The Committee met at 7:00 p.m. in the House of Assembly.

MR. CHAIRMAN (Oldford): Order, please!

We will get our meeting under way. I welcome everyone to the Social Services Estimates Committee. We are here tonight to review the Estimates of the Department of Justice. Let's begin by asking the members of the Committee to introduce themselves. My name is Doug Oldford, I am the Chair, and the Member for Trinity North. We will start with Ms. Cowan.

MS. COWAN: Thank you. I am Patricia Cowan, the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. LANGDON: Oliver Langdon, the Member for Fortune - Hermitage.

MR. HODDER: Harvey Hodder, the Member for Waterford - Kenmount.

MR. CAREEN: Nick Careen, the Member for Placentia.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We welcome the minister and his staff. The rules of our Committee are such that we allow the minister ten minutes for an opening statement and for the introduction of his staff. Then, as we always do, we will alternate the questions from the government side to the Opposition side back and forth. We will give ten minutes for questions and answers. At this time, I call on the minister for the introduction of his staff and his opening remarks. Mr. Minister.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, I won't take the ten minutes, in the interest of allowing members to raise the issues that concern them specifically and directly, but may I introduce the officials who are here tonight.

I can't say they are "my" officials at the moment. As the Premier explained in Committee of Whole in the House this afternoon, I am working from the main floor, whereas the offices of the Department of Justice are on the fourth floor of this building. I have responsibility, as he told the House, for almost all of the matters that fall within the purview of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General but there are some exceptions. That may mean that for particular questions I shall defer to one or more of the officials here and let them speak, because there are matters in which I have no involvement, for reasons which I believe are well known.

Having said that, let me introduce the staff. To my immediate right is the Deputy Minister, Mrs. Spracklin, Queen's Counsel, who has been Deputy Minister for a number of years. Starting behind me are Kevin Dicks, the Director of Finance and General Operations; John Cummings, the Assistant Deputy Minister for civil law; Colin Flynn, the Director of Public Prosecutions; and the young man behind me is my executive assistant, Seamus O'Regan Jr. I will add that I look forward to a discussion with the Committee tonight on the Estimates. There are no major new programs that we are bringing forward this year, nor are there any major changes in any of our existing programs. With that said, I am in your hands, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: One other point - we are being recorded. I ask your officials to identify themselves each time they speak for the benefit of Hansard.

MR. ROBERTS: Let me note if I may, Mr. Chairman, that just after you called on me, our colleague, the Member for Bellevue, Mr. Barrett, arrived and is now with us in the Committee as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe you could introduce yourself for the record.

MR. BARRETT: I thank Mr. Roberts. He already introduced me.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We will begin the questioning. Mr. Hodder.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We are not going to get into a discussion as to the peculiarities of the Government House Leader's position relative to the Department of Justice, this kind of thing. That has been well aired in various places and it would be rather redundant to discuss these matters.

I did want to refer to, if I could - the minister may not have it there with him, but it is on pages 104-105 of the Auditor General's report, and it deals with the Office of the High Sheriff. There is an extra copy on my desk.

MR. ROBERTS: I can't say I'm familiar with it, but I have a briefing note that has been prepared for me in anticipation of possibly a question in the House.

MR. HODDER: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: Please carry on. I now have the note.

MR. HODDER: I just wanted to refer to the fact that the Auditor General has made some recommendations, has made some commentary on the manner in which the audits are carried out in the Sheriff's Office, particularly the manner in which accounting and management systems and controls are maintained. In particular, the Auditor General mentions that there was no formal inventory control system in existence to account for assets seized and subsequently disposed. `There are no controls in place to account for the disposition of seized assets and related receipts. Accounts receivable records are not properly maintained, and controls over the billing of various fees charged are inadequate.' The Auditor General is unable to satisfy herself as to the completeness of the inventory, the revenue, and the receipts, or the accuracy of the accounts receivable.

I wanted to place a statement to the minister. Certainly, this has to be of some concern to the ministry and I want to get his comments on that, and what actions are being taken to rectify these deficiencies.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, let me note, as well, the presence of the Member for St. John's East, Mr. Harris, who has just joined the Committee.

I thank my friend, the Member for Waterford - Kenmount, because the point is a very important one. The Sheriff deals with a lot of money and, of course, it is other people's money. The Sheriff's role in the civil judicial system is to be the executive arm by which the judgements of the courts are executed. We leave it to individual litigants to execute judgements and the Sheriff is the agency through which money judgements are executed. He has other functions as well, but I think the member's question was addressed primarily to the money-handling segment.

Let me make two points generally, the first of which is very brief. The Auditor General's comments are directed to the 1993-'94 year which ended a year and three or four days ago, and we believe there is considerable validity in them, and have accepted that. Secondly, as long ago as last July, and I can go through it in detail in the briefing note which Mr. Dicks just gave to Mr. O'Regan, who gave it to me. It gives me some detail and I can go into as much detail as the member would wish. It lists the steps we have taken to come to grips with this.

I will go through it very briefly and then my friend can come back on any particular area. We became aware, I guess, in July 1994 that the Auditor General had concerns as a result of, either her audit or that being done by her officials for her, so there was a meeting held with officials from Justice and officials from her office and in August 1994 she issued a final version of her 1993-94 management letter and this is were these points were raised in the first instance. Two or three weeks later, Justice officials requested a management analyst to go through the letter and identify the issues and come up with a plan to begin to comes to grips with them with a view to removing them. That led to a meeting in October, which was done in the office of the High Sheriff, at which were present not only the Sheriff's office people but officials from the finance and general operations group within the department and the information technology people. Part of the problem was simply keeping track of the masses of different accounts, and they have now put some work into the accounts receivable system. We bought a package of software from ACCPAC. Don't ask me what ACCPAC is; I assume it is a company that -

MS. COWAN: It sounds like a computer game.

MR. ROBERTS: It's an accounts receivable package, Mr. Dicks tells me - somebody who knows more than I do would perhaps know more than that - and that is being put into use now. So that should give us a system to keep track of the receivables.

I believe we are also about to acquire a general ledger, a GL package, also make by ACCPAC. Apparently, they are big in this field. That will be the main accounting software for the division.

We have seconded an employee from the accounts division to go down and work with the High Sheriff's Office to beef up their accounting capability. I am told that the system description is expected to be completed by the end of May, 1995, and once that is done work will begin on a revised policy and procedure manual. The hon. gentleman is familiar with these manuals.

MR. HODDER: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: This should be completed, I am told, by the end of August, 1995.

Now, that is a very general description. I won't go into it in more detail. I will leave it to my friend to raise the points he wants to, but generally speaking, we acknowledge the validity of the Auditor General's concerns and are addressing them.

MR. HODDER: One of the areas of concern to the Auditor General was, of course, the lack of segregation of incompatible duties which could lead to errors or misuse of funds going undetected. In the computer program that you have now devised, do the auditing systems and records guarantee that all funds are going to be appropriately segregated and that misuse of funds should not now go undetected? Are there built-in safeguards, in other words, checks and balances?

MR. ROBERTS: I am reluctant ever to use the word `guarantee' because, as my friend will acknowledge, there has never been a system built that somebody can't find a way around, whether it is manual or computer-based, but I am told that these are among the issues we are addressing. The new computer programs will enable us better to keep track of the accounts as to what should be where, and also there is a realignment of duties proposed which will result in a permanent position being created to manage the accounts receivable. Now, I am not going to say that something won't go wrong.

MR. HODDER: Has the minister, in view of the problem that has been identified, provided for quarterly reviews and updates to be forwarded to the ministry as to the efficiency and the manner in which accounts are kept, and the procedures for implementing the new system?

MR. ROBERTS: We should be able to do them more frequently than quarterly. With the proper accounting packages of software and hardware, and with proper accounting procedures, we ought to be able to reconcile those accounts daily.

MR. HODDER: Yes, but that would be done by the High Sheriff's Office itself.

MR. ROBERTS: Yes.

MR. HODDER: But in view of getting an independent audit done on the efficiency of the system, and how well it has been implemented, we wouldn't want to wait until shall we say next year to have a review done by the Auditor General's Office or some other office independent. On a daily basis, all of the accounts should be rectified; however, in view of the fact that the system which did exist wasn't working right, and it is taking it a long time to slip into disrepute, you might say, I am asking the minister: Does he have provision made for the monitoring of the new system so as to ensure that indeed the system that is there is working as it should be working?

MR. ROBERTS: I'm not sure I can answer that with a word or two. There are two or three checks on any system, Mr. Chairman. My friend referred to one of them, the Auditor General, who comes in later on, after the end of the year, and she does an audit using whatever techniques she judges appropriate. But that is long after the event, in this case.

MR. HODDER: The horse is out of the barn by that time.

MR. ROBERTS: Usually well gone by then.

MR. HODDER: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: Then there are two other checks. There is an internal audit group within the government which is - Treasury Board or Finance?

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: It is part of Treasury Board, and they audit (inaudible). Now, an audit by definition is a sample, as my friend knows. You can't possibly check every entry everywhere. Secondly, within each department, there are management groups in addition to the management themselves, if you can follow the Irish in that one, and the initial responsibility rests with the High Sheriff, Mr. Thoms, who has been there for a number of years, and as far as we know is capable, competent, and is doing his job well.

In addition to that, as I mentioned, we have seconded a person from the accounts division in the department and sent - it is man (inaudible), isn't it?

AN OFFICIAL: From headquarters.

MR. ROBERTS: It is a headquarters person down (inaudible) to bolster the field operation.

Then, in addition, Mr. Dicks and his associates in the Finance and General Operations division have lots to do. One of the things they have to do is to watch to make sure all of our systems are working fairly well. I'm not sure that meets the letter of what the Auditor General may recommend in there but there are times when with all the goodwill in the world we are not able to do what the Auditor General recommends. There are times when we are not even sure we should try to do it, but we are trying to improve the systems and I believe we have done it. And there is money. The money we ask for this year would be enough to enable us to do what we plan to do.

MR. HODDER: I'm sure the minister would be well aware of the fact that there are some concerns within the community in the last year or so about trust funds and the manner in which trusts are, shall we say, administered by certain people in the legal business. We want the public to have absolute trust in the fact that the government, as the administrators of the Province, can assure all members of the public that the Office of the High Sheriff is running in a very efficient and trustworthy manner.

However, on page 106 of the Auditor General's report, she outlines the authority of the court. She also notes some of the weaknesses. I will just read a couple of them: "During our audit, the following weaknesses were noted in" the area of - this is the Inventory Held In Trust on page 106 - "the seizure is often performed by only one employee; there is no formal review process of seizure policies; the Office has no storage facilities for property seized and held in trust and must consequently rely on third parties for this function; there is no process in place to ensure all items seized are recorded in the inventory ledger...." It says: "formal reports on the sale of seized assets are not always prepared; no documentation is maintained on the witnessing of the Sheriff's sales...." It goes on down through.

