The Committee met at 7:00 p.m.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

It being six minutes past the hour of seven, I will now call to order the first meeting of the Government Services Estimates Committee.

CLERK (Miss Duff): Mr. Chairman-elect, since this is the first meeting, the first item of business will be the election of the Chairman and then the Vice-Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: I move the Member for Lewisporte.

AN HON. MEMBER: I second that.

Motion, that the Member for Lewisporte take the Chair.

CLERK (Miss Duff): Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN (Penney): Could I have a motion please for the position of Vice-Chairman?

AN HON. MEMBER: I move Mr. R. Aylward.

AN HON. MEMBER: I second it.

Motion, that Mr. Bob Aylward be elected Vice-Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: My name is Melvin Penny, I am the Member for the District of Lewisporte, and I will be Chairman of the Estimate Committee for the Government Services Division. To my left is Mr. Bob Aylward, the Member for Kilbride. He will be the Vice-Chair for the meetings that will be dealing with the estimates of the Departments of Finance; Works, Services and Transportation; Employment and Labour Relations; Municipal and Provincial Affairs.

On my left are the other Members of the Committee: Mr. Norman Doyle, the Member for Harbour Main; Mr. Percy Barrett, the Member for Bellevue; Mr. John Crane, the Member for Harbour Grace; Mr. Larry Short, the Member for St. George's; and at the table with us is the Clerk of the Committee: Betty Duff. On my far right is the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ms. Patt Cowan, and her officials who she will introduce in short order.

I think we should first explain the format that we will be using. The Vice-Chairman and I have agreed that we will be using the established format of allowing the Minister fifteen minutes to make an opening comment, and then we will allow a Member of the Opposition - and I would assume it would be Mr. Aylward -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, that would be entirely up to you if you wish to be the critic - to make a fifteen minute opening statement as well. Then the questions will go to the Committee Members, and normally we will go with a Government Member and then an Opposition Member and rotate back and forth that way.

We have agreed that the first part of the questions should be general. We will not necessarily get into the estimates. I would prefer, at least, that we reserve the questions dealing with specifics in the estimates until last. If you have any general questions, we will do that first. I would suggest as well that we not get into a ten minute speech with five or ten questions. We adopt a procedure very similar to what we use in question period in the House of Assembly. If a Member has a question he will make it a concise question, and we would like concise answers. I will allow a Member up to ten minutes if he wishes, and I would appreciate it if we were to stick to that kind of a procedure - question and answer - and I will give every Member all the time he needs to ask whatever questions are necessary.

Members are not permitted to ask questions of the officials of the Department. Officials can answer any questions that would be put to them by the Minister, but they must be cautioned even then the answers must be based on fact, not policy. Members should not ask questions of the officials, if the Minister wants the official to answer for her that would be her privilege. The position of the Chair of those meetings is very similar to the position of the Speaker of the House of Assembly. It will be my job to maintain order and some semblance of decorum, but there is a much more relaxed atmosphere here than there would be at the Legislature. You are quite at liberty to remove your jackets, if you wish, and if you want to bring a coffee into the Chamber you are welcome to do that as well. It is not necessary that Members be referred to by the district they represent. We can refer to the Members by using their names. For the sake of Hansard I ask that when you speak please identify yourself. That is particularly important of the Department officials so that it gets recorded properly in the record. I see we have at least one individual from the news media so I would like to welcome him here tonight.

I now ask the Minister to introduce her officials.

MS. COWAN: Thank you, Chairperson.

I have with me Debbie Fry. Debbie is the Deputy Minister, just newly appointed to the Department. Next to her is Mike Dwyer. Mike is also fairly new to the Department. His area of responsibility is occupational health and safety. On my left I have Cathy Gogan whose responsibility is employment and careers. Behind me is Tom Hopkins who is our financial person. Linda Black, as most of you know, is our labour relations individual. She is on holiday at this particular time or she would be here with us this evening.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms Minister.

If you would proceed with your opening statement.

MS. COWAN: My opening statement is not fifteen minutes but just a very brief overview, and I think anything I have to say will probably come out in the questions as they proceed through the evening.

We will begin by saying the Estimates of the Department of Employment and Labour Relations show that the Department is divided into four branches, the executive and support services which is comprised of the Minister's office, executive support, administrative support, and program planning and review. Funding for this branch is the normal allocation for ongoing current account expenditures such as salaries, supplies and other items that are noted in the Estimates. We then have our Labour Relations and Employment Standards Division and it is comprised of the Industrial Relations Division, the Labour Relations Board and the Labour Standards Division. Funding for this branch in addition to the normal current account expenditures includes token allocations for setting up industrial enquiries, conciliation and mediation services, other than those provided by the Industrial Relations Division, and funding for the Labour Standards Board and Labour Standards Tribunal. The Occupational Health and Safety Branch is comprised of the Occupational Safety Division, the Public Safety Division, the Health and Safety Education Committees Division, and the Design and Approval section. The above divisions represent a recent reorganization within the Occupational Health and Safety Branch. Funding is provided for the normal current account expenditures of these restructured divisions. Funding is also provided under this branch for the operations of the Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal and the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety. Financial assistance is allocated for the St. Lawrence Miners Dependence Fund and assistance to outside agencies involved in occupational health and safety programs. The Workers' Compensation Commission provides 100 per cent reimbursement of expenditures incurred by the Occupational Safety Division, the Health and Safety Education and Committees Division, and the Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal. The expenditures of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety as well as assistance to outside agencies is also fully reimbursed by the Workers' Compensation Commission.

Lastly, we have the branch of employment and careers which is made up of the Employment Services Division, the Career Support Services Division, and the Youth Employment Strategy Division. In addition to the funding for ongoing current account expenditures, funds have been allocated for the Graduate Employment Programme, the Student Employment Programme, a programme for women interested in successful employment, a programme for older worker adjustment, the Employment Generation Programme, and the Adjustment Programme for Fish Plant Workers.

The programme funding summary and the summary of expenditures and related revenue is outlined on page 181 of your Estimates book. I will be pleased to answer any detailed questions when the time arises, Chair.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Doyle has been given the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Official Opposition in the opening statements.

MR. DOYLE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am not going to get into responding to the Minister's overview of her Department or make any statement. I think we will just go into some general questions and maybe the Minister can keep track as I go along for a few minutes as to what questions we would like to have answered as it pertains to her Department.

I am looking forward, Mr. Chairman, to receiving some information from the Minister on a variety of different topics because it is generally difficult to get detailed answers in the House of Assembly, so the Committee system, I guess, is a good opportunity for getting some detailed answers from the Minister on a variety of areas within her Department.

Now, the Minister I am sure is aware that she has a very, very important department especially as it relates to the Department's mandate to create employment. Predictably, I suppose, that is the first area that I wish to get into with the Minister, the employment section of her Department. The first thing I wish to speak to the Minister about is the Employment Generation Programme. I am sure that is predictable as well because I have been talking to the Minister in the House in Question Period in debate as well on the Employment Generation Programme as it relates to her Department and the mandate that she has to try and create employment. Again, it is very difficult sometimes to get the information that one is looking for.

Specifically, getting down to the Employment Generation Programme itself, I am interested in why the Department of Employment and Labour Relations would budget $2.9 million for the Employment Generation Programme and would spend only $2.2 million last year - now this year she has budgeted $1.5 million so we have a reduction there of $1.4 million in the Employment Generation Programme for this year. Specifically, I am given to understand that $700,000 was not spent from the budgeted amount of $2.9 million of last year.

Now, I remember when I asked the Minister about the Employment Generation Programme in the House only a few months ago and again last year, I asked her if all the money had been spent from the Employment Generation Programme.

She told me at that time that all of the money had been spent except for slippage, I believe was the term that she used.

Slippage, meaning that companies who had applied for funding under the Employment Generation Programme, who had received funding, and possibly for one reason or another did not use that funding, that funding was going back to Government and that was called slippage that the Minister was free then to approve for other projects, but we find it again this year, lo and behold, when we have a look at the Budget. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation for it and this is what I want to find out from the Minister.

Lo and behold we find out that $700,000 of that $2.9 million budgeted was not used, now, the reason why I would find that so unusual, I mean, is obvious; we have an unemployment rate of 23.5 per cent; we have a very small amount of money being budgeted for employment generation to begin with and still, in spite of that, there is even a smaller amount of $1.5 million budgeted this year and $700,000, apparently that was not used out of last year's budget, so, I am interested in the Minister making some comment or giving some information on that.

Also, in commenting on the Employment Generation Programme, I would be interested as well to get a report from the Minister as to how many of these people who become employed on the Employment Generation Programme continued on in the work force, because I remember one of the main reasons the Minister gave last year or two years ago, for scrapping the old Employment Generation Programme, I have forgotten what it was called or what we called it, but in any event the programme was discontinued and the Minister came in with her own Employment Generation Programme.

I know one of the reasons that the Minister gave for scrapping the previous programme was the fact that people who had been employed were not going on to continuous employment and she felt that under the new Employment Generation Programme, it would address the needs of people in terms of permanent employment and people receiving continuous employment as a result of her new programme.

So I would be interested to hear a report on that as to how many people were employed under the Employment Generation Programme and how many people continued to be employed, as was the goal of the programme. I do not want to pile it up too much, so maybe I will give the Minister an opportunity for answering and then I will continue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, but we will allow you to continue for the duration of the fifteen minutes before I turn it to one of the other Members, if that is acceptable?

MR. DOYLE: No problem.

MS. COWAN: Mr. Chairman, is it alright or do I have to say on a point of order or anything like that, do I?

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, no, not at all.

MS. COWAN: Just so that I am clear, I have made a note now of what he is going to ask but he is going to ask this again, I assume, is he?

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, he would like you to answer the questions now.

MS. COWAN: Now, and I have permission to do it?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, of course.

MS. COWAN: Okay, great. I was not quite sure.

To the number of questions there, I have tried to write down the questions in the order that you gave them, Mr. Doyle, so I hope I have.

First of all you mention the fact that I did in the House mention at one time that the money was all spent except for slippage. And although I do not have the Hansard in front of me or anything I would assume that I was talking about the monies that had been given to me originally for that programme. Then you will recall that later on the Government put in place a stimulation programme, an employment stimulation programme, in which funding was given to Forestry and Social Services and Transportation and so on. There was also money given to me for the employment generation programme. So that would account for why I had spent it all except for slippage at that time when I reported to you in the House that later on more monies were given to that particular project.

Now, as far as why there is not more money in it this year, we are three years into the programme now and we have enough money in there to continue us through the sixty weeks of employment, and at that time we will be reviewing the whole programme and seeing if it was in fact a good one. We have done some preliminary review of that, Mr. Doyle, to date, but it really is not significant. We have to see if the people do carry on through the sixty weeks and then if the employer keeps them on. Because that is the significant point. Will they stay on after that sixty weeks? And so at that time we will be reviewing it. And then of course we will have to look at a number of other situations that we are reviewing in our Department as to other employment programmes and deciding where in the future it is best to spend our money. We will want to look at whether the employment programme is one we want to target or whether it is something with youth or with women or whatever it should be.

As far as the $700,000 that was not spent, that is simply a matter of bookkeeping. It is one that I have never understood. When I was president of NTA I could never figure it out either every year when we looked at budgets. But the money could not carry over into the second year, it had to be spent in that particular budget year. And since there was not enough to carry people on through the sixty week programme it was not spent.

Okay. I think you asked me how many people were involved, how many jobs we created through that. Six hundred and fifty jobs. So we have 650 people then, employed through that particular programme. One hundred have withdrawn, okay, so that leaves us with 550. As to the programme itself, I guess I do not really need to repeat how it works. We had the twenty weeks of the Government subsidy then we had twenty weeks in which the employer had to make a total commitment to the individual, and then the individual came back onto the twenty weeks of the subsidy programme at the end. So I think that I have covered all your points. The reason that some of the 100 people withdrew was simply because there was a decline in business, or sometimes the employers would fill a position before we had given them approval, which is of course not correct, so we could not subsidize them, or the business was sold or whatever. So there are legitimate reasons it would appear to date for the person falling out. Not particularly because they did not want to continue or the employer did not want them.

I could just, maybe if I could. Mr. Wayne Mitchell has joined us from the Workers' Compensation Commission. He had an appointment which has kept him a little bit late. And it is customary for us to have someone from the Commission here just in case, Mr. Chairman, there should be -

MR. R. AYLWARD: Make sure he gets docked enough pay now for not being here on time.

MS. COWAN: Well, he is not well and he is here under duress, I must say, and I appreciate it very much, and it shows his commitment.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: I would like to be able to continue on into new areas, but I really cannot. I have to stick with this one for a minute, because I have not really received any answers to the questions that I asked.

