of rough years in Labrador West. With
the closure of Wabush mines and the downturn in the industry itself, it's been a
rough couple of years. We are seeing the confidence grow and hopefully, in the
next year or so, we'll even see more of that.
Now,
people will say, well and they keep asking me: Will Wabush ever start again? I
believe it will I believe it will. As you know, I've mentioned publicly that
Monday past was the deadline for any interested parties to have their proposals
in to the monitor the monitor is the CCAA person who's controlling the
bankruptcy protection of Cliffs. They had until Monday night.
We
anxiously await the report from the monitor to see if there's any viable
proposal that's acceptable to the monitor that we can move forward with. We look
forward to that, and certainly with bated breath we hope that there is something
positive in that. Again, it's a wait-and-see game at this point, and I'm sure
that we will see some positive activity in that region.
The
Opposition clearly talks about we have no diversification plans. Well, Labrador
West, I think, is a poster child of that, with the data centres that have been
developed and I've spoken about this in the House before as well. We have one
up and running, we have one about to start, and we have a third one that's being
planned. They are not big employment creators but they are big users, consumers
of electricity, which is money to the coffers of this province, and it instills
confidence again in the region.
It's a
new industry for us. It's an industry in Labrador West because of our climatic
conditions, and that's what you have to build on. This is what we need more of.
We need regions in this province to build on their assets. If that's what it
takes to move forward, then that's what we have to do. Labrador West is a great
example of that, so I am very proud. I am very proud to represent the people of
Labrador West and the fact that we are prepared to look at diversification and
we're doing a real good job of it.
Mr.
Speaker, again, I will close my comments as I started. We don't have time for
the negativity. This is not a time to be negative about the future. This is a
time to be positive. We heard things yesterday and the headline in one of the
papers this morning is: a way backward instead of forward. I mean, nothing can be further from the truth, Mr. Speaker. We
have a plan, despite what the Opposition may say. We do have a plan. It's all
rhetoric. It's time for them to change the dial because we have a plan. We will
implement our plan. We will report on our plan. We are accountable to our plan
and we will complete our plan.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. LETTO:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Tourism, Culture, Industry and Innovation.
MR. MITCHELMORE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's
such a pleasure to follow my esteemed colleague, the Member for Labrador West,
and all the initiatives that he talked about that's happening in Labrador around
mining and diversification, and to have the opportunity to respond from the
Speech from the Throne. I certainly, as a minister, believe in
The Way Forward. I believe in the Premier and our team that we have
in place here on this side of the House to really get this province back on
track. We've presented a plan that's very clear, that has measurable targets and
deliverables, which will grow and diversify the economy.
I want
to point out, though, that when I listened to the Leader of the Opposition
yesterday in his response, I was appalled. So I had to go back and I had to just
look at the documentation of the Estimates. I go back and look at the
instability that was created by the former PC administration. They had 3½
premiers and a merry-go-round of ministers. When I walked into the Department of
Tourism, Mr. Speaker, there were five Tourism Ministers in just over one year.
If you
look at where the total public sector debt was in 2013, while this whole
transition of 3½ premiers under their administration, there was $6.7 billion in
total public sector debt. Now, that's an interesting number: $6.7 billion. It's
much more manageable than what we have today. So 2013, 2014, 2015 at the end
of their tenure, in just three years, they grew the total public sector debt to
$12.2 billion in 2015. That's absolutely shameful. That's $5.5 billion; that's
almost double.
We had a
Finance Minister, a PC Finance Minister, that got up and said that math is not
his forte; it wasn't his best subject. Well, thankfully, we have a Finance
Minister who understands math, understands targets and understands the
importance of performance management and delivering on key targets to get us
back to surplus. We have a seven-year plan to get back to surplus.
If you
look at the 12 years of overspending that happened and the bad business deals by
the previous administration with their Muskrat Falls Project that they were
fixated on, that is now over budget, predicting that oil would be at $100 a
barrel for over 55 years, Mr. Speaker, they couldn't budget year over year.
My
colleagues talked about it. When they campaigned, they said there'd be a $1.1
billion deficit. It ended up being $2.2 billion. Had we not changed course, it
would have been $2.7 billion. Right now, we're at a point, during the fall
fiscal update, that we've gotten the deficit under control to $1.6 billion.
We're making great progress here.
Had the
previous administration actually planned and put forward initiatives and
contained their cost of spending, we would have been in much better shape as a
province. I say to people if you look at where we were when we took office and
you were running your household, it's like you had your credit cards maxed to
the max, you pay a little bit but you take a lot of interest as the Member for
Stephenville Port au Port said, there's a billion dollars in interest
payments, more than education right now, and that's not good.
So if
you're taking your credit cards, maxing them out, your line of credit is already
overextended and you need to go buy a car now because you need transportation
how do you go do that? You have to raise more revenue. That was the position
that we were placed in very unfortunate position, but we had to look at
increasing revenue. We're focused on getting the province back on track, growing
revenue streams, but also containing cost.
This is
why, in the Speech from the Throne, I'm so pleased to see a number of the
initiatives that are talked about around industry and economy. I work with my
team of colleagues, the Minister of Natural Resources, the Minister of Fisheries
and Land Resources and a number of others as we talk about how we create those
jobs.
In the
Speech from the Throne, it's clearly talked about that we're going to have a
Cabinet committee on jobs; there will be a job lens. There are actual targets
put in place to create 14,000 person-years in specific industries when it comes
to aquaculture, when it comes to our agriculture sector. We've already advanced
initiatives as a government that we're going to basically be able to double the
available land that's currently in production for farmers or for people who want
to get into farming and doing these types of initiatives. There's great
opportunity.
The
Speech from the Throne talked about a return to groundfish and a focus on
transition. This is quite key, and we have a number of initiatives that the
Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources has undertaken under technology and
modernization and working with our federal government colleagues to see that
there was a $325 million fisheries innovation fund where $100 million is
earmarked for Newfoundland and Labrador. Plus, we'll be able to play in the
space for the $30 million in marketing and the initiatives around marketing.
There are lots of other initiatives that have been put forward by the federal
government to invest in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Our
institutions like the Oceans Frontier Institute, that's going to create 162
jobs; yet my critic on the other side said that's a bad deal for Newfoundland
and Labrador. Very, very unfortunate that he's opposed to job creation here in
Newfoundland and Labrador, but we've seen bad business deals from the other
side, Madam Speaker.
I will
say that we're very targeted on our initiatives when we look at tourism. When we
look at how we grow tourism that we talk about product development; we talk
about increasing air access. We look at the initiatives and the industries to
grow those 18,000 jobs across the province, because a lot of those jobs are not
only here in St. John's, but they're all across Newfoundland and Labrador, and
we're seeing a lot of synergies that are happening.
One of
the things that we're pairing, as well, Madam Speaker, and you may be quite
interested as the Member representing Cartwright L'Anse au Clair, that one of
our regional innovation systems pilot projects is going to be focused on
Southern Labrador and the Great Northern Peninsula around looking at fisheries
and tourism. We have a lot of synergies when it comes to both industries. When
it comes to tourism on the Great Northern Peninsula and in Southern Labrador we
have three UNESCOs it's a great opportunity. We also have a UNESCO at Mistaken
Point. We're certainly not forgetting them.
When we
talk about the cluster and the capacity of tourism and what exists that all
cultures basically collided on the Great Northern Peninsula of over 5,000 years
of history, and into Labrador, with Point Amour, the burial mound that exists
there, there's a lot to be capitalized on: Battle Harbour, the Vikings. I mean,
they were really our first come-from-aways. We have so much to celebrate there.
Then
also, we have the traditional fishing industry. We have St. Anthony Basin
Resources Inc. We have a lot of fish processing operations. We have
international shipping on the Great Northern Peninsula. We also have a lot of
great infrastructure in Labrador when it comes to the fishery; when it comes to
looking at the investment institutions, like the credit unions that exist; when
we talk about the Labrador shrimp company that's there. Those are all positive
things, and we look forward to using our academia with the Minister of Advanced
Education and Skills, when we look at the College of the North Atlantic that
exist and we talk about Academy Canada, and how we can work together to pull
resources to create greater opportunities, greater economic opportunities.
We're
not just stopping there for that pilot project. We're doing five pilot projects
across this province. There will be a pilot project that's going to be focused
in the Corner Brook area around forestry. We have Kruger that's operating a pulp
and paper mill there. We also have a lot of agriculture research that's taking
place, and a lot of agricultural land in the Cormack and Pasadena and the Codroy
Valley area.
The
Member for St. George's Humber is very particularly interested in looking at
the agricultural opportunities. And we've seen growth. We've seen where things
like canola, which is a 19 billion dollar industry that was planted under our
watch, Madam Speaker. That was an initiative that this government undertook.
The
former administration didn't have the vision to look at all the diversity and
all the opportunities that we have in agriculture, because they were just
fixated on oil. Oil is not a bad thing. We want to see more exploration, more
development and more activity. The Minister of Natural Resources has been
working very strongly on that and seeing good things happen in the oil and gas
sector, when you talk about the offshore development and things that are taking
place.
So we're
really looking at connecting from a supplier-development point of view as to how
some of the businesses and the local benefits, and how we can grow that piece of
pie. That's really important. It's all about having a good plan.
If you
look at Gander, Gander and area has always had a lot of potential around the
aerospace industry, looking at all the institutions that are there from the
college, the flight training; you have the aviation museum; you have the
airport. You have a lot of connectivity when it comes to supply and service
businesses, and potential to look at aerospace, how we grow that, and how we
build on our R & D capacity.
We saw
where Provincial Aerospace Ltd. secured a major contract with the federal
government and Bombardier. These are good things that are happening in our
economy that we've seen in the last number of months that are going to create
well-paying jobs for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians here, Madam Speaker. It is
not all doom and gloom; I can certainly tell you that. Although other people,
people on the other side will certainly only speak to the negative.
Then,
when you move forward to the Burin Peninsula, look at the potential for
industrial development that exists on the Burin Peninsula. You take in Argentia
and you look at the Clarenville, Arnold's Cove area, and you look at all the
activity that's there. It's a great golden triangle that it has been referred
to, and there is a lot of employment that's happening in those regions, a lot of
great infrastructure. So we're going to work to capitalize on the technology
aspects, how we can create synergies and how we can grow and create more jobs.
I was
very pleased to stand in this House not that long ago to announce the loan that
we had provided to Canada Fluorspar. That's going to create hundreds of jobs in
the construction and the development phase. They're long term for St. Lawrence.
Significant benefits to the economy. There's going to be shipping jobs as well
out of Marystown. It's all about building capacity and growing.
Then we
see with the Avalon Peninsula, when we look at ocean technology. So much
potential with Holyrood and their Oceans Initiative that they have, when we talk
about the Marine Institute, when we talk about the OceansAdvance and the
cluster, and that the federal government now is investing in these cluster
projects of upwards of $950 million over five years. We're resetting the
innovation agenda here. We've been consulting. We've been talking and we're
implementing priorities and plans that are going to grow the economy here in
Newfoundland and Labrador.
Having
targeted growth is quite key, and that's why the business innovation agenda will
certainly help see more tech companies. We have some really successful
businesses here in Newfoundland and Labrador that are securing international
contracts. They're playing in that space of sensor technology, whether they're
Solace Power in Mount Pearl North or whether they're Kraken Sonar that's playing
in this multibillion dollar defence and ocean technology space where their
technology is far superior to the big players that exist. We're doing great
things here in Newfoundland and Labrador.
When we
look at the arts and we look at the cultural community, we invest and we invest
heavily into arts, more than the national average, Madam Speaker. We're quite
excited to see that in the film industry; in film last year,
Frontier which is referred to
in the Speech from the Throne. The film industry last year created 600 full-time
equivalent jobs, had $46 million in production value alone.
That's not counting the post-production that NIFCO, given
their great operation and what they do, they have stellar equipment when it
comes to attracting operations and people coming from outside the province to do
post-production work because it's comparable to equipment that exists in
Montreal. We have the best on
the East Coast, Madam Speaker. We have a lot of talent. We have a great talent
pool that exists. We've built up capacity and we want to see film continue to
grow.
We've
seen where our music industry has received accolades year over year. MusicNL,
our industry association representing the musicians, we support them. We support
their operations. We support the programs to help grow that talent pool, and
they've been adding new members. It's quite exciting to hear and to talk about.
When we
look at our museums and our art galleries, and seeing the tourism stats, seeing
that the numbers are up significantly; they were up 34 per cent last year at
museums alone. When you look The Rooms, our cultural facility, when you look at
the numbers and the fact that we have a permanent we have the largest World
War I permanent exhibit in the country, and it's quite an honour to have that.
That raised $13 million in private sector, and a million dollars from the
federal government to pull off that initiative. Quite exciting.
Come From Away;
we're really excited to see that Come From
Away came back to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, to celebrate the
kindness, the generosity, the hospitality and the warmth of the people of the
region during one of the world's most horrific events in recent memory. That
performance, that musical has gone to Toronto, it's been in California, it's
been in Seattle, it's been in Washington, D.C. and now it's on Broadway in New
York.
Just
last week I had the opportunity to be there in person, to talk to those key
operators in travel and trade. Some people who have not done business in
Newfoundland and Labrador and people who are currently doing business that are
coming back, whether it's the East Coast Trail and the pristine reason that they
want to have that outdoor nature experience, and the East Coast Trail is a
valuable asset.
We've
seen people come for the East Coast Trail and invest $500,000 in the Venture
Capital Fund here in Newfoundland and Labrador, because they know that
Newfoundland and Labrador is a good place to do business. We have competitive
taxation when it comes to the small business taxes here in Newfoundland and
Labrador. We've seen when we were down at
Come From Away, that people are excited to want to come to regions of the
province, whether it's the Twillingate Lewisporte area, whether they want to
go to Fogo Island Inn.
We see
where businesses are looking to reach out and create those packages and those
opportunities, and we're certainly there to support, Madam Speaker. We're there
to support a number of initiatives, whether it's in our tourism marketing or
whether it's in our product development plans, or whether it's working with our
partners as to how we grow and reach our vision of $1.6 billion by 2020. We're
going to get there. We can get there.
We've
been supporting a lot of initiatives when it comes to the tech sector, Madam
Speaker, through research and development and activities and initiatives here in
place. We want to work and create business incubators and accelerators, whether
they're at our College of the North Atlantic or in community. There are a lot of
great initiatives that are happening. The Speech from the Throne is clearly
setting that direction.
Yesterday, I met with the Community Sector Council and we talked about social
enterprise. We talked about the value of social enterprise to the community and
the economy, whether it's Choices for Youth or Stella's Circle, the Hungry Heart
Cafe.
We saw
where MUN Enactus partnered with the social enterprise Choices for Youth for
Project SucSeed, where you're linking up agriculture; you're linking up food
security. You're looking at being able to provide food in the North when it
comes to Nunavut, when it comes to coastal communities, when it comes to
isolated and rural areas. This is a great solution to a number of problems that
exist with growing fresh and healthy product in a lot of rural isolated
communities across the world.
So we're
really proud of the initiatives of our young people and the opportunities and
the solutions they see to be able to capitalize on that. Those are things we
want to continue to support and develop, foster at a very young age. This is why
I'm very pleased to see in the Speech from the Throne that there's support for
early learning and childhood educators, and support through subsidies to help
lower-income people ensure they have the ability to have their children at
daycare to avail of those programs and supports.
It also
then opens up a pool of labour as well, because we hear far too often that
businesses, whether they are small business or medium business, that there's a
mismatch of labour and sometimes it's the fact that people have barriers to
employment. We have to remove those barriers. So as a government we're taking a
very proactive approach to making sure that more people are able to enter the
workforce.
We're
focusing on immigration. What a great opportunity to bring more people here to
this province to help combat our declining population. When we look at the
potential of adding entrepreneurship, visas and the potential from an
immigration point of view, that when people come and create business, let them
grow, let them scale up. We're going to be focusing on business in Newfoundland
and Labrador where there's high growth potential where we can create those
long-term sustainable jobs.
We're
not focusing on these boom-and-bust megaprojects and economies that were fixated
in a solution by the previous administration because, if you look at that, how
we got there in 2013, 2014, 2015, public sector debt, the total public sector
debt just listen, while the Leader of the Opposition was under the helm
running this province $6.7 billion all the way up to $12.2 billion $5.5
billion in debt, basically doubling where we are now, maxing out the people's
credit card, maxing out that line of credit and forcing very difficult decisions
to be made.
We, as a
government, all of us on this side of the House, and we ask the people on that
side of the House too, to support The Way
Forward, support the Speech from the Throne, support the budget that's
coming down next week because we're going to grow the economy here in
Newfoundland and Labrador.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MADAM SPEAKER (Dempster):
The Speaker
recognizes the hon. Member for Virginia Waters Pleasantville.
MR. B. DAVIS:
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
It's an
honour to rise in this hon. House again here today to deliver an Address in
Reply to the Throne Speech. I'd be remiss if I didn't say a big welcome to a
young friend of mine, Nick Hillier, who is in the House today taking in the
debate. So hopefully, he sees some great debate here hopefully, not one sided.
It's
hard to believe that almost over a year has gone by since we last had a Throne
Speech. I think that most of us on this side of the House, especially us rookie
MHAs; it has been a year of tremendous growth for us. Both out in our districts
and in this Legislature, we've had a unique experience of leading government in
the transition.
We took
over in 2015 when the PCs had been in power for 12 years the government that
left behind a sluggish, an inefficient and downright huge government. When we
took over, we knew sweeping changes we wanted to make and we got right to making
those changes. But changing direction on something that is lumbering and as huge
as the government the PCs left behind takes time. Full steam ahead, full speed
ahead on the reckless course that they set; it was a course that was led towards
nothing but ballooning debt and financial ruin.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MADAM SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. B. DAVIS:
Thank you.
You
should put your jersey back on. You were quiet when you had the jersey on.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MADAM SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. B. DAVIS:
That's right; you speak next.
I like listening to you.
MADAM SPEAKER:
Order, please!
I remind
the Member to direct his comments to the Speaker.
Thank
you.
MR. B. DAVIS:
Sorry, Madam Speaker. I
apologize to you.
The
worse part of this was the PCs didn't recognize and do anything to prevent it.
Instead, they were content to kick this problem to the province's future. When
we got into government, we immediately started to fix things. But I would like
to say changing direction takes time, and especially when it's a runaway
speeding train of debt that they left us.
It's
fair to say that we learned a number of lessons in the first 12 months as well.
We took crucial steps toward getting Newfoundland and Labrador back on the right
track. So when I think back to a year ago when we brought down the 2016 budget,
I feel a sense of accomplishment as well as some disappointment. We are in a
much better situation than we were 12 months ago, and we've made astounding
progress. The decision we made to raise taxes and fees and reorganizing the
delivery of service, we knew we're not going to be winning any popularity
contests, but they needed to be done. We were willing and they were not.
But when
we're facing the reality that if we did nothing, then we'd have to choose our
own popularity first, we were guaranteeing our province would never find a way
out of this hole. We did these actions knowing that we would suffer greatly in
the court of public opinion, but we also did them knowing that if we did
nothing, then we weren't going to fix this province at all. That was a year ago.
It's been a hard year for many, and this fact is not lost on me or any of us on
this side of the House, despite what Members opposite say.
Madam
Speaker, we've asked Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to shoulder a considerable
burden. We've asked them to sacrifice in the service of betterment of our home.
We stand by these decisions now, as we did back then. But every one of us on
this side of the House recognizes that there is a lot that the people have done
for our province.
We also
recognize the return for their sacrifice. We owe them nothing short of doing
more due diligence and careful consideration, considered work, at all times, and
in all sectors of our government. We owe them that action, immediate and
decisive action. Standing here addressing the hon. House a year later, I can
proudly attest to our track record of action on behalf of the province and its
people.
In 2016,
we passed 64 pieces of legislation in this House of Assembly, right here 64
pieces in our first year. Just for comparison sake, in 2015, the PCs: just 15.
Past practice will dictate future results. And if that's any indication,
obviously the legislative agenda that we brought forward as this government is
far-reaching in relation to what you the PC Party did before. But that's not the
only thing. In the last five years of the PC administration, they passed an
average of just 35 pieces of legislation.
It's
true; I'd hang my head, too, considering how much we've accomplished in the
first year, in very difficult times. For the most part, their legislative record
spoke of an aimless government, with no particular objective in mind other than
retaining favour of the voting public.
I find
it hard to believe to still hear on the call-in shows and read on Twitter from
the Members opposite to say we have no plan. My colleagues prior to me addressed
the plan. It's there in black and white. You may not want to read it, but it's
there, with measurable outcomes.
The
former premier has a habit of rattling off alternative facts and avoiding
responsibility for the fiscal situation that our province is in. Let us not
forget that less than two years ago, the former premier stood up and told the
entire province that we were $1.1 billion in debt. Well, obviously, my colleague
for Mount Pearl Southlands said he was hoodwinked on Muskrat Falls. I would
tend to agree the province was hoodwinked on the $1.1 billion deficit, because
we know, on the accounting side of it, that that was far worse than that.
My
colleague for Stephenville Port au Port mentioned about the fact that if it
was $100 million, maybe $200 million, maybe even $300 million more, we could
probably have dealt with it without having to do the far-reaching activities
that we had to do on this side of the government, that none of us wanted to do;
but, considering that it was an additional $1.1 billion that was not told to the
people of this province shameful.
It's
okay for the Members opposite to be like the ostrich party and bury their heads
in the sand and not take responsibility for anything that they did. They stand
in this House from time to time, when we bring in some nice pieces of
legislation, or we bring in Suboxone or Naloxone, and stand up and say: I was
going to do that. We started that. But we delivered it, that's the difference.
Talk is cheap; action is where the rubber hits the road.
So in 12
years you have a lot of talk and a lot less action, in my mind. From my opinion,
I think the rhetoric as my colleague from Lab West said should tend to stop
and focus on the fact that, listen, you can take credit for some good things
that you did. I'll agree there were some good infrastructure spends, there were
some good schools that were built and that's all good things, but you have to
also stand up for the things that are now coming back to roost, like Muskrat
Falls. You have to stand up on what your record is, because that's your legacy
project.