Then the recommendation is: "Appropriate measures should be taken to ensure weaknesses identified are addressed. An inventory control system should be developed and implemented to accurately account for seizures and subsequent disposition of assets."

I ask the minister, has his review of the Office, in addition to the accounting procedures, addressed these items as well?

MR. ROBERTS: The answer is yes. I don't want to take away from the "yes," I'm not trying to hedge on it. Some of the Auditor General's concerns are difficult to address in a practical sense. "A seizure is often performed by only one employee." Now, in effect, it would mean doubling the staff of the Sheriff's Office. If we were to say to have two employees, it is my judgement that is not the way to go. The way to go is to have a proper system of records in place. I would say to my friend - I want to make sure there s no misunderstanding - when he spoke of trust accounts, sure, this is trust money, it is somebody else's money which the Sheriff is holding.

MR. HODDER: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: But the trust account - generally when we use trust accounts - and he referred to a level of concern in the public which I think is legitimate; it is there and it is a legitimate one - we are talking, I think, of other things altogether. We have, unfortunately, seen a couple of cases this year where members of the Bar have been charged and convicted with improper handling of trust accounts. Now, this is not the sort of thing the Sheriff - these are cases where lawyers were holding money in behalf of clients and were found by the courts to be dealing with it improperly.

The Sheriff has a very different role. He does, I guess it is fair to say, two things. He seizes property to satisfy judgements and sells it at public auction. My friend may have seen notices in the newspaper. Secondly, if one has a garnishee order in place - if the hon. member's salary should be garnisheed to pay debts, you know, in a court judgement - then the Sheriff is responsible for receiving that money and paying it out. In each case those are trust funds but they are a little different.

But the answer was yes, we are trying to address these issues. We may not, in each case, agree with the Auditor General's comments or even her detailed recommendations, but that doesn't take away from the heft of her concern.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. We now go to Ms. Cowan.

MS. COWAN: Thank you very much.

First of all I want to commend the minister - and I'm not doing this just because I happen to be a member of his party and it is appropriate to start off commending the minister and his or her department - but I really am pleased with the innovative way in which you are trying to address the situation in Davis Inlet. I was really pleased with that announcement in the House the other day, and I think that is the first step in probably providing some innovative approaches to people who have a different culture and different expectations and different experiences in how they live and how they govern themselves. My congratulations to you on that.

The other thing that I was really pleased about, and I want to ask a couple of questions - I am chairing this children's interest thing and we went out West to have a look at some of the programs that are happening for children out there. In British Columbia they actually have privatized their support enforcement services. You are probably aware of that. They do a really good job of getting fathers - which in 95 per cent of the cases it is fathers who are not paying their child support - to pay it. When I had first become an MHA, I often had a few complaints about our system here. I haven't had any in the last few years. Also, the people in B.C. spoke quite highly of the people on the West Coast who are looking after our support enforcement.

I was just wondering if you can give me any stats on that, Minister, or if any of your officials could, just to see how indeed we are doing - how many people may have applied over the year for assistance, how many we are able to help, what happens when we can't get somebody to pay, and so on.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, my friend, the Member for Conception Bay South has raised a very broad subject and a very important one. Let me make a couple of comments. My judgement is that the officials at the Support Enforcement Agency are doing a tremendous job under very difficult circumstances. They are heavily overworked. We have not been able to increase the number of people there this year. We have added four in the last three years and I take some measure of pride in being associated with that. There are sixteen there now, and their leader is a man named Cy Simmons who does a tremendous job.

MS. COWAN: Well, that's good, because I would think the stress - the more people we can have there the better but we don't have a magic wand to put just everybody we need - with the stress associated with people calling in, having people there to address it is really important, so I am glad to see that you have added people.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Cummings is the official director responsible for the SEA. He may have some numbers so I will ask him to speak in a moment. But, to make a general comment or two - the service is absolutely essential. Now, whether we should privatize it, I could be open-minded, and there is no magic in government doing it, but one would have to be convinced that -

MS. COWAN: I am not really saying that tonight. It is just interesting that it was proposed.

MR. ROBERTS: I think most people have looked at the knowledge that the service in this Province has been developed into a very effective one. Now, the problem comes when somebody does not want to pay, and it is amazing the lengths to which people will go in two senses. We have a number of cases where individuals have chosen to try to fight the system and have burned up an immense amount of time and effort in going to court. The response of government through the Justice officials is we assign civil solicitors and we represent these people.

Without naming them I can think of at least two where we have spent at least $50,000 more in lawyer's time to fight a case. In these two I have in mind it was a man who feels he doesn't have to pay the court order and will go to immense lengths to try not to do it. The other thing people do, of course, is try to run away, hide, or get lost, to be loose. There are the answers to tighten up the system. We have made significant progress across Canada. We need some moves from the Federal Government. We have seen some.

We were able this year to add TAGS. I suppose I have spent hours trying to persuade the federal system to move to add TAGS. We have 29,000 people in this Province who are on TAGS. Some of them are on the receiving end of support orders, and some of those on the receiving end of support orders don't want to pay. It is not difficult to get Ottawa to agree, but it is difficult to get them to do anything. It is like an elephant up there. So we have now added TAGS. I don't think there are too many holes. It still never ceases to amaze me that somebody who is in a relationship, has a child, and then tries to shirk the duty to provide that child with a reasonable amount of support.

I am not sure I have answered the member's questions.

MS. COWAN: It worries me a little bit because there would probably be more family breakdown in the Province. I guess we can predict it with reasonable certainty because of the stress and strains of economics and so on, and the hard economic times we are living in. It is the sort of thing that I hope you and your staff will remain really vigilant on.

Could you tell me how many people you served, for example? Would you have that kind of statistic here?

MR. ROBERTS: The answer is, I don't. There is a report which I have seen and I will ask Mr. Cummings to send me on one.

MS. COWAN: Perhaps what we can do is when it is time for some of the public hearings we could maybe call on Mr. Cummings to make a presentation to us at the Children's Interest Committee, but it certainly is an interest of mine.

The other thing you know I like to do is read mysteries.

MR. ROBERTS: I hope you didn't find too many in these estimates.

MS. COWAN: No, but I was looking at forensic pathology. Do we have coroners in Canada?

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, some provinces have them; Newfoundland and Labrador doesn't.

MS. COWAN: Would they provide the same or similar as forensic pathology? This isn't really related to expenditures, but it is something that -

MR. ROBERTS: It sounds like Agatha Christie.

The coroner, in my understanding, is a very old and British quasi-judicial office, and I guess there are really as many versions of what a coroner does as there are jurisdictions. In some places in Canada they are called a chief medical examiner, or medical examiner assistant, but basically what happens is if you get an unexpected or unexplained death, the coroner/chief medical examiner is the means by which the state tries to assure itself that nothing untoward has happened.

Our system here is under review. I don't want to get too specific, if I may, but we are having a look at it. We have some splendid people, Dr. Charlie Hutton and Dr. Simon Avis are the two names that are best known. I don't think there are any huge gaps in the system, but the question is whether we can make it work more effectively.

MS. COWAN: So if now, for an example... We certainly don't spend a lot of money, it seems, in that area, which is maybe a positive thing, that we don't have that many sudden and unexpected deaths. When you hear the odd time of something happening in a hospital, there has been an error or whatever, does a coroner work at arm's length from government, or does it add any more - well, just the arm's length approach with this forensic pathologist services.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, the coroner is no more and no less at arm's length than Dr. Hutton. Dr. Hutton is rigorously independent and gives his views in the appropriate way without fear or favour. The estimate is - I believe that we spend directly on the service, but there are other amounts. For example, the police do a fair amount of investigation which can be tied into this.

Secondly, of course, we have a judicial inquiry system. My friend may have read of them from time to time. The reports are usually tabled in the House or made public by other means. I will give you one, for example; there was a case in Makkovik a year or two ago where a man was shot by an RCM Police officer. There was a judicial inquiry held into that, and the report was tabled and made public. There is a case, remember over in Carbonear a couple of years ago, a person died while undergoing an operation. There was a judicial inquiry into that. These are quite common where necessary, and the cost of them does not show up here. That is borne, in fact, through the provincial court and through the Crown attorneys.

MS. COWAN: Okay, thank you; those are all the questions I have. I was going to ask Harvey to time me so that I wouldn't go for more than ten minutes. Did I, Harvey?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair was timing you.

MS. COWAN: Okay.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Careen.

MR. CAREEN: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just going on to what the Member for Bonavista South had to say, we all know people have been victims of boys' heads on men's shoulders, a polite way to put it.

I don't have much to say about Justice, although justice is the soft underbelly of our democracy.

MR. ROBERTS: A Churchill phrase, not a bad one.

MR. CAREEN: What?

MR. ROBERTS: It was Churchill's phrase.

MR. CAREEN: I have seen throughout there are parts where you have, this year from last year, some monies for information technology. There are increases in some areas, decreases in others. May I ask, is that where, like last year, they bought some computerized materials and this year they might have to put it into another division? It is listed throughout `Information and Technology'. In some areas there are increases from last year; in other areas they are decreased from last year.

MR. ROBERTS: I think, Mr. Chairman, from the notes I have here, and through my own knowledge, I can probably address any specific item, but let me tell you how IT works throughout the government. In fact, at budget time we consider this separately in that we look across the whole government service, and let's say it comes to $20 million; then, the individual amounts are allocated through to the departments, and in the departments to the various subheads.

The Justice Department uses a great deal of new information systems simply because justice sometimes has masses of information. For example, in the court system keeping track of fines and traffic tickets, we spend a lot of money on that. The money goes on two things, software and hardware, and I have to be careful because I am on the verge of getting out of my depth in this technical stuff - I really know that you pull a switch and it goes on or off - but basically we invest large sums of money in software. Once that is in, you don't have to spend more. In hardware we seem to be spending each year as we need more computer units and what have you.

Now, there are also two other things. The lawyers now, many of them, use computers as word processors for research and for timekeeping purposes, and there is some money in here, I believe, to cover the cost of purchasing additional units. The other comment I make in a general way - and I say to my friend, the Member for Placentia, as there are specific questions I will try to deal with them - is the Justice Department maintains an extraordinarily good library/legal information system. It is not the Library of Congress, it is not the University of Toronto Law School, but it is a very good research facility and by far and away the best in the Province, and is used very heavily by members of the Bar and the Bench as well as by lawyers and people within government. We have spent a lot of money in the last few years on IT systems in there. There is a huge new library on the fifth floor. It is next to the wing that is being renovated now for the Opposition offices.