The original question was: There was $2.9 million budgeted for the Employment Generation Programme, and there was $2.2 million spent, which means that $700,000 from the programme was not spent. Now, I understand the Minister says she is having difficulty understanding the bookkeeping end of it, and what have you, but I am still interested in finding out why $700,000 was not spent from that programme. The Minister really has not explained it to me. Maybe one of her officials could indicate what happened there, because when I see a budgeted amount of $2.9 million, and I see $2.2 million was spent from it, that indicates to me that $700,000 was not spent. So I have no objection if one of the officials wishes to reply, because I am interested in getting that information and I would like to have accurate information if I could, because the Minister is not providing accurate information on that.

MS. COWAN: There are none so deaf as those who do not want to hear.

MR. DOYLE: I am asking the Minister where the $700,000 went, and she is the one telling me that she does not understand where it went. Now, I am not deaf, and I would like the information from the Minister. If she does not want to answer, indicate that she does not and I will move on. I am not deaf, let me point out to the hon. Minister, but I would like the information.

MS. COWAN: Mr. Doyle, I do not think we need to take on such an adversarial stance.

MR. DOYLE: I will judge whether I take on adversarial stances. You do your job and I will do mine. Don't you worry about my stance at all.

MS. COWAN: I will certainly answer, and I will try to do so in a dignified and courteous manner, Mr. Chairman.

The $700,000 that was not spent could not be spent because of the long-term commitment. We could not take that $700,000, fund so many jobs and then carry them over into the next fiscal year. There was not going to be the money available in the next fiscal year, nor could we take any of that $700,000 and carry it over into the next fiscal year. So, had we started individuals in the Employment Generation Programme with that $700,000, we would have had to drop them at the end of the fiscal year, and that was not the aim of the programme.

MR. DOYLE: So you are telling me that the money was spent?

MS. COWAN: The money was not spent.

MR. DOYLE: You did not have time to spend it, is what you are saying?

MS. COWAN: No. Well, I suppose you could put it that way, but the fiscal year was drawing to a close, and you cannot carry any of that $700,000 over into the next fiscal year, as you are aware.

MR. DOYLE: But why was the money not spent? Was it that the applications were too slow in coming, the applications were too slow in being approved, or what?

MS. COWAN: No, the applications were there, but if we had committed to any of these individuals and the businesses involved, we would have had to carry them on into the next fiscal year, into this fiscal year, and the money was not available for this fiscal year.

I know you are just putting on a performance and you do understand. You were in Cabinet, Sir, yourself and you understand these things.

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Chairman, a point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

A point of order, the hon. the Member for Harbour Main.

MR. DOYLE: The Minister is attributing motives as to why I am asking her questions. Now, they are hard-hitting questions, I understand, but if she does not like it, well that is just too bad. The Minister is here to account for her Department, and we have a duty and a responsibility, as Committee Members and as Members of the Opposition, to get the information from the Minister. Now, I am sorry if the Minister does not like the questions that I happen to be asking, but if she does not feel like answering then she can leave. She is going to get the questions, and I suggest that she answer them.

That is the point of order, Mr. Chairman, the Minister is attributing motives as to why we are asking questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would the Minister care to speak to the point of order?

MS. COWAN: No thank you. I am not going to continue in this way.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no point of order. I would caution both Mr. Doyle and the Minister to ask the questions in a polite manner and to answer them in just as courteous a manner. I would ask that we resume with the questioning and would suggest that Mr. Doyle continue to ask his questions in a polite and courteous manner and that the Minister answer in just as polite and as courteous a manner.

Mr. Doyle, I am going to have to move to another Member of the Committee we will get back to you.

Mr. Barrett.

MR. BARRETT: Ms. Minister, as you are aware I am very interested in the Hibernia development site and what is happening on that particular site, naturally, as it is in the District I represent in the House of Assembly. I know there was a unique collective agreement signed at that particular site, the Site Agreement, and employees have to be union members. Some of the conditions of that agreement were that workers would have to have six months residency and that the job opportunities would be open to qualified Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. I was wondering if your Department is doing any monitoring on that particular site in terms of the employment requirements for workers on that site?

MS. COWAN: (Inaudible) native Newfoundlander. Yes, both Mines and Energy and my Department are monitoring the number of jobs that are there and the number of people who had to be hired, if any, from outside the Province. I do not have those figures exactly in front of me other than we have to date 450 jobs on site, it would look as if it was somewhere in the area of 40 per cent from the local area, and that 98 per cent are Newfoundlanders.

MR. BARRETT: Are there people within your Department continuously monitoring the qualifications of the people who come in, to make sure there are no Newfoundlanders who could do the jobs that are being done by people from outside Newfoundland.

MS. COWAN: Yes, we have contacts we work through, I forget what the area is called, where Peter Kennedy is heading up that division and we have ongoing interaction with that particular group - the Hibernia Monitoring Committee. We have people from our Department going out monthly to monitor the situation regarding employment.

MR. BARRETT: Are we just permitted one question?

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, continue you can use up your full ten minutes Mr. Barrett.

MR. BARRETT: The other area I would like to look at is in terms of the occupational health and safety.

Has you Department considered having people on site all the time in terms of the Hibernia Project? Or, what is the strategy in terms of monitoring the occupational health and safety on the particular site?

MS. COWAN: What we have done is, we have been working along with Nodeco and I must say they have been very cooperative. I think we are now well into the second stage of the second working document on the occupational health and safety there, as it relates to the more sophisticated construction that will be coming up down the road. Right now the construction that is going on there is a fairly basic type of construction which falls quite easily under the gambit of what is considered normal here in the Province. Nodeco will be hiring a full-time person who will have the responsibility for Occupational Health and Safety. Do they have that individual yet?

MR. DWYER: It should be done this week.

MS. COWAN: It should be done this week.

To date we have been very, very, impressed with the attitude toward Occupational Health and Safety on that site. It is really something that we will be able to point out as an approach that can be emulated by others.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If I may for one second? I would like to remind officials again that if you make any comment that is going to be recorded by Hansard I would ask you to identify yourselves so that you will be properly entered into the records.

Mr. Barrett.

MR. BARRETT: I guess it is part of the legislation of the Province that companies have to have a program of Occupational Health and Safety as part of the industrial activity on the site, but I would like to know the Department's plans? It is a big project and I am wondering if it is just going to be people who are gong to be visiting the site occasionally or will there be somebody fixed to the site who will be monitoring the Occupational Health and Safety?

MS. COWAN: There will be nobody on site all the time but we will be making periodic inspections at the site. The main thing now is to get the whole programme in place that applies to the most sophisticated parts of the construction and to make sure that the employer is totally conversant with the regulations, legislation and so on, because the onus is largely on the employer to see that the workplace safety, or whatever you want to call it, is carried out properly. We will be making periodic inspections from time to time and will be available, of course, if we are called upon for any particular expertise that we might have that the employer does not.

MR. BARRETT: Before I got involved in politics, one of the areas I had great interest in is programmes, particularly for the re-entry of women back into the labour force. I was familiar with some of the programs you were involved in when I was a Member of the Department of Career Development and Advanced studies. Have there been any new initiatives lately with regards to providing training and employment opportunities for women?

MS. COWAN: Should I continue?

MR. CHAIRMAN: It is not necessary at the Committee stage for the Minister to be acknowledged each time. While Mr. Barrett is asking questions you may feel free to answer them until his time of ten minutes has been used up.

MS. COWAN: Mr. Barrett would be familiar, from his previous work, with the WISE program. That program has proven to be extremely successful. In fact, I think it is probably one of the best employment programmes, not only in this Province, but if you were looking over quite a wide geographical area. That program aims to get women back into the workforce not by training them in specific jobs so that they come out as a bank teller, that they come out as a hairdresser or a person with ability to do drafting or bricklaying, or whatever, but it takes women who for some reason have been out of the workforce for a while, or are social service recipients, individuals who might lack somewhat in self esteem and be hesitant to go back into the workforce. It takes these individuals through a training program which builds up their concept of their own abilities and trains them in how best to present themselves to get a job and so on, and also gives them work experience. I forget just how long the period of time is. That programme has had about a 95 per cent success rate. That is, 95 per cent of the women in that programme have either been employed or have gone on to further their education. Now, your average success rate for any other programme is around 48 to 50 per cent. So, you can see what a fine programme that is.

So rather than our Department dreaming up some new programme, when we had such an excellent one there that originated with some special federal funding that ran out, we have now set up that same programme in Central Newfoundland, and are funding the core operations of that. I attended the opening of that particular programme a while ago, and they have very, very enthusiastic women out there getting that programme on the go. I did speak to some of the first participants who are very, very excited about it. So that is a real plus, and I would hope to see, funds permitting, that again we will be able to move that programme to another community college campus in another part of the Province and provide these opportunities for even more women.

Now, as well, we have one other programme for women that we call a Job Bridges Programme. This is a programme that is attempting to get women into types of work that we consider non-traditional. For example, let us say the trades. It has been well known, although most people have chosen to ignore it, for about ten years or more that we are not going to have the people we need in the trades, even here in Newfoundland, and this is with males. Males are not training for the trades like they once did. So it is very important that we get a good number of individuals, male and female, into that kind of work. We are training women - we are not training them, excuse me - we are subsidizing an employer who is willing to take a woman into a non-traditional type of job and see them through. Now, we go just a step beyond seeing that the women get into this position, we have counsellors available as well. The counsellor can talk to the woman about some of the problems that she might encounter on the job and to the employer about how he or she can be supportive to that particular individual. Our employment counsellor will check back throughout the period and see if indeed all is going well, and do everything she can to facilitate that. To date we have twenty-eight women who have entered into a non-traditional form of work through that programme.

So I think that probably pretty well covers that particular aspect, Mr. Barrett.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Barrett, your ten minutes has elapsed. I am going to have to go to another member of the Committee.

Mr. Aylward.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Mr. Doyle, if you would.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I recognize Mr. Doyle.

Mr. Aylward, you will acknowledge then that I will give the floor to all other Committee Members before I get back to you again.

MR. R. AYLWARD: That is right.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: Mr. Chairman, I have ten minutes, is it?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, you have ten minutes.

MR. DOYLE: I wish to go for five minutes, then Mr. Aylward can interject and go five minutes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If we start rewriting the rules as we go, I think we are going to run into all kinds of problems. I think we will stick with the rules the way we have them.

MR. DOYLE: Okay.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If you do not wish to use your full ten minutes, you do not have to, but I will go to one of the other -

MR. DOYLE: Well, I have two or three hours actually, just in the interest of somebody else who might wish to ask a question.

I want to get back to the Employment Generation Programme again, and I am still interested in finding out about that $700,000 because the information has not been given as to what happened with the $700,000. Now I understand what the Minister is saying, that the money, nearing the end of the fiscal year, could not be transferred over to another fiscal year. But what I am trying to get at is why the money was not used coming up to the end of the fiscal year. The Minister has said that there were plenty of applications on hand. Why could not the money be taken, the $700,000, and approve the existing applications? Given the fact that we have an unemployment rate of 23.5 per cent I am sure the Minister was interested in getting as many applications approved as she had money to approve them.

So I still do not have an answer as to why the applications that were on hand, and presumably there were many, many applications on hand, maybe the Minister will tell me there were no applications, but she has told me already there were applications. So why was the $700,000, even though we were nearing the end of the fiscal year, taken and just went into limbo, it just went back into general revenue - the money was not used. So again I am just wondering why that $700,000 was not used to approve existing applications coming up to the end of the fiscal year.

MS. COWAN: Because of the fact that we would not be able to continue, the money was not going to be available in the 1990-91 year to continue those individuals who would have started late in that fiscal year. They might have got, for example, part of their twenty weeks, but we would not have had the money in the next fiscal year to continue the last twenty weeks.

MR. WINSOR: But wouldn't there have to be a carry over of money?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I am sorry, I am going to have to stick with Mr. Doyle. I will give Mr. Winsor a chance later.

For the sake of the record and Hansard, I would like to introduce Mr. Sam Winsor, the Member for Fogo, who joined us late. Mr. Winsor will be given his opportunity to ask questions.

MR. DOYLE: In the interest of getting all of the information that we want to get, I mean is this the way that the Committee operated in the past? The people cannot interject?

MR. CHAIRMAN: This is the way the Committee operated when I was chairing it, yes.

MR. WINSOR: Government Services never operated this way before. I have been on it for two years now and the policy is kind of a question and answer instead of this ten minute bit -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is Mr. Winsor on a point of order.