AN HON. MEMBER:
A ferry without a wharf.
MR. B. DAVIS:
Or a ferry without a wharf,
yes.
We've
talked about our plan a bit here this morning already. We have an ambitious
legislative agenda to deliver on the empty promises made by the PCs in some
cases, and we're going to deliver on that in spades.
One of
the pieces of legislation that we brought in was Secure Withdrawal Management
for Young Persons Act. A good piece of legislation, very well needed. We also
talked about the creation of an Office of the Seniors' Advocate. Even though
it's a luxury, is what the PC Party thinks, we don't agree.
We think
the Office of the Seniors' Advocate is great. We need that. Our aging population
is occurring. We have the oldest population in this country, and we can't think
of a better way to endorse that philosophy than putting an Office of the
Seniors' Advocate in place to address those concerns and make sure we have that
lens on legislation and things coming forward.
We also
have presumptive cancer legislation for firefighters that came forward. We
delivered on a signature piece of a commitment in one year, on many of these
signature pieces. You had the honour of 12 years serving in this House talking
about it, because if I remember correctly, presumptive cancer legislation was
first talked about in 2003, and that was early in your mandate.
There
was a lot of talk about delivery on it, a lot of firefighters consulted, and we
delivered on it within one year. We talked about it in our campaign. We
delivered on it, not only for career firefighters but for volunteers as well
which risk their lives each and every day in our communities right across our
province, from coast to coast to coast, and in Lab West.
So I
have no doubt that in 2017 this hon. House will bear witness to delivering on
another raft of broken PC promises, and they will continue to stand on their
feet in this hon. House and claim that they were going to do it and take credit
for it. We can let them do that, that's fine, but the people see through that,
because it's all about delivering.
The Way Forward
detailed our government's vision for sustainability and growth in Newfoundland
and Labrador. It's a roadmap for our province, the future for prosperity and
opportunity and a high standard of living for everyone we hope. This plan is
based on extensive consultations with Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and took
place as soon as we took office. It incorporates feedback and suggestions from
people all across our province.
In the
consultation process we developed a series of goals for the future of the
province. The Way Forward lists
concrete, measurable commitments, many of which have been discussed already, our
way of remaining accountable to the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador.
We are
stepping away from the smoke and mirror approach of politics of the former
administration. The Way Forward is
working. Only this past week our Premier announced phase 2 of
The Way Forward, focusing on growth in
the private sector employment. Along with the announcement of specific phase 2,
the Premier announced phase 1 completed; structural savings of about $45
million. Is that enough? No. We have a lot more work to do, but it's a great
start.
On top
of already the many millions of dollars that our Minister of Finance and her
team have already shaved off the deficit, the minister and her officials have
realized these savings without compromising the delivery of services and
statistical outputs, and we know that sitting in the Department of Health. I
believe the new policy on zero-based budgeting is exactly the cure a government
that has grown too large needs.
A
sustainable and vibrant economy in Newfoundland and Labrador is possible, and I
believe such an economy can support a strong and dynamic private sector. Our job
as a government is to create the conditions that will help private enterprises
succeed, and that's what phase 2 will do.
Phase 2
is projected to create 14,000 person-years of employment. It's an astonishing
number.
AN HON. MEMBER:
How much?
MR. B. DAVIS:
Fourteen thousand years, a
tremendous figure in and of itself. And yes, it is based on credible numbers and
realistic targets. The Way Forward has
a strong focus on accountability, and we're asking the people of Newfoundland
and Labrador to keep us to our word. We are confident in our plan and we're full
speed ahead on it.
We have
asked a lot of the people but we are seeing results, and it won't be always like
this. Even now we're seeing progress. Even now we're seeing encouraging trends.
When prosperity returns, and for sure it will, because of the resilience and
strength of our people
AN HON. MEMBER:
Someday the sun will shine.
MR. B. DAVIS:
That's right, when we are in
the ideal financial position to make most of the opportunity we have.
I want
to take a little bit of time and just talk about my district. I have a few
minutes left, so I'd like to take a little bit of time and talk about my
district.
AN HON. MEMBER:
(Inaudible.)
MR. B. DAVIS:
Well, I'll always stand in
this House and be willing to stand and hopefully the people that are listening
will hear what I say, and if they ever have questions, please reach out to me.
Virginia Waters Pleasantville is a beautiful district. I would say one of the
most beautiful in our province.
MS. HALEY:
Next to Burin Grand Bank.
MR. B. DAVIS:
Next to Burin Grand Bank, I
guess, yes; and scenic Gander, of course, and perfectly centered Grand
Falls-Windsor Buchans.
So there
are a lot of beautiful districts in our province, and hopefully we'll get an
opportunity to go out there. I've seen many of them, but I'm very lucky to
represent the district I have, one of the most diverse economically, as well as
nationalities as well in the entire province. It's culturally vibrant
enhance the quality of education in our schools. Vanier, Virginia Park
Elementary and St. Paul's Junior High, each of these schools are examples of
excellent work that our educators do to support and uplift our children.
It has
been a joy for me to witness the development of the new school at Virginia Park,
as well as putting it back on track. I'd like to thank the Minister of
Transportation and Works for putting it back on track. It was off the rails for
a little while but I'm happy it's back on track there now and it looks like it's
going to be ahead of schedule. It may not be below budget, but it's definitely
going to be ahead of schedule from where we thought. So I'm hoping we'll be
cutting the ribbon on that soon enough, but I know the due diligence our
minister has put in place to make sure this works, and we're very pleased to see
that in the community.
I firmly
believe this will be the anchor for the community now and into the future. It
promises to be an excellent facility for the children of Virginia Park and the
surrounding catchment area. I have the personal benefit of being a volunteer at
the school and it's one of the highlights of my time in office. I love
interacting with the children, staff and parents. They form a great cohesive
community. I can't wait to see the community grow into their new school.
Madam Speaker, organizations such as: the 150 RCAF
North Atlantic Wing, the Virginia Park Community Centre, Mary Queen of Peace
scouting clubs, St. Mark's church and CLB unit, Cygnus Gymnastics, are many
examples of incredible community outreach and volunteers within my community,
and it's an honour to represent these groups.
These groups deserve to be supported in the great work
they do by our government and we have been supporting them. All the ones that
I have mentioned have received support from government and we're very happy that
we can do that. Government can never match the multiplier effect that volunteer
hours and enthusiasm volunteers bring to their work. The passion that these
volunteers have for their community translates into action and, in turn, great
impact to the families in the district.
It has been an honour to serve on the All-Party
Committee on Mental Health and Addictions. I have to applaud my committee
colleagues, from all sides of the House. We've done a heck of a job of putting
together and crafting a report and recommendations respecting the newly shared
stories and struggles of individuals that we consulted with.
Thank you to each and every one of the people who chose
to share their difficult stories. This report is for them. I believe we are on
the verge of great changes in the way mental health services and addictions
supports are administered in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I think this report
will point the way there.
Madam Speaker, I've also had the great pleasure of
working with the Minister of Health during my time as his parliamentary
secretary.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
B. DAVIS:
I've been consistently amazed by his level of compassion and dedication to his
job
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR.
B. DAVIS:
and the file that he has a huge breadth of scope of knowledge on. I can't think
of anyone more qualified to be running the province's complex health machinery
than the man who has the job right now.
My time is getting short but, to wrap things up, I'd
just like to say after the first fiscal year in the Government of Newfoundland
and Labrador, I'm confident that our government, because of the actions and the
results that we've accomplished over this past year, we're in a good situation
right now.
There's a long way to go, no doubt, but we're in a much
better situation than we were when we took over, some 15 months ago. We have a
plan that's backed up by creditable figures and, even six months in, we're
seeing those results from this plan. This is the government that will lead
Newfoundland and Labrador back to a solid economic foundation, and I'm more
confident now more than ever that that'll be the case.
We're not prepared to stick our head in the sand; we'll
stand up for the things we've made, the decisions we've made. I would just ask
my colleagues from the other side of the House to pull their heads up out of the
sand and actually stand up for what they believe in as well, and fight for what
they did. Make sure that everyone knows the issues that you've stood for, let
them stand for themselves as well.
Thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MADAM SPEAKER:
The Speaker recognizes the Minister of Education and Early Childhood
Development.
MR.
KIRBY:
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
It's a tough act to follow the Member for Virginia
Waters Pleasantville, but I'll give it the old college try. It's a privilege
for me to stand here representing my constituents in the District of Mount Scio.
There are only 40 of us here in the House of Assembly. Every time I get a chance
to talk to students in schools, I often tell them that they're only 40 of us. In
a population of about a half a million, we're the folks who have the privilege
of having these seats for a four-year period. It's a real privilege to be here
and to have this opportunity to give voice to concerns and issues that are
raised with us as Members of the House of Assembly.
I've been visiting a lot of schools over the past year
or so, basically since I became minister. I think one of the great things about
being Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development is that I get the
opportunity to visit a lot of schools. I've visited a good many schools around
the city since Christmas. I've visited schools in the Member for Cape St.
Francis's district; in the district of the Member for Fogo Island Cape Freels;
the Member for Grand Falls-Windsor Buchans; the Minister of Transportation and
Works; the Minister of Health and Community Services in Gander, I've been in his
schools in his district; the District of Terra Nova; the District of Humber
Bay of Islands, and Corner Brook. And most recently last week, I visited all of
the schools in Labrador City-Wabush.
There is no doubt that there are a lot of issues that
we have to deal with in the education system. Some of them are new and some of
them are long standing. It's good to talk to teachers, to talk to principals,
talk to student assistants, school staff, students themselves, to get a better
understanding of what the issues are in different areas, because they certainly
vary a lot.
Yesterday, I was really inspired to hear the Premier
respond to the Speech from the Throne that we heard yesterday. One of the things
that he said really put the hook into me; it really spoke to me. I've often said
in the House of Assembly that my parents were small business people. My parents
had a small convenience store. My mom was basically a shopkeeper. She worked
there for about 35 years, she was on her feet, working in the store. I just look
back at how hard she worked to provide employment, not only for herself and
provide for our family but to provide employment in the community and also to
pay into government coffers through a taxation that small business people have
to pay.
I was thinking about how many people I have encountered
through my work as a Member of the House of Assembly who are very much in the
same position. Yesterday, the Premier spoke about how important it is for us to
place a high value on that money that people pay in to the provincial Treasury,
because, certainly, the people who make that money and pay it in, place a high
value on it. And not just people like my mom, shopkeepers; people who are in all
matter of small business.
The amount of time they spend on their feet, just to
think about how much time they spend standing at a counter, on a job site, in
their business, on a shop floor, the amount of time they spend on their feet and
how hard they work to make those few dollars that they have to make to support
their families, and how much time they spend working after hours, after the
store closes, the business closes for the day, how much time they spend after
hours working on the affairs of their business. Because a lot of small business
people, they are dealing with HR issues, they are dealing with taxation issues,
they are dealing with all sorts of issues, payroll and so on, that really is in
invisible often to the person who is patronizing their business.
How much time they spend away from their family; how
many vacations they miss small business people oftentimes don't have the
opportunity just to shut it down and go somewhere else, because they're often
the primary person who is responsible. How many sacrifices those people make to
make a few dollars to try to make a go for it; how much time that they spend
away from their kids so they can support their children, support their families,
and help build our communities.
I think that's really a big part of what the Premier
was talking about yesterday. Those few bucks are precious to the people who are
making them. We have to aspire to spend them in the most responsible manner
possible and unfortunately,
for a period of time not to cast blame that was not being done.
As the
Lieutenant Governor, as he sat there yesterday where you're sitting, Madam
Speaker, he in the speech pointed out that we did have that culture of spending
as opposed to what small business people have to have, which is a culture of
saving and valuing every penny. We owe them; we owe them that much that we have
to take responsibility to treat those dollars as we would if they were our own.
One of
our responsibilities now is to clean up that $2.7 billion mess that was sitting
there when the election in 2015 was over. We also owe folks in this province, as
the Premier said yesterday; we have a responsibility to fix the Muskrat madness.
We have to make sure that when Muskrat Falls goes operational that senior
citizens in Newfoundland and Labrador are not burdened with power bills that are
twice what they're paying today. Whether it's seniors, low-income folks,
middle-income folks, community centres, arenas, halls, municipal facilities,
folks cannot afford to pay double the price of power that we see today. So we
have a great burden of responsibility today to fix that mess that is Muskrat
Falls.
So many
people told us at the time that we should not have been going down that road.
That oil was not going to stay above $100 a barrel for 35 years, or some sort of
wickedly, fantastic vision that someone had. It was not going to be that way.
Experts in energy production and electricity use told us that, academics told us
that. We had the public utilities board questioning all of this. We had an
independent panel that studied it and said there was no market for the
electricity and on and on and on. There was so much caution.
I
remember the Member for The Straits White Bay North, he gave a really, really
powerful speech over there on the other side of the House in the very sort of
twilight hours about the danger of this, and it's quite memorable.
So we
have that burden of responsibility. Yesterday the Premier spoke to that, and I
think he spoke to the people of the province about how we need to find a way
forward through all of this. It's a fog, but I'm from the Burin Peninsula, it's
probably one of the places in the world that gets the most fog. We find our way
through the fog. It's difficult sometimes to navigate, it's not always easy,
it's not what we want, it's challenging. It doesn't make us feel happy sometimes
but we find our way through the fog, because we have no other choice.
I'm
optimistic. I'm not going to turn my back on the people of this province. I am
not going to give up on people like my mom, on small business people, on people
who work hard and trust in us to make sure that they have the public services
they need, that they have the health care services they need, that their
children get a decent education like art, like we all had an opportunity to get.
I'm not giving up on them, we're not giving up on them, and the hon. Premier is
not giving up on them. I think he spoke quite clearly about that yesterday. We
are going to persevere. We are going to fix these problems, however large they
are.
We have
a plan. We had a report card on the initial part of that plan this week, and
there's more to be done. We are going to work with all of our partners,
everybody who wants to collaborate with government for the purposes of job
creation, whether it's in aquaculture, agriculture, energy itself, mining, all
sorts of areas, the fishery. We are going to work with those folks to do what we
can to make sure that our children and I have a small child in school myself
have better opportunities than we had ourselves. We have a responsibility to do
that.
We have
been doing quite a bit over the last year. There's no question, last year's
budget was difficult but there was a lot of good things in last year's budget.
As I've
said so many times before, in the 2015 provincial election all three political
parties in this province who were running candidates promised to implement
full-day kindergarten. Then after the election, first the PC Party and then the
NDP said no, no full-day kindergarten for our kids. No full-day kindergarten.
Again yesterday, we heard the Leader of the Opposition, the former premier, once
again speaking out against full-day kindergarten.
I've
been in schools. I've been in almost three dozen, I would say, since the new
year began. There's no doubt, there are growing pains with full-day
kindergarten. There are growing pains with any new program that government
implements. It doesn't matter what kind either. There are always going to be
problems.
One of
the key problems with full-day kindergarten, as I've been able to ascertain from
directly speaking to full-day kindergarten teachers all across the province, one
of the primary problems is they didn't get curriculum materials on time. Well,
guess what? There are grade one teachers and grade two teachers and grade three
teachers, and I could go on, there are teachers at every grade level who didn't
get curriculum materials on time. Guess which year that happened, this year? No,
Madam Speaker, every single year that's an issue.
That's
an issue when you have over 270 French and English schools with over 66,000
students in a province with a vast geography as ours that you're going to have
that problem. That's a legitimate concern. We are addressing them, but that's
probably the most significant issue outside of supervision.
Some
teachers have told me, it is true, that you have more students in school for a
longer period of time than you're going to have more supervisory responsibility,
no question. That is part of it. That would happen if we had enrolment
fluctuations; that would happen if we had reorganizations of schools as we've
often had. That is a fact. There is no question about it, but that does not
negate all of the positive things that educators who are worth their salt know
about this program.
Every
province in Canada had the wisdom to implement full-day kindergarten before we
did. Now the PC Party and the NDP party want us to stay mired in the past, for
our children not to have the same opportunities as children in the rest of
Canada, then that's their business. We have moved on. We have full-day
kindergarten, and right now there are over 4,600 children in the province who
are getting a better start in life because of full-day kindergarten.
Yesterday, the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island was up on his feet
talking about inclusive education. Sure one of the primary benefits, according
to all of the literature you can read on full-day kindergarten, is that children
who have special needs, exceptionalities of one or another that need to be
addressed, get earlier diagnosis if they're in school earlier in a full-day
program. Sure there are jurisdictions in this country that have full-day
kindergarten for four year olds. They call it junior kindergarten, but the PC
Party and the NDP party want us to be stuck in 1960s. Well, that's not good
enough for children in this province. That is not sufficient.
Another
thing we did last year in the budget is we added additional resources for
inclusion. We added 27 new inclusive instructional resource teachers, IRTs, who
work with kids with special needs. We added additional resources for student
assistant time. We did that last year in the budget, more teachers and more
student assistants. Now, that's a fact. Now you can say something contrary if
you want, but those are the alternative facts that one of the Members was
talking about a little while ago. It doesn't have to be true, you can say it but
that's not the fact. The fact is last year we added substantial new resources
for inclusion in our schools.
Another
thing we did last year, because we had a school board election. Now, for years
the PC Party denied the people of the province their right to elect their
trustees for their school district. And for whatever reason, I have no idea
and they talk about political patronage here every day they decided they were
in a better position to choose the trustees. So they picked the party faithful
by and large, there are some exceptions, but by and large they picked the people
they wanted to be trustees for the new school district and they just put them
there.
They
told the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, we know better than you. We're
going to pick the trustees for you instead of doing what every other
jurisdiction does, which allow people to elect their own trustees. We had the
school board election. Now we have two school boards that are democratically
elected. Now, it wasn't perfect, but what is. There are a few growing pains
along the way. We live, we learn.
The next
time there's a school board election I'm sure there'll be issues, but there will
also be improvements. To be honest, there was such a lengthy period of time
between having a school board election and having the one last fall, that no
wonder we had issues because it was that long ago that we actually had school
board elections.
Another
thing that was done, when we were in Opposition, I remember this very one day, I
had a conversation with the Premier about what we should do to address some of
the fundamental issues that are problematic in the school system. We had a
conversation and we decided to do something. He decided to do something that has
not happened in more than a decade in this province. We'll say it's probably an
opportunity that only comes once in a generation when it comes to the House of
Assembly. He formed a Premier's task force on improving educational outcomes and
gave it a broad mandate to look at some of those issues in our schools.
This
week, the task force finished their consultations. So January, February, March,
for three months the Premier's task force on improving educational outcomes has
been going across the province talking to, I would dare say, thousands of
people. Hundreds and hundreds have shown up to public meetings. There have been
submissions from a host of different groups in education.
There
were lots of teachers who completed the online survey from what I understand,
and they will be providing a report to the Department of Education and Early
Childhood Development in June or July, hopefully June, but sometime in the
summer. We will then operationalize those recommendations of the task force in
an education action plan. Those changes that are needed in the school system
will be implemented for September 2018.
I have
had a good number of conversations with the task force members. I've told them
to sort of think big. Think about fundamental change. Try to address those
issues that are most problematic in the school system.
A few
weeks back the Premier and the Minister of Transportation Works announced a
five-year infrastructure plan which included the replacement of a school in
Coley's Point
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. KIRBY:
which the previous
administration failed to do over more than a dozen years in office. It's a
facility that's 60-plus years old. Well overdue for replacement, and we are
going to get that work done
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. KIRBY:
because the people in that area deserve it.
The
member for the area, the Member for Harbour Grace Port de Grave has been
constant in her advocacy for the replacement of the Coley's Point school and
certainly it's something that is a high priority for government. We will get it
done.
There's
a lot more I could say, obviously, but I'll leave it at that. I look forward to
more opportunities to discuss the budget once we see it on the floor.
Thank
you, Madam Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MADAM SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Madam
Speaker.
It's a
great pleasure to rise to reply to the Speech from the Throne given by
Lieutenant Governor yesterday. It's interesting to have a little bit of ceremony
in the House once in a while, a little bit of colour, the dress uniforms of the
various services who accompany His Honour.
With the
indulgence of the House, I would like to take a few moments to talk a little bit
about my own district. As minister, usually my time in the House is taken up
with departmental activities, but I think it would be only sensible to emphasize
some of the things from the Throne Speech and also some of the activities in my
own district over the last little while.
It is
actually 80 years ago this year that construction began on what was then the
Newfoundland Airport, and it's interesting how threads come together. One of my
colleagues not that long ago, retired from James Paton in Gander. He moved to
Gander from Botwood where his father was responsible for operations of the
seaplane base there.
For
those of you are interested in history, that was the transatlantic stopping
point for flights at that time. Mr. Blackie Sr. moved to Gander where his lad
grew up seeing lots of pale blue uniforms from the RAF and the RCAF because not
long after Captain Frazer landed his Fox Moth in Gander in 1938, the political
situation in Europe deteriorated and war was declared.
Peter
Blackie grew up there and eventually went and did pre-med in Memorial, as it
then was, Memorial College I think, and went to Dal to do medicine. He was the
first of many people actually who left Gander to get an education and then
returned where he served his community, and continues to serve his community
with distinction. He was actually recognized by the Canadian Forces a year ago
with the Queen's Medal, the highest commendation a civilian can gain from the
military for having provided nearly 50 years of continuous service to Canadian
Forces at the base in Gander. He had a ceremony, a more civilian ceremony as it
were, involving the base and one of three search and rescue who he is still the
flight surgeon for all these years later.
His
career path really mirrors, in large part, the trajectory of Gander. He was
heavily involved with aviation. It became the pivotal point for the North
Atlantic ferry command and later became the stop for early transatlantic jets.
Indeed, having an interest in aviation, it was one of the few places in Canada
of which I was aware before I immigrated. I'd heard of Gander as a teenager,
where I really didn't know and couldn't have told you where Ottawa or St. John's
was.