We have also, in the last year, brought together - there were a number of various collections throughout the government that have been brought together in one. For example, IGA had huge historical documents bearing on aboriginal issues and some of their policies. These have been folded into Justice and we now have a central index to them, and that is costly.

I can hop around, but the point is that there are a lot of individual items within these items. Does that help? If not, try me again.

Let me make one other comment to what the hon. member said, a child's head on a man's body, or the other way around.

MR. CAREEN: A boy's head on a man's shoulders.

MR. ROBERTS: I once knew a young woman who said she had the mind of a twenty-year-old and the body of a sixteen-year-old. My answer was: Better that than the mind of a sixteen-year-old in the body of a twenty-two-year-old. Think on that one.

MR. CAREEN: Section 4.1.03, Police Services, Northeast Avalon, Labrador West, and the City of Corner Brook, there is over $200,000 less just for salaries alone. Is the Constabulary being cut back in those regions?

MR. ROBERTS: The answer is no, but let me see you turn up the exact thing, page 7. I will read the note: A net reduction of $158,700 in the salary allocations between the administration and police service activities can primarily be attributed to the following: salary plan measures of $67,600; compensation reductions of $77,000 and vacant positions reverting to step 1 on the respective salary scales. But we are not reducing the number of officers in either location.

MR. CAREEN: Okay.

MR. ROBERTS: Unfortunately, we aren't increasing them either, but there are no changes in the complement of the RNC.

MR. CAREEN: Not in here, but ever since back in Mr. Smallwood's time, and we've never got much support from the feds upalong - there a few years ago they announced it, the idea of a federal penitentiary. Is there any talk of that at all, or is our government still from time to time making requests to the feds to fulfil their promise?

MR. ROBERTS: Our position is very clear and the answer to the question asked by my friend is yes. The promise was made repeatedly up till about 1989, and in fact, I believe shortly before a public consultation which took place in that year, land was purchased over the Harbour Grace area, if memory serves me correctly. A public consultation took place and that was the last we heard of the proposal to build the penitentiary.

There is a need for it, we believe there is an equitable right for it. It is wrong in the correctional sense for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to have to leave the Province. It means it is much more difficult for their families to see them and the whole rehabilitation process is detrimentally affected. The Government of Canada have not built any new institutions. We believe the next one they build should be here but I can't tell the Committee that we have any commitment on that. But we have raised it. I have been at meetings in the last month, in which it has come up. It is a matter we constantly press with Ottawa.

MR. CAREEN: We see in this country, too, particularly in the West, an extreme right-wing movement about every time there is some kind of a crime with an habitual criminal or a person they figure got out too early. There is more of a sense of keeping people in prison longer than they are usually - up to the present day. I think our - I'm just curious. I asked you were you keeping on pressing and you are, but this is happening. We hear it every day. law enforcement and people's groups across this country asking why people should stay in prison longer.

I suppose that is alright for some people. We see some people who have been paroled to Newfoundland when they should have been probably paroled to a bigger city than to some small outport in which the amenities are lacking. I believe there are some people who should have a chance and there are other people who shouldn't have. There are types of people you have to deal with.

Correctional Facilities, over to 4.2.05. There are parts of the Penitentiary - I haven't been in there yet.

MR. ROBERTS: The prisons act makes the hon. gentleman a visitor. The good news is, a visitor, if he goes in, can come out at will.

MR. CAREEN: Yes. As Ray Guy used to call it, the `Walled-Off Astoria.' There have been some renovations done over there over this past while. This year there have been no renovations. You hear stories from time to time that there are parts of that place in very bad need of repair. Is that a fact or is it just talk by someone who wasn't really made feel welcome while a guest there?

MR. ROBERTS: As with many situations, Mr. Chairman, the answer would have to be a little of each. I have been in the Penitentiary a number of times since I became minister. I don't claim to be expert but I have some understanding of it, and I have, of course, spoken with the officials. We have addressed the worst of the problem. The Centre Block no longer houses prisoners. It has now been made into an office and ancillary facility place. I forget the name of it, the ones they use for the prisoners during the weekend sentences.

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The ones near the Forest Road side. There is some space, I'm told, in Centre Block for intermittents as well. The Centre Block is the oldest part of the prison. It was built about 1857. There is a section of six or eight cells, that was built, I thought it was after the Second World War, which are pretty dismal, and that is where people end up if they are sent in for drunk driving on an intermittent weekend sentence. That may be the same ones. They have been renovated. They aren't the Holiday Inn or the Delta or the Hotel Newfoundland, and there is no room service. But they are up to at least acceptable standards and in many cases better.

There is also a concern with housekeeping that my friend may hear about from time to time. That is a constant concern. I think the staff of the Penitentiary, the superintendent, Don Saunders, and the people there, do the best they can and, in my view, do it very well. Is it perfect? I have to be honest and say no. Could it be better? Probably, but no matter what we do there are always going to be problems. I think, by and large, the prison system in the Province - and I am speaking only of provincial prisoners, two years and a day and less - can stand comparison with any in the country, either in accommodations or in staff or in results.

MR. CAREEN: That is all for now, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Careen.

Mr. Langdon.

MR. LANGDON: Yes. Many of the councils in the Provinces, the minister suggested today, are having difficulty with accounts receivable and so on. Because the court system is tied up in other areas with other jurisdictions I was wondering if it would be feasible, or if any thought could be given to it, to have a circuit judge who could be assigned, say, to the councils to take people who are in arrears to the councils to court, paying 10 per cent of the amount that is probably collected to the Justice department so that it wouldn't cost any extra funding to the government as such, but in the meantime, helping out those municipalities which are having difficulty in getting their cases to the court.

We talked to one council today which said they had last year one opportunity to go to court, to take people to court; and their accounts receivable are substantial, and if you give it to a collection agency you pay all your money away that you try to collect. Is that possible?

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, it is an intriguing suggestion and I guess it is an idea probably the time for which has come - the syntax is a little fractured in that sentence...an idea whose time may have come. I can only make some very general comments, but a couple of things.

First of all, I think the government have a responsibility to ensure that any litigant including, in this case, a municipal council, has an opportunity to get a day in court within a reasonable period of time. I think one of the things that society undertakes when we set up courts is to allow matters to be dealt with reasonably promptly and reasonably effectively. On the criminal side we have, of course, the responsibilities and the rights conferred by the 1982 charter which, as amplified by the courts, lays really some quite strict guidelines down. That is one comment.

The second is that the constitution of the courts lies within the jurisdiction of this House which it has exercised through the judicature act, under which the Supreme Court Trial Division and the Court of Appeal function, and the Provincial Court act under which the Provincial Court functions. Subject to some constitutional restrictions, drawing from the principle that we cannot derogate from the federally appointed courts, the section 96 courts, we cannot derogate from their authority, we can adjust and re-adjust, and we have over the years. For example, the District Court - when I came to the Bar there was a District Court as well as a Supreme Court. We now have no District Court. The District Court and the Supreme Court were merged in 1986, if memory serves me.

The third comment is we do have one or two dedicated courts, dedicated by subject matter. We have a Traffic Court which sits here in St. John's and we have a Unified Family Court which has jurisdiction for, what, the eastern part of the Avalon?

MS. SPRACKLIN: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: The eastern - draw a line from, say, Holyrood to Whitbourne, wherever. Both of those are courts that specialize in particular subjects. So, in a sense, there is no reason why we couldn't have a municipal court or a debt collection court, but also, my deputy quite rightly tells me, the Provincial Court has small claims jurisdiction and functions as a small claims court.

I would like to look at the idea. I hadn't been aware until very recently that it was posing a problem. I would like to look at the idea to see what could be done, but I will acknowledge that the government have an obligation to ensure that people who wish to have resort to the courts can have their cases dealt with fairly and promptly. Remember what the courts are. The courts are simply the means by which we settle our disputes as opposed to out behind the barn with fists or down in front of the stable with six-guns and a shootout at the O.K. Corral. I would like to think about the idea, which is an intriguing one, and if there is a problem we shall have to address it.

MR. LANGDON: Okay. The other thing - from the department, are there are any capital projects this year in the Province?

MR. ROBERTS: The capital votes, of course, are carried in -

MR. LANGDON: Works, Services and Transportation?

MR. ROBERTS: - in Works, Services and Transportation. So you will have to ask my colleague for details. I can tell you where our priorities are. How far we can go as to addressing them I can't say.

We have identified the need for a new court building in Clarenville. There is a Provincial Court judge stationed there, and the Supreme Court sits there on circuit fairly frequently. I don't know - does anybody...?

AN OFFICIAL: One week in a month.

MR. ROBERTS: One week a month at present. There is also a court in Grand Bank. We have a court at Grand Bank, one at Gander, and one in St. John's, and then Clarenville is the only circuit point in between. So there is a need, we think, to build or provide by whatever means, a new facility there.

The other situation we have happens to be in my own constituency in Happy Valley - Goose Bay where you have a Supreme Court judge, Mr. Justice O'Regan, sitting permanently, and there is a Provincial Court judge, Mr. Judge Power, sitting permanently. There is often a second Provincial Court judge, because Happy Valley is the base for the circuits along the northern coast of Labrador as well as Western Labrador. We have a fine court facility in Western Labrador and no judge stationed there. In Happy Valley - Goose Bay we are working in both cases with rented facilities which are not ideal.

MR. LANGDON: No.

MR. ROBERTS: And the leases on each are either up or about to come up in the next few months. The issue is whether we should attempt to acquire a new facility by some means or whether we should go on with leases. My friend will acknowledge, Mr. Chairman, that courts are really purpose-made buildings and it is not possible to go out every two or three years, as you might with an ordinary office space. You have to go out for a longer-term lease and at some point, it might make sense to acquire a building either by purchase or by a long-term lease and dedicate it to the courts. So, whenever we are able to do something, it will be in those two places first, and those are our priorities.

MR. LANGDON: Okay. I would like to ask one more question if I could.

A constituent of mine has a physical impairment, a speech impairment, and needed a legal aid person, because he couldn't afford it himself, to accompany him to court. The two cases - I believe it was impaired, and harassment is another charge up against him. But the letter that he got back from, I think it was the Central Newfoundland judge in Grand Falls, saying that for summation cases, no legal aid person could be given to this individual -

MR. ROBERTS: For summary convictions?