MR. WINSOR: Yes, on a point of order. In the two years that I have been on the Government Services Committee, it has never functioned this way when you had ten minutes. It was an opportunity to question the Minister and there was always, as the Minister will agree, a kind of exchange back and forth without this ten minute thing. When you develop a line, if you have to wait until the next time it rolls around it seems that you will never be able to get a detailed examination of what is going on. I mean this ten minute bit might be fine for initially starting the thing to give the critic ten minutes to lead off, but once you get past that stage it seems that for a free flow of information the question-answer type thing would be more desirable.

MS. COWAN: To that point of order, Mr. Chairman, my recollection from the past was that people did not jump in with a question, that there was always one person designated to speak for his or her period of time and then it was passed on to the next individual.

I do not recall whether there were ten minute gambits or not, but I am certainly only too happy to go along with the will of the Chair in that; but my recollection of the past is that there was never a free for all, with everybody yelling questions back and forth. It was I must say, carried on in a very polite and courteous fashion.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Aylward.

MR. R. AYLWARD: To that point of order, I have been on the Government Services Committee since it started, and as Vice-Chair for the last couple of years. There is a difference in the way the Committee is working now; the Chairman and I agreed on trying to work it this way because he found it successful in his Committee last year.

What Mr. Winsor said about Government Services Committee: having a back and forth with the Minister and a Member and then another person and the Minister again, was the way we did operate it, not as a free for all, it was an orderly flow, but rather than have ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, if Mr. Doyle did not want to ask another question on this specific topic, it went to another person, and another person.

I am willing to try it the way in which I have agreed with the Chairman, but I would think that it will prolong the Committee meeting; if you could deal with an item and get rid of it and move on, I think you would probably accomplish more.

MR. CHAIRMAN: To that point of order, I think there has been some misunderstanding, maybe it is my fault, maybe it is the other Member's fault, but I will not allow interjections, the question was asked how the Committees performed in the past. This is the way the Committees were organized and the way we functioned last year at the committee which I chaired and this is the way that we have agreed to do it tonight.

The only misconception I think, is that you must use up your ten minutes; I do not think that was what the Chair said. The Chair said that you could have ten minutes; if any Member wishes to ask a question in one minute or two minutes, and go on to somebody else to ask another that is fine, but I will have to give another Member the chance to do that. Mr. Winsor, will get his chance, and I think we will have to maintain that kind of an orderly flow of questions in order to get an orderly flow of answers. I will not allow it to become a free for all.

MR. DOYLE: So the ten minutes then that has been allocated say for me has to be used by me; my colleague, say Mr. Winsor, cannot help use that ten minutes if he so wishes?

MR. CHAIRMAN: There has been no ten minutes allocated, that is the maximum amount that I will give you if you wish to use it up. If you wish to use two, then I will go to another Member, and if he wishes to use only two, then when he is finished I will go to another Member again.

MR. DOYLE: But the ten minutes is not allocated say -

MR. CHAIRMAN: No. Ten minutes is not allocated for you to decide who is going to ask the questions, no.

MR. DOYLE: Okay. I do not know if I could pursue this-

MS. COWAN: Had I completed my answer? I cannot remember where we were when this happened.

MR. DOYLE: Well, I do not know if you have completed your answer, but I am still just as confused as ever as a result of your answer and as I said, if the Minister wishes to have one of her officials answer the question, because I am interested in accurate information; I do not know, and again I am not assuming that the Minister is not giving me accurate information, it is just that it is difficult to understand how that could possibly happen.

MS. COWAN: Okay. First of all the $700,000 was there because of the fact that different people had dropped out of the programme for one reason or another.

MR. DOYLE: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: That was at the end, near the end, of the fiscal year. Okay? So we were left with that money. We had no reason to believe, and it has certainly not been something that has been ever practised as far as I know by Treasury Board, to commit for the next two or three years in the middle of one fiscal year. So I could not make the assumption that if I spent that $700,000 then to start people on the employment generation programme that I would have in this fiscal year the money to follow that up.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: Yes, because of the fact that we have the twenty-twenty-twenty division. Which carries it over a sixty week programme.

MR. DOYLE: So the Minister or her Department were not able to forecast, with the number of applications that were coming in and the value of these applications, that there would be $700,000 left over?

MS. COWAN: You cannot forecast slippage. You do not know when somebody is going to sell a place, you do not know if someone will not adhere to the rules and regulations that are set down, you do not know how the economy is going to fluctuate, so slippage is certainly very difficult to predict.

MR. DOYLE: Slippage is one things. But that is 25 per cent of your budget. I mean one would think that when one refers to slippage you would be talking about minuscule amounts of money. But I mean you had a budget of $2.9 million. Now are you telling me that slippage was 25 per cent of it?

MS. COWAN: Slippage was around $700,000 as I indicated to you (Inaudible).

MR. DOYLE: That is 25 per cent of your entire budget. Your entire budget was $2.9 million. And four sevens are twenty-eight. So almost 25 per cent of your entire budget composes, makes up, slippage? I mean, this is out of whack in my opinion. There is something wrong here. How could it possibly happen that slippage would be 25 per cent of your whole employment budget? And your Department was not able to forecast - with a really small budget of $2.9 million - was not able to sit down in the middle of the fiscal year or nearing the end of the fiscal year and say: look, we have this many applications in and this is the value of the applications, and therefore we have to knock it off right here or take additional applications in order to use up the $2.9 million? Are you telling me that your officials within your Department could not forecast that?

MS. COWAN: It is impossible, Mr. Doyle, to forecast the economy, it is impossible -

MR. DOYLE: Twenty-five per cent of your entire budget was slippage is what you are telling me.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

Mr. Doyle, your allotted time has been used up. I will allow the Minister the time to answer the question.

MS. COWAN: There is absolutely no way, whether it is 25 per cent, 15 per cent, 16 per cent, 35 per cent, that you can predict slippage. The percentage means nothing. It is the number of people who dropped out of the programme. We could not predict that. I mean, we would hope that no one would drop out but we know such things as, say, the building being sold, let's see, we have the list here, a decline in business, the position had been filled before the employer was given the go-ahead by our Department -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: That's quite correct. Business has been sold or leased, the business was seasonal, the employer was not willing to participate -

MR. DOYLE: Would you not say that your employment programme was a dismal failure if 25 per cent of them dropped out?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

I recognize Mr. Crane.

MR. DOYLE: This is unbelievable, totally unbelievable, I have never seen this before (inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

I have recognized Mr. Crane.

MR. DOYLE: This is totally unbelievable. In a Province with an unemployment rate of 23.5 per cent you had 25 per cent slippage in your Department.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

Mr. Crane.

MR. DOYLE: This is unbelievable.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I am sorry, Mr. Doyle, I am going to have to ask you to keep cool and to have no further outbursts of that kind.

Mr. Crane.

MR. CRANE: Ms. Minister, getting back to the Employment Generation Programme last year you budgeted $2.9 million and you spent $2.2 million, this year we are budgeting $1.5 million, does that mean there is not much interest in the programme or what?

Employment Generation, I am just picking up from where Mr. Aylward left off. I am not interested in the $700,000 I think I understand what you have been saying on that -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CRANE: Well, I know that.

- but why budget only $1.5 million this year when you had $2.9 million budgeted last year?

MS. COWAN: Yes, because we were into the final year of the programme, into the final twenty weeks for most people and at that stage we wanted to stop and evaluate before we continued spending more money to start new jobs and to start up the same 20/20 cycle again.

MR. CRANE: So, what you are telling me now is there is no new programme in place for this year just tapering off from last year's.

MS. COWAN: Yes, we will be continuing that one, tapering it off evaluating it and then if necessary introducing a new one or deciding to put money into something that might be better should this prove not to be a really good programme.

MR. CRANE: This Job Bridges Programme, it does not appear in the budget this year or maybe I just cannot find it.

MS. COWAN: It is under the WISE, Women Interested in Successful Employment, it is included in that.

MS. CRANE: How much money is budgeted for that this year since I have not been able to find it?

MS. COWAN: Two hundred and fifteen thousand.

MR. CRANE: What was budgeted last year, Ms. Minister?

MS. COWAN: It started late in the year and I shall have to ask Ms. Gogan if she has that information.

MS. GOGAN: The same amount was budgeted last year.

MR. CRANE: So, you are operating on the same budget as last year. You are talking about the other programmes being 95 per cent successful, what is that programme like? Is that a successful programme?

MS. COWAN: We do not know yet because it is so new. It started toward the end of last year and we have to evaluate it. It is not going to be the kind of programme that you find people rushing out to get involved in because what we are doing here is talking about breaking down stereotyped attitudes and so on. So, we have first of all to find the employer willing to take on an individual female in a nontraditional role and we then have to find the interested woman to take the job.

MR. CRANE: I imagine you will find the women a lot quicker to take the job than you will find somebody willing to hire them.

MS. COWAN: Well, the pay is usually much better in these jobs.

MR. CRANE: Moving away from Hibernia and Bull Arm, your Department has often been criticized for the inadequacy of the occupational health and safety programmes. I am sure every week in the House Mr. Doyle is criticizing your occupational health and safety programmes. Are you doing anything to improve it, Ms. Minister?

MS. COWAN: Well, first of all -

MR. DOYLE: A point of order, Mr. Chairman. I cannot allow the comment to stay on the record that I have been criticizing the Occupational Health and Safety Division of the Minister's Department. I do not know where the member would get that idea, that I have been criticizing that Department. It has never happened. I responded to a statement by the Minister yesterday in the House, but it was in no way critical of Occupational Health and Safety in Newfoundland, except that there was not enough money going into it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Crane.

MR. CRANE: Yes, Mr. Chairman. If Mr. Doyle is saying that is the first time he has commented or criticized the Occupational Health and Safety Programme in that Department, then I say there is something gone wrong, Sir, radically wrong. I am sure I have heard you many times in this House.

MR. DOYLE: I have never criticized the Programme. I like the Programme.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no point of order, just a difference of opinion between two hon. members.

Would you continue Mr. Crane?

MR. CRANE: Okay. I asked you a question.

MS. COWAN: Okay, fine! Thank you.

There have always been a number of questions asked about the Occupational Health and Safety Division of the Department. There have not been as many from Mr. Doyle, perhaps, as I would have anticipated, but certainly the media has focused on it.

I think it is important for me to say, at this particular stage, that what I inherited in Occupational Health and Safety in my Department was a disaster, and it has taken at least two years to get on top of it. Mr. Dwyer was brought into the Department and has been applying his expertise to making that Division much more on the ball.

One of the things I would like to demonstrate that we have now that I think is going to be very good - I cannot believe that Occupational Health and Safety continued in this Province the way it had and nothing was done, like Mr. Dwyer has now put in place. What we have done is looked at the statistics from Workers' Compensation - they have always been there, they have always been available - and we have been able to build a computer programme which spotlights the areas of highest accident. Then we are able to set up a programme of visitation. Would you believe that in the past the inspectors just went hither and yon as the urge struck, or as a call came in. There was no organized, orchestrated manner in which workplaces which had bad records, were visited in a systematic way. We are now doing that. It has just started and, you know, there are going to be a few little quirks and so on in it that have to be ironed out. But we are hoping that that is going to greatly improve the services of inspection.

Now, if after a period of time we are able to evaluate this, we will probably be able to say then, yes, we need more inspectors or the inspectors we have now are adequate, or whatever. This is going to give us very good information as to the number of inspectors, because we are often criticized - and I have criticized the Department myself - because we do not have enough inspectors. But before we could just go out and hire people, willy-nilly, we had to make sure we were going to use them properly once we had them. If this programme works well in the St. John's area it will then be moved to other parts of the Province and we will be able to have a very systematic inspection service set up.

We, of course, still have an individual on hand to respond to emergency situations so that we do not have all our inspectors out in the field at once and not reachable.

MR. CRANE: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Winsor.

MR. WINSOR: Yes, I want to, in turn, revisit the Employment Generation Programme.

The Minister has said there was $700,000 that was left over. Now, what I find intriguing about this is when we questioned her last year in the House the Minister constantly said that only if there were slippage would there be new funds approved, and what is amazing about this is that did not become apparent until towards the end of the fiscal year. It is a policy of Government that if money is not spent in one fiscal year, if a program is approved it is allowed to be carried over into the next year, for example in water and sewer.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) every year.