Interestingly enough, his children, one whom became a pediatrician, but there
other is Rob Blackie who was alluded to by the Minister of Culture who was one
of the active producers of Frontier
series, went into film. It seems to be a tradition in that generation in Gander
because Brad Peyton, another of his contemporaries, was active with
San Andreas and his mom, again, worked in health care.
So there
is this mix in Gander of aviation, tradition and a more forward-looking
generation involved in cultural activities. The reference in the Throne Speech
was really to build on Gander's deep roots, indeed it's raison d'κtre, which was
aviation, and speaks about aerospace and defence as a centre for innovation for
the province moving away from traditional businesses and traditional industry to
develop and diversify our economy. It is certainly something that we've learned
from the mistakes of previous generations. We need to move away from single
business lines, be it wood, cod, mining or oil, which has led us down a certain
path of expectation which was never realized.
The
aerospace industry in Gander has likewise waxed and waned; it is recovering now
on a sustainable footing. It's one of the airports in the country which is
posting small but regular surpluses, and has a very active board and a business
plan going forward. It still has the lowest number of down days due to weather
of any Atlantic Canadian airport; has the longest runway in Atlantic Canada
even longer than Stephenville, for my colleague over the way, from a technical
perspective.
So it
has a secure foundation in aviation. The Chamber of Commerce and local business
and the Airport Authority are very active in promoting that, and I think were
delighted, certainly from the feedback I've received from the chamber, to see
that announcement in the Throne Speech about a centre for innovation for
aerospace in Gander.
It goes
without saying that the publicity from
Come From Away has drawn renewed attention to not just Gander, but the
surrounding communities within my own district and neighbouring Districts of
Lewisporte Twillingate, for example, where the hospitality of those folk on
that very difficult day, some years ago, has finally found a new way of being
recognized through the arts and through entertainment.
It
speaks well to the possibilities for Gander in the future as a destination of
itself, and not merely just as an airport, as a portal to other places. There
are all sorts of possibilities there now building on the success of the
entertainment piece, and I know my colleague from Tourism and Culture is active
in trying to pursue that, and I certainly will be going back to the hospitality
industry locally to see what we can do in advance of this year's tourist season.
So
rather than just being simply a portal to get into the province, I see huge
possibilities for Gander as a destination in and of itself, including the
surrounding areas. The fishing on the Gander River, the activities in the woods
around Gambo and Benton, there are enormous possibilities there.
So
again, it's not an opportunity I get very often as a Minister of the Crown to
stand and talk about my own district, but they are the people who put me here,
and I think I do them a disservice not to recognize that fact as often and as
vigorously as I can.
It was
interesting, however, to move into the realm of the government portfolio. My
colleague behind me, my vary able parliamentary secretary, without whose
assistance this last 16 months would not have been as straightforward as it
could have been, I certainly appreciate his wise counsel and active help, to
reciprocate his very kind comments from earlier on.
He
mentioned 64 pieces of legislation, and I think what struck me with the
initiatives I've brought to the House, both in terms of legislation and policy
changes, is the immediate almost jack-in-the-box response from Members opposite
who pop up and said, well, I thought of that; we were going to do that.
If you
pick, for example, the patient safety legislation, that sat in the Department of
Health for three years, and it ran against an obstacle, which was an obstacle of
principle, an obstacle of practical implementation. They ran out of energy; they
ran out of interest; they parked it.
The same
thing happened with the MCP insurance act, which is one the earliest bills I had
the privilege to introduce into the House. They ran into some obstacles; they
parked it; they put it on one side and ran out of interest and energy. It never
got anywhere. There were other pieces of legislation where they ran into
tangles, and I'm thinking now the secure management piece of legislation. They
ran into concerns, perfectly valid and ethical, but they couldn't be bothered
finding the energy to work their way round them. But yes, they thought of them.
Well, in
the last year, the last 16 months or less, we have taken those pieces of
legislation, we have actively sought out solutions to the problems that they
abandoned, we fixed the legislation, brought it before the House and received
enthusiastic, if not unanimous, support for all of them.
So I
would contrast the thinking with the doing. Really, I think it's very, very
unfortunate that someone feels so bound to try and claim credit for things that
really and honestly they can't claim credit for. Essentially, as I say, they
stalled because they ran out of energy and effort over the last three years. I
think this is the hallmark of a tired regime who resort to idleness when the
challenges become too great.
Yesterday, in the first of the Address in Reply around the motion to craft a
response to His Honour, the Premier got up and used a phrase, which I hadn't
heard before, which was: Facts tell and stories sell. I had actually heard it in
a different way, that narrative beats numbers any day, but that's kind of a more
scientific jargon.
What
we've seen, I think, over the last little while is a concerted effort by the
Members opposite to craft an alternate reality, to craft a story that really
isn't based in any fact or reality that you can appreciate objectively. What
they've tried to do is to do this, to downplay their inability to deliver, but
also to distract attention from another phenomenon I mentioned in the previous
session of the House, which is the fact that somehow none of where we are today
has anything to do with anything they did or didn't do in the last 12 years.
It's
this huge disassociation. It's as though, for the
Star Trek fans, this crowd beamed in on the 1st of December to a
situation of which they were totally ignorant and had no part. I would suggest
they may have been totally ignorant, given the policy direction that we
inherited, because none of it could have been based on any thought or planning.
To come
in and suggest, somewhat disingenuously, that we would have a deficit of $800
million or $1.1 billion and then having omitted to provide any updates when
asked, certainly not before an election campaign, when you actually inspect the
books, you find that deficit is north of $2.7 billion. Somehow none of this had
anything to do with them; none of this had anything to do with any of their
policies or the lack thereof for the last few years. Given, again, that they had
$25 billion in oil revenue, a time of peak oil, peak oil price, and 12 years in
which to craft something. The only thing that I can assume is they were lazy.
They're not stupid people, they never have been. No one could ever accuse them
of that, and I certainly wouldn't, but really, they were thoughtless. They did
not think ahead beyond a certain point.
The
Minister of Tourism and Culture, I think referenced part of the problem. They
had this revolving door of ministers. They had three-and-a-half premiers in a
very short space of time, and there was no direction and no leadership. I think
their answer was to spend money they didn't have and kick the fiscal can down
the road for the likes of my grandson, for example. I think really that whole
tenor of discussion yesterday is intellectually offensive, if not actually
physically so.
The
facts of the case are The Way Forward
is a very clear document with a very clear plan, but the thing it has which has
been singularly lacking in terms of the previous 12 years is this is a plan that
is actually: a) being implemented; and, b) its progress is being monitored and
reported on at regular intervals.
Only
this week, we had the first of those reports earlier than anticipated because
those deadlines, those targets had by and large all been met before the May 9
deadline; with the exception I think of four or five, which would be met by the
May 9 deadline. I think it is a testament to the organization and the commitment
of this side of the House to produce actions rather than ideas that will sit
there and disappear, evaporate at the first challenge. We've worked our way
through these things.
Under
The Way Forward you have seen the
issue of the public sector employees begin to be addressed by putting in place
appropriate governance, and we started by example. We started by putting our own
House in order. We have between the flatter, leaner approach for core government
and the reorganization put in place a much leaner organizational framework for
government. It will have two benefits. One is it makes government more efficient
and more effective, and the second thing is it deals with inefficiencies which
have cost us money. We've hemorrhaged money over the last 12 years.
Our
problem as alluded to by stated clearly in actual fact, not alluded to by
the Member for Stephenville Port au Port is not one of revenue. We have the
highest per capita revenue of any jurisdiction in Canada and have had for some
time. What we also have, however, is a disproportionately higher per capita
spending compared with any other jurisdiction in Canada. In my own department,
the telling figures, $7,130, that's what we spend per Newfoundlander and
Labradorian per year on health care. The Canadian average as a comparator is
$5,998, yet we do not see any value for that extra money.
Our
outcomes are no different. Well, that's wrong. I misspeak, Mr. Speaker. Our
outcomes are different than the rest of Canada. Our outcomes are worse. We have
an unhealthy population with multiple, chronic disease and a far higher
incidence of multiple chronic diseases than any other jurisdiction. Our outcomes
are actually worse for that investment; yet, after 12 years there was no attempt
to deal with any of that in any meaningful way.
When you
come up with a good idea and implement it: oh, yes, we thought about it, we
thought about it. Well, you may have thought about it but you didn't get off
your bums and do anything about it. It didn't happen, and in the last 14 months,
16 months it has happened. So really and honestly, again it is very difficult to
sit here quietly and listen to the jack-in-the-boxes on the other side pop up
and claim credit for every good idea whilst at the same time dissociating
themselves from all the bad ideas that they actually did unfortunately
implement.
If they
had been as vigorous with their bad ideas as they were with the good ideas they
want to claim credit for, we'd probably not be in the mess we're in at the
moment; but, unfortunately, they were selective in what they ignored. As a
result of that, we last year were left with some very difficult decisions. At
the end of the day we were in a hole, fiscally, and the lenders were simply
saying, you need a plan because if you don't have one you're not going to get
any money. We got a plan. We implemented it and we were told off for doing it.
We had
difficult choices and we accepted that. We said and nobody applauded after our
budget last year because we knew the impact it would have to have on the folk of
this province, but there was no reasonable, practical alternative. We got the
money, we got favourable interest rates, but even with those favourable interest
rates, we are spending just shy of $1 billion every year to keep the lights on.
The
level of debt we are carrying, going forward, is such that if we were in
Venezuela, where they have the same, they'd turn the lights off for 12 hours a
day. Puerto Rico tried to declare bankruptcy with a smaller per capital deficit
than we do. We have managed to avoid that, only by making difficult decisions.
The
revenue levers were pulled. This time now we have to start dealing with our
other major problem, which is the highest per capital expenditure of any
jurisdiction in Canada. That is our challenge and that is something we won't
think about. We will think about it, consult and deal with it.
On that
note, Mr. Speaker, I'm going take my seat.
Thank
you for your time.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER (Osborne):
The hon. the Deputy
Government House Leader.
MS. COADY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move,
seconded by the Minister of Justice and Public Safety, for leave to introduce a
bill entitled, An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Accountability, Integrity
And Administration Act, Bill 2, and I further move that the said bill be now
read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded by
the hon. the Deputy Government House Leader that she shall have leave to
introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The House Of Assembly Accountability,
Integrity And Administration Act, Bill 2, and that the said bill now be read a
first time.
Is it
the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All
those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
CLERK (Barnes):
A bill, An Act To Amend The
House Of Assembly Accountability, Integrity And Administration Act. (Bill 2)
MR. SPEAKER:
Bill 2 has now been read a
first time.
When
shall the said bill be read a second time?
MS. COADY:
Tomorrow.
MR. SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On
motion, Bill 2 read a first time, ordered read a second time on tomorrow.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Deputy
Government House Leader.
MS. COADY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I move,
seconded by the Minister of Justice and Public Safety, for leave to introduce a
bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Intergovernmental Affairs Act, Bill 4, and I
further move that the said bill be now read a first time.
MR. SPEAKER:
It is moved and seconded by
the hon. the Deputy Government House Leader that she shall have leave to
introduce a bill entitled, An Act To Amend The Intergovernmental Affairs Act,
Bill 4, and that the said bill be now read a first time.
Is it
the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
All
those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
CLERK:
A bill, An Act To Amend The
Intergovernmental Affairs Act. (Bill 4)
MR. SPEAKER:
Bill 4 has now been read a
first time.
When
shall the said bill be read a second time?
MS. COADY:
Tomorrow.
MR. SPEAKER:
Tomorrow.
On
motion, Bill 4 read a first time, ordered read a second time on tomorrow.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Deputy
Government House Leader.
MS. COADY:
Recess the House, Mr.
Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The motion is to recess the
House until this afternoon.
All
those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
Carried.
Recess
The
House resumed at 2 p.m.
MR. SPEAKER (Osborne):
Order, please!
Admit
strangers.
In the
Speaker's gallery today, we have Nicholas Hillier who is job shadowing the
Member for Placentia West Bellevue.
Welcome.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
Statements by
Members
MR. SPEAKER:
For Members' statements
today, we have the Members for the Districts of Lewisporte Twillingate, Fogo
Island Cape Freels, Conception Bay East Bell Island, Placentia West
Bellevue, Virginia Waters and Topsail Paradise.
The hon.
the Member for Lewisporte Twillingate.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. D. BENNETT:
Mr. Speaker, I rise in the
hon. House to recognize Prime Berth Twillingate Fishery & Heritage Centre, on
Twillingate Island. A personal dream of owner David Boyd, with the support of
his wife Christine, Prime Berth, a private museum, was built from the care and
hard work of Mr. Boyd.
The
interpretative fishing centre offers a large collection of fishery artifacts,
hand-build exhibits, a reconstructed whale skeleton, historic photo gallery and
personal writings that share the history of the Newfoundland inshore fishery.
One
aspect that truly sets Prime Berth apart from other museums is their authentic
fishery experiences. Visitors can join Captain Dave on the water and try their
hand at cod and squid jigging, mackerel hauling and lobster trap baiting.
Afterwards, they can watch a demonstration on how to clean a cod fish in the cod
splitting show and, later, be entertained by local folk songs.
Prime
Berth has recently received three major awards including: Top 6 Museums in
Canada by TripAdvisor; 2016 Manning Awards for Excellence in the Presentation of
Historic Places; and 2016 Sustainable Tourism Award by Hospitality Newfoundland
and Labrador.
I ask
all hon. Members to join me in congratulating David and Christine Boyd on their
achievements and wish them much success.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for the
District of Fogo Island Cape Freels.
MR. BRAGG:
Mr. Speaker, I'm so proud to
rise and highlight the valuable volunteer work from the people of my district.
On Saturday past, I attended the 37th annual firemen's ball and awards night at
Centreville-Wareham-Trinity and Indian Bay.
Over 300
people came out to show their support. Several awards were given out for five to
35 years of service, but two things stood out over all the rest. Firefighter Ted
Green received an award for 35 years of service, plus a local garage received
added attention. Parson, CH & Sons Ltd received a standing ovation for their
commitment to the fire department. Co-owner Robert Parsons, who is also the fire
chief, his brother Deon, assistant chief, has everyone who works with them
signed up for the fire department.
It was
noted that they have left people stranded on the hoist, while they all ran out
the door to respond to an emergency.
The
community applauded their dedication. Although these people were highlighted,
they were not able to overshadow the strong commitment by all community
volunteers
I ask
everyone to join me in thanking these volunteers.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Conception Bay East Bell Island.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, I stand today to recognize a special event that took place in my
district this past weekend. I speak of the Legionnaire's appreciation day
organized and financed by Tourism Bell Island to show appreciation to all
Legionnaires but particularly those connected to Bell Island.
The
event included greetings from dignitaries, special presentations and
entertainment, which included high school students in World War II uniforms,
dancing with their partners to the music and dance styles of the era. There were
a number of other entertainers but what stole the show was to have the singing
Legionnaires, who are nationally recognized, travel to island and perform. I
have to note some of these members are World War II veterans.
It was a
pleasure to have Command President Frank Sullivan, along with Portugal Cove-St.
Philip's Legion President Len Collins in attendance.
A
special moment for me when was I learned that over 30 descendants of World War I
war hero, Spaniard's Bay native and life-long Bell Island miner Corporal Matthew
Brazil who is a recipient of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, royal military
medal and the Croix de guerre, France's highest honour to be bestowed on any
military individual, had travelled to Bell Island from all over the province to
celebrate.
Mr.
Speaker, I ask all to join me in showing their appreciation for all
Legionnaires.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Placentia West Bellevue.
MR. BROWNE:
Mr. Speaker, with great
remorse and regret, I stand before this hon. House today to pay tribute to and
celebrate the life of a friend to all, Paul Bolt.
On March
14, we learned the sad news of Paul's untimely passing, at the young age of 46.
Most would know Paul as a tireless advocate for rural Newfoundland and Labrador,
as the mayor of Grand le Pierre for many years, and a man who did not mind
stepping up to the plate to serve, whether it be on council or other
organizations geared towards community development and growth such as the
Fortune Bay East Development Association.
He was
especially proud of the local Burin Peninsula Brighter Futures chapter in Grand
le Pierre where children flourished and thrived, which he helped to secure for
the area where he often brought me to visit.
Mr.
Speaker, Buddha taught us: Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived
wisely. Paul Bolt lived wisely. He was a kind, gentle and compassionate man
that has been lost.
I extend
my sincere condolences to his family. We have lost a leader to many, and a
friend to all.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Virginia Waters Pleasantville.
MR. B. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise
in this hon. House today to highlight some of the fantastic achievements earned
by St. Paul's Junior High students.
The
school sent two teams to the Junior High Provincial Math League competition and
one team earned first place. Congratulations to Ranjeevan Illango, Chunhao Hann,
Tristan Paranavitana and Safwaan Shams. The other team composed of Brynn
Furlong, Mahiba Khan, Avani Adluri and Kathleen Curran also did an amazing job
scoring three out of four in the final relay round a feat which few others
teams accomplished.
Who
Wants to Save a Life? is a fast-paced provincial game which heightens awareness
of occupational health and safety, sponsored by WorkplaceNL. St. Paul's won
gold, as well as a $5,000 prize and a set of iPads.
Finally,
Jake Billard, a grade seven student, represented the province in the Atlantic
Diving Competition held in Halifax. Jake competed against youth up to the age of
17 years of age. He competed in six events and won six golds. As a result, he
hopes to represent the province at the Canada Games in Winnipeg, Manitoba and
will also compete in the Speedo Junior Development Nationals held in Victoria,
BC.
I ask
all hon. Members to join me in congratulating these incredible students.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Topsail Paradise.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Duke
of Edinburgh awards is a self-development program available to young people aged
14 to 24. The purpose of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award is to encourage young
people to set goals and challenges, work towards achieving them and then be
recognized at the end for sustaining the commitment they have made.
There is
no competition between participants; the only people with whom they compete are
themselves. Self-motivation is fundamental to the program. The criteria for
gaining an award are based on each participant's individual improvement and
potential at the starting point of the award. The award program has three
levels: bronze, silver and gold, each requiring an increasing level of
commitment and effort.
Mr.
Speaker, I would like to recognize 10 students from Holy Spirit High School in
Conception Bay South who recently received their bronze level. On December 20,
the Member for Conception Bay South and I presented the awards to: Reegyn
Crickard, Hannah Daley, Jack Bistrow, Hillary Oldford, Erica Bennett, Samantha
Hallett, Nicole Hunt, Caitlyn Coles, Megan Coles, and Erin Burt.
Mr.
Speaker, I'm very pleased to ask all Members of this hon. House to join me in
congratulating these students on their recent achievement.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Statements by Ministers.
Statements by
Ministers
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Natural Resources.
MS. COADY:
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to
rise in this hon. House today to share the optimism and confidence about mining
prospects in Newfoundland and Labrador, as demonstrated by the many people I met
earlier this month at PDAC the annual Prospectors & Developers Association of
Canada's Mining Convention and Trade Show.
Mining
is one of our leading industries and is a major contributor to our economy. With
more than 7,000 people employed and mineral shipments forecast to reach $2.9
billion in 2017, Newfoundland and Labrador is currently ranked 16th on the
Fraser Institute's 2016 International Mining Survey as one of the most
attractive jurisdictions worldwide for investment attractiveness.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MS. COADY:
Our diversified minerals
industry provides a wide variety of commodities to the world market. This is
because in Newfoundland and Labrador we have armed ourselves with public
geoscience, nimble regulation and support for prospectors and junior mining
companies through the Mineral Incentive Program all in order to create the
greatest opportunity for exploration and development. As committed in
The Way Forward vision, we will build
on these efforts to increase activity in the mining sector by engaging in
targeted promotion and core digitization, which will support broader sharing of
the province's core sample information to companies worldwide.
In
tandem with this year's PDAC conference, the provincial government has released
the most recent collection of reports from the Geological Survey which collects,
interprets and disseminates knowledge and geoscience data with a goal of
enhancing the province's geoscience knowledge base. The data is used mainly by
the mineral-resource industry to inform and enhance exploration and investment
efforts. The most recent collection of reports can be found on government's
website, as well as Natural Resources.
Mr.
Speaker, with over 900 exhibitors and 22,000 attendees from 125 countries, PDAC
offered Newfoundland and Labrador companies the opportunity to make valuable
connections. We shared the breadth and depth of our local expertise and
demonstrated to the world that our mining industry and its people are skilled,
experienced and ready to do business a goal, I am happy to report; we made
very clear to industry at this year's PDAC conference.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I
certainly thank the minister for the advance copy of her statement. Mr. Speaker,
our province's mining industry is a major contributor to our economy. It creates
jobs of over 7,000 residents, and its exports help to stimulate our economy each
year. It's encouraging that mineral shipments are forecasted to reach $2.9
billion this year, and that our industry was ranked 16th worldwide last year by
the Fraser Institute. I encourage the government to continue the programs of the
mining industry and to continue the many programs and investments which our
previous government put in place to support the industry.
Mining
activity is driven by national and international investment. The minister's
statement unfortunately does not make reference to creating an environment in
which those in the international community choose to invest in mining right here
in this province. I will stress to her the need for government to create that
environment for continued growth.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I too
thank the minister for the advance copy of her statement. It's good to see
government working hard to promote the province's mining industry. However,
valuable as the industry is, it is based on a non-renewable resource. So I ask
the minister, what is the government's plan towards promoting a more sustainable
mining industry and its plan to ensure communities and workers are protected
when a mine does come to an end, so that we do not have a repeat of what has
happened to the retired miners of Wabush.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Advanced Education, Skills and Labour.
MR. BYRNE:
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
I would
like to rise today to celebrate our recent launch of The Way Forward on
Immigration in Newfoundland and Labrador, the province's five-year plan for
increasing immigrant attraction and retention.
It was
my pleasure to launch this plan at Verafin, an industry-leading software
provider proudly based in this Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Verafin's
team includes talent from different parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well,
different parts of the world, including individuals who have received permanent
residency through the Provincial Nominee Program. This made it a very fitting
location to launch an action plan based on collaboration, engagement and true
partnership.