MR. LANGDON: I was wondering if that was correct or if there could be an appeal or whatever the case might be. The person has approached me, but I haven't done anything about it; and I thought it was a good time to bring it up.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, my deputy minister sits as a member ex-officio on the Legal Aid Commission. The basic rule is, summary conviction offences do not qualify one for legal aid unless there is a significant risk of incarceration, but what I would say to my friend is: the reason we draw the line is simply that there is a limit on the money, and the line is drawn to exclude the less serious offences but if it is somebody who cannot make himself heard or -

MR. LANGDON: This person would have great difficulty; in fact I don't think that the judge or anyone else could understand his lingo because of the physical impairment.

MR. ROBERTS: Just give him your name for Hansard.

MS. SPRACKLIN: The court will provide either interpretation services or you know, whatever is required for a person to make himself understood.

MR. LANGDON: Yes. The two or three times that the person has gone to the court, nothing had been provided for him whatsoever.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, let me then say, that individual should do one of two things, either raise the matter with the Crown Attorney who has a responsibility - the Crown Attorney is an officer of the court and his or her job is not to secure convictions, his or her job is to ensure that matters are prosecuted fairly. The Crown Attorney should do that; if not, or in addition, that person should feel free either to write to the deputy minister, to me, or to the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court. If I get a letter, I will pass it to the Chief Judge, who will attend to it.

MR. LANGDON: Okay.

MR. ROBERTS: But, as the deputy says, I mean, interpreters are provided and there is no difference between somebody who cannot speak English or French; we have a capability to conduct trials in either language; or somebody who cannot speak because of a physical or other impairment.

MR. LANGDON: Because of the physical impairment, he can't hear very well -

MR. ROBERTS: Well, then, we would have to address (inaudible).

MR. LANGDON: - and can't speak very well.

MR. ROBERTS: The court has a responsibility to ensure that a person accused of a crime is able to comprehend and deal with the charge on its merits.

MR. LANGDON: The person contacted me and I didn't do anything about it because I saw a letter where it said: summary -

MR. ROBERTS: Summary conviction.

MR. LANGDON: - but I thought there might be some extenuating circumstances here and I should probably ask him to write.

MS. SPRACKLIN: Legal Aid would generally consist of legal representation and advice. The services provided by the court would be, for example: Interpreters for the deaf or people to assist hearing-impaired, all that sort of thing, is the type of thing - or language barriers; so there are different functions. If you would like to give me a call tomorrow with the name of the individual, I can try to follow up and see what -

MR. LANGDON: Yes. I would do that, and thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Harris.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Minister, if I may, first of all - I am just trying to sort out what the implications are for the estimates for the current circumstances we are facing with yourself as a Government House Leader and not the minister. Do we have an overlap in the votes on Page 243, in vote l.l.01 and the votes on Page 15, 2.2.02? I note there is an amount for salaries in both, in transportation and communications, etc., on the Government House Leader's side that weren't there before but now are, and I understand that one might expect to have estimates for the minister's office, the Minister of Justice, because the situation you are in may change. To what extent do we have an overlap here? I note that the Departmental Salary Details -

MS. COWAN: What page?

MR. HARRIS: Page 243 and page 15 are the two, but in the Departmental Salary Estimates on page l63, there is an executive assistant to the minister, etc., those kinds of positions. I have the page wrong, I am sorry. On page 159, the executive assistant to the minister shows up there, and I am just wondering to what extent we have an overlap there.

MR. ROBERTS: Let me answer that.

MR. HARRIS: I am not trying to embarrass anybody, except to find out.

MR. ROBERTS: The question is a fair one and I would be delighted to try to answer it. The Premier mentioned in the Committee of the Whole in the House today that neither he nor I is paid more than once but each is paid once. The estimates on pages 15 and 243, in each case provide a salary for a minister, and they also provide a salary for what we refer to as the political secretary and, in each case, provide for the executive assistant to the minister. Now, when I left Justice at the end of November, whatever the day was, my executive assistant came with me and my political secretary came with me.

MR. HARRIS: So, you have one of each.

MR. ROBERTS: I have one of each.

MR. HARRIS: So there is one minister, only one EA and one political secretary?

MR. ROBERTS: Yes. Mr. O'Regan is my executive assistant and my political secretary is a lady named Mrs. Pierpoint who has worked with me for many years. They are now being paid, as am I, out of subhead 2.2.02, and, in addition, my travel and so forth is charged against that. The $10,000 is, I guess, the number as to what I have spent against that head since, whenever I moved down in it, the end of November, or whenever. There is one other secretary, the so-called departmental secretary, Ms. Stewart, who has been with the department for six or seven years. She worked with Ms. Verge. She is still up on the fourth floor and my cabinet papers are still up on the fourth floor, because that is a secure place, and all that stuff.

There is no addition in staff and there are no extra expenditures being incurred, it is just they are being paid out of two heads. If, at some point, the Premier appoints somebody to be the Minister of Justice, then there will be adequate money to pay that person and his or her staff. If that person is me, then there will be no more expenditures charged to 2.2.02.

MR. HARRIS: So, under 2.2.02 there is no additional secretary.

MR. ROBERTS: No.

MR. HARRIS: Is there a political secretary?

MR. ROBERTS: I have the same three people working with me that I had before. Ms. Stewart remains on the Justice payroll. When she is not doing things at my request she is working under the deputy minister's direction. Mrs. Pierpoint and Mr. O'Regan are working with me on the main floor. There is no extra staff. I have no extra travel either.

MR. HARRIS: Speaking of support and executive support for the department, in the Department of Justice - and I am not an expert on the running of your department, Minister, but it seems to me there is quite a lot of, I won't say top-heavy, although in looking at executive support, in addition to the deputy minister there are three assistant deputy ministers. Well, actually there are four because there is another one that appears over on page 163. There are three ADMs on page 159, and another ADM on page 163 in the Legislative Council, and there is an associate as well. So there is a deputy minister -

MR. ROBERTS: No, there is no associate. That position has been abolished, has it not?

MR. HARRIS: Well, it is listed as a permanent position on page 159, at a salary of $89,000 under the Departmental Salary Details, if you want to have a look at that.

MR. ROBERTS: I don't have - if Ms. Spracklin would be kind enough to pass me the Departmental Salary Details.

MR. HARRIS: Seamus has one there behind you.

MR. ROBERTS: Okay, I have one here.

MR. HARRIS: I am just looking at the staff complement, page 159. The permanent staff complement shows the DM, Ms. Spracklin, of course, one associate, three ADMs there, and then another over on page 163 under the Legislative Counsel.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, let me outline the structure of executive and see if we can get to this. There is the deputy minister, of course, Ms. Spracklin. There are, in fact, four ADMs in Justice. There is no associate deputy minister, and I have just checked with Mr. Cummings and Ms. Spracklin; nobody has held that position within ten, have they?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: During my time there, there has been no person. Let me tell you who the ADMs are: Mr. Cummings is Civil Law, and has the responsibility for a number of those areas; Mr. Lake is the Legislative Counsel - we see him sometimes here in the House - and he ranks as an ADM. He runs the Legislative Counsel's office; Mr. Ralph Alcock is the ADM, Public Protection and Support Services, and the title really conveys his name; then, there is an ADM for Consumer Affairs, and that is filled on an acting basis by Mr. Winston Morris, who has been seconded from Finance.

There are other senior people in the department. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Flynn, functions essentially independently, the DPP, fourth to the deputy AG and to the AG, but the DPP, in practice, in reality and in law, is independent. But there is no associate deputy minister.

Now, my friend is going to ask what the vote is there, and I cannot answer. I confess, I never noticed it there before.

MR. HARRIS: I don't know if there is a vote associated with that, and -

MR. ROBERTS: And there is no proposal to appoint one.

MR. HARRIS: Okay.

MR. ROBERTS: There will be a -

MR. HARRIS: So that is an unfilled position, presumably.

MR. ROBERTS: Nobody quite knows, but there will be some interesting questions. Treasury Board will want to know about that, too.

MR. HARRIS: Yes, maybe they will want the money back.

I also note, since we are on the Departmental Salary Details, and I am sure Ms. Spracklin probably has only one secretary, it may surprise her to find out that she also has one on page 163 in the Supreme Court Trial Division. Around half-way down there is a secretary to the deputy minister right in the middle of all of that.

MR. ROBERTS: I was meeting today with a judge of the court and that came up. I can only assume that person is ranked as a secretary to the deputy minister, which is a rank within the public service when each - what do they call it, a GL or GS, what the devil they call those things?

MS. SPRACKLIN: There is, in fact, a classification called Secretary to a Deputy Minister or equivalent, and I guess the Chief Officer of the Court is considered a deputy minister or equivalent.

MR. HARRIS: It doesn't seem to be as important as Secretary to the Chief Justice, though, I might add.

MR. ROBERTS: We have to agree with that. That is Barry Sparkes' secretary, the Registrar's secretary.

MR. HARRIS: So that is the Secretary to the Registrar?

MR. ROBERTS: But the woman - I assume it is a woman - has the rank or has the status as a deputy minister's secretary. The deputy minister does not have two secretaries.

MR. HARRIS: No, I didn't think so but I just - because we were looking at anomalies around here. I thought that stuck out as a significant one.

MR. ROBERTS: Of course, I happened to be meeting today with a Judge of the Supreme Court who raised the same question.

MR. HARRIS: In the Administrative Support side, again I am looking at the amounts voted for - my friend, Mr. Careen, the Member for Placentia, brought up Information Technology. It seems to be a great place to store lots of money in the departments, and I see it throughout, not just in small amounts but in very large and significant amounts. I see, for example, in the Administrative Support side of the department $193,000 this year and nearly $600,000 last year. I guess the only thing I have to compare it to, from a practical point of view, is something like - on page 246 vote 2.1.03, the Registration of Deeds and Companies has a vote of $184,000 on Information Technology. It seems to me, that is a particular exercise that is full of a need for expenditures of that nature to run the information retrieval system, the recording of deeds and companies and constant and daily access to that system by myriads of people in the department and throughout the Province. Yet, on the administrative side of the department there is a larger amount, $193,000 for the Administrative Support side. Now, this is, I must say, in addition to $54,000 in the Sheriff's Office, $158,000 in Support Enforcement, $37,000 in Legal Information Services; those significant numbers throughout there, $35,000 in Legislative Counsel, and I guess if you went on through you would find significant amounts here and there; Provincial courts, understandably, $409,000 on Information Technology because they have a great deal of information to look after; Fines and Administration, another $296,000. It seems to be a really significant amount of money throughout the department on what comes under the grounds of Information Technology. I acknowledge that you are not an expert on this, perhaps someone on the administrative side with your team here could tell us why we are looking at such a large expenditure on the administrative side for Information Technology and why such a large - large this year comparatively speaking but almost three times as much as that actually spent last year?