MR. WINSOR: Every Government. For example, if you do not use your water and sewer money and the contract runs out because of bad weather that money is carried forward and it is done in the next year. Now, why could the Minister not do the same thing with her Employment Generation Program, commit no new expenditures for the next year, not five cents, because she had $700,000, and if it cost $10,000 to finance a job the Minister could have carried it forward and had seventy new jobs done for that period of time. The Minister knew well in advance that there was some $700,000, and is not the real reason why the Minister did not approve any more, is because the cutbacks had come about and the Employment Generation Program had not been a success? When the Minister stood in the Colonial Building and boosted about her new program, and how the other program was the one for, I think she used the words, Tory hacks, and this new program was going to be so good and so effective. What we see here is a down sizing and a down scaling of what she said was going to be a good program. Now, the Minister has had two years to have the program in place and it is time for the Minister to reveal some statistics to us, and one of them should be the success of her program in her first year because sixty weeks have elapsed. The Minister said what we did in the old program was we put people on for ten or twenty weeks, and then they were on UI and they never returned to the workforce. Now, how successful has her program been? How many jobs were created, and how many of them were maintained as a result of the program? The Minister should have these figures for the first year of her program. The Minister can take some notes on this because I do not want to give up my ten minutes.

MR. BARRETT: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes.

MR. BARRETT: The hon. Member indicated there was carry over from Municipal Capital Works. I think it should be clarified that the financing for Municipal Capital Works is through the Municipal Finance Corporation and it does not really matter which year it is spent.

MR. WINSOR: The same thing applies to roads.

MR. BARRETT: No. It is carried over but it has to come out of this present year's Budget.

MR. WINSOR: Exactly. That is what I mean.

MR. BARRETT: The Municipal Finance Corporation is a different thing.

This is not a point of order. I know it is not a point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Stop eating up his ten minutes.

MR. BARRETT: The Municipal Finance Corporation is different.

MR. WINSOR: To that point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: To the point of order.

Mr. Winsor.

MR. WINSOR: It does not really matter. The Member for Lewisporte knows that the Change Island's road did not get completed last year and it is going to be carried over into this year. It is not under the Municipal thing. It is a thing the Department of Highways does and it is a routine thing. I do not want him to cut into my time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

There is no point of order, just a disagreement between two hon. Members.

MR. WINSOR: In looking through all the Minister's employment programs, Section 4102, we find there was budgeted $1 million and $700,000 was spent. The Student Employment Program was pretty well even. In Youth Employment Strategy, and this is one I want to come back to, there is $306,000 of federal revenue that was budgeted and some $57,900 was used, a difference of about $250,000. I wonder if the Minister could explain why that $250,000, or thereabouts, give or take a few cents, was not availed of?

Could the Minister also explain why of $534,000 only $304,000 was spent in Women Interested in Successful Employment? Can the Minister explain why of $1 million budgeted only $750,000 was spent for the Programme for Older Worker Adjustment. The Employment Generation has been discussed. In the Adjustment Programme for Fish Plant Workers, $9 million budgeted.

MR. DOYLE: (Inaudible) money (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

Mr. Winsor, I must recognize that you came in late to this meeting. But it was explained by the Chair that in order to facilitate free flowing questions and answers we would prefer that you asked a question, got an answer, and asked another question and got an answer.

MR. WINSOR: But then I lose my ten minutes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no losing ten minutes. We will stay here till whatever time, we will come back tomorrow night, and we will come back the next night -

MR. WINSOR: Okay, we are going to have to.

MR. CHAIRMAN: - and we will be at this for the full fifteen days if that is what you wish. But I have to give other Members the same kind of an opportunity. So I would prefer if you would ask your questions and would get an answer.

MR. DOYLE: (Inaudible) ten minutes between you and the Minister (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: And the employment services for adjustment programme was reduced by some $1.7 million. And in total for employment services there was $17,200,000 budgeted, some $14,250,000 spent, a difference of about $3 million at a time in our Province when unemployment rates are at an unprecedented high. We have never had anything that exceeded it, perhaps in the 'thirties. But other than that we have never had anything quite so high. Can the Minister explain why all these amounts of money were budgeted, and the revised budget of what actually was spent, in a time when workers needed jobs, why didn't the Minister do it? And again I want to ask the Minister why could she not take her $700,000 - I want to keep that in mind -

MR. DOYLE: Twenty-five per cent.

MR. WINSOR: - the 25 per cent - and carry it forward to the next year. Finance a number of jobs last year out of this year's budget. Because the money had to come anyway to finance the ones that were ongoing.

MR. DOYLE: And that is common practice.

MS. COWAN: Alright. (Inaudible).

MR. WINSOR: Yes.

MS. COWAN: Okay. First of all let me say to Mr. Doyle and to Mr. Winsor that there is no party being given here by the Liberal Government for people in this Province. We are not spending our money in an irresponsible manner. We are trying to be responsible to the taxpayers. And I am not about to commit monies that I am not sure will be there in the future.

Now let me just talk about -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: These are grants, sir, not loans. And as was pointed out very succinctly and aptly by Mr. Barrett it is a totally different situation than the municipal financing situation. The terms and conditions of this particular programme did not allow me to carry money over into the next fiscal year. Now, I could have gone into Cabinet and said: now, you know, gentlemen, we must get votes, we must have all those people out there working, it does not matter if the programme is successful or not, but let's get them out there, let's get them to work, let's get them on UI as fast as we jolly well can, just like the last government did, and everybody will be happy.

But no, that is not the approach we are taking. We have committed ourselves to developing long term programmes. We want to evaluate this programme now and that is why we did not put extra money into it. If it turns out to be a top-notch programme then more money -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: We put in enough money to see the programme through, see the individuals and the businesses through who started in last year. And that is what we will do. We will then evaluate it. Somebody is making a big fuss about 25 per cent slippage. Again, that is just absolute nonsense, smoke and mirrors as the Opposition likes to use (Inaudible)

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

MS. COWAN: The explanation for that now, Chair, I have given on several occasions and I do not think that I will go into that again. I will go through Mr. Winsor's, through the different items that you mentioned as you spoke during your ten minutes. I will have to ask first of all, Mr. Hawkins to respond to the first question regarding the spending of the federal monies in the Youth Employment Strategy.

MR. HOPKINS: With the permission of the Chair, I would like to come back to that question; I would like to talk to Miss Gogan about it because off the top of my head I am not really sure why that happened, but -

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair has no problem with that request, does the Minister?

MS. COWAN: Oh no, that is fine with me if Mr. Winsor does not mind.

MR. CHAIRMAN: (Inaudible), question?

MR. WINSOR: (Inaudible) obviously, I want the answer.

MS. COWAN: Yes, okay. Your next question was regarding the programme for older worker adjustment, the Power Programme? We have absolutely no way of predicting how many people will have to avail of a Power Programme. We know an approximate number like we know that employed at that company are so many individuals over the age of fifty-five, but we have no idea when the company closes whether those individuals will find more work, or whether they will need the Power Programme, so we take I guess what you would call the worst situation and put in as much money, assuming that the majority of people will need the Power Programme and then it is great if they do not need that money, that means that they have found work elsewhere and do not have to avail of the Power funds.

The Employment Generation Programme, we have talked about the adjustment programme for fish-plant workers, the money is not needed now, the contracts are about to run out in those particular areas, Grand Bank in June, Gaultois in June and Trepassey in September, so there will not be the amount of money needed there, as first anticipated when the programme was put in place a year or a year and a half ago.

MR. WINSOR: So is the Minister saying that there was no need for that, the $9,000 there were not enough applicants to avail of that amount of money and only $7,300,000 was spent?

MS. COWAN: That is millions, by the way.

MR. WINSOR: Million, that is what I said.

MS. COWAN: I thought you said thousand - maybe I said thousand.

I will have to ask Cathy Gogan as to why that was; Cathy?

MS. GOGAN: There is an agreement with FPI and National Sea and the Provincial Government, $15 million for extended notice for the fish plants and that is in accordance with the agreement, it is not individual subsidies for people, it is extended notice for the fish plants.

MR. WINSOR: So the fish plants did not choose to-

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sorry, Mr. Winsor; I allowed the first interruption because of clarification. I have to turn the questioning over to another Member of our Committee. I think the Minister -

MS. COWAN: I did not answer his last question, am I able to do that?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Of course, continue.

MS. COWAN: Mr. Winsor, under the Career Support Services, actually what we have there now is some federal funding which does not appear on the Budget which is going to allow us to keep an extra individual whom we thought we would not, which bolsters up that particular division and as well, we have developed a means of working in a more complimentary way with the Federal Government, so we feel that with the monies that are being expended this year, by the Province, plus this extra bit that is put in by the Feds -

MR. WINSOR: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: On a point of order, Mr. Winsor.

MR. WINSOR: I did not asked the Minister what her expenditures were for this year, I asked her why there was a reduction of $528,800 as was budgeted, to the $454 that was actually spent; I am asking about last year's budget.

MS. COWAN: I beg your pardon; I am sorry.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no point of order, simply a point of clarification.

MS. COWAN: A point of clarification; alright Ms. Gogan, to you.

MS. GOGAN: In the Career Support Services mainly due to a change over in staff when somebody resigns it takes approximately three to six months to replace that individual, and we did have some staff changes in Career Support Services.

MS. COWAN: Apparently Ms. Gogan has, Mr. Chairman, the answer to the first question that Mr. Winsor asked that I had referred to Tom Hopkins.

MS. GOGAN: There is a federal/provincial agreement called the Canada/Newfoundland Youth Strategy which is one of our major funding programmes in this Department. The Federal Government puts $9.275 million in annually, and the Provincial Government $3.625; it is a 70/30 cost-shared agreement. There was a project, Natural Economic Life Skills, to be delivered through the Department of Education that the Federal Government was extremely interested in funding. However, because education is a provincial responsibility they could not directly fund the project. We estimated that it would be approximately $306,000, and like any of these programmes you can never come up with the exact amount because you are talking about individuals, and that one was approximately $250,000 so we got $250,000 revenue rather than the $306,000. The money was for a very specific purpose so we could not have used it for anything else.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would caution Members that this is what happens when we take ten minutes to ask multiple questions - we have to have multiple answers, and then with the interjection for clarifications. I would suggest that for the duration of this Committee meeting we not allow this to happen again, but if you want to make a point or ask a very quick question for clarification I will allow it.

MR. WINSOR: Perhaps I misunderstood what Ms. Gogan said. I understood her to say that they could only avail of $250,000. What I am saying is that $250,000 was not spent. It seems to me that $57,000 was spent of the $306,000 budgeted, if I am reading it right. The bracketed figures always indicate revenues, do they not? And it appears as if $306,000 was the budgeted federal income of which $57,900 is spent. Is that the way -

MS. GOGAN: I will have to have our Director of Administration check that out, but I know the money was spent because I signed everything.

MR. WINSOR: The $250,000?

MS. GOGAN: Yes, federal revenue.

MR. WINSOR: Because unless there is a mistake in the estimates it appears as if only $57,000 - are you following the estimates that I am looking at?

MS. GOGAN: Another problem that arises sometimes with the estimates is at the time of the year when they are prepared all our claims have not come in and we have a fantastic number of claims. And just to refer back to the $700,000, approximately $200,000 of that can be accounted for in that manner; it is more like $500,000 that is the accurate figure.

MS. COWAN: If I may too, there has been an enormous number of programmes, and I have some here that have been approved just with federal money. So, as Ms. Gogan says, it obviously has to have been spent. I have a packet of paper here very thick just outlining projects, so it was obviously utilized.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Short.

MR. SHORT: You mentioned the Programme for Older Worker Adjustment. In terms of the Budget of 1990 the revised figures show $750,000 and the budgeted figure for 1991 is $1.68 million. Did I understand you, Ms. Cowan, to say that there is no way of knowing what would happen? What is the reason for nearly doubling the budget? Maybe you could describe the programme as well.

MS. COWAN: Well, in the first year of the programme we had assistance to provide to people who were working at Albright and Wilson and that covered thirty-two workers; at Dunville Mining, two workers; and at Newfoundland Hardwoods seven workers. So, that was not a large number of workers drawing on the power programme.

Coming up this year we are going to have approximately 117 fish plant workers; Daniels Harbour - the zinc mine there that has closed - twenty workers; and at Baie Verte, seventy workers; so that is 207 workers who may avail of power this year once their UI runs out where we only had forty-one workers last year availing of it. We hope we shall not have to spend all that money because if we do not spend it all that means those individuals have found employment and do not need the power programme to keep up a certain standard of living.

MR. SHORT: What does the programme do? What is it all about?

MS. COWAN: Well, what happens with this programme is that it is focused at individuals who are fifty-five years of age or over, as you may be aware, that is the group in our society who have an extremely difficult time finding employment. Of course, in Newfoundland it may be even more difficult because of our poor economic situation. When their UI benefits run out there is a programme that kicks in and the amount of money they get is based on a number of situations that are set before a particular committee. It has representatives of both the Federal and Provincial Government on that Committee.