Immigrants, Mr. Speaker, enrich our culture. They bring valued skills, and they
contribute to the economic growth throughout Newfoundland and Labrador,
including rural and remote areas of our province. In fact, immigrants to the
province live in 78 different communities in Newfoundland and Labrador. This
action plan is the province's roadmap to increase immigration by 50 per cent,
welcoming approximately 1,700 newcomers annually by the year 2022.
Reaching
this target requires working more closely with our key partners, and these
include employers and communities, service providers, our post-secondary
institutions like Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the
College of the North Atlantic, and all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Mr.
Speaker, we all have a role to play in making our province a destination of
choice for newcomers. Together, we can build an even more economically, socially
and culturally vibrant province and far more inclusive in the process.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Conception Bay East Bell Island.
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I thank
the minister for an advance copy of his statement, and I thank his officials for
a very thorough and professional briefing.
In 2015,
the previous administration had released a 10-year population growth strategy
which placed heavy focus on growing our province's population base and welcoming
new residents from all over the world.
At that
time, Newfoundland and Labrador, as was with many other provinces, faced various
challenges, but despite that fact, our province remained an attractive
destination mainly because of those who lived here and those who wanted to move
here felt a sense of hope and optimism about Newfoundland and Labrador.
Fast
forward two years under the Liberal government, and that sense of optimism is
gone. Last year, the Liberal government brought down a budget which attacked the
working class, smothered the economy and essentially caused a mass exodus of
young working families. Their own document stated that their decisions will see
massive unemployment and outmigration, and despite these facts, the Liberals
still claim that there has never been a better time to move to our province.
I will
conclude my response with a note sent to me on Saturday, Mr. Speaker, and I
quote: I'm reading the comments released by the Liberals, as me and my family
sit in the U-Haul moving away from the province I call home. They just don't get
it.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I too
thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement. Mr. Speaker, the
minister talks about a plan, but he has presented nothing which shows how he
arrived at the number of 1,700 immigrants annually. What actions does he plan to
take to ensure government achieves that target? All we have is the minister
saying publicly he has calculated by extrapolation that 1,700 will be the number
of people immigrating to the province every year up to 2022. I ask the minister,
what kind of a plan is that?
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
Oral Questions.
Oral Questions
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, I ask the Premier: If he fully endorses the federal Liberal's plan to
legalize marijuana?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government House
Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm
certainly happy to stand here and speak to this very important topic one that
I actually had a conversation with yesterday with MP Bill Blair, who's the
parliamentary secretary to the federal Minister of Justice and Public Safety.
As we
all know, the federal government has announced this plan. We know that
legislation will be unveiled very soon, and the word is that this will be
something that will happen hopefully in 2018. As a province, we will continue to
move forward to ensure that it's done very safely here in this province. We
understand that there are a number of federal aspects to it; there are a number
of provincial aspects to it, such as distribution, taxation. Again, we are fully
concerned with the safety side of this; but, this is something that will happen,
and we'll do what we can to make sure that this province is ready as well.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I
appreciate the update from the Minister of Justice and Public Safety, but I'd
like to know where the Premier stands on this.
So I'll
ask the Premier if the prime minister has your full support in the legalization
of marijuana.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government House
Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Again,
happy to stand here and speak to this because we know it is going to happen here
in this province. It's something that's going to require the co-operation of
both the feds and the provinces to happen. There have been concerns raised
throughout the provinces because this is a wide-ranging shift in our culture.
Here in
this province, we have a working group that is happening and features people
from the Department of Health, Service NL, the Department of Finance and the
Department of Justice. We've been speaking with our police. We'll continue to
work forward to make sure this happens here in this province and is done safely.
Again, it's something we look forward to moving forward and having happen, as
the feds roll it out.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Again, I
thank the hon. minister for his response today. From your response, Minister, am
I to understand that the Premier and his Cabinet and your government fully
support the federals move to legalize marijuana?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government House
Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Yes.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. P. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, the reference to rural has been taken out of the Department of
Business. As well, in the over 10,000-word Throne Speech yesterday, rural
Newfoundland and Labrador was only referenced a couple of times in the speech.
So I ask
the Premier: What does this say about the government's commitment or plan for
rural Newfoundland and Labrador? Will rural parts of Newfoundland and Labrador
be targeted in next week's budget?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Well,
rural Newfoundland and all parts of Newfoundland and Labrador were highlighted
in the Speech from the Throne yesterday, just as much as it has been highlighted
in everything that this government has done. We have taken considerable actions
unlike the PC administration, formerly to advance rural Newfoundland and
Labrador.
A prime
example would be Crown lands and agriculture and the work that we're doing with
our forestry industry, Mr. Speaker. Many examples in the Speech from the Throne
and in The Way Forward document, Mr.
Speaker, working with areas in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.
Mr.
Speaker, I made it quite clear yesterday that we would find new jobs in old
industries. I talked at length with that. It's a commitment that we've made to
rural Newfoundland and Labrador, but just not rural Newfoundland and Labrador,
Newfoundland and Labrador, in every single community.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. DAVIS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
So I
guess that wasn't important enough to put in the Throne Speech.
I'll ask
the Premier: Based on the Speech from the Throne yesterday, can students expect
that the tuition freeze at Memorial University may be in jeopardy?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Advanced Education, Skills and Labour.
MR. BYRNE:
Mr. Speaker, as the hon.
Member will be aware; it was clearly outlined within my own mandate letter to
work with Memorial University of Newfoundland and with the College of the North
Atlantic to ensure a tuition freeze for our students. And, in fact, our
government now has provided an incredible, a record amount of funds to be able
to facilitate a tuition freeze.
The
budget will be the budget. I'm sure the hon. Members, just as I do, look forward
to receiving it on the floor of the House, in due time. The budget will provide
that information, which, I guess, will allow a discussion about that. But I can
anticipate that that which we said, will continue.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Leader of the
Opposition.
MR. DAVIS:
Well, Mr. Speaker, that's
certainly good news for students, knowing that the tuition freeze will continue
at Memorial University, and I thank the minister for clarifying that.
In
yesterday's Throne Speech, there no mention of Newfoundland and Labrador's new,
very proud, jewel in the crown of Newfoundland and Labrador tourism, and that's
the UNESCO designation at Mistaken Point very important for Newfoundland and
Labrador. Even though there was a long list of celebrations, very important
celebrations that were listed in the Throne Speech, Mistaken Point was left out
that speech.
I ask
the Premier if people should be concerned there have been concerns raised
that this may be an indication of not being ready for visitors coming to
Newfoundland and Labrador, specifically for this UNESCO site at Mistaken Point?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Premier.
PREMIER BALL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We are
very proud with the designation of Mistaken Point. It is indeed a jewel when it
comes to Newfoundland Labrador. Like we have with all the many areas that we
would have to promote tourism in Newfoundland and Labrador, we are working with
all the areas, including Mistaken Point. Mr. Speaker, we will be ready for what
should be a great tourism season.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
PREMIER BALL:
Tourists will be coming to
Newfoundland and Labrador in historic levels, Mr. Speaker. We are working with
our Atlantic Canada provinces, putting in joint strategies that we can actually
promote Atlantic Canada.
Within
all of that, Mr. Speaker, there is a spot for Newfoundland and Labrador every
single one every single one of the great areas that can lead to a tourism
experience, including Mistaken Point.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. Member for Fortune
Bay Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
CBC has reported that seniors
continue to live at the former Riverside Country Manor, months after Eastern
Health pulled the home's licence. Inspection reports identified numerous issues
and concerns for the seniors' health and safety.
I ask
the minister responsible for Housing: What are you doing to ensure that these
seniors are being taken care of?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
The
facility in question was licensed as a personal care home by Eastern Health.
After concerns were raised, Eastern Health withdrew that licence. They worked
with each of the residents to offer them alternative accommodation. There are
four people living there, of their own choice and free will, as a boarding
house, which is not regulated by the Department of Health and, therefore, is now
outside of my jurisdiction.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Fortune Bay Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
Thank you, Minister, and
that's precisely why I was asking the minister responsible for Housing and
Seniors and affordable housing for seniors, who is also the MHA for these
seniors in question.
So what
are you doing, as MHA, and as minister responsible for affordable housing for
seniors to ensure the health and safety of your constituents is being looked
after?
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Children, Seniors and Social Development.
MS. GAMBIN-WALSH:
Mr. Speaker, we, as a
government, and I, as a minister, care deeply about the safety and the
appropriate housing of all individuals and families in our districts.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MS. GAMBIN-WALSH:
Individuals have a right to
choice, Mr. Speaker. However, if any individual in this hon. House or anybody in
Newfoundland and Labrador feels that an adult is in need of protection, we do
have the Adult Protection Act. I
encourage everyone to contact the Department of Children, Seniors and Social
Development.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Fortune Bay Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
You have allowed the seniors'
home, which wasn't fit to meet the standards to maintain its licence, to operate
as a boarding house.
I ask
the minister responsible for your constituents, do you support this?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Children, Seniors and Social Development.
MS. GAMBIN-WALSH:
Mr. Speaker, I remind the
Member about the Adult Protection Act.
If the Member feels that there are individuals that are in need of adult
protection, please contact the Department of Children, Seniors and Social
Development.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Fortune Bay Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
The home's licence was
revoked in July. What actions have you taken to monitor the number of seniors
currently residing at the home?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Children, Seniors and Social Development.
MS. GAMBIN-WALSH:
Mr. Speaker, individuals in
the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador have a right to choice. I remind the
Member we do have the Adult Protection Act.
Thank
you.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Cape
St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
Numbers
released by DFO this week show that the Northern cod stocks have grown. MP Nick
Whalen said yesterday that now is not the time to increase quotas, but the FFAW
is calling on small quotas increase.
I ask
the minister: What is your position?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. Minister of
Fisheries and Land Resources.
MR. CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I
thank the hon. Member for the question.
Mr.
Speaker, our position as a province is that when you look at science numbers
yesterday of 7 per cent and 30 per cent last year, you look at a 40 per cent
increase in the biomass over two years. We supported the FFAW last year in their
request to increase the harvest from approximately 6,000 to 10,000 tons and we
would certainly support our harvesters this year again in a modest increase in
the allowable catch.
Thank
you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Cape
St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
I want to thank the minister
for his answer. The first time I heard one from you.
Thank
you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh.
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. K. PARSONS:
Minister, this same Liberal
MP stated yesterday
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. K. PARSONS:
Minister, this same member,
Liberal MP yesterday stated that the crab and shrimp harvesters, which he called
fishermen, were wealthy people and had lots of money in recent years. So they
should be able to cope with reduction in quotas.
Do you
stand by his opinion?
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources.
MR. CROCKER:
Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to
stand by a Member of Parliament's opinion, but what I'm going to tell you and
tell this hon. House is that over the past number of years a lot of our
shellfish harvesters have done really well.
I come
from a district, Mr. Speaker, where I have harvesters two a family, I think,
of a man and wife, actually, who have about 13,000 pounds of crab to catch every
year, and if you use $3 as a number, you have a family with an income of
$39,000; a gross income of $39,000. So, Mr. Speaker, this government will
support our harvesters in this province and realize that within these
challenging times we're going to be here for our harvesters and processors.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Cape
St. Francis.
MR. K. PARSONS:
Yes, Minister, and I have the
same thing in my district too with harvesters that are not millionaires, or as
the MP called them yesterday, compared them to doctors and lawyers.
The MP
also stated yesterday that he wanted to see our fishery return back to what it
was in the '60s and '70s and '80s.
I know
he's very ill-advised on what he was talking about, but how do you stand on that
position?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Fisheries and Land Resources.
MR. CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I
thank the hon. the Member for the question.
Mr.
Speaker, when we look at the cod fishery that we left in 1992, 25 years ago this
July, when we return to a fishery, hopefully in the not-too-distant future,
there are going to be many challenges. Mr. Speaker, the fishery that we left 25
years ago is not the fishery we're going to face today, and the hon. Member
opposite and I have often talked about this. We're going to face challenges in
marketing; we're going to face challenges in how we prepare that product for
market; so no, Mr. Speaker.
When you
look at some of the things we've done with the federal government, we realize
that marketing and harvesting technologies are going to very important. Our
Seafood Innovation and Transition Program which was in our
2016 Budget, we put $2 million into harvesting and processing
techniques that will help advance the quality of our products.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, the Minister of Natural Resources has had more than a week to clarify
about a speculation that Come By Chance Refinery may be for sale.
I ask
the minister: Is Come By Chance for sale?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Natural Resources.
MS. COADY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have
had an opportunity to speak with the owners of Come By Chance. They have
indicated to me that they have not there is nothing immediately involved in
making sure that it is on the market. They are not entertaining offers at this
point in time, but they are a private company, Mr. Speaker, and I'm sure at some
point they may consider that, but at this point in time they've advised me they
are not.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As the
minister clarified, can she clarify the fact that she has had discussions with
the owners and, in fact, was the discussion about any environmental liability
that was part of the original agreement when the refinery was last sold?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Natural Resources.
MS. COADY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I have
had multiple conversations with the owners of Newfoundland and Labrador
refinery. It's a very important contributor to our local economy and a very
important employer. We speak with them on a regular basis, Mr. Speaker.
Regarding the environmental liability, that is an ongoing process. I know that
the officials have been working toward that. That is continuing and more efforts
are toward that end, and I know that that's a continuing process, Mr. Speaker.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Last
week, the minister said that Come By Chance Refinery has improved operations and
have a good strategy for the future. This is in stark contrast to what we've
heard from some employees who are concerned about safety at the facility.
I ask
the minister: Can you confirm that recent layoffs have not affected North
Atlantic emergency response capability to protect workers at the site?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
Thank you very much for the
question.
As I
promised the House some days ago, I did want to speak with officials as to
what's been going on. I'm pleased to report to the House that just by way of
example it is a very complicated site, as my colleague indicated but just
for an example as to what's been going on. Our office of Service NL actually has
two units: Occupational Health and Safety, and Engineering and Inspection
Services. In 2016, they carried out some 21 safety inspections and issued 35
directives, and in the Engineering and Inspection Services they carried out some
237 scheduled inspections, 121 demand inspections, seven complaints and 26
directives.
The
point of my commentary, Mr. Speaker, is to indicate that there's a very
comprehensive review of safety on the site, and we'll continue to do that.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, on March 16, when I asked about safety reports and inspections, the
minister said that I'll report back on what we can release.
Why
hasn't the minister released all occupational health and safety reports and
inspections for the facility?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
Typically, Mr. Speaker,
inspection reports are not released; however, the directives are made public. We
post them on the site at the work location, and I understand there's an ATIPP
request right now. So these documents are going to be distributed from our
department very shortly.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, central to a safe environment is the employees' right to know. Despite
this, workers at Come By Chance Refinery have asked for copies of the
occupational health and safety inspections. To date, they have not received
them.
Is the
minister complying with the law?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
Is the minister complying
with the law now that's an interesting question.
What I
might say to the hon. Member is that I look forward to if the union
representatives or others are looking to have a review of these inspection
reports, I would look forward to arranging that.
I should
note to the Member, and to this House, that on those inspection reports are
personal information in terms of who's responsible for what. So we tend not to
release that type of information, but I look forward to sitting down and sharing
with the Member or anyone else who's inquiring.
I also
wanted to say that we have plans onsite for our various aspects, and we ensure
that should the company want to make any changes to those plans, they need to go
through my department to ensure that they remain complaint.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, we know that complaints have been made by workers at the site to the
government's occupational health and safety division.
Can the
minister confirm that all those complaints have indeed been investigated?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
According to my records that
I read out just a few minutes ago, Mr. Speaker, we received some seven
complaints last year. They were all investigated and, as I said, there were some
directives that were issued. So we're continuing to respond as we receive
incidents described by a worker or others on the site.
So,
thank you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, work refusals in the workplace are designated by individuals who, under
the legislation, have a right to refuse work because of safety hazards or things
they believe are unsafe. My understanding is there have been eight work refusals
at Come By Chance recently.
Can the
minister confirm that this has occurred, and have they been investigated?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
I'll be very honest with the
Member; I'm not aware of these refusals. I will confer with staff and report
back.
I can
say, though, that our department actually has an office located inside this
facility. We are there almost on a daily basis, so there's due attention to
what's going on. Despite the changes in human resources at the facility, we have
been watching very closely occupational health and safety, we are watching, and
we will continue to watch and make sure that the workers are very safe at that
site.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The
minister did indicate despite the layoffs at the facility; I want to go there in
regard to the occupational health and safety plan had to be rewritten based on
the reduction in the workforce.
I ask
the minister: Can you confirm for the workers on the site that with this
reduction in workforce and a rewritten plan, is the facility in compliance with
all standards?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Service NL.
MR. TRIMPER:
Mr. Speaker, changes to the
plan are to be submitted to our department. We will be reviewing them, if that
is the case, and ensuring compliance. So the answer is yes.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Mount
Pearl North.
MR. KENT:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Earlier
today, the Liberal government continued its piecemeal announcements of layoffs
and cuts this time, targeting the health care system.
I ask
the Premier: Will this be the final cut to the province's health care system, or
are there more cuts and layoffs coming next week?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
The
plan, The Way Forward, clearly laid
out over a period from August right through to February of this year an approach
to a Flatter, Leaner Management through core government. That was implemented,
discussed in the House and questioned by Members opposite. It was also part of
The Way Forward that this would
ultimately roll out to agencies, boards and commissions.
As of
this morning, the regional health authorities have implemented Flatter, Leaner
Management across the health authorities. This will allow streamlining and
improvement of governance. It will not affect front-line services and it will
better align the governance structures to allow the health authorities to meet
their mandate.
Thank
you very much.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Mount
Pearl North.
MR. KENT:
Mr. Speaker,
The Way Forward that we keep hearing about is not a plan. This
government is hoping that it's a way out, not a way forward.
Mr.
Speaker, I ask the minister: What type of management positions specifically were
targeted in this latest round of cuts?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Well, I would have to take
issue with the preamble to the question, Mr. Speaker. It's not only a plan; it's
an action plan
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. HAGGIE:
not an inaction strategy,
of which we've seen multiple over the last three years.
The
implementation of Flatter, Leaner Management through the RHAs has been left
entirely in the mandate of the RHAs. These are operational, affect executive and
senior management positions and have been done in the context of each individual
RHA's needs and requirements.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Mount
Pearl North.
MR. KENT:
Mr. Speaker, there was little
detail in this morning's announcement and, as a result, it's hard to know what
impact there will be on the quality of service and on patient safety.
So I ask
the minister: Are you confident that service delivery and patient safety will
not be impacted in any way by removing these 93 positions from our health care
system?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I can do
no better. Bloated government, that's kind of on us. The Member opposite, the
short answer
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
AN HON. MEMBER:
Table it.
MR. HAGGIE:
We could table that, Mr.
Speaker, if you'd prefer.
The
short answer to the question is that these are operational decisions within the
mandate of the regional health authority and I trust their good judgement and
their method in which these decisions have been made.
Out of
deference to the employees concerned, as a conscientious employer, these folk,
it's a difficult day, they should hear the news from their RHA and their line
managers, not through the media and not through the Member opposite.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
Once
again, I remind Members the only person I wish to hear from is the person
identified to speak. I also remind Members that the use of props in the House is
not permitted.
The hon.
the Member for Mount Pearl North.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. KENT:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Nine-three people lost their jobs today; 93 people's families were affected; 93
families were affected and the minister wants to get on with those kinds of
theatrics and antics in the House of Assembly. It's shameful and embarrassing,
Mr. Speaker.
I ask
the minister: Can he give us details on the 13 non-management positions that
were eliminated today?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
Two
threads, for clarity: These are operational decisions made by the regional
health authorities in the light of their own particular context; once again,
details of the how folk will be impacted in these difficult times will take some
time to work its way through the system.
There
are various options open to some of these folk and until they have decided on
how they want to exercise those options, I am not going to reveal personal
details and prejudice the process in the House simply to satisfy the Member's
question at this stage. That information will be available in the fullness of
time, but these folk need to hear this from the line managers and from the RHAs
first. It's not courteous and it's not a proper way of doing it, to announce
this in public.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
Today
government announced the loss of 93 jobs; 21 per cent of management positions in
the province's regional health authorities as part of its flatter, may I say,
meaner management policy. Managers are directly involved in oversight and
ensuring safe quality health services.
I ask
the Premier: Has any thought been given to how this action affects long-term
planning, or are the layoffs only to save money?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Thank you very much for the
question, Mr. Speaker.
Again,
for clarity, Flatter, Leaner is an approach that we have taken through
government, clearly outlining the way forward, with the intent of rolling it
through the agencies, boards and commissions. Regional health authorities choose
to implement that this morning and began the process at 8 o'clock today. How
that is rolled out is based on the context and needs of the individual regional
health authorities. It is senior management. It is a governance issue, not a
front-line issue.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I point
out to the minister that Flatter, Leaner Management is a slogan, not a
comprehensive strategy.
I ask
the Premier: Does government even have a long-term strategy for the health care
system in this province?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
The short answer to that question, Mr. Speaker, is yes.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Well, I ask the minister to
stand up and give it to us.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Mr. Speaker, I ask the
minister to explain, in detail, what that strategy is.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
The hon.
the Minister of Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
I try and rise to challenges, Mr. Speaker, but to describe a plan to transform
the delivery of health care in this province in 45 seconds will do neither
justice to the plan nor the Member's ability to understand it. The bottom line
is
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. HAGGIE:
that we cannot continue to spend money on health care and not get any return
of any significance on that money. We spend $7,130 for every man, woman and
child in this province on health care. The national average is $5,998. For that
difference, we do not see any significant gain in outcomes. In actual fact, we
have some of the poorest indicators. We cannot simply do what we've always done
and expect a different result.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
We heard
again this week about the personal care home that was finally closed after a
year of complaints, inspections and orders.
I ask
the Minister of Health and Community Services: Will these layoffs impact the
ability of health authorities to oversee monitoring policies to ensure that
vulnerable people who require care are protected?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Mr. Speaker, the issue with
that home was identified by routine inspection and by comment from residents and
others expressing concerns. After due diligence, an attempt to remedy those
complaints and those issues, it was felt wisest to remove the licence for them
to operate as a personal care home. That was done.