MR. ROBERTS: Well, Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned in response to an earlier question, Justice is a huge consumer of information technology simply because Justice ends up with situations where it has masses of information and the requirement that the information be assimilated and be recallable, which is a classic IT situation if I understand the IT business at all and I don't pretend to be expert at it. Generally speaking this year the requests for IT votes are down and I am told the reason for that is because, first of all, this decreased mainframe costs for NISL. Now, NISL is the successor to NLCS. NLCS was our own in-house agency and now we are out to NISL and apparently the mainframe costs are down, I suspect that means we will see it some other way.

Secondly, we have discontinued the WordPerfect CAP program. Now, I do not know what the devil CAP is. Canada Assistance Plan program. That is what CAP is. I should have know that, shouldn't I? Professional resources were not required due to the cancellation of the Atlantic innovative justice system project. Nova Scotia and PEI pulled out of that and New Brunswick decided to implement their own. That was a process to try to develop common systems across the four Atlantic Provinces.

Now, I can go through each individual vote, if my friend wants, and indeed will be glad to do it. We are not spending as much as we would like to spend but we are spending more than some people say we can afford to spend. Generally speaking we are in many areas using information technology to great effect in justice. The fined administration programs are heavy consumers. The provincial court does extremely well in case management. I am not sure the Supreme Court has yet caught up to that but we are hoping they will in due course.

MS. COWAN: (inaudible) as a good example and I wish the other departments in government were doing it.

MR. ROBERTS: The Support Enforcement Agency relies heavily on computer technology.

MR. HARRIS: I understand that in some individual circumstances, Registry of Deeds, Support Enforcement, Provincial Courts, Fines, they are the hands-on handlers of the information. I am just curious about the large amount in the administrative side of things. I am again looking at that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Actually, your time is up. You can have one more short question in this round, and then we will go back around again.

MR. HARRIS: I guess I can finish the question.

MR. ROBERTS: Perhaps the deputy minister who has a great more knowledge than do I can address that, because I think she can provide more detail.

MR. HARRIS: I haven't finished the question yet. I was in mid-sentence when the Chair intervened.

As I said, I was not particularly concerned about the hands-on part, but on the administrative side it seemed high, and again looking at the administrative side of the department it seems that - and again there may be some corrections from the salary details, but I see a lot of staff positions associated with that as well. For example, a director of information technology, a manager of information technology, two computer analysts, one computer support specialist, along with other managerial analysts and that sort, all seem to be related to information and computer technology. Is all of this necessary or is there some way this can be streamlined at the administrative level? I also see a huge increase in transportation and communications on the administrative side, from about $320,000 to $534,000 on the administrative side of the department.

MR. ROBERTS: Let me deal with that item and then I will ask the deputy to deal with what the administrative support group does. The explanation for Subhead l.2.02 (03) which is Transportation and Communications, there is an increase of $215,000. The government have re-allocated the cost of operating the 911 emergency line and that is the Justice share of it which essentially is the police share. The City of St. John's will bear the fire share and the health department estimates will have an item in them that reflects the hospital share, so that is what that is.

MR. HARRIS: The new provincial plan or just the St. John's one?

MR. ROBERTS: That is a proportionate share of the operating costs to the City of St. John's for the use of the 911 emergency line. We allocated the amounts. It was being borne previously by Municipal Affairs and it is now being carried here. The 911 system, the new Province-wide one that my friend the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs announced the other day, is a different one, but this will be subsumed into it in my understanding. I don't think it is a new expenditure; it is simply a re-allocation to get the votes a little more (inaudible). One would find a corresponding reduction in the Municipal and Provincial Affairs estimates.

I will ask the Deputy Minister to deal with the administrative support issue.

MS. SPRACKLIN: Mr. Harris, I think the IT issue and where it is allocated in the administrative support services, they provide the support services, the consulting services and whatnot to all areas of the department. Then in addition to that you may find IT votes in various divisions where they may have a person allocated permanently on an ongoing basis.

The administrative support services have devised an information technology plan for the entire department which would take you through the spectrum of the policing, courts, corrections, the whole area; civil division, registry of deeds, bills of sale. They've tried to develop a strategic plan so that we can prioritize where we spend what money we do get and where our priorities are; devise systems that are integrated and can speak to each other so that we are not duplicating and triplicating. That is a central function that serves the whole department.

MR. HARRIS: So your computer systems analyst who appears here in the minister's support may be out and helping out support enforcement set up their system and things like that.

MS. SPRACKLIN: That is correct.

MR. HARRIS: Okay.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We had planned on breaking for coffee at 8:20 p.m., 8:30 p.m. What is the wish of the Committee? Do we want to break for coffee or do we want to carry on?

MS. COWAN: I would love a cup of coffee but the thing is I'm being told that the roads are getting very bad. I don't know whether it would be appropriate for us to maybe try to clue up so we can get home safely. I maybe have the farthest to go and I will drive carefully if everybody else is dying for coffee, but....

AN OFFICIAL: You don't want to be dying.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe we will give Mr. Hodder ten minutes now and then we will go for coffee.

MR. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few questions. Just trying to find the right section here now. Page 254. It is on the Fines Administration. Last year there was a public statement by the Ministry as to the total amount of outstanding fines that were payable in the Province with the courts. I'm wondering if the minister could update us as to the collection rates and how the government's initiatives have fared over the past several months.

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, the answer is that we are making progress but we are still not there yet. We've added some people during the year and then the program which I announced, gosh, September, October? I forget when. There was a statement made, accompanied I believe, if memory serves me well, by advertisements in the newspaper saying pay up or else. It has produced some results. I don't have the data here. I can ask the officials to get them. We probably have them fairly easily available. I may even have them before the Committee finishes our work tonight.

Fines are sort of a difficult area. Fines are assessed and we pick up most of them through the motor vehicle registration system, which is the most efficient and effective method. Because most people, about 350,000 if memory serves me well, in the Province out of 600,000 have driver's licences and these must be renewed annually and as we all know when you go to renew your licence, if you have outstanding fines we pick them up and we say: No tickee, no laundry - no fine payment, no licence renewal. There are still significant, most of them quite old - I am trying to remember, I saw a dating not too long ago of the receivables - I am sorry, a table of receivables by date, by age, age receivables, and most of the ones in those settings now fall into three categories.

First of all, because of the annual renewal and the tri-annual renewal of motor vehicle licences, we are always running a year or two behind. Many people just don't bother paying parking tickets for argument sake, until it comes time to renew their licences. I am sure my friend pays his regularly if he gets any but many people don't.

Secondly, there are the very old ones that we really have to take out of the system; we have to come to grips with the matter and write them off as uncollectible or make an extraordinary effort and the third, are the ones that people have disappeared, died, left, gone bankrupt and what have you. The other difficulty to remember is, we are very limited in our remedy with these. If people don't pay their fines the penalty is, one goes to jail. In fact often fines are imposed - I don't know what, thirty days or so many dollars? Is that the way it works?

MS. SPRACKLIN: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: In default, one goes to jail. Now that's all terrific until you remember the jails are filled to overcrowding; we have very limited facilities in jails to hold people, in addition to which, it costs us money to hold people. In the lock-ups around the Province, if we have to bring in guards and attendants for the weekend customers, it often costs us more than we get so there is an area of judgement in there to be candid, that one has to look at, and I am not talking about people who have committed crimes of violence. These fines are civil fines, these are tickets, these are perhaps speeding tickets, that kind of thing; so we have made some progress, we have a long way to go and I suspect the Auditor General for years to come will have work cut out in that field.

MR. HODDER: (Inaudible) last autumn that spousal support payments would be enforced through the vehicle licensing system. Are there initiatives still under discussion in the ministry with that matter?

MR. ROBERTS: Yes. It is in fact a matter that the Cabinet is considering. We have not come to a decision at Cabinet, there are pros and there are cons but the suggestion is that we say: if one is behind in spousal support there is no license renewal until the spousal support is brought up to date. We have taken no decision as a government on it as yet but it is certainly a matter at which we are looking.

MR. HODDER: Is it correct to say that the ministry might also consider the collection of municipal taxes through the vehicle licensing sanctions?

MR. ROBERTS: I have not heard that suggestion made, Mr. Chairman. I don't want to take a run at it without having thought about it and taken counsel - what's that? Municipal taxes or municipal fines, my friend?

MR. HODDER: Municipal taxes.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh. We don't collect any taxes so my guess is the answer to that would be no. I am sorry, I had confused it with my friend from Fortune - Hermitage who asked a question about fines imposed for failure to pay taxes. But we are looking at trying to develop a piece of legislation. We have talked about this, what we call a Provincial Ticketing System, which would put a lot of offences on a slightly different basis and enable us to get at them through the motor vehicle system, which turns out to be a very effective revenue - it is not a revenue collection measure - a measure of collecting monies due to the government through fines, but how far one goes, how quickly one goes, these are areas for judgement, but we have never looked at municipal taxes and I am not sure we would.

MR. HODDER: What procedures are in place to write off uncollectibles?

MR. ROBERTS: Any write-off must be approved by Treasury Board, and there are policy manuals which say when fines or other debts are deemed to be uncollectible. I don't have the manuals here, but we could make them public; there is no secret about them.

The departmental group or agency would say: Let's have a list of our receivables and apply the standards in the procedure manual to decide which ones our candidates would write off. They would then send these to Treasury Board with a request for authority to write them off, and the Financial Administration Act places that jurisdiction with Treasury Board. Treasury Board would then put its own analyst to work on it and would come to a decision.

MR. HODDER: On the enforcement of spousal payments, one of the issues that my colleague mentioned for Conception Bay South was, of course, some of the procedures in other parts of Canada.

One of the things that I am aware of is that some initiatives, and I do believe supported by the minister, to have a more efficient Canada-wide system of spousal support, information sharing, tracking and follow-up procedures through the use of probably the SIN number. What is the status of these discussions between our provinces and also with the federal government?

MR. ROBERTS: We support these, and I just had a word with Mr. Cummings who follows these things in detail for me. There is a series of consultations going on among the provinces and Ottawa, but our position is that we support them and we are prepared to reciprocate. The basis for these is reciprocation. We would gladly enforce other province's orders if other provinces would enforce ours. I will leave it there unless you want me to get into the legal problems of judgements across provincial boundaries.

MR. HODDER: The difficulty, Mr. Minister, would be, in instances that I had to work with quite recently where it takes up to four to five to six months when someone leaves Newfoundland, say, to go to Alberta, and Alberta is one of the provinces that are more co-operative, as I understand it, but certainly when the person - most often it is the father - leaves Newfoundland and goes to Alberta, he may very well change his job. When he does, then the whole initiative has to start all over again.