So, first of all a person has to be affected by a layoff that is of a major, major concern. You would look at something like the Albright and Wilson closure and you realize there is absolutely no work for those individuals in radius of that particular plant, so that helped certainly to qualify them. They have to be between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-four at the time of the layoff and they have to have worked fifteen out of the last twenty years. So, that is part of the criteria. They have to be Canadian citizens or landed immigrants, and have to exhaust all their UI benefits first, and have to have absolutely no prospect of re-employment. The Committee then evaluates all these situations and decides who will get the money. As far as what benefits are offered, the basic benefits equal about 70 per cent of UI benefits that the individual received at the time of layoff and those are payable till the time they are 65 and they are indexed according to the pension index that the Canadian Pension Plan uses. And there is an incentive in the programme that the individual is allowed to earn so much money, which is rather unique to programmes of this nature because usually you are not allowed to pursue anything else. So there is a certain amount of money they are able to make at another source, perhaps by doing an arts and crafts type project or whatever. So that is sort of it just in a nutshell.

MR. SHORT: So this programme is fairly new then in terms of -

MS. COWAN: Yes, it has been signed - I do not know when it was signed. A year ago, I think. Probably shortly after I came into office that was signed.

MR. SHORT: What kinds of things would these people do. What would they be -

MS. COWAN: Different -

MR. SHORT: The people that are, say, laid off from Long Harbour or whatever, right? What would they be involved in with the programme? What kinds of opportunities? I mean, they are not just given money.

MS. COWAN: Yes, they are just given money to live.

MR. SHORT: Oh, I see, so it is not a programme to put them to work (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: It is not a job subsidy type programme or anything. Because part of the criteria for the programme is that there is just absolutely no work for this person to avail of anywhere. So that the vast majority of these individuals are just not going to find employment in the immediate area.

MR. SHORT: So it will probably help get them up to age 60 when they can draw Canada Pension (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: That is right, age 65. It is not a programme we ever want to use. I think you would probably refer to it as sort of a programme of last resort. This is not just for Newfoundland, by the way, this is a programme that is used right across the country.

MR. SHORT: Okay. I want to get into workers' compensation afterwards but I will leave that for another round of questioning if you would like.

MS. COWAN: Okay.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I am glad you did not, Larry, because I was going to get into workers' compensation myself now.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If I may be permitted, Mr. Aylward. After Mr. Aylward is finished his questions and gotten his answers we will recess for five or ten minutes for a coffee break.

MS. COWAN: Could I have a point of compassion or something here? It would be really nice I think -

MR. CHAIRMAN: A point of compassion.

MS. COWAN: - yes, if we could have any questions for workers' compensation. If, Mr. Chair, you could see any way of doing it so that our representative, Mr. Mitchell, can leave. Because he is not particularly well. If that does not cause a problem to you, Chair.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair has no problem with it if there is no objection from the Committee.

MR. R. AYLWARD: I am intending to keep him here all night.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) what we are going to talk to him about.

MR. R. AYLWARD: They are more policy questions rather than details, so I do not know if Mr. Mitchell even needs to -

MS. COWAN: To be here.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, if you wish you can address your questions related to workers compensation and I will give each one of you an opportunity, for a minute or two or three or whatever you want. And then we will let the gentleman leave and then we will recess for a coffee break. Does anybody on the Committee have a problem with that?

Mr. Aylward.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: (Inaudible) he was going to be noble, I expect.

MR. WAYNE MITCHELL: I thank hon. Members for their consideration. I would expect that with the medication doled out by our strong medical profession I would be able to stay as long as the Members feel that my presence is warranted. So please do not change your schedule on my account, but I do thank you for your consideration.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Aylward.

MR. R. AYLWARD: If you follow the reports most recently on what is happening with the workers' compensation, especially the fund and the deficit, if you talk to employers in most any industry, most any segment of our industries, they feel that they are at their limit of contributions now. I talked to small store owners who, I would say very seldom have need for a - it certainly is not a high risk occupation like lumber woods or anything. They have had significant increases over the last several years.

But there is a definite concern of people who come to me who are receiving benefits now legitimately, who are permanently injured. And they are nervous now that because the fund is in such trouble, because it is underfunded or it appears to be going bankrupt, that they are concerned that they are not going to have benefits in the future to be able to provide for their families.

What plans do the Minister, the Department or the Government have to try to get the fund in shape so that whatever benefits you are offering in the future will have enough money to cover these benefits that - well, some that you are paying out now, but certainly for the future injuries of people also?

MS. COWAN: That is a very good question. I think first of all, and I did mention it in the House but I will mention it again, -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Minister, I must ask if you could lean into the microphone. Where you are used to speaking here in the House from a standing position, Hansard is having problems recording with that voice level.

MS. COWAN: Okay, yes, sorry. Thank you, Chair. First of all I guess it was very positive that the Commission recognized the financial position they were in and found a way to state it. Admitting you have a problem is the first step. I understand that they are making a presentation to the Statutory Review that is in place now with some suggestions as to how they as a board feel that the fund can be brought into line without greatly impacting on the benefits that are received by individuals or greatly impacting on the amount of money that the employer has to pay.

One of the terms of reference of the Statutory Review Committee was to look at the whole funding area. So really it would be premature for me to guess. One of the reasons we had the Review Committee of course - or one of reasons we gave them, not that we had it, it was time to have it - but one of the reasons that we gave them that particular terms of reference was because we as a Government were concerned about the escalating dollar problem at the Commission. And I look forward now to hearing from that review and hope that they will have some good concrete suggestions for improving the fiscal position without impacting horrendously on service.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Well, I suppose there are two ways to impact on the bottom line. You either reduce liabilities or you increase your revenue.

MS. COWAN: Not necessarily. Certainly that is an area that has to be looked at. But there are also ways of operating workers' compensation which could make it more effective. For example, it is shown that by hiring additional personnel who are able to deal with individuals as soon as they get there with the accident, so that they do not have to wait for ages, then they are likely not going to be needing long-term care way down the road. And so they are looking at a variety of situations. So it is not just that simple. I do not know whether you would like to elaborate on that at all, Mr. Mitchell.

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you, Minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. I would caution Mr. Mitchell. I would say this only because he came in late. That as an official of the Department he would be permitted to make comments on fact only. He would not be permitted to speak on policy.

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Tell us what great fellows PCs are, tell us something like that.

MR. MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just on a couple of matters of fact pertaining to Mr. Aylward's comment. The annual report does in fact demonstrate a significant deterioration in the financial position. The Board of Directors of the Workers' Compensation, with the help of a consultant, have spent considerable months over the last year trying to deal not only with a good estimate of where we stand financially for our liabilities now and into the future, but also in terms of developing alternatives for consideration. There is a document to be released publicly very shortly which will advance to the Review Committee, that has been appointed by Government, various alternatives to deal with that funding position from where the board sees it. That will deal with things on the revenue side, it will deal with other matters on the expenditure side, and as the Minister has suggested it will deal with organizational, or operational things that can be looked at. That should be available publicly in short order once we meet with the various stake holders. We will then be giving that to the Review Committee to facilitate public debate on Workers' Compensation and how to resolve the financial dilemma as reported in the annual report.

MS. COWAN: If I could comment? In addition, of course, to what the Commission has suggested, other individuals who are making presentations will be making suggestions as well, which the Review Committee will be taking into account.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Do you want to have a break and we can carry on later?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, it was the decision of the Committee that we would release this gentleman from his obligations. Does anybody have a question to ask very quickly before we recess?

MR. MITCHELL: I believe the Minister will probably be able to handle it because I wanted to get into what is happening in Worker's Compensation, some of the changes that have happened with the boards and commissions, so if you are comfortable with that kind of thing. Over the last couple of years I am thinking about.

MS. COWAN: I am not quite sure what you are getting at but if it is directly administrative type of things I am not familiar with what happens over there administratively. It would not be in my gambit.

MR. SHORT: I just wanted somebody to perhaps elaborate on what changes have been made in Workers' Compensation over the last year or so? By way of an example, I spent four years working on a particular case, even outside of politics and after I got involved in it, and it took me four years to get the case to a point where the person finally got a settlement. I found that in the beginning there were a lot of difficulties in the system. The system did not work for the person who was injured and it took all kinds of time, but I believe over the last year or so there have been some changes that have worked to the workers' benefit. I was wondering if somebody could elaborate on those type of changes that have been brought about in the last year or two?

MS. COWAN: I must say we have had fewer and fewer of those. There was an awful backlog of them a couple of years ago but they seem to be dissipating now which is positive. I will turn that question over to Mr. Mitchell because he will be able to tell you the steps that one has to go through at the Compensation Board.

MR. MITCHELL; Mr. Short, for the two years that I have been Chief Executive Officer at the Commission, working with a new board, we have tried to put client service first and foremost from the point of view of delivery of services as expeditiously as we can. That starts right from upfront adjudication and rehabilitation with the injured worker, moving it through our system as fast as we can, through an internal review process, if people are dissatisfied with our decisions by virtue of decisions from a hearings officer that we have at the Commission. And if people are still dissatisfied with that decision there is an External Appeal Tribunal that exists to meet justice in the Workers' Compensation field. There was an initial backlog but the process of all the various aspects now provide for a smoother working through of that system to the extent that there is not a horrendous backlog right now. Obviously the demands are such that we can only respond to a limited extent and we are continually trying to deal with it as fast as we can through that particular internal appeal system that we have.

MR. SHORT: In terms of the tribunal stage, there is still an option there for the Workers' Compensation Commission to come back and disagree with a decision that has been made at the Tribunal stage.

MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Chairman, there is a provision under legislation referred to as Section 21(7) where it says that a decision of the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal that is inconsistent with policy or established law can be reviewed by the Workers' Compensation Board of Directors but only in those limited circumstances. There have only been several cases that have fallen under that ambit that have been referred to the Workers' Compensation Board. So, the legislation is very clear in terms of what can be referred back to the Board.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Short.

MR. SHORT: One final question: has the relationship between the Workers' Compensation Commission and the Appeals Tribunal improved? It seems as though there was not an excellent relationship there.

MS. COWAN: I have not had any complaints in the last little while. I would say for about the last six months or so. There were a flurry of complaints there and we took some action to clarify the situation between the two and things have been operating, I think, in a very smooth fashion. Certainly, I have not been getting a lot of complaints about it. The relationship between the two bodies again has been examined by the review committee.

MR. SHORT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Winsor.

MR. WINSOR: The Minister has alluded to the fact that there are some things that could happen to offset this $129 million deficit -the accumulated deficit, I think, is somewhere in the range of $129 million. In view of the recent cutbacks in health care in this Province, does the Minister expect that this could possibly rise? In fact I met a gentleman, two or three days ago or whenever, who has been waiting something in the range of fourteen months or fifteen months to get some back surgery looked at and this is not uncommon, I am sure every Member here knows that. It seems to be because of a lack of surgeons and other things, but there is an inordinate amount of time getting into medical institutions in this Province. So, essentially if someone hurts themselves then they are taken off work and they are on Workers' Compensation benefits for an extended period of time, even before they can get a good diagnosis, especially if it is back, legs, or anything in the orthopaedic line.

Now with massive cutbacks, does the Minister think that this salary bill or benefits might even increase as a result and is she concerned about it?

MS. COWAN: What we have to look at here, is again the comment I made to Mr. Aylward earlier, is getting these people looked at more quickly.

MR. WINSOR: How?

MS. COWAN: Well, by hiring more people for example at the Worker' Compensation Commission. They already have hired one extra individual this year who will more quickly diagnose and start -

MR. WINSOR: Are you saying medical people?

MS. COWAN: I guess they are probably adjudicators are they when they first come in? I am not familiar with the terms - who assess the type of damage and then get the person to receive attention.

Just one other point I wanted to make, it is the future liability here that is the problem, like with the pension plans it is not the present that is the tremendous problem, it is what has been committed to for the future.

MR. WINSOR: I am not sure if the Minister understood what I am saying.

MS. COWAN: Maybe I did not. I am sorry. Go ahead.

MR. WINSOR: Right now there is a long wait now for some -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The Member for Fogo seems to be having some problem with getting his question out and he is indicating to the Chair that it is because of some confusion coming from his immediate left.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Throw the two of them out, I would say.

MR. WINSOR: My question is, there has been a reduction in the number of people working in the health care profession in this Province. Presently there is a long wait for people who are in receipt of benefits or who have been injured in getting to medical practitioners, particularly specialists or occupational therapists or whatever, to get rehabilitated.