As part
of that process, Eastern Health went to these folk and their families and
offered them alternative accommodation. Four individuals and their families
chose chose, Mr. Speaker, to stay where they are. Unless they are in need of
adult protection, those are decisions I cannot arbitrate. The individuals have
to have the right to self-determine where they live.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I ask
the minister: Is that going to continue with all of these cuts? So I may go
further.
I now
ask him: Can he tell us if he has done an analysis of what the impact of the
cuts will be on the delivery of services in this province?
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Health and Community Services.
MR. HAGGIE:
Mr. Speaker, thank you very
much.
The
decisions as to the shape and nature of the changes that have been brought about
today have been determined by the regional health authorities themselves. They
were given clear direction from me that this was to have no impact on front-line
services. This is about aligning governance and management to produce a
streamlined, nimble and more effective decision-making program to make health
care in those institutions and across those RHAs better than it is now.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Time for Question Period has
expired.
The time
for Question Period has expired.
Before
we move forward with the remainder of the agenda, I would like to recognize
Mayor Stone of Red Bay who in in the gallery.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Presenting Reports by
Standing and Select Committees.
Tabling
of Documents.
Tabling of
Documents
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Natural Resources.
MS. COADY:
Mr. Speaker, in accordance
with the Energy Corporation Act and
the Hydro Corporation Act, it's my
pleasure to table the 2016 Business and Financial Report for Nalcor Energy, as
well as the 2016 Consolidated Financial Statements of Newfoundland and Labrador
Hydro.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further tabling of documents?
The hon.
the Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources.
MR. CROCKER:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In
accordance with the Transparency and
Accountability Act, it is my pleasure to table the 2017-19 Activity Reports
for the following category three entities: Appeals Board of Professional Fish
Harvesters Certification Board, Fish Processing Licensing Board and the
Professional Fish Harvesters Certification Board.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Finance and President of Treasury Board.
MS. C. BENNETT:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As
Minister of Finance, I want to stand today to table the 2017-19 Activity Plans
for the following government entities: the Government Money Purchase Pension
Plan Committee and the Pension Investment Committee, and I also would like to
table pre-commitments for the House as well.
Thank
you.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further tabling of documents?
Notices
of Motion.
Notices of Motion
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Government House
Leader.
MR. A. PARSONS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I give
notice that I will ask leave to move the following resolution.
Be It
Resolved by the House of Assembly as follows:
WHEREAS
on December 7, 2016, the Management Commission of the House of Assembly approved
Recommendation 27 of the 2016 Management Commission Review Committee respecting
a taxable allowance in lieu of mileage in Corner Brook and the capital region;
and
WHEREAS
on March 15, 2017, the Management Commission approved an amendment to the
Members' Resources and Allowances Rules needed to implement the said taxable
allowance in lieu of mileage; and
WHEREAS
on December 7, 2016, the Management Commission of the House of Assembly approved
Recommendation 21 of the 2016 Management Commission Review Committee respecting
a lump sum taxable allowance for accommodations; and
WHEREAS
on March 15, 2017, the Management Commission approved an amendment to the
Members' Resources and Allowances Rules needed to implement the said taxable
allowance respecting accommodations; and
WHEREAS
subsection 20(7) of the House of Assembly
Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act states: A change shall not
be made to the level of amounts of allowances and resources provided to members
except in accordance with a rule and, notwithstanding section 64, that rule
shall not be effective unless first laid before the House of Assembly and a
resolution adopting it has been passed.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that this hon. House of Assembly adopt amendments to
the Members' Resources and Allowances Rules approved by the Management
Commission of the House of Assembly on March 15, 2017 as follows: Section 38 of
the Members' Resources and Allowances Rules is amended by adding immediately
after subsection (2) of the following: (2.1) Notwithstanding paragraph (2)(a),
a member who represents the district of Corner Brook or a district in the
capital region may elect to receive the sum of $200 per month for an entire
fiscal year in lieu of receiving the cost of transportation referred to in that
paragraph, provided that (a) the election must be made before April 1 of the
fiscal year to which the election applies; and (b) the $200 per month shall be a
taxable benefit to the member.
And the
Members' Resources and Allowances Rules are amended by adding immediately after
section 40, the following: Taxable Accommodation Allowance: Capital Region
40.1(1) Notwithstanding paragraphs 31(1)(b), (32)(2)(b), 33(b), 35(b), 36(2)(b)
and 37(b), not fewer than 30 days before the commencement of a fiscal year, a
member entitled to accommodation costs in the capital region may elect to
receive a lump sum amount for temporary or private accommodation in the capital
region in lieu of receiving the accommodation costs referred to in those
paragraphs.
(2) An
election made by a member under subsection (1) is (a) for the fiscal year
immediately following that election; and (b) a taxable benefit of that member.
(3) A
lump sum received under this section shall be an amount that is calculated by
multiplying the number of sitting days for the fiscal year as stated in the
parliamentary calendar by the average daily cost of all member accommodation
under the paragraphs referred to in subsection (1) for the previous fiscal year.
(4) If
a member who is elected to receive a lump sum amount under this section leaves
office before the end of the fiscal year to which the lump sum applies, the
balance of the amount of that sum shall be repaid to the House of Assembly on a
pro rata basis.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
Further notices of motion?
Answers
to Questions for which Notice has been Given.
Petitions.
Petitions
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Opposition House
Leader.
MR. HUTCHINGS:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I'm
certainly glad today to present this petition to the House.
To the
hon. House of Assembly of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador in
Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland
and Labrador humbly sheweth:
WHEREAS
government plans to cut the number of supervisors in Transportation and Works
depots; and
WHEREAS
this will lead to a decrease in the monitoring and upkeep of road conditions;
and
WHEREAS
the cuts to Trepassey depot would negatively impact the quality and safety of
the roads in the Trepassey area;
WHEREUPON the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon the House
of Assembly to urge government to take necessary actions to ensure that
supervisory staff and equipment remain in the Trepassey depot so staff are able
to monitor road conditions, dispatch crews and equipment, as needed.
And, as
in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.
Mr.
Speaker, this is an issue that's come up over the past number of weeks. This
petition here has approximately 300 to 400 names from the region, from Portugal
Cove South to Trepassey, which is very fundamental in regard to the equipment,
the supervisory position and oversight being there to, first and foremost, be
able to identify road conditions and to be able to dispatch equipment to make
sure that the highway is in a safe condition for the residents.
On
either side, I think there's been speculation that some will be moved to St.
Joseph's, which is a far distance away. As well, on the other side, if you go
towards Renews and that area, you have Trepassey barrens. The weather conditions
on both sides certainly can be very stormy; you have high winds. So it's
certainly important that that equipment and, as well, the supervisory capacity
stay in Trepassey area.
Now, I
have spoken to the minister, the Minister of Transportation and Works. Some time
ago he indicated to me that the depot was not going to close. That's good, but
we're still waiting for clarity from the communities. I recognize I sent that
off to the minister and I'm waiting to hear back on what actually is going to
happen with the supervision and the actual equipment. It's fine to have the
depot there in the wintertime but if that's not staffed or don't have the
equipment there and it's got to come from other regions of the area, the
Southern Avalon, that's not conducive or appropriate to a level of care that's
required. Whether it's normal resident traffic, whether it's for employment or,
even more importantly, necessary in an emergency situations where we get an
ambulance, or a fire department, or someone needs to respond and respond outside
of that region, which is extremely important.
So these
are issues that I've brought to the House today. As I said, there are almost 400
signatures here from those in that region, from the municipalities, from the
local service district, urging government and the minister to take a look at
this, and to ensure that the winter service that is there now is kept whole and
ensure that the quality and level of service for the people in that region are
maintained. We certainly urge the government and urge the minister to act on
this and act quickly.
Thank
you very much, Mr. Speaker.
Orders of the Day
Private Members'
Day
MR. SPEAKER:
It being Private Members'
Day, I call upon the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island to present his
private Members' motion.
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's
indeed an honour to present the private Member's resolution for today. I'll
re-read it to the House:
BE IT
RESOLVED that the House of Assembly urge the Department of Education and Early
Childhood Development to convene a public summit in 2017 to discuss the
challenges of inclusive education and constructive solutions with the
Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association, the Faculty of Education of
Memorial University, the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of School
Councils, specialist educators, classroom/subject teachers, instructional
resource teachers, student assistants, guidance counsellors, educational
psychologists, program specialists for student support services, school
administrators, parents, students, advocacy groups for persons with
disabilities, other special interest groups, experts on inclusive education
practices, legislators representing all parties in the House of Assembly and
members of the general public.
It's
seconded by
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
The hon.
the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island.
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's
seconded by my hon. colleague, the Member for Fortune Bay Cape La Hune.
It's an
honour to be able to stand here and present this, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to be
able to say it's something that I was the architect of. I may have been the
person who helped generate the writing of this particular bill today or this
particular resolution, but this came from the hundreds, and I do say, Mr.
Speaker, the hundreds of people who are engaged in education, but particularly
in inclusive education and come from every sector. Every important part of how
inclusive education is to be offered, the challenges around it, the positive
outcomes as part of it, the perspective of making it fully inclusive for
everybody, and a way of moving it forward and making it holistic for everybody,
and improving the outcomes for education.
I was
fortunate enough, when I became the critic 15 months ago of education, to take
it on as a challenge. Even though I had worked as a civil servant for nearly 30
years and worked in the Department of Education for a period of time, I wasn't
specifically connected to inclusive education. While some of the things I had
done had a direct bearing on that, I didn't get a full understanding until I
started to meet with administrators, meet with professional organizations, meet
with parents, meet with teachers, get to see the full picture of what inclusive
education is all about.
Everybody agrees with it. Everybody agrees it's a positive thing for our system.
The problem becomes, how do we make it truly inclusive? How do we ensure that it
meets the needs of not only those students but of all the students in our school
system? How does it ensure that it's not an added stressor to administrators and
to teachers, and to parents, and to all those involved and the social agencies
that support this?
So, Mr.
Speaker, yesterday when I was thinking about before we presented the
resolution to be tabled today. I have a little calendar pad, and every day I
look at what the quote is of the day to try to get a perspective on what things
are. It was ironic, because this one made a lot of sense to me. It read: the
more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you
don't know, the easier it is to get to know.
I
thought that was a perspective particularly around me on inclusive education,
but I think a lot of people who don't directly deal with it. If you work within
the system, you understand the challenges. You understand what needs to be done,
but no doubt you understand the inspiration behind it and how it can be very
effective.
As I
went through what it is I say, and for people who don't know, the process today
is I'll get to speak twice as the mover of this private Member's resolution.
I'll get to speak for 15 minutes at the beginning and I'll generally outline
what we're proposing here. Then Members from all sides and all parties will get
a chance to speak to it, and I'm hoping everybody will be supportive and they'll
understand what our intent is here.
Basically, in a general nutshell, our intent is to find as many people out there
who have a vested interest and a stake. I think every Newfoundlander and
Labradorian has a vested interest in making inclusive education work and be
holistic and be what it was meant to be, an opportunity to ensure everybody,
every student reaches their potential, and all the supporting cast have a part
to play in that.
When I
was thinking about what to do and researching some information over the last
number of weeks, I happened to pull out a presentation that was presented
earlier to another group that I'll talk about in a little while. When I read it
I said, you can tell, these are the people who understand what inclusive
education is about. These are the people who understand the benefits, and these
are the people who understand the challenges. It very articulates to me, sums up
exactly the intent of this resolution, and then it adds to the intent of how we
have that open dialogue.
I'll
just read, and it says: Inclusive education should be considered as a philosophy
for guiding everything in education. It should consider the diversity of every
learner and help guide decision making regarding educational policies,
development of staff, allocation of resources, curriculum development, learning
materials, instructional methodology and physical environment. As such, it
should inform our decision making in all these areas.
Mr.
Speaker, that was the opening note in the NLTA submission to the Premier's Task
Force on Education. As I read through their whole submission, this to me summed
up exactly what inclusive education is all about. These are the key factors;
these are the key components that we're asking through a summit of all the key
players, which includes and would be one of the key people or key organizations
to help lead us, the NLTA.
We're
asking the department to take the lead on this. I have all respect for the
Minister of Education as an educator, as an individual who has been through the
education system and understands it, to have a perspective on being able to
offer this, being able to give the key stakeholders the opportunity to be
engaged. Because the benefit of having all the ultimate stakeholders here, and
particularly those who come from different diverse backgrounds, and they may not
all be aware of the other challenges or the other potential partnerships that
could be developed until they get in that room and understand the assets that
each of them bring.
That's
what we're asking here. We've seen the positive influence that the all-party
committee had on mental health. We saw where that came from. We're not at a
point now where we're asking for an all-party committee on inclusive education
at this point, because we feel and the research we've done and the
stakeholders we've talked to that there's enough supportive talent and enough
supportive energy, but particularly experience, enough supportive experience
there by those involved to be able to come up with constructive solutions and be
able to set out a time frame in which inclusive education meets its goal.
As I
outlined at the beginning, it's the ultimate goal that we give every student in
this province the opportunity to reach their potential, and that's what it's all
about. That's what our education system was founded on, that we do that.
We've
ran into some challenges as part of this whole process. As we implemented a new
program, it was an understanding of what are the resources necessary; how does
section A fit with section B and section B fit with section C and vice versa. So
we haven't had that full inclusive discussion. This is not about pointing blame
or it's not about saying somebody needs to rectify something they didn't do;
it's about moving forward.
The
government talks about moving forward, and we support that, and this is another
opportunity for us to do it but do it the right way. The best way to move
forward is if we bring in those that have that expertise, have that commitment
and have that understanding of what it is we're going to tackle here. What we're
tackling is inclusive education.
So as I
talk to the minister and there's no doubt, we've had opportunities where we've
gone back and forth and we've challenged each other on inclusive education
programs and supportive services, but we have an opportunity to come together.
The
Minister of Justice did a great thing yesterday on having a summit on justice. I
think it's a great opportunity. He brought in key stakeholders to find out what
are our challenges. Again, what are the positive things we're doing? Because you
don't want to change something for the sake of changing. If there are positive
things happening, let's continue them. Let's support those.
If there
are things that are causing trouble or hindering us being able to move the
objective forward, in this case inclusive education, well then let's move that
out of the way. If there are supports we need, if it's human supports, if it
structural assets we need, if it's a new approach to certain things, if it's
just an understanding of getting everybody in line with the best way of meeting
our goals, that's what dialogue brings. Nobody will ever argue that dialogue
isn't the best thing you can actually have a disagreement and still solve a
problem.
So what
we're asking here, we're asking everybody in this House to support the private
Member's resolution. We know it will be a fair bit of work for the Minister of
Education's staff to take on. But I know there are very competent people over
there. I know the partners that I've spoken to who I've just outlined and no
doubt there are other ones out there that we haven't noted in our resolution,
who'd be more than willing to work with the department's officials to try to
make this happen and to do it in such a way that every stakeholder is given an
opportunity.
It could
be through the use of technology that we engage rural areas that we can't get
at, at this point. It could be better uses of information distribution. It could
be using the one asset the greatest asset we have in our education system are
the schools themselves and the people who are in there, how we get that
information.
So we're
not pigeonholing it by saying here's the process that we're proposing, because
we know there's going to be a diverse session of views on how this can be done.
I'd like to be able to learn from what the Minister of Justice did on the summit
and the processes there, and maybe the Minister of Education's staff could look
at that.
We have
full faith in the Premier's task force on education. As I mentioned one time in
the House here, I've worked with some of those people and I know them to be very
diligent, very professional, and very knowledgeable about education and very
committed to the education focus in this province. So there's no doubt that
information will come.
A task
force is a little bit more encompassing in the sense that the time frames are a
little bit different and their recommendations. What we're asking for here is a
stakeholder summit and that could, obviously, still help drive some of the
recommendations that the task force themselves do.
I know
the task force held 10 consultations and know they were in normally urban areas.
Because of the geographic here, we know there are some challenges. I know the
time frames, it was mid-winter. From the people I've talked to, some of the
agencies, they didn't get an opportunity, they weren't aware of it and we know
all those challenges. That's not a blame to anybody; it's a reality of the
province we live in. It wouldn't make any difference if it was the Premier's
task force on education to something else we were doing. The information, the
time frames to get out to everybody and the ability for them to be able to have
feedback sometimes becomes challenging.
I'm glad
to say the last week, because of my connection with some organizations and I
encouraged them to get the message out to their respective individuals or
partnering agencies to respond back to the task force, particularly about
inclusive education. As the task force will attest to, I suspect they got 40 to
45 either letters or actual presentations, written presentations, sent to them
from people who outlined concerns around inclusive education. Included in that,
I know were some administrators and some educators.
I was
glad to do that because it was privilege for me to have them cc me on it so I
could get the read. When I talk about not knowing things, what a way to get to
know things when you admit you don't know a lot about it because your mind is
open to exactly what's happening.
In this
case, sometimes it was heart wrenching to feel the frustration of a parent, of a
kid, but just as much so of a teacher, of an administrator in the school, not
being able to deal with actually moving inclusive education to the level they
wanted to, knowing that there are challenges there, and having little control
over what they could do with it because of limited resources. It could be a
space issue. It could be a training issue that was necessary. It could be a
counselling issue that was necessary.
Again,
it's been said to me by a number of groups and individuals, including the NLTA,
that sometimes it's about how we change. It's not always about putting more
resources. We know that's an important part, and I'll talk to that in my second
part about some of the information that's come back to us about what's needed,
but the first stages is to have the dialogue about what can be done. Groups like
the NLTA and the school council association, they deal with it on a day-to-day
basis. Quick things, quick recommendations they could make, little tweaking to
what we do and a new approach to it, a way we distribute information can be
positive ways of first addressing some of the challenge we have.
There's
no doubt there's a multitude. We'll have to find the ones we can tick off and
move very quickly, because immediately they can be responded to. Then there are
bigger ones that we have to look at how we partner in other ways, how we support
them through human supports, through structural supports, to particular types of
new innovative training.
The
other thing that I noticed as we were doing a jurisdictional scan, this is not
unique to Newfoundland and Labrador. It's unfortunate that other jurisdictions,
even more affluent ones with less geographic challenges and population density
issues face these challenges also, but there are some jurisdictions that have
changed their approach on it.
There
are some that have resourced it in a different manner that it didn't become a
burden from a financial point of view, from the taxpayers' money. It became an
investment in not only the education system but in good productive citizens,
because everything that's done at the primary and secondary level has an impact
on our post-secondary. What happens at our post-secondary has an impact on the
job market, and the impact on the job market has an impact on those productive
citizens who pay taxes so we have money to be able to support the services that
people expect.
The
process here starts from early childhood development right into our school
system and beyond that. What we need to do is find the common ground, and the
common ground is having a summit where we all sit down, we have that discussion,
we note exactly what we have, what we don't have, what are the challenges, where
it is we are, where it is we want to go and how we find the best ways to get
there.
So we're
going to have a good open dialogue. I'm looking forward to the responses from
the Third Party and, particularly, the government party also around how they
feel this would be a positive thing. If they have any suggestions, we're more
than open to take those.
Mr.
Speaker, I do look forward to the response from all in this House and I do look
forward to the last 15 minutes being able to conclude.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Stephenville Port au Port.
MR. FINN:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
It's
certainly great to take my place today and speak to the private Member's motion
that's brought in by the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island.
Just to
state for the record, I'll give a quick preamble, if you will, of the motion as
he has read it into the record. Essentially, today we're talking about education
and early childhood development.
The
motion reads: BE IT RESOLVED that the House of Assembly urge the Department of
Education and Early Childhood Development to convene a public summit in 2017 to
discuss the challenges of inclusive education .
It goes on to list a number of
organizations, groups and individuals that the Opposition feels should be
invited to such a summit.
I'm very
pleased to stand here and speak to education today. In fact, I think across the
40 Members in the Legislature, I'm as close as you can get to a recent high
school graduate, with exception for the Member for Placentia West Bellevue
and, of course, the Minister of Tourism in front of me, just a few years my
junior.
Every
time we talk about education in the Legislature, I certainly enjoy getting up
and speaking to it. I spoke to a couple of pieces of legislation we brought in
last year, brought in by the Minister of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour
with respect to the Schools Act and
the Student Services Financial Assistance
Act, and as well as legislation brought in by the Minister of Education as
well around the school board election process.
Both my
parents were educators, Mr. Speaker. They devoted their life to education in the
post-secondary system. My father served on the school board on the West Coast of
Newfoundland for a number of years.
The
school system seen many challenges and changes over the years, and I can speak
from direct experience. When I was in the school system we had the
denominational system, and when I approached grade 10 in 1999 we seen the
transition to the non-denominational school system. With that change, there were
certainly a number of things that happened in the school system at the time. Of
course, as years go on and generations change, our millennials grow up and we
move into newer kids coming up through the school system, obviously a number of
changes.
One
thing I was very proud of in my time in school to have the opportunity, I sat as
a student body representative. I actually sat on the school council with
administrators and school board officials as a student representative. So it's
certainly something that is near and dear to my heart. I spent the last number
of years volunteering in the school system as well.
In fact,
when it comes to inclusive education and we look at a safe environment, the
current principal for Stephenville High, Mr. Vern Lewis, a good friend of mine,
when I was graduating high school he was a brand new teacher in the system. One
of the first things he did in his first year as a school teacher was bring in a
committee called the safe and orderly environment committee, and that was in
2001. What he set about to achieve was essentially what we're talking about here
today.
Inclusive education; what is inclusive education? Certainly, we're talking about
the right of all students to attend a school with their peers and to receive
appropriate and quality programming. We're talking about a welcoming school
culture where all members of the school feel they belong. We're talking about an
atmosphere which respects values and participation of all members of the school
community. The move towards inclusive education involves a refocusing of the way
individuals perceive the learning environment. We have to have inclusive
education because if we value some people more than others, that would be
completely unethical, Mr. Speaker.