The people in Alberta admit that they are going to service their own clients first, and I guess that in terms of how the bureaucracy responds that is understandable. The initiatives that I am talking about are initiatives which would be on a Calgary wide co-operative basis and other legal implications, jurisdictional problems with some provinces, and in some cases probably even threats to provincial rights and all the rest of it. It seems to me to be a very sensible, logical thing to do. I am wondering, what would prevent its implementation on a very co-operative basis.

MR. ROBERTS: I will ask Mr. Cummings to speak to that in detail in a moment. I will make a general observation by way of lead-in.

The problem grows from the act that within Confederation each of the eleven jurisdictions is sovereign within the parameters of the Constitution Act 1991 and 1992. Different jurisdictions - and perhaps different governments within each jurisdiction - have different views on how to do these things. For example, my friend mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman, the use of the motor vehicle registration system to collect spousal support orders. If there are ten jurisdictions that have motor registration systems there are about four views as to whether it is proper to use the motor vehicle system.

Some guys say: I have a right to drive a car, and if I won't pay for my kids why should you take away my licence to drive a car? Some governments subscribe to that. I will just ask Mr. Cummings to speak in detail, but that is the problem. Different people have different views on how these systems should be run. Of course, it is like the education system, with which my friend would be even more familiar. Why do we not have common exams in Canada, common curriculum in Canada? The answer is, provinces are sovereign within that area, and it may be the Province of Alberta has a different view of what is appropriate for history than the Province of Nova Scotia. That is why we don't have common curriculum, as I understand it. I will ask Mr. Cummings to speak in detail to that (inaudible).

MR. CUMMINGS: Yes. The problem of enforcing orders between provinces is probably the single biggest problem our agency faces. This is where we have our biggest problem with arrears. We are making very good progress everywhere else, I think, but in this one area where we can't enforce an order ourselves and have to send it to another province I think you are right. We find that it takes a very long time to get anything done and overall our recovery rates are lower in those types of cases.

I think it is also correct to say other provinces feel the same way and want to do something about it. On a very preliminary basis discussions are going on in two areas. The directors of support enforcement get together on a national basis usually once a year, and of course they have other exchanges without actually meeting during the year. They have started to talk about what they can do to improve things in this particular area. In addition to that there is a federal-provincial committee on family law, and this is an issue that they are just starting to address as well; is there anything we can do to improve efficiency both in terms of finding people, and then when we've found them to collect the amounts that are owed.

In terms of finding people I think we've made a lot of improvement. For instance, there is now an arrangement right across Canada whereby all provinces can access motor vehicle records of all other jurisdictions, which helps to find people. The federal government has given us some increased access to some of their data banks which also helps, and we are still talking to them about getting even more access to these data banks, as well as access possibly to additional sources of revenue that might come from the federal government. We get most of them now but there are still some out there that we don't get access to.

There are things going on but it will probably take a while before we see resolution to most of these issues. I think we are at the stage where the issues are still being defined and recognized. The discussions on how to solve them are just beginning.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Coffee is being served in the government caucus room in the back. We will take ten minutes and come back at 8:44 p.m., 8:45 p.m.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

We are back to the questioning. Mr. Harris, you are next.

MR. HARRIS: Again, Mr. Minister, the Departmental Salary Details give us a - on page 160 in the civil law section, the manager of social law - now in about a months time or actually the middle of this month I will have been admitted to the Bar for fifteen years but I never came across the notion of social law, perhaps someone can tell me what a manager of social law is?

MR. ROBERTS: The hon. gentleman has never worked, Mr. Chairman, in government. He does not understand the ways of bureaucracy. We have a solicitors pay scale and when he looks down he will see five, four and threes. We also have a position classified as Manager of Social Law. It is held by Brian Furey who is a lawyer my friend may know, a very capable, competent lawyer and it turns out he is the only one in that classification. There is a Manager of Resource Law, George Horan still? Okay and is there a manager of something else?

MS. SPRACKLIN: Yes.

MR. ROBERTS: Now the next question is why don't they show up here?

MS. SPRACKLIN: Well they should. The civil division is basically divided into units. It was an attempt I guess to try and bring some consistency and organization to the various services and to various government departments. It was broken down into a social law unit which provided services to the Department of Social Services, the Department of Health, the Department of Education and Training, the Department of Employment and Labour Relations and the Department of Justice. There was another one which was called the government services unit which provided services to another group of departments.

AN HON. MEMBER: The resource.

MS. SPRACKLIN: The resource.

MR. HARRIS: So it is similar to our legislative or estimates committees which are social departments, resource departments and -

MS. SPRACKLIN: Yes, and each group is headed up with a senior lawyer who is a Solicitor V. So Brian Furey is the head of the social law unit, George Horan is the government services and John McCarthy does the resource.

MR. ROBERTS: But in reality, if my friend looks down, he will see two Solicitors V. We have three senior solicitors and I don't know why Treasury Board in their infinite wisdom -

MR. HARRIS: Yes, there does not seem to be any difference in the salaries between the -

MR. ROBERTS: It is to the dollar, $85,801 is one-half of $171,602 but I -

MS. SPRACKLIN: I can't explain why that one is set out -

MR. ROBERTS: But they are not new positions and the manager of social law in fact is Brian Fureys position.

MR. HARRIS: Yes, but I guess there is not a lot of change in permanent staff complements so they must just reprint these things from year to year and not necessarily pay a lot of attention.

MR. ROBERTS: My hon. friend has found two errors in one evening, that's not bad.

MR. HARRIS: I want to ask another question about the allocation for registration of deeds and companies. Does the operation of Crown lands come under the department as well?

MR. ROBERTS: No, Natural Resources.

MR. HARRIS: Is that why there is no real integration between those two data systems, both having to do with land and forcing private practitioners to traipse back and forth from the Howley building to the government? Is there any talk of integrating those systems for greater convenience of all and presumably for efficiency for the government as well? Is there any work being done on that?

MR. ROBERTS: The answer to my hon. friend's final question is yes, we, being the government and a number of departments - are working on the question. The reason there are two is not that there are two departments, the reason there are two systems, as far as I can understand is history, and the two departments simply reflect the history.

When the government started disposing of Crown lands officially, keeping records, for some reason it was in the Natural Resources Department, presumably because the Minister of Natural Resources, by whatever name he or she may be known, owned the Crown land - was the officer who signed the deeds. They set up their own registry, and then over the years we began to develop what is now the Registry of Deeds, which is a deposit registry system. There is no real reason for them to be apart, in my understanding.

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: There are conversations which not even led to an interdepartmental committee. There is no reason, in my judgement, why there cannot be one registry of lands in the Province. I can go further. I would like to see us move - and this is a longer range project - to a land title system whereby we could end the need for lawyers to certify titles in this Province. Now, I will have every lawyer in the Province picketing me tomorrow, but in reality we do not need lawyers to do land conveyancing when the title is settled. We need them to do it on the security side, and mortgages and charges of one sort or another. I must say to my friend, Mr. Chairman, we will probably be here a long time before we have come to that point.

MR. HARRIS: Yes, well, my own experience in certifying title, I think I would be very happy to see a system where lawyers did not have to bother to do it.

MR. ROBERTS: So would the clients, because the charges would have to go way down.

MR. HARRIS: Not as much as the surveyors, though, it seems. Under Law Courts, administration, courts, there was some talk of expanding the unified family court system outside of St. John's. I know a number of years ago a previous Minister of Justice was talking about setting up a similar system in Corner Brook. What plans are afoot at the moment to look at that unified family court system and see whether there is a possibility of either expanding it or having similar systems in other parts of the Province?

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, there is no current proposal. It is an idea that surfaces from time to time, but it appears to be as much really on one side of the argument as the other because if one sets up a unified family court the question is - let's take Corner Brook, where we now have two Supreme Court judges sitting, a Mr. Justice Roberts - no relation, I will say in defence of Judge Roberts - and Mr. Justice Wooldridge, and they do family court work out there, I believe, at the federal section 96 jurisdiction - if we were to set up a unified family court in Corner Brook, do we take away one Supreme Court judge? If not, does that Supreme Court judge, or one or more of them, have spare time?

There are no plans to go any further. The unified family court appears to be working well here in St. John's, and I suspect that reflects in part the population concentration in this area. It is interesting, too, that most provinces have not gone very far towards a unified family court. It was an idea that in the late seventies came along. Mr. Justice Fagan was the first judge here, the late Ralph Fagan, and a number of provinces adopted it on an experimental basis, as we did. Most of them have not gone much further than we have gone. They took the experiments and made them permanent and then stopped.

We keep looking at it. There are proposals, as my friend knows, to amalgamate the provincial court into the section 96 court, the United Supreme Court, and again there are arguments to be made on either side of that.

MR. HARRIS: There are no plans for that.

MR. ROBERTS: Nothing will happen in the coming year.

MR. HARRIS: Moving on to, as part of the provincial courts, Minister, vote 3.2.03, Fines Administration, is a vote of $761,000. With revenues of $400,000 that does not seem to me to be right, unless it is only part of the revenues.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh, we get far more than that from (inaudible).

MR. HARRIS: The revenues under the estimate of provincial revenues attached to the budget, there appears to be about $8.9 million in fines and forfeitures shown as revenues. What is that $400,000, what is that the provincial court -

MR. ROBERTS: That $400,000, as shown on the revenue, is not fines that the courts levy.

MR. HARRIS: That is tickets, is it?

MR. ROBERTS: - or collect, I should say.

MR. HARRIS: Is that tickets?

MR. ROBERTS: This is fines administration and we have a new proposal - I don't know if we have announced it, if we haven't announced it here we go - we collect, through the fines administration system, municipal fines, university fines, hospital fines and other fines.

MR. HARRIS: This is your commission here is it?

MR. ROBERTS: And in effect that is the commission. It will also increase the revenue to the municipalities but we are going to charge them - instead of charging them a percentage we are going to charge them a fee per fine and the fee will be enough to recover our costs. So that $400,000 item, which the member will note, appeared last year, we weren't able to get the system up and running during the year. That $400,000 is the amount we will collect back from municipalities, university and hospitals.

MR. HARRIS: So the service was not in place between then and now?

MR. ROBERTS: That is right, yes. But my hon. friend will note we only spent $744,000 last year and we are budgeting the same amount this year. I am sorry, we spent $917,000 this year but $110,000 of that is a great big IT vote which I suspect I am going to see when I get here is to get the thing up and running.

MR. HARRIS: Okay. So that is going to be introduced this year is it? Legislation required to do that and that is what, university, municipalities or whatever?

MR. ROBERTS: Liquor commission, hospitals - is that it?