In light of the fact that she has a future deficit of $129 million, does not the Minister think that because of the cutbacks in health, an already bad situation is going to be made even worse?

MS. COWAN: I am clear on what you are saying now. I could not speak to that because that is really a question that would be more in the area of the Minister of Health, but I will ask Mr. Mitchell, he can perhaps make a comment on that.

MR. MITCHELL: Mr. Chairman, in response to the question, in stating the financial position of the Commission, one of the reasons that we outlined in the annual report that was tabled in the House of Assembly for the rising unfunded liability at the Commission, was the increase in duration at the Commission, that is the number of weeks people are on claim vis-à-vis, what they were on years previous. It is a very difficult area to pinpoint precisely as to what causes duration; part of it as the Minister says, if we deployed people differently or had more people, we could move people faster through the system.

Unquestionably it is access to medical manpower; it is access to diagnostic and health facilities which exist in the Province and the Commission has been rather inventive over the last year or so in trying to work out priority access arrangements with various health care providers in the interest of providing as expeditious a service to injured workers as possible, through arrangements with several of the institutions, we will continue to do that, because that is the way in terms of reducing the duration.

But unquestionably, medical supply and demand in the Province and health care delivery have an impact upon duration. To what extent that is the only factor, or a major factor, is a debatable point, I think.

MR. WINSOR: So the end result could very well be that an already bad situation could be made worse if people cannot get a kind of immediate access to early treatment and then the continuation of it.

MR. MITCHELL: We constantly strive to try to get the medical attention and the health care delivery as quickly as we can with our consultations with the various health care providers in the medical profession in the Province and we will continue to do that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we will recess for ten minutes. I would like to invite the hon. Member for Bonavista North, Speaker of the House of Assembly of the great Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to join us at the Government caucus room for coffee.

MR. DOYLE: Doughnuts and sandwiches, also.

MR. CHAIRMAN: As well, the Executive Assistant to the Minister, is quite welcome to join us and the gentleman who is here representing The Evening Telegram.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before we get back to the questions, I wonder, is there anybody in the Minister's department or any of the Officials who has lost a Visitor's Pass? It was found on the floor of the caucus room.

MS. COWAN: Oh, Wayne.

MR. R. AYLWARD: He has already left, he did not get to the Common Room.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Unless I have totally misinterpreted what is happening, this is going to fool-up the security system, so I will see that the card at least, gets returned to security, but I do not know about the wearer.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) who it is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes. They will know who, but not where.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Let us save it for Clyde, tomorrow, we will put it on him, maybe he will take off then.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Barrett had indicated that he wanted to ask some questions but he is not here, so I am going to have to go to Mr. Doyle.

MR. R. AYLWARD: Oh no.

MR. DOYLE: Before I start I am just going to make one comment on

Workers' Compensation. I know Mr. Mitchell is gone but I just wanted to say, probably more for the benefit of our friends in the press than anyone, that Workers' Compensation, and the Commission itself, falls under an awful lot of criticism. I was really, really surprised when I read the report of the Workers' Compensation Commission and there were 19,500 claims registered with the Workers' Compensation Commission and 19,200 of these have been approved, so there were only 300 claims that had not been approved out of the 19,500. It is fine to criticize, and I am sure there is plenty about the Workers' Compensation Commission to criticize about, but it should also be noted, when it is fair to do so, that there were 19,500 claims and 19,200 had been approved. That is really amazing when you get right down to it.

MS. COWAN: (Inaudible) ten minutes, too. That is positive and I thank Mr. Doyle for making that comment. In fact there was one other time that he has complimented me. This was the second and I appreciate it, so thank you, Mr. Doyle.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to make one other comment before I turn it back to Mr. Doyle. I would like to reiterate that there is no ten minutes allocated. I have suggested that Members ask a question or two, or three. I will not allow any one person to monopolize the Question Period in excess of ten minutes. I am not suggesting that a Member question for ten minutes. He can ask one question and take thirty seconds, but it is just that nobody will monopolize it beyond ten minutes.

Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: I really would like to go back to the $700,000 but I do not think there is any point. I think I will just leave it and maybe find out who is in charge of the Employment Generation Program over in the Department of Employment and Labour Relations. Maybe I will have a talk with that individual and see if I can flesh out a little bit more on this $700,000 because it still appears very strange to me. It is not $700,000 now, it is down to $500,000 which sounds a little bit better. There is $500,000 now that was not used in the Employment Generation Program. I am interested in finding out if we have an Employment Generation Program this year because the signals I am getting is that we do not. The $500,000, I am given to understand, although it is still my contention that it was not used, the Minister is somehow connecting that up to the amount of money that has been budgeted this year, so I guess the question I want to ask is: do we have an Employment Generation Program this year, because the Budget indicates that we have $1.5 million allocated for employment generation this year? First of all, do we have a program?

MS. COWAN: We are completing the program that began last year, so we are into the final weeks this year.

MR. DOYLE: So, we do not have a program per se this year?

MS. COWAN: We are not looking for applications, and filling applications this year. We want to evaluate the program to decide if it is effective before we continue to put more money into it.

MR. DOYLE: So, the $1.5 million in the Budget Estimates that we have allocated this year is really to take care of last years?

MS. COWAN: The people who started on the program last year, the sixty week program.

MR. DOYLE: So, we have that much established, we do not have any money allocated this year for Employment Generation.

MS. COWAN: We have money allocated to continue through the program that began last year.

MR. DOYLE: To approve the applications?

MS. COWAN: We do not have new money to create new positions.

MR. DOYLE: Okay. That is totally unbelievable. Again, I say it, it is totally unbelievable. I mean we have an unemployment rate of 23.5 per cent. We have 52,000 people in the Province currently unemployed. Now over a two year period the unemployment rate has gone from 18.5 per cent up to 23.5 per cent that is a 5 percentage increase in a two year period. The Minister is telling us this evening that she scrapped the original employment programme that was there when she went there, which had $7 million in it, put in $2.9 million and has now budgeted this year $1.5 million, which will not address an Employment Generation Programme this year but which will take care of the programme that was on the go last year. She has stopped the programme to evaluate where it has gone.

We do not have any money allocated for employment generation in the Employment Department. This is not just the Department of Labour. We are talking about the Department of Employment which is what it is, Employment and Labour Relations, without a budget for employment. Now, if you do not have a budget for employment within the Employment Department how do you justify the creation of a Department of Employment? I know the Economic Recovery Commission and all the rest of it is there and the Minister will tell me that we have an Economic Recovery Commission and it has been mandated to bring the unemployment rate down and that is fine and dandy, that is great. But we also have a Department of Employment that when the Minister went in there two years ago, had a $7 million budget for employment generation alone, and then she brought it down to $2.9 million, then she brought it down to $1.5 million, and lo and behold she is telling me tonight that there is no money this year for employment generation, that we have put it on hold and are evaluating what we have done so far.

I would say to the Minister, that is just not good enough with an unemployment rate at 23.5 per cent. It is totally unbelievable. Because we are at the point now, because as I said, with 52,000 people unemployed, the unemployment rate has reached crises proportions, Government has just finished a massive layoff within the public service but still there is no real job creation effort within the Minister's Department.

Now, I know we have always had a high unemployment rate and we are probably going to continue for a long time to come to have a high unemployment rate. I agree, we do have one, but we have never seen in recent years such a small, such a minuscule amount of money put into employment generation.

Now when you are in a recessionary period, as the Minister knows, that is when Government generally tops up the employment generation efforts. In a period of recession you will see more money going into employment generation. It just stands to reason that while you are trying to get over the short-term problems of recession the Government will try to keep people going and try and create some kind of short-term. I know from the Minister's comments before that she is saying that the Government is committed to long-term, well long-term is fine and dandy and I agree with that, but you know the Economic Recovery Commission has been mandated for an eight year period.

The Premier said that before you bring the unemployment rate down to anywhere around the national average, it would probably be six to eight years. The Minister, in a television interview a couple of weeks ago, said the same thing, it is probably going to be a number of years. Well, it is not going to be a number of years at this rate it is going to be never because there is no money to put into employment generation.

Again, as I have said, at a time when the effects of Hibernia - Hibernia was supposed to create 2,500 or 3,000 jobs in a two or three year period, well that has been totally negated by the layoff of 2,500 to 3,500 people, we have not been able to get a handle on that so the effect of Hibernia is negated. So, how do you justify not putting any money into employment generation?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

You time has elapsed, Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: Is my ten minutes gone?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, Sir.

MS. COWAN: Well, first of all, Mr. Chair, I will once again mention that Employment Generation is one programme. It is not the only programme in my Department that leads people to employment. It is only one small programme. It is this kind of programme that the past Government adored. They adored this programme because politically it was so much fun to be able to hand out to your friends and supporters cushy little subsidies to help them survive.

MR. DOYLE: You should be ashamed to say that.

MS. COWAN: Our programme is aimed at specific groups of people. We are particularly concerned with youth; we are particularly concerned with women; we are particularly concerned with fisheries at this time because of the crises in the fishery in this Province, so what we are doing now is a number of things. If you look at the youth employment strategy, it is not covered by the freeze. We have put $3.625 million into that particular programme and the positive thing about this is that we are in the third year of that five year programme, so it is around this time that we will start to see a lot of these young people becoming employed and hopefully that will in some way impact in a positive way upon the statistics which are indeed quite frightening, particularly in the area of the unemployment of youth, the people between the age of nineteen and twenty-five.

MR. DOYLE: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

I would remind Mr. Doyle there were no interruptions when the question was being asked. I would expect the same courtesy be given the Minister to answer the question.

MS. COWAN: We have continued to put money into the Women Interested in Successful Employment Programme because we find it has an extremely positive success rate. We evaluated that and know it is a good programme. We are not going to continue programmes that we do not have concrete proof are a good way to spend the taxpayers money. I have no intention of going to Cabinet and saying I want more money for a programme until I can tell Cabinet these are the reasons I want it. It was great, it gave people long-term employment, it did what we wanted it to do and that is what we are doing with the Employment Generation Programme. We will see it through to its end and evaluate it. If we find it was a very, very good programme and there is a need in the Province, there is a very good chance that we will have to institute another one.

You will recall last year the Employment Stimulation Programme was put in place and as the year progressed and we saw there was a great deal of unemployment in the Province, we did bring the Employment Stimulation Programme into place and in that way helped a number of individuals who were without work in the Province, or who had not qualified for their UI. We tried to meet what was an emergency situation.

I will have to remind everyone again that we are in a recession in this Province. We have just had three mines close; we have also had -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

I would like to remind hon. Members that this is a forum provided to ask questions and to get information. This is not a place to play any kind of political games and I will not allow any more interruptions like this. I would ask the Minister to continue with her answer.

MS. COWAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are in a recession; we have seen a collapse in the fisheries in this Province; we have seen three mines close in the last little while. Because of the horrendous debt of the Provincial Government, which was not of our own making, we have had to lay off people in order to meet our financial obligations and commitments and to be able to borrow at a half decent interest rate, which we would not have been able to do if we had continued in the same manner as the past Government.

Even so, Mr. Chairman, I must say that the unemployment rate is not as high today as it was in 1985 in this Province when the fishery was having the best year it had ever had. Now I am not trying to negate in anyway the unemployment rate. It is not good and it is of extreme concern to our Government, but what I am trying to do is show Mr. Doyle up for what he really is, and that he is just playing political games for the benefit of the media.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

I would remind the Minister that we want only answers to the questions. I would suggest that she not make comments like that again.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

Mr. Barrett.

MR. BARRETT: I would like to get into some of the details of the estimates, and the Minister will probably have to refer to the officials. I would like to start off by complimenting the Minister on the fact that in these times of restraint she was able to maintain the budget in two areas - not that I do not have interest in all the areas of the Department, but in regards to our youth, in that she was able to maintain the same level of funding for the Student Employment Programme, which is a very valuable programme, to assist our students who are attending post-secondary institutions.

AN HON. MEMBER: That is all federal money is it?

MR. BARRETT: That is all provincial money.

AN HON. MEMBER: Is it?

MR. BARRETT: The question I would like to ask in this particular area - I know that the deadline for applications is the 15th of May. I would like to know when the decisions will be made on that particular programme. The Minister can take note of that and answer it.

As a person who was involved in the post-secondary education field the one that is of great assistance and is a great programme is the Graduate Employment Programme, because we all know one of the handicaps that the youth of the Province have when they graduate from post-secondary institutions is the fact that doors are shut because they do not have any experience. They may have the training, but they do not have the experience, and I would like to compliment the Minister and be positive that she was able to maintain the same level of funding in this present year for the Graduate Employment Programme. I know it is hard to predict because it is a client driven type of programme, it is not the kind of programme that a business applies for funding, but I would like to see more and more programmes that are client driven rather than wage subsidies for businesses, and sometimes I think these are abused, but in this particular case, it is a client programme and the clients naturally can apply through businesses for subsidies and give these youths very valuable experience.