So when
we talk about inclusive education in fact, the inclusive education system
began under the PC administration. It was rolled out in 2009. At the time, there
were 30 schools that were going to embark as the pilot project for inclusive
education. There was a phase and approach adopted and there was somewhere
between about 27 to 42 new schools joining each year right up until this current
June, Mr. Speaker.
The
intention was that from 2009 rolling right up to this current school year,
representatives from all the public schools would receive training in inclusive
education practices. Right now, we have over 260 schools involved in inclusive
education. I guess what's interesting to note and what we heard from
administrators then and some of this was from recommendations from the report
on Pathways and the ISSP commission is that there was very little consultation
done at the time when we looked at inclusive education. There was very little
consultation done with front-line administrators and also some of the
recommendations from the reports that were commissioned back then have still not
been implemented.
Just for
the record, again it was brought in under the former administration. When I say
that, I kind of hesitate for a second. I'm just thinking here it was brought in
in 2009. We have three members that represent the PCs opposite that have been
sitting there since 2007. The year right now is 2017. So we have three members
over there now that have been there for 10 years and we're talking about hosting
a summit on education. I can't say they've all been over there since the PC
administration of 2003, but we have Members there that have been there 10 years.
The
critic for Education, the Member for Conception Bay Bell Island, has brought
this in today. I understand he's had the ability to sit in Legislature for some
seven years. So I find it quite interesting that this is coming in today, when
we had all that time under the former administration to get there.
Under
the former administration, Mr. Speaker, there were some budget cuts with respect
to education. They've been referenced here in this House; 2013 seen a
significant number of cuts. In 2013, we had a 142 positions removed from
education 142 positions were removed from the education system. These were
made in areas such as administration, learning, resources support and
district-based numeracy supports. Some of these reductions were to do
specifically for meeting needs of children, with exceptionalities and who
required inclusive education.
The
measures resulted in about 142 fewer positions, and then there was a further 18
positions that were reduced as a result of declined enrolment. In addition in
that year, I might add, in the same budget, the community and schools program,
which I'm pleased to say that was my understanding and if someone in the
Legislature wants to correct me if I'm wrong was actually developed in the
Stephenville region. The community and schools program was an initiative to
essentially bring communities back to the school system. So what it would do is
it would provide opportunities for after school-based learning activities. It
was founded by the Community Education Network, which I had the great
opportunity to spend eight years working with prior to being elected here in
this House of Assembly.
The
Community Education Network was an initiative founded specifically due to high
school dropout rates in the early '90s. The community and schools program, while
it started on the West Coast of Newfoundland, sometimes successes are better
kept secrets, because what happened, it tried to balloon and roll out across the
province in the various other schools, and other schools caught wind of this
great program and they wanted it. Well, as a result of the budget cuts in 2013,
that program went by the wayside.
I'd like
to just read I'm going to go back to the Member for Conception Bay East Bell
Island. I'll get right back on topic; he did mention post-secondary education. I
do note that in my 15 minutes here I'll get back to that. This was from the
Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island in 2013.
Direct
quote: Mr. Speaker, I have to note when you look at putting a Budget in place
and running a government, you have to be fiscally responsible. That is one thing
we definitely are
Do we want to run further deficits? Do we want to borrow? Do
we want to jeopardize our bond rating where we are paying interest out to
international companies that could be better used for health care, for
education, and for helping people who have specific needs?
I'll
give you some of the context; I'll come back to the direct quote: You have to
make sure by the next election, whatever Administration is in there, that they
inherit something that is workable.
I kind
of hear myself echo. I spoke this morning with respect to the Speech from the
Throne and we spoke specifically and I referenced specifically about working
with what we had left. What we had left when we inherited office, as we all
know, was a $2.2 billion deficit for last year alone. At a time when the PC
administration had more in 2013, they had more than we ever would have had, they
did less and there were cuts to education.
Leaving
on that note, I'm going to talk about some of the things we have done and some
of the things we're doing right now. The Premier's task force on education, as
alluded to by the Member, certainly is a great initiative and he said that it's
a great initiative. This was a commitment that was met and that was kept by our
government.
One of
the things noted in Phase 2 of The Way
Forward are despite the past 10 years of increasing education costs in the
K-12 and the post-secondary system, we've seen increases in the last 10 years of
spending to the tune of $425 million. That's an increase of 48 per cent over 10
years, but, despite that, many of our indicators and educational outcomes are
still well below the national average. So we're in a position now where we
cannot continue to fund the status quo and we have to look at doing things
differently.
There
are some other initiatives and I'll get to them in a moment with respect to
the All-Party Committee on Mental Health, which I was very proud to have served
as a member. With respect to the task force, I was very pleased to have met the
task force. The task force actually came out to my hometown of Stephenville and
met with administrators at Stephenville High. I took in the evening community
session and I further had an opportunity to meet with the Premier's task force
on education when they met with the All-Party Committee on Mental Health and we
saw them here just last week at the release of that report.
Dr.
Alice Collins, Dr. Marian Fushell, Dr. David Philpott and Dr. Margaret Wakeham
phenomenal individuals, very educated; they brought a wealth of experience in
their backgrounds as educators. When they came to Stephenville High, one of the
comments made to me by the administrator was: We finally have someone come out
to listen to us. They said it's been years and years since anyone actually came
out to hear our concerns.
I had
teachers come up to me in the grocery store and I had students who partook in
the sessions on the Premier's task force on education and they were just over
the moon that they had the opportunity to voice their concerns where it
mattered. When we talk about some of the things that we're doing, we are
certainly keeping that commitment with the Premier's task force on education.
I also
want to point out that we saw increases for student assistants over the last
number of years and, as part of the increase, we had $500,000, half a million
dollars, that was provided to student assistants in last year's budget. In
Budget 2016 there were 27 teaching
units that were scheduled to come out of the system. Due to declining enrolment,
these 27 positions were due to come out of the system. Instead of doing that,
Mr. Speaker, we directed them to be used to support inclusion in the school
system. These are 27 positions that we were going to phase out due to declining
enrolment across the province and we filtered them right back in. We saw the
need there.
As a
result, there were no reductions in the allocation in last year's budget of
educational psychologists, speech language pathologists, itinerant teachers for
autism, itinerants for safe and caring schools and inclusive education, teachers
of students with English as a second language, itinerate teachers for the deaf
and hard of hearing and blind and visually impaired no cuts in budget
2016-2017.
I'm
going to wrap up with the All-Party Committee on Mental Health and Addictions.
There are a number of recommendations in there that I'll direct the Member
opposite to have a look at. These are things that most reports sometimes, people
and critics and whether it's the public or Members opposite or even folks here
in the House, you'll point to the report and you'll say well, that's just
recommendations; there's no meat to that. How is that going to come into effect?
The
All-Party Committee on Mental Health and Addictions report has some
accountability measures in place, the likes of which I've never seen in former
reports by the former administration. In addition, we're ensuring the Minister
of Health and Community Services must report publicly on the implementation of
the reports and recommendations. We're also giving the mandate to the Provincial
Mental Health and Addictions Advisory Council to issue oversight for that
report.
In that
report, there are a number of recommendations. And recommendations in the mental
health report were in no particular order. Recommendation 3: Create regional
interdisciplinary teams, reporting to the regional health authorities, to
provide timely mental health and addictions assessment and treatment for
students in schools specific to the education system.
There's
another recommendation on the Premier's task force, certainly giving them the
mandate to look at the resources in the school system. Eliminate the stigma and
discrimination in the school system by providing contact-based education
programs. We're talking about people with experience sharing stories in the
school system.
When we
talk about post-secondary education, and the Member opposite mentioned
post-secondary education, one of the recommendations in the all-party mental
health committee report: Increase the number of physicians and nurse
practitioners involved in addictions medicines by: Encouraging Memorial
University's Faculty of Medicine to create a Clinical Program Director of
Addictions Medicine within the Discipline of Family Practice
. So we're
looking at encouraging our post-secondary education at MUN and the Faculty of
Medicine there to look at mental health and addictions. We all know that if it
stems at that level, it will certainly trickle down.
There's
also a recommendation, Mr. Speaker, with respect to specialized training for
school-based psychologists, teachers, counsellors and social workers who work
specifically with the LGBTQ2S community specific training in there as well.
So there
are a number of initiatives we've laid out. They are specifically referenced
The Way Forward; even further so in
the All-Party Committee on Mental Health in their list of recommendations there.
It is a great honour to speak to education, I'd love to see the debate unfold
and I certainly look forward to hearing from the Minister of Education for the
afternoon as well.
Thank
you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER (Warr):
The hon. the Member for
Fortune Bay Cape La Hune.
MS. PERRY:
Thank you so much, Mr.
Speaker.
I'm not
sure what to think of what I just heard, but I'm detecting there possibly isn't
going to be support for this motion from Members opposite. That remains to be
seen, of course, but that would certainly be very disappointing, because as a
veteran of this House of Assembly with 10 years' experience and quite proud to
still be here and to have represented my constituents such that I am still here,
Mr. Speaker, and represented the wishes they wanted here in the House.
MR. K. PARSONS:
And represented them well.
MS. PERRY:
And represented them well.
Well, thank you kindly, to my hon. colleague.
I will
say we have to always be vigilant of issues that are of current concern. I don't
know where the Member opposite was over the course of the last few weeks when we
have seen a number of concerns raised across this entire province by our
educators, by our parents and by our children regarding inclusive education. The
issue is very current and very much needs attention, Mr. Speaker. We, as Members
opposite, will ensure that we hold government accountable to the issues of the
day.
It is
important to speak on a resolution that addresses an issue
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MS. PERRY:
that tens of thousands of
people across this province are talking about. Teachers, parents, students,
they're all talking about it. They're sometimes concerned that the right people
aren't listening, and after what I just heard for 10 minutes I share their
concern.
How high
does this rank as an issue of concern for our government? How high does it rank
as an issue of concern for all of us living here in this province, Mr. Speaker?
I'm trying to think of a matter of public policy that is more important than the
effective education of our children and, boy, it's hard. It's hard to figure
that there's anything more important.
Many
issues are very important, all issues we face certainly are important, but if
you were going to say something's more important well, look at health care.
Could it be health care? Well, this is what I'll say to that. The people of our
society who rely most heavily on health care are seniors, people who have
retired, and to finance that care you need a healthy economy driven by a
well-educated workforce. A strong health care system requires a strong education
system to support it.
What
other areas of public policy could trump education in importance? Poverty
reduction? Well, the best means of escaping poverty is a strong education.
That's why we go out of our way to ensure that children raised in families with
limited means are not hindered in any way from getting a solid education. You
can say, well, what about natural resources development and stimulating economic
growth? Could they be more important than education? Well, to that I would say
no, because your economy is not strong if a large segment of your population
lacks the educational foundation to participate. Your economy will not be as
productive or as competitive as it needs to be. That's why countries around the
world are investing so strongly in education, to change their economic
circumstances and the quality of life for their people for the better.
If you
find an economy that is on the rise from poverty to success, you will discover
that their strategy began with investments in education. Even the critical
public policy areas of justice and public safety hinge on education because so
many of those who end up committing crimes and reoffending are missing the
element of a strong educational foundation.
I
believe, therefore, it can reasonably be argued that no area of public policy is
more important than education because education is the foundation for everything
else. But, because it's so broad, the topic of educational outcomes is
challenging to talk about. There's so much to be said. You can't just talk about
everything in a broad way at a tree-top level; you also have to dive into the
branches and focus on certain particular areas that need attention.
The
province's Task Force on Improving Educational Outcomes is something we support.
Improving educational outcomes is the mandate of every single administration.
Every government has an obligation to focus on doing better. We, as a
government, certainly did, as did those before us and those who will follow you.
We laid
out similar goals in our most recent Blue Book. We said we will continue our
efforts to make Newfoundland and Labrador a national leader in education in
terms of curriculum, access, outcomes and support. We will continue to focus on
improved performance in math, science, computing, technology and language arts.
We will identify best practices nationally and globally and enable teachers to
bring those advances to our own classrooms.
We will
deliver more guidance and counselling resources to students. We will collaborate
with teachers, professional associations, business groups and labour unions,
post-secondary educators and others in the development of modern, accurate,
career planning curriculum and resources. We will continue to invest in
state-of-art schools, classrooms, laboratories, and technological resources in
distance education in rural and remote communities and in new curriculum, new
technologies, skilled trades programming and more.
It's a
continual process of finding ways to do better, collaboratively. You don't just
stop, Mr. Speaker, because you tried it once. You continue to work at improving
to make it better. Every government has to engage in it, even if others have
addressed it because if you're not continually advancing, you're losing grounds
to jurisdictions that are moving forward.
We have
great expectations for the recommendations of the task force, because the
educators running it are very good at what they do. But we have noticed that
during the process, there are so many educational issues on the table that some
areas that need particular focus are competing for attention. When the focus is
on academic performance, academic standards and testing, academic curriculum,
teacher training, technological resources and the long, long list of other
issues impacting outcomes, some issues may be out of the spotlight.
My hon.
colleague for Bell Island has brought this motion to the floor today because one
of those issues is inclusive education. You can hardly find a more sensitive
topic. Some people only whisper about it in public but, privately, many people
have a great deal to say. For years, students who pose challenges for educators
for one reason or another were segregated.
Segregation severely impacted the lives of many people in profound ways. Many
with tremendous potential were denied the opportunity to fulfill it and left
socially unfulfilled as well. Segregation diminishes all of us. It denies us the
full contributions of many of our fellow citizens. It leads to unhealthy
attitudes about who is better and who is worth less than others.
We need
to promote empathy and interaction by building bridges, not walls. But not every
bridge is well constructed. To use an analogy, in September 2006, the De la
Concorde overpass in Laval, Quebec collapsed, killing five people and seriously
injuring another six. The reason: Poor construction not designed to handle the
load.
When the
pressure became too great, it simply gave out, and the consequences were tragic.
That bridge is a fitting analogy for the way bridges to inclusion are being
built in our schools. If any bridge cannot handle the load, it will fail and the
results will be tragic.
Our
Education Minister has studied with and worked beside some of the best educators
in Canada and he certainly ought to know where the stresses are in education and
where the needs are in this province, Mr. Speaker. It is better to gather people
and get them speaking openly about change, if you want real change to happen.
Shutting down any avenue of discourse is going to suppress the drive for change.
Clearly our education system, which I would argue is the most important area of
public policy, is in need of change.
The
problem with the bridge of inclusive education, the way it is now, is that it's
a bridge built largely on the teachers' backs. It's not enough to combine
classes, add minimal resources and tell teachers to simply deal with it; yet, in
many cases that has happened. You do not build bridges of empathy among students
when they start blaming their disruptive peers for their own failure to learn
and excel at school. If anything, this will drive resentment rather than empathy
and harmony among peers. If some students in the classroom have special needs,
then all the resources needed to attend to those needs must be provided so that
no students are compromised, not them and not their peers.
Teachers
have been long celebrated as superheroes, delivering stellar education in the
classroom with limited resources by dipping into their own pockets. Mr. Speaker,
I marvel, I continue to see that today. I have family and friends who are
educators. My father, actually, was a principal of a school for over 35 years.
He used to buy things from his own pocket for school, and I still see my friends
today using their own money to buy resources for the classroom and it baffles
me.
Teachers
can't solve all the challenges by dipping into their own pockets. It's
impossible. All the challenges won't be solved that way. When the teacher cannot
focus on teaching, when students cannot focus on learning, then a few extra
dollars from a teacher's pocket aren't going to solve the problem. What's needed
is a creative way of achieving goals that are sometimes incompatible, the goals
of integrating students instead of segregating them, and of ensuring that all
students have the benefit of school environments that are conducive to learning
and excelling. Some people have been afraid to raise the issue because they do
not want to be labelled as politically incorrect, or insensitive or challenging
integration, but I do applaud people for being concerned about the feelings of
others.
If there
are real problems that are impacting learning and there are then we can't
ignore them for fear of offending someone. When we deal with them we have to do
so respectfully and empathetically, but we do need to deal with them. That
starts with focusing on this major issue and talking about it.
What
better way to do that than at a public summit dedicated to the issue of
inclusion, where all the problems, all the potential solutions, all the reasons
and counter reasons, and novel approaches are considered openly. Our work will
complement the work of the task force. The education of our children is too
important to all of us to let major problems go unresolved while children
suffer.
I look
forward to a unanimous vote of support for this resolution, because I would be
totally baffled for any kind of a justification not to have a summit, Mr.
Speaker, on this very important issue affecting our future, our children of
today who are the leaders of tomorrow. So let's not lose the opportunity that a
summit of this nature and the conversations and solutions it can bring. Let's
put the education of our young people first where it belongs. Let's not vote
along party lines today, let's vote in support of a summit for inclusive
education for our children and improve the future for all.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Minister of
Education and Early Childhood Development.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. KIRBY:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's a
pleasure for me to rise again. It feels like I only it's not very often I get
two opportunities to stand and speak in the House in any one day, especially
with our new sort of rules governing sessions and so on. So I'm really happy to
have an opportunity to speak again and I won't go back to a lot of the things I
had to say earlier today because we did sort of talk a little bit about
education and inclusive education this morning.
As I
said this morning, I've really had a great opportunity to visit a lot of
schools. I visited about three dozen since the New Year. I have to say, every
time I go to a school and I speak to an administrator, I speak to a teacher,
speak to other school staff, the issue of inclusion inevitably comes up. There's
a certain amount of irony in what's being proposed here and especially who's
proposing this here in the House of Assembly today, because in the 12 years that
the previous administration was in office there was never any mention of such a
summit.
In fact,
in 2007 there was an ISSP & Pathways Commission struck by the previous
administration. When I sat in Opposition as the Education critic, I repeatedly
stood on my feet and raised the issue that the report of the ISSP & Pathways
Commission was well, a lot of it was never ever acted upon by the previous
administration. Their practice was to produce reports, put it on the shelf and
see how much dust it could collect.
The ISSP
& Pathways Commission recommended public disclosure of assessment and wait-list
information; guidelines for ethical assessment practices; procedures to address
the needs of all at-risk students; an appeals process for families; meeting the
needs of exceptionally able learners, gifted learners; expanding the role of
student assistants into teacher assistant roles like they have in lots of other
jurisdictions in Canada it works quite well; introducing the idea of special
education department heads in schools; and on and on and on.
The
answer: Instead of acting on their own commission report, in 2009 the previous
administration forged ahead with the inclusive education model we have now,
after consulting with themselves because they certainly didn't consult with
educators about sort of how much sense it would have made to go down the road
that they did. So they basically forced this new inclusive education model that
was not recommended by the Pathways and ISSP commission. They forced this onto
the system without consulting with educators, without consulting with experts,
did not provide the resources that were needed, and so we end up in the
situation that we're in now.
And
again, not an issue raised by the Pathways and ISSP commission, just something
that they came up with and forced onto the system. I have a quote here because
there was a revolving door right here of Ministers of Education over the last
term they were in office. We repeatedly asked them about the inclusive education
model and all we got up until 2015 were just excuses excuses, excuses,
excuses.
One day
I asked the then Minister of Education about this whole business, all the
problems that we have with inclusive education in our schools, and he says, Mr.
Speaker, we are as good as and better than many provinces in this country.
They
spent their time justifying that model in the dying days of their final term of
office, making excuse after excuse after excuse. Now they want to have a summit.
Well, the Premier's Task Force on Improving Educational Outcomes was put in
place last fall. They did consultations in January and February and March. In
fact, the final consultations, as I understand it, took place just earlier this
week. That's three months of consultations.
On top
of that, the NLTA had its own panel that went across the province prior to that,
exhaustively consulting with people. The public were invited to participate in
the process of consultation with the task force. Inclusive education was a key
element in the mandate that they were given by government. They have folks on
that task force whose specific area of expertise is inclusive education and
instruction the needs of students with special needs.
There
were consultations with just teachers and the task force. There were
consultations with students. There were public consultations in a number of
communities. The Member said something I made a note of it here to the
effect of there were people who could not participate because they were in rural
areas, and this task force only went to urban areas. What he said is absolutely
contrary to what has happened and just ended recently.
For one,
there were three surveys online that people could complete for teachers, for
students, for parents. That was there up until the 20th of March. People were
able to submit online submissions, to email them or whatever. Online submissions
were actually provided by the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation for
teachers and students and parents in rural communities, allowing everybody in
Newfoundland and Labrador to participate, if they wanted to.
I
understand people have jobs, lives, kids, mortgages, responsibilities, work.
Occasionally, things happen and the people don't find out about it until after
they fact. If the Member knows any of those people, I'm sure the task force
would be happy to hear from them. We can still accept submissions from people if
there is some reason why, some extenuating circumstance why they couldn't
participate.
There
were stakeholder groups. There were representatives of the NLTA at a number of
the different public sessions. Again, teachers were consulted with,
specifically, in sessions. Both school boards were consulted, the staff, the
trustees of both school boards I know that the task force met with the
trustees.
Memorial
University of Newfoundland, the Faculty of Education, they were consulted with;
College of the North Atlantic; the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of
School Councils; the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate; the Child and Youth
Advocate; Choices for Youth; Thrive; the Association for New Canadians. They
invited participation from indigenous groups in the province. As I understand
it, Nunatsiavut, NunatuKavut, the Qalipu Band on the West Coast, all of those
groups had an opportunity to provide feedback and on and on and on.
The
Member wants now he wants a summit on top of that. We just had three months'
worth of summits. Now he wants to go back again consulting, and I'm not sure
what it's not clear, because it wasn't really clear what the Member had to
say. He said that he proposed this because he heard somebody else propose it,
more or less.
I can
tell you from just going into the schools that I went into in Lab West last week
last week I had the privilege of going to Lab City and Wabush and going to all
four schools in that area, and I can assure you now that the teachers I spoke to
there don't want to wait for a summit for these issues to be addressed. They
have been waiting since this model was foisted onto the education system in 2009
with consultation with nobody other than themselves. They have been waiting for
action since then.
I'll
tell you another thing. I have not run into a parent who has said to me: oh,
let's have more talk. Let's have more talk now because we haven't had enough.