MS. SPRACKLIN: Yes, basically. I think there is something like seventy-odd ticketing jurisdictions we call them in the Province and that can be anything from CBC to federal ticketing agencies to the -

MR. HARRIS: Is there any plan to assist the owners of private parking lots? Does that include municipal parking lots that may be transferred?

MR. ROBERTS: Let me knock that on the head, we have never authorized any private person - private person in the legal sense -to impose fines. Now there is a section in the Highway Traffic Act - my hon. friend I am sure knows - 245 from memory, that allows a person to lay a charge against a person parking on private property and the person laying the charge can keep the net revenue. I don't know if that has ever been used but it is there. We have never authorized a private body to impose fines. The bodies - seventy to which my deputy refers - are all public bodies.

MR. HARRIS: So that presumably would go for the city parking garage if it is turned over to a private enterprise?

MR. ROBERTS: As far as I know it is.

MS. SPRACKLIN: Excuse me, I am afraid there is some misunderstanding here. We are not authorizing any new bodies to impose fines. Right now if the City of St. John's issues a traffic ticket we collect the fine but we remit the revenue, with the exception of a small amount, to the city. All we are saying is that we will be readjusting the amount that we keep of what we collect. It will not have any adverse affect on hospitals, the university or anybody else.

MR. HARRIS: Okay. Again on fines, one of the sources of revenue allegedly for the victims services is the victim fine surcharge. Can someone advise what amount is imposed by way of victim fine surcharge provincewide on an annual basis or the last fiscal year and what amount is actually collected and goes into that fund?

MR. ROBERTS: We are all hesitating because my hon. friend's question is one that has been asked officially -

MR. HARRIS: Probably asked yourself many times.

MR. ROBERTS: - twenty or thirty times. I suppose the truthful answer is nobody seems to be able to give me a firm figure. When we come to the Victims Services vote here, my friend - I am just trying to turn up the vote -

MR. HARRIS: Page 259.

MR. ROBERTS: I am sorry?

MR. HARRIS: Page 259, 4.2.04.

MR. ROBERTS: He will note a revenue item there, I think it is $200,000. Oh, page 259, sorry. These things have no rhyme or reason to them at all I'm afraid, they are just history.

You will note the revenue item of $200,000 and that's our estimate of the federal fines surcharge yield for the year.

MR. HARRIS: That was your estimate last year too.

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, and we only got $150,000; and it depends on judges willingness to impose them and then upon - I am not even sure the ability to collect them - I mean the revenue is a revenue item whether it is collected or not, I mean, if it is not collected because of bad debt in due course. But one has to take a run on how many cases there will be in which judges impose fines and how much the fines will be. It is not a very effective means of financing; we are putting a million one a year in the Victims Services and we get $200K from the revenue. Now I don't begrudge the $900K, in fact I would like to see more in there, that is one of these areas we have expanded in the last few years. This is one of the most useful and productive votes we have in the entire department.

MR. HARRIS: On Police Services, Minister, page 256, vote 4.1.04, the R.C.M.P contract, I notice it is the same amount as last year or slightly under; what's the effect of extraordinary expenses such as the 100 mounties camped out at Voisey's Bay or other such enterprises? Is that covered by the contract, is that an extra -

MR. ROBERTS: There were not 100, Mr. Chairman. My recollection is about fifty-two at peak but that is still a lot of police. Yes, it has to come out of that amount and if we spend more we get charged more. We pay 70 per cent of the cost of the R.C.M.P. and it is a quite complicated agreement but basically, whatever Voisey's Bay cost and we don't have a firm figure yet but whatever that operation cost it has to be borne as part of the $39,728,000 that we will provide to the R.C.M.P. this year.

MR. HARRIS: Do I understand you to say then that this vote won't increase because of that expenditure but the cost of that will have to come out of the total allocation for -

MR. ROBERTS: Well, Mr. Chairman, the vote is only an estimate. Last year the Committee will note we asked for $40,490,000, this is only the main vote but if we take the total of what we asked for, $40,562,000 and the actual expenditure was $39,375,000 and that includes part of the cost of Voisey's Bay because of course that service was done during the '94/'95 fiscal year. This year we are asking for $39,728,000 that is the best estimate that the officials can come up with; the actual may differ one way or the other. In other words, if we have a run of Voisey's Bays, let's say we are unlucky enough to have a dozen situations where we needed a major police operation of that scale, no doubt the bill for the R.C.M.P. would be more than $39,728,000.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Harris -

MR. HARRIS: I will pass.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We have to go to Mr. Careen now. Thank you, Mr. Minister, thank you Mr. Harris.

Mr. Careen.

MR. CAREEN: Thank you.

Minister, page 262 would be Commercial Relations. There is a difference between last year's estimates and actuals. In Professional Services, what increase do they - there is obviously, more lawyers?

MR. ROBERTS: No. For once we are not hiring more lawyers. The $125,000 is the amount that we estimate we will have to pay to the OSFI, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. We have asked them to come in and work with us to do a review of the locally incorporated insurance companies, and the feds do nothing for free so that is the cost. We will recover it because we will charge that back to the insurance companies at the end of the day. We have to show an expenditure and we have to ask authority to spend that money.

MR. CAREEN: Page 260, 5.1.01, Trade Practices. Last year there was $43,400 revised which was not spent, and this year there is $1,000. What would the grants and subsidies be if it did have to be?

MR. ROBERTS: Page 265?

MR. CAREEN: Page 260, 5.1.01.

MR. ROBERTS: Grants and Subsidies, Trade Practices. My friend will recall we abolished a couple of years ago a position called consumer advocate. There was a fair amount of fuss about it at the time. We said at that time that we were prepared to fund representations should it be necessary and there have not been any applications either to the Public Utilities Board or the CRTC, either of the utilities in this Province since then. We have not spent any money, but this year we are asking for $1000 which as my friend will acknowledge is a token vote. Should an application be forthcoming we are prepared to look at funding a consumer group to make sure that point of view is represented.

MR. CAREEN: Very good.

MR. ROBERTS: By wiping out the office we have now saved a salary and there have been no applications for a couple of years.

MR. CAREEN: There was something happened last year that bothered a lot of people, anybody with a conscience. I know that in this department, like any other department, the minister has a twenty-four hour watch and takes blame for whatever happens, and that goes with the territory. Sometimes extenuating circumstances caused by someone else causes it - every action has a reaction.

There was an incident up in Bonavista Bay where the council had put into motion back payments of taxes, something like a debtor's prison out of a Dicken's story, the RCMP on a particular night after one o'clock caught this lady and charged her.

MR. ROBERTS: I do not think they charged her.

MR. CAREEN: Well, they brought her in and locked her up for unpaid municipal monies that were owed. Has your department stepped in to make sure that anything like that cannot happen. They should have their own recourse of getting their money without doing this.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, Mr. Chairman, there has been a fair amount of discussion this evening about collecting fines. My friend for Waterford - Kenmount was asking some very good question about it, and this is part of the way the system works. What happened in that case was the woman had not paid a fine so a warrant of committal had been issued. As I mentioned earlier that is the only remedy we have. We do not beat people or hit them on the head. They get taken off to jail. Now, what went wrong, and my recollection is the RCMP quickly acknowledged it and apologized, was that an officer has no business going to anybody's home at one o'clock in the morning to arrest somebody on that kind of charge. Now, if it were a murder or something it would be different, but my recollection is this did not even come to the Department of Justice. Now, I at this stage was on the main floor but I hear about things and watch the news - the RCMP the next day simply said: we apologize and we are sorry. We cannot say it will never happen again but it should not happen again.

Now, I acknowledged that what happens on watch the commanding officer is responsible for, but remember, I say to my friend, the RCM Police and the RNC run their own show operationally, and my understanding, and I ask Mr. Flynn to correct me if I am wrong, is all that happened was that, for some reason, an over-zealous officer did something he ought not to have done and I understand he got his knuckles rapped. That was very unpleasant. But you can be put in jail in this Province, not for debt, but for refusing to pay a fine. That is the only weapon we have to do it, to collect the fines.

MR. CAREEN: It just occurred to me to ask because we have heard it for weeks and it was out in the news again this evening about municipalities being in trouble.

MR. HARRIS: Is there not a fine for non-payment of debt in that circumstance? The fine is for non-payment of debt, isn't it?

MR. ROBERTS: There would have been a warrant of committal for non-payment of a debt, yes, but you are putting on the warrant of committal, I say to my friend, not for the debt itself. We don't have a debtor's prison but if a fine is imposed one has to -

MR. HARRIS: But the fine is imposed for non-payment of debt.

MR. ROBERTS: Yes.

MR. HARRIS: Well, it is much the same thing.

MR. ROBERTS: No, my learned friend would agree, the fine is for the offence and the offence happens to be not paying the debt. It could be for driving too fast or for hitting somebody on the head. It could also be a warrant of committal, my deputy minister reminds me, for refusal to respond to a judgement debtor's summons, which is an order of the court, and you can't ignore orders of the court without taking the consequences.

MR. CAREEN: I just wanted to quickly touch base on that because I realize Ms. Cowan has to go.

Thank you.

MR. HODDER: I just have a couple of comments and a couple of questions to ask the minister. There has been a great deal of talk about alternative justice and sentencing systems, a great deal of discussion within the aboriginal native community relative to circles of healing, community-based responsibility for, shall we say, handling the procedures of penalties. I am wondering if the minister could comment on, well, two things really? One is that community-based responsibility is a well-established Canadian principle, particularly as it applies to some offences, and particularly after people have come out of prison. There are various programs that the Social Services Department and others are trying to administer for sexual offenders and that kind of thing.

The native community in Western Canada talk about their circle of healing very similar to what is talked about in Labrador, and I wonder if the minister could apprise us as to the status of the ultimate justice systems that have been discussed with the native community in Labrador?

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, my friend opens up a very, very large subject there and I could go on for hours, but I am sure he doesn't want me to, so I will try to be brief. Let me talk specifically about Labrador and the Innu people in particular, because I think that is what my hon. friend's question is aimed at.

We have now signed an interim policing agreement with the Innu community and that is consistent with the principles we laid down last Fall. We were very pleased to do it and we think it is a step forward - we, the government - and as part of that, there is a series of meetings looking at measures that could be taken within the justice system. In fact, the deputy is meeting tomorrow with a group of Innu and, in due course, we will bring Ottawa into the piece as well.

It probably would be most helpful if I just simply sketch a couple of the principles. Sentencing circles are allowed now within the Criminal Code. In fact, both the Supreme Court and the Provincial Court have used sentencing circles. A sentencing circle is essentially a pre-sentence procedure and the judge has a great deal of latitude within the provisions of the code as to the information he or she receives and to the disposition he or she makes of an accused person up on conviction. I believe the judges in this Province are sensitive and they have demonstrated this on many occasions.