The other area I would like to look at is in the Inspection Services, Health and Occupational Safety. I note that most of the account centres in the Occupation Health and Safety have been increased -

MS. COWAN: The most - which?

MR. BARRETT: Most of the account centres in the Inspection area, Occupation Health and Safety Services, most of the account centres there, particularly in the salary areas, have been increased, does this mean that there were not any layoffs in those particular areas? I noticed that the only area that is down is the area of mines, which probably is an indication of the fact that we did lose some of the mines in the Province, which means that we probably do not need as many staff, but it looks like all those account centres have been increased and I am just wondering if there were any layoffs in Inspection Services?

MS. COWAN: (Inaudible).

MR. BARRETT: Okay; you can probably take note of that particular question. The other one is in the Electrical Inspections; I know that in the area of the Province that I represent that there will be a tremendous increase in activity and I am wondering if the Department officials have looked at the expanding of the staff or re-allocating the staff in the Clarenville office, because there is a fair amount of activity or there will be a fair amount of activity and lots of jobs created in the Come by Chance, Arnold's Cove, Sunnyside area over the next two or three months, and then it is going to be a tremendous increase, and we need to facilitate the development of that part of the Province to make sure that we take full advantage of the job opportunities that will come because of the spin offs from the Hibernia project.

The other area is the Assistance to St. Lawrence Miners Dependents. It is a new programme to me and I would like the Minister to probably give me a little bit of information. I know it is to assist the widows of St. Lawrence Miners. Do the allowances for these individuals go up each year or are they frozen at the same levels as when they were awarded?

The other one is -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Barrett, I am sorry, I must interrupt; I have been trying to follow what was happening. I had already ruled that I would prefer that single questions be asked and single answers be given, rather than make a ten minute presentation and the Minister then have to come back with answers to six or seven questions. I think that is what you are doing, so would the Minister like to answer the questions that have been asked already?

MS. COWAN: Okay. I have a whole bunch of them here. First, I was just consulting with Mrs. Gogan, who says that we do not have the exact date, Percy, for the close of applications but it is some time in early May and then we will be as quick as we can, to get them out because we realize a lot of young people are anxious about that.

Now there is the $600,000. I heard someone say that was Federal money, it is not. That $600,000 is provincial money. There is also Challenge '91, which is a federal programme and puts a tremendous amount of money into the Province for student employment in the summer, and for which we are very grateful to the Federal Government.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: I beg your pardon?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible), yet?

MS. COWAN: Yes. It is $11 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: Okay, so that is the first question. The Graduate Programme is aimed at those individuals who cannot get a job because they do not have experience. They are fresh out of school and just cannot get experience, so they are given a certain period of time, I believe it is three months, out of a post-secondary institution to try and find work and if they have not been successful then we will try to match them up with an employer through a subsidy situation. We have been able to create in the past year sixty-five jobs and anticipate the same for the coming year. That programme is proving to be very valuable.

The increases in inspection: I am going to let Mr. Dwyer respond to that, Mr. Barrett.

MR. DWYER: The increase in salary dollars from last year is directly due to the filling of some crucial positions that were difficult to fill last year, one being the Manager of General Inspections which was allowed to be vacant in excess of one year, that is now filled, which indicates an increase in excess of $50,000-odd. Another area which we are sort of proud off is the medical and hygiene section. We have had trouble for years hiring and maintaining qualified industrial hygienists. We have filled one position through the recent redundancy policy. We expect a recent graduate from the U of T who we put through the Public Service Commission to be on staff within a couple of weeks. So, basically there have been some crucial positions there that have been filled that were either difficult to fill or were vacant waiting to be filled from last year.

Thank you.

MR. BARRETT: Have there been any layoffs in the Health and Safety Inspection Division?

MR. DWYER: There were basically two lay offs in the occupational health and safety area of my branch and they were largely due to the three mine closures in Baie Verte, Daniels Harbour and St. Lawrence. We were forced to reduce a manager of mines, and a mining engineer and subsequently we moved the mining people in under the general inspection area. So we do not perceive any negative repercussions because of that because the workload in the mines area is just not out there this year and we do not foresee it in the next couple of years.

MS. COWAN: Okay, we have the number of inspectors. I suppose, you were thinking in terms of electrical inspectors, boiler and pressure vessel inspectors and so on and wanted to know if there was a great demand or need for them in the Clarenville area?

Yes, Mr. Dwyer.

MR. DWYER: Basically, we have just restructured our Electrical Inspection Division and we were forced to re-direct some of our head offices. We have reduced three or four clerical staff, like for argument sake, Springdale, Gander, Stephenville, Holyrood, however, we were able to maintain the inspection staff themselves who now operate from their home rather than from a Springdale office or Gander office. We have been tracking over the past year as to the frequency of inspections in the different periods of time so we are able to see exactly where and when we need more inspectors and are able to project in that manner. So, that basically justifies the keeping of the inspectors we have. There is only one ill-repercussion, we may be looking at one seasonal position for six months. That was it. So, we did fare fairly well in that area.

In the boiler pressure vessel section, we maintained the eight inspectors, we did not lose anything in there. The elevator section, we maintained our inspection staff there and the same thing with the building accessibility staff. The only thing we had to do, we were forced to eliminate the director of Engineering Services. And what we did we combined it with the director of Electrical Services, and subsequently the new division is called the Public Inspection Division. So I do not think overall in my branch that the recent cuts really affected us as badly as one would have expected.

MR. BARRETT: You probably would have to hire one seasonal person in the electrical inspection. Would you anticipate that will be in the Clarenville area?

MR. DWYER: No. Well, as it is now we have budgeted enough money, we have enough money to keep what staff we have on now due to a - I believe there was a recent retirement in one of the other areas. So right now we do not envision any layoffs whatsoever with the staff and with the work load that we have now.

MR. BARRETT: Okay.

MS. COWAN: I think, Mr. Chair, if I may be allowed, that Mr. Dwyer's comments show that he has the Occupational Health and Safety division well in hand. I am very pleased with the progress we have made there and look forward to a lot more progress.

Now, going on to the assistance to the St. Lawrence's miners dependents. That came about as an agreement made in 1973 between the Aluminum Company of Canada and the government of Newfoundland at that time. And that was to pay special assistance to the victims and widows and the dependents of miners who had died as a result of diseases developed from working in the fluorspar mine there. That agreement actually expired June 30, 1985 but the Cabinet of the day approved the continued assistance and we have continued with that assistance on the same basis as the former agreement. It is not indexed or anything of that nature. The number remains frozen. There are no new people added to it since 1973. So the demands on the budget are gradually dissipating, I suppose, because some of the people unfortunately are getting on in years and are passing on. So in the month of March for example we paid out to 138 individuals in St. Lawrence. So that was an average of about $40.88 each.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Winsor. Is it the wish of the Committee to proceed with general questions or to go to the subheads?

MR. WINSOR: I am not finished.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It was just a question, Mr. Winsor.

MR. WINSOR: Oh. On the entire area of health and safety and programmes the Minister's Department has been reduced I think from 186 employees to 174, of which I think only two came from the employment side and the other ten came from the enactment of labour laws. The Minister's Department has also, in health and safety inspections, reduced the numbers from twelve to eleven in that particular division. In the electrical inspections it has been reduced from thirty-nine to thirty-two, now granted some of them are clerical.

If the Minister is wondering where I am getting the information I am using Departmental Salary Details for last year and the two of them, and a comparison of each one shows that there are some twelve positions eliminated. Health and safety inspections being one. The Minister has acknowledged in the House that one of the areas of jurisdiction of her Department now, through the Atlantic Accord, is the Hibernia site, Bull Arm or Mosquito Cove, call it what you wish, perhaps I suspect since Churchill Falls, the most labour intensive potentially dangerous site that we have had in this Province. How can the Minister have a reduction in health and safety inspections by one in that? I think it is reduced from eight to seven, if I recall, at a time when if there was ever a need to have increased safety and surveillance in light of what we see with the Workers' Compensation Board, the number that is going up astronomically, the Minister's Department in the areas of occupational health and safety and inspections, generally seems to be on a decline, ten people less. Now, some of them are clerical but there has been field staff loss as well. Is not the Minister at all concerned that with this major development taking place in the Bull Arm area, Come by Chance - my friend from the Sunnyside area, my friend from Bellevue would want me to mention his district since it is the closest district to it. I am sure he wants me to ask the question for him, he is very much concerned

MR. BARRETT: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

The questions presently being asked by the hon. Member for Fogo were already the first series of questions that the hon. Member for Bellevue asked.

MR. WINSOR: These are different questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

Are you addressing the point of order?

MR. WINSOR: No. There is obviously no point of order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There is no point of order.

MR. WINSOR: I am greatly concerned that there is not an increased number. The Minister has a major development taking place and she has downsized the staff. How can she justify that?

MS. COWAN: First of all, Sir, I have not downsized the staff. That is a vacant position and I will let Mr. Dwyer elaborate on that in a minute. There was no layoff there.

MR. WINSOR: You say it was a vacant position? If it was not filled the Minister's Department in its salary details last year indicated there were eight occupational health and safety inspectors, and this year there are seven.

MS. COWAN: There are still eight.

MR. WINSOR: No. There are seven occupational health and safety, one, and there is one health and safety inspector, two, if this is right, if this is worth the paper it is written on. How many are there? Are there seven or eight? Last year there was twelve in the Department and this year there are eleven.

MS. COWAN: Seven and one is eight. There is no change there. Are you looking at Page 147?

MR. WINSOR: I am looking at Page 147 and then I am looking at Page 128 of last year.

MS. COWAN: Page 128 of last year. Oh, you have last years?

MR. WINSOR: I have last years, too, and I see a decline in numbers by one.

MS. COWAN: I am not sure what that would be. There has been nobody leave.

MR. WINSOR: Well, if the Minister wants to borrow my book she certainly can. I am concerned that in light of the increased activity that is going on there, how can the Minister justify downsizing that Department, or not hiring extra inspectors? If they were busy last year then the amount of work they have to do this year has quadrupled because of the massive industrial expansion that is taking place. Is the Minister not concerned that she has enough staff?

MS. COWAN: The Minister is feeling very, very, positive about her Occupational Health and Safety Division because of the fact that it is finally in good hands.

MR. DOYLE: The Minister should administer it.

MS. COWAN: The Minister should be administering Occupational Health and Safety, is that not interesting?

Anyway, we were finding that in the St. John's area the inspections were not taking place in the manner in which we would like them to be taking place. In fact, when we looked abroad at other provinces, to look at the productivity of their Occupational Health and Safety Inspectors, we found that ours had fallen way behind that of the other Occupational Health and Safety officers in other provinces in the Maritimes, so our job then was to try to change that; and this is leading up believe it or not, to your answer, Mr. Winsor.

What we have done is, we have set up a pilot project. This project, and I elaborated on it before you came in, is based on figures that we have been able to gather from the Workers' Compensation Commission that were there in the past, but no one ever bothered with; we have fed them into a computer and we have been able to develop a programme so that our inspectors can now visit more frequently the areas of highest accident, so they are now going out in a systematic, carefully controlled manner; before they went out willy-nilly.

Now, Hibernia: What we want to do is evaluate this pilot and see if indeed we do have enough inspectors; our best guess is, no, we do not, but again I am not prepared to throw around money of the taxpayers of this Province until I can go to Cabinet and say we cannot meet our commitments, we should have made so many visits last month and we were only able to make three-quarters of those or whatever, I need more Occupational Health and Safety Inspectors. At this time I could only say it based on rumour and hearsay.

At the Hibernia site at the moment, there is not a lot of sophisticated construction taking place, it is basic construction and putting through roads and building a few basic structures and so on -

MR. WINSOR: 500 men.

MS. COWAN: I beg your pardon?

MR. WINSOR: 500 employees.

MS. COWAN: 450, anyway it is somewhere in that area -

MR. WINSOR: Close to 500.

MS. COWAN: - but we are inspecting; we are out a couple of times every month working with Nodeco to develop a very, very good programme. Nodeco has a very responsible attitude towards Occupational Health and Safety; as the employer they are probably setting up what is one of the best Occupational Health and Safety Programmes in the Province, so they are taking their job very, very seriously as an employer should.

Our Department has been working with Nodeco developing long-term plans for when we get into the more complicated areas of construction with which we are not as familiar in this Province, and making sure that all possibilities for accidents are covered.