I'll
draw Members' attention because the task force on improving educational outcomes
met with the all-party committee on improving mental health and addictions and
they made a number of recommendations that sort of intersect. If you look at the
report, in the early pages of the report of the All-Party Committee on Mental
Health and Addictions, they say, and I quote: Although the perspectives shared
with us were often unique, the common message we heard was that having the
conversation is not enough. Action is needed now in order to better meet the
needs of the people in the province. Action! People don't want more talk,
people want action. This all-party committee wants action.
We can
sit around here and cast blame all we want, but in the end we have to clean up
the variety of messes that we have inherited. Prior to the last election, the
Premier said if he was to form government in 2015 we would have a task force on
improving educational outcomes. The chair of the task force, a former Dean of
the Faculty of Education, Dr. Alice Collins, has said this is a once-in-a-decade
opportunity.
The task
force was specifically mandated to look at the issue of inclusive education and
what has gone wrong, because we heard in Opposition continually that it was not
working for a vast number of parents, teachers and students. We heard that a
lot. I would be a liar, Mr. Speaker, if I stood here and said I think everything
is working properly and as it should. I am not going to say that because it is
not.
There
are immense challenges with inclusive education in our schools. I have seen it.
I won't describe it. I have seen it first-hand in a variety of schools. It's not
on the Avalon, it's not in Central, it's not on the West Coast, it's not on the
East Coast, it's not in Labrador, we have problems throughout the system.
Had the
previous administration implemented, stayed true to the recommendations of the
ISSP & Pathways Commission, I would not be standing here today. We would not
have the problems today that have initiated this discussion because the previous
administration did not hold true to that.
Just,
for example, one suggestion, expanding the role of student assistants to
something broader like teacher assistants. In the UK they call them teacher's
aides. In other provinces they call them educational assistants. That's
something that could have had serious impact to the good on the system. It
stayed on the shelf. They didn't want to act on it.
Now we
have a task force with experts who have had comprehensive, three months' worth
of consultations with parents, with teachers, with students all across the
province and now the Member wants, sometime in 2017, to have more summits and
more consultation. The time for talk is over. Our kids cannot wait for more
talk.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. KIRBY:
We will get the report. If
teachers wanted to participate in this, they have had an opportunity. If parents
wanted to participate in this, they have an opportunity. There are a lot of
folks out there who have a lot to say about this.
We will
have the report in a few months a short time, I hope. We will have an
inter-jurisdictional review. It will summarize what is not working here. It will
make recommendations about what we need to do to fix the issues we have in our
schools. Then the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development will
operationalize those recommendations in the form of an education action plan,
and for September 2018 we will make the changes that need to be changed.
Now,
that's not news to anyone because we have been saying from day one that this is
what we would do. We are going to do it. The time for talk is finished. The
crowd across the way can continue to talk all they want. Our kids are relying on
us to act, and act we will, Mr. Speaker.
Thank
you.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for St.
John's East Quidi Vidi.
MS. MICHAEL:
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I am
glad to stand this afternoon and get an opportunity to speak to the main issue
that is the focus of the private Member's resolution today. It's not the public
summit, I would suggest. I think the main issue is the issue of the challenges
of inclusive education.
The
minister made reference to the task force. One of the things that became quite
obvious as the task force on educational outcomes did its work, and that was one
of the most major issues in our educational system right now is the issue of the
fact that our inclusive education model is not working.
We all
agree with inclusive education; we all want inclusive education. We want all
children to be able to perform to their maximum; therefore, we want classrooms
that are going to work, instructional areas that are going to work so that all
children can meet their maximum. That's what inclusive education is all about.
I
remember as I was preparing, I did present to the task force. I remember as I
was preparing for that I did reading of some of the presentations that had
already been made to the task force and I read some other reports, et cetera,
with regard to inclusive education. There was one person; a teacher who pointed
out that there needs to be a plan for every child in the classroom. Not one or
two children, not children that are exceptional in different ways, because
exceptionalities can be children who have difficulty when it comes to learning;
an exceptionality can also be a child who is a genius. These are all
exceptionalities.
The
position of one of the presentations that I read was that as an educator this
teacher believed that you have to have a plan for every child. Then on a regular
basis that plan, which parents are also involved in, has to be checked out, has
to be looked at. Is it progressing the way it should, et cetera?
What
we're talking about when we're talking about inclusive education is something
that is comprehensive and it's something that requires all kinds of resources in
order to make it work. This has been the major problem with our system here in
Newfoundland and Labrador, is that from day one the adequate resources have not
been put in.
Now, do
we need a summit to sit down and talk about that? That's not what I would see
the summit doing. Because of all the work that has been done over the past 10 or
so years, because of all the reports that have been done, because of the work
that was done by the NLTA last year, because of the task force, I think what a
summit could do by bringing together all the various groups that are referred to
in the private Member's resolution, what a summit could do would be really give
the impetuous to putting a plan in place.
You're
going to get recommendations from the task force. We have recommendations from
several reports, as have been referred to by the minister, but what we need now,
and I absolutely agree, is action and we need a plan. Now, the government that
we have right now and I'm not sure they're much different from the other one
to be quite honest, even though I'm supporting my colleague's resolution here.
The
government is proving itself not to be very good at plans, at making plans. We
had a so-called plan presented to us last Friday when we were briefed, an
immigration policy, a plan, a strategy. I can't find any action in it. I cannot
find any action.
Today,
we had the Minister of Health and Community Services stand and talk about the
plan they have for a health care system. When I asked, well, give us the
details. There was no plan; there was no action. So what a summit could do could
be very effective in making sure that a plan is put in place to deal with the
issue of inclusive education.
One of
the reasons I presented to the task force was because of so many phone calls
that I continually get from parents with regard to how their children's needs
aren't being met. I have had phone calls from parents whose children are
exceptionally bright. I've had phone calls and other communications from parents
whose children are on the autism spectrum. I particularly get contacted by
people who have children who are either deaf or have some form of hearing loss,
if not total.
These
contacts are ongoing all the time. They point out how we are not dealing well
with inclusive education. One of the things that got pointed out in the hearing
that I attended of the task force was the way in which inclusive education was
not helping either the children who may have difficulties with learning, or who
may have exceptionalities, physical or otherwise, nor the children who didn't
have anything that stands out, that it wasn't working for anybody.
We have
teachers who are stressed out, we have a system that doesn't have the resources
that it needs, so we do need a plan we absolutely do. But I want to point out
how bad it is and how this government is doing planning, which is planning in
silos. For example, we can't talk about services being delivered in education
without referring to the budget it's impossible. But one would think, looking
at some of the examples I have, that the Minister of Finance doesn't speak to
the other ministers about the impact of the budget that she brings forward.
I'm
going to use a really concrete example an example of the letter I got
yesterday actually, Tuesday, March 28. It's from a parent and she has told me I
can use the information. She wants to be sure that if she were identified, to
say how wonderful the work of the child's teacher is, how wonderful the work of
the itinerant teacher is and how wonderful the principal is, but the restraints
that they're working under.
Her
daughter is seven years old; she's in grade two. She has bilateral, severe,
profound sloping hearing loss and relies on an FM system in the classroom. This
hearing loss can progress. After another recent progression in her hearing loss,
the Janeway recommended a change in hearing aids in order to hopefully improve
and optimize her access to speech sounds which she was missing.
These
aids were changed in December '16, but things have not been working well for her
and it's mainly because she hasn't had a reliable FM system since December. Now,
she's in school, she's in class this is three months ago. So since December,
she has not had a reliable FM system.
She's
been tested by an audiologist and the recommendation was made on March 9 and it
was made by the Janeway that a new FM system be ordered for her daughter. Now,
here's the crunch and I mean, this is something that I can't believe I'm
standing in our province in the year of 2017 having to say this. She needs this
FM system to be able to hear clearly. She's missing all kinds of instruction in
the classroom and they've been told that the FM system cannot be ordered until
after April 1 because there's no money in the budget for that child's FM system.
This is unbelievable. That is what this parent has been told. That's what this
family has been told.
I just
can't believe it. I just cannot believe it. She said it's almost April now and
it will soon be ordered, but it will have been more than three weeks since the
recommendation and it's going to take weeks before it arrives. This is what's
happening in our province, Mr. Speaker.
So a
summit which brings everybody into the same room and to say how do we put a plan
in place based on what the task force has heard I have no doubt that the task
force is as upset as I am about this. But there are things going on that aren't
coming out in different places. A summit would cause it to come out.
Another
example has to do with the new protocol that I'm told is in place, put in place
by the school district, the English school district and the new protocol, a
protocol for dealing with a child who becomes exceptionally aggressive and hard
to deal with. The protocol now is that the teacher, principal, whatever, the
school, call 911. Now, we know what you get when you call 911, and what they're
going to get is not an ambulance coming because they're not equipped to deal
with a child who is being violent. What they are going to get is police, RNC.
I've had it reported to me that last week a school in my own district, a boy in
grade five, it was the RNC that came.
This is
unbelievable, but this stuff is not being heard, and that's what a summit would
do. Put everybody in the room together, leaders in all of the areas that are
being talked about here, and really plan how this stuff can end. What the
government has to deal with the first case I talked about is a budgetary
issue.
So we
have a major problem. If we're not going to be able to increase the resources
going in to our educational system, then we're not going to have a safe,
inclusive education system. I mean, that's the bottom line. We didn't need the
task force to tell us that. I think many of us knew that. I've been hearing it
ever since the inclusive education model came in: the inadequate number of
itinerant teachers; inadequate number of teaching assistants; teachers being
overloaded; one teacher having to be responsible for three children who have
special needs and the complications of that. If one of those children has to
leave the classroom and that teacher, the assistant, goes with that child, then
the main teacher in the classroom is left with the two children with special
needs, plus everybody else.
So
what's going on is not acceptable. I think the summit can cause an action to be
put in place. I think a summit is a good thing to happen. A summit that has the
Cabinet in that room, that has the minister in that room. A summit that has the
Opposition Members in that room. A summit where we're really faced together,
okay, what is it that's absolutely needed? And a summit that has the Minister of
Finance in the room. Because whether the Minister of Finance likes it or lumps
it, this cannot happen we cannot make the model of inclusive education work
without more resources and more resources means more money. That's the bottom
line.
So I
will be supporting this resolution. It sounds like the Minister of Education
isn't going to be although he didn't say, so we'll have to wait until he
stands and we find out what he's doing, until he votes and finds out what he's
doing. But I think it would be good for the government not just to take the task
force report on their own, but take the task force report and put it in the
context of the kind of summit that's outlined here.
Thank
you very much, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Placentia West Bellevue.
MR. BROWNE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's
certainly an honour to rise today in this hon. House to address the resolution
put forth by the Member for Conception Bay East Bell Island. Before I begin
discussing education, I wanted to make a special mention of Kaetlyn Osmond who
is now in second place in world stage figure skating. She did a great short
program this morning, which I hope Members took the opportunity to view, and
she'll be doing the long program. We wish her all the best. We wish her all the
best.
I also
want to say a special Happy Birthday to the mother of the Member for Burin
Grand Bank, who I am told is celebrating her 74th birthday today. So certainly,
I'll get those two things out of the way, Madam Speaker.
It's
certainly an honour now to address the resolution at hand. I have great respect,
Madam Speaker, for the teachers or our province, as I'm sure all Members here
do. I recently had the opportunity to visit a number of schools in my district.
In fact, I visited one in the Member's district as well, Beachy Cove. I had a
fantastic trip to Beachy Cove. I read to the French immersion kindergarten class
for the Francophonie Day
and it was wonderful They
have a lot of great things going on there at Beachy Cove and, indeed, in many of
my own schools.
I
recently had the opportunity to visit Holy Family in Chapel Arm where the Masons
held an event promoting peace and tolerance and love and friendship for one
another, Madam Speaker.
I also
had the opportunity during Education Week to visit the grade one French
immersion class of Sacred Heart Academy in Marystown; a great school, my alma
mater, Madam Speaker. It was wonderful to be there to read to that class as part
of Education Week. I also had the opportunity to visit a number of other
schools, including Swift Current Academy recently to deliver some mental health
funding from the Department of Health and Community Services.
Madam
Speaker, I preference my comments with those remarks to say that we all have
such a profound respect for teachers and the work they do and the challenging
circumstances under which they work. There is no doubt that there are challenges
in our school system. I think we see that.
The
Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development was on the Burin Peninsula
last year and met with a number of parents and school councils and teachers
while he was there. I have to say the visit was very well-received because
there's nothing more important, Madam Speaker, than listening, and listening to
the concerns that are out there which is why I would be so inclined to support
the resolution at hand if it weren't already taking place through the Premier's
task force on education.
Just to
give some background to Members, re the Premier's task force on education, it
was appointed on November 8 of last year. It was launched by the Minister of
Education at the Premier's direction through his mandate letter.
I'd also
like to point out, we hear the Leader of the Official Opposition often getting
up talking about lack of a plan and a wish book, pixie dust and a lack of
commitment to the promises that were made, but I would remind all hon. Members
that in the minister's mandate letter it set out a direction to form the
Premier's Task Force on improving Educational Outcomes, and that's been
delivered, Madam Speaker. That has been delivered and is in motion right now in
this province. They have criss-crossed the province. They have been through my
district. They've been through many other districts, and they're hearing from
parents, they're hearing from teachers, they're hearing from students in fact.
As
someone who didn't come out of the school system all that long ago, I value the
fact that they're going and sitting down with students to hear their concerns
and perspectives as well, Madam Speaker, because that's tremendously important
as well. This is a commitment made and a commitment delivered.
Also,
another commitment made and commitment delivered was within one year of the
minister's appointment to have school board elections. Which is something the
former administration failed to do for years and years and years, to have
unelected trustees running the affairs of the school board here in the province.
So I will certainly commend the minister and this government for ensuring
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MADAM SPEAKER (Dempster):
Order, please!
MR. BROWNE:
that these commitments that were made, Madam Speaker, have been delivered and
acted upon.
Back to
the Premier's Task Force on improving Educational Outcomes, because it's
important, Madam Speaker, that all Members understand the mandate that it has.
It's looking at a variety of areas of concern in education, ranging from early
learning to math, to reading and literacy, to inclusive education that is part
of its mandate student mental health and wellness.
As the
minister has indicated, they sat down and spent time with the All-Party
Committee on Mental Health and Addictions, which released its report just last
week, which I fully support. They're also looking at multicultural education,
indigenous education, co-op education, teacher education and professional
development for teachers. That's certainly a tall task in any stretch, Madam
Speaker, to look at all those issues, but I have all faith that under the
chairperson, Dr. Collins, they will do an exemplary job.
It was
said earlier as well that the chair of that committee, who is a respected
educator in her own right, has said this is a once in a decade opportunity,
Madam Speaker. I think it really goes back to our fundamental philosophy on what
education means and what education is for the people and the children of our
province.
I was
reading a quote earlier, Madam Speaker. Let us think of education as the means
of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private
hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and
greater strength for our Nation. That was a Kennedy quote, Madam Speaker, and I
think it holds true to Newfoundland and Labrador as well.
I would
refer Members back to the Ministerial Panel on Educational Delivery in the
Classroom, which I had the opportunity to read through. It's certainly a report
that was delivered to then Minister of Education, Judy Foote, in 2000. That
really, through my review of the literature on this subject, Madam Speaker, was
one of the last comprehensive looks at the entire education system.
We've
seen in the past there have been royal commissions, there have been ministerial
panels and now we have the Premier's Task Force on improving Educational
Outcomes which is so important. It is something that then Leader of the
Opposition, now Premier, committed to prior to the last election and has come
through on. Because in this ministerial panel on the delivery of education in
the classroom you find a comprehensive look at education and the philosophy
behind which we use to develop a curriculum and the programs and services that
we offer in our schools.
I
believe it's well overdue, Madam Speaker, to have the type of dialogue we're
having in this province surrounding teachers, the role that teachers play, the
challenges they face, and certainly, indeed how we can improve those outcomes.
Because, Madam Speaker, we all know there was significant increases in terms of
the funding provided to the education system in this province over the reign of
the Progressive Conservatives but the outcomes did not alter to meet the
increased percentage.
I'll
read a quote here from The Way Forward,
the plan with which we're going to bring forward economic growth and
sustainability to the province. The plan that the Opposition denies exists. I
read this quote, Madam Speaker. High levels of expenditures in recent years did
not budge many of our most important outcomes in health and education. Despite,
over the past ten years, increasing health care spending by $1.1 billion and
K-12 and post-secondary education spending by $425 million, an increase of 61
per cent and 48 per cent respectively, Madam Speaker, 48 per cent in the
education system many of our indicators remain well below the national
average.
That's
not a reflection on teachers, that's not a reflection on students, that's not a
reflection on our schools because I have every faith that the teachers of this
province can deliver the finest education that one can receive in the world,
Madam Speaker, but they must be provided with the tools to do so. That is really
why it's important to have the Premier's Task Force on improving Educational
Outcomes canvass the province, discuss with those who are the important
stakeholders.
I would
note that they have had engaging sessions with the Newfoundland and Labrador
Teachers' Association, the school districts, both the staff and the elected
people, Memorial University, College of the North Atlantic, the Federation of
School Councils, the Office of the Child Advocate, Choices for Youth, Thrive,
the Association for New Canadians and, of course, there have been a number of
indigenous participants as well.
Those
are just some of the people that the task force has gone out to solicit feedback
from. Of course, this has been such an open process, Madam Speaker, anyone has
been able to go out and provide feedback, either through the interactive website
or in person, or through email or by phone. I know in February, they were in
Marystown and they heard from a number of different groups. They heard from the
Federation of School Councils that were there at that meeting. There was a local
action group, the Stand Against Drugs Committee that we are all so very familiar
with here. There were parents. There were teachers. There were former teachers
as well. My two parents are both former teachers, so of course I truly believe
in the power of education and I see what our teachers can do.
The
point that I am making in all of this, Madam Speaker, is that I would support
this motion fully if it wasn't really something that was already in motion. As
the minister has said, the people of this province have heard enough talk. They
want action. I've heard that day in and day out. The Members opposite, I am
sure, have heard it day in and day out, but they seem to have become accustomed
just to throwing meetings and parties and summits. They had their health care
summit that cost well over $100,000 to have. I'm not sure what came out of it,
and now they want another summit after we're already spending public resources
on a Premier's Task Force for Improving Educational Outcomes.
Mr.
Speaker, I'm at a loss I'm truly at a loss as to why they want another summit,
following a very comprehensive process through the Premier's task force on
education. This is a commitment that was made during the election. It's a
commitment that was put into the mandate letter of the minister and it's been
acted on. The Premier has acted on this. The minister has acted on this.
Indeed,
the school board elections I have to raise it again, Mr. Speaker, because they
were left without any elected school board trustees for years and years and
years and it didn't seem to be a priority at all, and this government acted and
this government delivered.
Mr.
Speaker, in closing, I will say it again. I have the greatest of respect for
teachers. I understand the challenges that they face. It is indeed challenging.
We, as a government, are committed to working through those challenges and
issues to ensure that they have the right tools to provide, as I've said
earlier, what I believe can and should and must be the best education for the
children of our province to position ourselves as global leaders into the
future.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER (Osborne):
The hon. the Member for
Conception Bay South.
MR. PETTEN:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr.
Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up and speak on this issue. It's a very
important issue, as we've heard various Members speak about today, and it
affects each and every district within the province and all schools. It's an
issue that's not going anywhere. It's one that we need to address. I commend my
colleague for Conception Bay East Bell Island for bringing this motion forward
today. I think it's a great idea, and it's one that is my pleasure to speak to.
Mr.
Speaker, when reviewing the resolution before, the first part is simple; BE IT
RESOLVED that the House of Assembly urge the Department of Education and Early
Childhood Development to convene a public summit in 2017 to discuss the
challenges of inclusive education and constructive solutions
.
The
second part lists those who ought to be included in such a summit. It's intended
to be a comprehensive list. I just want to list those after listening to some
speakers opposite speak about it and the Premier's task force, I think this list
is worth repeating: the Newfoundland and Labrador Teachers' Association, the
Faculty of Education of Memorial University, the Newfoundland and Labrador
Federation of School Councils, specialist educators, classroom/subject teachers,
instructional resource teachers, student assistants, guidance counsellors,
educational psychologists, program specialists for student support services,
school administrators, parents, students, advocacy groups for persons with
disabilities, other special interest groups, experts on inclusive education
practices, legislators representing all parties in the House of Assembly and
members of the general public.
Mr.
Speaker, on that note, I have the utmost respect for the Premier's task force on
educational outcomes. I have no problem with that. The list of groups I just
read that time, I think that's a very comprehensive group of people, two days,
one day, whatever it means, to have a summit to bring that group of people
together to discuss an issue of such importance, I think it's very worthy and
it's one that should be given some serious consideration, in conjunction with
the Premier's task force which like I said, we have no issue with that as
well. This is dealing with one specific issue with all those people in one room;
it makes a lot of sense.
The
point is that everyone needs to be part of this conversation, and that's how we
come to agreements about solutions. Some will talk about what is affordable
and that's fair. But we shouldn't get so boxed in by old ways of thinking that
we're unwilling to try innovative solutions and novel approaches. In the end,
the new approach may not be unaffordable at all, when we weigh the costs against
the benefits. Let us not forget that there are other costs besides the one in
the budget documents. There are human costs of failing our students. There are
also economic costs of failing to give a generation of our young people the best
education we possibly can. If the system is failing our students, the entire
province will bear that cost down the road.
We will
slip in terms of productivity, competiveness, employability, poverty and
self-reliance, and those are economic costs that have fiscal consequences. If
you nickle and dime your way to a cheap but ineffective educational system, you
may be nickeling and diming your way to ruin.
A
government has to focus on the future and invest in education in ways that
ensure we are positioned to lead nationally and globally on every scale. If our
education vision is not as broad as that, then we will be left behind because
other jurisdictions are already there.