I would be happy to send my friend some of the decisions that have been filed. There are good indications where there have been refusals to hold sentencing circles. I can think of one where a Supreme Court Judge refused to hold a sentencing circle in a sexual assault thing because the victim said she didn't think it was appropriate at all. That is a factor the judge considered and in this case said, `fine, I will not have a sentencing circle.' Diversions, pre-charge, post-charge are used widely in the Province. Youth diversions we use throughout the Province. Adult diversions will depend on changes to the Criminal Code that are now working their way through the system.

The other point I would make, I guess, is the principle upon which we stand very firmly and this has caused the difficulty with the Innu people. Whatever is done must be within the bounds of the Criminal Code and the law. You can't ignore the law, you can work within the law. The Criminal Code gives the Attorney General of this Province certain authority and certain responsibility. The Constitution of Canada gives the Attorney General of the Province the responsibility to administer criminal law. Parliament makes the criminal law but the provinces administer it. We are prepared, within the Criminal Code, to look at any of the various avenues, remedies and methods open to us. We will not go outside the Criminal Code. I think I can say, and events have demonstrated, that within the Criminal Code there is a fair amount of flexibility permissible and I suspect over the next few years across Canada we will see it developed to the point where Parliament makes some changes. But we are within the Code. Now, we are following a number of initiatives and Davis is one of them. Again, that is a very sketchy answer but I would be happy to go into it - I probably spend more time on that file than any other that comes to me.

MR. HODDER: Has the minister prepared briefing papers that might be shared with members of the House?

MR. ROBERTS: The answer to both questions would be no. There is no specific briefing paper, and therefore, there is nothing I could table. There is an immense amount of information. I would be happy to ask the officials to provide the member with at least a beginning of an introduction, and I put it that way. It is vastly complicated and I don't think there is any one book - I will undertake, given my friend's interest, to see what we can provide him, either by way of material or by way of leads to materials.

MR. HODDER: My interest springs from the Select Committee on Children's Interest and we, as a Committee, would need to have some information as to the principles that are involved. We have had discussions, in some cases, with representatives in Western Canada where similar programs are discussed and any background information the ministry could share would be very helpful.

MR. ROBERTS: Well, let me say, Mr. Chairman, I share my friend's interest. We have, I think, two people who may be able to help and I will ask to speak to each of them. There is a man named Chris Curran, a solicitor in the Civil Division, who works on these issues and Pamela Rideout-Lahey, a rep in Court Services and the Provincial Court, has collected quite a substantial amount of information from across the country.

MS. SPRACKLIN: We have a lot of information.

MR. ROBERTS: The problem is, it is not necessarily collated and we will have to see what we can put together. I say to my friend, he is starting on an exploration that is a long, but very interesting one.

AN OFFICIAL: Oh he had somebody hired to do that for him.

MR. ROBERTS: Oh, then the Committee is better off than the Justice Department.

MR. HODDER: Moving to a new topic, if I could, because I am aware of the clock and the need to get back to my friend here. Of the RNC, there seems to have been a pattern established over many years whereby, when the senior management personnel of the RNC seem to be in need of change, there doesn't seem to be a process in place which makes that transition smooth, and while I have all confidence in Superintendent Leo -

MR. ROBERTS: Len Power.

MR. HODDER: Len Power - it seems to me that each time when the term of the RNC chief seems to be coming to an end, we go through a very frustrating time, and I am wondering if the ministry has given any consideration to term limits for the Chief of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary or, if there has been any discussion about ensuring that we don't have a situation whereby the chief is on sick leave for extended periods of time and we go through this period of uncertainty?

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, that is a very good question. The Chief of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is an appointment by the Cabinet, by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council and it is without term, I believe the act says on good behaviour - I could look it up - and as a matter of fact, it may be at pleasure, but one could look it up in the 1993 act, I guess it is, the most recent, the current act. It has been unchanged in that sense for many years. The immediate problem I think he is referring to is the fact that the former Chief, Ed Coady, was on sick leave and eventually it came to the point where he took a retirement and Len Power was made Chief.

Now, two or three comments with which I think my friend will agree. First of all, it is always difficult to know when a sick leave becomes a retirement and you can't penalize -

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: I'm sorry?

AN OFFICIAL: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: You can't penalize a person - no, my friend is not in this case and unless he knows something more than I do, that's not fair, I would suggest. It's at what point you say to somebody that you have been sick long enough, you are now gone.

Secondly, there is, within the RNC, a very well-developed hierarchical command structure, and when Chief Coady came to see me and said: My doctor says I must go on sick leave, the answer was: Sobeit. I mean, you must take care of your health. And Len Power, at that time, was the Senior Deputy Chief, there are two deputy chiefs, and Len Power became the Acting Chief and functioned very well as acting chief, there was no difficulty that I knew of and I was there throughout most of the period. And then there came a point when Chief Coady's medical condition was such that obviously, retirement was the correct option, so there we were, and by this time, the Premier becoming the acting minister, it fell to him to make the recommendation that Chief Power be made Chief, as he was, Cabinet did that.

I didn't see any turmoil or anything else. Now, whether we should appoint for a term is another issue, but I am not certain that any police force in Canada does, with one exception, I saw it in Toronto recently. They had a devil of a job in Toronto when the guy's term ran out and he refused to go, which struck me as kind of absurd, but the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not appointed for a term, he is appointed at pleasure, as far as I know.

MS. SPRACKLIN: (Inaudible).

MR. ROBERTS: My deputy says, as far as she knows, that is correct.

I don't think we see any turmoil in the ranks of the RNC; in fact, to the contrary. I think it is a very professionally run force that performs very well, sometimes under difficult conditions.

MR. HODDER: My point would be that at the times when there has been change of the office, or change of the persons holding the office of Chief -

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member's time has elapsed.

MR. HODDER: - there has been some uncertainty, and in each case there have been frustrations and public perceptions of lack of confidence. Again, I am aware of the fact that these proceedings are being placed on public record, and I am wondering if the ministry would give some consideration to that. I think if you looked back over the last twenty-five years, you would find that has happened before.

MR. CHAIRMAN: A short answer, Mr. Minister.

MR. ROBERTS: My answer would be yes, I will, and I would like to be able to talk to my friend at a little greater length, perhaps in a different forum.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The hon. the Member for St. John's East, I think, has four minutes.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Chair.

On the Commercial Relations vote here on page 262 of the Estimates, and 170 of the Departmental Salary Details, there is this Professional Services item that is referred to necessitated by the Hiland action. Can we hear some more about Caribou, Mr. Minister? We have not heard very much about it since the initial announcements were made, and haven't heard very much since then. Do we have any other potentials lying around, and were there savings and loans companies, or people out there who are subject to regulation, or are they all gone? Are there any more companies of that nature?

MR. ROBERTS: Mr. Chairman, there were, in my understanding, two trust and loan companies licensed in the Province - local. Now, the Royal Trust has a licence and Montreal Trust; just put them aside for the moment. One was Caribou, which is now in the hands of a receiver under the Winding Up Act of Canada, and the other is the Fortis Trust Corporation which, in my understanding, is now regulated by the feds because it has the Canada deposit insurance program in place. Is that correct? Does anybody - that is my understanding.

MR. HARRIS: Fortis is under the CDIC.

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, my understanding is that Fortis - I was a director of that company a number of years ago, and Fortis has, I think, CDIC insurance.

MR. HARRIS: They do now, but they took over the smaller company which, I think -

MR. ROBERTS: They took over a company called Newfoundland Building and Savings Investment Limited. But let me come back to Caribou. I can say nothing more on Caribou because at this stage there is nothing more that I am able to report, but there are two things pending. The first is that the company was placed under the Winding Up Act on the petition, I believe, of its directors and its officers, and the Winding Up Act, which is a federal statute and ousts any provincial statute because of the paramountcy of federal legislation, provides that a receiver is appointed and the receiver will report back to the court within, I believe, sixty days, and from memory, the sixty days is up.

MR. HARRIS: So that essentially looks after the assets and liabilities, etcetera. My concern is the fact that this company was, for a year -

MR. ROBERTS: There is the other issue of the way in which the regulation was done.

MR. HARRIS: And they were taking in deposits off the street for -

MR. ROBERTS: My friend is wise, or whatever you want to say, to raise it there, that is the second one I was going to refer to. This happened at a time when I happened to be away from the Province so the Premier as the acting Minister of Justice, in the absence of the guy who would normally have to deal with it, namely, me, and properly so, he ordered a review to be made by the officials. That review has not yet been completed. I have seen some preliminary reports but I haven't seen anything like a final one. When we get that we will be in a position to know, as best we can, what happened. Obviously, something went astray, and I don't want to be any more judgemental than that. I don't know the magnitude of it, I don't know what happened, but this company goes back thirty years - the act goes back twenty years?

MS. SPRACKLIN: The act goes back to 1984.

MR. ROBERTS: The act goes back to 1984.

MS. SPRACKLIN: No, 1974.

MR. ROBERTS: No, 1974 - twenty years, I am correct, and the exemption goes back to 1984. We are presently reviewing the files to find out exactly what did and did not happen, and then there will have to be some judgements taken. At that point, I have no doubt there will be a public statement, and I am not sure where we will go from there, but I don't want to prejudge the result.

MR. HARRIS: I see the time, but I have one last question. Under the vote 5.l.06 it refers to `supervision of insurance, trust and various other financial institutions and market intermediaries operating in the Province.' Could you tell us who the various other financial institutions and market intermediaries are?

MR. ROBERTS: We license mortgage brokers.

MR. HARRIS: Mortgage brokers?

MR. ROBERTS: Real estate agents.

MS. SPRACKLIN: I think, under this particular division, you are basically looking just at insurance companies and personal companies.

MR. HARRIS: The mortgage brokers are under 5.1.02 on page 260. So there is nobody else, just the insurance companies and the trust companies?

MR. ROBERTS: I have to tell you, Mr. Chairman, that the Justice officials don't write these head notes. I suspect they were written a number of years ago. But I don't know of any others. My hon. friend is right, when you look back to 5.1.02 the Mortgage Brokers Act and the Real Estate Act, are dealt with under that head. It is all in the same division, Consumer and Corporate Affairs.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If there are no further questions, first of all we have some housekeeping to do. If there are no errors or omissions I would like someone to move the Minutes of last night's meeting.

On motion, Minutes adopted as circulated.

On motion, subheads 1.1.01 through 5.1.06, carried.

On motion, Department of Justice, total heads, $108,776,100 carried.

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, officials, for being here in whatever capacity.

On motion, Committee adjourned.