MR. DOYLE: She goes on and on.

MS. COWAN: I am repeating a question - I was asked a question, I am sorry, Mr. Doyle, if you find the discussion of Occupational Health and Safety boring it does not surprise me since your Government did nothing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would ask the Minister to clue up the answer.

MS. COWAN: I am trying to get to the answer because it was so complicated -

AN HON. MEMBER: It was not complicated at all, I asked (inaudible).

MS. COWAN: - but anyway, Chairperson, if indeed we find that the completion of these plans that we have, that we do not have enough Occupational Health and Safety Inspectors to do justice to Hibernia, to do justice to any of the industry or construction sites in St. John's and in the remainder of the Province, we will indeed be hiring them; so you can rest assured that we do not intend to let the health and safety of workers take second place.

MR. WINSOR: Surely the Minister must know though that she is talking about using her computer model based on Workers' Compensation reports of previous injuries and the frequency and so on, that none of this is going to apply to the Hibernia site since it is brand new. So you cannot feed that in to a computer since there has never been any project. I am absolutely astonished that the Minister does not have a major increase in Occupational Health and Safety with such a massive site being developed. If the Minister's budget is frozen by the end of this summer we are talking something in the range I think of 1,400 or 1,500 people potentially on that site. And the Minister has no provisions to have increased occupational health and safety inspections there?

MS. COWAN: I will pass that over to Mike, he wants to make a comment.

MR. DWYER: Yes. Mike Dwyer. The provisions we have in place are basically HMDC, who are responsible for occupational health and safety on the total project. What we are doing and what we have stipulated is the fact that they must through their sub-contractors develop a safety management programme. It is a self-management type programme. They have inspectors, nursing people and emergency medical attendants on staff even as of today.

What we will do as a Department is audit HMDC's auditing role. What HMDC through their sub-contractors will be doing will be making safety a line management responsibility. In which case they will not have people walking around beating people over the head with sticks. People will be responsible for not only their own safety but for the safety of their fellow workers, and it will be a part of their job and which they will be held responsible for.

It has worked well in Norway. They have learned that unless the culture is changed around to that type of understanding you are going to have a lot of accidents. They have learned the hard way. We have learned from their experience that this is indeed the way that we can maximize occupational health and safety out on the Bull Arm project. The beauty about the Bull Arm project is that at any time at peak periods we will have anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 people in one small place. It is a great opportunity for Newfoundland to reverse its thinking with occupational health and safety and disperse these 3,000 or 4,000 people when the project is finished and spread this knowledge to the rest of the Province.

It may be unorthodox to us here now but it is not unorthodox to projects of that nature and magnitude. We do not have enough inspectors nor can we hire enough inspectors to look after that project in the old manner. With respect to eight inspectors on staff now to look after the area in Newfoundland and Labrador we are evaluating what work we can do with eight inspectors. After we have evaluated and we are happy with the production that we are getting we will look and see exactly how many pro-active inspections we would like to have. At that point in time we will make our presentation as a Department point of view to Treasury Board, and I am quite hopeful that yes, we can get the extra inspection people we do need. But first we have to see how many we do need.

MR. WINSOR: The gist of it is that basically there has been no new inspections. The Government at this point in time is hoping that the company essentially is going to provide adequate safety standards in training for its people, and you are just doing a monitoring, not providing increased inspection services.

MR. DWYER: We are going to ensure that occupational health and safety is carried out appropriately and according to the letter in the contract with the HMDC people, who are doing a fairly good job at this point in time. We will ensure that inspections are carried out by those people in an appropriate manner. We will audit their inspections to ensure that it is being done properly, appropriately and in a way that is similar to other projects of that size, magnitude and nature.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Doyle, the Chair had recognized that you were the next questioner but I was going to ask you to yield to your colleague Mr. Aylward, but that is fine, go ahead.

MR. R. AYLWARD: No, I just answered my own question carry on.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Carry on Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: I have forty or fifty short questions for the Minister.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Are they under the subheads, Mr. Doyle?

MR. DOYLE: No.

What is the Minister's strategy to establish a better labour relations climate in the Province?

MS. COWAN: Well, one of the things that we have brought in this year which we are finding is going to be, I think, very, very important, has already proven quite successful, and it is proactive which I think is something that - no, excuse me it is not proactive it comes up when there are problems - it is proactive in that we hope it will prevent -

MR. DOYLE: It is reactive.

MS. COWAN: I beg your pardon. Mr. Chairman, I do not need words put into my mouth especially words that change the connotation of what I am saying.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would ask the Minister be given the opportunity to answer the questions without interruption please.

MS. COWAN: We have a preventative mediation programme which we hope will prevent employers and employees getting into situations where they have to turn to legal counsel and start to bring into force different aspects of The Labour Relations Act. What we are doing is bringing shop stewards and supervisors together; they will be from a specific workplace where there has known to be a long history of labour-management problems and through our conciliation officers, of whom I am very proud, we have been able to conduct a couple of these workshops. I attended the first one just at the end to give out the certificates and it was a pleasure to walk into a room, where at one point management and labour could not even courteously address one another, to see them working together mutually to try to come to some understanding of their problems. That, I think, is going to be a very, very effective programme and one that we are very pleased with.

MR. DOYLE: What is the Minister doing specifically? There is a hue and cry right now from the public service sector unions. I mean morale is very, very low within the public service because of layoffs and what have you, people are demonstrating on a daily basis, what strategy does the Minister have to deal with that kind of problem within the public service right now?

MS. COWAN: Well, I do not think, Mr. Doyle, it is an unusual problem. Certainly, it is one that was a part of your Government as well. I think what we tried to do as a Cabinet and as a Government - certainly in light of the wage freeze and the number of layoffs, which has been said many times before, was to involve the labour leaders of the Province in some sort of productive dialogue in which they could assist us in making the whole process less painful - with the exception of one or two unions this was not successful. The groups preferred to take a confrontational attitude rather than to work with Government. At this point in time the attitude remains confrontational and is very, very difficult to deal with.

MR. DOYLE: So, the problem really is that the unions are taking a confrontational approach and they are refusing to work with Government.

MS. COWAN: No, that is not what I said.

MR. DOYLE: That is what you said.

MS. COWAN: In the beginning, we brought the union leaders into consultation situations and they preferred not to become involved and the situation is obviously at the moment confrontational. What would you call a demonstration, if it is not confrontational?

MR. DOYLE: They are refusing to become involved in what? You say they are refusing to become involved.

MS. COWAN: In the initial stages when we were contemplating that we were faced with a very serious financial position in the Province. We called these individuals in to tell them the sort of situation we were faced with. And because they had so little faith in governments, because of what they had dealt with in the past, they did not really take us very seriously, and as a result did not feel obligated to give us any of the suggestions which they might have as to how to, in particular, avoid layoffs.

Now for example, the Council of Trade - is it the Council of Trade Unions?

MR. DOYLE: Building Trades Council.

MS. COWAN: No, it is not the Building Trades Council, excuse me. There is another group, the name just, who -

AN HON. MEMBER: Federation of Labour?

MS. COWAN: No, this is another smaller group which some of the trades belong to. The name will come back to me in a moment. Have been working with Government in an attempt - they have a number of employees for example at Hydro. They are working with us in an attempt to see if there is some way that a number of layoffs can be avoided. We have been in contact with those individuals.

MR. DOYLE: Now the Minister is saying that the unions -

MS. COWAN: In fact the Premier met with them I think two or three days in a row, one time right after the other.

MR. DOYLE: So what the Minister is saying then: the unions did not put forth -

MS. COWAN: It is the Canadian Federation of Labour but the Newfoundland branch has another name and it has just escaped me for a minute.

MR. DOYLE: So the Minister is saying that the unions did not put forth alternatives to layoffs or anything like that, then. As a result, Government went ahead -

MS. COWAN: That is correct, with the exception of this one group. And I believe perhaps CUPE had some ideas as well. I was not present at those particular meetings so I am not aware of the exact detail of what took place.

MR. DOYLE: Very strange.

MS. COWAN: Strange?

MR. DOYLE: What is the Minister's opinion, or does she have an opinion on the breaking of the existing contracts that the unions had with the Government, as the Minister of Labour?

MS. COWAN: My opinion is the same as my colleagues' opinion. It is an unfortunate thing. We did not wish to do it. I think that point has been made on very many occasions. We had no alternative but to do that. Or to lay off a lot more people. It seemed much more responsible to not lay off people. We are answerable to the taxpayers of this Province, and it is very important that we keep our budgets in line. We cannot continue to borrow and expect the people of this Province to pay back monies that we borrow. We had to freeze the wages. It is unfortunate that we had to break a contract. I do not think there is anybody that is pleased that we had to do that but we had absolutely no other option.

MR. DOYLE: So the Minister who is responsible for the establishment of good labour relations in the Province is saying that she supported that type of move, of rolling back and breaking existing contracts? As the Minister of Labour, is she saying that?

MS. COWAN: I also, Mr. Doyle, have a responsibility for employment in the Province.

MR. DOYLE: I am asking her a question, does she support that?

MS. COWAN: And I was not prepared to see more people - up to another 2,000 people - unemployed. As Minister of Labour and as Minister of Employment and as a human being I would find that very difficult.

MR. DOYLE: So the answer is that she supported the breaking of existing contracts?

MS. COWAN: Mr. Doyle.

MR. DOYLE: Did you call in the unions to speak to them since that happened?

MS. COWAN: Me personally?

MR. DOYLE: You, as Minister of Labour. Did you call in the unions to -

MS. COWAN: No, I have not called in the unions to speak to them about that.

MR. DOYLE: Any particular reason?

MS. COWAN: I will do it eventually but at this time I am waiting, biding my time until I feel it is appropriate.

MR. DOYLE: So the logical question which would follow that, as a result of these contract roll backs -

MS. COWAN: You will have to - just if I could make one other point too - recall that the responsibility for employing and so on is not my responsibility, it is the responsibility of the President of Treasury Board.

MR. DOYLE: But I mean, you are the Minister of Labour, and you are responsible for labour relations in the Province. And good climate for labour relations. Now, does the Minister feel as a result of supporting that type of move that she still has the trust of the labour movement in the Province?

MS. COWAN: I would say, Mr. Doyle, that you are confusing probably the labour movement between the private and the public sector. The public sector -

MR. DOYLE: Okay, let's talk about the public sector (Inaudible).

MS. COWAN: - learned to distrust governments. I am not allowed here tonight to go into any political diatribe. It is too bad you were away when I had the opportunity to remind your government what it did.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! Order, please!

I will ask the Minister to clue up her answer. It then being 10:00 p.m. I will - will the Minister clue up her answer?

MS. COWAN: Alright. I have forgotten the question. It is 10:00 p.m.. Oh yes, with the private sector unions in the Province there is I feel very good rapport between the groups. Obviously the public sector unions are disturbed at this time, as anyone would anticipate they would be. The leaders of those organizations have a responsibility to their members and they have to demonstrate that they are concerned about a freeze and concerned that they have people who are losing their jobs. That is only a natural thing and it is certainly not unexpected.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.

Before calling for a motion to adjourn I would like to thank my Committee, the Vice-Chairman, the Minister for being so forthright with her answers, and I would like to thank her for being so cooperative with the Chair as I would all Members of the Committee. I would also like to extend thanks to the officials from the Minister's Department. I would like to thank Miss Duff who has sat here as Clerk of the Committee tonight; Hansard; our Page, Paula; the reporter from The Evening Telegram.

I would like to read into the record that the next scheduled meeting with this sector of the Budget estimates will be Monday, May 6, at the House of Assembly here at 9:30 a.m. and the estimates for the Department of Works, Services and Transportation will be reviewed. Also on that same day, at 7:00 p.m. at the Colonial Building we will be reviewing the estimates of the Department of Finance.

Could I have a motion to adjourn, please?

MR. BARRETT: So moved.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, I must apologize, Mr. Barrett. I had meant to mention earlier that there was a change in the schedule, that I had discussed it with the Minister and also with the Vice-Chairman. I assumed that he had discussed it with his Members of the Committee. Okay. I must apoLogize for not mentioning that to you. I will tell you now the one that was originally slotted in there for Thursday, May 2, at 7:00 p.m. - Municipal and Provincial Affairs and Housing - had to be changed to the following Thursday. So that will now be heard on Thursday, May 9.

AN HON. MEMBER: Seven o'clock in the evening?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes. Everything is the same except it has gone from one Thursday to the next. I ask that you make that notation.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. CHAIRMAN: Not unless somebody has rescheduled another one in there.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

On motion, the Committee adjourned.