All
students are different; they have different needs, different strengths, and
different ways of learning, different ways of excelling. In one school that was
challenged by poor performance, teachers introduced a period of intense physical
activity during each day to break up the pace. They found that the students were
able to better focus on learning after working out. That's an innovative
solution based on evidence. It doesn't really cost much but benefits can be
measurable. Perhaps there are innovative approaches to inclusive education that
we will enhance the feeling of togetherness, while also allowing students with
different needs to pursue their education in different ways.
But this
cannot all be on the back of a teacher. If we have experts at the summit table
along advocates for persons with disabilities, alongside teachers, alongside
students, alongside administrators who manage to finances, we can hear all
sides. Everyone can talk about inclusion, how to achieve it, make it work, this
issue can get the attention it merits and maybe it can also get some solutions
sooner rather than later. It's a huge issue.
When we
talk about inclusion, let's not forget that we are talking about young people
with their whole lives before them. ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down's
Syndrome, visual impairment, hearing impairment, dyslexia, different IQs,
different levels of education advancement, these are labels we've put on people.
These labels are not intended to diminish the value of any human being. A label
is only part of who the person happens to be. Sometimes a label describes
differences among students that can be addressed with relative ease and a bit of
creativity to the benefit of everyone.
But
other labels represent real challenges for educators. I don't think we are going
to resolve those challenges until we figure out the purpose of schooling in the
21st century. We need to figure out what we are trying to achieve.
Ideally,
a school will help to draw out each and every student's innate potential,
motivate them, help them feel good about themselves, help to see the value of
their relationships with their peers and build a stronger, more cohesive and
tolerant society.
But
those idealistic goals are no help to a classroom teacher who is trying to
figure out how to deliver a lesson in a classroom without the resources and
supports to deal with the particular challenges facing that class. When
intensively disruptive students are compromising education in the classroom,
everyone is harmed. It is irresponsible inclusion.
When the
curriculum is too challenging for some students to grasp or not challenging
enough to motivate others to engage, then students can suffer. The differences
between them may actually become more apparent and more of an issue. If this
becomes the basis for resentment, then how would this promote harmony and
acceptance among students, despite the differences? It might just draw them
apart.
Imagine
a teacher trying to develop and deliver a lesson plan for that class. The class
I refer to is a recent news story about a classroom in another province where
students in a grade eight class range from pre-primary level to a grade nine
level. So you can only image what that teacher was dealing with.
Perhaps
there are solutions. Perhaps others have found approaches that work. We need to
find out, and a summit is the way to focus in on the challenge and the
experiences and perspective of others.
At one
school in Florida each secondary school in the country has an administrator
and secretary specifically assigned to exceptional student education. Some
larger schools have their own ESE counsellors; some exceptional student
education teachers work with parents, the district office, teachers and
students. At another US school, you would enter a classroom with several adults
present, but the classroom would appear ordinary otherwise. There would be a
learning centre, group work everyone would be engaged in learning.
An
educator listed some of the challenges facing teachers with respect to
inclusion. For example, the teachers lack of experience in an inclusion setting;
lack of experience dealing with severe and profound disabilities; including all
students in all activities; educating students with less severe disabilities;
dealing with the death of a student with severe illness; the shortage of teacher
aids; how to teach compassion to students who are not familiar with exceptional
students; dealing with parents of typically developing students; individualized
lesson plans; coordinating therapies.
Promoting inclusion must be accompanied by strategies for effectively addressing
all of those issues. Whatever we do, we have to remember that each and every
child is a precious life and we have to be sensitive to that. We cannot hurt one
child in order to help another child. We have to find an approach that benefits
every child.
Teachers
need space where they can talk about this openly, frankly and constructively.
Without that forum, many are afraid to speak up, thinking they will be labeled
intolerant or mean-spirited, where they are the very opposite of that. They
don't want to talk negatively about the particular children they teach, but they
would like to compare notes with other teachers and talk in general terms about
the challenges they share and approaches that might work.
Some
teachers' hearts are breaking because they see learning opportunities slipping
through their fingers every day as their classes deal with challenges that they
don't know how to face. That's not what they expected when they trained to
become teachers. The problem is not getting easier. Classes are larger, as
government raises caps.
The
resources to help teachers cope are deficient. It's a constant fight when it
ought to be a priority for government to address. It may be inconvenient and
embarrassing for government to have people hear of so many grievances that may
not be easily solved. Perhaps the minister is afraid things will descend in
anger and acrimony directed his way. But how can you justify shutting down a
debate on addressing a major educational challenge when the problem is real, and
it's not getting the attention it deserves? How would that be responsible? Let's
have a summit and let's hear what people have to say.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for Mount
Pearl Southlands.
MR. LANE:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's a
pleasure to get a couple of minutes now to speak on this motion. I certainly
want to thank the Members of the Official Opposition for giving me the
opportunity because it's not an automatic thing for me. I don't always get to
speak on Private Members' Day.
First of
all, I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, right off the bat that I do support the
motion as brought forward by the Official Opposition. It's interesting because
in the Throne Speech yesterday, I was listening to the Premier and he was going
to start off by saying we should I don't remember the exact words, but it was
about something to the effect that we should be putting partisan politics aside
in these tough times and working together. Now, that eventually turned into a
big rant against the Official Opposition. I can understand that he felt provoked
and so on. I'm not going to deny that. But he did say that at the beginning, for
that one brief moment.
Here we
are presented with an opportunity today to do just that: to put politics aside
and to work together on something which is a very important issue, an issue that
is affecting children and families all throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, in
all of our districts. It seems and I guess we will wait to see how the vote
goes, but it sounds like our government is not going to support it. I don't know
why they wouldn't want to support it. I really don't know why they wouldn't want
to support a motion that says that we are going to bring the stakeholders
together now to take action.
I was
very glad, by the way, I heard the Minister of Education and Early Childhood
Development I believe is the title say we were going to take action. People
are sick of talk and we want action. I agree with him. Lord knows, I've spoken
to many, many people I'm sure we all have who are sick to death of talking
about these issues around inclusion. Teachers are sick to death of talking about
it, administrators are, parents are and all the stakeholders are. We all know
that it comes down to resources; that's the biggest issue here. We didn't need
to do any kind of a task force, or summit or anything to know that it comes down
to resources. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to.
I got to
say that I did find it very disappointing when I listened to some of the Members
opposite, and instead of talking to the issue and not all; I will say some did
speak to the issue, to some degree. But instead of talking about the issue at
hand, all we heard was well, you guys were in government, you didn't do it. You
had 12 years, 10 years, 12 years, whatever.
I would
just say, Mr. Speaker, that if we had to take that attitude, if every
government, over the years, took that attitude nothing would change, no matter
what. The government would change and would say you didn't make that change so,
therefore, we're not going to do it. You never changed that legislation, so
we're not going to do it. You never funded these projects, so we're not going to
do it. I mean if that's the attitude to simply say because you didn't do it,
it's okay for us to say we're not going to do it it doesn't make sense to me.
We have to talk about today.
If you
talk to people out there in the community, they are not interested in what
happened last week, last month, last year. We all know there were issues with
the previous administration and the administration before that, and the
administration before because nobody is perfect. There's lots of blame to go
around on all sides, in all parties over the years, but we all know that, and
everybody knows that.
But
people want to talk about what you are going to do today. From here forward,
what are you going to do? That's what people want to know. Here's an opportunity
for us to forget about the past and to move forward, from today forward, on a
very important issue that affects people in all of our districts, and there
seems to be no will to go down that road.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Oh, oh!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
MR. LANE:
There seems to be no will to
go down that road. It's very, very unfortunate that the Members opposite don't
want to go down that road of working together, collectively, to support what
should be an issue which is near and dear to all of our hearts.
I know
if you talk to people, constituents, you hear so many times the issues around
inclusion. Whether it be the children that need services that are not receiving
adequate services; whether it be children that need services but because they're
sort of on the borderline, if you will, so to speak, they're falling between the
cracks, they're getting no services at all; and you also hear the frustration
from parents around children who don't need services but they feel that their
child is not getting the attention they deserve because the teacher's time is
tied up with the children who do need services because there are not enough
supports in place. These are very serious issues.
I
support the task force. The Premier had a task force on education great, good
thing; I supported it. I think everybody supported it. I think everyone who has
spoken said they've supported it. This is not looking at the broader issue of
education; this is looking at the more specific issue around inclusion in the
classroom, to bring people together and if the minister was going to take
action, which is great, again, I'll say I'm glad to hear it. So I certainly hope
next week when the budget comes out that we're going to see action taken.
Now, I
heard the minister talk about 2018, they're going to take the report and the
recommendations and that's going to go to some committee, and that's going to go
to someone else and they're going to do all these things in 2018. I suggest it
will probably be 2019, election year, would be more likely when it would happen.
Anyway,
the fact of the matter is that action needs to be taken now. In the absence of
that action being taken now, then we at least need to work together to put a
plan in place so that action would be taken as soon as possible. That's what I
believe is being asked for here and I will be supporting it.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
MR. SPEAKER:
The hon. the Member for
Conception Bay East Bell Island.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. BRAZIL:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
It's
indeed an honour to get to speak again to the private Member's resolution
regarding an inclusive education summit. I want to acknowledge the Members who
spoke. The Member for Stephenville Port au Port, I might note it was
disappointing that he was more centred on putting blame on something that didn't
happen in a program, the Community Education Network, a very valued program, I
had the privilege of working with, that unfortunately didn't continue to receive
funding. I don't think it receives funding today either. It did a very important
job on the West Coast and the Southwest Coast, particularly around engaging
education and youth at risk, those processes and sponsoring the Community Youth
Network.
I am a
bit disappointed that he didn't focus more on the task at hand. The task at hand
here was how we better identify issues around inclusive education, and
acknowledging that this has to be a collective process and a collective effort
by all to make this work. So that was a bit disappointing that he didn't take
the opportunity to talk about what solutions they would have.
I want
to acknowledge my colleague, the Member for Fortune Bay Cape La Hune, who very
articulately talked about how we use the process to ensure that everybody has a
good quality of education and ensure that geographically our education process
is accessible, and that the outcomes should be on equal par, that people in a
rural community would still have access to education like in an urban community.
I want
to acknowledge the Minister of Education, and again, another note of
disappointment about pointing fingers and pointing blame. I would have thought,
as the Minister of Education and I threw out the olive branch at the
beginning; myself and him may not have the greatest working relationship in the
House of Assembly, but I threw out the olive branch that I had respect for him
as an educator and respect for him as an Education critic when he was here. He
had all the solutions, it was all going to happen, it was all going to be part
and parcel of the minute he became part of a government, they were going to
change everything. I was disappointed that he doesn't acknowledge I don't
think he really acknowledges the fact there's an opportunity.
I have
no qualms of acknowledging there's a lot of good work been done by a lot of
great committees and task forces. The NLTA have done more work on every aspect
of education, including inclusive education. I don't know where he's been for
three Monday nights when CBC and dozens of teachers from those who've been in
the classroom for three years and those who've been in there for 30 years, and
counsellors, and everybody else relevant to it talked about the impact inclusive
education is having, and particularly the need for somebody to address it, and
have not done anything to make that work. So that was a bit disappointing that
he didn't take the opportunity to talk about what the vision would be, from
their perspective, on making things work.
It's
more than disappointing there, particularly as the Minister of Education, but
particularly as an educator who also was the critic for a number of years,
seemed to have all the solutions and, no doubt, the solutions he threw out, at
the end of the day, made sense. I saw it over there for the last couple of years
and noted that some of these made sense. And there's no doubt we had dialogue
and some of them we actually implemented.
Maybe we
could have done more. Fine enough, if you want to do that, fair enough; but if
nothing else, if you wanted to take the opportunity to have the summit,
participate in the summit, if you wanted to point blame at us that's fair enough
this is not what this is about. This resolution was never about pointing blame
at anybody. It was about addressing an issue that parents, educators, agencies
that represent educators, agencies that represent students that have challenges,
the general public everybody felt we needed to have that.
So I've
got one Member who's big around having dialogue; I've got the minister who says
dialogue is a waste of time. And that's great; I agree with him, it's a waste of
time to do it, if he already has the solutions in hand. So part of me, the back
part, the good old optimist is saying, in this budget he must have hundreds of
millions of dollars allocated. He must have been able to convince his colleagues
not to cut 219 teaching positions like last year, but indeed to put so much
money into the education system that we will legitimately address the challenges
we have with inclusive education.
I'm
going on that premise, because the fact that he's so adamantly against this can
only mean that he has a solution. Because on one hand he stands that inclusive
education is very important. We need to address it; we need to resource it. So
I'm assuming he's having all kinds of dialogues with the NLTA about what he's
going to announce next week, and I actually look forward next Thursday of
sitting here. The old clichι is eating crow; I have no problems doing that if he
has the solutions to inclusive education. I look forward to that.
I also
want acknowledge the Member for St. John's East Quidi Vidi who, herself, has a
vast experience in the education system and who supports this, because she sees
this as the impetus for having another open discussion. She acknowledges the
fact of taking off some of these reports, dusting them off, because maybe
don't forget, generational things change; new leaders come into being; new
leaders within the education system; parents come from a different perspective;
things change in our society. Maybe some of those reports are extremely still
relevant, and maybe we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I'm glad
she outlined that, that maybe we look at recommendation 22 to 27 in a particular
report that would still be relevant and we take that and say, now this is part
of something that we want to put as the approach that we'll use to solving these
issues. Included in that would be the Premier's task force. I would think the
task force members would love to hear from a summit what people think from every
genre of the education system, and not just from a piece of paper that was sent
in not really clearly understanding exactly what they meant by that.
I
received, I say, 70 or 80 in the last week, and some of them are very clear what
their challenges are. Some, I'm not quite sure, because even the parents
sometimes are not quite sure what resources they have available and what they
don't. So it would have been a great opportunity to be able to do that without
much confusion.
The
Member for Placentia West Bellevue, while he still wasn't totally
supportive, he was the most supportive of the group over there. And I think he
got it a little bit better than the rest of them; he understood what this was
about. I think he may have watched and I'm hoping he did the series on CBC
when teachers outlined and counsellors outlined the challenges.
And it was
heart-wrenching to see
teachers basically cry because they want to give so much, they want to be able
to show the success for every student, but know there are challenges around the
process we're using, the lack of resources, the lack of communication between
the department, even some of the issues around how you develop the curriculum,
those types of things. So it was a bit disappointing that that wasn't one of the
focuses.
If you
didn't believe the merits that we had, why we're proposing it were morally just,
I would hope and think you couldn't disagree with what dozens of teachers had
told you and told you, point blank, and had nothing to gain other than they want
to better move the education system forward.
If you
have a dispute with agencies that represent them, that's fine; that's the
negotiation process. But when the grassroots individuals who are part of the
organization and deliver the services tell you there's a problem and have they
have challenges and they give you solutions and you don't listen and you don't
think it's important and you don't think there's a process that should be used
to engage that information and then make your decisions, then I have a problem
with that and it's very disappointing.
My
colleague, the Member for Conception Bay South, who outlined the need to give an
inclusive process, have a dialogue, talk about constructive solutions, which was
a great it's comical because I hear the Minister of Justice, rightfully so,
had a summit on justice needed; we have some challenges. It's been identified
by those who work in that field, but the people who work in the field of
education, particularly around inclusive education, the merits of what they say,
apparently doesn't mean anything to my colleagues on that side. It's not as
important.
Listen,
everything we do in our society is important. Every line process, every line
service we offer is important and we have a right to expect people to listen,
particularly the government to listen and take our advice. They don't
necessarily have to frame it exactly the way that we put it there and I say
we, I mean the citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador. But they have to take it
into account and hopefully that will craft exactly what their policies are, what
their philosophies are and where they invest their money into resources.
So it
was good to see my colleague outline those processes. It was disappointing to
see, on the other side, that that wasn't being taken seriously and it wasn't as
important to them.
Also the
Member for Mount Pearl Southlands and I give credit where he noted and I
opened up with this is not about pointing blame and it is not about being
partisan, and he wanted to emphasize that. We do things in this House at times
that are not based on party lines because they're the right things to do. They
benefit the people that we serve. We want to make society a little bit better.
We want to show for those people who work for society, our civil servants,
people who provide our services if it's in education, if it's in snow clearing,
if it's in health care, whatever sector it is, we want to be able to all agree
we need to find a better way to let them do their jobs, not put hindrance and
blocks up against it but support them.
Sometimes it's moral support, sometimes it's philosophical support, sometimes
it's actually constructive, financial support and that's what we were talking
here. This wasn't all somebody write a blank cheque. This was about bringing
everybody to together who would talk about the resource we have here, can
probably still be used over here, without it costing any more. Or the resource
we have here needs to go there and we need to put some supports with that. The
dialogue around that would have only been a benefit to everybody in Newfoundland
and Labrador.
He also
talked about every genre of the school system feels, in some way, shape or form,
affected by inclusive education. The kids who are succeeding are still feeling,
at times, that they are not getting the attention they need, and teachers feel
that. Teachers feel that they have to emphasize over here because they don't
have the resources, and some of it is physical resources, not just human
resource but the space. I know the last couple of years there has been a push on
to build as many schools as possible because they were needed and there were
various reasons. If you're offering new programs and services, you have to have
the physical space to be able to offer those.
Some of
the challenges that some of the students face within inclusive education dictate
you need to have particular rooms or particular settings that are conducive to
being able to address that issue or conducive to a proper learning process. So
these are the things that we had talked about. We had encouraged the government
and I understand they're facing fiscal restraints, but even the fiscal
restraints you have to prioritize what it is you stand for. I would have thought
standing for education, health care and providing services would have been your
primary objective. If you have to drop something else, if you have to drop a
million dollars for consultants, do that so that we have programs for inclusive
education. You have the ability to make those decisions. It baffles me that
you're not prioritizing what's happening.
I know
the Members back there have got to be feeling the same things that we are
feeling here from their constituents. They got to see the same things when they
go in the schools. No doubt, when you go into a school, you're going to see the
best of the best because our school system is doing a great job. Don't get me
wrong; it's doing a super job. But there are challenges. They've been identified
by everybody.
So it's
one to do a great job and a super job, but let's do a super, super job. Do you
know how we do that? Let's fill the gap that we have that's been identified.
Inclusive education, right now, is the biggest challenge facing our education
system because it's taking away from all the other programs and services that
teachers, administrators even the people who design the curriculum have to
concentrate around. They don't have the resources to be able to deal with that
particular issue and still deal with the mainstream curriculum system. So there
has to be a dialogue.
The best
way to do that sometimes it's not always about throwing money at it; sometimes
it's about the money you already have, how to use it. Sometimes it's going to be
about the resources that you use. No doubt, we identified it. We identified it
in the previous administration that there were more resources needed. Nobody
ever argued that, and that process was started. There were resources every year
put into it. They were trying to be moved around; they were trying to dialogue
with the powers that were involved who could give the best advice the NLTA, a
number of other agencies.
We were
trying to find that out. We never succeeded in finishing the job. We agree, not
a problem it was ongoing. It's a living entity. So what we're saying as part
of a living entity, why don't we continue that, continue to have the dialogue,
continue to find better ways to do it?
We've
had people come and ask us for this dialogue, and what we were proposing, an
opportunity the issue here becomes and I know we're politicians, and maybe
the politicians on that side were afraid they were going to get beat up. They
don't have to get beat up. Somebody had mentioned that in 2009, we implemented
this program. Was it fully resourced at the time? Of course it wasn't. We know
that.
So if
they wanted to take a potshot at us, they can do that, get that out of the way,
let's deal with the issue at hand. The issue at hand is simple: How do we better
serve the people in our education system? How do we support those who provide
education? How do we ensure that the students get the quality of education that
they're entitled to and that the outcomes are at the level of the expectations
of those students? There's a standard expectation. That expectation is: every
kid has the ability to reach their potential. To do that, you've got to have
proper resources. To have proper resources, you got to know exactly what they
are.
Well, we
already know. We've heard it. The NLTA I've read the report. I've given a good
outline of some of the resources they need. No doubt, they also would endorse an
open dialogue with other stakeholders, because there is always room for
developing extra partnerships. There's always room for prioritizing where the
resource particularly should go. There are always ways of also looking at our
priorities from a long-term thing. What are our time frames for achieving
certain goals?
The
other important thing is educating the parents about exactly what can be
delivered, and on a timely basis, and what the expectations are. Not all parents
are going to agree with it. Some are going to be frustrated and think more needs
to be done at a quicker pace. But the best people to be able to tell you that
are the educators, with input from parents and other stakeholders.
So, Mr.
Speaker, on that note, I will take my seat and ask that we vote on what I think
would be a great opportunity for us to move our education system forward.
Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Hear, hear!
MR. SPEAKER:
Order, please!
Is the
House ready for the question?
All
those in favour, 'aye.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Aye.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against, 'nay.'
SOME HON. MEMBERS:
Nay.
AN HON. MEMBER:
Division.
MR. SPEAKER:
Division has been called.
Call in
the Members.
Division
MR. SPEAKER:
Are the Whips ready? Yes?
Ms.
Michael, we're ready.
All
those in favour of the motion, please rise.
CLERK (Barnes):
Mr. Paul Davis, Mr. Hutchings, Mr. Kent, Mr. Brazil, Ms. Perry, Mr. Kevin
Parsons, Mr. Petten, Ms. Michael, Mr. Lane.
MR. SPEAKER:
All those against the motion,
please rise.
CLERK:
Mr. Andrew Parsons, Ms. Coady, Mr. Joyce, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Crocker, Mr. Kirby,
Mr. Trimper, Mr. Warr, Ms. Dempster, Mr. Browne, Ms. Gambin-Walsh, Mr.
Mitchelmore, Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Letto, Ms. Haley, Mr. Bernard Davis, Mr. Derek
Bennett, Mr. Holloway, Ms. Parsley, Ms. Pam Parsons, Mr. Bragg, Mr. Finn, Mr.
Reid, Mr. Dean, Mr. King.
Mr.
Speaker, the ayes: nine; the nays: 25.
MR. SPEAKER:
I declare the motion
defeated.
This House now stands adjourned until 1:30, tomorrow afternoon.